While you may not be hurting a business directly if you are pirating material that you would not purchase from them, if you are seeding a torrent as you download the file, then you are providing access to the file to other people who may or may not have the same intentions as you do.
I make no judgement on peoples intentions to do what they like with their own resources. If they wish to download torrents off me and spend all their money on shiny gold necklaces then as far as I'm concerned all the more power for me to influence culture by spending my money on it.
So you argument is basically that development time costs nothing? Just because the process of copying the media is the same whether you're copying a game that's taken 2 years of paid development time to create and a load of CVs you've written yourself doesn't mean the value is the same.
When you are selling copies then that is exactly the case. The 'true' market value of a copy is always going to be as close to the cost of the media as there is competition in the distribution market.
The problem with your attitude is that without someone ultimately paying for the development time and everything else that goes with it what you steal wouldn't exist in the first place. I know it's a convenient deceit to figure mainstream musicians, games developers, movie studios, etc "make too much money", but if it weren't so easy to copy stuff what would you do? Go without? Piracy is so fashionable because it's so easy, intangible and apparently victimless - if your only option to get something was to pay for it or do without you'd either find a way to scrape together the cash if you needed it bad enough, or you wouldn't.
You cannot have your cake and eat it, you cannot say that the value is the artificial value imposed by copyright yet claim that they are stealing all the effort put into a work. You are right that piracy is prevalent because it is easy intangible and apparently victimless but that is precisely the effect copyright has. A rational mind does not associate the value of a work with the price set by a company and does not treat negotiations that they had no part in as valid. The result of this is that given the low chance of getting caught and a lack of blind faith in the law, piracy is inevitable. The further effect of this is people do not place value in the work itself, they're not investing in an artist they're buying a CD. If they copy a CD then they are less likely to feel obligation towards the artist because of this disassociation.
Your comparison with things that are harder to pirate seems pointless, I am not sure where you mean to go with that argument. Unless you are suggesting a comparison between piracy and stealing in which case could you please clarify.
If something's expensive, why do you feel the right to watch it/listen to it/use it, when others have to pay? Isn't it more ethical to just not pay? As for convenience, that's no excuse at all, it's just laziness. Given the ease of legally downloading these days, it's even less of an excuse. As for pirating professional software for 'fun' or 'non-commercial' use, if you don't need all the features, then why not get a more limited program that does what you want and actually compensate a developer? On the other hand, if you do need the features, then pay the money or don't use it.
Why shouldn't someone have the right to make informed decisions about what to do with their money? While the effect may be in the decision to not pay for something, the choice is whether something was worth paying for. If anything this study highlights the problem copyright has introduced. People are so taken with the rhetoric that copying is stealing that they no longer recognise the value in the work itself. Whereas they should be encouraged to support creators they are told 'here is a price for a copy, pay it or be branded a criminal', a rational person who doesn't like the price will risk being branded a criminal and the creator will get nothing.
You don't have a right to use something for free just because you think it's too expensive.
And you don't have a right to charge for something just because you produced it, except that which is written in law. Not everyone follows the law blindly.
Never the less, if you dont want to buy the album, use legit streaming services or get the songs (or software, games and so on) in some other legit way approved by the maker, why do you think you should be obligated to get them? Even more so if you want to get them for free. If you dont approve with the price, you just dont get it then. Live with it and dont go stealing it and try to rationalize it.
This seems to be the core rhetoric, that there is an obligation to pay because we say so and the law agrees with us. Can't you come up with something that doesn't amount to 'I'm right because you are wrong'?
You confuse rationalising paying for something with respect for the law. Paying for something is a decision that can be made without copyright and is not an issue here. Where there is no agreement and no transaction, there is no obligation to pay except that which is written in law. If you would like to argue that respect of the law is reason enough then do so.
Piracy is in no way justified by saying that you disagree with the license terms of the product. If you don't like the way a company does business, don't do business with them; don't buy the product, don't pirate it. Pirating it is obviously strictly self-serving. Who are you trying to fool by claiming that you're pirating to stand up for freedom of information principles? The law (they don't buy it) or yourself?
Pirating something as opposed to not buying it effects a business how? Why should people abide by rules they do not agree with if to do otherwise has zero effect on anyone else? You do not agree to abide by someone's copyright in using their work, that the law presumes you do is a flaw in the law not in a persons ability to justify their actions.
