A seemingly routine suppression hearing in a suburban Chicago courthouse last month took an unexpected dramatic turn when video from a police car was introduced that disproved the testimony of five police officers.
They had said Joseph Sperling was arrested after officers who pulled him over in a traffic stop smelled marijuana, searched the vehicle and found nearly a pound in a backpack lying on the back seat of his car. But the Glenview police video showed the search occurred only after Sperling was taken from his car, frisked and handcuffed, reports the Chicago Tribune (sub. req.).
In less time than it took for me to read this article, I have become a pirate. I promise NEVER to pay Square's rent for the old games I purchased, nor do I plan to support their newer games at all.
I plan to NEVER look to their newer titles unless it's from a rom because for years, Square didn't want my money. Now they have the hubris to tell me they want to maximize the revenue of the dwindling fanbase that devoted a lot of time to their franchises?
Sony already told them, "you're on your own".
I'm doing the same.
Now of you'll excuse me, I have some games like Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 to add to my computer library.
"The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is using a new surveillance program utilizing the technology of a private contractor doing business under the not-scary-at-all name of "Persistent Surveillance Systems.""
Now that we have one branch recognizing the 1st Amendment for bloggers, how about someone remind Dianne Feinstein about bloggers getting shielded through the First Amendment as well?
Oh, and the President needs a constant reminder about bloggers and whistleblowers needing to have similar "SHIELDs" in place.
We thought he was just a little nutty in the past -- calling Snowden's supporters internet shut-ins and insisting that Snowden himself (a non-drinker) was bound to end up an alcoholic.
This is rather telling...
In the 50s, there WERE some "defectors" that ended up as alcoholics. I don't quite remember the story, but two defected to Russia and were discredited in every way possible.
So basically, they're throwing out everything in their playbook to try to make Snowden look like a traitor to America when people see a very obvious difference between what he did and the NSA's actions.
From what can be parsed, even Edward Bernays would be proud in the amount of propaganda that is currently being launched. Reason being, it's meant to discredit others but it's not doing that. It's cementing the fact that these people don't understand the new digital age we live in and believe that hiding their tactics will really work to help out the US.
I'm just in awe that they have lived so far in a bubble that their old tactics of subterfuge and espionage, which has taken down other countries, isn't quite working the same when they won't even admit they have a problem.
The work for the show and the research required equates to a TON of work to create newer versions of people we know from history.
For example, Whitebeard and Blackbeard are actually from the mythos of Blackbeard the pirate.
Roronoa Zoro is a readaptation of the masked man that went on to help Batman be created.
And literally looking through the entire history of One Piece is looking through the entire history of the actual age of piracy.
And it's not just Eiichiro Oda's work that does this.
Rurouni Kenshin is a retelling of history of the early Meiji period.
Think about if copyright worked for only 20 years and people could readapt Batman for newer purposes...
You'd have a reinvigorated fan market that worked to create better stories outside of WB. But that can't happen so long as copyright is held in the hands of publishers who want to have control over markets until they're gone.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Confirmation bias? Things as they are...
Both depressions were caused by state intrusion into private enterprise. So don't blame capitalism for them.
I can and will. When Andrew Mellon was giving money to his friends in all the high places while Hoovervilles were forming, I will blame the economic system that caters to the rich and powerful.
I will also state that the unregulated private markets do a lot of harm since the Big Banks have gotten larger and they're now gambling more. The devastation of the derivatives markets is the same in both time periods and nothing has changed save for capitalism eliminating the regulations and exposing how it will work to undo the regulations, requiring a new system that doesn't cater to the rich and powerful.
I suggest you visualize the state of the world if you remove REAL capitalism -- private transactions freely entered into using absolute trade or hard money. In otherwords 1350 A.D. or so. Do you want to return to feudalism? Communism? Or what?
