And yet, you made the effort to secure a copy of said app...?
Pretending that just because you never signed a contract, that there is no expectation of payment, is one of the most backwards arguments I've ever heard.
I've never met you, and yet I already know that I shouldn't come and break into your house... how can that possibly be, as we've never signed an agreement...?
Soo... do you even pay for anything? Why? You can use this justification to avoid paying power bills, phone bills, taxes, etc. "X has already been consumed... why should I pay for it now?"
The point is, no matter which way you cut it, piracy HURTS the further development of software. I don't actually care how each individual action is rationalised away from deep-thinking philosophical pirates... the simple fact is an application or piece of software or music track is being consumed with no return at that point in time to the creator. And... the key problem with the every presented example is that the user of the app stupidly thought they are causing no "harm" by using an application for free (or without obeying the restrictions imposed on its use by the creator). Providing "no benefit" equals "harm" in a society where you either sink or swim.
Let's break this down to the simplest point: I'm not asking pirates to stop. I'm demanding that pirates recognise themselves for being the parasites that they are. I get quite tired of people taking things they really have no right to. I guarentee you each and every one of these people would get up in arms if the same was done to them. Could you imagine that conversation? "Well... you already did 8hrs on the checkout, but I just don't really feel like I want to pay you. It's not really hurting you, because you could have just done something else instead".
While I respect that you aren't necessarily defending Apple... "assholes" sounds about right. By saying that "he should have known better", your basically saying that its ok for Apple to behave the way they did. Legally, sure... they can do that. Business-wise, we all know why they do it. From a customer stance though, it is utter crap, and Apple should be attacked for this.
By blaming the kickstarter guys, you're letting Apple get off the hook. If they had said "fine"... this never would have been a problem.
So a needless $25 non-standard connector, and a tech project that was killed because Apple have rules in place basically forbidding the bundling of multiple connectors doesn't sound to you like someone being screwed over?
Except... I don't know which innovations Microsoft is getting paid for on Android.
The practice of how patents work is not broken you are correct. What is broken is the types of patents that can be made. For example, patenting a one-click button to purchase an order off a website (remember that fiasco?), seems to badly fail the non-obvious requirement. Likewise, touch gestures have been in movies years before MS & Apple started patenting them.
This is the key problem. Microsoft has not contributed (from what I can tell) any useful advice, experience, designs or code to Android. So no, in my book, they deserve not a red cent of profit from the Android markets.
Let me paraphrase this assertion for you: "I never planned to give you any compensation for your work anyways". You know... that sounds a lot like stealing.
This is post-action justification. You don't start from the perspective of "I feel like pirating things today. I know, I'll pirate this book I never would have bought". What happens is you browse the torrent sites, or potentially read a review, and think to yourself "this sounds interesting enough to look at". From here, there are two paths you might take:
a) Attempt to find a copy by legal means. Potentially you give up and decide to pirate it, or perhaps the asking price is too expensive, but you still want to see/read it so you pirate it b) (more likely) you go and pirate it because you were never planning on compensating the creator at all
The logic that "I wasn't ever going to buy it so you didn't lose anything" is entirely nonsensical, and I dearly wish people would stop pretending it is meaningful.
These guys have been doing this for years as well. I actually have kept overbuying my broadband allocations (I use probably 20% a month) simply because they have been so honest and decent. Good service... and they have gone to bat for my rights every time. iiNet is changing the shape of Aussie ISPs, doing a wonderful job keeping Telstra/Optus and co. honest. The others see iiNet back out, and suddenly realise you can say no to the media industry on unrealistic or overly power-hungry requests.
I don't work for them... just a very satisfied consumer of their services.
For interest sake, I had the same issue. Here is the full text from the email. It contains no references to voting, and apart from a very generic "please give us feedback" sounds more like the changes have happened... not that *I* have the opportunity to directly affect this:
We recently announced some proposed updates to our Data Use Policy, which explains how we collect and use data when people use Facebook, and our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which explains the terms governing use of our services. The updates provide you with more detailed information about our practices and reflect changes to our products, including:
New tools for managing your Facebook Messages;
Changes to how we refer to certain products;
Tips on managing your timeline; and
Reminders about what's visible to other people on Facebook.
