It's a fallacy to compare "my brain can compute # moves per second" vs the computer's ability to simply crunch.
I do not think I used arguments to the effect of "computers can compute millions of moves a second, and humans can only think of, umhh, 3 or something, how pathetic!". That would, indeed, be a fallacy. The argument i used was that as computing power increases, so will computer chess performance increase. Are you seriously questioning this?
So, waiting for the "exponential" (which is not true either) growth of computing power to play the "ultimate game" is not going to work.
So computing power has not been increasing exponentially for the last many, many years? Do you have any good reasons to suspect this trend will not continue? (better than the reasons people have been using for the last many years to refute what now is fact, that is)
Increase in computing power results in increase in playing power. This means computers can get arbitrarily good at chess in finite time. However, I agree that it might (!) take longer than the lifetime of anyone here to wait that out. I say this in the original post.
Also, you ignore the fact the humans are becoming better players.
How long have computers been around and how long have people studied chess? Now tell me which part is improving more rapidly: computer or man. Besides, chess theory will aid a computer as well, given sufficient algorithmic development and time, both of which there is plenty.
Using the words of George Carlin: "how can it be a spy satellite, when on the news they say it's a spy satellite?" The point being, of course, that spy satellites naturally are supposed to spy on people, and it's not very productive to spy on people if they know exactly where you are and what you are seeing. So, of course the owner of a spy satellite will try to conceal it's whereabouts. In case of war, shooting down a satellite you know where is is also a hell of alot easier than if you didn't know.
If you still think the US are evil here, think about how successfull a real, human spy would be if he walked around with a big sign saying "I'm a spy!" That wouldn't work very well, now would it? In fact, it would simply be silly, not to say stupid, right? It's the same thing with satellites (of course not completely, but the analogy is sound).
If anyone is worried about bias, I'm Danish, not American.
Deep Blue did not search the full tree, but
singular extensions are a different beast.
Singular extensions let the computer search
_more_ than would be needed.
It is true that singular extensions extend the depth of the search. However, they have everything to do with Deep Blue not searching the full tree (as it would have been without singular extensions).
If you just use plain alpha-beta, you search as much as you can, perhaps using iterative deepening or some such. When you use singular extensions on top of that, you decrease the depth which you ask alpha-beta to search (this is important), and then you use singular extensions to extend the search beyound that point. So, compared to the tree you would have had if you had not used singular extensions, you are not searching all of it. Rather, you are only searching those parts of it which are deemed interesting by the heuristic that decides which search paths to extend. These interesting paths can then be searched even deeper than regular alpha-beta would do, which is the whole point.
Deep Fritz uses it very aggressively and hence
can sometimes see just as far Deep Blue could,
but also makes more mistakes because of it.
Null-move pruning is only dangerous in case you are in a zugzwang (or something like that) situation. That is, a situation where the best you could do would be to say "pass" and let the other guy have a second turn. These are exceedingly rare, I've been told, and that is also my experience. What is the last time you've wanted to say "pass" in a chess game? Of course, I might be mistaken. Do these situations occur more frequently in high-level chess matches than I think?
Aske Plaat's proposed improvements are not
used in any top program noawadays. They cause
troule with some of the other tricks in use and
the gain is not large enough to live with them.
I didn't know that... but he did make it clear that current game-tree search algorithms are not optimal, and there is still room for substantial improvement, which was my point.
Even if this guy should beat the computer, that should not lead anyone to having illusions about the future. Eventually, computer chess superiority will be a fact. Even though the program running on Deep Blue could beat Kasparov, that day is not today. The very fact that we are unsure whether Validimir Kramnik or the computer will win clearly proves this.
One reason that computers inevitably will beat us humans is that each year, computers get exponentially faster, which means the chess programs can search linearly deeper in the game search tree. It's simply a matter of waiting untill they are unbeatable.
However, that wait might be very long, but to top things over, algorithms are improving too. Some have thought in the past that our game-tree search algorithms were pretty close to optimal, but for example some of Aske Plaat's research clearly shows that this is far from the case, and that the old predictions about optimal performance was based on too simple and fundamentally unsound principles. Substantial improvements can be made. (not that I have anything to do with him. I don't know him and live in another country)
Even more important is the fact that we need not search the full search tree (indeed Deep Blue did not, using instead something called singular extensions). Rather, if we can make a heuristic that tells us which parts of the search tree are "interesting" we can skip the rest and only concentrate on those areas. In this way, computer chess is becoming a little more like human chess (though not much). The point is, as those "this part of the tree is interesting" heuristics get better, so will computer chess programs get better.
In short, the future of computer chess is bright, and we might have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Human superiority or even something resembling it simply will not last. Chess will neither be the first nor the last game where computers will always beat a human.
"There are no absolutes - as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably." Jim Taggart, in "Atlas Shrugged".
Ok, that has GOT to be one of the most consciously misleading quotes I've ever seen! In the book Atlas Shrugged, Jim Taggart is an utterly contemptible person. If you want to know what the point of Atlas Shrugged is, you've got to *invert* his statements.
AOL/TW would hardly benefit from advertising for a competitor. Why exactly should AOL/TW enter into a deal that harms them? I wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that (if you are rational). AOL/TW wouldn't do that.
