You are assuming that shamanistic magic and law are logical, consistent, and coherent, with that statement. You should probably think a little harder and realise what exactly I was saying.
That was my partially my point. Atheose is operating under the very false mindset that people and institutions operate logically and consistently and that's not true at all.
I, however, was saying that it is all three at once--who said the law was consistent? Not I. It uses different combinations of each three sometimes at the same times but also at different times. Who says that something based on tradition and on formula isn't also influenced partially by bullshitting your way through? The law has a ton of tradition and a ton of ad-hoc bullshit.
Apparently you did, which is why you believe that bullshit. You make the mistake of trusting the courts, first of all, as the courts are basically like shamanistic magic that is based on tradition, based on formula, and made up as you go along.
The Supreme Court has ruled, that students don't "shed their constitutional rights ⦠at the schoolhouse gate", anyway. (Tinker v. Des Moines)
But who really cares? Who cares what the courts think? Do you even believe your own argument? Does the state have a right to systematically execute minors? Why not, I thought they don't have rights?
What is harm"? A weasel word if I ever heard one. Namecalling? Poopiehead buttsniffer!
But seriously, and before anyone makes it, there's a difference between that tired old "shouting fire in a crowded theater" analogy" and telling someone they smell like an elephant's butt. It's true people are affected by the things other's say, but it's nearly impossible to know how they will really react to it. I know if I cut you you'll bleed; I don't know that if I said you smelled like rancid turnips you'd go kill yourself.
Anyway, where do you draw the line? Why is it so wrong to basically call the school principle a pervert (and maybe some students have caught him staring at their breasts!) and yet be able to call Bush a child killer? Sure, Bush may be president, and famous, but is that really a good reason?
Before we shout out about libel, there is also a difference between truly believing in what you say, and lying to destroy someone's reputation; there also could be a difference in the actual content and nature of the accusation, much in the same way it is to say "Steve likes fat girls" compared to "Steve raped me...!"
All right, all together now: I'm not a lawyer, and probably neither are you. But as I've said before, if you put 10 judges in 10 separate rooms and asked them to decide this case (or any other case) independently of each other, you'd be very unlikely to get a consensus anyway. The importance of courts in a civilized society is that they provide a peaceful means of settling disputes, not because we expect that the judges will actually get the "right" answer -- that's why we don't have a crisis of faith in the system every time the Supreme Court splits 5-4. (By contrast, when physicists work on problems involving car safety and satellite trajectories, we do care about them getting the "right" answer, and so physicists are held to a higher standard than judges -- we expect that 9 physicists working on the same problem in separate rooms would all get the same result.) That goes for the rest of us too -- I have no independent confirmation that I'm right, and anyone ranting with supreme confidence that I'm wrong, has no independent confirmation that they're right, either. The best we can do is try to make arguments that are logically consistent, and check that even if they are free of internal contradicions, that they also can't be carried through to an absurd conclusion.
This pretty much illustrates what the law and justice system actually are. The "justice" "system" (it's really neither) is full of contradictory rulings, vague statutes, and all-around bullshit. People are conned into believing in judgments based on "legal principles" because they are given fancy names in Latin; in a relevant example to the article, in loco parentis (read the article to get a sense just how contradictory and fragmented the system really is) could probably be used to justify suspension or even expulsion of this kid, as it is often used to justify the state enforcing its standards; the state essentially can decide which type of speech or position the student expresses is allowable. I'm sure a school could get away with suspending a student based on that student's belief that, say, drugs should be legal or expressing a political opinion that could be offensive to some people. (This is one of the problems with public schooling, I think--if the state has to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable speech, then some of that unacceptable speech is going to inevitably "massively unpopular opinion or idea"). And, as an aside, and I'm sure a lot of us nerds that sludged through high school can remember, the administators were often more concerned with how students dressed than with what parents are really supposed to care about, like violence, as the violent bullies never got in trouble. Maybe school administrators see themselves in the bullies...
