Simple: by dropping that book or painting the previous owner gave up the rights to it. In an object such as a book, the rights to ownership of that copy of the book are granted via the actual book. In software, the rights to ownership of that copy of software are granted via the product key; if someone gave you a key to that software for free and stopped using their key themselves, then that would be fine. Instead, what you are doing (to continue to use the book analogy) is having someone copy the pages of the book and hand them to you to read (which is illegal without prior consent).
The only reason you can say that you own your car or your house is because the government has papers (which they give you a copy of) saying that you do. If this wasn't the case, then anybody could walk into your house and say "this is mine" and the only way you could stop them is to respond with force your self; but with a title to your house you can point to it and say "I own this house, get the hell out" and if they don't you can call the police and they'll get them out of your house by force. The "natural order", to use your own phrase, is that whoever can physically force out anyone else from a house, owns that house until someone else can physically force them out.
Copyright is no different than the title to your car or house; it is a title that says you control a particular intellectual item and that you may use it how you see fit (so long as you don't do anything that breaks laws unrelated to copyright with it).
You sound like some sort of fucking cult member; the joyous days of free software is coming my children, now drink this wine mixed with cyanide so we can all go to the glorious future! What a load of shit, who's going to pay those making the creative software? How are they going to make money? I know people do like to write amateur code; but if I'm going to make a career out of coding I need a way to pay the bills. Who will pay for the office people who make the product work in? Who's going to set up the offices?
If people are not paid for the products they make, chances are good that there won't be much in the way of new products because at some point somebody along the lines has to get paid. It's hard to make creative software if you're working 8+ hours a day on average doing something else to pay the bills.
Okay, you obviously have no idea how and why you are being charged more than the physical thing costs to make (which makes you an idiot) or you're just acting dumb to try and justify your theft so I'll explain.
Let's say you're looking to buy a new car, and I mean the newest model fresh off the lot. The car costs $30,000 plus tax and fees; did the car actually cost $30,000 to physically manufacture, ship to the car lot, display on the car lot and pay everyone involved in those processes? No, not at all, of course; your $30,000 goes into a variety of things. Part of your money is going to the physical manufacture of the car and paying everyone involved in that, probably about a third of that car's manufacture cost. Another bit of that money goes to shipping the car to the car lot and paying the shipping company and salesman. Another part of your money is profit for the company and the car dealer (assuming they sell enough cars). Another part is going to marketing, both marketing from the company and the card dealer. A large portion of that new car's cost however goes right to the R&D department of the car company. They've spent at least a year (probably more, as models often don't change drastically for several years) researching the aerodynamics of the car, the electrical wiring, the engine function, the ergonomics of the car and the appearance to try to make a car that people will want to buy. So part of that $30,000 is just going to pay back the company for the R&D they did to design and develop that car.
The same is true for a piece of software; and in fact R&D is probably most of the cost of that software. That's part of why, as the months go by, the price of that software or game will drop; the R&D portion of a piece of software once it has shipped has been paid back (though the main factor is the market, how many people are willing to pay for the product at what price, how many of those people are left, etc). So in essence, the majority of your money is going to the development of that software, a small portion is going to marketing, a small portion is going to profit (if you sell enough software), a portion goes to the store you buy it at (online or brick and mortar), a portion goes to shipping it or the bandwidth to download it and likely the smallest portion is going to actually making the copy (whether on disc or via the intertnet).
When you pay for software, you aren't just paying for the box and disc, you're paying for the development of that software; pirating software means your taking money away from the people who made that software, and if enough people pirate the software then the company will go bankrupt and there won't be any new software from them. This is just like the theft of a physical object, if enough people steal from your grocery store, then the grocery store won't have enough money to pay its bills and make a profit so they'll be forced to close.
So, to summarize (and hopefully get it through some of the thicker heads) you are not just paying for the physical medium on which your copy of a software product is obtained, you are paying for the design and development of that product. If you really want to see a developer continue to succeed, buy their product legally; it's that simple. In capitalism, every purchase you make is a vote for the products of that type; if you buy a sports car you're saying you want to see more sports car, if you buy Mass Effect you're saying you want to see more games like it.
