Timothy, wtf? Why is this in idle, where almost no one is going to bother looking at it (since many, many people avoid idle like the plague)? This needs to be seen by everyone, not just a few.
Also, it's NOT funny. DON'T LAUGH! This is scary, not funny.
The government is most certainly not above the law. YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT. Or more to the point, it is made up of individuals who can be hauled into court.
Above the law? What the hell is wrong with you?
Were you paid to say this, or are you just brainwashed?
I say this to people occasionally, but people like you really ARE the problem with America today. "The government did it, so it must be okay!" Are you REALLY that deluded?
Given the way his sentence read: "Of course the government is above the law, but companies should not be punished for government crimes.", I'd say it was an omission, and he meant "Of course the government is not above the law...".
I can name 3 good IDEs off the top of my head for java. Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntellJ. Two of which are open source.
What's stopping others from developing good C# IDEs, though?
Ugh. If you're gonna be on windows and have to use just a text editor and command line tools for coding, at least use something like notepad++ for syntax hilighting on your csharp files. There's even a portable version if you don't have admin rights to do an install.
Obviously there are far better tools than Notepad out there, even if you insist on coding with a text editor + command-line tools. I'm just saying that, if I was required to for some stupid reason, I could live with coding C# in Notepad.
I don't think anyone would willingly code in C# without Visual Studio... another lock-in.
Sure, in the same sense that no one would willingly code in Java without (insert IDE of choice here). IDEs are really useful tools, and Visual Studio happens to be a really nice IDE. I could code in C# using Notepad, and wouldn't really have a problem with it if that's all that was available. Not like the libraries are horribly difficult to use or something. Since I have Visual Studio available, I choose to use that.
Seriously off-topic, but you might be able to provide some insight into how I should further my career. I also don't have a degree (I flunked out, rather than voluntarily dropping out), although I may go back to finish it. My main goal, though, is to become a software developer (I currently work in desktop support). How would you advise getting a first software development job? That's the main thing I need, since once I have a few years under my belt in the field, my lack of a degree will hardly matter at all. I'm finding it difficult to get that sort of a job, however. I currently live in Wisconsin (not in Milwaukee or Madison), where employers seem to be able to be more selective, since there are more candidates than jobs here. Would it be possible, then, that the first step I should take would be to move to a new location?
I'm really interested to know what you would advise, since I pretty badly want to get into software, I just have no idea how to do so without a degree to give me that initial boost. Sorry for the off-topic post.
If you wish to spend your nights reading information from 2+ years ago, that is your problem. The rest of us want today's information, and now.
First: there is absolutely nothing wrong with reading information that is 2+ years old. Information itself does not become outdated. News may, but that's only a small portion of all available information. Unless we get some stunning development in calculus, for example, a student in 10 years will be just as well off reading a calculus book published today as a calculus book published 9 years from now. Furthermore, not all books are nonfiction books. Fiction is just as good whenever you read it... or are you saying that all those poor saps who still enjoy Shakespeare's work are just deluding themselves?
Second: as useful as the Internet is for rapid dissemination of information, printed media still has its place. It's generally far easier to organize and reference a personal-sized collection of books than it would be with electronic versions. Large collections are easier to manage electronically, but the average individual's collection is probably better off on dead trees. Books have the advantage of being more tactilely pleasing, as well: it feels a lot nicer to turn physical pages than to scroll down with your mouse wheel.
There's a place for both media; it isn't as simple as you paint it, where the enlightened use electronic media, and only Luddites use print.
If people are still using Internet Explorer, it can only be explained as ignorance or complacency.
You say "complacency" like it's such a bad thing. IE has always done, and continues to do, what I want it to excellently. Firefox is not capable of doing it any better. Why, then, should I feel bothered to switch?
I don't have a cell phone or cable TV either. I think I was just raised frugally.
Depending on how much you use your phone, a cell phone may be more economical. I have a pre-paid phone, and including the cost of the phone itself, I pay $15-20 per month for the calling I do. My landline phone (which I'm dropping this fall) costs $25/month just to have the damn line hooked up... long-distance calls are extra, of course. Sure, I have unlimited local calling, but when every single person I know is long-distance, that scarcely makes a difference for me.
Not saying your situation is identical, just food for thought.
Since the open-source community (in a moment of grand idiocy...) decided to adopt an already-common word, "free", it has a double meaning. Since I get AVG for $0, it is, indeed, ABSOLUTELY FREE in the most common sense of the word.