The Republicans are right when they speak of "activist judges", but not quite in the way they've thought of it. All judges are essentially activists for their own personal political and moral philosophies. A judge isn't going to rule against what he thinks is moral and what is just. Our law system is based on tradition, and yet, is fragmented and contradictory, so a judge can usually look back to previous caselaw and find something to justify what he thinks.
Don't believe me that the system is one big play? Look at history. Look at the many times the Supreme Court has overturned themselves (funny how the words of the constitution essentially don't change, but how the Court's rulings do...) and look at how much attention is given to Supreme Court nominees. Look at FDR trying to pack the Court with sympathizers to the New Deal. Look at the whole issue whether the nominees support Roe v. Wade or not. Look at how many goddamn 5-4 splits there are over the goddamn constitution. Look at how we can call judges "conservative" or "liberal" as if they belong to a sports team and how we describe their past cases as if they were sports games, speaking of their decisions as if they were some great playoff
Clearly, the answer to a corporation removing a service only a vast minority use these days (whether USENET is great or not is irrelevant) is nationalization and socialism, right...?
Anyway, to your parent on this thread:
For what they offer for Internet, you should be paying $19.99, and not $55.00.
And yet, you'd still depart with that $55. I fail to see why your personal opinion on what a service should cost should have any bearing on what they get to offer it for. If you're willing to pay, and they're willing to offer, then it's essentially a fair deal.
Because we all know that all the "primary" sites your teachers always want you to go to never ever have misleading information and are always cited.
Thanks for the childish, juvenile strawman.
Now, I'm not sure if I would write a 100 page book about American History based on Wikipedia, but a paper about most software Wikipedia is going to give you the most information short of talking to the actual developer (because most of the time the project's site is no good and man pages only tell you the flags you can use)
The problem is is that on no particular article at any particular time can be trusted; maybe you can tell if something on the page is a lie, but people using it as a source of information cannot. The fact that you suggest this tells me you're probably the type of person that goes out and hunts for material that confirms what you already know when writing a paper instead of using it to support a thesis or argument; that, and that you would say "your teachers" indicates to me that you're probably still in high school, and thus not yet introduced to academic standards.
This doesn't even have anything to do with professors being accurate and honest. The simple fact is is that the peer reviews on a wikipedia page may also include weirdos with no scientific knowledge whatsoever. Having once edited wikipedia I saw that firsthand, too.
0) people download and play game, and see how unfullfilling, widdled down the game really is after all the hype
Seriously, Spore is one of the two most over-hyped games of this year. The only other game as over-hyped is Age of Conan (boy did that one fall flat on its face!)
But again, if DRM results in less sales anyway, why would they be doing this?
Your explanation is simply adding another layer of complexity. Okay, so DRM doesn't work for and isn't meant to reduce piracy... so, it's to prevent reselling? That still just means people are going to pirate it, especially moreso with the restrictive DRM. It's a possible explanation but not one that really explains why they continue to release DRM that presumably (and I am assuming it for the sake of argument) results in even less sales.
People often try to find insidious reasons behind actions and often can make a plausible connection between two things, but that is not necessarily what the motivation is or was--it may just be a functional coincidence. Obviously the publisher doesn't like reselling, but DRM would never be the answer to that as it, as we all believe, reduces all sales. Less sales means less reselling.
And...uh, can you blame them for not wanting reselling? I'm not saying that, if they are locking people out, that that justifies that kind of DRM, merely that you can't blame a company for wanting people to buy a new product instead of reselling. EA is perfectly within its right ethically and legally, to try to move towards a more online approach to offering additional content, etc; this is partly the reason MMOs seem so attractive to companies. The consumer/customer eventually decides if it's a good deal or not. Customers are loudly proclaiming that it's not a good deal with the DRM. This reaction by EA is a good first step; let's show them it's not enough.
Oh, and I don't like this us vs. them mentality people have towards business. Businesses give us things, but they need us to survive. You can whine all day about game companies wanting to maximize their profits (you try to maximize your benefit too, do you not...?) but the only reason you have a lot of these games is because of the very company or industry you're complaining about.