Telling people they are wrong because they are being unlawful is an argument towards respect of the law, not justification for a persons actions. If you lack a better argument than making claims about peoples intentions then you lack an argument.
To sum it up then, 'play by our rules or you're a bad person'?
I won't write an essay of why ownership of copyright is arbitrary and I won't explain why there are differences between your rights as given by law and your rights as given by mutual need because that gets discussed a lot already. I will say that not doing something ineffectual because someone has convinced you it is morally wrong is a blight on peoples capacity to make those decisions for themselves and a counter-intuitive to achieve mutual goals. When you give people the choice of doing things your way or being branded criminals then what incentive is there to respect your needs, beyond the threat of punishment?
I fully agree that people not paying to support work is a problem and if this study is to be trusted, that it provides evidence for such. I also believe however that the cause of this problem is the very system you would have them abide by. Instead of people placing value in creators they are told to place value in copies of their work.. this is how they are bought up to think when people use words like property and stealing to justify the current lawful way of doing things. So when they 'steal' something that is of high price and no value they will fail to see the harm done because what they stole was worthless. If you marketed the creator instead and encouraged people to invest in the value provided by them, you would have a much easier time convincing people to part with their money because they can recognise the value and the benefit to themselves in paying for it.
In a free society the current system is doomed to failure. It places value where there is none and people do not find that to be rational. Any attempts to justify it as rational only further alienate rational people who are not content to do something just because someone says so. Creators need support and consumers need freedom, take one away and you risk the other becoming worthless.
As a more enlightened pirate, I look for products that place value on the creator such as Magnatune.com (which I use as an example incessantly). Systems like these where the goal is mutual benefit encourage people to take part on their own terms. I pay for things I believe support the value I place on them, usually that of the creator. Lastly, the idea that those who don't believe a system works should have a moral obligation not to partake when taking part on their own terms has no effect is ludicrous. You may as well say people shouldn't watch TV if they don't like commercials, that is an option but it is still their choice.
If the only reason people pay $15 for a CD is because of artificial scarcity then that is not the value of the CD, it is the value of the CD after the restriction. Most of the $15 is price because of the lack of a competitive market, you are right that the price is $15 because people will pay $15 but that is hardly a good point. If someone restricted access to being able to breathe and charged $100 per month for the privilege then people would still be willing to pay for it, and possibly a lot more. The only reason the price of a CD isn't much higher is that the demand isn't infinite.
"It's not property and you, sir, are not an intellectual."
I have no idea whether he is or not, but you're wrong. The law says it's property, and makes no regard for how easily reproducible it is. You can stomp your feet and exclaim otherwise... you can spout macro-economic theory all day long... but copyrighted matierals, including copies of such matierial, bet it physical or digital, are considered property.
Fortunately, changing or extending the definition of a word does not change the original meaning of a word. Incidentally, intellectual property is a relatively new term in regards to copyright law. For example the Berne Convention only mentions intellectual property in reference to names of organisations.
On top of that, you appear to not even know what intellectual property refers to in its current usage. You say that copies of copyrighted material are considered property when actually the term is in reference a work that someone holds rights for. For example, a performance could be considered intellectual property but a recording of the performance is just that, a recording.
I am unsure where plain ALSA is failing that OSS4 isn't except in limited cases, perhaps where a device is further ahead in support? I hope you submitted details of your problems to the ALSA devs.
With regards to Pulseaudio, it uses the hardware in a different way to the OSS4 and ALSA APIs which is why you are unlikely to see a lot of the long term benefits of Pulseaudio ever crop up in OSS4 or plain ALSA. Because of the way Pulseaudio uses the sound hardware (a way that does make sense in the long term strategy of making audio perfect in all use cases with one system), issues crop up that didn't before such as drivers providing bad timing information, which you can see only matters if the audio system wants to be more efficient rather than settling for just working. There is a page summarising known bad drivers and what can be done about them.
My impression of most of the negative posts is that people are unhappy using a system that has not been thoroughly tested. That is a fine sentiment but I worry that it is leading to a conclusion that Pulseaudio offers nothing worth the hassle which I can assure you is far from the truth if people truly want a system that compares (or beats into submission) that found on Windows and OSX. OSS4 does not offer such a system and shows little intention of ever doing so and ALSA needs these hurdles overcome for Pulseaudio to do so.
Well, that's basically "using the internet". And using the definition of "protected computer", if you can add a tcp/ip stack to your toaster, it's a protected computer.
