What is capitalism?? It's a system of exploitation and oppression but here you are saying it equals FREEDOM????
Nice try supporter of the 1% - i have this sneaking suspicion you aren't actually a member:)
Seriously, i am in awe of capitalist ideology. It has managed to convince a large number of people around the world, if this thread is any indication, that the profit motive is as natural as the sun in that for some INSANE reason, the question of PROFIT does not come into consideration when expressing an opinion on whether you think nuclear power is safe to use. It really gets me down it does. Although the new Arab revolutionary upheavals are a welcome development to this jaded old lefty:)
WTF people, a business group releases a study and we all get to waste our time shooting down a ridiculously absurd figure regarding piracy for what, sport? It seems anyone can release a study these days and it will get examined by every nerd on the planet! Obviously not all studies, only ones that support the existence of an economic system that is splintering under the weight of its internal contradictions, viz the attempt to turn digital content into private property. Will you all PLEASE all get an anti-capitalist consciousness from somewhere, anywhere! -- this FOG you all seem to live in is driving me nuts!
Yes they did, but commodity production was not the dominant form of production until well after that time. Capital does not rule in that situation and so you can hardly call it capitalism.
It was only with the advent of national and world-wide markets with a common currency, common laws, i.e the necessities for the formation of the nation state, that commodity production became dominant.
You can look all this stuff up yourself you know... and if you don't really know about the system you were sort of defending in the first place, you REALLY know NOTHING about the resolution to the myriad of capitalist contradictions, i.e communism. You can look that up to, it's all on the web, hidden in plain sight;)
"What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of thinking, young man?" [the priest] demanded... "You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.... Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened to you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine- man making incantation in the primeval forest ten thousand years ago."
"I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically... Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness."
"The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains himself by the universe."
"There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians... Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the emotions, while the scientists were formulating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while the scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science, they have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts of science have overthrown their subjective explanations of things, they have made new subjective explanations of things, including explanations of the latest ascertained facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to the end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained facts. That is all."
"Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries," Dr. Ballingford announced pompously. "And Aristotle was a metaphysician."
"Your illustration is most unfortunate," Ernest replied. "You refer to a very dark period in human history. In fact, we call that period the Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination of Aristotle's thought!"
Oh please. Name one serious economist or economic historian that claims capitalism, a monetary system where capital is at the heart of the mode of production, has existed for thousands of years.
You are explaining the world by yourself, instead of explaining yourself by the world.
The first phase of capitalism began with primitive accumulation, which included the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the looting and genocide of the Americas, without which Capitalism wouldn't have got it's start as a world system divided extremely unevenly between the North and South, or 1st and 3rd worlds, take your pick. Whatever, this wasn't 1000s of years ago.
How about being sure of what you are saying next time?!
Sometimes i like to fantasize about what people will be taught in the future looking back to our time. We're talking 500+ years here. Because there's one thing i know for sure, we won't have a world capitalist system -- either we get rid of it, or we don't and it will be a case of there will be history lessons in the future or we will be too busy trying to survive an inhospitable planet to worry about the luxury of teaching people things. And in every one of these daydreams, the students are completely incredulous.
"But miss, why couldn't people see how unsustainable, irrational and inhumane the capitalist system was?!? I mean it was a system of exploitation and oppression! I just don't get it!"
I also recommend this, i only use batch scripts and AutoIT scripts... the language does have a few funny limitations where you will actually find youself using it to run batch commands (moving entire folder trees is one example) but for the ability to write a script in 2 seconds and compile it on the spot for immediate testing, AutoIT is king.