Yeah, because giving a democracy the power to do something as radical as keep a stable currency is such a huge intrusion. We should all be scribbling our own IOU's to pay for things. Works much better./sarcasm
I never suggested that. Go back to World of Warcraft, where things like "/sarcasm" are more the norm.
No, I don't trust the government, but I trust a corporation even less because a corporation is legally obliged to follow a course of action that maximises shareholder value. Regulations is only necessary because of the flaws in corporation law, if you want to do away with government regulation and interference in business affairs, then make companies liable for their externalities and then the market would truly be free. This is the naivety I was talking about, instead of fixing corporate law so it is relevant to the twenty first century you advocate reams of ineffectual laws so that corporations maintain their protection to go on plundering the taxpayer of their wealth? The system is broken, either fix it or put additional regulation in place to bring things into balance. If you don't do it the financial system will continue to suffer collapses like this and people loose confidence investing their money in it.
Wait wait wait wait, when did I ever suggest reams of ineffectual laws? Quite the opposite, actually; I'm not even a supporter of corporate personhood.
I don't like Ayn Rand, her ethics, her epistemology, and especially her views on charity. You're not very intelligent, especially since you're trying to equate a political philosophy centered around mutual consent with a religion famous for exploiting lawsuits and coercing people...
Your risky investment is your "fault"; I don't like using that word in any context like this, granted, in a perfect, just world the hobo would have paid you back.
But no one should be forced to help bail you out and give you that 10 bucks because of your risky decisions.
No, I don't trust the government, but I trust a corporation even less because a corporation is legally obliged to follow a course of action that maximises shareholder value.
You don't see how self-refuting this is? If corporations are worse because they are LEGALLY requires to maximize shareholder value, then, what entity is responsible for this LEGAL principle...?
And before someone says that "but what if Steam goes down?", Valve has claimed that in the event that they close up shop they will release a patch activating the games without needing to be online.
Frankly, I think Steam is the case where they do things right, because it provides both a service with the DRM--the service to download and play your games on any computer, tied to an account.
Actually, I've heard that point before and forgot to consider it. Yeah, the whole "EA is fucking us!" thing might be true then.
But now I wonder, if DRM hurts sales all-around, then it even prevent the initial sales that may have ended up a reseller like GameSis still stronger, and EA should know this. So maybe my "appeal to the pointy-haired boss" is still stronger--or another version of it that I forgot to mention, "make the shareholders think we're trying to maximize sales," which may be an even better hypothesis.
I already considered your point and I thought the implications of my post addressed that. When has DRM even -curbed- piracy? Again, Spore's DRM was cracked before the game was even released in America (iirc it was released early in Australia or something for some reason, maybe accident?). The DRM gets cracked pretty much the same day, and the cracked versions are easier to deal with, to boot. So how, exactly, is piracy being curbed in any way, shape, or form? Nobody "waits" on the crack, except usually maybe for updates to a no-cd hack before they install the latest patch.
You say that it isn't the case when the DRM is more trouble than just waiting for a clean crack, but given that already the cracks pretty much come out the day of release, if not before, and that DRM inherently makes the game more trouble than the piracy itself, I'm not sure that it EVER curbs piracy. Maybe a friend lending his game to someone? But those days when people were so naive are long passed; everyone knows about filesharing today.
We're willing to evolve our policy to accommodate our consumers. But we're hoping that everyone understands that DRM policy is essential to the economic structure we use to fund our games and as well as to the rights of people who create them. Without the ability to protect our work from piracy, developers across the entire game industry will eventually stop investing time and money in PC titles.
Not only does this sound hilarious ("essential to the economic structure...") but not once in the history of software piracy, as far as I know, has DRM -ever- stopped piracy.
I have to wonder if the CEOs and the decision-makers are out-of-touch and naive. Who do they think is actually going to believe this shit? Do they? Frankly, I don't think any actual malice is going on, just complete stupidity by non-techies easily wowed by the DRM snake oil.