You may be interested to know what a protected computer actually is. The bill even references the relevant section of the relevant code as the definition of protected computer.
I seem to remember a HHGTTG theme that pretty much sums up that point, involving a guy who runs the universe from isolation without knowing hes doing it.
Karate is such a big subject that you should not judge it on such a limited experience. Having said that, martial arts clubs (Karate ones included) are not often focused towards self defence. Here is an in depth opinion piece on the divide between martial arts and self defence. I do not agree with everything in that article, the picture the author paints of martial arts is a bit biased towards describing the arts that ignore the divide but the basic premise that you will learn street effective self defence quicker in a self defence class is correct. If you find a good martial arts club that knows the limits of their training method then this should not be a big issue in the long term and the tools from training in martial arts are a lot more effective than anything you can learn in a self defence class.
The experience you describe is one you hear a lot about in martial arts, the art and the time you commit are no where near as important as the understanding of the people involved. If you consider that a lot of martial art forms view black belt as the starting point and the progress to sixth Dan may just be the counting of years then the story isn't too surprising.
It should be a straw man as I'm not really trying to argue on behalf of everything in the alternative medicine bucket based upon herbalism. Based upon the context of the GP's statement, it appeared that he was lumping them in the same bucket as alternative medicine as a junk science and just wanted to point out that it really wasn't a fair statement.
I think using something as an example doesn't really cross the line of fair to unfair.
As for your query in regards to herbs being used to cure cancer, Paclitaxel was derived from Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia) and is used in the treatment of various forms of cancer.
See, now that was interesting. Plus there are many others that are said to prevent certain forms of cancer. Not sure you'd find Paclitaxel at any usual herbal medicine shop though.
Actually, over the course of history herbs have been proven time and time again to have a therapeutic effect and can also be an effective treatment of illness (e.g. Cinchona bark) so you need to be careful about how you dismiss herbs as they don't always belong under the heading of "alternative medicine."
I hate to be the one to point it out but, isn't that a straw man? The GP was in no way dismissing herbs, all they said was 'it doesn't mean that herbs did it'. They could just as well have said 'it doesn't mean aspirin did it'. I'd be interested to know what herbs are suggested to cure cancer.
This seems to be a common theme when people are arguing against science. Because a doctor got it wrong or because the person who doesn't believe in science cannot understand it somehow that is supposed to add to the legitimacy of other approaches.
We should strive to understand how these things work when they do work
In science being right is having the best answer not necessarily having all the answers. All science, including biology, falls within the limits of empiricism when subject to reality (as Einstein might have put it). Unfortunately what you are saying is about as good an answer as flipping a coin. You tell people to look into "how these things work" without proving that they have worked. Hell, you haven't even provided a statistical correlation let alone anything that would constitute proof, all you have given is an anecdote of coincidence. People don't laugh at you because they believe in doctors or scientists they laugh at you because they believe in science itself which as a concept is merely a formula and thus irrefutable.
because we can prove they're lying.
Who is lying, the doctors? You certainly don't offer any evidence that they are, being wrong isn't the same as lying. Maybe you should stop treating doctors as fortune tellers who see the future but instead fallible people who practice empiricism.
I wasn't comparing a TV to a pack of cigarettes, I was comparing the taxing of cigarettes to the taxing of receiving TV signals. I do appreciate the difference between owning a TV and owing the licence. There was an interesting case some years ago involving an ex-con who only wanted to use a TV with his VCR.
My only point in that statement was the inappropriate use of the words 'opt-out'. In common usage opt-out refers to refusing an unwanted service, not refusing a service that you want because you don't like the price.
From what? Their inability to convince people to give them money, or from the reality that greed is not a useful commodity?
That's why you're having so much trouble, there is nothing to protect except peoples greed. Physical property works with markets because there is one constant truth: scarcity. Take away the scarcity and the whole point of a market economy disappears. If physical property was not scarce, like shared information is not scarce, would you still insist on a market to protect it?
When teachers teach, are their teachings property? When they teach someone and that person passes on the knowledge, is the teacher richer? I would say that there is no scarcity in what is taught. The scarcity is in the people who teach. The creative industry isn't doing something special that doesn't fit into a market economy, they just don't seem to realise that it isn't the creations that are the commodity it is the creators.