Okay, so what you're essentially advocating is asking for people to pay UP FRONT for a product that doesn't exist. If someone walked up to you on the street and said "If you give me $50,000 I'll make you a sports car" would you do it? Fuck no; you'd tell them to stuff it and walk away. Exactly how do you intend to get people to DIRECTLY pay up front for a product that doesn't exist yet? I'll answer for you, you won't; people are not going to pay you for a product that doesn't exist, they want to see it work, they want to see reviews and previews so that they can decide if they want/need it. People want to know you have a product before they pay for it.
Yeah, kinda funny how that works out isn't it? It's like the paid version is somehow superior to the one you don't pay for; it's like you...hold on, brilliant new idea here, you get what you pay for. Absolutely brilliant idea!
Take a look at the contracts you signed when you started to work for your company. Almost every tech company includes in their contracts a clause that says, in short, anything you make for us is ours. This means that if your manager wants to try to patent your work, he can; the company owns your work that you do for the company and has the right to do whatever they please with it. The company can delete it, patent it, make it open source or sell it to another company as they see fit.
The only real way around it is (as others said) try to find a way to point out that the patent wouldn't hold up in court. That, or find a new job if you disagree that strongly; but I almost guarantee that every other tech company out there has the same clause in their contracts (and it has held up in court).
You're telling me you only bought GTA: San Andreas for parachutes, airplanes and jetpacks? Seriously? I think the game you're looking for is a flight simulator; not a GTA game.
You're obviously not a coder of any sort; that sort of "algorithm" is approaching something much closer to a human mind, or perhaps even a God-like one (remember, even humans get stumped). The best you can do (at least right now) is to script in a random quest generator based on templates or simply create a hell of a lot of content (GTA 4 does a bit of both). Neither one tends to result in the same sort of quality storyline as a "scripted" story though.
Some of us have windows in our rooms and even though you can close the curtains you can't block out all light from the sun. If I have to be a pitch black (or nearly so) room to be able to see things then I cannot play the game during the day and that's a pain in the ass.
Sure, it might be possible, but why? Why the hell would humans colonize Venus when we have a perfectly good moon and Mars to colonize? Why would we float around on bubbles in a toxic atmosphere far above a planet, knowing that if something goes wrong we'll either be thrown into space or come crashing to the ground on a planet that melts spacecraft in minutes? It's a great sci-fi, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Oh yes, because the colonial governments were SO much better to the people than the current crop of dictators. In many cases, the internal problems in African governments comes, in part, because some imperialist drew a line (literally) in the sand to divide up their territories dividing up and putting together tribes previously at war with each other; when imperialist authority left, these tribes no longer were united against imperialists and instead began to fight for control of their countries so the "enemy tribes" wouldn't control the country instead. Yes, it's horrible, but that's the choice the people in some African countries have made; under apartheid they had no such choices.
However, we could just go straight to the point; what you're saying is that Bill Gates should use charity money to hire mercenaries and oust the local governments right? Let's go back to the days where the white man helped the poor, stupid, violent people of Africa by being their dictator; apartheid worked out great for everyone, right? Right? Way to go, racist!
This has nothing to do with whether or not Microsoft the company is doing something wrong or illegal; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doesn't suddenly make everything Microsoft does or has done in the past right. That said, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done and continues to do good things to improve people's lives.
Oh shut the fuck up; every single charity in the world meant to last more than a year does something like this to ensure their continued survival. The fact of the matter is that it's better to spend a bit of interest over the course of years or decades than it is to spend everything in one go; if you have $1 billion and you get 10% interest on it per year (for example) and spend that 10% each year you're giving away $100 million per year, after 11 years you've spent more than that initial investment.
I wouldn't be too sure on the skills part of it; most school networks are ridiculously easy to break into. School districts can't afford to hire good IT guys, so they pretty much get the bottom of the barrel; I remember that I once got access to all the teachers' files completely by accident. Fortunately (for the school district, at least) I was a rather good kid and showed them how I did it.
Let's take a look at the charges levied against the student:
34 felony counts of altering public record 11 felony counts of stealing and secreting public records 7 felony counts of illegal computer access and fraud 6 felony counts of burglary 4 felony counts of identity theft 3 felony counts of altering book of records 2 felony counts of receiving stolen property 1 felony count of conspiracy 1 felony count of attempting altering of a public record
And, as the article says, he's not just being charged with breaking in to the school's computers, he also put in a remote access program (which others could have used to do a variety of things with the school's network with). Then there's the fact that he broke into the principal's office to steal a test he did badly on. I think this individual, quite clearly, is a potential threat to other people. He sounds an awful lot like the sort of person who would do anything to get ahead; maybe in the future he could steal someone's identity to get a job or a loan. Do I necessarily think that 38 years is the amount of time he should do? No, but I don't think he'll do that much time either; he deserves to do some jail time though for his crimes.