People like to go "ugh EA is fucking us!" and also complain "But the DRM actually hurts sales!" (probably true) and yet they STILL bang their head against the wall. If DRM worked, then the EA fucking us thing might be true. But given how worthless DRM is and how hackers break it the day it comes out (and often, before, as was partly the case with Spore) I frankly have to wonder if someone is simply just out of touch.
Actually, I have a better idea. DRM is being used not because it works, but because someone (or some group, the people responsible for fighting piracy or such?) in the corporate structure ants the people up top to think they're doing their (impossible, and they likely know it) job so they don't get sacked. DRM stinks of a product of bureaucracy.
So you're suggesting "might makes right", that since in the past one force won over another that is somehow a good basis for deciding upon legal principles?
You can't fix federalism; appealing to a big fat government to save you is like appealing to a God; everyone wants some big embodiment of justice and all of them just think it needs to be fixed, although it never will be, especially since no one agrees on how things should work. And the God that can save you can just as easily smite you, and let me tell you, this God seems prone to anger.
The solution IS a state-centered approach. Smaller government, less points of failure; at least you can realistically move if your state is shit. That, however, is not the case when you have a big monolithic government. I don't know whether the authors would agree with me on this, but I think there's a reason most dystopic novels feature large, monolithic governments as the oppressor.
Seriously, some of Deepak's later stuff has been a bit fluffy, but his earlier publishings were very informative to students of both New Age philosophy and energy work. He explained the chakras and personal energy fields very well. I have spoken to Reiki masters who cite his work, Wiccans(and other occultists) who have improved their magics from learning energy control, and Martial artists who have improved their skills through better visualization of their chi/ki just to name a few . All thanks to Deepak.
One's use of an OS does not bespeak their worth as a person or teacher, just as one's faith in a diety does not justify their continued existance.
From this statement alone I'd have to conclude it does, however, say something about intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
You are assuming that shamanistic magic and law are logical, consistent, and coherent, with that statement. You should probably think a little harder and realise what exactly I was saying.
That was my partially my point. Atheose is operating under the very false mindset that people and institutions operate logically and consistently and that's not true at all.
I, however, was saying that it is all three at once--who said the law was consistent? Not I. It uses different combinations of each three sometimes at the same times but also at different times. Who says that something based on tradition and on formula isn't also influenced partially by bullshitting your way through? The law has a ton of tradition and a ton of ad-hoc bullshit.
Does anyone take Civics any more?
Apparently you did, which is why you believe that bullshit. You make the mistake of trusting the courts, first of all, as the courts are basically like shamanistic magic that is based on tradition, based on formula, and made up as you go along.
The Supreme Court has ruled, that students don't "shed their constitutional rights ⦠at the schoolhouse gate", anyway. (Tinker v. Des Moines)
But who really cares? Who cares what the courts think? Do you even believe your own argument? Does the state have a right to systematically execute minors? Why not, I thought they don't have rights?
What is harm"? A weasel word if I ever heard one. Namecalling? Poopiehead buttsniffer!
But seriously, and before anyone makes it, there's a difference between that tired old "shouting fire in a crowded theater" analogy" and telling someone they smell like an elephant's butt. It's true people are affected by the things other's say, but it's nearly impossible to know how they will really react to it. I know if I cut you you'll bleed; I don't know that if I said you smelled like rancid turnips you'd go kill yourself.
Anyway, where do you draw the line? Why is it so wrong to basically call the school principle a pervert (and maybe some students have caught him staring at their breasts!) and yet be able to call Bush a child killer? Sure, Bush may be president, and famous, but is that really a good reason?
Before we shout out about libel, there is also a difference between truly believing in what you say, and lying to destroy someone's reputation; there also could be a difference in the actual content and nature of the accusation, much in the same way it is to say "Steve likes fat girls" compared to "Steve raped me...!"