The pinch of that realisation is everyone might get closer to what they deserve. People might only get to see big budget movies if they really are as desperately wonderful as hollywood thinks. Artists would be lot less likely to become rich yet more would be able to make a living. Perhaps not as much money will be spent on entertainment, perhaps more will. I would guess less. Either way you have more efficiency and (if the rest of the economy isn't being fucked up) a lower cost of living for everyone, including the artists.
Maybe if you didn't cite your problems of two years ago as the current state of Linux people wouldn't dismiss you as being a troll. Here's a tip: if you can't get something to work and don't know how to make it work.. report it and wait for someone who knows what they are doing to fix it instead of screwing around and then being angry that your system isn't working.
You repeatedly cite your experiences of compiling stuff from scratch as too hard and too common. Strangely it is for some undisclosed package that is essential but no one has bothered packaging. It also conflicts with my own personal experience of having found any packages that I have had to compile manually despite me using a relatively niche distribution (Arch Linux) for the past couple of years.
People are accusing you of talking trash because that's what it appears to be. Even if there is truth to what you say it is marred by the taint of the surrounding falsehoods.
I have great respect for most people working at the BBC and many of the things it has done. Having said that, I wish to specially exclude Nicky Campbell from that last statement entirely.
I believe the best way of describing the issue about news reporting is to call it 'grading on a bell curve'.
My only real issue with the BBC is how they are funded. Why? Because that issue makes all the of the others moot.
Much like people downloading exes from all over the place now then, and being lucky if its a nice installer you can remove with add/remove programs. Using the central package manager to manage software installs would be a step up from what we have with windows now.
Hang on, you were talking about repositories to allow for auto updating. Now you're talking about something completely different. Linux already has a billion ways for a person to put a program on a website so a Linux user just clicks on a link to install it. There's even the Linux Standard Base which is built on the.rpm format that all the major distributions support.
When you install something from an MSI, it does not do anything remotely like a repository unless you've set one up yourself. By the way, if you are maintaining a local software repository through Active Directory/Group Policy it is a nightmare compared to the simplicity that is most Linux software repositories.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know, what is the point of the question?
While you may not be hurting a business directly if you are pirating material that you would not purchase from them, if you are seeding a torrent as you download the file, then you are providing access to the file to other people who may or may not have the same intentions as you do.
I make no judgement on peoples intentions to do what they like with their own resources. If they wish to download torrents off me and spend all their money on shiny gold necklaces then as far as I'm concerned all the more power for me to influence culture by spending my money on it.
So you argument is basically that development time costs nothing? Just because the process of copying the media is the same whether you're copying a game that's taken 2 years of paid development time to create and a load of CVs you've written yourself doesn't mean the value is the same.
When you are selling copies then that is exactly the case. The 'true' market value of a copy is always going to be as close to the cost of the media as there is competition in the distribution market.
The problem with your attitude is that without someone ultimately paying for the development time and everything else that goes with it what you steal wouldn't exist in the first place. I know it's a convenient deceit to figure mainstream musicians, games developers, movie studios, etc "make too much money", but if it weren't so easy to copy stuff what would you do? Go without? Piracy is so fashionable because it's so easy, intangible and apparently victimless - if your only option to get something was to pay for it or do without you'd either find a way to scrape together the cash if you needed it bad enough, or you wouldn't.
You cannot have your cake and eat it, you cannot say that the value is the artificial value imposed by copyright yet claim that they are stealing all the effort put into a work. You are right that piracy is prevalent because it is easy intangible and apparently victimless but that is precisely the effect copyright has. A rational mind does not associate the value of a work with the price set by a company and does not treat negotiations that they had no part in as valid. The result of this is that given the low chance of getting caught and a lack of blind faith in the law, piracy is inevitable. The further effect of this is people do not place value in the work itself, they're not investing in an artist they're buying a CD. If they copy a CD then they are less likely to feel obligation towards the artist because of this disassociation.
Your comparison with things that are harder to pirate seems pointless, I am not sure where you mean to go with that argument. Unless you are suggesting a comparison between piracy and stealing in which case could you please clarify.
If something's expensive, why do you feel the right to watch it/listen to it/use it, when others have to pay? Isn't it more ethical to just not pay? As for convenience, that's no excuse at all, it's just laziness. Given the ease of legally downloading these days, it's even less of an excuse. As for pirating professional software for 'fun' or 'non-commercial' use, if you don't need all the features, then why not get a more limited program that does what you want and actually compensate a developer? On the other hand, if you do need the features, then pay the money or don't use it.
