she broke the law and she lost. We don't actually know that yet. She did appeal the case.
The law says you can't distribute stuff when you don't hold the copyright.
Did she distribute?
She was convicted of distribution. Actually, she was also convicted to pay more than 9000$ for each song she allegedly distributed. But there wasn't a shred of evidence that she distributed anything.
For that simple reason, she should not have been convicted.
Don't get me wrong here. I am no pirate. I fact I am probably one of the few rare examples of people who don't have a single illegal MP3 file or movie. I also believe that pirates should be punished.
But the evidence must be present. No matter how much I dislike pirates, ensuring a fair trial (with appropriate evidence) is far more important that collecting money for the greedy "content industry".
I think we both generally feel the same about these issues.
My point is, that by constantly picking on GMail, the world will translate this into a "GMail problem". Only it isn't. It is just as big a problem for Amazon, e-bay, Hotmail, Yahoo, LinkedIn,.... and any other website.
I am not out to protect Google. If they screwed up, they deserve a little spanking. But it is important that we don't think of this as a "GMail problem", and ignore the threat for all non-Google websites.
why try to hack ObscureMail if you can get access to MILLIONS of accounts hacking GMail? You don't think sites such as Amazon, Hotmail, Yahoo Groups, e-Bay, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. would provide access to just as many accounts?
In fact, the total nightmare-scenario for the end-users (and the total wet-dream for XSS hackers) would be to gain access to an ad-server. Imagine the XSS hacks you could do if you managed to compromise a DoubleClick server? Millions of users could be targeted, across thousands of sites where your compromised ad-server would even be white-listed for all sorts of crap? In that case, the popularity of the sites themselves would be of no consequence. As long as it displayed ads from your compromised server.
Hmmm... come to think of it, that is a pretty clever idea. I just might wanna take a look at the scripting used in streaming video ads...
With all respect, why continue this crusade against Google/Gmail?
Sure, they are a key player in the market, but so is Yahoo, Hotmail, and a number of others.
From a technical perspective, cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities isn't exactly a new thing. Nor are they isolated to Gmail.
The article is not wrong - so I am not attempting to protect Google. On the other hand, this problem is fairly general in nature, and probably applicable to a ton of websites. In fact, the "cookie grabbing technique" is one of the oldest tricks in the areas of XSS.
With this in mind, the article (and in general the constant rampage against Google) seems... a tiny bit one-sided. Not only is that unfair for Google (I am not a stockholder, so I will survive) but it also takes away the focus from the real issue: XSS is a big deal, and has do be dealt with. By everybody... not just by Google.
Sorry to be harsh, but I'm not going to bother replying.
What a great way to kill a debate.
Your post is a incoherent mess, full of half-truths, truthiness and fill.
That is an easy statement for you, since you decline to elaborate which portions you consider to be "half-truths". Gosh, it almost sounds like Microsoft yelling about the Linux community violating patents... which they refuse to identify. Wow. Your trustworthiness is much higher than mine, I can certainly see that. Thank you for the lecture. You sir, are a real inspiration for other people.
A debate is all about sharing knowledge and views. If you disagree with me, fine, explain why. And provide information that could potentially make me change my mind.
Pretty much every sentence in it is either factually incorrect,
Which specific sentences are factually incorrect?
an arbitrary assumption,
Which specific sentences contain arbitrary assumptions?
logically inconsistent
Which specific sentences are logically inconsistent?
or not responding to the points they purport to respond to.
Which specific sentences are not responding to the points they purport to respond to?
I'd suggest you learn about logical fallacies and logical argument in general. Ideally, learn about the scientific method also.
Ok, so I took the time to read the pages at all the four links you provided.
Your link to the definition of Truthiness is mostly an accusation, and an insult. I can only speculate about your reason for degrading the debate to such a low level, but my guess is that you try to point out, that you feel my previous statements are insufficiently supported, and lacks evidence or facts. While I agree that I have not provided a ton of external links, you seem to make the faulty assumption, that lack of evidence automatically turns everything I said into "Truthiness". The assumption is flawed, because lack of evidence in itself can not be used to classify the original statement as faulty - only as unproven. If I state that "10+10=20" but fail to support that with evidence, the statement is not faulty by default. It is only unsupported/unproven. A fair action would then be to ask for clarification or evidence - or provide contradiction evidence if possible.