All right, all together now: I'm not a lawyer, and probably neither are you. But as I've said before, if you put 10 judges in 10 separate rooms and asked them to decide this case (or any other case) independently of each other, you'd be very unlikely to get a consensus anyway. The importance of courts in a civilized society is that they provide a peaceful means of settling disputes, not because we expect that the judges will actually get the "right" answer -- that's why we don't have a crisis of faith in the system every time the Supreme Court splits 5-4. (By contrast, when physicists work on problems involving car safety and satellite trajectories, we do care about them getting the "right" answer, and so physicists are held to a higher standard than judges -- we expect that 9 physicists working on the same problem in separate rooms would all get the same result.) That goes for the rest of us too -- I have no independent confirmation that I'm right, and anyone ranting with supreme confidence that I'm wrong, has no independent confirmation that they're right, either. The best we can do is try to make arguments that are logically consistent, and check that even if they are free of internal contradicions, that they also can't be carried through to an absurd conclusion.
This pretty much illustrates what the law and justice system actually are. The "justice" "system" (it's really neither) is full of contradictory rulings, vague statutes, and all-around bullshit. People are conned into believing in judgments based on "legal principles" because they are given fancy names in Latin; in a relevant example to the article, in loco parentis (read the article to get a sense just how contradictory and fragmented the system really is) could probably be used to justify suspension or even expulsion of this kid, as it is often used to justify the state enforcing its standards; the state essentially can decide which type of speech or position the student expresses is allowable. I'm sure a school could get away with suspending a student based on that student's belief that, say, drugs should be legal or expressing a political opinion that could be offensive to some people. (This is one of the problems with public schooling, I think--if the state has to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable speech, then some of that unacceptable speech is going to inevitably "massively unpopular opinion or idea"). And, as an aside, and I'm sure a lot of us nerds that sludged through high school can remember, the administators were often more concerned with how students dressed than with what parents are really supposed to care about, like violence, as the violent bullies never got in trouble. Maybe school administrators see themselves in the bullies...
The Republicans are right when they speak of "activist judges", but not quite in the way they've thought of it. All judges are essentially activists for their own personal political and moral philosophies. A judge isn't going to rule against what he thinks is moral and what is just. Our law system is based on tradition, and yet, is fragmented and contradictory, so a judge can usually look back to previous caselaw and find something to justify what he thinks.
Don't believe me that the system is one big play? Look at history. Look at the many times the Supreme Court has overturned themselves (funny how the words of the constitution essentially don't change, but how the Court's rulings do...) and look at how much attention is given to Supreme Court nominees. Look at FDR trying to pack the Court with sympathizers to the New Deal. Look at the whole issue whether the nominees support Roe v. Wade or not. Look at how many goddamn 5-4 splits there are over the goddamn constitution. Look at how we can call judges "conservative" or "liberal" as if they belong to a sports team and how we describe their past cases as if they were sports games, speaking of their decisions as if they were some great playoff
Clearly, the answer to a corporation removing a service only a vast minority use these days (whether USENET is great or not is irrelevant) is nationalization and socialism, right...?
Anyway, to your parent on this thread:
For what they offer for Internet, you should be paying $19.99, and not $55.00.
And yet, you'd still depart with that $55. I fail to see why your personal opinion on what a service should cost should have any bearing on what they get to offer it for. If you're willing to pay, and they're willing to offer, then it's essentially a fair deal.
Because we all know that all the "primary" sites your teachers always want you to go to never ever have misleading information and are always cited.
Thanks for the childish, juvenile strawman.
Now, I'm not sure if I would write a 100 page book about American History based on Wikipedia, but a paper about most software Wikipedia is going to give you the most information short of talking to the actual developer (because most of the time the project's site is no good and man pages only tell you the flags you can use)
The problem is is that on no particular article at any particular time can be trusted; maybe you can tell if something on the page is a lie, but people using it as a source of information cannot. The fact that you suggest this tells me you're probably the type of person that goes out and hunts for material that confirms what you already know when writing a paper instead of using it to support a thesis or argument; that, and that you would say "your teachers" indicates to me that you're probably still in high school, and thus not yet introduced to academic standards.
This doesn't even have anything to do with professors being accurate and honest. The simple fact is is that the peer reviews on a wikipedia page may also include weirdos with no scientific knowledge whatsoever. Having once edited wikipedia I saw that firsthand, too.