The current president and his cronies have done everything they can to fight honest science; even if DARPA isn't necessarily going to be moderated by political appointees, my guess is that many won't bother to make the distinction. Why bother to work for the government as a scientist if your conclusions are going to be second-guessed or changed by your editor?
Flame away if you like folks, but I'd say tech schools aren't for kids just out of high school. Believe it or not, but you may take your first CS course...and hate it. I don't know how much programming you've done before this, I don't know how well you understand the underlying theories and implementations; but I do know that I went to a university and found that about 75% of the people who start off wanting to go into CS go into something completely different.
Tech schools are for people who either worked straight out of high school and now know what they would like to do or they are for people who went to college and found they wanted to gain additional computer skills or change industries, etc. Then, here's the shocker for high school and college students who have been fed bullshit about how important grades are for all their lives; five years after you graduate, nobody is going to give a damn. They're going to look at who you worked for, how you did there, why you were fired and how you interviewed.
To be quite honest, I'd rate social skills as being more important than where you went to school, insofar as getting a job and keeping it. You can be as skilled as you want, but if you don't interview well and when hired you cause problems for HR due to being a dick, you want get or hold jobs very well. If nothing else, a university teaches students the social skills they need to get by; and probably more importantly, to fucking relax.
...he's just not quite right on the timeline. Physical media is going to going to disappear; it's just not going to disappear in the next few years. He's vastly underestimating how much people want to have a hard copy of the things they buy; for example, all of my game collection is on a physical disk, somewhere with the exception of the games I've bought for my consoles that can only be bought from their online service. Sure, I -could- have bought the Orange Box from Steam; but I want the physical disk too, it's proof that I own it, that even if your online service crashes and burns I can still play my games (before anyone brings it up, you can play Steam games in offline mode). Online services for buying games may be pretty well-used now, but some gamers (myself, for example) won't use them unless they send you a physical copy as well or we're absolutely forced to by changes in the market.
How the fuck is this news?
Second off: Yeah, the clicking can be annoying; but I'm pretty sure they didn't put that in there just to tell your drive is working. It's a part of accessing the drive memory.
Yes, but you don't necessarily have to PAY to get access to them; you either have to have the necessary scholarly chops (ie, a doctorate in literature or theology) or you have to be high enough ranking in the church. Generally, neither of these require you to pay money to the Catholic Church (high-ranking priests, in fact, have a salary); though they might require that you have some sort of insurance or pay a safety deposit (in case you damage/destroy the document).
So, let's get this straight: We can either cure a millionaire in his 20's who's monetary donations might fund cures for other diseases, help hundreds (or thousands) of less fortunate individuals and a variety of other things and would be most likely to continue to make millions to help people or we can save a homeless bum in his 60's and you want to determine who lives based on a coinflip? No, I don't quite think that's fair there, one is helpful for society and likely will be for years if not decades and the other is a drain on society and likely to die quite soon now; cold and heartless, but true, the millionaire could do far more for society than the bum. If society were built upon any sort of sanity or logic, it would save the millionaire if it was FORCED to choose between the two; simply put the richer individual contributes more, now granted that's an extreme example, but quite a valid one. Now, if the choice was a bit closer and one was a doctor and the other a manager who made more money, then I think the choice would be based more on use to society than dollars.
That said, capitalism doesn't force society to make that choice; millionaires can pay for their own treatment as can most people in the middle class, then we do the best we can for those who don't make as much money. Could we do better? Certainly; but capitalism ironically works out to be a more "fair" system of distributing resources than many others.
Perhaps I can restate the gp's gripe in a more constructive and clear manner: "I didn't enjoy Will Wright's previous game series, and I found the number of expansion packs for each series to be repetitive and/or redundant. I'm sick of hearing about Spore, people have been hyping it more than the second coming of Jesus Christ(Christians) and/or The Purple Lizard God (Mormons)."
To be honest, I tend to agree, this game has been talked about to death; it looks mildly interesting to me, but not that great as a game. There is, however, great potential (I think) when looking at the creature creation process to apply this dynamic creation to other games (imagine building your own gun on the fly, in an FPS game, for example).
