161–170 of 286 posts
We need try and start to route around companies that are damaging the internet; and start figuring out who their collaborators are and route around them. This is a great first start, but we need to get companies like google to refuse to allow the MPAA & RIAA to use any of their value add products (gmail/calendar/etc).
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The "Occupy" movement is a sinking ship run by anarchists. It's literally an expression of incoherent rage. I think a traditional, well-organized, on-message movement against SOPA would do a lot better than throwing in with OWS.
Expressions of incoherent rage have fuelled the majority of social change in history.
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Wrong. In the New Testament, faith means assurance based on a reliable track record. It's the Greek word "pistis" and the two terms - faith and assurance - are used interchangeably.
Esoteric definitions of faith have little use in standard discussion.
I've been thinking about just playing ultimatetennis instead, maybe this is the time.
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If you think about it, hunters are rarely invited to wildlife fundraisers, fur clothing manufacturers to PETA meetings, and creationists to NAS meetings -- all because of opinions expressed by each party. Dissent is part of a modern life, and not inviting people to private events is a perfectly legitimate way of voicing that dissent.
The examples you gave are all of events which are defined by some belief or cause, whose opponents would simply be out of place if present. That's very different from what's going on here, where the bearers of a particular opinion are being excluded from a business relationship as a punishment for expressing an opinion which is only circuitously related to that business relationship.
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There is no place in the scientific method for belief without evidence, which is what faith is; faith forms the basis of religion.
>" There is no place in the scientific method for belief without evidence " I'm not a professional scientist but as a wannabe theoretician I can't concede how this can be correct. Indeed I think it needs to be wrong often in order for experiment to progress from theory. I'd warrant that the LHC was only built because those theoreticians at the forefront of physical advances in particle physics at Fermilab and CERN (a…
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Esoteric definitions of faith have little use in standard discussion.
If the "esoteric" definition is the one used by religious people, then it has a great deal of use in discussing the thought processes of religious people.
Update (6:18 PM): GoDaddy seems unimpressed by the boycott so far. They made the following statement to Ars Technica: "Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations."
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There was an article (that I now cannot find) that claimed there was a positive effect of counterfeiting for high end fashion brands because it motivated buyers to more quickly move on to the latest version. Someone who is willing to spend $700 on a hand bag will get a newer version rather than hold onto the one they have when they see anyone and everyone sporting it.
That’s an interesting point, and I’d like to read that article, but I think it’d be highly situationally dependent on the particular brand and you’d have to know their internal sales numbers to confirm it. Even if it were true, though, it still doesn’t address the fact that the designers would be crazy not to want more power to stop their designs from being stolen for simply artistic rather than pragmatic or business…
However, when you say stuff such as In fact, it’s that kind of one-sided ad hominem bullshit that’s actually the problem, you presume that the point about them being greedy or immoral is invalid. That also sounds a bit naive and one-sided.
We've all observed how artistic rights, copyrights, patents are used by corporations to turn unscrupulous profits. Can you guarantee that executives leading corporations in the fashion industry are exempt of such practices? Would you vouch for their integrity if we decided to observe their various operations under the magnifier? Can you say with certainty that no questionable corners have been cut to turn up a buck or two?
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I think it depends on what you mean by "good investor". If you invest in tobacco, land mine manufacturers, and semi-competent toxic waste disposal facilities, you might make a mint. That would make you a good investor in the sense of profitable. However, no entrepreneur in his right mind would take money from people like that, because they wouldn't be good investors in the sense of being supportive of a long-term eff…
Minor tangent here that's not relevant to your main point - what exactly is wrong with trying to dispose of toxic waste in a "semi-competent" manner? Lead, mercury, asbestos, and all those other freaky things have got to go somewhere . Shouldn't you be more pissed off at people generating that waste?