Humans have a right to be protected from violence. Humans have a right to property. Humans have a right of free speech. Humans [i]do not[/i] have a right to advertise on AOL/TW (why should they?). That is a priviledge granted by AOL/TW, and (hopefully) only when it benefits AOL/TW. That is as it should be.
I don't have enough money to advertise on AOL/TW, which of course means that AOL/TW don't advertise for me. Somehow, I don't think that is wrong. Imagine that, a corporation doing something that isn't wrong! Alien concept, I know.
The cable business unit is separate from the internet business unit even though they have the same parent company.
And this is when someone bangs you in the head with a cluestick and reminds you that you don't own AOL/TW, and that therefore their internal decisions about who to advertise for and not is none of your damn business. Having the same parent company is as good a reason as any. That you happen to not like it is completely unimportant. I don't suppose you think Free software should disappear, just because some guy with no clue doesn't like it... I'm sure AOL/TW has the same mindset.
Art is that which inspire you to become reach new heights. Most things that people today call "art" is not. Splatters on a canvas inspire no one, for example. Just expressing yourself is not art; even a fart is a form of expression.
Is code art? It can be. Have you ever seen a few lines of code that just made you go "Wow! I wish I could think up stuff like that!" If that experience actually made a difference, if it helped you closer to actually BE able to think up "stuff like that", then that code was art.
Customers do not ask for Windows, they simply do not know enough to ask not to have it.
If Windows was not viewed as essential, computermakers would jump at the chance to slash those extra dollars off the price. They don't.
Inconvenient, maybe, costly? In the short term, yes, but over the long term, nope.
That is your opinion. It may be true, but the choice is not up to you or me, it is up to people themselves. Freedom.
for the life of me I fail to grasp why you are so enamored with things as they are that you do not want to move on to things as they could be
I happen to believe in freedom; the freedom of each individual to buy exactly that which he wants to (provided he can pay, naturally).
And, like a road, as technology ages, it gets worse [less compatible, less reliable, less functional].
It does not get less reliable (provided you know how to reinstall). It does not get less functional. Less compatible? True, but never the less the software is exactly the same. The road is not.
In any case, I don't see the relevance of your arguments. We are discussing the morality and fairness of you stealing software.
Man would be perfectly happy if the government did nothing but persecute criminals, the laws being such that you only became a criminial if you commited fraud, theft or violence or some such.
In other words this means that the only instance in which the government would use force would be when an individual had violated the rights of others.
You make an invalid assumption that being talented == being irreplacable.
You are quite right. I'm quite talented at walking, but that doesn't make me irreplacable. The talent needs to be rare to be worth anything.
There may be 3 or 4 people on earth who can't, for everyone else, a workable substitute could be found and trained.
The keyword here is could. People who would be extremely hard to replace naturally can demand quite a high wage. If you are going to demand to be paid millions, then your talents better be pretty rare, and your task pretty hard, or no one will give you so much money.
Imagine everyone were taught C++ from age 3. Now, as an employer, would you pay a very high wage to someone who was very good at writing C++ code (that being his only skill)? I certainly wouldn't, because even if he's very good, so is everyone else...
When I say "gun to the head", I mean it literally, i.e. a threath of physical force. This is what I don't think the RIAA is doing.
Most independent labels don't have sufficient circulation to make sure that their artists can get more than the bare necessities to survive (as artists that is, so I include costs for gear, studio time etc).
First of all, you've just agreed that circulation is not impossible to attain for independent labels. It may be hard, but it is not clearly not impossible.
Also, you've just agreed that artists do get the bare necessities they need when signing a contract with an independent label, and that these necessities include all the gear necessesary to do their job.
The only way to become succesful, whether you define that as wealth or widespread recognition, is through the superior distribution channels of a major label.
The way to earn recognition is by making superior music. People will pay for good music. If, however, one's music is not superior, then I agree that one needs the major labels to create the appearance that the music is good. Sadly, stupid people will buy bad music if they've been told that it's good.
The main point is this: good music sells itself.
All 5 (6?) major labels offer artists the same crappy deal, so there is no alternative.
You've just said that an artist can get by on the income earned from a contract with an independent label. If the major labels can offer a better deal, how is that "crappy" ?
However, you may be correct that many artists do not recieve compensation proportional to their ability. This can only be because they have allowed this to happen. They may be victims, but they have given their sanction to their exploiters, and that makes them guilty too. They need only to revoke that sanction, and the major labels will not survive. This is, of course, assuming that the artists are actually worth something, and that they could not just be replaced by the next guy. If these people are not irreplacable, then they aren't recieving millions because their abilities do not warrent it.
It is also not the duty of other men to engage in the financial equivalent of anal rape for a profit, but they do that all the time.
The financial equivalent of rape would be to hold a gun to someones head (literally) and make them buy stuff. The main ingredient in rape is the use of physical force. I very much doubt you have been physically threathened to buy anything we are discussing right now.
Hence, culture, and by extension music [since it is a piece of culture] becomes necessary in some sense.
You are saying that music is a precondition of your survival. This must mean you would die without it. That is absurd.
Since M$ refuses to open their formats, and most businesses are too lazy/clueless to use non-M$ software, in order to do business, one is forced to use the commonly used tools.
