More importantly, why should I care if a fraction of human beings who receive life-critical health care are designated "illegal" by some entity? Because my money's involved?
Oh nooooooooo.
This needs to stop being presented as a two-sided issue. It is only two-sided in the sense that one can be right or wrong. ID has no answer to the basic problem of falsifiability, and so its proponents must resort to faked controversy in order to generate any sort of buzz for their position. There is no controversy over ID within the greater scientific community.
Prior to G1G1's launch, I was hearing a lot of concerns to the effect of "G1G1 exposes to consumer criticism a product that was never intended for consumers." Ultimately, I think these concerns have been validated. Every month since its launch I have seen an article questioning the entire validity of the project because...what? Some people on a forum are complaining about a stuck key and a poor warranty? It's absurd, as are the comparisons to ultra-portable laptops such as the EEEPC, products which the XO was never intended to compete with. The EEEPC is a for-profit product that, while a superior consumer computer, does not meet many of the goals (E.g. dust/environmental protection) of the OLPC project. They are only similar in that they both have a small form-factor case; it's apples to oranges.
The idea that the "West" is hypocritical hinges on the notion of a unified "West"; i.e. the "West" is opposed to Chinese human rights abuses, but this is hypocritical because the "West" has itself committed human rights abuses in the past. This notion of a unified "West" is pure fantasy. The group of Westerners protesting Chinese human rights abuses is not necessarily in any way identified with the group of Westerners committing human rights abuses -- if anything, I think it's highly probable that they're distinct.
Everything I've said so far should be obvious, but from within the Chinese ideology of "a Western world, united against us", it is not so obvious, and this kind of craziness persists.
Free use of the Internet has a place in the classroom. I often use Google, Wikipedia, etc. during class to get an alternative perspective, or to clarify a point that the professor is failing to convey to me (and this is not the professor's fault, it is simply the case that no professor can explain everything to everyone all the time). As one takes more and more advanced courses, and the topics presented become more and more bleeding edge and controversial, this use of the Internet becomes more and more important.
A ban on laptops would be doubly horrendous, not only for reasons mentioned, but also because electronic notes are *vastly* superior to paper. Since I started taking them on my laptop, both the quality and usefulness of my notes have risen dramatically.
You're correct, they can't win. No amount of lawyers is going to make the technology go away. All this litigation is the outward manifestation of a death spiral.
And frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. No matter what happens to the middlemen, music will continue to be made. Knowing this, and hating what commercialization and celebrity has done to the arts, what sane reason is there for me to continue to support their system? It will implode, and most of us will benefit. This is a simple consequence of sane consumer behaviour.
As for the artists: if the "traditional strong areas" of the middlemen are "promotion and distribution", then "get heard and damn the money" (from music sales) sounds like a pretty attractive alternative, don't you think?
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More importantly, why should I care if a fraction of human beings who receive life-critical health care are designated "illegal" by some entity? Because my money's involved? Oh nooooooooo.
This needs to stop being presented as a two-sided issue. It is only two-sided in the sense that one can be right or wrong. ID has no answer to the basic problem of falsifiability, and so its proponents must resort to faked controversy in order to generate any sort of buzz for their position. There is no controversy over ID within the greater scientific community.
Prior to G1G1's launch, I was hearing a lot of concerns to the effect of "G1G1 exposes to consumer criticism a product that was never intended for consumers." Ultimately, I think these concerns have been validated. Every month since its launch I have seen an article questioning the entire validity of the project because...what? Some people on a forum are complaining about a stuck key and a poor warranty? It's absurd, as are the comparisons to ultra-portable laptops such as the EEEPC, products which the XO was never intended to compete with. The EEEPC is a for-profit product that, while a superior consumer computer, does not meet many of the goals (E.g. dust/environmental protection) of the OLPC project. They are only similar in that they both have a small form-factor case; it's apples to oranges.
The idea that the "West" is hypocritical hinges on the notion of a unified "West"; i.e. the "West" is opposed to Chinese human rights abuses, but this is hypocritical because the "West" has itself committed human rights abuses in the past. This notion of a unified "West" is pure fantasy. The group of Westerners protesting Chinese human rights abuses is not necessarily in any way identified with the group of Westerners committing human rights abuses -- if anything, I think it's highly probable that they're distinct. Everything I've said so far should be obvious, but from within the Chinese ideology of "a Western world, united against us", it is not so obvious, and this kind of craziness persists.
Free use of the Internet has a place in the classroom. I often use Google, Wikipedia, etc. during class to get an alternative perspective, or to clarify a point that the professor is failing to convey to me (and this is not the professor's fault, it is simply the case that no professor can explain everything to everyone all the time). As one takes more and more advanced courses, and the topics presented become more and more bleeding edge and controversial, this use of the Internet becomes more and more important. A ban on laptops would be doubly horrendous, not only for reasons mentioned, but also because electronic notes are *vastly* superior to paper. Since I started taking them on my laptop, both the quality and usefulness of my notes have risen dramatically.
You're correct, they can't win. No amount of lawyers is going to make the technology go away. All this litigation is the outward manifestation of a death spiral.
And frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. No matter what happens to the middlemen, music will continue to be made. Knowing this, and hating what commercialization and celebrity has done to the arts, what sane reason is there for me to continue to support their system? It will implode, and most of us will benefit. This is a simple consequence of sane consumer behaviour.
As for the artists: if the "traditional strong areas" of the middlemen are "promotion and distribution", then "get heard and damn the money" (from music sales) sounds like a pretty attractive alternative, don't you think?