Re: Quite a stretch, Mike. -- But pleasant fantasy!
As the hippies would say, "Go to bed, old man!"
Your arguments could be extended to any invention over the past 400 years to paint them as somehow "evil" inventions.
Airplanes allow drug smugglers to bring in their toxic cargo, and terrorists to take hostages and crash into buildings. Thanks a lot, Orville and Wibur!
Cars kill thousands on the road every year. Thanks a lot, Daimler Motor Car Company!
Railroads allowed a-holes like Cornelius Vanderbuilt and Jay Gould to become obscenely wealthy. Thanks a lot, James Watt!
Three easy examples. Three developments that revolutionized not just the country, but the entire world, and provided incalculable benefit to humankind. Did they produce some bad apples? Yeah - our inventions are merely tools conjured from our imagination and utilized by our flawed souls. They have every bit the capability of evil and good as their human operator. No more, no less. There is no such thing as "bad" innovation. Those who look at change as a threat to their livelihood are both shortsighted and underestimate their own abilities to adapt and change.
That's the kind of "innovation" that I think is good? Frak yeah. Innovation grows us as a species. It actively repels stagnation. It drives cultural and physiological changes and in more cases than not, increases prosperity across the entire planet. Innovation begets change, which begets more innovation. Stagnation begets complacency, which will beget extinction.
To quote Robert Heinlein:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
If he'd been the mayor of a major US city, he could've been convicted for running a bribery and extortion ring out of the mayor's office and only gotten 20 years.
I kinda feel sorry for the players, but at the same time, I was LMAO at the reports coming in on PC Gamer and Kotaku. I (and probably everybody else here) saw this fiasco coming from 20 miles away. And the sucky thing about it is that it's not going to deter one frakking company from doing anything differently.
EA is not going to say "hey, we may have made a big mistake making this online only." No, they're sitting in their boardrooms RIGHT NOW saying "We need more hardware to handle the load." Their fundamental grasp on reality has slipped away. They're going gung-ho to treat a symptom with zero thought as to what the underlying cause of it is.
And nothing will change because of it. Millions of people will still buy Diablo 4, forgetting (or ignoring) the infamous day that Diablo 3 came out.
Eliminating piracy at the expense of pissing off your customers? At EA, absolutely. After all, the majority of their customers already hate them.
it's a conflict of interest because it means the doctor and nurses are forced to think about more than the patient's health. They also have to think about the bottom line.
Who's bottom line do they have to think about? The hospital's? I'm don't understand why a doctor or nurse needs to give a frak about making sure the hospital is charging enough. Do you think the cashier at the Tesco cares what they're getting for a Snickers bar?
Re: It's what you get when capitalists control a market...
All the good things in your own life that you associate with the term "capitalism" have been hard won by fighting back plutocrats and their inherited privileges
LOL yeah. The peasants stormed Cupertino and forced Steve Jobs to release the iPhone.
Pretty simple: The reason health care services are so expensive is that there's 90 layers of paperwork and bureaucracy between those that provide and charge for the services (doctors, etc) and those who receive and partially/wholly pay for the service (patient).
All those layers make it insanely easy for the providers to jack up the prices to whatever they think they can get away with. And patients take the attitude of "Who the fuck cares what it costs? I've got health insurance!"
In addition to the "insightful" and "funny" tags for comments, can we get one called "frakking moronic" for comments like this one? It'd make a great addition to the Sunday roundup.
On the post: Innovators Break Stuff, Including The Rules: How Gates, Jobs & Zuckerberg Could Have Been Targeted Like Aaron Swartz
Re: Quite a stretch, Mike. -- But pleasant fantasy!
Your arguments could be extended to any invention over the past 400 years to paint them as somehow "evil" inventions.
Airplanes allow drug smugglers to bring in their toxic cargo, and terrorists to take hostages and crash into buildings. Thanks a lot, Orville and Wibur!
Cars kill thousands on the road every year. Thanks a lot, Daimler Motor Car Company!
Railroads allowed a-holes like Cornelius Vanderbuilt and Jay Gould to become obscenely wealthy. Thanks a lot, James Watt!
Three easy examples. Three developments that revolutionized not just the country, but the entire world, and provided incalculable benefit to humankind. Did they produce some bad apples? Yeah - our inventions are merely tools conjured from our imagination and utilized by our flawed souls. They have every bit the capability of evil and good as their human operator. No more, no less. There is no such thing as "bad" innovation. Those who look at change as a threat to their livelihood are both shortsighted and underestimate their own abilities to adapt and change.