I don't know why you have this obsession with "real" anything. This is the market based economy as shown through Adam Smith's labor theory of value along with that of David Ricardo. IE "The price of a good or service in the market is thought to be determined by the amount of labor devoted to its production". When you have neoclassical thought (liberal and conservative economic theory), they are focused on markets and prices as you can see from Mike's posts. But there is something... Missing from such an analysis. What is missing is the dichotomy of employer and employee and how they interact.
An employee needs inputs to labor with so that he has the necessary skills in an enterprise. Likewise, the employee becomes skilled in his labor, making things faster and then doing it more productively. When he does, he is creating an "extra" or surplus. That's where this issue is needing to be figured out. The point of my argument is that this surplus can cause a lot of conflict within an organization as people begin to find out that their surplus is going to their employer and these people can feel ripped off. They aren't producing for themselves or appropriating for themselves and that creates conflict.
And honestly, it's not about private transactions or absolute trade or whatever...
Markets aren't in all aspects of society. Just look at your home for two minutes. Let's say that you went home for Thanksgiving and your grandmother decided on how you were going to cut up the turkey. Everyone gets some of the food and it's time to clean up. Your mother asks you to clean up and you want to do it for $5.
How is that market transaction supposed to work? If you're a part of my family, your dad reaches out and smacks you across the face, telling you how this is a family. Nothing is done by the private market.
The point here is the fact that you can change the organization and have different variables that are in play here. What I've just described was a more feudalist method for Thanksgiving while you can have a more democratic organization in the workplace. Looking for one form of socio-economic theory to rule them all ignores that you can have a better theory form which allows for more democratic ways of doing business so long as all participants decide on it.
Capitalism is an economic system where the means of production (the capital) is privately owned. I.e. it is a system of private property.
Yes, classical capitalism. However, the Keynesian version of it with the government regulating has different entry points in trying to allow the state to regulate, equaling state capitalism in some form or fashion. And to believe that the government staying out of regulating is mere folly, particularly when the state is an entity responding to demands of different kinds of people, be they rich or the entire public.
This corrupt blending of corporate and state interests is very profitable for both parties, but is not an element of capitalism, nor it's inevitable end, anymore than the ability to drop poison into a bucket of clean water implies that having clean water is impossible.
We have 300 years of capitalism. The system has a lot of history for making a select number of people very wealthy while leaving others out in the cold. And for all intents and purposes, we have a 6 year recession that is being felt by the masses while the rich and elite get richer. So I find it odd when you say that the end result of merged corporate and state interests don't intertwine when you can look at the Railroad monopolies, the Treaty of Versailles, or the elimination of Glass Steagall and see that this system eventually leads to the monopolization of resources by the select few.
Re: Re: Re: Confirmation bias? Things as they are...
Go ahead and discuss "things as they are." However, your claim that the current cartelism is a natural feature and your suggestion to not examine capitalism "in its essentials" sets up the drift to things as they are, which is not capitalism.
Name one time that capitalism hasn't failed. We've had two Major Depressions in 75 years and recessions every 3-4. The system is very chaotic with a very large strain on a populace when everyone merely worries about commodities and pricing.
And no, the Civil War to WW1 was tumultuous and chaotic just as capitalism was chaotic from WWII to now. Capitalism is mainly kept at bay when the workers stopped allowing austerity to be inflicted upon them.
Every person that goes against the government is considered guilty until proven innocent. To have to go through all of that for doing nothing more than downloading a lot of stuff is ludicrous.
This was a sham from the get go and never should have been a criminal case in the first place.
Everyone blames everyone else and we don't get anywhere.
The problem is that everyone on every side of the spectrum can't take ten minutes to actually hash out their differences and find out a solution through actual debate.
That's the problem. Not about who wants to pick up the "No True X" debate to defend their position.
Except, when you look, the most successful and disruptive examples of this "collaborative" approach are not non-profits or civil society, but rather perfectly capitalist companies, that have actually unlocked tremendous potential for revenue not just for themselves, but their users.