Why shouldn't someone have the right to make informed decisions about what to do with their money? While the effect may be in the decision to not pay for something, the choice is whether something was worth paying for. If anything this study highlights the problem copyright has introduced. People are so taken with the rhetoric that copying is stealing that they no longer recognise the value in the work itself. Whereas they should be encouraged to support creators they are told 'here is a price for a copy, pay it or be branded a criminal', a rational person who doesn't like the price will risk being branded a criminal and the creator will get nothing.
You don't have a right to use something for free just because you think it's too expensive.
And you don't have a right to charge for something just because you produced it, except that which is written in law. Not everyone follows the law blindly.
Never the less, if you dont want to buy the album, use legit streaming services or get the songs (or software, games and so on) in some other legit way approved by the maker, why do you think you should be obligated to get them? Even more so if you want to get them for free. If you dont approve with the price, you just dont get it then. Live with it and dont go stealing it and try to rationalize it.
This seems to be the core rhetoric, that there is an obligation to pay because we say so and the law agrees with us. Can't you come up with something that doesn't amount to 'I'm right because you are wrong'?
You confuse rationalising paying for something with respect for the law. Paying for something is a decision that can be made without copyright and is not an issue here. Where there is no agreement and no transaction, there is no obligation to pay except that which is written in law. If you would like to argue that respect of the law is reason enough then do so.
Piracy is in no way justified by saying that you disagree with the license terms of the product. If you don't like the way a company does business, don't do business with them; don't buy the product, don't pirate it. Pirating it is obviously strictly self-serving. Who are you trying to fool by claiming that you're pirating to stand up for freedom of information principles? The law (they don't buy it) or yourself?
Pirating something as opposed to not buying it effects a business how? Why should people abide by rules they do not agree with if to do otherwise has zero effect on anyone else? You do not agree to abide by someone's copyright in using their work, that the law presumes you do is a flaw in the law not in a persons ability to justify their actions.
Telling people they are wrong because they are being unlawful is an argument towards respect of the law, not justification for a persons actions. If you lack a better argument than making claims about peoples intentions then you lack an argument.
To sum it up then, 'play by our rules or you're a bad person'?
I won't write an essay of why ownership of copyright is arbitrary and I won't explain why there are differences between your rights as given by law and your rights as given by mutual need because that gets discussed a lot already. I will say that not doing something ineffectual because someone has convinced you it is morally wrong is a blight on peoples capacity to make those decisions for themselves and a counter-intuitive to achieve mutual goals. When you give people the choice of doing things your way or being branded criminals then what incentive is there to respect your needs, beyond the threat of punishment?
I fully agree that people not paying to support work is a problem and if this study is to be trusted, that it provides evidence for such. I also believe however that the cause of this problem is the very system you would have them abide by. Instead of people placing value in creators they are told to place value in copies of their work.. this is how they are bought up to think when people use words like property and stealing to justify the current lawful way of doing things. So when they 'steal' something that is of high price and no value they will fail to see the harm done because what they stole was worthless. If you marketed the creator instead and encouraged people to invest in the value provided by them, you would have a much easier time convincing people to part with their money because they can recognise the value and the benefit to themselves in paying for it.
In a free society the current system is doomed to failure. It places value where there is none and people do not find that to be rational. Any attempts to justify it as rational only further alienate rational people who are not content to do something just because someone says so. Creators need support and consumers need freedom, take one away and you risk the other becoming worthless.
As a more enlightened pirate, I look for products that place value on the creator such as Magnatune.com (which I use as an example incessantly). Systems like these where the goal is mutual benefit encourage people to take part on their own terms. I pay for things I believe support the value I place on them, usually that of the creator. Lastly, the idea that those who don't believe a system works should have a moral obligation not to partake when taking part on their own terms has no effect is ludicrous. You may as well say people shouldn't watch TV if they don't like commercials, that is an option but it is still their choice.
If the only reason people pay $15 for a CD is because of artificial scarcity then that is not the value of the CD, it is the value of the CD after the restriction. Most of the $15 is price because of the lack of a competitive market, you are right that the price is $15 because people will pay $15 but that is hardly a good point. If someone restricted access to being able to breathe and charged $100 per month for the privilege then people would still be willing to pay for it, and possibly a lot more. The only reason the price of a CD isn't much higher is that the demand isn't infinite.