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Simple: by dropping that book or painting the previous owner gave up the rights to it. In an object such as a book, the rights to ownership of that copy of the book are granted via the actual book. In software, the rights to ownership of that copy of software are granted via the product key; if someone gave you a key to that software for free and stopped using their key themselves, then that would be fine. Instead, what you are doing (to continue to use the book analogy) is having someone copy the pages of the book and hand them to you to read (which is illegal without prior consent).
Simple: You won't see new software unless you pay for the software out now.
The only reason you can say that you own your car or your house is because the government has papers (which they give you a copy of) saying that you do. If this wasn't the case, then anybody could walk into your house and say "this is mine" and the only way you could stop them is to respond with force your self; but with a title to your house you can point to it and say "I own this house, get the hell out" and if they don't you can call the police and they'll get them out of your house by force. The "natural order", to use your own phrase, is that whoever can physically force out anyone else from a house, owns that house until someone else can physically force them out.
Copyright is no different than the title to your car or house; it is a title that says you control a particular intellectual item and that you may use it how you see fit (so long as you don't do anything that breaks laws unrelated to copyright with it).
You sound like some sort of fucking cult member; the joyous days of free software is coming my children, now drink this wine mixed with cyanide so we can all go to the glorious future! What a load of shit, who's going to pay those making the creative software? How are they going to make money? I know people do like to write amateur code; but if I'm going to make a career out of coding I need a way to pay the bills. Who will pay for the office people who make the product work in? Who's going to set up the offices?
If people are not paid for the products they make, chances are good that there won't be much in the way of new products because at some point somebody along the lines has to get paid. It's hard to make creative software if you're working 8+ hours a day on average doing something else to pay the bills.
Okay, you obviously have no idea how and why you are being charged more than the physical thing costs to make (which makes you an idiot) or you're just acting dumb to try and justify your theft so I'll explain.
Let's say you're looking to buy a new car, and I mean the newest model fresh off the lot. The car costs $30,000 plus tax and fees; did the car actually cost $30,000 to physically manufacture, ship to the car lot, display on the car lot and pay everyone involved in those processes? No, not at all, of course; your $30,000 goes into a variety of things. Part of your money is going to the physical manufacture of the car and paying everyone involved in that, probably about a third of that car's manufacture cost. Another bit of that money goes to shipping the car to the car lot and paying the shipping company and salesman. Another part of your money is profit for the company and the car dealer (assuming they sell enough cars). Another part is going to marketing, both marketing from the company and the card dealer. A large portion of that new car's cost however goes right to the R&D department of the car company. They've spent at least a year (probably more, as models often don't change drastically for several years) researching the aerodynamics of the car, the electrical wiring, the engine function, the ergonomics of the car and the appearance to try to make a car that people will want to buy. So part of that $30,000 is just going to pay back the company for the R&D they did to design and develop that car.
The same is true for a piece of software; and in fact R&D is probably most of the cost of that software. That's part of why, as the months go by, the price of that software or game will drop; the R&D portion of a piece of software once it has shipped has been paid back (though the main factor is the market, how many people are willing to pay for the product at what price, how many of those people are left, etc). So in essence, the majority of your money is going to the development of that software, a small portion is going to marketing, a small portion is going to profit (if you sell enough software), a portion goes to the store you buy it at (online or brick and mortar), a portion goes to shipping it or the bandwidth to download it and likely the smallest portion is going to actually making the copy (whether on disc or via the intertnet).
When you pay for software, you aren't just paying for the box and disc, you're paying for the development of that software; pirating software means your taking money away from the people who made that software, and if enough people pirate the software then the company will go bankrupt and there won't be any new software from them. This is just like the theft of a physical object, if enough people steal from your grocery store, then the grocery store won't have enough money to pay its bills and make a profit so they'll be forced to close.
So, to summarize (and hopefully get it through some of the thicker heads) you are not just paying for the physical medium on which your copy of a software product is obtained, you are paying for the design and development of that product. If you really want to see a developer continue to succeed, buy their product legally; it's that simple. In capitalism, every purchase you make is a vote for the products of that type; if you buy a sports car you're saying you want to see more sports car, if you buy Mass Effect you're saying you want to see more games like it.
Okay, so what you're essentially advocating is asking for people to pay UP FRONT for a product that doesn't exist. If someone walked up to you on the street and said "If you give me $50,000 I'll make you a sports car" would you do it? Fuck no; you'd tell them to stuff it and walk away. Exactly how do you intend to get people to DIRECTLY pay up front for a product that doesn't exist yet? I'll answer for you, you won't; people are not going to pay you for a product that doesn't exist, they want to see it work, they want to see reviews and previews so that they can decide if they want/need it. People want to know you have a product before they pay for it.