It was originally designed to automate rolling out 1000s of new Windows machines and so it was designed to control a Windows machine intimately. i can't recommend it enough:)
How about creating an SOE (standard operating environment) DVD with driverpacks from driverpacks.net? To see an example of this, do a google search for my little baby Winborg XP. Anytime we get a new machine that will host Windows, we just use the SOE on it and the drivers question is not an issue. We also install our essential 3rd-party apps as a part of setup and so it really is a dream to use. Stick the DVD in and come back in an hour with the PC totally ready to go. Takes 2 minutes to individualize it for the user it is for and wallah! The best thing about my Winborg XP is that the latest edition is a builder edition and so u could just modify that for your needs, but this is the lazy option, i fully recommend getting into unattended installs, beats the Ghost method hands down due to the drivers problem being solved. Each month i make a new SOE that incorporates the new hotfixes from MS, any updates to the 60 or so addons we integrate into the SOE, and any updates to the 3rd party apps. I have even scripted the SOE to be built automatically, so its a pain and trouble-free process. Having said all this, if i didn't know this could be done, i would go with a VM method for sure:)
When one guy can hold an entire country of gamers to ransom, it's not hard to understand the frustrated reactions of those who are effectively politically disenfranchised. Australians have very low levels of political consciousnesses compared to the rest of the world's population and part of this is reflected by the way the system was setup over here. It's not as if the convicts ever had much say in what went on and this top-down and top-heavy system of governance has developed as such, such that we have a nanny-state style of organising society. The wowsers are in control and don't you forget it! Sit down, shut up, or you won't EVER get your R18+ gaming classifications. I think it's fair to say it's never gonna come without a little pressure, but immature notes under the door probably isn't the sort of pressure that will work. Having said that, the dickhead deserves nasty things said to him. Very nasty things. I would say R rated things, but he's probably never heard any:(
think of the children! And by children i mean profit from movies, music, digital content, whatever. Here we have a situation where it's clear to every technologically minded person on the planet that the old business model of 'units' and 'profits' has been made obsolete, and yet the primary focus of politicians will be to try to preserve the old business models because this is where the donations come from for some time to come. Think of the profits! Oh, won't somebody please think of the profits!
Nazis did in Germany was legal. DO NOT BUY INTO THE LEGALITY ARGUMENT. If for some reason hell freezes over and Big Music proposes legal limits to the profits they can make out of the changing face of music distribution, then and only then would they begin to have an argument for their 'laws'. I'm not holding my breath.
This is exactly why 'piracy' is such a good thing. Before, when there were tollbooths before all the artists of the world, we could only really sample the delights of a few. Now, there's no where on earth most of us could afford to pay for all the content we consume. How can we be convinced that it is GOOD to be able to only taste a tiny fraction of what is out there? The Big Music enforced tollbooths are a plague of this planet, and it is PIRACY, resolving the contradictions of digital content in the age of private property, that is the cure.
lol... look over your shoulder at Latin America will you... you never answered my point, you just saw the bogey word 'socialism' and ran screaming... you say you are working towards your own future... exactly who is keeping you alive if you aren't doing all the things i describe previously? You are going to say you hand over hard-earned money for the necessities of life but you are basically saying "I don't have to care about how these things that i need become available to me, they're available aren't they?". There is a humungously intricate network of human organisation that provides you the needs to stay alive, I just wish you could appreciate that. It seems you have been filled with an ideology that prevents this.You do live in the belly of the beast, however, so i forgive you. Millions wouldn't! (Seriously, just in Vietnam alone...)
"they want to be left alone"... are there many people who want to be totally self-sufficient hermits, who grow their own food, make their own clothes and shelter? Totally on their own?
.
Assuming we're talking about the other 99.99% of human beings, the victory of the capitalist mode of production is socialized production, ie, we ALL rely on each other to survive. But you just want to be left alone. How is that possible if you are relying on others to survive?
.
I, too, want to be left alone, but that's not possible when we all are suffering under a social system that is not a system of solidarity. You want to be left alone? How about trying to do away with the conditions that necessitate a state and thus a government? That's what i am working towards, and that's why i'm a member of a revolutionary socialist organisation. What are you working towards?
Firstly, "'so called' necessity" is a nonsensical phrase isn't it? We can argue over what falls under the definition of "necessary", but once something IS necessary then in order to be free from the consequences of the thing we NEED to NECESSARILY prevent, we must ACT. Who wants to act and who doesn't?
. Secondly, just like there are countless examples of collective action around the world, there are also countless examples of coercion going on, the capitalist mode of production couldn't function without it. Usually you guys have no beef with capitalism just coercive governments... rather hypocritical don't you think?