In other words, you are saying that everyone in the world are using MS products. Would that not indicate that MS is doing something right? If most people thougth they were being "raped", would they not use something other than MS products? Yes, there are alternatives. One of them is free software.
But basically, your main point is that MS demands a large amount of money to enable you to do your job by using their software. What is wrong with that? Why shouldn't they? MS does not exist to bend over backwards to fulfill your needs, while demanding no compensation. MS can demand any price they wish for their products. You can punish them by not trading with them, but then you can't use that whish you neglected to buy.
If the playing field were fair, simply not buying would be enough, but on an unfair field, you have to use underground tactics.
To you, it is unfair for MS to demand a price for their software that people are willing to pay. That the situation is not to your liking does not excuse you being immoral.
Drug companies that expect a "return on their efforts" from third-world countries that can't afford their prices are just wrong though.
Drug companies do not exist to take care of people at the expense and against the wishes of the owners. Slavery is immoral; this applies equally when the subject in question is the owner of a drug company.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
This is synonoymous with: "the moral among men should be the slaves of the immoral - and enjoy it" No man should be a slave, ruled by force. Communism is therefore immoral.
If you buy CD's, you agree that the price is agreeable to you. If you do not buy a CD, you by definition do not have a right to it's content; even if you think the price is not fair.
Take a look at the cost of ANY M$ product? Aagain, fair?
Then don't use MS products.
If you refuse me a fair price, I will not buy.
That is a wise principle.
I you refuse me a fair price for something I need to survive [in both the physical and mental senses] I will fight you for it.
You cannot seriously mean that MS products and CDs are preconditions of your survival in any sense. If you really do mean that, then it would seem to me that the value of those things to you should be infinite, and therefore no price could ever be too high.
My advice to you would be to use free software.
To expect a fair price is one thing, to expect to be paid repeatedly, ad infinitum, is quite another.
The producer sets the price of his product. If you find the price unfair, it is your right to neglect to trade with that individual.
It is not the duty of other men to sacrifice their own interests and values to fulfill yours.
The problem is, our society does NOT pay "men" (ahem) based on the benefits they provide others, but rather on the benefits they can convince others they have provided.
You are correct. I should have used the word "proportional" instead.
As for the use of the word "men": "the best among persons" just doesn't sound right...
If we lived in the society you describe, the leaders of RIAA would shrivel up from lack of food
Perhaps they would and perhaps they should. I don't know enough about the situation to agree or disagree. However I am fairly certain that the RIAA doesn't hold a gun to anyone's head; including the heads of the artists.
The artists must believe that the companies who form the RIAA gives them some kind of benefit worth the payment they demand in return, or the artists would not sign contracts with them.
You may say that the artists are stupid, but that does not mean that they do not have a right to act as they wish; even if that is not what you wish. If one is not free to do stupid things, one is not free at all.
Simple fact is, most who create solely to make money create inferior items.
Simple fact is, the best of minds among men should and do expect a return on their efforts that is as large as the benefits they provide other men.
Those that do not expect this lack self-esteem. These people have been taught by people like you that they should not be proud and expect what is rightfully theirs. They have been taugth by people like you that their proper role is as the slave of their inferiors.
To attach art[and I mean art in the sense of any well crafted item] so closely with greed is to debase those who create.
That which a man produces is his own. Since when did it become greed to only enter trades that are fair? No man should be expected to sacrifice his values and thereby his life to the likes of you.
Darwin came to mind when you said this: "Some would say that this would destroy culture, but if a culture is so weak it cannot survive the "loss" of its language, I'd say that people weren't really serious about it anyway". So I suppose people colonized all over America weren't really being "serious" about their own cultures since they let their native languages disappear and be substituted by english, spanish or portuguese. The loss of those languages and their corresponding cultures was a very painful process fo those people, it's not something we can talk about in terms of one language being weaker than the other, you just can't say "well they weren't being serious about it, too bad".
I meant that they were not serious about their language(s); they understood the tremendous good of being able to communicate unobstructed. I believe this is also what I wrote.
Yes it would but let's be realistic. The fact is that there is a very strong interdependence between language and culture. An universal language would need an universal culture, that's impossible. We would have to live in the same latitude, grow up eating the same things, watching the same landscapes, thinking, discussing, joking in the same fashion, everything, everywhere would be homogeneous. Is that your notion of an ideal world?
That is a loaded question; you offer a claim you don't support and then you ask me a question that presupposes the truth of that claim. Please, these kinds of tricks don't add to the credibility of your position.
And talking pragmatically, about the fact that most of the available literature worldwide is inaccessible to me, well, it's inaccesible to me anyway because I have a finite amount of time to spend reading it.
You are still restricted in that you will be robbed of oppertunity. If there a specific book you want to read but can't, then it doesn't matter how many other books you can read: you still can't read that one book you want to read.
It occurs to me that one of your arguments was that a literary treasure would go to waste if everyone spoke the same language; therefore I believe the above answer of yours contradicts your previous statement. Care to clarify?
"most any language is completely sufficient to say anything you want provided you speak that language well enough.", I have to disagree, and I would have thought it would be obvious why. If what you say were true, perfect translations would exist, they don't.
