>>>You are a lazy sad sack who would rather find enjoyment in the hard work of others, without contributing to the effort. >>>
Awww..... look at the cute little kiddy throwing a temper tantrum. You remind me of my cute little boy. Yes you do, yes you do..... such an adorable little anonymous coward. (squeezes AC's pudgy cheek)
>>>I think most people who are playing a pirated game will not stop mid-game and say, you know what? I really enjoy, this, I am going out to the store to buy it. >>>
I do. "Wow this Battlestar Galactica is really good. I'm going to support the actors, writers, and staff by buying it on DVD, so they can earn income and feed their families." - So now we have two datapoints - Your OPINION of what you BELIEVE "most" people do - And an actual person's buying habits.
We can add a several more datapoints if we add all the other stories from Slashdotters who say they buy products they like. It's starting to look like the "try before I buy so I can avoid shit" is a valid model (and also a smart model for the consumer).
>>>If an app is good, you should be able to find independently written positive reviews for it.
Microsoft Vista got good reviews. Reviews don't matter when the person is biased (or worse bribed) for the publisher.
>>>There's always the score provided in the app store, too
And as we slashdot readers have seen time-after-time, online reviews are often distorted by (a) Companies hiring employees to act as customers and post positive reviews or (b) The owner of the store deliberately erasing negative reviews to boost his own sales.
And finally there's a tendency for person to be "too kind". Often I've downloaded movies or shows that got 7, 8, or even 9 stars on IMDB.com, and I found that the my own score would only be a 2 or 3 (i.e. trash). The most-recent example is Inglorious Basterds which inexplicably has high scores/positive reviews but I found to be an epic fail of a movie. (Fortunately I downloaded rather than buy, so no money wasted.) Reviews don't mean much when my opinion rarely matches the opinion of the reviewers.
"Try before you buy" takes power away from the corporation to suck dollars from workers' wallets, and puts the power back in the hands of the People.
Two separate studies have shown that is not true. Out of 2500 songs downloaded, only 1 album sale is lost. One of those studies was done at Harvard, which I've heard is a fairly good research institute.
I like short games. One of my favorites is Eternal Darkness (Nintendo) which can be finished in a day, but the story is excellent and it's fun to replay it over and over. Another example is Resident Evil 2.
Vice-versa I hate games that needlessly pad the story to 40 or more hours. I get bored. And of course I rarely replay them.
Corporations like you are just mad because back in Asimov's day, if 99% of what he bought was trash that was just tough shit for Isaac. They didn't give refunds. NOW the balance of power is tipping towards the consumer, where the consumer can weed-out 99% of the junk (via try before you buy) and only buy the top 1% of books/songs/videos he enjoys. This loss of power scares corporations. It means the consumers no longer have to waste their limited dollars.
One final thought -
The average American carries about $10,000 in credit card debt. And let's assume piracy no longer exists. How do you, the corporation, propose to suck more dollars from consumer wallets, when they are already empty??? The consumers have already spent all they have.
>>>The "try before you buy" excuse that people give as a reason to pirate (very popular here at Slashdot) has always been a steaming pile of bullshit >>>
No it isn't. Just because I downloaded 90210 or an iPhone App doesn't mean I don't use the "try before buy" model. If I don't buy 80% of what I download, it's because 80% of it is shit. (Or worse: "99% of any genre is trash"-Isaac Asimov). BUT if it's good then I will buy it. Just take a gander of what's on my shelf:
- Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT - Babylon 5 - Earth Final Conflict (seasons 1 and 4) - BSG complete collection - Stargate SG1 complete - Stargate SGA complete - Red Dwarf complete - All in the Family 1,2,3,4,5 - Random movies: Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, the Abbott & Costello Collection,..... - random music: Greatest Hits of 1980, 1981,..., 1999. Depeche Mode GH, R.E.M. GH, and on and on and on - Random games: About 100 Atari titles, ~50 SNES titles, ~50 N64 titles, and literally hundreds of PS1/PS2/Gamecube discs. - and on and on and on
Yes I "try before buy" a lot of stuff off the net. And a big chunk of it is trash so I don't buy that trash. This is Not a bullshit approach to consumerism, but a SMART approach to consumerism because it keeps ME wealthy, and it keeps YOU the bastard corporation from sucking away all my dollars. (Of course you then beg politicians for 2000 billion dollar bailouts, but that's a separate issue.)
The U.S. democrats over the past century have passed laws to control how much corn/potatoes we can grow in our own backyards (1930s food rationing which is still in effect), taken-over our retirement savings (SS), taken-over our childcare (schools and SCHIP), taken-over our cars (exhaust regulation), and soon will take-over our healthcare (government-run).
Economically they are authoritarian. They should be moved to the left side your political compass.
>>>That may be the way it is in your company. When I'm hiring a tech person, a word document is a strike against you.
