Piracy is good, yes. Have you been drinking Rupert Murdoch's Famous Internet Censorship flavored Kool Aid? Piracy is good. Even Bill Gates said that piracy is good - what greater authority on the subject can there be?
WTF is with this globalization, one world government view that pirates are a cancer, eating at the world's economy? There are probably tens of thousands of people in China who could never have been able to buy Windows, who are working in the tech world today, because pirated copies of Windows were available. Ditto with India, and God knows how many other countries. EVEN THE UNITED STATES!!! (How many American parents were unable to purchase, or see the wisdom in purchasing, Windows 95 in 1995?)
Of course, we're back to the definition and purpose of copyright law. Copyright law was never intended to ensure that an author would make a profit. It was only intended to ensure that IF THERE WERE A PROFIT to be made, then the author should get some of that profit.
Piracy is good, if for no other reason than underprivileged people acquiring educational tools. Games and music? I just don't give a rat's ass about the music syndicates, movie syndicates, and games. They can all go belly-up if they lack the imagination to find new business models.
Piracy is good. I got my first Windows NT via torrent. I got my first Linux via torrent. I got my first MacOS via torrent. I'm among the wealthiest 1% of the world's population, and I couldn't afford everything that I've ever played with on the computer. What about that other 99%?
I support piracy, whole heartedly. My counterparts in backwoods African and Asian and South American countries NEED piracy, if they are ever to join the 20th century. You know, the century that we retired a decade ago?
Hey, one of the women I work with went home on vacation a few weeks ago. She has already overstayed her stay. I asked her husband how I could email her. I learned that her hometown only got electricity about 25 years ago, and there IS NO INTERNET!!! Cell phones don't work. If I were to communicate with her, it would be via POTS, at some exorbitant cost.
Now, pull your head outta your butt, and support Pirate Bay, and the Pirate Parties. They provide a crucial service to huge segments of the world's population.
Oh - I'll note here, that I've not personally pirated anything in a long time. Today, I don't need WinNT, anything that Adobe makes, or even Sun/Oracle. With OSS, it's free anyway. I still get most of my stuff via torrent though!
Climate change has happened repeatedly in mankind's history. Climate change has been happening since long before mankind appeared, and will continue happening long after mankind has disappeared from the face of the earth.
Mankind is mostly irrelevant. It is possible that mankind has accelerated this one cycle of climate change a fraction of a percent, but it would be amazing if anyone actually had enough facts to demonstrate that as fact.
It doesn't take 10, 20, or more years. Adolph and his thugs worked hard to get where they could stage their Kristallnacht. Let's call it 5 years of serious groundwork, followed up with a metamorphic event.
Don't be a douche. I have mod points all the time - until I actually want to use some. Someone makes a really great post, I see it's been modded to 3, and I look for the mod button - AND IT'S NOT THERE!!!!
Besides which, no one can rely on the vagaries of slashdot moderation. My karma has been high for a couple years running. Tomorrow, my karma could be in the septic tank. Shit happens, you know?
The McCarthy days. That's exactly what came to my mind, when I read the title, and then the summary. Back then, there was a Commie hiding on every corner, now it's a terrorist. And, yes, it's all bullshit.
Wait - you mean HBGary, whose clock was cleaned by Anonymous? Why would I ask them anything? If they wrote a book, 'How to be a third rate charlatan', I might read it. I'd consider it to be a prerequisite to understanding 'How to be a first rate charlatan' - which would most likely be written by a politician.
News is like food. I just ingest and digest the stuff, I don't bother remembering whether I ate from fine china, bone china, or throwaway paper plates.;^)
Microsoft owns shit. Pure shit. Patents on software are absurd. It's properly COPYRIGHT!!!
Now, IF Microsoft were getting license fees on COPYRIGHTS, then, and only then, might I actually look at the issue as though it were a rational thing.
I will admit, that I am prejudiced against Microsoft, and even if I were examining a rational idea such as licensing a copyrighted IP, I would still be a hard sell. But, PATENTS?!?!?! Absurd, insane, idiotic - I could go on for awhile with descriptive terms.
Damned near everyone around here has mentioned the fact that the patent system is broken. It needs to be fixed! Unfortunately, I suspect things to get a whole lot worse, before anyone gets around to actually fixing the damned thing! Especially since our lawmakers are all on the take.
And, yes, Microsoft taking money from any *nix derivative is indeed extortion. There is precious little in any unix-like that had it's origins at Redmond.
