91–100 of 120 posts
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In Denmark (and other European countries i assume) we have public founding. Parties who have been nominated for an election and received at least 1000 votes in the recent election, are entitled to receive state aid amounting to 28 DKK (~USD 5) per vote. It seems to work pretty well.
I don't understand your system, but what prevents giving money out according to votes from creating a self-fulfilling prophecy?
It's like saying google support SOPA because they do business with the RIAA.
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I have interned with Microsoft in the past, and am scheduled to in the future. Therefore take everything I say with a metric ton of salt. Obviously my opinions don't speak for them. Most corporations put their lobbying efforts behind or against legislation based on what's in their interest. I don't believe that the public can honestly expect them to act any differently so long as their behavior is in accordance with…
>I don't believe that the public can honestly expect them to act any differently so long as their behavior is in accordance with the law -- even if only technically, and even if the law should be changed. Corporations are composed of people, and I expect people to act morally. Laws are never going to properly capture morality, to put it another way legality is a weak indicator of morality. I humbly submit that it's n…
It's no coincidence that most of the companies on that list sell mediocre software for way more than it's worth. They rob us with their high prices, yet they throw a tantrum when we rob them back. Make your software suck less and maybe I'll consider paying for it.
"They rob us with their high prices, yet they throw a tantrum when we rob them back" Last I checked, nobody is putting a gun to your head to buy a piece of software that you feel is overpriced for your perceived benefit. And that certainly does not give you the right to just outright steal it. There simply is no moral justification for that - it's theft, plain and simple. If you feel something is overpriced, then don…
Ehr, sorry, but this is not true. It's not a gun, but you have to own a copy of Windows for some government/state services in some countries, because their software is written for it.
Also, copying software is not a "theft, plain and simple". I'm not sure how you missed the whole debate about it that lasts for a few decades. If it was so "plain and simple", there would be no debate.
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1. BSA has long been critisized as a fornt for MS. [1] 2. Microsoft is widely believed to be largest contributor to BSA [2] How is it a fallacy to assume MS has a large voice in deciding BSA's policy? Also when you dismiss an argument with a pithy "Textbook logical fallacy", shouldn't you disclose that MS is one of your clients? [3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance#Crit... [2] http://books.…
Gah! You figured me out! Secret shill for Microsoft! The fallacy is, "if they're not guilty, all they need to do is deny it". It's used by the powerful against the powerless way more often than it's used against big companies, which is all the more reason not to legitimize it.
Let's, for example, assume you generously donate a given sum every month, to Greenpeace. According to you logic, nobody can say you support them.
Microsoft pays the fees required by their BSA membership and allow the entity to brag abput their membership. The entity's charter is to defend the interests of their members and one of the ways to do it is supporting SOPA. How can anyone say, considering Microsoft's previous support to PIPA and their support to BSA, that they don't support SOPA?
How likely is that Microsoft would chose not to comment and, at the same time, be against SOPA? The odds of that are vanishingly small.
About the first part of your last message, you never kept it really secret ;-)
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Corporations' only moral code is greed. And I'm not talking abstractly, I've been part of discussions at companies where people adamantly say it is wrong to leave money on the table no matter what. The only time it is OK not to grab all money you can is if it might prevent the company from grabbing even more money in the future.
The REALLY long term game is helping your country be prosperous so that you have an educated workforce to draw from and people and people and companies wealthy enough to pay high prices for your products. That requires a pretty pervasive altruistic/moral attitude to make it work, though... tragedy of the commons and all that, otherwise.
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Does that mean Microsoft and Apple have to support any anti-piracy bill, without any regard for its consequences? Because if that's true, then they are no better than RIAA and MPAA and they couldn't care less about the Internet and censorship, as long as they reduce the pirated copies by 10% (if that).
To come at that question from the other direction, I sometimes wonder what (if any) anti-piracy bill some tech folks would support. The counter-argument to better IP enforcement often seems to be "change your business model", which is not a policy statement.
There's a reason that there's no law that holds telephone companies responsible for law-breaking which is organized over their wires / cell towers. It's ludicrous.
The membership of this group is basically a list of businesses that startups should be chipping away at. Let them spend their time lobbying, while you sneak up behind them and whack them on the head with your niche webapp. -- Adobe Apple Autodesk AVEVA AVG Bentley Systems CA Cadence Design Systems CNC Software – Mastercam Compuware Corel Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation Dell Intel Intuit Kaspersky McAfee Micr…
The above comment displays a remarkable lack of understand of what it takes to build serious, featureful, software that solves hard problems. Almost every webapp I've used is a recreational activity compared to some of the problems the above companies solve. Particularly amusing in comparison are the antivirus vendors, Autodesk, CNC, and Solidworks. They are gen-you-winely complicated.
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The REALLY long term game is helping your country be prosperous so that you have an educated workforce to draw from and people and people and companies wealthy enough to pay high prices for your products. That requires a pretty pervasive altruistic/moral attitude to make it work, though... tragedy of the commons and all that, otherwise.
You're right, ericd, but the vast majority of corporations (and shareholders, and lawmakers) are incapable of thinking beyond the next quarter earnings call.
Google is one of the few companies that I would say has stayed strongly principled and has taken a really long view on a lot of things. I think it's probably because the founders are principled and idealistic and are still at the helm, but also because they seem to have hired idealistic people from top to bottom. I wonder if it could ever be the case that a majority of companies were Googley.
The membership of this group is basically a list of businesses that startups should be chipping away at. Let them spend their time lobbying, while you sneak up behind them and whack them on the head with your niche webapp. -- Adobe Apple Autodesk AVEVA AVG Bentley Systems CA Cadence Design Systems CNC Software – Mastercam Compuware Corel Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation Dell Intel Intuit Kaspersky McAfee Micr…
Downvoters, educate me! What's the issue here?