bandushrew

Because that is true, it becomes worthwhile for lobbyists to invest money in encouraging the government to centralise control.

If lobbyist money can affect government policy - and it can - then it is always a worthwhile investment for those who have money to invest.

Basically, decentralizing government is, surprisingly enough, not a magic bullet.

what? are you claiming that the unions would have a problem with raising the price of stamps by a cent?

I dont agree with that. If I stole a loaf of bread to feed my family, that is a very different ethical proposition to stealing a loaf of bread to feed some ducks.

If I rob a bank and give the money to a family who desperately needs it, I am a very different person from the person who steals it to purchase a ferrari.

Legally , there may be no difference. Ethically and morally there is a huge difference in my opinion.

I own an iPad and 3 iPhones, but I dont use one as my mobile phone. I use a stupid cheap heap of junk that works brilliantly to make and receive phone calls and text messages.

At the end of the day, all smart phones usually add is another distraction.

hmm? they cant be bogus from a legal POV, or they would be no good for defence.

Maybe google just meant that they didn't like them very much?

I dont understand how you can tell bogus patents from legitimate ones? legally speaking, they all look the same to me. could you give me a run down on the differences?

I dont really care much who owns those patents to be honest, I care about those companies who consistently, loudly and vocally oppose software patents.

To me, this argument looks like: <some stuff I dont care about in the slightest> Google: Software patents are bad and are going to be used against us.

That puts me, in this fight, squarely on the side of google.

But I am not fussy, if Microsoft comes out again and vocally declaims the evil of software patents, they can be on my side again as well.

What I really want to see is large software companies consistently and actively working against software patents in every direction, putting the patents they control into a pool that everyone can join on the agreement that they never sue anyone for patent infringement, and giving everyone in the pool equal ownership of the patents in there. While also working to lobby for overriding reform of the patent system.

that would be a good start, and I dont see anyone doing it at the moment.

So really, sod them all.

because I desperately need allies.

Im not choosing the company I want to be right, I am choosing the opinion. Any company that argues against software patents is on my side. Any company that argues for them, or uses them offensively, is on the other side.

When Microsoft argued against patents, they were on my side. When they use them against other companies, they are on the other side.

Honestly, I dont care a whit what the company is, software patents are bad and if they want me on their side, they will say so, loudly.

To be fair, mice are freaking stupid. They've lasted this long because they solve a specific problem miles better than anything else out there, but, they are still freaking stupid pieces of equipment.

If apple can convince me to do away with mine, I will be grateful to them.

You are suffering from a false sense of security.

Google doesn't make people use their real names, they cannot.

Google just forces people to have to try a tinsy bit harder to use fake names,

The more google tightens up its grip, the greater will be your false sense of security and the more devastating will be the consequences when someone takes advantage of you.

He contaminated his own cooking area.

Surely that is his problem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stubbins_Ffirth

It is unreasonable people who improve the world.

This isn't boiling the frog. This is eating the cooked corpse.

I really dont want the government to have knowledge of my preference for midget donkey porn. That is my business, not theirs.

I agree entirely, and I think you have made an important point.

The person who did this is mentally unbalanced, and needs help.

great!

how can I choose to deny access to my data?

heh heh. the silly article made it sound as if that wasn't an option. trust the journalists to stuff things up.

so how do I do it?

Edit: I dont use Firefox, so AdBlock is out of the question, and I have no idea what websites do this. Is there a list available somewhere? How can I discover whether or not a website does this without visiting them in the first place?

that is very cool. The important thing about the system is that it is a matter of personal choice, right? I can choose not to participate, right?

because they ask my permission, dont they? I mean, I can choose between not seeing their contact or being tracked - yes?

" They also claim "KISSmetrics has never, and will never, share anonymous customer activity of what people did on customer A’s site with customer B.""

but if they change their mind, there is no way I can stop them - right?

There absolutely is something wrong with what they are doing. They are deliberately going out of their way to stop me from enforcing my personal privacy requirements on my browser running on my computer over my network.

If I installed an application on your computer that sent me the names of all the applications you ran, when you ran them and how long for. That reinstalled itself when you attempted to remove it and that used every technique it could to gather information about you, you would want me arrested as a hacker.

I think what they do is disgusting, and I hope to hell that stories like this kill the traction they have gained with some big-name clients.

what if you did? that would make you a bad businessman, but I dont think your business acumen is an argument either for or against the minimum wage?

? I think this is a good idea, and I think unions and minimum wage laws are a good idea.

you appear to think there is some kind of contradiction there?

so this kind of abuse has happened so frequently that multiple people you know and trust are able to give first hand stories.