Yeah, kinda funny how that works out isn't it? It's like the paid version is somehow superior to the one you don't pay for; it's like you...hold on, brilliant new idea here, you get what you pay for. Absolutely brilliant idea!
That obviously wasn't the case, otherwise they wouldn't have been forced to release (at least) 6 months early, now would they?
Take a look at the contracts you signed when you started to work for your company. Almost every tech company includes in their contracts a clause that says, in short, anything you make for us is ours. This means that if your manager wants to try to patent your work, he can; the company owns your work that you do for the company and has the right to do whatever they please with it. The company can delete it, patent it, make it open source or sell it to another company as they see fit.
The only real way around it is (as others said) try to find a way to point out that the patent wouldn't hold up in court. That, or find a new job if you disagree that strongly; but I almost guarantee that every other tech company out there has the same clause in their contracts (and it has held up in court).
You're telling me you only bought GTA: San Andreas for parachutes, airplanes and jetpacks? Seriously? I think the game you're looking for is a flight simulator; not a GTA game.
You're obviously not a coder of any sort; that sort of "algorithm" is approaching something much closer to a human mind, or perhaps even a God-like one (remember, even humans get stumped). The best you can do (at least right now) is to script in a random quest generator based on templates or simply create a hell of a lot of content (GTA 4 does a bit of both). Neither one tends to result in the same sort of quality storyline as a "scripted" story though.
Some of us have windows in our rooms and even though you can close the curtains you can't block out all light from the sun. If I have to be a pitch black (or nearly so) room to be able to see things then I cannot play the game during the day and that's a pain in the ass.
Sure, it might be possible, but why? Why the hell would humans colonize Venus when we have a perfectly good moon and Mars to colonize? Why would we float around on bubbles in a toxic atmosphere far above a planet, knowing that if something goes wrong we'll either be thrown into space or come crashing to the ground on a planet that melts spacecraft in minutes? It's a great sci-fi, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Oh yes, because the colonial governments were SO much better to the people than the current crop of dictators. In many cases, the internal problems in African governments comes, in part, because some imperialist drew a line (literally) in the sand to divide up their territories dividing up and putting together tribes previously at war with each other; when imperialist authority left, these tribes no longer were united against imperialists and instead began to fight for control of their countries so the "enemy tribes" wouldn't control the country instead. Yes, it's horrible, but that's the choice the people in some African countries have made; under apartheid they had no such choices.
However, we could just go straight to the point; what you're saying is that Bill Gates should use charity money to hire mercenaries and oust the local governments right? Let's go back to the days where the white man helped the poor, stupid, violent people of Africa by being their dictator; apartheid worked out great for everyone, right? Right? Way to go, racist!
This has nothing to do with whether or not Microsoft the company is doing something wrong or illegal; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doesn't suddenly make everything Microsoft does or has done in the past right. That said, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done and continues to do good things to improve people's lives.
Oh shut the fuck up; every single charity in the world meant to last more than a year does something like this to ensure their continued survival. The fact of the matter is that it's better to spend a bit of interest over the course of years or decades than it is to spend everything in one go; if you have $1 billion and you get 10% interest on it per year (for example) and spend that 10% each year you're giving away $100 million per year, after 11 years you've spent more than that initial investment.
I wouldn't be too sure on the skills part of it; most school networks are ridiculously easy to break into. School districts can't afford to hire good IT guys, so they pretty much get the bottom of the barrel; I remember that I once got access to all the teachers' files completely by accident. Fortunately (for the school district, at least) I was a rather good kid and showed them how I did it.
Let's take a look at the charges levied against the student:
34 felony counts of altering public record
11 felony counts of stealing and secreting public records
7 felony counts of illegal computer access and fraud
6 felony counts of burglary
4 felony counts of identity theft
3 felony counts of altering book of records
2 felony counts of receiving stolen property
1 felony count of conspiracy
1 felony count of attempting altering of a public record
And, as the article says, he's not just being charged with breaking in to the school's computers, he also put in a remote access program (which others could have used to do a variety of things with the school's network with). Then there's the fact that he broke into the principal's office to steal a test he did badly on. I think this individual, quite clearly, is a potential threat to other people. He sounds an awful lot like the sort of person who would do anything to get ahead; maybe in the future he could steal someone's identity to get a job or a loan. Do I necessarily think that 38 years is the amount of time he should do? No, but I don't think he'll do that much time either; he deserves to do some jail time though for his crimes.