Uhm... Isn't it easier to create a capitalist organization than it is one with a different model in mind? Valve's success comes from its unique structure. There's advantages and disadvantages, but after reading his story, it seems that what he's saying is that the type of organization will not have the profit motive as in capitalist organizations.
While BnB, Uber, Lyrt, Sidecar, FlightCar, RelayRides, etc are pandering to the customer now, what stops them from becoming Google, Apple, Samsung, etc?
Joseph Schumpeter basically explained that as one group of capitalists rolled over another, the cycle would continue for those groups to become a monopoly. It's actually similar to how capitalists such as Facebook bought out the Oculus to prevent competition in a market. I'd argue that's the main problem with Hollywood which keeps the movie studios somewhat weak so that they don't have to compete with movie sales. And they destroy those markets eventually unless something comes to prevent that chaos.
But they're not anti-capitalistic at all. They're making capitalism much better.
Honest question... How can we know this when there's no data to back this up? I know of co-ops as alternatives to capitalist organizations where co-ops do better than capitalist organizations. Stefano (pdf) has shown similar research and John Pencavel (pdf again...) have such research which show the effectiveness of another type of organization.
Instead, what we are seeing is that new forms of (very capitalist) companies are forming. They're disruptive -- but disruptive in a good way. They're often about providing more economic freedom and power out to users, such that the transactions are actually beneficial to all players, rather than having a few large companies hoarding the power in the middle.
Okay, but is it really fair to just name a lot of capitalist organizations and have nothing to compare them to? It's easier to have a capitalist organization than others. If we really want to see the effectiveness of different forms of organizations, we would want to look at the strengths and weaknesses of them. Something like Valve's "democracy" version and EA's hierarchical structure. I'd think we want to do that before just saying capitalism wins, don't you agree?
But having companies hoard power has never been true capitalism in the first place.
How so? AT&T was taken apart by the state and Reagan helped to form the monopoly again through effective lobbying for the past 40 years. They also lobby to control politics and maintain a control over democracy so that they make more in profits. The eventual endgame of capitalism is cronyism which destroys democracy for private profit. Even Adam Smith cautioned that those in the same market would collude for higher prices against the public. But even then, his was an incomplete review of capitalism.
In short, perhaps Rifkin's use of "nonprofit" here is better used by some other term. This is definitely something to look into because I think better words would be "co-op" or possibly "Worker Self Directed Enterprise" where the workers decide on the organization of the enterprise.
TYT was talking about this years ago in regards to one of the recently retired people who was gung ho for torture... I'll find that story very soon because I forgot the name of the person and submit it.
Basically, this national security issue is nothing more than a cover up of how far our intelligence agencies have fallen.
" One idea — though now it is no more than that — is to build alliances with educational nonprofit groups that might enforce the notion that stealing an artist’s work online is just like lifting from a classmate’s desk. "
Truer words have never been spoken.
Now when are the labels going to pay their workers fairly along with sharing their profits, which piracy has not affected, for the public domain they've been taking from for decades?
I'm all for a few corrections, but the big questions upon the court are not being answered and from what's been said, it's just a little bit off the top of all of the problems of Prenda.
I can't help but think that Prenda is breathing a sigh of relief right as they fall over the edge into the volcano.
On the post: Five Illinois Cops Are Caught Lying On The Stand When Defense Produces A Recording Contradicting Their Testimony
Phoenix Wright tells the story...
Objection!
They had said Joseph Sperling was arrested after officers who pulled him over in a traffic stop smelled marijuana, searched the vehicle and found nearly a pound in a backpack lying on the back seat of his car. But the Glenview police video showed the search occurred only after Sperling was taken from his car, frisked and handcuffed, reports the Chicago Tribune (sub. req.).
They're in pursuit!
Sadly, the world of Phoenix Wright has become even more true... You are guilty until proven innocent.