"It's not property and you, sir, are not an intellectual."
I have no idea whether he is or not, but you're wrong. The law says it's property, and makes no regard for how easily reproducible it is. You can stomp your feet and exclaim otherwise... you can spout macro-economic theory all day long... but copyrighted matierals, including copies of such matierial, bet it physical or digital, are considered property.
Fortunately, changing or extending the definition of a word does not change the original meaning of a word. Incidentally, intellectual property is a relatively new term in regards to copyright law. For example the Berne Convention only mentions intellectual property in reference to names of organisations.
On top of that, you appear to not even know what intellectual property refers to in its current usage. You say that copies of copyrighted material are considered property when actually the term is in reference a work that someone holds rights for. For example, a performance could be considered intellectual property but a recording of the performance is just that, a recording.
I am unsure where plain ALSA is failing that OSS4 isn't except in limited cases, perhaps where a device is further ahead in support? I hope you submitted details of your problems to the ALSA devs.
With regards to Pulseaudio, it uses the hardware in a different way to the OSS4 and ALSA APIs which is why you are unlikely to see a lot of the long term benefits of Pulseaudio ever crop up in OSS4 or plain ALSA. Because of the way Pulseaudio uses the sound hardware (a way that does make sense in the long term strategy of making audio perfect in all use cases with one system), issues crop up that didn't before such as drivers providing bad timing information, which you can see only matters if the audio system wants to be more efficient rather than settling for just working. There is a page summarising known bad drivers and what can be done about them.
My impression of most of the negative posts is that people are unhappy using a system that has not been thoroughly tested. That is a fine sentiment but I worry that it is leading to a conclusion that Pulseaudio offers nothing worth the hassle which I can assure you is far from the truth if people truly want a system that compares (or beats into submission) that found on Windows and OSX. OSS4 does not offer such a system and shows little intention of ever doing so and ALSA needs these hurdles overcome for Pulseaudio to do so.
Mod parent up and read more about protected computers.
Well, that's basically "using the internet". And using the definition of "protected computer", if you can add a tcp/ip stack to your toaster, it's a protected computer.
You may be interested to know what a protected computer actually is. The bill even references the relevant section of the relevant code as the definition of protected computer.
I seem to remember a HHGTTG theme that pretty much sums up that point, involving a guy who runs the universe from isolation without knowing hes doing it.
Karate is such a big subject that you should not judge it on such a limited experience. Having said that, martial arts clubs (Karate ones included) are not often focused towards self defence. Here is an in depth opinion piece on the divide between martial arts and self defence. I do not agree with everything in that article, the picture the author paints of martial arts is a bit biased towards describing the arts that ignore the divide but the basic premise that you will learn street effective self defence quicker in a self defence class is correct. If you find a good martial arts club that knows the limits of their training method then this should not be a big issue in the long term and the tools from training in martial arts are a lot more effective than anything you can learn in a self defence class.
The experience you describe is one you hear a lot about in martial arts, the art and the time you commit are no where near as important as the understanding of the people involved. If you consider that a lot of martial art forms view black belt as the starting point and the progress to sixth Dan may just be the counting of years then the story isn't too surprising.
It should be a straw man as I'm not really trying to argue on behalf of everything in the alternative medicine bucket based upon herbalism. Based upon the context of the GP's statement, it appeared that he was lumping them in the same bucket as alternative medicine as a junk science and just wanted to point out that it really wasn't a fair statement.
I think using something as an example doesn't really cross the line of fair to unfair.
As for your query in regards to herbs being used to cure cancer, Paclitaxel was derived from Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia) and is used in the treatment of various forms of cancer.
See, now that was interesting. Plus there are many others that are said to prevent certain forms of cancer. Not sure you'd find Paclitaxel at any usual herbal medicine shop though.
Actually, over the course of history herbs have been proven time and time again to have a therapeutic effect and can also be an effective treatment of illness (e.g. Cinchona bark) so you need to be careful about how you dismiss herbs as they don't always belong under the heading of "alternative medicine."
I hate to be the one to point it out but, isn't that a straw man? The GP was in no way dismissing herbs, all they said was 'it doesn't mean that herbs did it'. They could just as well have said 'it doesn't mean aspirin did it'. I'd be interested to know what herbs are suggested to cure cancer.