IE is NOT a web browser...It's an internet advertising companion. Bonus feature: surf the web! But while you do, we will throw as many ads as your poor brain can handle, and then double the number, for each and every site that allows such abominations.
.
Renaming IE shortcuts from 'Launch Internet Explorer' to 'Launch Internet Advertising Companion' since 1999.
Playing the Russia card is so old hat comrade! Really, why link the idea of collective action to an enormous tragedy of history? The world is completely and utterly full of examples of collective action at work, the world couldn't FUNCTION without it. All us lefties are asking for is simply a little bit more. Freedom is the recognition of necessity.
they're still calling us pirates. I like to think of myself as someone who likes to walk around the tollbooths the entertainment industry puts in front of everything, not walk through them. Haven't they got enough money? How many copies of my favorite albums do i have to buy to replace the ones i lost, or had stolen or whatever? Because the tollbooth owners don't care about that sort of fairness, how can i be expected to WILLINGLY put up with the hassle of the tollbooth experience when i can just walk around? The ISP guy got it spot on in one regard -- the only way to combat the culture that has developed to avoid this hassle (ie filesharing) is to make stuff dirt cheap and mega accessible. But there's no or very little profit in that is there, and so here lies the contradiction of trying to own something in digital form and make "good healthy profits". Normally i would sarcastically say "good luck with that" but its simply not funny that while they're trying to make these healthy profits we have to put up with all the associated nastiness of their stand-over tactics and absurd propaganda... can we have the revolution now please?
You might call it a "ripoff" but it's a ripoff that customers *voluntarily* enter into.
Yes, you could describe it that way but that assumes there's nothing wrong with exploiting the ownership relationship. Most people don't have access to highly developed technology, and they certainly can't just "do it themselves", so they have to pay whatever is asked of them, as you so helpfully point out. But there is NOTHING voluntary about it. Of the group of people that would like to send text messages, there are some who are rich enough to consider the cost completely negligible and so can see no reason NOT to "voluntarily" pay the amount asked, and there's the rest of us.
Your comment appears completely valid if you cannot see, like i do, that capitalism is a system of exploitation and oppression, full of contradictions like we are seeing big time right now.
Not everyone who buys a game is interested in helping develop the game, but surely there are those who can't afford to buy the game that are willing to donate time to develop the game (providing detailed feedback, etc).
What should we be focusing on? Maximizing profit or maximizing game development? or in other words - producing games to live, or living to produce games? I know which future i want... and i want it now!
Slashdot Mirror
What is capitalism?? It's a system of exploitation and oppression but here you are saying it equals FREEDOM???? Nice try supporter of the 1% - i have this sneaking suspicion you aren't actually a member :)
Seriously, i am in awe of capitalist ideology. It has managed to convince a large number of people around the world, if this thread is any indication, that the profit motive is as natural as the sun in that for some INSANE reason, the question of PROFIT does not come into consideration when expressing an opinion on whether you think nuclear power is safe to use. It really gets me down it does. Although the new Arab revolutionary upheavals are a welcome development to this jaded old lefty :)
The po-lice state is coming
Do dah do dah
The po-lice state is coming
Oh do dah day.
Oh do dah day
It's on its merry way
The po-lice state is coming
Oh do dah day.
WTF people, a business group releases a study and we all get to waste our time shooting down a ridiculously absurd figure regarding piracy for what, sport? It seems anyone can release a study these days and it will get examined by every nerd on the planet! Obviously not all studies, only ones that support the existence of an economic system that is splintering under the weight of its internal contradictions, viz the attempt to turn digital content into private property. Will you all PLEASE all get an anti-capitalist consciousness from somewhere, anywhere! -- this FOG you all seem to live in is driving me nuts!
Again with the explaining the world by yourself! Still waiting for the name of ONE person who actually studies this stuff who agrees with you.
It was only with the advent of national and world-wide markets with a common currency, common laws, i.e the necessities for the formation of the nation state, that commodity production became dominant.