On the post: James Clapper Giving Speeches To Students, Begging Them To Stop Thinking Of Ed Snowden As A Hero
Solution
On the post: Square Enix: DRM Is Here To Stay
Congrats are in order
I plan to NEVER look to their newer titles unless it's from a rom because for years, Square didn't want my money. Now they have the hubris to tell me they want to maximize the revenue of the dwindling fanbase that devoted a lot of time to their franchises?
Sony already told them, "you're on your own".
I'm doing the same.
Now of you'll excuse me, I have some games like Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 to add to my computer library.
On the post: LA Sheriff's Dept. On New Surveillance Program: We Knew The Public Wouldn't Like It, So We Kept It A Secret
The public...
Well no wonder people are PSS'd at LA police...
On the post: Court Declares That, Yes, Bloggers Are Media
One branch down...
Oh, and the President needs a constant reminder about bloggers and whistleblowers needing to have similar "SHIELDs" in place.
On the post: Former NSA/CIA Boss' Anger Issues: Claims Senate Staffers Are 'Sissies' And Wyden Isn't 'Acting Like A Man'
Hold on...
This is rather telling...
In the 50s, there WERE some "defectors" that ended up as alcoholics. I don't quite remember the story, but two defected to Russia and were discredited in every way possible.
So basically, they're throwing out everything in their playbook to try to make Snowden look like a traitor to America when people see a very obvious difference between what he did and the NSA's actions.
From what can be parsed, even Edward Bernays would be proud in the amount of propaganda that is currently being launched. Reason being, it's meant to discredit others but it's not doing that. It's cementing the fact that these people don't understand the new digital age we live in and believe that hiding their tactics will really work to help out the US.
I'm just in awe that they have lived so far in a bubble that their old tactics of subterfuge and espionage, which has taken down other countries, isn't quite working the same when they won't even admit they have a problem.
On the post: DOJ Apologizes For Misleading FISC Concerning Evidence; Hints Strongly That It Used Opportunity To Destroy Evidence
Who's got the copies?
I wonder what is going to happen with all of these shenanigans...
On the post: ICE Rejects My Request To Waive FOIA Fees 'Because .' Yes, 'Because .'
Re:
On the post: Japanese Anime And Manga Fans Worried About How TPP Will Kill Important Fan Fiction
Re: Re: Laws are for people, not the way around
The work for the show and the research required equates to a TON of work to create newer versions of people we know from history.
For example, Whitebeard and Blackbeard are actually from the mythos of Blackbeard the pirate.
Roronoa Zoro is a readaptation of the masked man that went on to help Batman be created.
And literally looking through the entire history of One Piece is looking through the entire history of the actual age of piracy.
And it's not just Eiichiro Oda's work that does this.
Rurouni Kenshin is a retelling of history of the early Meiji period.
Think about if copyright worked for only 20 years and people could readapt Batman for newer purposes...
You'd have a reinvigorated fan market that worked to create better stories outside of WB. But that can't happen so long as copyright is held in the hands of publishers who want to have control over markets until they're gone.
On the post: Is The Zero Marginal Cost Society The End Of Capitalism... Or A Way To Fix Capitalism?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Confirmation bias? Things as they are...
I can and will. When Andrew Mellon was giving money to his friends in all the high places while Hoovervilles were forming, I will blame the economic system that caters to the rich and powerful.
I will also state that the unregulated private markets do a lot of harm since the Big Banks have gotten larger and they're now gambling more. The devastation of the derivatives markets is the same in both time periods and nothing has changed save for capitalism eliminating the regulations and exposing how it will work to undo the regulations, requiring a new system that doesn't cater to the rich and powerful.
I suggest you visualize the state of the world if you remove REAL capitalism -- private transactions freely entered into using absolute trade or hard money. In otherwords 1350 A.D. or so. Do you want to return to feudalism? Communism? Or what?