ROFLMAO - I remember the first years seeing those ads. I actually clicked on them. Looked up a couple of high school buddies, and found that I could contact them for - oh, I can't remember - maybe sixty dollars. Thought about that for a couple minutes. Concluded that if those buddies were really worth sixty bucks to me, I would have kept track of them all along!
Shipmates, now - that's another story. Whole different ballgame. I might pay to track some of them down. But, dammit - seems that more than half are dead already. Heard that my *favorite* (maybe "most respected" would be a better term here) commanding officer had died almost two years ago, and that made me feel ten frigging years older.
Anyway - I figure that the people who want me to pay for that info are probably just con artists anyway. "Oh, you say that this isn't the right John Brown? Oh, so sorry, but the contract agreement doesn't guarantee that we find the John Brown you were looking for. Maybe for another twenty dollars, we can try again? Or, for a hundred, we can do a more personalized search with guaranteed results!"
I'm saying that those individuals have the right to keep a secret between themselves. The company does not become a person, simply because those people decide to become a company. "By extension" implies that a company is entitled to the rights and considerations that an individual is entitled to.
The fifth amendment, for instance, protects me from being forced to testify against myself. No such protection is afforded a corporation. When Uncle wants to examine any records, or question any employee, affiliate, officer, or representative, the company cannot plead the fifth. Any individual within the company might do so, but the company cannot.
I could go on, but my point is, it is harmful to society to even make statements that seem to imply that companies have legal status as persons. They are not. You cannot extend the right to life to a company, nor the right to procreate, nor the right to vote, or serve in the military.
I'll be perfectly honest here - I hate politics. Hate 'em with a passion. And, I've never dealt with Iran, so there's a lot that I don't know. But, it so often happens that despite my ignorance, I find other people making posts, such as AC made above, that are so overwhelmingly ignorant, that I can't just let it pass. Hopefully, a few people have read your and my posts, and come to the conclusion that what the mass media feeds them is so much bullshit.
Yes, the Persians are every bit as complex a people as Europeans, or Americans, or anyone else. And, their politics are complex, as well. I don't even really hope to understand them. But, by virtue of reading, and listening, I most definitely have a better picture Iran's past 50-odd years of history than most Americans.
There is a reason that Iran had it's revolution, after all. And, that reason stems from US and UK interference in the Persian's own politics. Without that interference, the ayatollahs would probably not enjoy any power at all.
Oh - I must add one thing that is often overlooked in discussions of this type. Japan had already been subjected to some of the more conventional firebombings, such as Dresden experienced. Those more typical bombings were even more horrible than Dresden, because the Japanese military-industrial complex was more spread out into poor neighborhoods, than Germany had been. They were more terrible, in that Japanese construction was vastly more flammable than German construction, causing the damage to be even more widespread, and more deadly.
And, those firebombings had not even put a dent in their will to fight.
Invading Japanese islands and mainland would have been a nightmare indeed. I personally believe that the bombs were a necessary evil.
You, Sir, win the prize, for the most educated, and most intelligent response.
I happen to disagree with you, slightly. I believe that it was necessary to defeat the Japanese. As for those options you mention - hmmmm. How many bombs were available at that time? And, what would the cost have been to acquire more? Remember, this was new technology, then. Wasting a bomb on a non-military target for the purposes of demonstrating the power of the bombs was probably seen as "Not an option!"
Testing nuclear destruction in populated areas was probably seen as necessary, but I suspect that the military was determined to inflict the maximum damage to an active enemy, more than anything else. Japan had inflicted a lot of hurt on us, and we demanded satisfaction. Japan had also inflicted a lot of hurt on various allies, and we demanded some satisfaction for that, as well. And, it didn't hurt that the Japanese are a different race, with a different culture, and different values. It was easy to dehumanize them.
And, let us not forget that "fire for effect" is very much the military way of doing things. "Fire for demonstration" or "Fire for shock and awe" is a foreign concept to the military mind.
My point is, they are obviously not making comparisons to the entire pool of cell phone purchasers. Surveying a select subclass of cell phone purchasers can almost guarantee the results you are looking for.
If slashdot included a polling mechanism such as is available on VBB, we could post a survey for all slashdot users to respond to. "How would you rank x model phone?" Or, "What is your favorite phone?" Or, "Which phone do you think is the most technologically advanced?"
On the other hand, asking "Which Windows phone is your favorite?" would guarantee that Android couldn't win the poll.
