Moral boon or immoral boondoggle?

Grok Headline matches for Moral boon or immoral boondoggle?

”Yes, sir, I am here for immoral
activities”

”Yes, sir, I am here for immoral
activities” 02/10/2004 02:55 AM
Tell me, has the US Visa Waiver form (the green one, I-94W) changed in the past couple of years? Or perhaps I have changed and seeing things with new eyes. It is as if some of the things weren’t there previously.

One of the questions on the backside says: "...or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?" Immoral – defined by whom? The Bush government? The Bible? If I were gay who was into BDSM, and had a boyfriend waiting for me in San Diego, should I tick "yes"?

The concept of what is immoral and what is not is an eerily vague one, and it is easy to pass judgement unto others. It is so easy to assume moral superiority – and I know that I am guilty of the same thing, saying this. Intolerance should not be tolerated: it is the dilemma of our world.

The other thing that stopped me is the one that says "You may not represent the foreign information media during your visit".

That not only sounds suspicious, but it also begs the question: what about blogging? If I tell truthfully to the world what I see and hear, am I a part of this "foreign information media" or not?

Broadband boondoggle in the making

Broadband boondoggle in the making 01/04/2005 01:32 PM
Tropos Networks CEO Ronald Sege says a new Pennsylvania law will slow the launch of faster, less expensive wireless broadband.

Crooked Timber: What�s the Irish for
boondoggle?

Crooked Timber: What�s the Irish for
boondoggle? 06/26/2004 07:04 PM
Should Gaelic be an official EU language? .. compelling case .. CT

crookedtimber.org/archives/002071.html
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Foie gras is yummy, is it also immoral?

Foie gras is yummy, is it also immoral? 06/22/2005 03:01 AM

An interesting article about the controversy surrounding foie gras and the current movement to ban its production in the United States: Does a Duck Have a Soul? How foie gras became the new fur.

Google's Boondoggle and Paid Search

Google's Boondoggle and Paid Search 08/04/2004 05:20 PM
TheStreet.com Aug 4 2004 8:59PM GMT

Saudi Arabia plans to punish anyone
using 3G cellphones for immoral purposes

Saudi Arabia plans to punish anyone
using 3G cellphones for immoral purposes 01/03/2005 10:06 AM
Engadget Jan 3 2005 1:10PM GMT

Pointers In C - A Boon Or A Bane?

Pointers In C - A Boon Or A Bane? 11/28/2002 11:07 PM
Stickysauce Nov 28 2002 9:40PM ET

Telco Plan Boon for Business?

Telco Plan Boon for Business? 08/23/2004 02:39 PM
A new plan to overhaul the byzantine payment system that carriers use to complete one another's calls could be a boon to enterprises but a bane to consumers.

Cell-Phone 411: Boon or Bane?

Cell-Phone 411: Boon or Bane? 07/13/2004 05:18 AM
A mobile-phone industry group plans to launch a wireless directory-assistance service next year, but consumer groups want federal rules to protect people's privacy and ensure that users must opt in to the database. By Ryan Singel.

Wave device boon to swimmers

Wave device boon to swimmers 07/30/2004 10:27 AM
A swimming pool lane divider which absorbs extra turbulence - at a lower cost - has been judged the winning entry in a prestigious competition.

iPod's Popularity A Boon To Synaptics

iPod's Popularity A Boon To Synaptics 12/22/2004 01:13 AM

Executives at Apple aren't the only insiders cashing in on the company's hot-selling iPod music player. Just ask executives at Synaptics, the San Jose maker of elecronic instruments that turns out iPod's scroll wheel. By Dan Lee, San Jose Mercury News

Jobs Data No Boon for Tech

Jobs Data No Boon for Tech 03/08/2004 11:27 PM
A government report tallies little job growth in the technology and Internet fields, but tech job postings on some popular online employment sites convey a more upbeat picture. By Joanna Glasner.