He proved the official story wrong
This seems to be a common theme when people are arguing against science. Because a doctor got it wrong or because the person who doesn't believe in science cannot understand it somehow that is supposed to add to the legitimacy of other approaches.
We should strive to understand how these things work when they do work
In science being right is having the best answer not necessarily having all the answers. All science, including biology, falls within the limits of empiricism when subject to reality (as Einstein might have put it). Unfortunately what you are saying is about as good an answer as flipping a coin. You tell people to look into "how these things work" without proving that they have worked. Hell, you haven't even provided a statistical correlation let alone anything that would constitute proof, all you have given is an anecdote of coincidence. People don't laugh at you because they believe in doctors or scientists they laugh at you because they believe in science itself which as a concept is merely a formula and thus irrefutable.
because we can prove they're lying.
Who is lying, the doctors? You certainly don't offer any evidence that they are, being wrong isn't the same as lying. Maybe you should stop treating doctors as fortune tellers who see the future but instead fallible people who practice empiricism.
I wasn't comparing a TV to a pack of cigarettes, I was comparing the taxing of cigarettes to the taxing of receiving TV signals. I do appreciate the difference between owning a TV and owing the licence. There was an interesting case some years ago involving an ex-con who only wanted to use a TV with his VCR.
My only point in that statement was the inappropriate use of the words 'opt-out'. In common usage opt-out refers to refusing an unwanted service, not refusing a service that you want because you don't like the price.
Who are the people that need protecting?
From what? Their inability to convince people to give them money, or from the reality that greed is not a useful commodity?
That's why you're having so much trouble, there is nothing to protect except peoples greed. Physical property works with markets because there is one constant truth: scarcity. Take away the scarcity and the whole point of a market economy disappears. If physical property was not scarce, like shared information is not scarce, would you still insist on a market to protect it?
When teachers teach, are their teachings property? When they teach someone and that person passes on the knowledge, is the teacher richer? I would say that there is no scarcity in what is taught. The scarcity is in the people who teach. The creative industry isn't doing something special that doesn't fit into a market economy, they just don't seem to realise that it isn't the creations that are the commodity it is the creators.
The pinch of that realisation is everyone might get closer to what they deserve. People might only get to see big budget movies if they really are as desperately wonderful as hollywood thinks. Artists would be lot less likely to become rich yet more would be able to make a living. Perhaps not as much money will be spent on entertainment, perhaps more will. I would guess less. Either way you have more efficiency and (if the rest of the economy isn't being fucked up) a lower cost of living for everyone, including the artists.
Choosing between different arbitrary options is hard. At least, for the observers.
I don't think reverse engineering a network protocol is anywhere close to as hard as reverse engineering something like flash.
Maybe if you didn't cite your problems of two years ago as the current state of Linux people wouldn't dismiss you as being a troll. Here's a tip: if you can't get something to work and don't know how to make it work.. report it and wait for someone who knows what they are doing to fix it instead of screwing around and then being angry that your system isn't working.
You repeatedly cite your experiences of compiling stuff from scratch as too hard and too common. Strangely it is for some undisclosed package that is essential but no one has bothered packaging. It also conflicts with my own personal experience of having found any packages that I have had to compile manually despite me using a relatively niche distribution (Arch Linux) for the past couple of years.
People are accusing you of talking trash because that's what it appears to be. Even if there is truth to what you say it is marred by the taint of the surrounding falsehoods.
Well put. The line is drawn at this little thing us free thinkers like to call 'lying'.
I have great respect for most people working at the BBC and many of the things it has done. Having said that, I wish to specially exclude Nicky Campbell from that last statement entirely.
I believe the best way of describing the issue about news reporting is to call it 'grading on a bell curve'.
My only real issue with the BBC is how they are funded. Why? Because that issue makes all the of the others moot.
Much like people downloading exes from all over the place now then, and being lucky if its a nice installer you can remove with add/remove programs. Using the central package manager to manage software installs would be a step up from what we have with windows now.
Hang on, you were talking about repositories to allow for auto updating. Now you're talking about something completely different. Linux already has a billion ways for a person to put a program on a website so a Linux user just clicks on a link to install it. There's even the Linux Standard Base which is built on the .rpm format that all the major distributions support.
When you install something from an MSI, it does not do anything remotely like a repository unless you've set one up yourself. By the way, if you are maintaining a local software repository through Active Directory/Group Policy it is a nightmare compared to the simplicity that is most Linux software repositories.