How in the HELL does anyone manage to manipulate real world facts, to the extent that Windows has not one, not two, but the THREE top rated phones? FFS, I don't know of one single person in real life who is carrying around a Windows phone. Not one. iPhones are a dime a dozen, and Androids are about twenty cents per gross. Other proprietary OS's are common as lice in a prison. Window? If I want to actually see, and touch a Windows phone, I have to find a store where one is on display, collecting dust.
Top rated? They probably went to a nursing home, where no one had ever owned a cell phone, and distributed 20 Windows phone, and one broken Android. The old folks were then asked to rate those phones. The broken Android beat out the other 17 Windows phones.
Obviously, you don't understand Iranian politics. The president of Iran has a bit of power. A little bit, that is. Real power rests with the "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Khomanie (spelling). The Ayatollah draws his power from his circle of Ayatollahs, who run the country behind the scenes. The president is little more than a figurehead. Our own president in the United States has much more real power than the president of Iran.
Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden? In your comparison, please include comparisons of number of lives lost, percentages of military to civilian deaths, personal property losses, infrastructure losses, and the military value of all those losses.
Perhaps, if you have enough background, you could compare the overall losses to both German and Japan during and immediately after World War 2.
And, if you're up to the task, maybe you could explain why the US military still has a surplus of Purple Heart medals, to the tune of a quarter million of them.
Nuclear weapons are terrible, I'll grant that. But, so is a 500 pound incindiary bomb landing in your living room. To the dead people, there is no difference.
Sure, it can be resolved in a courtroom. Some one uses SOPA to take down your site. Your site is down, so your revenues are down. It takes two years to get your day in court. By this time, you have, by necessity, moved on to something else. So, finally, your day in court is an inconvenience that interferes with your current job/contract/consultancy. You're screwed no matter how you look at it, and the MAFIAA wins.
Slashdot Mirror
Piracy is good, yes. Have you been drinking Rupert Murdoch's Famous Internet Censorship flavored Kool Aid? Piracy is good. Even Bill Gates said that piracy is good - what greater authority on the subject can there be?
http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/2803
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9
WTF is with this globalization, one world government view that pirates are a cancer, eating at the world's economy? There are probably tens of thousands of people in China who could never have been able to buy Windows, who are working in the tech world today, because pirated copies of Windows were available. Ditto with India, and God knows how many other countries. EVEN THE UNITED STATES!!! (How many American parents were unable to purchase, or see the wisdom in purchasing, Windows 95 in 1995?)
Of course, we're back to the definition and purpose of copyright law. Copyright law was never intended to ensure that an author would make a profit. It was only intended to ensure that IF THERE WERE A PROFIT to be made, then the author should get some of that profit.
Piracy is good, if for no other reason than underprivileged people acquiring educational tools. Games and music? I just don't give a rat's ass about the music syndicates, movie syndicates, and games. They can all go belly-up if they lack the imagination to find new business models.
Piracy is good. I got my first Windows NT via torrent. I got my first Linux via torrent. I got my first MacOS via torrent. I'm among the wealthiest 1% of the world's population, and I couldn't afford everything that I've ever played with on the computer. What about that other 99%?
I support piracy, whole heartedly. My counterparts in backwoods African and Asian and South American countries NEED piracy, if they are ever to join the 20th century. You know, the century that we retired a decade ago?
Hey, one of the women I work with went home on vacation a few weeks ago. She has already overstayed her stay. I asked her husband how I could email her. I learned that her hometown only got electricity about 25 years ago, and there IS NO INTERNET!!! Cell phones don't work. If I were to communicate with her, it would be via POTS, at some exorbitant cost.
Now, pull your head outta your butt, and support Pirate Bay, and the Pirate Parties. They provide a crucial service to huge segments of the world's population.
Oh - I'll note here, that I've not personally pirated anything in a long time. Today, I don't need WinNT, anything that Adobe makes, or even Sun/Oracle. With OSS, it's free anyway. I still get most of my stuff via torrent though!
"I have zero emotional investment in Dropbox."
That ranks among the things that makes a rational man ask, "WTF?"
Alright, so maybe you would care to list some of the things that you do have an "emotional investment" in?
What AC said about Kool-Aid.
Climate change has happened repeatedly in mankind's history. Climate change has been happening since long before mankind appeared, and will continue happening long after mankind has disappeared from the face of the earth.
Mankind is mostly irrelevant. It is possible that mankind has accelerated this one cycle of climate change a fraction of a percent, but it would be amazing if anyone actually had enough facts to demonstrate that as fact.
I seem to have missed that part of the Constitution. Where does it have the right to assembly, except on private property?