I have to further disagree. To me, an RPG is a game whose primary purpose is to tell a story, and whose main gameplay facets are exploration and some sort of combat system that makes your character more powerful. It also shouldn't be able to be stuck in another genre particularly neatly (for example, Bioshock tells a story, and features character advancement, but I would consider it more of an FPS/RPG hybrid than a straight-up RPG or FPS).
Choices aren't really required for an RPG. Final Fantasy games are undisputably RPGs, but they don't have any real way to affect the story (generally... there are exceptions). I can't think of any RPGs, however, which didn't offer some sort of system for making your character more powerful as you play.
The only reason to have a specific version of a text is if the professor assigns specific questions from the text and checks them for credit. But then you have a bad professor anyway...
Maybe I have an unusually good sample, but that seems like an over-generalization to me. My college math profs assigned homework in that manner (and once you made it past freshman-year math, homework was like 60% of your grade, at that), but they were (on average) amazing professors, who could have taught math to the stupidest person alive, on a bad day. I really can't see, having had profs like that, that it's true at all that a prof who assigns homework from the book is necessarily a bad prof.
Absolutely untrue. If someone makes their livelihood selling the thing you just copied, you have harmed their ability to earn their living. You do not owe it to them to purchase their good, but if you choose not to purchase their good, you had best not be using it.
Forcing people not to copy things with the threat of violence does hurt people.
Murder statutes hurt murderers, too. I'm not prepared to call that a big loss for anyone.
There is no fundamental right here. It is nothing than government protectionism. The government decides that the industry deserves profit and passes laws to get them that profit. It's no different than if the government decided you could only legally buy cars from Ford.
Bull. This is like the government saying that if you want one of Ford's cars, you have to get one on their terms... which, surprise, we have laws for. If it was truly like what you describe, independent music, and free music, would be illegal, which they clearly are not. Only taking the music from those who own it, against their will, is.
As long as no one is being forced to purchase music/whatever else against their will, the wishes of the creator as to how that work gets distributed reign supreme. It's his work, and you have no right to supersede his terms. If you don't like his terms, ignore his work, and find someone whose terms are to your liking... and if there's no one with terms you like, it's time to make your own content.
Sure it is. Just like murder laws, theft laws, rape laws, etc... These things all serve the same purpose: preventing members of society from harming each other.
Current copyright law in the US is absolutely insane, but copyright itself is a good and necessary concept.
...this story is about something that happened nearly forty years ago, and any attempt to transpose it to current political activity is kind of ridiculous.
Is it? The same exact bullshit is going on today, I'd say that makes today's events a pretty relevant thing to discuss when talking about this revelation.
No, but it does make him far and away better than every senator who held office at that time. If Feingold is still 50% evil (and I don't believe that, but whatever), so be it. The other guys are 90% evil, so let's get a Congress full of Feingolds first, and then try to improve things from there. One step at a time.
"What wrath? It's not like you can do anything to them once they're in office."
Lee Harvey Oswald would disagree with you.
a) Killing people is not an acceptable solution (for anything) unless as an extreme last resort.
b) And what a great job of punishing JFK Oswald did, turning him into the poor president who was cut down in his prime. I don't know about you, but if I want to hold someone accountable for their actions, I don't go about it by making them more popular.
These terms of which you speak have not been agreed between artist and audience, but between state and publisher.
Not so. The state does not require the artist to sell their work for a fee. Copyright law is perfectly ok with an artist choosing to give their work away for free, it merely requires that the artist be the one to make that decision, not the consumer. The artist has offered his work on his terms, take it or leave it are your options... no differently than when you buy a pair of shoes at Wal-Mart.
The state agrees to suspend the public's natural liberty to copy published works.... Even without this state granted privilege, an artist still wouldn't be able to contract a purchaser to alienate themselves from their natural liberty to produce duplicate or derivative works.
No one has a natural liberty to produce duplicate works of someone else's creative work... because the work itself is the item of value, not the materials that reproduce it. When you make a duplicate of an artist's work, you violate his terms for making that work available to you. Derivative works is a bit different, and I'm not convinced that copyright should allow an author to block derivative works. That would be like saying that I can't take the metal in my forks, melt it down, and make spoons... clearly ridiculous.
Slavery is all about the alienation of a person from their natural right to liberty, whether to roam or to speak freely.