Your link to the definition of fallacies appears to be an attempt to claim that every argument I have made which did not fit the "truthiness" category, are flawed arguments (arguments in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support). Since you refuse to identify which arguments you believe are fallacies it is a little difficult for me to provide additional reasoning/premises for them - don't you think? (Btw, the Wiki on Fallacy was more helpful to me than the link you provided).
Your link to the definition of Logical arguments was an interesting read, but really does nothing for this debate. You may point out that my language or way of explaining myself is of insufficient quality (English is not my first language - sorry), and that I should attempt to make every one of my arguments strictly valid according to the definition of Logical arguments.
That approach is wrong for several reasons. First (and most important) of all, because our debate is not strictly scientific in nature. Our debate contains large portions of personal views, sociological, psychological, ethical and moral perspectives. For that reason, it can not be conducted if all arguments were to follow strict logic. Many (most?) arguments in debates such as these follow the principles of a "civil debate" (see:
It just someone pissed that they got out bid on an A-team lunchbox. Actually, it was an Airworlf lunch box.
There was never an A-team lunch box. Perhaps you are confusing it with the Mr.T lunch box? (in which case I perfectly understand why he would got angry if he was outbid - they are very difficult to find nowadays...)
1.) Hack stuff using script-kiddie techniques
2.) Keep at it until you are caught
3.) Tell everyone the story about you being an idiot who got caught
4.) Do a month of jailtime
5.) $$$!
Is that the kind of people who programmed my personal firewall and my anti virus app.?
I was arguing that it's more complicated than that; like at the moment where we have large scale unlicensed copying going on while still having a high degree of confidence in the money supply and only certain wealthy individuals threatened.
fair enough. I understand that argument - though I do not entirely agree.
To significantly compromise confidence in that money supply a significant fraction of it has to be threatened. Small scale financial crimes don't fit that definition and so shouldn't attract significant penalties.
Here is where we disagree.
If someone I know gets away with plain old-fashioned counterfeit and never gets punished for it, my faith in the monetary system will degrade. Even if he only counterfeited a small amound, lets say 1000 USD. By comparison these 1000 USD are no threat to the monetary system. The threat is the perception that it is acceptable to counterfeit money, or the perception that one can get away with it. The monetary system is very dependent on many of the normal ethical/moral values we have in society. If we fail to punish counterfeit (or other "financial crimes") with a harsh sentences, simply because the single crime itself wasn't that big a deal, it will eventually create a slide in the ethical/moral perception of these crimes.
In fact, that is exactly was has happened in the software/content industry. A lot of people violate the laws surrounding immaterial rights - simply because the lack of consequence for breaking the law has created a slide in the ethical and moral values surrounding the subject.
In short, the perception is this: It's not too bad to download pirated music or software, because you probably won't get caught anyway, and you really didn't steal anything of physical value.
That is a very strange way of thinking, which it basically violates a lot of common ethical/moral values that people actually have, but which they ignore (or choose to set aside) because everybody else does the same. The result is a conflict in ethical/moral values, where the most convenient choise (stealing/pirating) wins. Ask a pirate this: If it is not "wrong" to copy a piece of software, why is it wrong to copy money? In both cases you don't actually "steal" anything physical - right? So both crimes could be consideres equal?
However, maybe there are a million people who could derive $10 or more benefit from the software. Obviously they're not going pay $100 for $10 of benefit but if they pirate for $0 they derive $10,000,000 of benefit while the vendor gets $0.
This is a very common and widespread argument for piracy. As a programemr I have never understood it, and I honestly can't see the logic in that point of view.
First of all, the whole concept of thinking that piracy "produces value" for some people, adds to the slide in ethical/moral values I described before. For that very reason alone, it is a bad argument. You simply cannot invalidate general ethical or moral values by attempting to justify them with practical or operational arguments. Most (but granted: not all) experts on ethics will tell you that. The argument has is foundation in consequentialism whis is another way of saying that the ends justify the means. By this reasoning, some could argue that pirating software is OK because the act of piracy produces more benefit that not pirating software.
Being a programmer who works hard on producing code other people pay for, I disagree. When people take my work and don't compensate me, I feel cheated and ripped off. I like to donate code to open projects when I can - but i believe the choice on donating or selling my work should be my own.
