HotKFreshSwag's comments

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Pandora and Spotify Rake in the Money and Then Send It Off in Royalties

Plenty of artists have removed their music from Spotify because they pay next to nothing.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Starving the Future

How is the article class warfare or leftist? The article seems banal and centrist to me.

Kicking in open doors and saying we should help poor people not go hungry and invest in education is what every politician does.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Google-An update to our search algorithms - Copyright Related

How does this work for countries with different copyright laws?

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: U.S. banks told to make plans for preventing collapse

If you're feeling very John Galt take a deep breath. Remember that you're not a fictional character in a fictional society. You're a real person in real society where Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc.

Ayn Rand was a very disturbed individual.

"In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books."

"What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'" "

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: How Advertisers Convinced Americans They Smelled Bad

In some cases, yes.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Why Men Can't Have It All

Is the pursuit of equality really something you think of as strange or outdated?

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Why Valve? Or, what do we need corporations for..

Economics used to be called political economics. Why Valve can't stay out of politics is because a lot of things worth doing are political in nature or related to politics. Politics is not a different sphere from everyday life.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Why Men Can't Have It All

One way to cure this symptom of patriarchy is to try to stop being a 'troglodyte' as you put it. What would a non-'troglodyte' do?

If you shrug, accept the status quo and say meh, it's a cultural problem you're functionally no different than someone who is completely ignorant of the issue.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Human cycles: History as science

Humans see patterns where there are none.

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strang...

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: UK government report calls for the end of broadcast TV

Investing in infrastructure during a recession is what you're supposed to do. It creates jobs temporarily which increase consumer demand which drives the economy and increases revenue which reduces government debt AND you get the infrastructure you built. It's a clear win-win-win.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

On the other hand high bandwidth prices slow down adoption, usage and evolution for all other industries which uses these telecom services. The rest of the economy is held back by these prices.

I would argue that the benefits of low bandwidth prices for the rest of the economy outweighs the benefits from the current telecom profits.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Google buys Wildfire

The world does not revolve around you :-(

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

A "little funding", are you serious? DARPA is part of the freaking DoD.

Are you really going to criticize the government for investing in American companies of which a couple ones failed on a VC news site.

Yeah, companies fail. Yeah, the American government invests in American companies. Yeah, the American government can afford it. Right now the US treasury bonds that are indexed to inflation have negative interest rates[1]. Investors are _paying_ Uncle Sam money to take care of their money. The market is telling the government: invest, invest, invest.

1. http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/in...

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: America’s economy is once again reinventing itself

Not so much two-party adversarial politics so much as big business and the 0.01% funding and controlling the two viable parties. The center-right party and the right party used to compromise. The system wasn't always this dysfunctional but one party has been hijacked by fringe groups who refuse to compromise.

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Census Bureau's American FactFinder software cost taxpayers $33.3 million

Does anyone know what something similar would cost a large private corporation?

HotKFreshSwag | 13 years ago | on: Pirate Bay Founder Fined For ‘Continued Involvement’ In The Site

“In civil cases it’s guilty until proven innocent and in a previous case I declined to give the details who I transfered the site to. They say if it’s not me, then I could easily say who it is.”

That's kind of a weird legal system.

HotKFreshSwag | 14 years ago | on: Saudi Arabian Hackers Leak Credit Card Details of 400,000 Israeli Citizens

I would call it black hat hacking, hacktivism or sabotage. I wouldn't call it a terror attack unless you feel terror when you realize you have to call your credit card provider.

Lets save the word terror for things that terrify people like say bodily harm or death.

HotKFreshSwag | 14 years ago | on: Louis CK's self distributed special up to 1MM revenue in 12 days

He only charged too little if his goal was to extract as much profit as possible from his customers.

HotKFreshSwag | 14 years ago | on: Mayor of Munich: "EU laptops should have LibreOffice or OpenOffice"

I would imagine that employees would get training for the software they use so the benefits of the software being easier to learn on your own isn't an issue for government workers or really any place where they train their employees.

HotKFreshSwag | 14 years ago | on: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

People who work at corporations have consciences. They are not run by robots yet. Corporations consist of people with kids of their own. They are human beings. They are not without blame just like the parents.