Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Entitled Asshole Mentality (Score 1) 199

"Entitlement" is clearly understood...and people are assholes about it. And "entitled to other people's work" is simple: it's what you get when "the customer is always right" is believe or practiced, hence all the beat-up (like an abused dog) service workers crushed between both the scumbags that have been referenced here and the supposed "corporate-enslaved" folks whining because the impossible hasn 't been done and, "GIVE ME YOUR MANAGER, I'M GOING TO HAVE YOU DEAL WITH!!!" (though they're idiots who won't be getting nuttin').

e.g. easiest example: the thousands of calls I've taken with huffy people demanding we refund them "cause I can't use my service and haven't been able to for weeks!!!!!" (their device is broken).

For those who don't know, this idea you have a right--because you are willing to pay--to another's authorship, movie, services, goods, etc., is that very idea of entitlement which is so repugnant: it means having a right to the extension of the lives and labors of those, with no natural relations to yourself, whom owe you nothing but to respect that you too exist, and should be permitted to unfettered. Whether that's achieved through one or another means, it means you're a tax on an other's life.

There are some arguable exceptions, e.g. a truly public-beneficiary water system or [GASP!] hospital system (if you can afford it) unlike, say, what we have where the boomers have promised themselves their children's and children's children's inheritances so they can live fat and drive-up the prices of housing for millions around the globe as they begin flocking to Panama, Belize, and etc. (like the old crass, careless European classes were once notoriously hated for), all while ignoring that what they're buying was stolen from some poor farmer to build their cute little abode by an ocean/golf course/exotic mountain/suburban home (--this is a big one, ask the farmers).

Comment Re:Entitled Asshole Mentality (Score 1) 199

p.s. simply put, there is a remedy (hard to obtain in this day and age of progressive jurisprudence married with no-natural law): it's called disgorgement. I care for government-funding of studios only to the extent it robs poor people of the ability to held themselves and society of the charity that could be granted to the ones who want to, while access to shit packaged as media you just must swallow as the next big thing, shit that ain't your shit, I care not at all about: it doesn't truly help the leisure class or those whom they stomp on while whining they're put upon.

Comment Re:Entitled Asshole Mentality (Score 1) 199

p.s. being willing to pay still doesn't entitle you to service, nor does it mean that them accepting your pay woudn't actually be in many ways harmful to them, e.g. doing business in a jurisdiction like Russia is always a bad idea should they try to reinterpret the laws and apply the new school ex post facto. There's this thing call natural liberty, which means neither payment nor force entitles you to what is another's. On the other hand, if you want to pay someone here to ship you a movie and the government tries to stop them...then they (not you) have a valid suit for abuse of law, conspiracy to wield government as a hedge for business interests and to do the bidding of a cartel, etc.

e.g. those who argue that a man's law should be upheld simply because that man is powerful...I have no interest in doing business with (do you wonder why the bureaucrats scream for class-status and laws protecting their "right" of access to businesses and services, as does everyone else?). Similarly, your "willing to pay" tidily goes along with the class of assholes who like to buy others' rights, "I'm willing to pay!"

But work for? I help people fix computers. So be careful with who you libel and accuse, lest God judge you. x)~

Comment Re: Entitled Asshole Mentality (Score 1) 199

xD Says the guy who uses "corporate slaves." I'm not moaning about entitlement--I didn't pick that up from the media or libertarians or even conservatives. I picked it up working in thousands of houses of ordinary Americans demanding free services, products, extra attention, etc., which neither I (nor those I worked for, including companies large and small) could afford. Neither I (nor those I usually work for--often including the larger companies) could even always afford what we install or build, yet those chatter-boxes would yammer-on how you can do without. "Entitled asshole" comes from recent experiences which I would write here, but I think I might try to publish them cause, ya know, the potential to make some money for your experience is nice when you're homeless. To you people who think you deserve entertainment and comfort yet would likely vote against something like a damn ratty-looking homeless guy living next door...YOU terrorize people, enslave them, and then cry about tyranny you've brought on yourselves: if you want it to stop you not only have to not pay those corporations you whine about (and demand from, which in turn to be "profitable", i.e. remain operating must become more and more psychopathic, even while they do, indeed, harm themselves by promoting the mentality of "you deserve it"), but also stop consuming their dung. You do want to avoid eating dung, don't you?