So basically you're an asshole who have off-the-wall elitist ideas about document formats ("Must be PDF or you're not hired"). I'm glad you rejected my Word resume. :-)
I prefer lightweight wherever possible, which is why I dumped Azureus for Utorrent (200 downto 15 megabytes). My Word 97 install fits into just 7 megabytes.
Now I'm experimenting with K-Meleon as a possible replacement for Firefox/Opera. So far KM doesn't impress me much... still hogs a lot of RAM and CPU.
Ooops. It looks like I loaded the wrong GPP (Genuine People Personality) into my android. This one's too rude for my taste. (Hmmm... where'd I lay that sexbot GPP?) .
>>>Why are you mentioning Win98? Hardly comparable in capability or stability
No but it fits inside my 96 megabyte laptop, which is what I was hoping I could upgrade to a Linux install like Xubuntu.
>>>First of all, the more powerful governments are, the more powerful regulation is which *limits* the power and size of corporate power
First of all, corporations only exist because government created them. Governments could kill every corporation overnight, simply by revoking their incorporation licenses.
So the previous person's comment: "Big, bloated, inefficient government leads to big, bloated, inefficient corps," is right on target. It's a circle - wealthy men bribed government leaders to give them limited liability (incorporation). The leaders granted it. Wealthy men bribed government leaders to give them special privileges. The leaders granted it. Wealthy men begged government leaders to bail them out. So government gave them 700 billion.
If the government leaders had simply said "No," right from the very start and maintained a small government of minimal size, the corporations would never have been born. Companies would be one-owner affairs.
Big, overreaching government gave birth to the evil of the corporation, with a simple piece of paper called an "incorporation license".
>>>I love when people use the word "true" to refer to a subgroup within a larger group that more agrees with their personal beliefs. >>>
We wouldn't have to do that if people were honest. Chairman Mao claimed to support human rights, as he signed orders to kill people who dared speak their minds. Likewise there are those who say "I'm libertarian" and yet turn-around and vote for 700 billion in taxpayer dollars be transfered to wealthy millionaires. So because people act like people, with a tendency to lie, it becomes necessary to separate those "fake" persons from the "true" persons.
Revoke the Comcast monopoly, such that other competitors like Time-Warner, Cox, Cablevision, Verizon, et cetera can lay fiber optics in parallel to Comcast's already-existing lines.
Then you will have a choice. If one company becomes greedy & charged you for google.com access you can switch to another company that doesn't charge, just the same way you can jump from sucky Ford to Dodge to Honda to Toyota to Kia to..... until you find the company you like.
Choice == Power for the citizen. Government == being treated like a child - no power. That's the libertarian viewpoint.
Ideas are not property. As Thomas Jefferson wisely observed about NATURAL rights: "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
"Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Copyright is a *temporary* restriction of speech and, as envisioned by the libertarian-thinking Founders, only 14 years long. (1970 Copyright Act)
It was intended to provide incentive to create artistic works for SHORT term gain, not a "strike it rich" mentality where an author can sit on his ass from age 25 'til death, and never work again. Furthermore we use the word "right" but it's actually a government-granted privilege. Rights have no expiration date; privileges do.
>>>Libertarians oppose "net neutrality" because there's nothing neutral about it. It's some group forcing what it thinks is right onto others. If Commcast wants to start charging you more every time you request a page from Google, let them. >>>
I would support this view *if and only if* Comcast's government-granted exclusive license (monopoly) was revoked, and a free/liberated market restored. Until that happens Comcast needs to be restrained by the government from abusing its monopoly, just the same way the Power and Telephone monopolies are restrained/regulated.
Net neutrality is needed because Comcast/Verizon/et al operate monopolies, and take away choice.
The solution is to remove the perversion of the market - revoke the exclusive licenses that state/local governments granted to Comcast/Verizon/et al. Restore the free/liberated market so people have power to choose.
BTW, per usual, the Slashdot summary is poor. If you read the frakking article it says clear as day,
The free software movement is textbook example of the libertarian thesis: its a private, voluntary community producing public goods without a dime of taxpayer support. Some leaders of the free software movement dont realize theyre walking libertarian case studies, and some have an unfortunate tendency to employ left-wing rhetoric to describe what theyre doing. But if you look at the substance of their views, and even more if you look at their actions, its hard to find anything for libertarians to object to...... The libertarian quarrel with socialism isnt with their egalitarianism, but with their willingness to impose that egalitarianism by force of law. Libertarians argue that free markets and robust civil society are good for the poor precisely because they are bottom-up, participatory structures that give every individual the opportunity to make the most of their own lives.
>>>Irrelevant. In a truly free market -- one that is free of regulation -- there will eventually a single winner for every segment of the market, and that winner will follow its best interests and prevent anyone from ever becoming a serious competitor. >>>
False.
