All advertising is odious, and always has been—as Charles Baudelaire described in the mid-19th-century: "The immense nausea of advertisements." (Intimate Journals, XLIV)
The poet was correct. To see or hear ads is to instantly feel queasy. Advertising is the pollution of the public sphere by those who love money.
All advertising ought to be banned and forbidden. Never allowed under any circumstances.
Even if such laws would be difficult to define and enforce, let us end this pox upon mankind.
Let us not conflate the National Republican Congressional Committee with any serious body in the republic. The NRCC is yet another fly-by-night scam operation whose principals have the goals of: (1) meeting the bare-minimum legal requirements for qualifying, with the IRS, as a tax-exempt 527 organization, and (2) absconding with 90% (or whatever non-persecutable maximum percentage) of the money they collect.
Is overblocking -- including public domain works -- a reasonable price to pay to avoid infringement?
Don’t we already have an answer to this question, in the realm of justice in public policy?
“It is better for one hundred guilty people to go free, than for one innocent person to be punished.”
Perhaps I fail to ken fine details of the intersection between a moral and a financial “price to pay,” but one of those two nodes dwarfs the other unto insignificance.
A great deal of the world wide web’s problems are due to money being exchanged for the direction of visitors to websites.
The practice must be banned. Link aggregation sites are a pox on the internet. Websites should rely on their own merits to draw whatever organic traffic they are worthy to attract. It would clean up massive portions of the web, to make mandatory the cessation of paying third parties for the sake of directing visitors to certain websites. It would also ease a transition to much greater transparency.
Aggregator sites, of all types, are unnecessary duplication, and their proliferation does not serve the common interest. Duplication is always wasteful. Ideally, a central authority would regulate all markets, and eliminate the production inferior goods, both physical and virtual. “Economic competition” and the “right of a person to make a bad decision” be damned.
nor can we equip them with the...critical thinking skills enough to know their own best interests
Educated workers draw higher wages, so amoral capitalists wreck our institutions of learning.
Obsessed with money, and their default move is to exploit other people. Probably devoid of any sense of fairness. Remember Brett Kavanaugh throwing a tantrum and saying if he was denied a seat on the US Supreme Court, then that would be an injustice of seismic historical proportions?
Twisted and weird beyond my ability to comprehend.
I’m unable to divine why Person A would pay money to Person B so that Person B would perform the service of taking a tweet written by Person C (who has no previous relationship with Person A, and whose tweets would not seem to have any applicability to the goals of Person A) and sharing that tweet with a large audience.
If Person C had written a tweet that had said “Send money to my bank account #1234567” and Person A happened to have access to that bank account, then I could see Person A wanting to broadcast that tweet as widely as possible. But it’s unlikely such a situation would arise.
Is the explanation that the tweet is some re-usable cash-grab instrument? I can imagine something such as “If you like this tweet, then send $50 to bank account #8901234” but there is no tweet that is such an effective tool, it cannot be imitated. So why would there be a need for Person A to steal a tweet from Person C, for dissemination by Person B?
CDT has...many success stories behind it. Hopefully this is another one.
The Complaint filed by CDT seems well-reasoned and well-spoken.
Experienced attorneys will conduct the defense, but on what basis? Trump’s argumentation is shadow-boxing. He dances in circles, attacking nothing. If he had half a brain, he’d be dangerous.
Fining a shady telecom $6 mil for the telecom's attempt to sucker $1.2 mil out of the program.
Tracfone did not “attempt to sucker $1.2M out of the project.”
Tracfone paid back $1.2M of the Lifeline money it had illegally collected. That $1.2M was a small portion of Tracfone’s total theft. The proposed $6M fine is based on evidence collected on Tracfone’s misdeeds in states (Florida and Texas), over the second half of 2018. But in 2018, Tracfone was paid Lifeline money for the entire year, for 42 states.
Given the population of Florida and Texas, and assuming that those remaining 40 states have an average share (relative to the US total) of the cell phone market, then we can estimate that the $6M fine is based on about 10% of Tracfone’s illicit Lifeline gains in 2018. (Florida and Texas combining for 50M people, out of the 42 Tracfone-covered states having an estimated 269M people, and the fine only addressing one-half year of Tracfone’s illegal Lifeline gains in those two states where evidence was collected.) Based on this alone, Tracfone probably deserved a $60M fine, for their 2018 violations.
It is preposterous to maintain Tracfone is facing a potential fine that is five times as large as the amount Tracfone illegally acquired through the Lifeline program. The $6M fine is a pittance, next to Tracfone’s career illegal Lifelife haul.
I’ll also add that the books are, without fail, letdowns. The works usually feature imaginative, detailed setups, without any well-developed conclusions, no matter the choices made by the reader. Incongruous diabolus ex machina endings litter every volume: Aliens are prone to appear, to kidnap the protagonist and instantly quash the story, in any time, place, or setting. The worlds of the narratives are internally inconsistent: An important element of the setting (for example, in its world, is magic real?) may fluctuate between different states, from page to page. As a whole, the books have little artistic merit. They are poorly-thought-out failures, especially in the wildly varying tones of their varying narrative branches, in which one “choice” leads to a conclusion which is an absurd joke, and its alternative “choice” leads to a grim death.