Wi-Fi Offers Boon to Florida Businesses

Wi-Fi Offers Boon to Florida Businesses 08/20/2004 12:52 PM
Panera Bread said it is seeing 50 percent more traffic on its free Wi-Fi networks in Florida since the hurricane: Much of that usage is from people trying to conduct regular business in the wake of the storm. T-Mobile offered a few days of free Wi-Fi in its outlets. It appears that the author of this story may have hoped to determine whether the free outlets had more traffic than locations that are charging for access but it seems that there wasn't enough conclusive evidence to draw any definitive conclusions. Anecdotally, it sounds like the venues offering free access were packed, but T-Mobile couldn't offer any data on usage increases at its locations. It would of course be interesting to know how much food people bought in the restaurants offering free Wi-Fi to determine if the service actually paid off. Regardless of the business aspect of the free Wi-Fi, the technology has been extremely useful in allowing the many people who are without access to get online and communicate....

Ciscos new routers a boon for telcos

Ciscos new routers a boon for telcos 12/10/2003 12:44 PM
Cyber India Online Dec 10 2003 11:52AM ET

P2P: Music's Death Knell or Boon?

P2P: Music's Death Knell or Boon? 03/22/2005 05:13 PM
Technology optimists and pessimists duke it out at the South by Southwest conference. While some music insiders have high hopes for new revenue streams, others say peer-to-peer song sharing continues to wreak havoc. Michael Grebb reports from Austin, Texas.

Microsoft consent decree: Boon or bust?

Microsoft consent decree: Boon or bust? 07/09/2004 11:43 AM
ZDNet Jul 9 2004 3:40PM GMT

Mac Market Ripe For Backup Software Boon

Mac Market Ripe For Backup Software Boon 05/11/2004 07:38 PM
By Kevin Komiega, SearchStorage.com (via MyAppleMenu)

Adelphia deal may be boon for Time
Warner

Adelphia deal may be boon for Time
Warner 04/09/2005 02:57 AM
Seattletimes.nwsource.com - Fri Apr 8, 11:48 pm GMT

Microsoft's 1994 consent decree: Boon or
bust?

Microsoft's 1994 consent decree: Boon or
bust? 07/09/2004 06:21 AM
CNET Jul 9 2004 11:17AM GMT

Back-To-School Seen a Boon for
Electronics Stores (Reuters)

Back-To-School Seen a Boon for
Electronics Stores (Reuters) 07/01/2004 02:11 PM
Reuters - Electronics retailers, facing slower same-store sales growth, should benefit from the back-to-school shopping rush by selling more gadgets like digital cameras and notebook computers, industry analysts said.

Photon Entanglement Feat Could Be Boon
for Optical Systems

Photon Entanglement Feat Could Be Boon
for Optical Systems 05/13/2004 12:43 AM

How moral are you?

How moral are you? 04/15/2004 06:20 PM
Now that the friendly people at Political Compass has helped you define your views on politics, Philosopher's Magazine can help you find out how moral you are: Play Taboo the online questionaire that will rate your morality and then tell you how you compare to others. Also by Philosopher's Magazine, Battleground God, as was reported here.

Cave Bear DNA Sequencing Could Be Boon
for Human Evolution Studies

Cave Bear DNA Sequencing Could Be Boon
for Human Evolution Studies 06/05/2005 11:00 PM

Travel search engines a boon to online
bargain hunters

Travel search engines a boon to online
bargain hunters 09/03/2004 06:18 AM
Djc.com - Fri Sep 3, 07:08 am GMT

India - Bane or boon? Online lottery
stumps Bengal

India - Bane or boon? Online lottery
stumps Bengal 09/15/2004 07:42 AM
Keralanext.com - Wed Sep 15, 09:56 am GMT

Booming foreign investment a boon to
Shanghai's high-tech ambitions

Booming foreign investment a boon to
Shanghai's high-tech ambitions 02/19/2004 06:08 PM
SiliconValley.com Feb 19 2004 8:53PM GMT

Moral Clarity

Moral Clarity 06/30/2004 09:15 AM
The Moral Values Party

With thousands of Republicans set to invade the city this summer, high-priced escorts and strippers are preparing for one grand old party.

Agencies are flying in extra call girls from around the globe to meet the expected demand during the Aug. 30-Sept. 2 gathering at Madison Square Garden.

"We have girls from London, Seattle, California, all coming in for that week," said a madam at a Manhattan escort service. "It's the week everyone wants to work."

