Your last 5 posts revolve around projecting military might across the globe to secure resources.
By any other name that's imperialistic. Empires spread their colonies to gather resources. But that was then, times have changed, along with the details. For example: no more giant buckles.
I dunno man, me and the wife got out of college a few years ago and we kinda feel like nomads hunting the elusive employment-beast on the steppes of America. Even though we pass through civilized lands, it's hard to establish a connection to a foreign place and peoples.
Whenever we ask friends about how to meet people, half of them answer: "go to church". That's not great advise for the atheist.
Well what about the family unit? Either when you were a child
That's as much of my post as you read isn't it?
What about the 2nd half of that sentence? The part where you're a father raising a (particularly ungrateful) son and providing for another life. Are you going to tell me you're only doing that to serve yourself in old age?
Newsflash! We're social creatures and doing that which is usually considered altruistic ultimately does help ourselves, including self-sacrifice.
Of course it's important to have an ego, seek a good life, and all that. But you cannot justify clawing your way to the top regardless of who you hurt on the way.
Furthermore, I'm not a 2 year old, but I sure as hell want the military to take care of the threat of foreign invasion. That's kind of their job. I'm totally willing to fund them though, to an extent.
And as an aside, your old testament god is awfully big on that coercion and negative repercussions bit.
Specifically you need a blue water, nuclear-powered navy like ours. I'm pretty sure China doesn't have that. The submarine that GP mentions was specifically a diesel vessel. You can shut off a diesel engine and run entirely on quiet batteries. You can't really turn off a nukey-plant. So while everyone was aghast that a chinese sub outperformed our own, you have to remember that they can only really operate like that near their own ports.
You also need some sort of platform to deliver those anti-tank missiles into our tanks, or at least get them in range and LOS of our tanks.
The fact that the GP implied that China didn't have ICBMs before they had a space program and that their "accuracy" is unknown shows his ignorance of military matters.
Not that I'm all that much better, but I'm not afraid of the bogeyman. I'm also not ignorant that the dragon has awoken.
There is no arrangement anywhere in the history of the world where you don't have to look out for yourself.
Well what about the family unit? Either when you were a child or when you have your own kids? During those times, other people are looking out for you and you should be looking out for others. But this is one of the big problems with Ayn Rand and her ilk. "looking out for yourself" can have a wide range of meaning. It can be basic self-preservation like remembering to eat, or it can be looking out for number one, caring about yourself above all else and to hell with the consequences. So anyone that disagreed with her was going to starve to death from a lack of ego, so that justified clawing your way to the top. So go ahead and tell me that scenario doesn't count.
I'd join a union if the industry in which I worked had unreasonable conditions and I had little hope of fixing those conditions alone. But honestly, I'd just do that because I was looking out for myself.
A chair is the product of the mind as much as a bar of gold is. Someone had to think about where to mine, how to smelt it, and what shape it should take. But that has zero impact on it's value. The value of a bar of gold is the ACTUAL GOLD CONTENT. The value of a chair is it's ability to hold up my ass.
As for copying chairs, you would be ludicrous if you were to try to claim that someone owns the idea of ye olde three-legged-stool. It's a plank with three sticks in it. It's common knowledge by this point. It's as basic as a 90 degree angle. The time for claiming the exclusive rights for sliced bread is over. Likewise, the period at which you should have exclusive rights to your work should have limits
But as much as I dislike how copyright is setup, you're going about this the wrong way. The purpose of copyright is to promote the creation of copywriteable works. So argue that you wouldn't create anything if it wouldn't feed your kids in the case of an unfortunate scenario.
Of course, neither does my job, which is why I'll buy life insurance like all the other peasants you seem to think you're above.
I'm all well and good with the point they're trying to make, but it doesn't quite justify excessive pricetags.
"We're making a point here, and this ludicrous fine which we're charging is supposed to send a message to the rest of the dirtbags" This is something that the bad people are supposed to say.
Oh god! I think my magical clicky device is broken. I aligned the two eldrich factors correctly and conjured more words to the mystic scrying pool just like I've seen others do, but something happened and I can't fix it. More words appeared, and then more and more and there doesn't seem to be an end to them. Oh god they're everywhere! My master is going to be back soon and I don't know what to do with all of them. I think I'll get the axe!
I believe the general argument from this point would be:
Copyright isn't property or a contract
It's the right to restrict use of your works for a set period of time. In a very loose sense, it's a contract with the government, one which should have a clause that makes it null and void with your death.