I do not recommend the series. It may serve a critical young reader as fodder for analysis of a promising concept which never fulfills its potential. Otherwise, it is best avoided.
As a reader who purchased Choose Your Own Adventure books soon after their first publication, and who was undoubtedly in the publisher’s target demographic, and as someone who has had a lifelong communion with American books and publishing, I must say that my perception and understanding of Choose Your Own Adventure has been, since the late 1970s, that the phrase was specific to one book series by one publisher, and a product that, in my experience, always had the features of a distinct, consistent marketing design.
There were imitators, over the years, and the idea of letting the reader continue along chosen branches of a narrative path is a basic idea.
And to my recall, the expression “choose your own adventure” rarely is found in pop culture sources. It is more of a scarcely-found in-joke than a universal meme.
I’m personally dead-set opposed to the tactics used by “[t]rademark bullies looking for a payday” and I wholeheartedly agree that those bullies “should more often have to at least face the risk of losing their trademarks entirely.”
“Intellectual property” is an oxymoron. Private property is a bane of mankind. Nevertheless, in my world, the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure has never had a generic or recurring general meaning. The concept is simple, and has been imitated, but that phrase and the trappings and livery of the original book series are a cultural artifact that is discrete, unique, and distinct.
Greetings, from the President of the…
Is this a good point at which to note that our* neighbor to the south is officially the United States of Mexico?
*for better or for worse, I am a resident and citizen of the USA
“a lot of people” with little brainpower
You assume that these people are rational, realistic, and capable of accurate self-reflection.
Alas, for they are not.
advertising is immoral and ought to be illegal
All advertising is odious, and always has been—as Charles Baudelaire described in the mid-19th-century: "The immense nausea of advertisements." (Intimate Journals, XLIV)
The poet was correct. To see or hear ads is to instantly feel queasy. Advertising is the pollution of the public sphere by those who love money.
All advertising ought to be banned and forbidden. Never allowed under any circumstances.
Even if such laws would be difficult to define and enforce, let us end this pox upon mankind.
(untitled comment)
WASHINGTON, DC—At a press conference today, a group of Republican Senators announced that California had fallen into the Pacific Ocean.
"The state of California has crumbled into the sea," said Sen Mike Lee (R-UT).
Democratic members of Congress said that such a topographical event had not taken place.
"California is still there," said Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
Capitol analysts have said that they expect this clash of ideas to continue into the foreseeable future, with no clear resolution in sight.
(untitled comment)
The Oxford is great but Merriam-Webster is the unrivaled authority on the American English lexicon.
NRCC
Let us not conflate the National Republican Congressional Committee with any serious body in the republic. The NRCC is yet another fly-by-night scam operation whose principals have the goals of: (1) meeting the bare-minimum legal requirements for qualifying, with the IRS, as a tax-exempt 527 organization, and (2) absconding with 90% (or whatever non-persecutable maximum percentage) of the money they collect.
A reasonable price
Is overblocking -- including public domain works -- a reasonable price to pay to avoid infringement?
Don’t we already have an answer to this question, in the realm of justice in public policy?
“It is better for one hundred guilty people to go free, than for one innocent person to be punished.”
Perhaps I fail to ken fine details of the intersection between a moral and a financial “price to pay,” but one of those two nodes dwarfs the other unto insignificance.
Re: 'I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!'
I struggle to find much sympathy to offer
While you find that it requires no struggle to blame the victims?
privy, see
We take information privacy seriously at WFS
...the privacy of WFS information—so we say nothing to you about our unethical planting of our unethical software.
to fix it
A great deal of the world wide web’s problems are due to money being exchanged for the direction of visitors to websites.
The practice must be banned. Link aggregation sites are a pox on the internet. Websites should rely on their own merits to draw whatever organic traffic they are worthy to attract. It would clean up massive portions of the web, to make mandatory the cessation of paying third parties for the sake of directing visitors to certain websites. It would also ease a transition to much greater transparency.
Aggregator sites, of all types, are unnecessary duplication, and their proliferation does not serve the common interest. Duplication is always wasteful. Ideally, a central authority would regulate all markets, and eliminate the production inferior goods, both physical and virtual. “Economic competition” and the “right of a person to make a bad decision” be damned.
Re: Rebuilding will take decades
Educated workers draw higher wages, so amoral capitalists wreck our institutions of learning.
Obsessed with money, and their default move is to exploit other people. Probably devoid of any sense of fairness. Remember Brett Kavanaugh throwing a tantrum and saying if he was denied a seat on the US Supreme Court, then that would be an injustice of seismic historical proportions?
Twisted and weird beyond my ability to comprehend.
full court?
An ironic statement, since TechDirt is “the press” and it is doing the exact opposite of what it predicts “the press” will do.