"It's going to be big," agreed one operator at a midtown escort service.

Now that's what I call moral clarity!!

Is it moral to plead the Fifth?

Is it moral to plead the Fifth? 01/07/2004 07:04 PM
Hypothetical: Let?s say you?ve committed a crime and, for whatever reason, don?t want to be convicted for it. (Maybe you?

A Plunge From the Moral Heights

A Plunge From the Moral Heights 06/10/2004 04:01 PM
not American

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29858-2004Jun9.html
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on the challenge of moral rights

on the challenge of moral rights 03/14/2005 05:51 PM
Bill Thompson calls himself a critical friend of Creative Commons, which in my world, is the only kind of friend one wants. But I can't escape thinking we're having an argument when there's nothing to argue about (again, a common feature of the very best of friends). Bill believes in moral rights. He thinks Creative Commons doesn't. Or more precisely, he thinks Creative Commons the collective, or me the individual, doesn't "care" or "understand" moral rights. Instead, he thinks we think copyright "is simply an economic matter." That is "US hegemony," Bill insists (please put that word on the list of eliminated words when the revolution comes), which neither he, nor anyone, should "accept." As someone who has been strongly criticized for strongly criticizing the US (even on foreign soil no less!) I'm all for eliminating US "hegemony." But there's just a simple misunderstanding here that we (CC) needs to do a better job addressing. Creative Commons offers free copyright licenses to artists and creators. The purpose of the license is to enable the artist or creator to mark his or her copyrighted work with the freedom he or she intends the work to carry. Those "freedoms" are the exclusive rights that copyright grants the copyright holder which the law permits the copyright holder to waive. The design of the system is to be automatic. No contract, or meeting of the minds, is intended. It is simply a license that says "if you use my copyrighted work in ways that would otherwise infringe my exclusive rights, I won't sue you if you have abided by this license." (The law makes everything ugly, but anyway, that's what it does.) Moral rights -- which are not "European" but in fact common to the US/UK tradition and the European tradition (in our tradition, they are called "author's rights," and the great text on this is Lyman Ray Patterson's Copyright in Historical Perspective) -- don't admit of such easy manipulation. In many jurisdictions that protect moral rights, you can't just automatically give away the moral right, without knowing something about how, or in what context, the work is to be used. For those jurisdictions then, a Creative Commons-like mechanism just wouldn't work. Such a mechanism couldn't succeed, in other words, in effecting an agreement about such moral rights. Creative Commons is a hammer. This is glass blowing. So our response to these jurisdictions is simple: we don't purport to affect the moral rights at all. They are left as they would be, because our tool can't effectively do anything about them. Thus, it is not because we don't "understand" moral rights that we don't do anything about them. It is instead because we precisely understand that our tool, given the law, can't do anything about them. Thus, to say that we think there's only one tool in the area of copyright and moral rights is, I think, to have it backwards. Those who would criticize Creative Commons for not "solving" the "moral rights problem" are the ones who think there is only one tool. We're the first to admit that we have a hammer, and you need a glass blower, so please don't consider our tool to be the tool you need if negotiating, or respecting, or understanding, moral rights is your objective. Now this isn't the case in every jurisdiction that protects moral rights. The contours of the law are different in different countries. Thus in some countries, we have been able to craft the license to give the author the power to grant both copyrights and moral rights. But in strong moral rights jurisdictions, that simple is not possible using the device we have crafted. So again, I don't see how this is us "dismissing" moral rights. (Does aspirin dismiss cancer just because it can't cure it?) And I don't see how narrowing our focus means we don't "care" about moral rights, if indeed you believe that a tool such as ours can't, in some jurisdictions at least, do anything about moral rights. And finally, I don't see where I've ever said anything against moral rights. No doubt, they restrict the freedom of authors -- at least those authors who would like a simple way to alienate the rights. So too does the ban on slavery restrict the freedom of workers -- but you wouldn't think I support slavery just because I remark this obvious fact, would you? Indeed, in many contexts where I've been asked, I've said that the moral rights tradition has actually proven to be an important check on the power of publishers -- something we've forgotten in our own tradition. But none of that is to criticize, or to advise that countries change their law. So yes, Creative Commons will not, at least in some jurisdictions, deal with moral rights. Nor will it cure cancer or end poverty. But if it is unclear to anyone, let's be clear about it: We don't therefore not "care" about cancer or poverty. We don't therefore "dismiss" those problems. We just understand -- as everyone should -- that the tools we're spreading can only do so much. Finally, about Bill's claim that I think that copyright, as distinct from moral rights, "is simply an economic matter." I'm sure Bill got this from one of our conversations. He's a careful journalist (unlike the journalists he associates with). But I must not have made my point clearly, because the sense in which he offers the statement is different from what I mean. I do believe that "copyright" is "simply an economic matter" -- meaning that the rights originally protected by copyright were protected for economic reasons. That again does not deny that there are other rights -- read Patterson to see the rich set of "author rights" that existed at the time of our Founding. I wouldn't say that were simply "an economic matter." But I do believe that copyright was about economics. And I continue to believe copyright is important, primarily for economic reasons. But that again is precisely why we wanted to create a simpler copyright, for the many many creators who either are not creating for economic ends, or who believe that control over their creativity is not a necessary means to their economic success. Free law is the tool we created. A tool to enable people to achieve something at the legal layer, just as iChat enables people to achieve something at the application layer. But as iChat isn't for everyone, or at least, for everyone for any end, neither is CC. I would not advise Britney to put her music under a CC license. I would advise Gilberto Gil to. Tell me what you're trying to do, and I'll tell you whether we've got a tool for you. (That's of course, rhetorical. Please don't tell me. There are briefs, and filings, and classes, and family that demand the time that answering questions would take.)