We are also proposing changes to our site governance process for future updates to our Data Use Policy and SRR. We deeply value the feedback we receive from you during our comment period but have found that the voting mechanism created a system that incentivized quantity of comments over the quality of them. So, we are proposing to end the voting component in order to promote a more meaningful environment for feedback. We also plan to roll out new engagement channels, including a feature for submitting questions about privacy to our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy. We encourage you to review these proposed changes and give us feedback before we finalize them. Please visit the "Documents" tab of the Facebook Site Governance Page https://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance to learn more about these changes and to submit comments before 09 PST on 28 November 2012. You can also follow and like the Site Governance Page for updates on this process and on any future changes to our Data Use Policy or SRR.
Heh. Anyone complaining about C# is likely complaining about something other than the language (e.g., politics, patents or CLI). The language itself is very expressive... I'm from a Java/C background, and find C# allows me to be much more expressive (almost to the same level as python and related) while still retaining absolutely awesome type-safety.
There is a difference between being honest, and being abusive though. If you want to pay extra to tell someone what you really think, I'm cool with that. If you want to pay extra so you think you can spend 20mins abusing someone up and down the isles, making some other player's life utterly miserable... I'd quite happily tell you to go jump in the ocean:)
A little more detail to this as well. It is the direct punishment that will then drag on for 10mins that seems to breed ragers. E.g., in LoL, after you die you get to stare at your screen for 1min waiting to respawn. Gives people plenty of time to get all worked up and very abusive:/
TF2 for example doesn't usually have the same intensity of hatred that I see regularly in LoL.
Problem is not that simple. Oracle couldn't afford to do what they do if their employees didn't allow it. While I agree that this employee is likely not directly involved, if their life is made uncomfortable, they will be more likely to agitate for change within the company.
It sounds like the poster didn't get personal with the insulting either, so if the phone support rep can't stand to hear that people don't approve of their company... they either need to work somewhere else or grow thicker skin.
That may hold some water if the issue was just that the engine behaved similar. But we're talking binary similarities... no amount of "training" is going to make one executable look more like another. Training data is usually stored separately...
Basically, while on the surface this appears like a community-friendly move, the fact that it is happening after the LibreOffice fork really puts it in a suspicious place. They had the opportunity to engage before the fork... why the sudden change of heart? Similar to the Hudson project, I suspect Oracle didn't believe the community could survive without them, and are now trying to recover from the community calling their bluff.
Key point though... OpenOffice (in my understanding) has absolutely no advantages to the LibreOffice fork. So the question that must be asked is why does Oracle want to relicense the code now? I would almost say this is a targeted attempt to splinter the community around LibreOffice. If you can take the OO.org code, make it proprietary and develop that... why would you give back to the community LGPL version... or the OO.org version for that matter?
I used to think about art (which includes literature) that way as well, many years ago.
Then I realized that art has a place in this world, and a purpose. Religion, on the other hand, you could do away and there'd be no loss.
To be explicit, you mean YOU would suffer no (perceived) loss. I find people who think we'd be happier with computers, mobile phones, cars, governments etc.
Mmm... so in other words, the pastor should follow social customs for a culture that existed 2000 years ago... and pretend that this will allow them to survive?
It is also interesting to note that Jesus' approach to this whole deal was not actually that radical. Society worked more in this regard than we do these days. Most people were not rich, and would be more likely to trade services than gold coins.
Money is not a reward in and of itself. It is a means to live and exist in our current money-oriented society. So, a minister should not be focused on gaining economical wealth definitely, but it is also the job of the congregation and brethren of the faith to support the pastor in their ministering to the community. This means ensuring the minister can eat every now and then, and hopefully has a bed to sleep in. Unfortunately, the latter does not happen as much these days...
Your argument would be plausible *if* there was more possible confusion between what is able to be legally torrented and what is not. However, it would likely be difficult to argue that you didn't realise the game was not being given away for free. If isn't like someone browsed through a store and thought "that looks nice... I think I might get it". The downloader (probably) deliberately went out and searched for the game after hearing about it, so it seems a bit ridiculous to claim that it never occurred to the downloader to check who owns the copyright.
The suing of the people who downloaded it can be argued to be relevant for just this reason. People do get punished for purchasing stolen materials (even unknowingly stolen, such as a car) by having the material taken away. In this case where there is no physical material to remove, what would discourage people from knowingly downloading games that are being illegally given away? Assuming the fines are reasonable (i.e., twice the game price or something, just to make up for the extra trouble the company went to to track down the person), it seems like a worthwhile activity to me.
If it can double sales then it would have to cost more than the entire game development budget to be be a waste...
