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Reasons not to buy from Amazon

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Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#141

Post by geoelectric »

scrumper wrote: post #22
codewithcheese wrote: post #17

"A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." You only need to make a good point once. Adding additional lesser points just weakens it. A fair few dubious and ridiculous claims here, same sort of claims can be made about any multi-national. No smoking gun here.

This does ring true; I'm sure I remember a study of retention of read material comparing paper books with e-readers which supports that point. I think it was something to do with not having an easy way to intuit position in a book with e-readers.

Regardless of whether it's true, Amazon is hardly the only company to sell an e-reader, nor did they invent the concept. It's a silly inclusion on a list of otherwise ethics-related arguments.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#142

Post by bdcravens »

teddyh wrote: post #139
bdcravens wrote: post #69

RMS is supporting buying the book directly from the publisher. But what if they are running IIS on the server, or Flash on their front-end? Doesn't this mean that he is recommending the use of proprietary software?

Suppose that RMS supported something like buying organic food directly from farmers. Would you then pose the question “ What if a farmer is a mass murderer or a terrorist? Would that mean that RMS is supporting terrorism? ”

RMS has been pretty cut-and-dry about proprietary software. For instance, he won't use document types that encourage proprietary software use (even when free alternatives exist).

So to answer your question, if RMS was a staunch anti-terrorist advocate, and it was guaranteed that a percentage of organic farmers were terrorists, then it would be perfectly reasonable to pose that question.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#143

Post by forthefuture »

SquidMagnet wrote: post #108
forthefuture wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strawman. It could also be like saying laws against gay marriage restrict freedom. You aren't making a point about reality, you're just comparing two things that have one thing in common. You lose your rights to your code if any of your code includes GPL code. Many people who write code necessarily avoid the GPL because of this.

How do laws against gay marriage not restrict freedom?

I'm not sure what you intend with this. I am using that as a counter example to "laws against slavery restrict freedom", because the person I'm responding to was implying that restriction is inherently good: restricting slavery is generally a positive, but restricting gay marriage is generally a negative. The fact that the same idea in two different scenarios can be good or bad means you can't use it as a maxim.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#144

Post by xtracto »

pronoiac wrote: post #68
specialk wrote: post #16

> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library…

Sweet fucking Jesus, do we need to talk about the GPL here? It's an utter derail here, and the way comments are ranked here means that the top pages of this thread are going to be the same hashing out of pros and cons and it's incredibly tedious.

These discussions remind me of the "old days" of /. Discussing the GPL is like discussing Catholicism, points of view are strongly rooted in ideology, these type of discussions are never constructive.

The only difference for me, is that at the time (when I participated in these on /.) I was young, full of energy to spend on idealisms, and thought everything was black or white. Nowadays, I just chuckle reading how people get their panties in a bunch (for some reason, I like this English phrase) instead of using the tools that comply with whatever license they like.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#145

Post by dang »

pXMzR2A wrote: post #118
specialk wrote: post #16

> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library…

> his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there Seriously, enough with this shit. This argument has been refuted time and time again. Tell the little people who sign your paychecks so that you'd post these comments to find another, better argument.

> Tell the little people who sign your paychecks so that you'd post these comments

Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. Accusations of astroturfing in particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9277068.

Please follow the HN guidelines and make your comments substantive and civil, even when replying to a previously refuted argument.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#146

Post by SquidMagnet »

forthefuture wrote: post #143
SquidMagnet wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do laws against gay marriage not restrict freedom?

I'm not sure what you intend with this. I am using that as a counter example to "laws against slavery restrict freedom", because the person I'm responding to was implying that restriction is inherently good: restricting slavery is generally a positive, but restricting gay marriage is generally a negative. The fact that the same idea in two different scenarios can be good or bad means you can't use it as a maxim.

No, the implication of the post to which you were responding is not that restriction is inherently good, but rather that restriction is not inherently bad.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#147

Post by anonbanker »

chaosfactor wrote: post #125
dethstar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman JUST loves puns https://stallman.org/puns.html

Stallman just LOVES puns https://stallman.org/puns.html

  Facebook slightly relaxed its policy of requiring accounts to carry people's real names, under pressure from cross-dressers. The company feared they would leave the site, and then it would be unable to do drag net surveillance.
doh!

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#148

Post by anonbanker »

tptacek wrote: post #39

Regarding the keyboard and "NSA" --- recall, NSA's entire involvement in this story is a shipment tracker that showed a package traversing Alexandria, VA --- here's the previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7126754

Way to downplay, tom.

You should probably mention that it was (Tor dev) Jacob Appelbaum's laptop, and that even he thinks it stopped there to be "fitted".

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#149

Post by teddyh »

bdcravens wrote: post #142
teddyh wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose that RMS supported something like buying organic food directly from farmers. Would you then pose the question “ What if a farmer is a mass murderer or a terrorist? Would that mean that RMS is supporting terrorism? ”

RMS has been pretty cut-and-dry about proprietary software. For instance, he won't use document types that encourage proprietary software use (even when free alternatives exist). So to answer your question, if RMS was a staunch anti-terrorist advocate, and it was guaranteed that a percentage of organic farmers were terrorists, then it would be perfectly reasonable to pose that question.

The analogy breaks down thusly: The non-terrorist farmers are neutral, but the web servers not running proprietary software are, by definition, running free software – i.e. they are not neutral, they are the opposite of proprietary. The web is not something that, inherently, suggests use of proprietary software, so I don’t see a similar reason for RMS to discourage use of the web in the same way he discourages .doc format files. A .doc file or a .swf file very much suggests specific proprietary software, even though free alternatives exist. Not so with .html, .css and .js.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#150

Post by teddyh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #140
teddyh wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose that RMS supported something like buying organic food directly from farmers. Would you then pose the question “ What if a farmer is a mass murderer or a terrorist? Would that mean that RMS is supporting terrorism? ”

I think what you miss is that RMS has argued against other things on the exact kind of indirect support for non-free software argument as was directed at his recommendation to buy directly from publishers; it rests on RMS's use of that criticism rather than the assumption that the criticism is valid.

The argument as you descibe it sounds silly, and to believe that RMS used it I would have to see a citation. Even so, if he used it, he would be wrong. I argued against the argument as presented, I can’t be expected to know whether it was subtle sarcasm or not.
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