You can look all this stuff up yourself you know... and if you don't really know about the system you were sort of defending in the first place, you REALLY know NOTHING about the resolution to the myriad of capitalist contradictions, i.e communism. You can look that up to, it's all on the web, hidden in plain sight ;)
"What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of thinking, young man?" [the priest] demanded ... "You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.... Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened to you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine- man making incantation in the primeval forest ten thousand years ago."
"I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically ... Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness."
"The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains himself by the universe."
"There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians ... Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the emotions, while the scientists were formulating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while the scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science, they have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts of science have overthrown their subjective explanations of things, they have made new subjective explanations of things, including explanations of the latest ascertained facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to the end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained facts. That is all."
"Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries," Dr. Ballingford announced pompously. "And Aristotle was a metaphysician."
"Your illustration is most unfortunate," Ernest replied. "You refer to a very dark period in human history. In fact, we call that period the Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination of Aristotle's thought!"
You are explaining the world by yourself, instead of explaining yourself by the world.
The first phase of capitalism began with primitive accumulation, which included the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the looting and genocide of the Americas, without which Capitalism wouldn't have got it's start as a world system divided extremely unevenly between the North and South, or 1st and 3rd worlds, take your pick. Whatever, this wasn't 1000s of years ago.
How about being sure of what you are saying next time?!
"But miss, why couldn't people see how unsustainable, irrational and inhumane the capitalist system was?!? I mean it was a system of exploitation and oppression! I just don't get it!"
I also recommend this, i only use batch scripts and AutoIT scripts ... the language does have a few funny limitations where you will actually find youself using it to run batch commands (moving entire folder trees is one example) but for the ability to write a script in 2 seconds and compile it on the spot for immediate testing, AutoIT is king.
It was originally designed to automate rolling out 1000s of new Windows machines and so it was designed to control a Windows machine intimately. i can't recommend it enough :)
The pol-lice state is coming
Doo dah
Doo dah
The pol-lice state is coming
Oh doo dah day.
Oh doo dah day
It's on its merry way
The pol-lice state is coming
Oh doo dah day.
How about creating an SOE (standard operating environment) DVD with driverpacks from driverpacks.net? To see an example of this, do a google search for my little baby Winborg XP. Anytime we get a new machine that will host Windows, we just use the SOE on it and the drivers question is not an issue. We also install our essential 3rd-party apps as a part of setup and so it really is a dream to use. Stick the DVD in and come back in an hour with the PC totally ready to go. Takes 2 minutes to individualize it for the user it is for and wallah! The best thing about my Winborg XP is that the latest edition is a builder edition and so u could just modify that for your needs, but this is the lazy option, i fully recommend getting into unattended installs, beats the Ghost method hands down due to the drivers problem being solved. Each month i make a new SOE that incorporates the new hotfixes from MS, any updates to the 60 or so addons we integrate into the SOE, and any updates to the 3rd party apps. I have even scripted the SOE to be built automatically, so its a pain and trouble-free process. Having said all this, if i didn't know this could be done, i would go with a VM method for sure :)
When one guy can hold an entire country of gamers to ransom, it's not hard to understand the frustrated reactions of those who are effectively politically disenfranchised. Australians have very low levels of political consciousnesses compared to the rest of the world's population and part of this is reflected by the way the system was setup over here. It's not as if the convicts ever had much say in what went on and this top-down and top-heavy system of governance has developed as such, such that we have a nanny-state style of organising society. The wowsers are in control and don't you forget it! Sit down, shut up, or you won't EVER get your R18+ gaming classifications. I think it's fair to say it's never gonna come without a little pressure, but immature notes under the door probably isn't the sort of pressure that will work. Having said that, the dickhead deserves nasty things said to him. Very nasty things. I would say R rated things, but he's probably never heard any :(
deserves an infinity of mod points, totally hilarious
think of the children! And by children i mean profit from movies, music, digital content, whatever. Here we have a situation where it's clear to every technologically minded person on the planet that the old business model of 'units' and 'profits' has been made obsolete, and yet the primary focus of politicians will be to try to preserve the old business models because this is where the donations come from for some time to come. Think of the profits! Oh, won't somebody please think of the profits!
