71–80 of 89 posts
I had an account on whitehouse.gov the last time they did this petition thing and now I can't log in. Not that it won't let me, but if I hit "sign in" there's no fields in which to enter a username and password. Like there's no sign in option there at all . What the fuck?
While I definitely support the notion of this petition, it's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly. To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. They won't somehow come to their senses and stop pushing for insane laws and regulations. It's a very dangerous illusion that petty petitions will change anyt…
You can't attack Big Content in any meaningful way, because the unimaginable (again) amounts of money they spend bribing Congress and the White House makes you absolutely insignificant as a voice.
And there's your solution:
Stop giving them money! Period.
We bitch and moan about all the bribery (I guess some people still call it lobbying, or access) that goes on, while at the same time we give them all of the exact same money that they're doing the bribing with.
If you want things to change, stop giving them money. Choke off their air supply.
You might think that your choice to not buy CDs and movies won't make a bit of difference. And you might be right. But there is no other way to stop them except by cutting off their supply of money.
Make them irrelevant in your life. Don't buy their music or their movies. Read books (I know), from the library if possible. Read more from the Internet (I know) and blogs, there's an amazing amount of free, quality content swimming around out there.
Make your own content, and be content with less content.
Do these petitions do any good? That is, is it even worthwhile to sign it? Or is our time better spent elsewhere.
There was actually a meta-petition[1] recently that was asking for the White House to pay more attention to these petitions, so it seems like these petitions are mostly ignored [1] https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/actually-...
The petitions are not there for us to influence them. They're there (they spent effort to put them there) for them to influence us.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum. If his argument is a silly one-liner that's demonstrably refuted with a pointer to Somalia as an example of "less government", it's not javek's responsibility to fill in the blanks for him.
Similarly, if anyone advocates more test coverage, we should automatically assume they want 100% quickcheck-like coverage testing all possible occurrences including power outages, network cables being unplugged, etc. What nonsense! How could anyone get work done in a place like that? Or, to use a political example, if anyone advocates more regulation of X, it's incumbent on them to explicitly explain they aren't actu…
And I'd similarly pile on anyone who asked for quote "more regulation" without specifying so much as an industry and type of behavior to be regulated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In reality it's more like this: Step 1: Use bucket of cash to gain access to and develop a rapport with a politician, increase the rapport and dependency with campaign contributions Step 2: Convince said politician of your perspective, namely that the works of art your company has struggled to create are threatened by people who want to "steal" them without paying. Step 3: Convince said politician that it's necessary…
Agreed. It amazes me when people see a bad result and insist that there must be a bad person behind it all somewhere. Do people not realize that more evil will come from a bad system full of good people than will ever come from a few bad people in a good system? Germany wasn't bad in WWII because of Hitler -- there are a million little Hitlers running around the world at any given moment. Germany went bad because the…
While I definitely support the notion of this petition, it's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly. To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. They won't somehow come to their senses and stop pushing for insane laws and regulations. It's a very dangerous illusion that petty petitions will change anyt…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly." That's simply false. They raise public awareness and support of any given issue. People say that the petitions to legalize marijuana have done nothing, but if that's true then why has public support for legalization gone from 36% to 50% in just five years? It's not magic, it's because every time there is a petition that the white…
People support marijuana legalisation primarily because they want to get high rather than because of an e-petition. Decriminilisation in places like california and modern research into medicanal uses has probably helped too.
I think it does a lot of disservice to the issue to just write it off as "lol, potheads want to smoke up, they're the only ones that want this legalized".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are arguing against a straw man. Cheez wasn't advocating taking all power from the government, just "most". Applying the principle of charity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity ) to cheez's remarks, one would assume that preventing violence is not one of the powers he advocated taking from the government.
I'd say it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum. If his argument is a silly one-liner that's demonstrably refuted with a pointer to Somalia as an example of "less government", it's not javek's responsibility to fill in the blanks for him.
Of course not, because you wouldn't be trying to set up a strawman to attack if I said that.
"it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum."
Bullshit. Bullshit in any circumstance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I think it's a bit more than: "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do." More along the lines of: "Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." But I agree that a lack of term l…
In reality it's more like this: Step 1: Use bucket of cash to gain access to and develop a rapport with a politician, increase the rapport and dependency with campaign contributions Step 2: Convince said politician of your perspective, namely that the works of art your company has struggled to create are threatened by people who want to "steal" them without paying. Step 3: Convince said politician that it's necessary…