But really, tell your little trust funds that they need to go be productive members of society rather then sucking off their dead daddies teet at age 30. It will do them good.
Ok, so they did this for $71, not $10. Why even put that $10 price tag in the title? Because one component costs $10? That makes about as much sense as quoting the price of a whole car that can remote start out of the box.
So would you apply that to the states as well? The at-will employment states could be considered barbaric corporate slavers when compared to states that have rules for letting people go. Should they put a tariff on at-will employment states? You know, to hold them to the same standards?
And before that sounds too much like a slipper slope argument; we don't have a real good defined standard here. Or even 50 of them. It's a hodge-podge of have, have-nots, lucky bastards, and poor-slobs, whose fate is only marginally tied to their ability. In China there's a ridiculous number of people willing to suck ash to get a job. If you have a system where the employer wants to cut corners and skip safety, and the employees desperately wants to appease the boss, then how are you going to keep BOTH of them from doing so?
And just who and how are these tariff's defined? How do you put a price on the smell of a paper factory? Or a 5% birth defect rate? And if you want politicians to determine this, then it's going to get political, that's their job.
Well yes, you ARE advocating protectionism. Only your own slightly different flavor. Protectionism cuts us out of the benefits of globalism, and we drop from first world status.
And environmental policies protect everyone, not just the workers. Everyone who lives near the factory, everyone who lives down river, everyone who breaths the air. In most cases the benefits of the EPA are only locally realized, but it does have interstate and global impact as well.
If I see an embedded video, (and if it's particularly awesome,) I will frequently go through the hoops to find the url of the.flv file and download it onto my own hard drive.
Why?
Because I'm a hoarding little pack-rat when it comes to digital media. My unsorted pics folder is 7 gigs of nonstop wtf moments. Seriously, I've entertained company by just putting that folder on slide show.
Uh, the price to produce a decent music CD is approaching zero, especially if you already have the instruments and a PC.
Buy a mike, some foam, learn to be an sound engineer or get one to join the band, pay someone for hosting your website or pull out a 486 and learn how to host it yourself. Sell yourself to everyone you know, and give your music away for free.
OR, promise 90% of all revenue you ever generate, give up ownership of your works, sell out to a label so they can deal with all that business stuff, and you can simply get a check.
Possibly even it's sequel, 2nd ed, if that's what you're comfortable with, but I hear that the rules are rather inconsistent. I know you were probably hoping for a brand new hip system, but re-examine why that is. Why change? Your daughter will have leet street cred for starting out with straight AD&D. A classically trained gamer if you will.
(also, 2nd ed books are cheap as dirt, some having a fairly high dirt content.)
We the people are the teeth of the constitution. We are responsible for penalizing those who would break or bend our rules from within. We may not be able to push them through the legal system, and some of them we can't vote out, but we can shame them, diminish them, and take away their power.
It's politics, raise a ruckus and you can get shit done.
I don't think you can really "own" an ebook if it has DRM. Almost* any form of DRM I've been able to conceptualize has violated what I believe to be owning a book. And every version of DRM implementation that I've dealt with has been ridiculously restrictive.
I agree with GP. China is not the worlds largest market.
It is the worlds largest market with the largest potential growth.
Europe and America are of course the largest markets. But those markets are guarded by very fat cats who will defend their turf. Entering those markets would be expensive. Entering China is cheaper, and has greater potential for insane profits, IF you play by their rules. Before the dragon woke, like maybe a decade ago, China played nicer with foreign corporations. The dragon is now awake and is flexing it's clout. Times have changed.
As for social unrest, I dunno. As long as the communist party can keep supplying jobs to it's people, and put bread in their bowl (and sustain growth), then I don't see an uprising happening.
So, presuming you handed one of the DVDs to you mother in person (otherwise I'd ask who you handed said DVD to in order for it to arrive at your mother's), then there is now a DVD located in the house of little old lady which is vital to proving a comment on slashdot wrong.
Gentlemen, my mission is clear, I must be off...
Slashdot Mirror
Your last 5 posts revolve around projecting military might across the globe to secure resources.
By any other name that's imperialistic. Empires spread their colonies to gather resources. But that was then, times have changed, along with the details. For example: no more giant buckles.
You are taking a statistical study, and the obvious reason behind it, and then mis-applying it to make a derogatory statement.