Perfect translation is often possible. Nearly perfect translation is always possible, which by itself refutes your argument simply because its consequence is so little. Of course, people who do translations are often inferior to the original authors, which is the reason translations are not perfect normally.
But don't you see, they WANTED to, they didn't HAVE to, no one forced them to. And the interesting and extremely valuable part is not the outcome (fluently knowing a new language) but the learning process.
Are you sure this is the truth? If it really is, then I'm sure there'll always be old dusty tomes about old languages, even when everyone speaks the same language. I'm not proposing outlawing all other languages!
Of course then those of your friends wouldn't have much use of learning that language, but then they didn't care about that, right?
Finally, I think we're diverting from the one point where I believe we agree, as expressed in my earlier post, it would be VERY convenient if people knew one same language to communicate on a global basis but I see many disadvantages extrapolating that to every daily activity that happens anywhere worldwide.
I don't believe that will work in the long run. My friends here in Denmark aren't nearly as good at English as I. Sure, they speak the language well enough to understand most anything as long as it doesn't get too complex, and they can in most cases get their intention across, but they are much, much better at Danish (as am I), and this is after years of schooling in this language and a lifetime of seeing it everywhere both in real life, on the television and on the internet.
If there is ever to be a truely universal language, I believe people will have to feel that it is their own.
Does it sound at all plausable that 2000 years ago, people were clamoring over Latin being the universal language, just like you are clamoring over English as a universal language? <br><br>
Yes it does. I think I said I really wouldn't prefer English if I had a choice; it just seems to be the language with a greatest potential for everyone to know it.
<br><br>
<b>English is destined to fail, much like Latin, as a 'universal language'.</b>
<br><br>
So, your argument is that English will "fail" because the different language Latin failed in a completely different world 2000 years ago.
<br><br>
Ever noticed how I am talking to you, even though we're probably thousands of kilometers away? Actually, I don't even know how far we are away from each other because I don't know where you are... You know why that is? It doesn't matter!
<br><br>
The world of today is completely different from the world 2000 years ago, so your inductive argument (based on a samplesize of ONE!) has no merit.
I never mentioned Darwin AND it is natural in evolution to have many species and uncountable variantion within species so that one unfortunate event cannot vipe out everything.
Care to explain what you meant?
losing your very own metaphors, potential jokes, songs, hidden meanings.
I think you ought to have more respect for your own language
A language does not get better just because it's my own. Indeed, stuff in general (ideas, jokes, etc.) doesn't get better just because it's mine. A fact too many people ignore.
there's got to be great literature produced for it that no one else can enjoy as much as you danish-speaking people do
Sure there is: Kirkegård and H.C. Andersen, to name 2 authors. I happen to know that many people learn Danish just to read these two authors in their native language.
Now, that is sensible; if you want to read the literature of a language you don't know, learn the language.
What is not sensible is for this major investment to be nessecary, since there really is no reason for it to be. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if everyone had spoken the same language back then? then you, too, could read these authors in their native language! Too bad you were robbed of that oppertunity. In fact, I'd say that by far most of the literature ever written is inaccessible to both you and me because we don't know the languages in which it has been written.
Why should we rob the children of the future of the ultimate literary treasure we have been denied?
Let us translate your example to computer programming. "However, I woudln't mind if Perl was removed from the face of the earth. In fact, I woudln't mind of Lisp was removed from the earth (my programming language of choice)."
I never said such a thing and I don't appreciate having words put into my mouth, especially not when I don't agree with those words.
First, I'm not even going to get into the fact that the problems of too many programming languages are not nearly as bad as the problems of too many actual languages and that there are ALOT more languages than programming languages.
Even doing that, you're still talking nonsense, because most any language is completely sufficient to say anything you want provided you speak that language well enough.
BUT if it really mattered to you, you could learn that new language as many people I know who've gone to great lenghts to learn foreign languages so they can enjoy local literature without the distortions of translation. And yes, it's much harder to learn Portuguese than C (or maybe not) but it's a rewarding, culturally enriching experience.
Don't you see that your are making my case for me?
If everyone spoke the same language, those friends of yours wouldn't have had to "go to greath lengths" to learn a new language.
Suppose they had used the time they spent on the unnessecary task of learning the language on actually learning about the culture and reading the litterature and such. Somehow I think they would have gotten a better grasp of that culture than they would otherwise. Also, they would speak the language much, much, much better, because it would be their own.
First of all I think it is ridiculus for a persons complete view of self to be determined by a mere detail such as the (X,Y,Z) coordinates where his birth took place.
Second, I don't really care if everyone actually speaks the EXACT same language. As long as there is a "the universal language" and everyone understands each other, I'm OK with it.
I suspect you'll find that the English and the Americans have a quite different culture, but still they understand each other perfectly.
But all in all, you are of course correct that it is quite utopian for everyone to have the intelligence to realize that a universal language is better for all. Just take this article as an example.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a fallacy to compare "my brain can compute # moves per second" vs the computer's ability to simply crunch.
I do not think I used arguments to the effect of "computers can compute millions of moves a second, and humans can only think of, umhh, 3 or something, how pathetic!". That would, indeed, be a fallacy. The argument i used was that as computing power increases, so will computer chess performance increase. Are you seriously questioning this?