That's actually not true. Doubling your sales is a meaningless figure. Essentially: Profit = Sales Profit - Development Budget (including some per-sale costs such as media, support etc.) So... doubling your sales has an unrelated affect on your profits... that is 2x the number of sales does not equal 2x the profit!
DRM is a business decision. The ONLY question that you can ask is does the increase in sales profits caused by implementing DRM make up for the expense in implementing DRM in the first place. And don't think this is terribly cheap. Look at the factors involved - Support costs for systems that are not compatible with your DRM (and any associated refunds) (ongoing costs) - DRM servers & upkeep & bandwidth (on-going) - Customization of packaging if a CD key or similar is used - False positives or other broken forms where the DRM did not work correctly (ongoing costs)
And then you still only get benefits from DRM if your game doesn't get cracked. If your game gets successfully cracked (a lot do), your DRM "value" is even more questionable because the DRM no longer functions. That is the problem with this however... the numbers are impossible to calculate, because one can never accurately gauge how many of the pirated copies would have purchased, or how many of the purchased copies would have pirated if able.
You're missing a vital number required for that last assertion: how much did the DRM cost to implement? (Note: this includes support costs, associated DRM infrastructure such as authorization servers, packaging of unique CD keys etc.)
If those costs are larger than your 10% sales gain... well... your DRM decision created a business loss and was therefore a foolish choice;)
Nolstagia leads to 90% piracy? I thought it led to low sales... not high piracy rates. Or are you saying nostalgic people are more likely to be cheap pirates and the solution is to only make games that appeal to non-nostalgic experiences?
I am not sure I understand this link between nostalgia and piracy rate so well...:S
You don't need to justify why re-inventing the wheel is a bad thing as I fully agree with that;)... but you haven't really explained how Ubuntu is simply re-inventing the wheel (that is, achieving the exact same thing as Debian with no advantages over Debian for ALL USES, not just your own specific niche)
I simply am not convinced of your initial arguments that the focus is completely identical for both Debian and Ubuntu, and that Ubuntu would have had the same freedoms to develop at the current pace if it simply merged with Debian.
I'm not assuming that Debian tries to be hard to use... merely that Debian does not extend a large amount of extra effort attempting to accommodate new users or "simply" their OS. The difference is one of focus. Ubuntu spends more energy on front-end polish then Debian does, so Ubuntu ends up "easier to use" (yes, a very relative term) than Debian does. Ubuntu does this through things like carefully picking the default applications shipped to ensure a best of breed, selecting and creating "pretty" themes etc. Debian doesn't do this... so I'm not saying Debian is hard to use, but rather that Ubuntu puts more focus on being easy to use... so yes, by comparison, Debian will be less thoroughly integrated, and harder to use.
The upstreaming speed is often something of great debate. Many of the complaints around this I've seen are very much repeating folklore they have heard, without really justifying much about it. Are we talking bugs? Source patches? User feedback? Needless to say, the Ubuntu community has been, and continues to work on improving this... so this is not a permanent issue, but merely ongoing work to streamline, and will significantly improve over time.
You still haven't really tried to justify why developing Ubuntu is a waste of time yet...
I still don't understand how developing Ubuntu is wasting developers time. The changes made to Ubuntu get merged back upstream if they prove to be an improvement. And Ubuntu gets to be a lot more exploratory than they would be able to if it was tied exactly to Debian. For example, the new notification system, the new social network integration features etc., heavy pulseaudio integration... none of that would have happened inside Debian. At least, not before the sun grew cold.
Ubuntu has a single focus, which is Linux on the desktop. Debian goals are much more vague then this. So again, I don't seen how Ubuntu is simply wasting time doing the dev work that it is. It sounds like you are comparing a marathon runner with a sprinter and trying to claim they both achieve the same thing (i.e., fitness), ignoring the fact that they serve different purposes and have different focuses.
Oh, I'd also argue that "training wheels" is the wrong term (though it does a pretty good job of demonstrating your perspective on Ubuntu;) ). Ubuntu is about ease of use... I haven't found places yet where I feel my abilities as a power user have been sacrificed for "safety", that I am not able to easily change. I'm interested to hear exactly what part you believe are the "training wheels" that restrict you in the long term...
Slashdot Mirror
And yet, you made the effort to secure a copy of said app...?
Pretending that just because you never signed a contract, that there is no expectation of payment, is one of the most backwards arguments I've ever heard.
I've never met you, and yet I already know that I shouldn't come and break into your house... how can that possibly be, as we've never signed an agreement...?