Your grandiosity aside, professors laughed at wikipedia because of credibility issues citing random sources.
And they are quite right.
Let's step back and realize that it was, first of all, a joke.
I don't think you understand my argument. Yes, the reselling dries up, but then so do FIRST sales BECAUSE of the DRM.
My post contains a number of implicit assumptions however that may not be true. But it does call into question whether that is exactly the case...
0) people download and play game, and see how unfullfilling, widdled down the game really is after all the hype
Seriously, Spore is one of the two most over-hyped games of this year. The only other game as over-hyped is Age of Conan (boy did that one fall flat on its face!)
But again, if DRM results in less sales anyway, why would they be doing this?
Your explanation is simply adding another layer of complexity. Okay, so DRM doesn't work for and isn't meant to reduce piracy... so, it's to prevent reselling? That still just means people are going to pirate it, especially moreso with the restrictive DRM. It's a possible explanation but not one that really explains why they continue to release DRM that presumably (and I am assuming it for the sake of argument) results in even less sales.
People often try to find insidious reasons behind actions and often can make a plausible connection between two things, but that is not necessarily what the motivation is or was--it may just be a functional coincidence. Obviously the publisher doesn't like reselling, but DRM would never be the answer to that as it, as we all believe, reduces all sales. Less sales means less reselling.
And...uh, can you blame them for not wanting reselling? I'm not saying that, if they are locking people out, that that justifies that kind of DRM, merely that you can't blame a company for wanting people to buy a new product instead of reselling. EA is perfectly within its right ethically and legally, to try to move towards a more online approach to offering additional content, etc; this is partly the reason MMOs seem so attractive to companies. The consumer/customer eventually decides if it's a good deal or not. Customers are loudly proclaiming that it's not a good deal with the DRM. This reaction by EA is a good first step; let's show them it's not enough.
Oh, and I don't like this us vs. them mentality people have towards business. Businesses give us things, but they need us to survive. You can whine all day about game companies wanting to maximize their profits (you try to maximize your benefit too, do you not...?) but the only reason you have a lot of these games is because of the very company or industry you're complaining about.
Yeah, because giving a democracy the power to do something as radical as keep a stable currency is such a huge intrusion. We should all be scribbling our own IOU's to pay for things. Works much better./sarcasm
I never suggested that. Go back to World of Warcraft, where things like "/sarcasm" are more the norm.
Actually let me go back to the whole paragraph:
No, I don't trust the government, but I trust a corporation even less because a corporation is legally obliged to follow a course of action that maximises shareholder value. Regulations is only necessary because of the flaws in corporation law, if you want to do away with government regulation and interference in business affairs, then make companies liable for their externalities and then the market would truly be free. This is the naivety I was talking about, instead of fixing corporate law so it is relevant to the twenty first century you advocate reams of ineffectual laws so that corporations maintain their protection to go on plundering the taxpayer of their wealth? The system is broken, either fix it or put additional regulation in place to bring things into balance. If you don't do it the financial system will continue to suffer collapses like this and people loose confidence investing their money in it.
Wait wait wait wait, when did I ever suggest reams of ineffectual laws? Quite the opposite, actually; I'm not even a supporter of corporate personhood.
I don't like Ayn Rand, her ethics, her epistemology, and especially her views on charity. You're not very intelligent, especially since you're trying to equate a political philosophy centered around mutual consent with a religion famous for exploiting lawsuits and coercing people...
Your risky investment is your "fault"; I don't like using that word in any context like this, granted, in a perfect, just world the hobo would have paid you back.
But no one should be forced to help bail you out and give you that 10 bucks because of your risky decisions.
I've only the time to address one thing:
No, I don't trust the government, but I trust a corporation even less because a corporation is legally obliged to follow a course of action that maximises shareholder value.
You don't see how self-refuting this is? If corporations are worse because they are LEGALLY requires to maximize shareholder value, then, what entity is responsible for this LEGAL principle...?
And before someone says that "but what if Steam goes down?", Valve has claimed that in the event that they close up shop they will release a patch activating the games without needing to be online.