So, waiting for the "exponential" (which is not true either) growth of computing power to play the "ultimate game" is not going to work.
So computing power has not been increasing exponentially for the last many, many years? Do you have any good reasons to suspect this trend will not continue? (better than the reasons people have been using for the last many years to refute what now is fact, that is)
Increase in computing power results in increase in playing power. This means computers can get arbitrarily good at chess in finite time. However, I agree that it might (!) take longer than the lifetime of anyone here to wait that out. I say this in the original post.
Also, you ignore the fact the humans are becoming better players.
How long have computers been around and how long have people studied chess? Now tell me which part is improving more rapidly: computer or man. Besides, chess theory will aid a computer as well, given sufficient algorithmic development and time, both of which there is plenty.
Using the words of George Carlin: "how can it be a spy satellite, when on the news they say it's a spy satellite?" The point being, of course, that spy satellites naturally are supposed to spy on people, and it's not very productive to spy on people if they know exactly where you are and what you are seeing. So, of course the owner of a spy satellite will try to conceal it's whereabouts. In case of war, shooting down a satellite you know where is is also a hell of alot easier than if you didn't know.
If you still think the US are evil here, think about how successfull a real, human spy would be if he walked around with a big sign saying "I'm a spy!" That wouldn't work very well, now would it? In fact, it would simply be silly, not to say stupid, right? It's the same thing with satellites (of course not completely, but the analogy is sound).
If anyone is worried about bias, I'm Danish, not American.
Deep Blue did not search the full tree, but singular extensions are a different beast. Singular extensions let the computer search _more_ than would be needed.
It is true that singular extensions extend the depth of the search. However, they have everything to do with Deep Blue not searching the full tree (as it would have been without singular extensions).
If you just use plain alpha-beta, you search as much as you can, perhaps using iterative deepening or some such. When you use singular extensions on top of that, you decrease the depth which you ask alpha-beta to search (this is important), and then you use singular extensions to extend the search beyound that point. So, compared to the tree you would have had if you had not used singular extensions, you are not searching all of it. Rather, you are only searching those parts of it which are deemed interesting by the heuristic that decides which search paths to extend. These interesting paths can then be searched even deeper than regular alpha-beta would do, which is the whole point.
Deep Fritz uses it very aggressively and hence can sometimes see just as far Deep Blue could, but also makes more mistakes because of it.
Null-move pruning is only dangerous in case you are in a zugzwang (or something like that) situation. That is, a situation where the best you could do would be to say "pass" and let the other guy have a second turn. These are exceedingly rare, I've been told, and that is also my experience. What is the last time you've wanted to say "pass" in a chess game? Of course, I might be mistaken. Do these situations occur more frequently in high-level chess matches than I think?
Aske Plaat's proposed improvements are not used in any top program noawadays. They cause troule with some of the other tricks in use and the gain is not large enough to live with them.
I didn't know that... but he did make it clear that current game-tree search algorithms are not optimal, and there is still room for substantial improvement, which was my point.
Even if this guy should beat the computer, that should not lead anyone to having illusions about the future. Eventually, computer chess superiority will be a fact. Even though the program running on Deep Blue could beat Kasparov, that day is not today. The very fact that we are unsure whether Validimir Kramnik or the computer will win clearly proves this.
One reason that computers inevitably will beat us humans is that each year, computers get exponentially faster, which means the chess programs can search linearly deeper in the game search tree. It's simply a matter of waiting untill they are unbeatable.
However, that wait might be very long, but to top things over, algorithms are improving too. Some have thought in the past that our game-tree search algorithms were pretty close to optimal, but for example some of Aske Plaat's research clearly shows that this is far from the case, and that the old predictions about optimal performance was based on too simple and fundamentally unsound principles. Substantial improvements can be made. (not that I have anything to do with him. I don't know him and live in another country)
Even more important is the fact that we need not search the full search tree (indeed Deep Blue did not, using instead something called singular extensions). Rather, if we can make a heuristic that tells us which parts of the search tree are "interesting" we can skip the rest and only concentrate on those areas. In this way, computer chess is becoming a little more like human chess (though not much). The point is, as those "this part of the tree is interesting" heuristics get better, so will computer chess programs get better.
In short, the future of computer chess is bright, and we might have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Human superiority or even something resembling it simply will not last. Chess will neither be the first nor the last game where computers will always beat a human.
This will never work. It's nothing but hot air.
"There are no absolutes - as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably." Jim Taggart, in "Atlas Shrugged".
Ok, that has GOT to be one of the most consciously misleading quotes I've ever seen! In the book Atlas Shrugged, Jim Taggart is an utterly contemptible person. If you want to know what the point of Atlas Shrugged is, you've got to *invert* his statements.
AOL/TW would hardly benefit from advertising for a competitor. Why exactly should AOL/TW enter into a deal that harms them? I wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that (if you are rational). AOL/TW wouldn't do that.
Humans have a right to be protected from violence. Humans have a right to property. Humans have a right of free speech. Humans [i]do not[/i] have a right to advertise on AOL/TW (why should they?). That is a priviledge granted by AOL/TW, and (hopefully) only when it benefits AOL/TW. That is as it should be.