Comment Re:Entitled Asshole Mentality (Score 1) 199

Either your government is in some kind of treaty that we also hate, or else you're just not looking hard enough, but you don't have a right to consume entertainment--neither do I. You can make your own--it has nothing to do with discrimination--and I don't shill for anyone: I do tech support these days and deal with assholes who feel like we should give them everything and more all day, as though they deserve (all the services + also all our labor + setting-up all their networking, configuring all their computers, cleaning them because they won't stop surfing porn--or let us know when it would be useful--and worse).

If you were crying about access to textbooks then I'd side with you--maybe (if our system weren't so twisted). But you feel discriminated and butthurt cause you can't catch an episode of the Walking Dead, 24, or the next movie? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

To put this into perspective folks: I'm homeless. I work out of hotspots for my job, and I don't feel like I MUST be able to watch anything, and basically I don't. Yet all around me people who say how you just have to have this or that, a smartphone, such and such style, be able to read something, etc...I would settle living in a tent off a campus and having access to a university library. :(

Comment Re:Entitled Asshole Mentality (Score 1) 199

You're speaking like a "conservative" screaming "government intervention" when their leadership propagandizes, or "liberal" screaming that the rich are behind a nefarious scheme to put down the poor when told by their masters (while those opposed are advocating eliminating some kind of thing that actually harms the poor the most). But the worst part is, you're using libertarian rhetoric to do it, and injecting emotion-laden buzzwords to get a reaction ain't thinkin'.

In the US context, "[...] government-enforced monopolies on ideas and methods" happens to pertain to PA-TENTS, , a separate class of objects altogether.

Access to copyrighted works recently-made with little merits or contribution to the advancement of useful arts and sciences, in any way, is neither a public good nor a public right; they are copy-righted, by their creators, to extract a return for their efforts and basically because they want to, and nobody really actually disagrees with this (openy and publicly); personally I'm fine with monopolizing-away Hanna Montana bullshit. (If you want to see how television effects children, take a sample of the Disney-raised little princesses that watched that shit over the last six or seven year.)

But vast collections of facts, cleverly arranged and not really a creative act (though courts like to find, wherever possible, how it could possibly be creative)? Nope on that. (I'm looking at various kinds of 'scholarly' works.)

But patents should never be granted on facts of nature or mathematics or merely exploitative or derivative consequences: the supreme court never pretended they (or their isomorphisms, ideas and methods) were patentable, on the grounds that anything so fundamental to knowledge, science work, and being human, violates and does violence to men's natural rights...until they not only stopped caring about those but even questioned that they exist (even the Conservatives: pick-up Robert Bork's "The Tempting of America" and you'll find a quasi-libertarian Authoritarian 'as-long-as-process-is-followed'" statist).

Movies however belong to the domain of copyright. And these days, they're barely even artistic, thinly-veiled engagements of the most prurient interests; appeals to emotion; some either substituting a identity-less character so you can step-in (a well-known trick to make something explode in popularity because the consumer feels as though everything is happening directly to them) or celebrations of those with personality cults (hence, no real acting anymore: just people playing themselves with a different name and context).

And then there is that useful distinction that stands quite well: idea vs. expression. Now if the optimal and only expression, such as a scientific formula mathematically derived, then no it's not...copyrightable (a different class); but any of the material "pirated" in this scenario isn't of that nature. It was just appropriated by all with the chance to see what they want, when they want...

Note however, I already appropriate (for those who used the link) for fair-use, though only through reference, a copyrighted work: it's called fair-use.

But...if you were thinking before you posted, you would know that they are separate issues, that there are methods of critiquing copyright, but shouting "government-enforced monopolies" and sleighting with "ideas and methods" would get-up the cheering of the horde here because they're near-and-dear words that play to certain prejudices...whereby you poison the well [of thinking] before it can commence.

Speaking of the Supreme Court: it is to such stupidity, whether libertarian, Conservative, Progressive, etc., that words by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes are wise, that is, that men should think not in words but in things.