There are many more reasons your little story about the "value" of piracy is flawed:
1.) It kills innovation. It's fair that some people don't want to pay 100$ for the software. But by ste
Based on your post I think we pretty much agree on how the world works.:-) But I have a single question:
(and I could anticipate a few more.. ie: to add a method to a tipically 'base' class as String, should only be allowed under strict circumstances!) I use Smalltalk which is an OO platform. I extend classes and use the polymorphic properties of the programming environment a lot. For me, adding a new method to the String class is easy, trivial, and virtually free of risk.
Why should extending the String class be under strict control? (It is an honest question)
And I must respectfully disagree with this assertion. Programmer D is primarily at fault, and no, there's no excuse for not handling the null-value. Not even if the convention for the list in question was, that it should always be supplied with strings? Daniel may in fact have specifically written in both the documentation and comments in the code, that only string values are valid?
Project Manager E is also at fault for exactly the reason you stated, no maybe about it. I'm not saying that we should expect D and E to be 100% flawless, but I do expect them to recognize, accept and admit fault. Did you not ever participate in a project, where time and use of resources was also a factor? A significant factor? (If not, I wonder what kind of projects you work on, and what kind of project manager controls them).
There is not an unlimited amount of programming hours for every project. So, as I said, flawless code is reserved for nuclear reactors and NASA rovers. The rest of us mortals will have to make do with "out best efforts under the circumstances". That is how the real world works. Realistically.
No it isn't. It's destructive to those who have lots of money. I am not a rich guy. But I assure you, not having money would be very destructive for me and my family. I would not be able to acquire food for my 2 year old daughter without money. Or pay my rent. Or my electrical bill. Or my gas and water supplier.
On the other hand, nobody would want to deliver me any gas, water, electricity or food if they weren't paid to do so. Most of the employees at these companies would probably stop working the instant they realized they would never receive a paycheck for their work.
I assure you: a crash of the monetary system would most certainly effect everybody. And all the common, working people would be the first ones to be in trouble. Without currency, modern society would stop spinning. No food, no oil, no gas, no water, no electricity. Billions of people would flee from the cities to the country side, where they would eventually fight over what little food was produced at the farms there (which wouldn't be much, since deliveries of essential goods like fertilizer and seeds for the farmer would also have stopped).
Money is not evil. The accumulation of wealth is evil - but that is a different matter. And we should reserve that discussion for a different thread or a different forum.
And your implied claim that illegal copying is very destructive for society as a whole is silly. If anything it's the reverse, with illegal copying being a great boon to society at large, creating enormous value for billions of people. An interesting point of view.
Could you please elaborate how illegal copying creates enormous value for society?
I am a programmer, so perhaps I think too much in terms of "software". For the sake or argument I will try to stop thinking about the people who obtain my software without my permission and use it without paying for it. Hell yeah, let's copy some money instead. Good old American dollar bills. Now THAT will create enormous value for billions - would it not?
I have seem programming projects grow beyond their scope many times. Here is a story on what might happen (all very theoretical and totally manufactured):
A bunch of people are working on a browser. They are a very philanthropic bunch so they work on the new browser from home, free of charge, in the interest of making a free alternative to one of the worlds biggest commercial browsers.
Programmer A, let's call him Anthony, is working on the URL entry field. He makes a chunk of code intended to help users who mistype the URL, and which makes the browser "guess" what the user actually intended. Perhaps a forgotten "w"? Or a URL without "www" to a domain which can't handle the absence of a host name (no URL forwarder)? And if all else fails, do a search using the default web search engine and display the result? Don't argue if this "feature" should be in the browser or not - stay with me for a minute here: The users have requested this feature, and Anthony is coding it. No big deal.
As part of his work, Anthony makes a few additions to a class or function library which handles Strings. He makes a procedure/method which automatically strips a string of "w." and "ww." if they are at the beginning of a string. He calls his procedure/method "stripUserURLCrap". And it works perfectly. Anthony is happy.
A few months later programmer B, let's call him Bill, is working on the parameter list in the browser. You know... the one you can display by typing "about:config" in the URL field. Bill wants to add line which displays the latest URL typed by the user. He looks at Anthonys code, and upon understanding what Anthony implemented in "stripUserURLCrap" he chooses to display two values: the string containing the actual user input, and a second string with all the strings "stripUserURLCrap" actually tries to resolve if the first original string failed to resolve a normal page. And it works perfectly. Bill is happy. Anthony is happy.