I don't have enough money to advertise on AOL/TW, which of course means that AOL/TW don't advertise for me. Somehow, I don't think that is wrong. Imagine that, a corporation doing something that isn't wrong! Alien concept, I know.
The cable business unit is separate from the internet business unit even though they have the same parent company.
And this is when someone bangs you in the head with a cluestick and reminds you that you don't own AOL/TW, and that therefore their internal decisions about who to advertise for and not is none of your damn business. Having the same parent company is as good a reason as any. That you happen to not like it is completely unimportant. I don't suppose you think Free software should disappear, just because some guy with no clue doesn't like it... I'm sure AOL/TW has the same mindset.
Art is that which inspire. It shows the mark of genius. It is deep. Clearly, code can be art.
Art is that which inspire you to become reach new heights. Most things that people today call "art" is not. Splatters on a canvas inspire no one, for example. Just expressing yourself is not art; even a fart is a form of expression.
Is code art? It can be. Have you ever seen a few lines of code that just made you go "Wow! I wish I could think up stuff like that!" If that experience actually made a difference, if it helped you closer to actually BE able to think up "stuff like that", then that code was art.
Customers do not ask for Windows, they simply do not know enough to ask not to have it.
If Windows was not viewed as essential, computermakers would jump at the chance to slash those extra dollars off the price. They don't.
Inconvenient, maybe, costly? In the short term, yes, but over the long term, nope.
That is your opinion. It may be true, but the choice is not up to you or me, it is up to people themselves. Freedom.
for the life of me I fail to grasp why you are so enamored with things as they are that you do not want to move on to things as they could be
I happen to believe in freedom; the freedom of each individual to buy exactly that which he wants to (provided he can pay, naturally).
And, like a road, as technology ages, it gets worse [less compatible, less reliable, less functional].
It does not get less reliable (provided you know how to reinstall). It does not get less functional. Less compatible? True, but never the less the software is exactly the same. The road is not.
In any case, I don't see the relevance of your arguments. We are discussing the morality and fairness of you stealing software.
Man would be perfectly happy if the government did nothing but persecute criminals, the laws being such that you only became a criminial if you commited fraud, theft or violence or some such.
In other words this means that the only instance in which the government would use force would be when an individual had violated the rights of others.
You make an invalid assumption that being talented == being irreplacable.
You are quite right. I'm quite talented at walking, but that doesn't make me irreplacable. The talent needs to be rare to be worth anything.
There may be 3 or 4 people on earth who can't, for everyone else, a workable substitute could be found and trained.
The keyword here is could. People who would be extremely hard to replace naturally can demand quite a high wage. If you are going to demand to be paid millions, then your talents better be pretty rare, and your task pretty hard, or no one will give you so much money.
Imagine everyone were taught C++ from age 3. Now, as an employer, would you pay a very high wage to someone who was very good at writing C++ code (that being his only skill)? I certainly wouldn't, because even if he's very good, so is everyone else...
More computers would be available without Windows if it wasn't an important part of the computer that customers demanded.
That it would be costly and inconvinient to switch to another OS is, believe a not, a perfectly valid reason to continue using Windows.<br><br>
Roads get worse with age. The various editions of Windows do not. The analogy is flawed. Windows 2000 is much better than Windows 3.1.
When I say "gun to the head", I mean it literally, i.e. a threath of physical force. This is what I don't think the RIAA is doing.
Most independent labels don't have sufficient circulation to make sure that their artists can get more than the bare necessities to survive (as artists that is, so I include costs for gear, studio time etc).
First of all, you've just agreed that circulation is not impossible to attain for independent labels. It may be hard, but it is not clearly not impossible.
Also, you've just agreed that artists do get the bare necessities they need when signing a contract with an independent label, and that these necessities include all the gear necessesary to do their job.
The only way to become succesful, whether you define that as wealth or widespread recognition, is through the superior distribution channels of a major label.
The way to earn recognition is by making superior music. People will pay for good music. If, however, one's music is not superior, then I agree that one needs the major labels to create the appearance that the music is good. Sadly, stupid people will buy bad music if they've been told that it's good.
The main point is this: good music sells itself.
All 5 (6?) major labels offer artists the same crappy deal, so there is no alternative.
You've just said that an artist can get by on the income earned from a contract with an independent label. If the major labels can offer a better deal, how is that "crappy" ?
However, you may be correct that many artists do not recieve compensation proportional to their ability. This can only be because they have allowed this to happen. They may be victims, but they have given their sanction to their exploiters, and that makes them guilty too. They need only to revoke that sanction, and the major labels will not survive. This is, of course, assuming that the artists are actually worth something, and that they could not just be replaced by the next guy. If these people are not irreplacable, then they aren't recieving millions because their abilities do not warrent it.
It is also not the duty of other men to engage in the financial equivalent of anal rape for a profit, but they do that all the time.
The financial equivalent of rape would be to hold a gun to someones head (literally) and make them buy stuff. The main ingredient in rape is the use of physical force. I very much doubt you have been physically threathened to buy anything we are discussing right now.
Hence, culture, and by extension music [since it is a piece of culture] becomes necessary in some sense.
You are saying that music is a precondition of your survival. This must mean you would die without it. That is absurd.