It doesn't take 10, 20, or more years. Adolph and his thugs worked hard to get where they could stage their Kristallnacht. Let's call it 5 years of serious groundwork, followed up with a metamorphic event.
Don't be a douche. I have mod points all the time - until I actually want to use some. Someone makes a really great post, I see it's been modded to 3, and I look for the mod button - AND IT'S NOT THERE!!!!
Besides which, no one can rely on the vagaries of slashdot moderation. My karma has been high for a couple years running. Tomorrow, my karma could be in the septic tank. Shit happens, you know?
The McCarthy days. That's exactly what came to my mind, when I read the title, and then the summary. Back then, there was a Commie hiding on every corner, now it's a terrorist. And, yes, it's all bullshit.
Wait - you mean HBGary, whose clock was cleaned by Anonymous? Why would I ask them anything? If they wrote a book, 'How to be a third rate charlatan', I might read it. I'd consider it to be a prerequisite to understanding 'How to be a first rate charlatan' - which would most likely be written by a politician.
You're just so CYNICAL! Can't you just accept the fact that sometimes, the lawyers and judges manage to do something right, just because it's right?
Ohhhh - who am I kidding here? Yes, you got it right, and the MAFIAA organizations are the proof of that.
News is like food. I just ingest and digest the stuff, I don't bother remembering whether I ate from fine china, bone china, or throwaway paper plates. ;^)
Microsoft owns shit. Pure shit. Patents on software are absurd. It's properly COPYRIGHT!!!
Now, IF Microsoft were getting license fees on COPYRIGHTS, then, and only then, might I actually look at the issue as though it were a rational thing.
I will admit, that I am prejudiced against Microsoft, and even if I were examining a rational idea such as licensing a copyrighted IP, I would still be a hard sell. But, PATENTS?!?!?! Absurd, insane, idiotic - I could go on for awhile with descriptive terms.
Damned near everyone around here has mentioned the fact that the patent system is broken. It needs to be fixed! Unfortunately, I suspect things to get a whole lot worse, before anyone gets around to actually fixing the damned thing! Especially since our lawmakers are all on the take.
And, yes, Microsoft taking money from any *nix derivative is indeed extortion. There is precious little in any unix-like that had it's origins at Redmond.
You must be thinking of Janet Napolitano. She first sold her soul to La Raza, then took out a second mortgage with the MAFIAA League.
ROFLMAO - I remember the first years seeing those ads. I actually clicked on them. Looked up a couple of high school buddies, and found that I could contact them for - oh, I can't remember - maybe sixty dollars. Thought about that for a couple minutes. Concluded that if those buddies were really worth sixty bucks to me, I would have kept track of them all along!
Shipmates, now - that's another story. Whole different ballgame. I might pay to track some of them down. But, dammit - seems that more than half are dead already. Heard that my *favorite* (maybe "most respected" would be a better term here) commanding officer had died almost two years ago, and that made me feel ten frigging years older.
Anyway - I figure that the people who want me to pay for that info are probably just con artists anyway. "Oh, you say that this isn't the right John Brown? Oh, so sorry, but the contract agreement doesn't guarantee that we find the John Brown you were looking for. Maybe for another twenty dollars, we can try again? Or, for a hundred, we can do a more personalized search with guaranteed results!"
I'm saying that those individuals have the right to keep a secret between themselves. The company does not become a person, simply because those people decide to become a company. "By extension" implies that a company is entitled to the rights and considerations that an individual is entitled to.
The fifth amendment, for instance, protects me from being forced to testify against myself. No such protection is afforded a corporation. When Uncle wants to examine any records, or question any employee, affiliate, officer, or representative, the company cannot plead the fifth. Any individual within the company might do so, but the company cannot.
I could go on, but my point is, it is harmful to society to even make statements that seem to imply that companies have legal status as persons. They are not. You cannot extend the right to life to a company, nor the right to procreate, nor the right to vote, or serve in the military.
That "by extension" bullshit is exactly that - BULLSHIT!
A company is not a person, and companies are not eligible to be considered as persons. The rights of people are not properly extended to corporations.
Good post, thank you very much.
I'll be perfectly honest here - I hate politics. Hate 'em with a passion. And, I've never dealt with Iran, so there's a lot that I don't know. But, it so often happens that despite my ignorance, I find other people making posts, such as AC made above, that are so overwhelmingly ignorant, that I can't just let it pass. Hopefully, a few people have read your and my posts, and come to the conclusion that what the mass media feeds them is so much bullshit.