The false part is when you say they "prevent" new competition from rising. In a FREE market, there is no way for a monopolist (like me for example) to stop a newbie (like you) from creating a product. I can kill you, but that's illegal. I could burn down your factory, but that too is illegal. Bottom line: there's nothing I can do to stop you from entering, because the market is open to all entrepreneurs who wish to enter.
Therefore the only way a monopoly can happen is for me to get government to grant me an exclusive license. That is what Comcast has done in may towns across this nation. That's not a free market; it's a closed market and according to libertarians should never be allowed to happen. Government should not be handing-out monopolies. The government should take a minimal approach - regulation, but that's it.
Look up Von Mises on wikipedia and study his ideas (Austrian economics).
Kubuntu says it requires 256 megabytes of RAM, which is kinda surprising. My Win98 laptop only uses 96 megabytes, and I thought Kubuntu would have similar specs since it's supposed to "particularly focus on low memory footprint." I guess Kubuntu is more akin to XP in memory size.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>So I can stick it to the man!
Bzzzz. It's so we proles can get back the 2000 billion dollars the corporations stole from us, via corruption of the People's Government.
>>>You are a lazy sad sack who would rather find enjoyment in the hard work of others, without contributing to the effort.
>>>
Awww..... look at the cute little kiddy throwing a temper tantrum. You remind me of my cute little boy. Yes you do, yes you do..... such an adorable little anonymous coward. (squeezes AC's pudgy cheek)
>>>I think most people who are playing a pirated game will not stop mid-game and say, you know what? I really enjoy, this, I am going out to the store to buy it.
>>>
I do. "Wow this Battlestar Galactica is really good. I'm going to support the actors, writers, and staff by buying it on DVD, so they can earn income and feed their families." - So now we have two datapoints - Your OPINION of what you BELIEVE "most" people do - And an actual person's buying habits.
We can add a several more datapoints if we add all the other stories from Slashdotters who say they buy products they like. It's starting to look like the "try before I buy so I can avoid shit" is a valid model (and also a smart model for the consumer).
>>>If an app is good, you should be able to find independently written positive reviews for it.
Microsoft Vista got good reviews.
Reviews don't matter when the person is
biased (or worse bribed) for the publisher.
>>>There's always the score provided in the app store, too
And as we slashdot readers have seen time-after-time, online reviews are often distorted by (a) Companies hiring employees to act as customers and post positive reviews or (b) The owner of the store deliberately erasing negative reviews to boost his own sales.
And finally there's a tendency for person to be "too kind". Often I've downloaded movies or shows that got 7, 8, or even 9 stars on IMDB.com, and I found that the my own score would only be a 2 or 3 (i.e. trash). The most-recent example is Inglorious Basterds which inexplicably has high scores/positive reviews but I found to be an epic fail of a movie. (Fortunately I downloaded rather than buy, so no money wasted.) Reviews don't mean much when my opinion rarely matches the opinion of the reviewers.
"Try before you buy" takes power away from the corporation to suck dollars from workers' wallets, and puts the power back in the hands of the People.
Two separate studies have shown that is not true. Out of 2500 songs downloaded, only 1 album sale is lost. One of those studies was done at Harvard, which I've heard is a fairly good research institute.
I like short games. One of my favorites is Eternal Darkness (Nintendo) which can be finished in a day, but the story is excellent and it's fun to replay it over and over. Another example is Resident Evil 2.
Vice-versa I hate games that needlessly pad the story to 40 or more hours. I get bored. And of course I rarely replay them.
P.S.
Corporations like you are just mad because back in Asimov's day, if 99% of what he bought was trash that was just tough shit for Isaac. They didn't give refunds. NOW the balance of power is tipping towards the consumer, where the consumer can weed-out 99% of the junk (via try before you buy) and only buy the top 1% of books/songs/videos he enjoys. This loss of power scares corporations. It means the consumers no longer have to waste their limited dollars.
One final thought -
The average American carries about $10,000 in credit card debt. And let's assume piracy no longer exists. How do you, the corporation, propose to suck more dollars from consumer wallets, when they are already empty??? The consumers have already spent all they have.
>>>The "try before you buy" excuse that people give as a reason to pirate (very popular here at Slashdot) has always been a steaming pile of bullshit
>>>
No it isn't. Just because I downloaded 90210 or an iPhone App doesn't mean I don't use the "try before buy" model. If I don't buy 80% of what I download, it's because 80% of it is shit. (Or worse: "99% of any genre is trash"-Isaac Asimov). BUT if it's good then I will buy it. Just take a gander of what's on my shelf:
- Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT ..... ..., 1999. Depeche Mode GH, R.E.M. GH, and on and on and on
- Babylon 5
- Earth Final Conflict (seasons 1 and 4)
- BSG complete collection
- Stargate SG1 complete
- Stargate SGA complete
- Red Dwarf complete
- All in the Family 1,2,3,4,5
- Random movies: Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, the Abbott & Costello Collection,
- random music: Greatest Hits of 1980, 1981,
- Random games: About 100 Atari titles, ~50 SNES titles, ~50 N64 titles, and literally hundreds of PS1/PS2/Gamecube discs.