That's the kind of "innovation" that I think is good? Frak yeah. Innovation grows us as a species. It actively repels stagnation. It drives cultural and physiological changes and in more cases than not, increases prosperity across the entire planet. Innovation begets change, which begets more innovation. Stagnation begets complacency, which will beget extinction.
To quote Robert Heinlein:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
On the post: Innovators Break Stuff, Including The Rules: How Gates, Jobs & Zuckerberg Could Have Been Targeted Like Aaron Swartz
wrong profession
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/11/verdict-detroit-ex-mayor/1978229/
On the post: Our Turn To Get Bizarre Legal Threats From Global Wildlife Foundation
Re:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lksjqqRa5N1qihssro1_250.jpg
On the post: Launch Day Punishment: SimCity's Online-Only DRM Locking Purchasers Out Of Servers, Purchases
EA is not going to say "hey, we may have made a big mistake making this online only." No, they're sitting in their boardrooms RIGHT NOW saying "We need more hardware to handle the load." Their fundamental grasp on reality has slipped away. They're going gung-ho to treat a symptom with zero thought as to what the underlying cause of it is.
And nothing will change because of it. Millions of people will still buy Diablo 4, forgetting (or ignoring) the infamous day that Diablo 3 came out.
Eliminating piracy at the expense of pissing off your customers? At EA, absolutely. After all, the majority of their customers already hate them.
On the post: Bizarre Legal Threat Of The Day: Confused Zoo Owner Threatens Popehat Over... Well... Just Read It
Boy, they've got an algorithm to calculate everything, don't they?
On the post: The Worst Article You Might Ever Read About 'Cybersecurity'
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
Re:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6661925/Hundreds-of-patients-died-needlessly- at-NHS-hospital-due-to-appalling-care.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9600165/L ack-of-weekend-NHS-consultants-risking-patients-lives.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/heal thnews/9639090/Cystic-Fibrosis-sufferer-denied-chance-of-life-drug-by-NHS.html
http://www.dailyma il.co.uk/health/article-2126379/Sentenced-death-old-The-NHS-denies-life-saving-treatment-elderly-man s-chilling-story-reveals.html?ITO=1490
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
Re: Re:
Who's bottom line do they have to think about? The hospital's? I'm don't understand why a doctor or nurse needs to give a frak about making sure the hospital is charging enough. Do you think the cashier at the Tesco cares what they're getting for a Snickers bar?
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
Re: It's what you get when capitalists control a market...
LOL yeah. The peasants stormed Cupertino and forced Steve Jobs to release the iPhone.
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
I'd like to hear your reasoning for this
On the post: Healthcare Isn't A Free Market, It's A Giant Economic Scam
All those layers make it insanely easy for the providers to jack up the prices to whatever they think they can get away with. And patients take the attitude of "Who the fuck cares what it costs? I've got health insurance!"
On the post: Bizarre: Indian Government Orders Censorship Of One Its Own Sites
The question is: Both India and HBO have this in common.
What is, both want external organizations to block content that they host on their own web sites?
Correct, you get to pick again.
On the post: White House Petition Concerning Legality Of Unlocking Phones Passes The Magic 100,000 Mark
Terrorist.
yes, it's sarcasm!
On the post: Dead Kennedys Guitarist Joins Crusade Against Ad Networks & YouTube Despite Understanding Neither
Multinational companies like Sony Music? Universal? Warner Music? EMI?
On the post: Armed UK Police Raid House Over Facebook Picture Showing Toy Weapon In Background
Re:
Let's make a little addition and see if your answer changes, shall we?
Nothing about this was over the top and I would not expect anything less from any logical law enforcementeven if it was my house.
On the post: Armed UK Police Raid House Over Facebook Picture Showing Toy Weapon In Background
Re:
http://goo.gl/CC0q2
On the post: Armed UK Police Raid House Over Facebook Picture Showing Toy Weapon In Background
Re: Raids need to stop
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/
On the post: Armed UK Police Raid House Over Facebook Picture Showing Toy Weapon In Background
Re: Stop the gun BS
A mortar is not a weapon?
And Techdirt isn't reporting that the cops had guns, the source article is saying it.
And you dumb attitude only makes thing worse rather than helping.
Pot, meet Kettle
On the post: Armed UK Police Raid House Over Facebook Picture Showing Toy Weapon In Background
Re:
In addition to the "insightful" and "funny" tags for comments, can we get one called "frakking moronic" for comments like this one? It'd make a great addition to the Sunday roundup.
Coog
On the post: Dateline 1901: In Response To Presidential Assassination, Department Of Justice Orders All Phone Calls Logged And Stored
"cowardly bullet"
"Grigsby's Cowardly Bullet"