Yes, the Persians are every bit as complex a people as Europeans, or Americans, or anyone else. And, their politics are complex, as well. I don't even really hope to understand them. But, by virtue of reading, and listening, I most definitely have a better picture Iran's past 50-odd years of history than most Americans.
There is a reason that Iran had it's revolution, after all. And, that reason stems from US and UK interference in the Persian's own politics. Without that interference, the ayatollahs would probably not enjoy any power at all.
Your opinion?
Oh - I must add one thing that is often overlooked in discussions of this type. Japan had already been subjected to some of the more conventional firebombings, such as Dresden experienced. Those more typical bombings were even more horrible than Dresden, because the Japanese military-industrial complex was more spread out into poor neighborhoods, than Germany had been. They were more terrible, in that Japanese construction was vastly more flammable than German construction, causing the damage to be even more widespread, and more deadly.
And, those firebombings had not even put a dent in their will to fight.
Invading Japanese islands and mainland would have been a nightmare indeed. I personally believe that the bombs were a necessary evil.
You, Sir, win the prize, for the most educated, and most intelligent response.
I happen to disagree with you, slightly. I believe that it was necessary to defeat the Japanese. As for those options you mention - hmmmm. How many bombs were available at that time? And, what would the cost have been to acquire more? Remember, this was new technology, then. Wasting a bomb on a non-military target for the purposes of demonstrating the power of the bombs was probably seen as "Not an option!"
Testing nuclear destruction in populated areas was probably seen as necessary, but I suspect that the military was determined to inflict the maximum damage to an active enemy, more than anything else. Japan had inflicted a lot of hurt on us, and we demanded satisfaction. Japan had also inflicted a lot of hurt on various allies, and we demanded some satisfaction for that, as well. And, it didn't hurt that the Japanese are a different race, with a different culture, and different values. It was easy to dehumanize them.
And, let us not forget that "fire for effect" is very much the military way of doing things. "Fire for demonstration" or "Fire for shock and awe" is a foreign concept to the military mind.
They even support *nix, it appears. Haven't used it, but there's a tarball available.
My point is, they are obviously not making comparisons to the entire pool of cell phone purchasers. Surveying a select subclass of cell phone purchasers can almost guarantee the results you are looking for.
If slashdot included a polling mechanism such as is available on VBB, we could post a survey for all slashdot users to respond to. "How would you rank x model phone?" Or, "What is your favorite phone?" Or, "Which phone do you think is the most technologically advanced?"
On the other hand, asking "Which Windows phone is your favorite?" would guarantee that Android couldn't win the poll.
How in the HELL does anyone manage to manipulate real world facts, to the extent that Windows has not one, not two, but the THREE top rated phones? FFS, I don't know of one single person in real life who is carrying around a Windows phone. Not one. iPhones are a dime a dozen, and Androids are about twenty cents per gross. Other proprietary OS's are common as lice in a prison. Window? If I want to actually see, and touch a Windows phone, I have to find a store where one is on display, collecting dust.
Top rated? They probably went to a nursing home, where no one had ever owned a cell phone, and distributed 20 Windows phone, and one broken Android. The old folks were then asked to rate those phones. The broken Android beat out the other 17 Windows phones.
Obviously, you don't understand Iranian politics. The president of Iran has a bit of power. A little bit, that is. Real power rests with the "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Khomanie (spelling). The Ayatollah draws his power from his circle of Ayatollahs, who run the country behind the scenes. The president is little more than a figurehead. Our own president in the United States has much more real power than the president of Iran.
Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden? In your comparison, please include comparisons of number of lives lost, percentages of military to civilian deaths, personal property losses, infrastructure losses, and the military value of all those losses.
Perhaps, if you have enough background, you could compare the overall losses to both German and Japan during and immediately after World War 2.
And, if you're up to the task, maybe you could explain why the US military still has a surplus of Purple Heart medals, to the tune of a quarter million of them.
Nuclear weapons are terrible, I'll grant that. But, so is a 500 pound incindiary bomb landing in your living room. To the dead people, there is no difference.
The snowgirl, for me, please. "You better be nice to me, or I'll get you a hair dryer for your birthday!"
Sure, it can be resolved in a courtroom. Some one uses SOPA to take down your site. Your site is down, so your revenues are down. It takes two years to get your day in court. By this time, you have, by necessity, moved on to something else. So, finally, your day in court is an inconvenience that interferes with your current job/contract/consultancy. You're screwed no matter how you look at it, and the MAFIAA wins.