Another few months later programmer C, let's call her Carol, discovers a buffer overflow error in the URL entry field. It turns out that if a user puts one billion "w." instances in the browserstring "stripUserURLCrap" will crash because the string is too long and nobody cared to check for morons typing one billion "w." strings in the URL field. She also discovers that the reason for the problem is that in order to compensate for empty strings or null objects in the URL field, "stripUserURLCrap" always serializes its input and inserts it into a new string - to which memory has to be allocated.
Before a lot of big and fancy security firms swarm all over this issue, Carol decides to fix the problem. She changes the way "stripUserURLCrap" works, and makes sure it can now handle a billion "w." entries and that it can also handle null objects. And it works perfectly. Carol is happy. Bill is happy. Anthony is happy.
A week later end-user J, let's call him Jesper, decides that "about:config" should be his start page. He sets the default page to "about:config", and goes to sleep. The very next morning when he opens the browser in order to check the weather forecast... WHAM! the browser crashes before it can even display the config page.
Whap happened? Well, the config page display a lot of strings, right? Values and parameters. One of them shows the value of the last typed URL from the user. And guess what: where the list was expecting a string there is suddenly a null value. The "last.typed" property returns a null object which is an illegal value the list can't handle. It expects strings.
Now answer this question: who made a mistake?
Did Anthony make the mistake which made the config-list crash?
Did Bill make the mistake which made the config-list crash?
Did Carol make the mistake which made the config-list crash?
They would each be in a position where they could argue, that they personally made no mistakes. And perhaps even that programmer D (his name was
Sure I do. Why do you ask? I mean, sarcasm aside, and in all honesty: why do you ask? English is not my first language - did I write something too unclear?
Murder is a serious crime. Rape, assault, illegal weapons possession, robbery, car jacking, drunken driving,those are SERIOUS crimes. Intellectual property theft especially on the scale that this guy was doing, is a financial crime. Actually, some would consider "financial crime" a very dangerous kind of crime.
Why?
Because "financial crime" undermines society itself. Look around you. The whole world is depending on the monetary system to work. And it only works as long as we - the users - trust that system. As such, "financial crime" is extremely dangerous for society because it destroys one of the most important foundations we depend on: money!
The most serious "financial crime" is counterfeiting money. It is punished extremely hard, because such activity is a serious threat to society. If we can't trust money, the world will stop functioning. Like... really! stop functioning!
The second-worst "financial crime" is forgery of documents where money is involved. The reasons are exactly the same as above. If you forge a check/document/contract in order to acquire someone else's money, that activity is a threat to an important foundation in society.
We can continue to describe the many different grades and shades of "financial crimes", but if you think about the logic behind it, it kinda makes sense. The reasons for having harsh punishments for such crimes are all similar: It is a kind of crime which is very destructive for society as a whole.
I am not saying that software piracy is as bad as rape. Nor am I saying that I agree with the course of action in this particular case. I am simply trying to explain the logic. Some laws are made to protect the individual, other laws are made to protect society as a whole. Are the former more important than the latter? Is there any reason to protect the individual, while society falls apart?
That is the reason for harsh punishment of "financial crimes". You don't have to agree with these reasons - but I hope you will at least give it some thought.
How is it that an open source project is taking this long to fix bugs such as this? Because knowing the symptoms is not the same as knowing how to fix the problem?
Observing the existence of a memory leak, and knowing where to fix it in your code, are two VERY different things.
I can certainly understand why people are tired of FF memory leaks. Being a FF user myself, with open browser windows and multiple tabs all through the day, I have seen what happens to FF after 4-5 hours of intense browsing. And don't even get me started on the PDF and Flash plugins!
Some would argue that the problem is sloppy coding, or poor encapsulation (a typical OO programmers point of view). But please remember, that even though modern browsers are GUI apps, they are coded much like low-level server processes or protocol stacks. Low-level programming using languages like C and C++ gives you more control and better performance, but at the expense of nicer development features like garbage collection and encapsulation.
Think about it. Would you accept a browser that rendered HTML flawlessly and with absolutely no memory leaks, but took more than a minute to render each page? I think not.
It's an act of balance, and the problem is not _always_ "sloppy coding". It is the increasing complexity of these apps, combined with user demands which push the development towards low-level development languages. From a realistic point of view, any app. written in low-level C with as many lines of codes as FF, is bound to have bugs and leaks. (perhaps except code controlling nuclear reactors and NASA satellites, but then the price of each line of code is also somewhat different).