Slavery also encompasses forcing people to work for you against their will. If slaves in the south had been free to live wherever they wanted, as long as they continued to work for the benefit of their master, it would still be called slavery. And taking an artist's work against the terms he makes it available under IS forcing him to work for you. If you don't like his terms, more power to you... but in that case, you should negotiate with the artist to provide more favorable terms, or ignore his offer entirely. Making it a one-sided affair (where you benefit from his work, but give no compensation to him) is blatantly wrong, and it astonishes me how many otherwise reasonable people think this is ok, just because it involves labor of the mind rather than labor of the hands.
These privileges unethically suspend the rights of human beings in order to provide commercial reward...
Not so. Copyright (patents are a whole different thing which I won't get into here) is more akin to murder laws: it restricts your freedom, but only because that's necessary to prevent harm to others.
Let me elaborate. It is, quite obviously, the right of every human being to work only if they choose to. Ideally, these will be under conditions agreeable to them, but the most important thing is that they have the choice of whether to work for another person or not. They also have the right to attempt to sell their labor (or its fruits) for what they consider a fair price (of course, nothing guarantees them success).
This is why we have copyright law. In the case of the artist, his work has become easily copied, so, unlike physical goods, it's easy to reap the fruit of the artist's labor without paying the artist. This is unethical for two reasons. First, the artist has the right to try to sell his creation at what he feels is a fair price. You have every right to disagree with his terms, but that does not give you, in turn, the right to violate them. Your option is to simply not purchase the artist's work. Second, if you benefit from the artist's work against the terms he/she set forth, you are forcing them to work for you... in other words, you have made that artist your slave.
So, copying the artist's work (without his/her permission) is blatantly unethical. This is why we have copyright law: to give some ability for our society to prevent mistreatment of people's work, just because it happens to be easily copied. Thus, copyright law, far from being unethical, is extremely ethical: it restricts people, true, but only to prevent them from harming others. It is a LACK of copyright law which would be unethical.
Slashdot Mirror
Timothy, wtf? Why is this in idle, where almost no one is going to bother looking at it (since many, many people avoid idle like the plague)? This needs to be seen by everyone, not just a few.
Also, it's NOT funny. DON'T LAUGH! This is scary, not funny.
WHAT?
WHAT?!>?! (emphasis, you know)
The government is most certainly not above the law. YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT. Or more to the point, it is made up of individuals who can be hauled into court.
Above the law? What the hell is wrong with you?
Were you paid to say this, or are you just brainwashed?
I say this to people occasionally, but people like you really ARE the problem with America today. "The government did it, so it must be okay!" Are you REALLY that deluded?
Given the way his sentence read: "Of course the government is above the law, but companies should not be punished for government crimes.", I'd say it was an omission, and he meant "Of course the government is not above the law...".
I can name 3 good IDEs off the top of my head for java. Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntellJ. Two of which are open source.
What's stopping others from developing good C# IDEs, though?
Ugh. If you're gonna be on windows and have to use just a text editor and command line tools for coding, at least use something like notepad++ for syntax hilighting on your csharp files. There's even a portable version if you don't have admin rights to do an install.
Obviously there are far better tools than Notepad out there, even if you insist on coding with a text editor + command-line tools. I'm just saying that, if I was required to for some stupid reason, I could live with coding C# in Notepad.
I don't think anyone would willingly code in C# without Visual Studio... another lock-in.
Sure, in the same sense that no one would willingly code in Java without (insert IDE of choice here). IDEs are really useful tools, and Visual Studio happens to be a really nice IDE. I could code in C# using Notepad, and wouldn't really have a problem with it if that's all that was available. Not like the libraries are horribly difficult to use or something. Since I have Visual Studio available, I choose to use that.
Seriously off-topic, but you might be able to provide some insight into how I should further my career. I also don't have a degree (I flunked out, rather than voluntarily dropping out), although I may go back to finish it. My main goal, though, is to become a software developer (I currently work in desktop support). How would you advise getting a first software development job? That's the main thing I need, since once I have a few years under my belt in the field, my lack of a degree will hardly matter at all. I'm finding it difficult to get that sort of a job, however. I currently live in Wisconsin (not in Milwaukee or Madison), where employers seem to be able to be more selective, since there are more candidates than jobs here. Would it be possible, then, that the first step I should take would be to move to a new location?
I'm really interested to know what you would advise, since I pretty badly want to get into software, I just have no idea how to do so without a degree to give me that initial boost. Sorry for the off-topic post.
I suggest you pour through a dictionary to figure out the difference between the verb pour and the adjective poor.