Nazis did in Germany was legal. DO NOT BUY INTO THE LEGALITY ARGUMENT. If for some reason hell freezes over and Big Music proposes legal limits to the profits they can make out of the changing face of music distribution, then and only then would they begin to have an argument for their 'laws'. I'm not holding my breath.
This is exactly why 'piracy' is such a good thing. Before, when there were tollbooths before all the artists of the world, we could only really sample the delights of a few. Now, there's no where on earth most of us could afford to pay for all the content we consume. How can we be convinced that it is GOOD to be able to only taste a tiny fraction of what is out there? The Big Music enforced tollbooths are a plague of this planet, and it is PIRACY, resolving the contradictions of digital content in the age of private property, that is the cure.
lol ... look over your shoulder at Latin America will you... you never answered my point, you just saw the bogey word 'socialism' and ran screaming ... you say you are working towards your own future ... exactly who is keeping you alive if you aren't doing all the things i describe previously? You are going to say you hand over hard-earned money for the necessities of life but you are basically saying "I don't have to care about how these things that i need become available to me, they're available aren't they?". There is a humungously intricate network of human organisation that provides you the needs to stay alive, I just wish you could appreciate that. It seems you have been filled with an ideology that prevents this.You do live in the belly of the beast, however, so i forgive you. Millions wouldn't! (Seriously, just in Vietnam alone...)
.
Assuming we're talking about the other 99.99% of human beings, the victory of the capitalist mode of production is socialized production, ie, we ALL rely on each other to survive. But you just want to be left alone. How is that possible if you are relying on others to survive?
.
I, too, want to be left alone, but that's not possible when we all are suffering under a social system that is not a system of solidarity. You want to be left alone? How about trying to do away with the conditions that necessitate a state and thus a government? That's what i am working towards, and that's why i'm a member of a revolutionary socialist organisation. What are you working towards?
.
Secondly, just like there are countless examples of collective action around the world, there are also countless examples of coercion going on, the capitalist mode of production couldn't function without it. Usually you guys have no beef with capitalism just coercive governments... rather hypocritical don't you think?
.
Renaming IE shortcuts from 'Launch Internet Explorer' to 'Launch Internet Advertising Companion' since 1999.
Playing the Russia card is so old hat comrade! Really, why link the idea of collective action to an enormous tragedy of history? The world is completely and utterly full of examples of collective action at work, the world couldn't FUNCTION without it. All us lefties are asking for is simply a little bit more. Freedom is the recognition of necessity.
they're still calling us pirates. I like to think of myself as someone who likes to walk around the tollbooths the entertainment industry puts in front of everything, not walk through them. Haven't they got enough money? How many copies of my favorite albums do i have to buy to replace the ones i lost, or had stolen or whatever? Because the tollbooth owners don't care about that sort of fairness, how can i be expected to WILLINGLY put up with the hassle of the tollbooth experience when i can just walk around? The ISP guy got it spot on in one regard -- the only way to combat the culture that has developed to avoid this hassle (ie filesharing) is to make stuff dirt cheap and mega accessible. But there's no or very little profit in that is there, and so here lies the contradiction of trying to own something in digital form and make "good healthy profits". Normally i would sarcastically say "good luck with that" but its simply not funny that while they're trying to make these healthy profits we have to put up with all the associated nastiness of their stand-over tactics and absurd propaganda... can we have the revolution now please?
You might call it a "ripoff" but it's a ripoff that customers *voluntarily* enter into.
Yes, you could describe it that way but that assumes there's nothing wrong with exploiting the ownership relationship. Most people don't have access to highly developed technology, and they certainly can't just "do it themselves", so they have to pay whatever is asked of them, as you so helpfully point out. But there is NOTHING voluntary about it. Of the group of people that would like to send text messages, there are some who are rich enough to consider the cost completely negligible and so can see no reason NOT to "voluntarily" pay the amount asked, and there's the rest of us.
Your comment appears completely valid if you cannot see, like i do, that capitalism is a system of exploitation and oppression, full of contradictions like we are seeing big time right now.
What should we be focusing on? Maximizing profit or maximizing game development? or in other words - producing games to live, or living to produce games? I know which future i want ... and i want it now!