What that would actually mean is that if you look like a hick, then people are going to call you a conservative, and they'd be right 60% of the time.
And we haven't preemptive invaded anyone (else) yet. That's always a plus.
I dunno man, me and the wife got out of college a few years ago and we kinda feel like nomads hunting the elusive employment-beast on the steppes of America. Even though we pass through civilized lands, it's hard to establish a connection to a foreign place and peoples.
Whenever we ask friends about how to meet people, half of them answer: "go to church". That's not great advise for the atheist.
Tell me about it. Those hillbillies out there are completely ass-backwards.
Here in Omaha we have real civilization and quality broadband.
Well what about the family unit? Either when you were a child
That's as much of my post as you read isn't it?
What about the 2nd half of that sentence? The part where you're a father raising a (particularly ungrateful) son and providing for another life. Are you going to tell me you're only doing that to serve yourself in old age?
Newsflash! We're social creatures and doing that which is usually considered altruistic ultimately does help ourselves, including self-sacrifice.
Of course it's important to have an ego, seek a good life, and all that. But you cannot justify clawing your way to the top regardless of who you hurt on the way.
Furthermore, I'm not a 2 year old, but I sure as hell want the military to take care of the threat of foreign invasion. That's kind of their job. I'm totally willing to fund them though, to an extent.
And as an aside, your old testament god is awfully big on that coercion and negative repercussions bit.
It's really a reemergence.
Specifically you need a blue water, nuclear-powered navy like ours. I'm pretty sure China doesn't have that. The submarine that GP mentions was specifically a diesel vessel. You can shut off a diesel engine and run entirely on quiet batteries. You can't really turn off a nukey-plant. So while everyone was aghast that a chinese sub outperformed our own, you have to remember that they can only really operate like that near their own ports.
You also need some sort of platform to deliver those anti-tank missiles into our tanks, or at least get them in range and LOS of our tanks.
The fact that the GP implied that China didn't have ICBMs before they had a space program and that their "accuracy" is unknown shows his ignorance of military matters.
Not that I'm all that much better, but I'm not afraid of the bogeyman. I'm also not ignorant that the dragon has awoken.
There is no arrangement anywhere in the history of the world where you don't have to look out for yourself.
Well what about the family unit? Either when you were a child or when you have your own kids? During those times, other people are looking out for you and you should be looking out for others. But this is one of the big problems with Ayn Rand and her ilk. "looking out for yourself" can have a wide range of meaning. It can be basic self-preservation like remembering to eat, or it can be looking out for number one, caring about yourself above all else and to hell with the consequences. So anyone that disagreed with her was going to starve to death from a lack of ego, so that justified clawing your way to the top. So go ahead and tell me that scenario doesn't count.
I'd join a union if the industry in which I worked had unreasonable conditions and I had little hope of fixing those conditions alone. But honestly, I'd just do that because I was looking out for myself.
A chair is the product of the mind as much as a bar of gold is. Someone had to think about where to mine, how to smelt it, and what shape it should take. But that has zero impact on it's value. The value of a bar of gold is the ACTUAL GOLD CONTENT. The value of a chair is it's ability to hold up my ass.
As for copying chairs, you would be ludicrous if you were to try to claim that someone owns the idea of ye olde three-legged-stool. It's a plank with three sticks in it. It's common knowledge by this point. It's as basic as a 90 degree angle. The time for claiming the exclusive rights for sliced bread is over. Likewise, the period at which you should have exclusive rights to your work should have limits
But as much as I dislike how copyright is setup, you're going about this the wrong way. The purpose of copyright is to promote the creation of copywriteable works. So argue that you wouldn't create anything if it wouldn't feed your kids in the case of an unfortunate scenario.
Of course, neither does my job, which is why I'll buy life insurance like all the other peasants you seem to think you're above.
I'm all well and good with the point they're trying to make, but it doesn't quite justify excessive pricetags.
"We're making a point here, and this ludicrous fine which we're charging is supposed to send a message to the rest of the dirtbags" This is something that the bad people are supposed to say.
Oh god! I think my magical clicky device is broken. I aligned the two eldrich factors correctly and conjured more words to the mystic scrying pool just like I've seen others do, but something happened and I can't fix it. More words appeared, and then more and more and there doesn't seem to be an end to them. Oh god they're everywhere! My master is going to be back soon and I don't know what to do with all of them. I think I'll get the axe!