I don't know why you have this obsession with "real" anything. This is the market based economy as shown through Adam Smith's labor theory of value along with that of David Ricardo. IE "The price of a good or service in the market is thought to be determined by the amount of labor devoted to its production". When you have neoclassical thought (liberal and conservative economic theory), they are focused on markets and prices as you can see from Mike's posts. But there is something... Missing from such an analysis. What is missing is the dichotomy of employer and employee and how they interact.
An employee needs inputs to labor with so that he has the necessary skills in an enterprise. Likewise, the employee becomes skilled in his labor, making things faster and then doing it more productively. When he does, he is creating an "extra" or surplus. That's where this issue is needing to be figured out. The point of my argument is that this surplus can cause a lot of conflict within an organization as people begin to find out that their surplus is going to their employer and these people can feel ripped off. They aren't producing for themselves or appropriating for themselves and that creates conflict.
And honestly, it's not about private transactions or absolute trade or whatever...
Markets aren't in all aspects of society. Just look at your home for two minutes. Let's say that you went home for Thanksgiving and your grandmother decided on how you were going to cut up the turkey. Everyone gets some of the food and it's time to clean up. Your mother asks you to clean up and you want to do it for $5.
How is that market transaction supposed to work? If you're a part of my family, your dad reaches out and smacks you across the face, telling you how this is a family. Nothing is done by the private market.
The point here is the fact that you can change the organization and have different variables that are in play here. What I've just described was a more feudalist method for Thanksgiving while you can have a more democratic organization in the workplace. Looking for one form of socio-economic theory to rule them all ignores that you can have a better theory form which allows for more democratic ways of doing business so long as all participants decide on it.
On the post: Is The Zero Marginal Cost Society The End Of Capitalism... Or A Way To Fix Capitalism?
Re: Re: Confirmation bias?
Yes, classical capitalism. However, the Keynesian version of it with the government regulating has different entry points in trying to allow the state to regulate, equaling state capitalism in some form or fashion. And to believe that the government staying out of regulating is mere folly, particularly when the state is an entity responding to demands of different kinds of people, be they rich or the entire public.
This corrupt blending of corporate and state interests is very profitable for both parties, but is not an element of capitalism, nor it's inevitable end, anymore than the ability to drop poison into a bucket of clean water implies that having clean water is impossible.
We have 300 years of capitalism. The system has a lot of history for making a select number of people very wealthy while leaving others out in the cold. And for all intents and purposes, we have a 6 year recession that is being felt by the masses while the rich and elite get richer. So I find it odd when you say that the end result of merged corporate and state interests don't intertwine when you can look at the Railroad monopolies, the Treaty of Versailles, or the elimination of Glass Steagall and see that this system eventually leads to the monopolization of resources by the select few.
On the post: Is The Zero Marginal Cost Society The End Of Capitalism... Or A Way To Fix Capitalism?
Re: Re: Re: Confirmation bias? Things as they are...
Name one time that capitalism hasn't failed. We've had two Major Depressions in 75 years and recessions every 3-4. The system is very chaotic with a very large strain on a populace when everyone merely worries about commodities and pricing.
And no, the Civil War to WW1 was tumultuous and chaotic just as capitalism was chaotic from WWII to now. Capitalism is mainly kept at bay when the workers stopped allowing austerity to be inflicted upon them.
On the post: Details Show MIT Employees Gleefully Helped With Prosecution And Persecution Of Aaron Swartz
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So...
Every person that goes against the government is considered guilty until proven innocent. To have to go through all of that for doing nothing more than downloading a lot of stuff is ludicrous.
This was a sham from the get go and never should have been a criminal case in the first place.
On the post: Is The Zero Marginal Cost Society The End Of Capitalism... Or A Way To Fix Capitalism?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Everyone blames everyone else and we don't get anywhere.
The problem is that everyone on every side of the spectrum can't take ten minutes to actually hash out their differences and find out a solution through actual debate.
That's the problem. Not about who wants to pick up the "No True X" debate to defend their position.
On the post: Is The Zero Marginal Cost Society The End Of Capitalism... Or A Way To Fix Capitalism?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Excellent
It's an imagination of the Supreme Court based on a ruling from a corrupt reporter for corporate interests.