Soo... do you even pay for anything? Why? You can use this justification to avoid paying power bills, phone bills, taxes, etc. "X has already been consumed... why should I pay for it now?"
The point is, no matter which way you cut it, piracy HURTS the further development of software. I don't actually care how each individual action is rationalised away from deep-thinking philosophical pirates... the simple fact is an application or piece of software or music track is being consumed with no return at that point in time to the creator. And... the key problem with the every presented example is that the user of the app stupidly thought they are causing no "harm" by using an application for free (or without obeying the restrictions imposed on its use by the creator). Providing "no benefit" equals "harm" in a society where you either sink or swim.
Let's break this down to the simplest point: I'm not asking pirates to stop. I'm demanding that pirates recognise themselves for being the parasites that they are. I get quite tired of people taking things they really have no right to. I guarentee you each and every one of these people would get up in arms if the same was done to them. Could you imagine that conversation? "Well... you already did 8hrs on the checkout, but I just don't really feel like I want to pay you. It's not really hurting you, because you could have just done something else instead".
While I respect that you aren't necessarily defending Apple... "assholes" sounds about right. By saying that "he should have known better", your basically saying that its ok for Apple to behave the way they did. Legally, sure... they can do that. Business-wise, we all know why they do it. From a customer stance though, it is utter crap, and Apple should be attacked for this.
By blaming the kickstarter guys, you're letting Apple get off the hook. If they had said "fine"... this never would have been a problem.
So a needless $25 non-standard connector, and a tech project that was killed because Apple have rules in place basically forbidding the bundling of multiple connectors doesn't sound to you like someone being screwed over?
For the sake of discussion, the list of patents Microsoft is using to gain these royalties can be found here: http://androidcommunity.com/barnes-noble-reveals-microsofts-android-patents-in-detail-20111114/
As a professional software developer... it boggles my mind that these things are patented.
So even though its just opinion (as is your whole argument)... it is hardly as "uninformed" as you want to believe ;)
Likewise, your position is the identical, just your default assumption is on the opposite.
Except... I don't know which innovations Microsoft is getting paid for on Android.
The practice of how patents work is not broken you are correct. What is broken is the types of patents that can be made. For example, patenting a one-click button to purchase an order off a website (remember that fiasco?), seems to badly fail the non-obvious requirement. Likewise, touch gestures have been in movies years before MS & Apple started patenting them.
This is the key problem. Microsoft has not contributed (from what I can tell) any useful advice, experience, designs or code to Android. So no, in my book, they deserve not a red cent of profit from the Android markets.
Let me paraphrase this assertion for you: "I never planned to give you any compensation for your work anyways". You know... that sounds a lot like stealing.
This is post-action justification. You don't start from the perspective of "I feel like pirating things today. I know, I'll pirate this book I never would have bought". What happens is you browse the torrent sites, or potentially read a review, and think to yourself "this sounds interesting enough to look at". From here, there are two paths you might take:
a) Attempt to find a copy by legal means. Potentially you give up and decide to pirate it, or perhaps the asking price is too expensive, but you still want to see/read it so you pirate it
b) (more likely) you go and pirate it because you were never planning on compensating the creator at all
The logic that "I wasn't ever going to buy it so you didn't lose anything" is entirely nonsensical, and I dearly wish people would stop pretending it is meaningful.
These guys have been doing this for years as well. I actually have kept overbuying my broadband allocations (I use probably 20% a month) simply because they have been so honest and decent. Good service... and they have gone to bat for my rights every time. iiNet is changing the shape of Aussie ISPs, doing a wonderful job keeping Telstra/Optus and co. honest. The others see iiNet back out, and suddenly realise you can say no to the media industry on unrealistic or overly power-hungry requests.
I don't work for them... just a very satisfied consumer of their services.
For interest sake, I had the same issue. Here is the full text from the email. It contains no references to voting, and apart from a very generic "please give us feedback" sounds more like the changes have happened... not that *I* have the opportunity to directly affect this:
We recently announced some proposed updates to our Data Use Policy, which explains how we collect and use data when people use Facebook, and our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which explains the terms governing use of our services.
The updates provide you with more detailed information about our practices and reflect changes to our products, including:
New tools for managing your Facebook Messages;
Changes to how we refer to certain products;
Tips on managing your timeline; and
Reminders about what's visible to other people on Facebook.