That would just make the ink run. Do you perhaps mean he should pore through a dictionary to learn the difference between the verbs pore and pour? ;)
If you wish to spend your nights reading information from 2+ years ago, that is your problem. The rest of us want today's information, and now.
First: there is absolutely nothing wrong with reading information that is 2+ years old. Information itself does not become outdated. News may, but that's only a small portion of all available information. Unless we get some stunning development in calculus, for example, a student in 10 years will be just as well off reading a calculus book published today as a calculus book published 9 years from now. Furthermore, not all books are nonfiction books. Fiction is just as good whenever you read it... or are you saying that all those poor saps who still enjoy Shakespeare's work are just deluding themselves?
Second: as useful as the Internet is for rapid dissemination of information, printed media still has its place. It's generally far easier to organize and reference a personal-sized collection of books than it would be with electronic versions. Large collections are easier to manage electronically, but the average individual's collection is probably better off on dead trees. Books have the advantage of being more tactilely pleasing, as well: it feels a lot nicer to turn physical pages than to scroll down with your mouse wheel.
There's a place for both media; it isn't as simple as you paint it, where the enlightened use electronic media, and only Luddites use print.
If people are still using Internet Explorer, it can only be explained as ignorance or complacency.
You say "complacency" like it's such a bad thing. IE has always done, and continues to do, what I want it to excellently. Firefox is not capable of doing it any better. Why, then, should I feel bothered to switch?
I don't have a cell phone or cable TV either. I think I was just raised frugally.
Depending on how much you use your phone, a cell phone may be more economical. I have a pre-paid phone, and including the cost of the phone itself, I pay $15-20 per month for the calling I do. My landline phone (which I'm dropping this fall) costs $25/month just to have the damn line hooked up... long-distance calls are extra, of course. Sure, I have unlimited local calling, but when every single person I know is long-distance, that scarcely makes a difference for me.
Not saying your situation is identical, just food for thought.
Since the open-source community (in a moment of grand idiocy...) decided to adopt an already-common word, "free", it has a double meaning. Since I get AVG for $0, it is, indeed, ABSOLUTELY FREE in the most common sense of the word.
I have to further disagree. To me, an RPG is a game whose primary purpose is to tell a story, and whose main gameplay facets are exploration and some sort of combat system that makes your character more powerful. It also shouldn't be able to be stuck in another genre particularly neatly (for example, Bioshock tells a story, and features character advancement, but I would consider it more of an FPS/RPG hybrid than a straight-up RPG or FPS).
Choices aren't really required for an RPG. Final Fantasy games are undisputably RPGs, but they don't have any real way to affect the story (generally... there are exceptions). I can't think of any RPGs, however, which didn't offer some sort of system for making your character more powerful as you play.
Pardon me for asking, but what the heck are you two talking about? I can't figure it out.
No, it'd be "5318008".
The only reason to have a specific version of a text is if the professor assigns specific questions from the text and checks them for credit. But then you have a bad professor anyway...
Maybe I have an unusually good sample, but that seems like an over-generalization to me. My college math profs assigned homework in that manner (and once you made it past freshman-year math, homework was like 60% of your grade, at that), but they were (on average) amazing professors, who could have taught math to the stupidest person alive, on a bad day. I really can't see, having had profs like that, that it's true at all that a prof who assigns homework from the book is necessarily a bad prof.
Making a copy of something harms no one.
Absolutely untrue. If someone makes their livelihood selling the thing you just copied, you have harmed their ability to earn their living. You do not owe it to them to purchase their good, but if you choose not to purchase their good, you had best not be using it.
Forcing people not to copy things with the threat of violence does hurt people.
Murder statutes hurt murderers, too. I'm not prepared to call that a big loss for anyone.
There is no fundamental right here. It is nothing than government protectionism. The government decides that the industry deserves profit and passes laws to get them that profit. It's no different than if the government decided you could only legally buy cars from Ford.
Bull. This is like the government saying that if you want one of Ford's cars, you have to get one on their terms... which, surprise, we have laws for. If it was truly like what you describe, independent music, and free music, would be illegal, which they clearly are not. Only taking the music from those who own it, against their will, is.
As long as no one is being forced to purchase music/whatever else against their will, the wishes of the creator as to how that work gets distributed reign supreme. It's his work, and you have no right to supersede his terms. If you don't like his terms, ignore his work, and find someone whose terms are to your liking... and if there's no one with terms you like, it's time to make your own content.
Yeah, I already said that, dude. Oswald wasn't effective at all, he just turned JFK into some martyr.