On the post: Is The Zero Marginal Cost Society The End Of Capitalism... Or A Way To Fix Capitalism?
Confirmation bias?
Uhm... Isn't it easier to create a capitalist organization than it is one with a different model in mind? Valve's success comes from its unique structure. There's advantages and disadvantages, but after reading his story, it seems that what he's saying is that the type of organization will not have the profit motive as in capitalist organizations.
While BnB, Uber, Lyrt, Sidecar, FlightCar, RelayRides, etc are pandering to the customer now, what stops them from becoming Google, Apple, Samsung, etc?
Joseph Schumpeter basically explained that as one group of capitalists rolled over another, the cycle would continue for those groups to become a monopoly. It's actually similar to how capitalists such as Facebook bought out the Oculus to prevent competition in a market. I'd argue that's the main problem with Hollywood which keeps the movie studios somewhat weak so that they don't have to compete with movie sales. And they destroy those markets eventually unless something comes to prevent that chaos.
But they're not anti-capitalistic at all. They're making capitalism much better.
Honest question... How can we know this when there's no data to back this up? I know of co-ops as alternatives to capitalist organizations where co-ops do better than capitalist organizations. Stefano (pdf) has shown similar research and John Pencavel (pdf again...) have such research which show the effectiveness of another type of organization.
Instead, what we are seeing is that new forms of (very capitalist) companies are forming. They're disruptive -- but disruptive in a good way. They're often about providing more economic freedom and power out to users, such that the transactions are actually beneficial to all players, rather than having a few large companies hoarding the power in the middle.
Okay, but is it really fair to just name a lot of capitalist organizations and have nothing to compare them to? It's easier to have a capitalist organization than others. If we really want to see the effectiveness of different forms of organizations, we would want to look at the strengths and weaknesses of them. Something like Valve's "democracy" version and EA's hierarchical structure. I'd think we want to do that before just saying capitalism wins, don't you agree?
But having companies hoard power has never been true capitalism in the first place.
How so? AT&T was taken apart by the state and Reagan helped to form the monopoly again through effective lobbying for the past 40 years. They also lobby to control politics and maintain a control over democracy so that they make more in profits. The eventual endgame of capitalism is cronyism which destroys democracy for private profit. Even Adam Smith cautioned that those in the same market would collude for higher prices against the public. But even then, his was an incomplete review of capitalism.
In short, perhaps Rifkin's use of "nonprofit" here is better used by some other term. This is definitely something to look into because I think better words would be "co-op" or possibly "Worker Self Directed Enterprise" where the workers decide on the organization of the enterprise.
On the post: Senate Report Says CIA Repeatedly Lied About The Fact That Its Torture Efforts Were Useless In Finding Bin Laden
Re:
The ex-head of the CIA was the one wanting to torture and here's the TYT interpretation.
Link
On the post: Senate Report Says CIA Repeatedly Lied About The Fact That Its Torture Efforts Were Useless In Finding Bin Laden
TYT was talking about this years ago in regards to one of the recently retired people who was gung ho for torture... I'll find that story very soon because I forgot the name of the person and submit it.
Basically, this national security issue is nothing more than a cover up of how far our intelligence agencies have fallen.
On the post: Hollywood Hires New Person To Make Same Old Mistakes In Fighting Against The Future
Who first?
Truer words have never been spoken.
Now when are the labels going to pay their workers fairly along with sharing their profits, which piracy has not affected, for the public domain they've been taking from for decades?
On the post: Prenda Actually Wins A Round; Order To Pay Back Settlements Tossed In Minnesota
Taking a scoop off Bullshit Mountain...
I'm all for a few corrections, but the big questions upon the court are not being answered and from what's been said, it's just a little bit off the top of all of the problems of Prenda.
I can't help but think that Prenda is breathing a sigh of relief right as they fall over the edge into the volcano.
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