We are also proposing changes to our site governance process for future updates to our Data Use Policy and SRR. We deeply value the feedback we receive from you during our comment period but have found that the voting mechanism created a system that incentivized quantity of comments over the quality of them. So, we are proposing to end the voting component in order to promote a more meaningful environment for feedback. We also plan to roll out new engagement channels, including a feature for submitting questions about privacy to our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy.
We encourage you to review these proposed changes and give us feedback before we finalize them. Please visit the "Documents" tab of the Facebook Site Governance Page https://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance to learn more about these changes and to submit comments before 09 PST on 28 November 2012.
You can also follow and like the Site Governance Page for updates on this process and on any future changes to our Data Use Policy or SRR.
Heh. Anyone complaining about C# is likely complaining about something other than the language (e.g., politics, patents or CLI). The language itself is very expressive... I'm from a Java/C background, and find C# allows me to be much more expressive (almost to the same level as python and related) while still retaining absolutely awesome type-safety.
There is a difference between being honest, and being abusive though. If you want to pay extra to tell someone what you really think, I'm cool with that. If you want to pay extra so you think you can spend 20mins abusing someone up and down the isles, making some other player's life utterly miserable... I'd quite happily tell you to go jump in the ocean :)
A little more detail to this as well. It is the direct punishment that will then drag on for 10mins that seems to breed ragers. E.g., in LoL, after you die you get to stare at your screen for 1min waiting to respawn. Gives people plenty of time to get all worked up and very abusive :/
TF2 for example doesn't usually have the same intensity of hatred that I see regularly in LoL.
Problem is not that simple. Oracle couldn't afford to do what they do if their employees didn't allow it. While I agree that this employee is likely not directly involved, if their life is made uncomfortable, they will be more likely to agitate for change within the company.
It sounds like the poster didn't get personal with the insulting either, so if the phone support rep can't stand to hear that people don't approve of their company... they either need to work somewhere else or grow thicker skin.
That may hold some water if the issue was just that the engine behaved similar. But we're talking binary similarities... no amount of "training" is going to make one executable look more like another. Training data is usually stored separately...
A good summary about potential underhandedness: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html
Basically, while on the surface this appears like a community-friendly move, the fact that it is happening after the LibreOffice fork really puts it in a suspicious place. They had the opportunity to engage before the fork... why the sudden change of heart? Similar to the Hudson project, I suspect Oracle didn't believe the community could survive without them, and are now trying to recover from the community calling their bluff.
Key point though... OpenOffice (in my understanding) has absolutely no advantages to the LibreOffice fork. So the question that must be asked is why does Oracle want to relicense the code now? I would almost say this is a targeted attempt to splinter the community around LibreOffice. If you can take the OO.org code, make it proprietary and develop that... why would you give back to the community LGPL version... or the OO.org version for that matter?
I used to think about art (which includes literature) that way as well, many years ago.
Then I realized that art has a place in this world, and a purpose. Religion, on the other hand, you could do away and there'd be no loss.
To be explicit, you mean YOU would suffer no (perceived) loss. I find people who think we'd be happier with computers, mobile phones, cars, governments etc.
Who's right?
Mmm... so in other words, the pastor should follow social customs for a culture that existed 2000 years ago... and pretend that this will allow them to survive?
It is also interesting to note that Jesus' approach to this whole deal was not actually that radical. Society worked more in this regard than we do these days. Most people were not rich, and would be more likely to trade services than gold coins.
Money is not a reward in and of itself. It is a means to live and exist in our current money-oriented society. So, a minister should not be focused on gaining economical wealth definitely, but it is also the job of the congregation and brethren of the faith to support the pastor in their ministering to the community. This means ensuring the minister can eat every now and then, and hopefully has a bed to sleep in. Unfortunately, the latter does not happen as much these days...
Your argument would be plausible *if* there was more possible confusion between what is able to be legally torrented and what is not. However, it would likely be difficult to argue that you didn't realise the game was not being given away for free. If isn't like someone browsed through a store and thought "that looks nice... I think I might get it". The downloader (probably) deliberately went out and searched for the game after hearing about it, so it seems a bit ridiculous to claim that it never occurred to the downloader to check who owns the copyright.
The suing of the people who downloaded it can be argued to be relevant for just this reason. People do get punished for purchasing stolen materials (even unknowingly stolen, such as a car) by having the material taken away. In this case where there is no physical material to remove, what would discourage people from knowingly downloading games that are being illegally given away? Assuming the fines are reasonable (i.e., twice the game price or something, just to make up for the extra trouble the company went to to track down the person), it seems like a worthwhile activity to me.