I believe the general argument from this point would be:
Copyright isn't property or a contract
It's the right to restrict use of your works for a set period of time. In a very loose sense, it's a contract with the government, one which should have a clause that makes it null and void with your death.
But really, tell your little trust funds that they need to go be productive members of society rather then sucking off their dead daddies teet at age 30. It will do them good.
Ok, so they did this for $71, not $10. Why even put that $10 price tag in the title? Because one component costs $10?
That makes about as much sense as quoting the price of a whole car that can remote start out of the box.
Finally my plan for steampunk (almost)nanobots can come to fruition! Those millions in grant money to the blacksmith have finally paid off.
So would you apply that to the states as well? The at-will employment states could be considered barbaric corporate slavers when compared to states that have rules for letting people go. Should they put a tariff on at-will employment states? You know, to hold them to the same standards?
And before that sounds too much like a slipper slope argument; we don't have a real good defined standard here. Or even 50 of them. It's a hodge-podge of have, have-nots, lucky bastards, and poor-slobs, whose fate is only marginally tied to their ability. In China there's a ridiculous number of people willing to suck ash to get a job. If you have a system where the employer wants to cut corners and skip safety, and the employees desperately wants to appease the boss, then how are you going to keep BOTH of them from doing so?
And just who and how are these tariff's defined? How do you put a price on the smell of a paper factory? Or a 5% birth defect rate? And if you want politicians to determine this, then it's going to get political, that's their job.
Well yes, you ARE advocating protectionism. Only your own slightly different flavor. Protectionism cuts us out of the benefits of globalism, and we drop from first world status.
And environmental policies protect everyone, not just the workers. Everyone who lives near the factory, everyone who lives down river, everyone who breaths the air. In most cases the benefits of the EPA are only locally realized, but it does have interstate and global impact as well.
If I see an embedded video, (and if it's particularly awesome,) I will frequently go through the hoops to find the url of the .flv file and download it onto my own hard drive.
Why?
Because I'm a hoarding little pack-rat when it comes to digital media. My unsorted pics folder is 7 gigs of nonstop wtf moments. Seriously, I've entertained company by just putting that folder on slide show.
Uh, the price to produce a decent music CD is approaching zero, especially if you already have the instruments and a PC.
Buy a mike, some foam, learn to be an sound engineer or get one to join the band, pay someone for hosting your website or pull out a 486 and learn how to host it yourself. Sell yourself to everyone you know, and give your music away for free.
OR, promise 90% of all revenue you ever generate, give up ownership of your works, sell out to a label so they can deal with all that business stuff, and you can simply get a check.
May I suggest AD&D?
Possibly even it's sequel, 2nd ed, if that's what you're comfortable with, but I hear that the rules are rather inconsistent. I know you were probably hoping for a brand new hip system, but re-examine why that is. Why change? Your daughter will have leet street cred for starting out with straight AD&D. A classically trained gamer if you will.
(also, 2nd ed books are cheap as dirt, some having a fairly high dirt content.)
We the people are the teeth of the constitution. We are responsible for penalizing those who would break or bend our rules from within. We may not be able to push them through the legal system, and some of them we can't vote out, but we can shame them, diminish them, and take away their power.
It's politics, raise a ruckus and you can get shit done.
I don't think you can really "own" an ebook if it has DRM. Almost* any form of DRM I've been able to conceptualize has violated what I believe to be owning a book. And every version of DRM implementation that I've dealt with has been ridiculously restrictive.
*Suing for plagiarism has had limited success.
I agree with GP. China is not the worlds largest market.
It is the worlds largest market with the largest potential growth.
Europe and America are of course the largest markets. But those markets are guarded by very fat cats who will defend their turf. Entering those markets would be expensive. Entering China is cheaper, and has greater potential for insane profits, IF you play by their rules. Before the dragon woke, like maybe a decade ago, China played nicer with foreign corporations. The dragon is now awake and is flexing it's clout. Times have changed.
As for social unrest, I dunno. As long as the communist party can keep supplying jobs to it's people, and put bread in their bowl (and sustain growth), then I don't see an uprising happening.
Wally will undercut you with cheaper goods built on the backs of an oppressed Chinese workforce and be called a champion of commerce for it.
So, presuming you handed one of the DVDs to you mother in person (otherwise I'd ask who you handed said DVD to in order for it to arrive at your mother's), then there is now a DVD located in the house of little old lady which is vital to proving a comment on slashdot wrong. Gentlemen, my mission is clear, I must be off...