Sure it is. Just like murder laws, theft laws, rape laws, etc... These things all serve the same purpose: preventing members of society from harming each other.
Current copyright law in the US is absolutely insane, but copyright itself is a good and necessary concept.
...this story is about something that happened nearly forty years ago, and any attempt to transpose it to current political activity is kind of ridiculous.
Is it? The same exact bullshit is going on today, I'd say that makes today's events a pretty relevant thing to discuss when talking about this revelation.
No, but it does make him far and away better than every senator who held office at that time. If Feingold is still 50% evil (and I don't believe that, but whatever), so be it. The other guys are 90% evil, so let's get a Congress full of Feingolds first, and then try to improve things from there. One step at a time.
No, but invoking him as an example of what we can do to elected officials to punish them does make it sound like you agree with his methods.
Saying "these days" doesn't mean he thinks it's a new phenomenon, just that he recognizes it's going on currently. Also, calm the fuck down, geez.
He's neither noble nor a hero.
Feingold being the single Senator to vote against the damnable Patriot Act, your words don't exactly ring with much truth.
"What wrath? It's not like you can do anything to them once they're in office."
Lee Harvey Oswald would disagree with you.
a) Killing people is not an acceptable solution (for anything) unless as an extreme last resort.
b) And what a great job of punishing JFK Oswald did, turning him into the poor president who was cut down in his prime. I don't know about you, but if I want to hold someone accountable for their actions, I don't go about it by making them more popular.
These terms of which you speak have not been agreed between artist and audience, but between state and publisher.
Not so. The state does not require the artist to sell their work for a fee. Copyright law is perfectly ok with an artist choosing to give their work away for free, it merely requires that the artist be the one to make that decision, not the consumer. The artist has offered his work on his terms, take it or leave it are your options... no differently than when you buy a pair of shoes at Wal-Mart.
The state agrees to suspend the public's natural liberty to copy published works.... Even without this state granted privilege, an artist still wouldn't be able to contract a purchaser to alienate themselves from their natural liberty to produce duplicate or derivative works.
No one has a natural liberty to produce duplicate works of someone else's creative work... because the work itself is the item of value, not the materials that reproduce it. When you make a duplicate of an artist's work, you violate his terms for making that work available to you. Derivative works is a bit different, and I'm not convinced that copyright should allow an author to block derivative works. That would be like saying that I can't take the metal in my forks, melt it down, and make spoons... clearly ridiculous.
Slavery is all about the alienation of a person from their natural right to liberty, whether to roam or to speak freely.
Slavery also encompasses forcing people to work for you against their will. If slaves in the south had been free to live wherever they wanted, as long as they continued to work for the benefit of their master, it would still be called slavery. And taking an artist's work against the terms he makes it available under IS forcing him to work for you. If you don't like his terms, more power to you... but in that case, you should negotiate with the artist to provide more favorable terms, or ignore his offer entirely. Making it a one-sided affair (where you benefit from his work, but give no compensation to him) is blatantly wrong, and it astonishes me how many otherwise reasonable people think this is ok, just because it involves labor of the mind rather than labor of the hands.
These privileges unethically suspend the rights of human beings in order to provide commercial reward...
Not so. Copyright (patents are a whole different thing which I won't get into here) is more akin to murder laws: it restricts your freedom, but only because that's necessary to prevent harm to others.
Let me elaborate. It is, quite obviously, the right of every human being to work only if they choose to. Ideally, these will be under conditions agreeable to them, but the most important thing is that they have the choice of whether to work for another person or not. They also have the right to attempt to sell their labor (or its fruits) for what they consider a fair price (of course, nothing guarantees them success).
This is why we have copyright law. In the case of the artist, his work has become easily copied, so, unlike physical goods, it's easy to reap the fruit of the artist's labor without paying the artist. This is unethical for two reasons. First, the artist has the right to try to sell his creation at what he feels is a fair price. You have every right to disagree with his terms, but that does not give you, in turn, the right to violate them. Your option is to simply not purchase the artist's work. Second, if you benefit from the artist's work against the terms he/she set forth, you are forcing them to work for you... in other words, you have made that artist your slave.
So, copying the artist's work (without his/her permission) is blatantly unethical. This is why we have copyright law: to give some ability for our society to prevent mistreatment of people's work, just because it happens to be easily copied. Thus, copyright law, far from being unethical, is extremely ethical: it restricts people, true, but only to prevent them from harming others. It is a LACK of copyright law which would be unethical.