That's because unlike shuttles, cores don't multiply magically. Shuttles don't "multiply magically". They are simply replicated by folks from Engineering.
A core could also be replicated, except for the antimatter-oh-my-God-I-am-NOT-having-this-discussion...
Slashdot Mirror
The law says you can't distribute stuff when you don't hold the copyright.
Did she distribute?
She was convicted of distribution. Actually, she was also convicted to pay more than 9000$ for each song she allegedly distributed. But there wasn't a shred of evidence that she distributed anything.
For that simple reason, she should not have been convicted.
Don't get me wrong here. I am no pirate. I fact I am probably one of the few rare examples of people who don't have a single illegal MP3 file or movie. I also believe that pirates should be punished.
But the evidence must be present. No matter how much I dislike pirates, ensuring a fair trial (with appropriate evidence) is far more important that collecting money for the greedy "content industry".
- Jesper
Would have modded you up if I could :-)
:-)
:-)
I did not attend the conference in question. My only trip to the US was to Denver this summer, where I attended the MS WPC.
If you have a name or two I can do a LinkedIn search?
I'll throw you a mail with the same answer
- Jesper
I think we both generally feel the same about these issues.
.... and any other website.
My point is, that by constantly picking on GMail, the world will translate this into a "GMail problem". Only it isn't. It is just as big a problem for Amazon, e-bay, Hotmail, Yahoo, LinkedIn,
I am not out to protect Google. If they screwed up, they deserve a little spanking. But it is important that we don't think of this as a "GMail problem", and ignore the threat for all non-Google websites.
Agree?
- Jesper
Politely: e-bay was not hacked last week. It turned out to be a hoax. :-)
In fact, the total nightmare-scenario for the end-users (and the total wet-dream for XSS hackers) would be to gain access to an ad-server. Imagine the XSS hacks you could do if you managed to compromise a DoubleClick server? Millions of users could be targeted, across thousands of sites where your compromised ad-server would even be white-listed for all sorts of crap? In that case, the popularity of the sites themselves would be of no consequence. As long as it displayed ads from your compromised server.
Hmmm... come to think of it, that is a pretty clever idea. I just might wanna take a look at the scripting used in streaming video ads
- Jesper
With all respect, why continue this crusade against Google/Gmail?
... a tiny bit one-sided. Not only is that unfair for Google (I am not a stockholder, so I will survive) but it also takes away the focus from the real issue: XSS is a big deal, and has do be dealt with. By everybody ... not just by Google.
:-)
Sure, they are a key player in the market, but so is Yahoo, Hotmail, and a number of others.
From a technical perspective, cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities isn't exactly a new thing. Nor are they isolated to Gmail.
The article is not wrong - so I am not attempting to protect Google. On the other hand, this problem is fairly general in nature, and probably applicable to a ton of websites. In fact, the "cookie grabbing technique" is one of the oldest tricks in the areas of XSS.
With this in mind, the article (and in general the constant rampage against Google) seems
- Jesper
Sorry to be harsh, but I'm not going to bother replying.
What a great way to kill a debate.
Your post is a incoherent mess, full of half-truths, truthiness and fill.
That is an easy statement for you, since you decline to elaborate which portions you consider to be "half-truths". Gosh, it almost sounds like Microsoft yelling about the Linux community violating patents ... which they refuse to identify. Wow. Your trustworthiness is much higher than mine, I can certainly see that. Thank you for the lecture. You sir, are a real inspiration for other people.
A debate is all about sharing knowledge and views. If you disagree with me, fine, explain why. And provide information that could potentially make me change my mind.
Pretty much every sentence in it is either factually incorrect,
Which specific sentences are factually incorrect?
an arbitrary assumption,
Which specific sentences contain arbitrary assumptions?
logically inconsistent
Which specific sentences are logically inconsistent?
or not responding to the points they purport to respond to.
Which specific sentences are not responding to the points they purport to respond to?
I'd suggest you learn about logical fallacies and logical argument in general. Ideally, learn about the scientific method also.
Ok, so I took the time to read the pages at all the four links you provided.