Frankly, I think Steam is the case where they do things right, because it provides both a service with the DRM--the service to download and play your games on any computer, tied to an account.
Actually, I've heard that point before and forgot to consider it. Yeah, the whole "EA is fucking us!" thing might be true then.
But now I wonder, if DRM hurts sales all-around, then it even prevent the initial sales that may have ended up a reseller like GameSis still stronger, and EA should know this. So maybe my "appeal to the pointy-haired boss" is still stronger--or another version of it that I forgot to mention, "make the shareholders think we're trying to maximize sales," which may be an even better hypothesis.
I already considered your point and I thought the implications of my post addressed that. When has DRM even -curbed- piracy? Again, Spore's DRM was cracked before the game was even released in America (iirc it was released early in Australia or something for some reason, maybe accident?). The DRM gets cracked pretty much the same day, and the cracked versions are easier to deal with, to boot. So how, exactly, is piracy being curbed in any way, shape, or form? Nobody "waits" on the crack, except usually maybe for updates to a no-cd hack before they install the latest patch.
You say that it isn't the case when the DRM is more trouble than just waiting for a clean crack, but given that already the cracks pretty much come out the day of release, if not before, and that DRM inherently makes the game more trouble than the piracy itself, I'm not sure that it EVER curbs piracy. Maybe a friend lending his game to someone? But those days when people were so naive are long passed; everyone knows about filesharing today.
We're willing to evolve our policy to accommodate our consumers. But we're hoping that everyone understands that DRM policy is essential to the economic structure we use to fund our games and as well as to the rights of people who create them. Without the ability to protect our work from piracy, developers across the entire game industry will eventually stop investing time and money in PC titles.
Not only does this sound hilarious ("essential to the economic structure...") but not once in the history of software piracy, as far as I know, has DRM -ever- stopped piracy.
I have to wonder if the CEOs and the decision-makers are out-of-touch and naive. Who do they think is actually going to believe this shit? Do they? Frankly, I don't think any actual malice is going on, just complete stupidity by non-techies easily wowed by the DRM snake oil.
People like to go "ugh EA is fucking us!" and also complain "But the DRM actually hurts sales!" (probably true) and yet they STILL bang their head against the wall. If DRM worked, then the EA fucking us thing might be true. But given how worthless DRM is and how hackers break it the day it comes out (and often, before, as was partly the case with Spore) I frankly have to wonder if someone is simply just out of touch.
Actually, I have a better idea. DRM is being used not because it works, but because someone (or some group, the people responsible for fighting piracy or such?) in the corporate structure ants the people up top to think they're doing their (impossible, and they likely know it) job so they don't get sacked. DRM stinks of a product of bureaucracy.
So you're suggesting "might makes right", that since in the past one force won over another that is somehow a good basis for deciding upon legal principles?
You can't fix federalism; appealing to a big fat government to save you is like appealing to a God; everyone wants some big embodiment of justice and all of them just think it needs to be fixed, although it never will be, especially since no one agrees on how things should work. And the God that can save you can just as easily smite you, and let me tell you, this God seems prone to anger.
The solution IS a state-centered approach. Smaller government, less points of failure; at least you can realistically move if your state is shit. That, however, is not the case when you have a big monolithic government. I don't know whether the authors would agree with me on this, but I think there's a reason most dystopic novels feature large, monolithic governments as the oppressor.
Seriously, some of Deepak's later stuff has been a bit fluffy, but his earlier publishings were very informative to students of both New Age philosophy and energy work. He explained the chakras and personal energy fields very well. I have spoken to Reiki masters who cite his work, Wiccans(and other occultists) who have improved their magics from learning energy control, and Martial artists who have improved their skills through better visualization of their chi/ki just to name a few . All thanks to Deepak.
One's use of an OS does not bespeak their worth as a person or teacher, just as one's faith in a diety does not justify their continued existance.
From this statement alone I'd have to conclude it does, however, say something about intelligence.
If that quack uses Windows then I'm going to hug my Linux box when I get home.