The current president and his cronies have done everything they can to fight honest science; even if DARPA isn't necessarily going to be moderated by political appointees, my guess is that many won't bother to make the distinction. Why bother to work for the government as a scientist if your conclusions are going to be second-guessed or changed by your editor?
Flame away if you like folks, but I'd say tech schools aren't for kids just out of high school. Believe it or not, but you may take your first CS course...and hate it. I don't know how much programming you've done before this, I don't know how well you understand the underlying theories and implementations; but I do know that I went to a university and found that about 75% of the people who start off wanting to go into CS go into something completely different. Tech schools are for people who either worked straight out of high school and now know what they would like to do or they are for people who went to college and found they wanted to gain additional computer skills or change industries, etc. Then, here's the shocker for high school and college students who have been fed bullshit about how important grades are for all their lives; five years after you graduate, nobody is going to give a damn. They're going to look at who you worked for, how you did there, why you were fired and how you interviewed. To be quite honest, I'd rate social skills as being more important than where you went to school, insofar as getting a job and keeping it. You can be as skilled as you want, but if you don't interview well and when hired you cause problems for HR due to being a dick, you want get or hold jobs very well. If nothing else, a university teaches students the social skills they need to get by; and probably more importantly, to fucking relax.
...he's just not quite right on the timeline. Physical media is going to going to disappear; it's just not going to disappear in the next few years. He's vastly underestimating how much people want to have a hard copy of the things they buy; for example, all of my game collection is on a physical disk, somewhere with the exception of the games I've bought for my consoles that can only be bought from their online service. Sure, I -could- have bought the Orange Box from Steam; but I want the physical disk too, it's proof that I own it, that even if your online service crashes and burns I can still play my games (before anyone brings it up, you can play Steam games in offline mode). Online services for buying games may be pretty well-used now, but some gamers (myself, for example) won't use them unless they send you a physical copy as well or we're absolutely forced to by changes in the market.
How the fuck is this news? Second off: Yeah, the clicking can be annoying; but I'm pretty sure they didn't put that in there just to tell your drive is working. It's a part of accessing the drive memory.
Yes, but you don't necessarily have to PAY to get access to them; you either have to have the necessary scholarly chops (ie, a doctorate in literature or theology) or you have to be high enough ranking in the church. Generally, neither of these require you to pay money to the Catholic Church (high-ranking priests, in fact, have a salary); though they might require that you have some sort of insurance or pay a safety deposit (in case you damage/destroy the document).
So, let's get this straight: We can either cure a millionaire in his 20's who's monetary donations might fund cures for other diseases, help hundreds (or thousands) of less fortunate individuals and a variety of other things and would be most likely to continue to make millions to help people or we can save a homeless bum in his 60's and you want to determine who lives based on a coinflip? No, I don't quite think that's fair there, one is helpful for society and likely will be for years if not decades and the other is a drain on society and likely to die quite soon now; cold and heartless, but true, the millionaire could do far more for society than the bum. If society were built upon any sort of sanity or logic, it would save the millionaire if it was FORCED to choose between the two; simply put the richer individual contributes more, now granted that's an extreme example, but quite a valid one. Now, if the choice was a bit closer and one was a doctor and the other a manager who made more money, then I think the choice would be based more on use to society than dollars.
That said, capitalism doesn't force society to make that choice; millionaires can pay for their own treatment as can most people in the middle class, then we do the best we can for those who don't make as much money. Could we do better? Certainly; but capitalism ironically works out to be a more "fair" system of distributing resources than many others.
Perhaps I can restate the gp's gripe in a more constructive and clear manner:
"I didn't enjoy Will Wright's previous game series, and I found the number of expansion packs for each series to be repetitive and/or redundant. I'm sick of hearing about Spore, people have been hyping it more than the second coming of Jesus Christ(Christians) and/or The Purple Lizard God (Mormons)."
To be honest, I tend to agree, this game has been talked about to death; it looks mildly interesting to me, but not that great as a game. There is, however, great potential (I think) when looking at the creature creation process to apply this dynamic creation to other games (imagine building your own gun on the fly, in an FPS game, for example).