Since M$ refuses to open their formats, and most businesses are too lazy/clueless to use non-M$ software, in order to do business, one is forced to use the commonly used tools.
In other words, you are saying that everyone in the world are using MS products. Would that not indicate that MS is doing something right? If most people thougth they were being "raped", would they not use something other than MS products? Yes, there are alternatives. One of them is free software.
But basically, your main point is that MS demands a large amount of money to enable you to do your job by using their software. What is wrong with that? Why shouldn't they? MS does not exist to bend over backwards to fulfill your needs, while demanding no compensation. MS can demand any price they wish for their products. You can punish them by not trading with them, but then you can't use that whish you neglected to buy.
If the playing field were fair, simply not buying would be enough, but on an unfair field, you have to use underground tactics.
To you, it is unfair for MS to demand a price for their software that people are willing to pay. That the situation is not to your liking does not excuse you being immoral.
Drug companies that expect a "return on their efforts" from third-world countries that can't afford their prices are just wrong though.
Drug companies do not exist to take care of people at the expense and against the wishes of the owners. Slavery is immoral; this applies equally when the subject in question is the owner of a drug company.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
This is synonoymous with: "the moral among men should be the slaves of the immoral - and enjoy it" No man should be a slave, ruled by force. Communism is therefore immoral.
Take a quick peak at CD prices? Fair?
If you buy CD's, you agree that the price is agreeable to you. If you do not buy a CD, you by definition do not have a right to it's content; even if you think the price is not fair.
Take a look at the cost of ANY M$ product? Aagain, fair?
Then don't use MS products.
If you refuse me a fair price, I will not buy.
That is a wise principle.
I you refuse me a fair price for something I need to survive [in both the physical and mental senses] I will fight you for it.
You cannot seriously mean that MS products and CDs are preconditions of your survival in any sense. If you really do mean that, then it would seem to me that the value of those things to you should be infinite, and therefore no price could ever be too high.
My advice to you would be to use free software.
To expect a fair price is one thing, to expect to be paid repeatedly, ad infinitum, is quite another.
The producer sets the price of his product. If you find the price unfair, it is your right to neglect to trade with that individual.
It is not the duty of other men to sacrifice their own interests and values to fulfill yours.
The problem is, our society does NOT pay "men" (ahem) based on the benefits they provide others, but rather on the benefits they can convince others they have provided.
You are correct. I should have used the word "proportional" instead.
As for the use of the word "men": "the best among persons" just doesn't sound right...
If we lived in the society you describe, the leaders of RIAA would shrivel up from lack of food
Perhaps they would and perhaps they should. I don't know enough about the situation to agree or disagree. However I am fairly certain that the RIAA doesn't hold a gun to anyone's head; including the heads of the artists.
The artists must believe that the companies who form the RIAA gives them some kind of benefit worth the payment they demand in return, or the artists would not sign contracts with them.
You may say that the artists are stupid, but that does not mean that they do not have a right to act as they wish; even if that is not what you wish. If one is not free to do stupid things, one is not free at all.
Simple fact is, most who create solely to make money create inferior items.
Simple fact is, the best of minds among men should and do expect a return on their efforts that is as large as the benefits they provide other men.
Those that do not expect this lack self-esteem. These people have been taught by people like you that they should not be proud and expect what is rightfully theirs. They have been taugth by people like you that their proper role is as the slave of their inferiors.
To attach art[and I mean art in the sense of any well crafted item] so closely with greed is to debase those who create.
That which a man produces is his own. Since when did it become greed to only enter trades that are fair? No man should be expected to sacrifice his values and thereby his life to the likes of you.
I mean, ONE adverticement was enough to count for 2% of the total video content.
Freenet is not done yet and the number of people who use it seems to be much too small to infer anything.
Also, if a similar study was made about the real net, I suspect certainly that atleast as much porn would be found.
Darwin came to mind when you said this: "Some would say that this would destroy culture, but if a culture is so weak it cannot survive the "loss" of its language, I'd say that people weren't really serious about it anyway". So I suppose people colonized all over America weren't really being "serious" about their own cultures since they let their native languages disappear and be substituted by english, spanish or portuguese. The loss of those languages and their corresponding cultures was a very painful process fo those people, it's not something we can talk about in terms of one language being weaker than the other, you just can't say "well they weren't being serious about it, too bad".
I meant that they were not serious about their language(s); they understood the tremendous good of being able to communicate unobstructed. I believe this is also what I wrote.
Yes it would but let's be realistic. The fact is that there is a very strong interdependence between language and culture. An universal language would need an universal culture, that's impossible. We would have to live in the same latitude, grow up eating the same things, watching the same landscapes, thinking, discussing, joking in the same fashion, everything, everywhere would be homogeneous. Is that your notion of an ideal world?
That is a loaded question; you offer a claim you don't support and then you ask me a question that presupposes the truth of that claim. Please, these kinds of tricks don't add to the credibility of your position.
And talking pragmatically, about the fact that most of the available literature worldwide is inaccessible to me, well, it's inaccesible to me anyway because I have a finite amount of time to spend reading it.
You are still restricted in that you will be robbed of oppertunity. If there a specific book you want to read but can't, then it doesn't matter how many other books you can read: you still can't read that one book you want to read.