Comment Re:Bad genetic diversity, flaws in resurrected gen (Score 3, Interesting) 168

The nice thing about mammoths is they are found all the time, in pristine condition, so well-preserved in ice that they're still edible (for a lot of money per steak)...some of the endeavors with them include research on the viability of eggs and sperm from them, though the likelihood is that a modified elephant egg (using parts from a mammoth's if possible--radically simplifying 'a bit') is to be the recipient of factors for fertilization...and then another and another and another for a long time.

If folks have been smart, they've been capturing good samples of DNA for mammoths for quite a while now. No word on whether that's what's been happening, though.

Comment Re:If you want to read a summary that makes sense (Score 1) 137

Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement!

Shady competition seeking to pay pittance for million+ Euro development, read all about it!

Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement! Slashvertisement!

Comment Re:I'm confused (Score 1) 389

This.

I deal with ignorant, easily-angry, huffy, unwilling-to-learn boobs whose conception of "the internet" is "my computer is on it's the internet, off it's not!" all day. (People who call angry demanding we don't charge them for internet service because the computer's broke.) Metro isn't user-friendly AT ALL.

AND IT'S NOT JUST BECAUSE THINGS AREN'T DISCOVERABLE (thought that's major).

Windows was an evolution: e.g. in little things the control panel improved year to year, (they broke this in Metro to remove features and things and force people to go through metro). That said, by things not changing too much, even willful-idiots could get by. Metro attempts to force everyone to use Microsoft's new paradigm to force the willful-idiots (who only begrudgingly learned what was already there because they can't understand why the damn thing just can't read their mind--and I'm not really exaggerating that much) to become familiar so MS can dominate different platforms with one interface: trouble with this idea is that MS (as you say) hasn't made an intuitive interface, e.g. the search for the start screen is hidden in Windows 8.0, but not just because of that: it's the fact that even if everything was exposed desktop+tablet=unuseable; you can't mix them for different forms, such that the willful idiots can use Android apps because they don't really have to learn much, just pick-up some muscle memory, while with Microsoft the expectations they had already and so could rely upon are gone--they're as pissed as we are.

Basically people like me are happy to recommend what software they need to restore the look and functions to Windows 7, and which apps they need to restore the crap that MS removed or moved for no other reason than to make the desktop less efficient/convenient/useable to force people into Metro, not to mention to recommend (if I discover they just nee "the internet") leaving Microsoft altogether.

But RMS's predition about them trying to cartel-ize and make that move away from them impossible, as we've seen, is always tenuously close, e.g. Microsoft locked-in all the businesses to ActiveX (most of them are still virtualizing or running XP or Server200x for that reason), sent its execs to take-over and ruin Nokia (legislators on boths sides of the pond 'mysteriously' doing nothing to prosecute intentional and obvious incompetence to ruin and under-value a stock before MS tries to take over), 'influence' and lock-in Netflix with their tech (after making deals promising DRM built-in to the kernel, which also happens to make it less stable and secure by nature of adding code), etc. such that those studios also pressured Netflix. If people weren't idiots they'd choose to read a book rather than pout about being more free but unable to use Netflix, as though TV is essential rather than a drain on most lives.

Problem with this is, they're decisions also affect you and I. Not to mention, the "oo shiny" that also infects the minds of the FOSS community's devs means things are constantly being broken that don't need to be: when that sort of indiscipline results in a community where discipline can't be imposed, oh no...right now I rather put people on Windows 7 than risk Linux breaking things, but I'm sure in a couple years updates from MS will begin to flow that break little things to 'encourage' upgrades.

Until it becomes unacceptable to permit people who believe mere existence requires you somehow contribute money to their personal interests to be in any position of power, which includes not only the business interests but the political elites they back, this sort of thing won't continue. It's interesting to note this: the tacit compromise the parties consistently make is to deny the equality of rights, as they define new ones that take the old ones away, or that they are natural rather instead of constructed, so that they can define new ones and take the old ones away, or speak as though rights are like interests, that they can contradict instead of move around one another.

WHO ELSE IS ABOUT TO ABANDON /. UPON BETA UPGRADE????????? AND GO AROUND WARNING ALL THEIR NETWORK CONTACTS ETC. TO STAY AWAY FROM SOMETHING RUN BY THOSE WHO DON'T LISTEN TO THEIR USERBASE????????

Slashdot Top Deals

365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer. = 1 Lite-year

Working...