Blitzer, moral judge

Blitzer, moral judge 04/10/2005 05:17 AM

dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/9/131834/1318
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Is There A Moral Doctor In The House?

Is There A Moral Doctor In The House? 08/22/2004 03:46 AM
Don't steal music, advise Apple on each and every iPod. But what if the iPod already comes with free music when you purchase it from Apple?

"What has happened to our moral
imagination?"

"What has happened to our moral
imagination?" 12/19/2004 03:41 PM
Bill Moyers' last NOW program is on PBS tonight. He recently accepted the Global Environment Citizen Award at Harvard, and the speech he gave there is worth reading. Here's a link and an excerpt:

The Moral Implications of GMOs

The Moral Implications of GMOs 11/12/2003 01:23 PM
A two-day conference on genetically modified organisms ends at the Vatican, with both supporters and critics hoping they've convinced the Catholic hierarchy to support their views.

Medical rather than moral problem

Medical rather than moral problem 05/30/2004 08:49 PM
Straits Times May 30 2004 11:22PM GMT

Would all moral thugs please stand up.

Would all moral thugs please stand up. 06/01/2004 09:07 AM
A mother talks about her son's childhood. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. (via the chimps at Monkeyfilter)

The Moral Case Against the Iraq War

The Moral Case Against the Iraq War 05/19/2004 12:10 AM
The Moral Case Against the Iraq War
Also on the moral tip, Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings
internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (PDF)

The New Republic Online: Moral Center

The New Republic Online: Moral Center 01/09/2004 10:10 PM
analyses of candidates, including Governor Dean .. The New Republic Online: Moral Center .. makes the case for Dean too .. a very nice, positive piece .. hand wringing .. Jonathan Cohn .. make sense

tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040119&s=cohn011904
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Hayes Micro: the moral is, take the
money and run

Hayes Micro: the moral is, take the
money and run 12/02/2003 01:39 AM
Amazing profile of the founders of Hayes Microcomputers -- Hayes (who wanted to build empires, went broke and blind instead) and his partner Heatherington (who cashed out early and has a putterer's dream-life now).

"Competition was heating up. Technology was moving faster. I just wanted out of the rat race," Heatherington says. "Apparently Dennis enjoyed the rat race, so he stayed."

Heatherington retired at 36. Hayes was shocked. He knew there was more money to be made in the years ahead...

Neither of Hayes' former wives would be interviewed. But Chan's attorney, Jimmy Deal, said Hayes is months behind on child support payments for the couple's two children.

Link (via /.)
Grok Description matches for Moral boon or immoral boondoggle?
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Moral boon or immoral boondoggle?

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