Why pay to re-tweet?
I’m unable to divine why Person A would pay money to Person B so that Person B would perform the service of taking a tweet written by Person C (who has no previous relationship with Person A, and whose tweets would not seem to have any applicability to the goals of Person A) and sharing that tweet with a large audience.
If Person C had written a tweet that had said “Send money to my bank account #1234567” and Person A happened to have access to that bank account, then I could see Person A wanting to broadcast that tweet as widely as possible. But it’s unlikely such a situation would arise.
Is the explanation that the tweet is some re-usable cash-grab instrument? I can imagine something such as “If you like this tweet, then send $50 to bank account #8901234” but there is no tweet that is such an effective tool, it cannot be imitated. So why would there be a need for Person A to steal a tweet from Person C, for dissemination by Person B?
It doesn’t seem to make sense.
Re: Parable Time
What is the reasoning behind this so-called parable? It makes no sense.
Does the illustration mean to imply that some bad actors should be excused for their wrongdoing, due to their inherent wicked natures?
That’s a blaming-the-victim paradigm.
I’ve heard this parable over and over again, during my lifetime, and it’s always seemed to be pure foolishness.
Hope
The Complaint filed by CDT seems well-reasoned and well-spoken.
Experienced attorneys will conduct the defense, but on what basis? Trump’s argumentation is shadow-boxing. He dances in circles, attacking nothing. If he had half a brain, he’d be dangerous.
Rolling
Cotton sits in the Class 2* seat of my ancestor James Henderson Berry, who represented Arkansas in the US Senate from 1885 until 1907.
He shames me, and all Arkansans.
*but not 2nd class!
Substance (1990)
When someone values $1 more than they value their own arm, then their idea of a “substantial threat to revenue” might surprise you.
Re: Obamaphone Fraud
Tracfone did not “attempt to sucker $1.2M out of the project.”
Tracfone paid back $1.2M of the Lifeline money it had illegally collected. That $1.2M was a small portion of Tracfone’s total theft. The proposed $6M fine is based on evidence collected on Tracfone’s misdeeds in states (Florida and Texas), over the second half of 2018. But in 2018, Tracfone was paid Lifeline money for the entire year, for 42 states.
Given the population of Florida and Texas, and assuming that those remaining 40 states have an average share (relative to the US total) of the cell phone market, then we can estimate that the $6M fine is based on about 10% of Tracfone’s illicit Lifeline gains in 2018. (Florida and Texas combining for 50M people, out of the 42 Tracfone-covered states having an estimated 269M people, and the fine only addressing one-half year of Tracfone’s illegal Lifeline gains in those two states where evidence was collected.) Based on this alone, Tracfone probably deserved a $60M fine, for their 2018 violations.
It is preposterous to maintain Tracfone is facing a potential fine that is five times as large as the amount Tracfone illegally acquired through the Lifeline program. The $6M fine is a pittance, next to Tracfone’s career illegal Lifelife haul.
Re: Chose His Owned Ad Venture
I’ll also add that the books are, without fail, letdowns. The works usually feature imaginative, detailed setups, without any well-developed conclusions, no matter the choices made by the reader. Incongruous diabolus ex machina endings litter every volume: Aliens are prone to appear, to kidnap the protagonist and instantly quash the story, in any time, place, or setting. The worlds of the narratives are internally inconsistent: An important element of the setting (for example, in its world, is magic real?) may fluctuate between different states, from page to page. As a whole, the books have little artistic merit. They are poorly-thought-out failures, especially in the wildly varying tones of their varying narrative branches, in which one “choice” leads to a conclusion which is an absurd joke, and its alternative “choice” leads to a grim death.
I do not recommend the series. It may serve a critical young reader as fodder for analysis of a promising concept which never fulfills its potential. Otherwise, it is best avoided.
Chose His Owned Ad Venture
As a reader who purchased Choose Your Own Adventure books soon after their first publication, and who was undoubtedly in the publisher’s target demographic, and as someone who has had a lifelong communion with American books and publishing, I must say that my perception and understanding of Choose Your Own Adventure has been, since the late 1970s, that the phrase was specific to one book series by one publisher, and a product that, in my experience, always had the features of a distinct, consistent marketing design.
There were imitators, over the years, and the idea of letting the reader continue along chosen branches of a narrative path is a basic idea.
And to my recall, the expression “choose your own adventure” rarely is found in pop culture sources. It is more of a scarcely-found in-joke than a universal meme.
I’m personally dead-set opposed to the tactics used by “[t]rademark bullies looking for a payday” and I wholeheartedly agree that those bullies “should more often have to at least face the risk of losing their trademarks entirely.”
“Intellectual property” is an oxymoron. Private property is a bane of mankind. Nevertheless, in my world, the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure has never had a generic or recurring general meaning. The concept is simple, and has been imitated, but that phrase and the trappings and livery of the original book series are a cultural artifact that is discrete, unique, and distinct.
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