Your link to the definition of Truthiness is mostly an accusation, and an insult. I can only speculate about your reason for degrading the debate to such a low level, but my guess is that you try to point out, that you feel my previous statements are insufficiently supported, and lacks evidence or facts. While I agree that I have not provided a ton of external links, you seem to make the faulty assumption, that lack of evidence automatically turns everything I said into "Truthiness". The assumption is flawed, because lack of evidence in itself can not be used to classify the original statement as faulty - only as unproven. If I state that "10+10=20" but fail to support that with evidence, the statement is not faulty by default. It is only unsupported/unproven. A fair action would then be to ask for clarification or evidence - or provide contradiction evidence if possible.
Your link to the definition of fallacies appears to be an attempt to claim that every argument I have made which did not fit the "truthiness" category, are flawed arguments (arguments in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support). Since you refuse to identify which arguments you believe are fallacies it is a little difficult for me to provide additional reasoning/premises for them - don't you think? (Btw, the Wiki on Fallacy was more helpful to me than the link you provided).
Your link to the definition of Logical arguments was an interesting read, but really does nothing for this debate. You may point out that my language or way of explaining myself is of insufficient quality (English is not my first language - sorry), and that I should attempt to make every one of my arguments strictly valid according to the definition of Logical arguments.
That approach is wrong for several reasons. First (and most important) of all, because our debate is not strictly scientific in nature. Our debate contains large portions of personal views, sociological, psychological, ethical and moral perspectives. For that reason, it can not be conducted if all arguments were to follow strict logic. Many (most?) arguments in debates such as these follow the principles of a "civil debate" (see:
There was never an A-team lunch box. Perhaps you are confusing it with the Mr.T lunch box?
(in which case I perfectly understand why he would got angry if he was outbid - they are very difficult to find nowadays...)
- Jesper
So what you are saying is ...
1.) Hack stuff using script-kiddie techniques
2.) Keep at it until you are caught
3.) Tell everyone the story about you being an idiot who got caught
4.) Do a month of jailtime
5.) $$$!
Is that the kind of people who programmed my personal firewall and my anti virus app.?
(Pleeeease, say "no", pleeeease, pretty-please)
- Jesper
Actually, the REAL question is...
;-)
WILL IT BLEND?
- Jesper
Mjeah.
So easy a caveman could do it.
But apparently not so easy a caveman could avoid getting caught?
What ever happened to the supercool hacking-thang called "not getting caught"?
- Jesper
I was arguing that it's more complicated than that; like at the moment where we have large scale unlicensed copying going on while still having a high degree of confidence in the money supply and only certain wealthy individuals threatened.
fair enough. I understand that argument - though I do not entirely agree.
To significantly compromise confidence in that money supply a significant fraction of it has to be threatened. Small scale financial crimes don't fit that definition and so shouldn't attract significant penalties.
Here is where we disagree.
If someone I know gets away with plain old-fashioned counterfeit and never gets punished for it, my faith in the monetary system will degrade. Even if he only counterfeited a small amound, lets say 1000 USD. By comparison these 1000 USD are no threat to the monetary system. The threat is the perception that it is acceptable to counterfeit money, or the perception that one can get away with it. The monetary system is very dependent on many of the normal ethical/moral values we have in society. If we fail to punish counterfeit (or other "financial crimes") with a harsh sentences, simply because the single crime itself wasn't that big a deal, it will eventually create a slide in the ethical/moral perception of these crimes.
In fact, that is exactly was has happened in the software/content industry. A lot of people violate the laws surrounding immaterial rights - simply because the lack of consequence for breaking the law has created a slide in the ethical and moral values surrounding the subject.
In short, the perception is this: It's not too bad to download pirated music or software, because you probably won't get caught anyway, and you really didn't steal anything of physical value.
That is a very strange way of thinking, which it basically violates a lot of common ethical/moral values that people actually have, but which they ignore (or choose to set aside) because everybody else does the same. The result is a conflict in ethical/moral values, where the most convenient choise (stealing/pirating) wins. Ask a pirate this: If it is not "wrong" to copy a piece of software, why is it wrong to copy money? In both cases you don't actually "steal" anything physical - right? So both crimes could be consideres equal?
However, maybe there are a million people who could derive $10 or more benefit from the software. Obviously they're not going pay $100 for $10 of benefit but if they pirate for $0 they derive $10,000,000 of benefit while the vendor gets $0.
This is a very common and widespread argument for piracy. As a programemr I have never understood it, and I honestly can't see the logic in that point of view.