If it can double sales then it would have to cost more than the entire game development budget to be be a waste...
That's actually not true. Doubling your sales is a meaningless figure. Essentially: Profit = Sales Profit - Development Budget (including some per-sale costs such as media, support etc.) So... doubling your sales has an unrelated affect on your profits... that is 2x the number of sales does not equal 2x the profit!
DRM is a business decision. The ONLY question that you can ask is does the increase in sales profits caused by implementing DRM make up for the expense in implementing DRM in the first place. And don't think this is terribly cheap. Look at the factors involved
- Support costs for systems that are not compatible with your DRM (and any associated refunds) (ongoing costs)
- DRM servers & upkeep & bandwidth (on-going)
- Customization of packaging if a CD key or similar is used
- False positives or other broken forms where the DRM did not work correctly (ongoing costs)
And then you still only get benefits from DRM if your game doesn't get cracked. If your game gets successfully cracked (a lot do), your DRM "value" is even more questionable because the DRM no longer functions. That is the problem with this however... the numbers are impossible to calculate, because one can never accurately gauge how many of the pirated copies would have purchased, or how many of the purchased copies would have pirated if able.
You're missing a vital number required for that last assertion: how much did the DRM cost to implement? (Note: this includes support costs, associated DRM infrastructure such as authorization servers, packaging of unique CD keys etc.)
If those costs are larger than your 10% sales gain... well... your DRM decision created a business loss and was therefore a foolish choice ;)
Nolstagia leads to 90% piracy? I thought it led to low sales... not high piracy rates. Or are you saying nostalgic people are more likely to be cheap pirates and the solution is to only make games that appeal to non-nostalgic experiences?
I am not sure I understand this link between nostalgia and piracy rate so well... :S
You don't need to justify why re-inventing the wheel is a bad thing as I fully agree with that ;)... but you haven't really explained how Ubuntu is simply re-inventing the wheel (that is, achieving the exact same thing as Debian with no advantages over Debian for ALL USES, not just your own specific niche)
I simply am not convinced of your initial arguments that the focus is completely identical for both Debian and Ubuntu, and that Ubuntu would have had the same freedoms to develop at the current pace if it simply merged with Debian.
I'm not assuming that Debian tries to be hard to use... merely that Debian does not extend a large amount of extra effort attempting to accommodate new users or "simply" their OS. The difference is one of focus. Ubuntu spends more energy on front-end polish then Debian does, so Ubuntu ends up "easier to use" (yes, a very relative term) than Debian does. Ubuntu does this through things like carefully picking the default applications shipped to ensure a best of breed, selecting and creating "pretty" themes etc. Debian doesn't do this... so I'm not saying Debian is hard to use, but rather that Ubuntu puts more focus on being easy to use... so yes, by comparison, Debian will be less thoroughly integrated, and harder to use.
The upstreaming speed is often something of great debate. Many of the complaints around this I've seen are very much repeating folklore they have heard, without really justifying much about it. Are we talking bugs? Source patches? User feedback? Needless to say, the Ubuntu community has been, and continues to work on improving this... so this is not a permanent issue, but merely ongoing work to streamline, and will significantly improve over time.
You still haven't really tried to justify why developing Ubuntu is a waste of time yet...
Synonymous at a very shallow level yes.
I still don't understand how developing Ubuntu is wasting developers time. The changes made to Ubuntu get merged back upstream if they prove to be an improvement. And Ubuntu gets to be a lot more exploratory than they would be able to if it was tied exactly to Debian. For example, the new notification system, the new social network integration features etc., heavy pulseaudio integration... none of that would have happened inside Debian. At least, not before the sun grew cold.
Ubuntu has a single focus, which is Linux on the desktop. Debian goals are much more vague then this. So again, I don't seen how Ubuntu is simply wasting time doing the dev work that it is. It sounds like you are comparing a marathon runner with a sprinter and trying to claim they both achieve the same thing (i.e., fitness), ignoring the fact that they serve different purposes and have different focuses.
Oh, I'd also argue that "training wheels" is the wrong term (though it does a pretty good job of demonstrating your perspective on Ubuntu ;) ). Ubuntu is about ease of use... I haven't found places yet where I feel my abilities as a power user have been sacrificed for "safety", that I am not able to easily change. I'm interested to hear exactly what part you believe are the "training wheels" that restrict you in the long term...