That is shocking.

This is fantastic.

The idea that C++ meta programming is most easily understood as an (unnecessary complicated) functional language actually makes a huge amount of sense to me, and I particularly enjoy the lovely sense of balance it invokes.

What is the "viable life line"? Minimum wage jobs are supplements to other income."

oh? what other supplements, exactly? more minimum wage jobs? how many supplements do you expect me to utilize?

"The actual minimum wage required to support a small family without external assistance is probably more like $15-18/hour."

how do you define 'support'? do you mean to educate, clothe, provide warmth and food. Do you just mean food? food and housing? food 4 days a week, and housing 5 days a week? are both parents working? who is looking after the kids? just one parent? so they are supporting how many people?

"1 in 3 black men will find themselves incarcerated during their lives. "

Indeed. lets see whether we can find a solution to that which doesn't require lowering the minimum wage.

"Lower than survival? Please."

with no minimum wage limit, what is to stop pay dropping below the 'viable life' line, however you personally define it?

"People need a purpose. Something to do."

They also need money: to eat, to live, to feed their dependents, to transport themselves (to work!), to educate themselves, to clothe themselves and to warm themselves in winter. To medicate themselves. To participate in life.

"Crime like what you describe is evidence of desperation -- people are able to strip copper out of buildings because none of the neighbors give a shit, and the local government's policies make it viable for speculators to keep buildings vacant."

That may be why people get away with it. but people perform those acts out of desperation. because they need money to do all the above.

"Read "The Death and Life of American Cities". Poverty doesn't need to equal misery, and being provided with stuff doesn't equate to happiness. We forgot about that after World War 2."

Im not talking about buying them televisions. Im talking about being able to afford to take your daughter to the doctor, to buy yourself a book for school.

If you can so easily brush off the sodding huge downsides of poverty, I am going to go out on a limb and claim that you have never experienced it in its real form.

Poverty is brutal. It makes people hard, it makes people stupid and it makes them desperate.

which is exactly as it should be. Expecting workers to work for lower-than-survival rates is a Bad Thing.

The question we should be asking isn't "how can we make low skill workers work for less money?". That is a race to the bottom that results in bigger societal problems and overall, bigger societal costs as those dispossessed people who are expected to work longer hours for less money than they can survive on realise that its easier and more profitable (and therefore more economically rational) to mug people in their homes, strip copper from empty houses and bridges and generally turn to crime.

dude, I heard you before.

It doesn't apply in this case. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to discern why.

"Maybe that qualifies [him] as working in the domain of a professional, yes?"

Either you think he is a professional, or you do not. You appear to be holding up a standard, claiming that you believe he fits the criteria needed to be judged by it, and then lambasting him for not living up to the standard you have set. Overall, I find this somewhat confusing, but possibly I dont have sufficient context to judge.

TBH Im not particularly motivated to 'stand up' for the behavior of anyone I dont know.

I am interested in what makes you so interested in casting judgment on Zed, as opposed to on yourself?

Whatever puerile, irrational and paranoid responses Zed may have produced, you seem to be matching them with a self admitted hypocrisy, a large amount of self righteous vitriol and a bewildering statement of tribal affiliation to an anonymous internet discussion forum that apparently requires your outraged protection lest it collapses completely under the weight of a misunderstanding between Zed and another participant.

Zed has, to my knowledge, done you no harm of any kind. He certainly represents absolutely no realistic threat to HN.

why do you feel justified abusing him in this fashion?

heh. His reputation appears to be a many faceted thing.

I, for instance, have been genuinely impressed with his productivity and his output, his choice of projects and his code and am moved by that aspect of myself that values quality to think very highly of him.

You, on the other hand, appear to feel that the most important aspect of his output is the way he achieves the standards that you have set for him - judged by how he expresses himself towards those who he feels are being disrespectful or rude at him on the internet.

Just out of interest, do you believe that making a strongly negative personal judgment based on a 'fact' that is clearly incorrect and could be easily checked with just a few clicks is the act of a professional? do you meet your own high standards?

A quick look through Zed's comment history tells me that the % of posts he has made that could fit your description is roughly 1%.

So Im going to go with you having a selection bias.

OTOH I do appreciate your vigorous defense of the HN community, too many people just dont care about implied insults to their self identified tribal group.

Go llambda!

Sorry, I am missing your point. In the absence of wrinkling, what is stopping me from being able to grab and manipulate objects?

I can do that without wrinkling, even in water.