First of all, the whole concept of thinking that piracy "produces value" for some people, adds to the slide in ethical/moral values I described before. For that very reason alone, it is a bad argument. You simply cannot invalidate general ethical or moral values by attempting to justify them with practical or operational arguments. Most (but granted: not all) experts on ethics will tell you that. The argument has is foundation in consequentialism whis is another way of saying that the ends justify the means. By this reasoning, some could argue that pirating software is OK because the act of piracy produces more benefit that not pirating software.
Being a programmer who works hard on producing code other people pay for, I disagree. When people take my work and don't compensate me, I feel cheated and ripped off. I like to donate code to open projects when I can - but i believe the choice on donating or selling my work should be my own.
There are many more reasons your little story about the "value" of piracy is flawed: 1.) It kills innovation. It's fair that some people don't want to pay 100$ for the software. But by ste
I am not sure the problems you describe translate to the world of Smalltalk. :-)
- Jesper
Why should extending the String class be under strict control? (It is an honest question)
- Jesper
Project Manager E is also at fault for exactly the reason you stated, no maybe about it. I'm not saying that we should expect D and E to be 100% flawless, but I do expect them to recognize, accept and admit fault. Did you not ever participate in a project, where time and use of resources was also a factor? A significant factor? (If not, I wonder what kind of projects you work on, and what kind of project manager controls them).
There is not an unlimited amount of programming hours for every project. So, as I said, flawless code is reserved for nuclear reactors and NASA rovers. The rest of us mortals will have to make do with "out best efforts under the circumstances". That is how the real world works. Realistically.
- Jesper
On the other hand, nobody would want to deliver me any gas, water, electricity or food if they weren't paid to do so. Most of the employees at these companies would probably stop working the instant they realized they would never receive a paycheck for their work.
I assure you: a crash of the monetary system would most certainly effect everybody. And all the common, working people would be the first ones to be in trouble. Without currency, modern society would stop spinning. No food, no oil, no gas, no water, no electricity. Billions of people would flee from the cities to the country side, where they would eventually fight over what little food was produced at the farms there (which wouldn't be much, since deliveries of essential goods like fertilizer and seeds for the farmer would also have stopped).
Money is not evil. The accumulation of wealth is evil - but that is a different matter. And we should reserve that discussion for a different thread or a different forum.
And your implied claim that illegal copying is very destructive for society as a whole is silly. If anything it's the reverse, with illegal copying being a great boon to society at large, creating enormous value for billions of people. An interesting point of view.
Could you please elaborate how illegal copying creates enormous value for society?
I am a programmer, so perhaps I think too much in terms of "software". For the sake or argument I will try to stop thinking about the people who obtain my software without my permission and use it without paying for it. Hell yeah, let's copy some money instead. Good old American dollar bills. Now THAT will create enormous value for billions - would it not?
Or did I misunderstand your argument?
- Jesper
I respectfully disagree.
... WHAM! the browser crashes before it can even display the config page.
I have seem programming projects grow beyond their scope many times. Here is a story on what might happen (all very theoretical and totally manufactured):
A bunch of people are working on a browser. They are a very philanthropic bunch so they work on the new browser from home, free of charge, in the interest of making a free alternative to one of the worlds biggest commercial browsers.
Programmer A, let's call him Anthony, is working on the URL entry field. He makes a chunk of code intended to help users who mistype the URL, and which makes the browser "guess" what the user actually intended. Perhaps a forgotten "w"? Or a URL without "www" to a domain which can't handle the absence of a host name (no URL forwarder)? And if all else fails, do a search using the default web search engine and display the result? Don't argue if this "feature" should be in the browser or not - stay with me for a minute here: The users have requested this feature, and Anthony is coding it. No big deal.
As part of his work, Anthony makes a few additions to a class or function library which handles Strings. He makes a procedure/method which automatically strips a string of "w." and "ww." if they are at the beginning of a string. He calls his procedure/method "stripUserURLCrap". And it works perfectly. Anthony is happy.
A few months later programmer B, let's call him Bill, is working on the parameter list in the browser. You know... the one you can display by typing "about:config" in the URL field. Bill wants to add line which displays the latest URL typed by the user. He looks at Anthonys code, and upon understanding what Anthony implemented in "stripUserURLCrap" he chooses to display two values: the string containing the actual user input, and a second string with all the strings "stripUserURLCrap" actually tries to resolve if the first original string failed to resolve a normal page. And it works perfectly. Bill is happy. Anthony is happy.