It occurs to me that one of your arguments was that a literary treasure would go to waste if everyone spoke the same language; therefore I believe the above answer of yours contradicts your previous statement. Care to clarify?
"most any language is completely sufficient to say anything you want provided you speak that language well enough.", I have to disagree, and I would have thought it would be obvious why. If what you say were true, perfect translations would exist, they don't.
Perfect translation is often possible. Nearly perfect translation is always possible, which by itself refutes your argument simply because its consequence is so little. Of course, people who do translations are often inferior to the original authors, which is the reason translations are not perfect normally.
But don't you see, they WANTED to, they didn't HAVE to, no one forced them to. And the interesting and extremely valuable part is not the outcome (fluently knowing a new language) but the learning process.
Are you sure this is the truth? If it really is, then I'm sure there'll always be old dusty tomes about old languages, even when everyone speaks the same language. I'm not proposing outlawing all other languages!
Of course then those of your friends wouldn't have much use of learning that language, but then they didn't care about that, right?
Finally, I think we're diverting from the one point where I believe we agree, as expressed in my earlier post, it would be VERY convenient if people knew one same language to communicate on a global basis but I see many disadvantages extrapolating that to every daily activity that happens anywhere worldwide.
I don't believe that will work in the long run. My friends here in Denmark aren't nearly as good at English as I. Sure, they speak the language well enough to understand most anything as long as it doesn't get too complex, and they can in most cases get their intention across, but they are much, much better at Danish (as am I), and this is after years of schooling in this language and a lifetime of seeing it everywhere both in real life, on the television and on the internet.
If there is ever to be a truely universal language, I believe people will have to feel that it is their own.
Does it sound at all plausable that 2000 years ago, people were clamoring over Latin being the universal language, just like you are clamoring over English as a universal language?
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Yes it does. I think I said I really wouldn't prefer English if I had a choice; it just seems to be the language with a greatest potential for everyone to know it.
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<b>English is destined to fail, much like Latin, as a 'universal language'.</b>
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So, your argument is that English will "fail" because the different language Latin failed in a completely different world 2000 years ago.
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Ever noticed how I am talking to you, even though we're probably thousands of kilometers away? Actually, I don't even know how far we are away from each other because I don't know where you are... You know why that is? It doesn't matter!
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The world of today is completely different from the world 2000 years ago, so your inductive argument (based on a samplesize of ONE!) has no merit.
You're taking darwinian logic too far
I never mentioned Darwin AND it is natural in evolution to have many species and uncountable variantion within species so that one unfortunate event cannot vipe out everything.
Care to explain what you meant?
losing your very own metaphors, potential jokes, songs, hidden meanings.
I think you ought to have more respect for your own language
A language does not get better just because it's my own. Indeed, stuff in general (ideas, jokes, etc.) doesn't get better just because it's mine. A fact too many people ignore.
there's got to be great literature produced for it that no one else can enjoy as much as you danish-speaking people do
Sure there is: Kirkegård and H.C. Andersen, to name 2 authors. I happen to know that many people learn Danish just to read these two authors in their native language.
Now, that is sensible; if you want to read the literature of a language you don't know, learn the language.
What is not sensible is for this major investment to be nessecary, since there really is no reason for it to be. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if everyone had spoken the same language back then? then you, too, could read these authors in their native language! Too bad you were robbed of that oppertunity. In fact, I'd say that by far most of the literature ever written is inaccessible to both you and me because we don't know the languages in which it has been written.
Why should we rob the children of the future of the ultimate literary treasure we have been denied?
Let us translate your example to computer programming. "However, I woudln't mind if Perl was removed from the face of the earth. In fact, I woudln't mind of Lisp was removed from the earth (my programming language of choice)."
I never said such a thing and I don't appreciate having words put into my mouth, especially not when I don't agree with those words.
First, I'm not even going to get into the fact that the problems of too many programming languages are not nearly as bad as the problems of too many actual languages and that there are ALOT more languages than programming languages.
Even doing that, you're still talking nonsense, because most any language is completely sufficient to say anything you want provided you speak that language well enough.
BUT if it really mattered to you, you could learn that new language as many people I know who've gone to great lenghts to learn foreign languages so they can enjoy local literature without the distortions of translation. And yes, it's much harder to learn Portuguese than C (or maybe not) but it's a rewarding, culturally enriching experience.
Don't you see that your are making my case for me?
If everyone spoke the same language, those friends of yours wouldn't have had to "go to greath lengths" to learn a new language.
Suppose they had used the time they spent on the unnessecary task of learning the language on actually learning about the culture and reading the litterature and such. Somehow I think they would have gotten a better grasp of that culture than they would otherwise. Also, they would speak the language much, much, much better, because it would be their own.
First of all I think it is ridiculus for a persons complete view of self to be determined by a mere detail such as the (X,Y,Z) coordinates where his birth took place.
Second, I don't really care if everyone actually speaks the EXACT same language. As long as there is a "the universal language" and everyone understands each other, I'm OK with it.
I suspect you'll find that the English and the Americans have a quite different culture, but still they understand each other perfectly.
But all in all, you are of course correct that it is quite utopian for everyone to have the intelligence to realize that a universal language is better for all. Just take this article as an example.