Another few months later programmer C, let's call her Carol, discovers a buffer overflow error in the URL entry field. It turns out that if a user puts one billion "w." instances in the browserstring "stripUserURLCrap" will crash because the string is too long and nobody cared to check for morons typing one billion "w." strings in the URL field. She also discovers that the reason for the problem is that in order to compensate for empty strings or null objects in the URL field, "stripUserURLCrap" always serializes its input and inserts it into a new string - to which memory has to be allocated.
Before a lot of big and fancy security firms swarm all over this issue, Carol decides to fix the problem. She changes the way "stripUserURLCrap" works, and makes sure it can now handle a billion "w." entries and that it can also handle null objects. And it works perfectly. Carol is happy. Bill is happy. Anthony is happy.
A week later end-user J, let's call him Jesper, decides that "about:config" should be his start page. He sets the default page to "about:config", and goes to sleep. The very next morning when he opens the browser in order to check the weather forecast
Whap happened? Well, the config page display a lot of strings, right? Values and parameters. One of them shows the value of the last typed URL from the user. And guess what: where the list was expecting a string there is suddenly a null value. The "last.typed" property returns a null object which is an illegal value the list can't handle. It expects strings.
Now answer this question: who made a mistake?
Did Anthony make the mistake which made the config-list crash?
Did Bill make the mistake which made the config-list crash?
Did Carol make the mistake which made the config-list crash?
They would each be in a position where they could argue, that they personally made no mistakes. And perhaps even that programmer D (his name was
You are right. Didn't think of that. So I just put in a few more columns in Task Manager.
Looks like FF leaks handles as well... or at least some of the plugins do.
- Jesper
Sure I do. Why do you ask? I mean, sarcasm aside, and in all honesty: why do you ask? English is not my first language - did I write something too unclear?
- Jesper
Why?
Because "financial crime" undermines society itself. Look around you. The whole world is depending on the monetary system to work. And it only works as long as we - the users - trust that system. As such, "financial crime" is extremely dangerous for society because it destroys one of the most important foundations we depend on: money!
The most serious "financial crime" is counterfeiting money. It is punished extremely hard, because such activity is a serious threat to society. If we can't trust money, the world will stop functioning. Like... really! stop functioning!
The second-worst "financial crime" is forgery of documents where money is involved. The reasons are exactly the same as above. If you forge a check/document/contract in order to acquire someone else's money, that activity is a threat to an important foundation in society.
We can continue to describe the many different grades and shades of "financial crimes", but if you think about the logic behind it, it kinda makes sense. The reasons for having harsh punishments for such crimes are all similar: It is a kind of crime which is very destructive for society as a whole.
I am not saying that software piracy is as bad as rape. Nor am I saying that I agree with the course of action in this particular case. I am simply trying to explain the logic. Some laws are made to protect the individual, other laws are made to protect society as a whole. Are the former more important than the latter? Is there any reason to protect the individual, while society falls apart?
That is the reason for harsh punishment of "financial crimes". You don't have to agree with these reasons - but I hope you will at least give it some thought.
- Jesper
Observing the existence of a memory leak, and knowing where to fix it in your code, are two VERY different things.
- Jesper
I can certainly understand why people are tired of FF memory leaks. Being a FF user myself, with open browser windows and multiple tabs all through the day, I have seen what happens to FF after 4-5 hours of intense browsing. And don't even get me started on the PDF and Flash plugins!
Some would argue that the problem is sloppy coding, or poor encapsulation (a typical OO programmers point of view). But please remember, that even though modern browsers are GUI apps, they are coded much like low-level server processes or protocol stacks. Low-level programming using languages like C and C++ gives you more control and better performance, but at the expense of nicer development features like garbage collection and encapsulation.
Think about it. Would you accept a browser that rendered HTML flawlessly and with absolutely no memory leaks, but took more than a minute to render each page? I think not.
It's an act of balance, and the problem is not _always_ "sloppy coding". It is the increasing complexity of these apps, combined with user demands which push the development towards low-level development languages. From a realistic point of view, any app. written in low-level C with as many lines of codes as FF, is bound to have bugs and leaks. (perhaps except code controlling nuclear reactors and NASA satellites, but then the price of each line of code is also somewhat different).
We - the end users - are not without blame.
- Jesper
A core could also be replicated, except for the antimatter-oh-my-God-I-am-NOT-having-this-discussion...
OMG!
/.
I can't believe you actually knew that, and was so certain about it that you even posted it on