- and on and on and on
Yes I "try before buy" a lot of stuff off the net. And a big chunk of it is trash so I don't buy that trash. This is Not a bullshit approach to consumerism, but a SMART approach to consumerism because it keeps ME wealthy, and it keeps YOU the bastard corporation from sucking away all my dollars. (Of course you then beg politicians for 2000 billion dollar bailouts, but that's a separate issue.)
The U.S. democrats over the past century have passed laws to control how much corn/potatoes we can grow in our own backyards (1930s food rationing which is still in effect), taken-over our retirement savings (SS), taken-over our childcare (schools and SCHIP), taken-over our cars (exhaust regulation), and soon will take-over our healthcare (government-run).
Economically they are authoritarian. They should be moved to the left side your political compass.
>>>That may be the way it is in your company. When I'm hiring a tech person, a word document is a strike against you.
So basically you're an asshole who have off-the-wall elitist
:-)
ideas about document formats ("Must be PDF or you're not hired").
I'm glad you rejected my Word resume.
Interesting. I just send plain ASCII. Gets me the interview every time.
Leaping Lizards!
I prefer lightweight wherever possible, which is why I dumped Azureus for Utorrent (200 downto 15 megabytes). My Word 97 install fits into just 7 megabytes.
Now I'm experimenting with K-Meleon as a possible replacement for Firefox/Opera. So far KM doesn't impress me much... still hogs a lot of RAM and CPU.
>>>Maybe you're trolling.
Ooops. It looks like I loaded the wrong GPP (Genuine People Personality) into my android. This one's too rude for my taste. (Hmmm... where'd I lay that sexbot GPP?)
.
>>>Why are you mentioning Win98? Hardly comparable in capability or stability
No but it fits inside my 96 megabyte laptop, which is what I was hoping I could upgrade to a Linux install like Xubuntu.
>>>First of all, the more powerful governments are, the more powerful regulation is which *limits* the power and size of corporate power
First of all, corporations only exist because government created them.
Governments could kill every corporation overnight,
simply by revoking their incorporation licenses.
So the previous person's comment: "Big, bloated, inefficient government leads to big, bloated, inefficient corps," is right on target. It's a circle - wealthy men bribed government leaders to give them limited liability (incorporation). The leaders granted it. Wealthy men bribed government leaders to give them special privileges. The leaders granted it. Wealthy men begged government leaders to bail them out. So government gave them 700 billion.
If the government leaders had simply said "No," right from the very start and maintained a small government of minimal size, the corporations would never have been born. Companies would be one-owner affairs.
Big, overreaching government gave birth to the evil of the corporation, with a simple piece of paper called an "incorporation license".
>>>I love when people use the word "true" to refer to a subgroup within a larger group that more agrees with their personal beliefs.
>>>
We wouldn't have to do that if people were honest. Chairman Mao claimed to support human rights, as he signed orders to kill people who dared speak their minds. Likewise there are those who say "I'm libertarian" and yet turn-around and vote for 700 billion in taxpayer dollars be transfered to wealthy millionaires. So because people act like people, with a tendency to lie, it becomes necessary to separate those "fake" persons from the "true" persons.
Revoke the Comcast monopoly, such that other competitors like Time-Warner, Cox, Cablevision, Verizon, et cetera can lay fiber optics in parallel to Comcast's already-existing lines.
Then you will have a choice. If one company becomes greedy & charged you for google.com access you can switch to another company that doesn't charge, just the same way you can jump from sucky Ford to Dodge to Honda to Toyota to Kia to..... until you find the company you like.
Choice == Power for the citizen.
Government == being treated like a child - no power.
That's the libertarian viewpoint.
Ideas are not property. As Thomas Jefferson wisely observed about NATURAL rights: "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
"Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Copyright is a *temporary* restriction of speech and, as envisioned by the libertarian-thinking Founders, only 14 years long. (1970 Copyright Act)
It was intended to provide incentive to create artistic works for SHORT term gain, not a "strike it rich" mentality where an author can sit on his ass from age 25 'til death, and never work again. Furthermore we use the word "right" but it's actually a government-granted privilege. Rights have no expiration date; privileges do.
>>>Libertarians oppose "net neutrality" because there's nothing neutral about it. It's some group forcing what it thinks is right onto others. If Commcast wants to start charging you more every time you request a page from Google, let them.
>>>
I would support this view *if and only if* Comcast's government-granted exclusive license (monopoly) was revoked, and a free/liberated market restored. Until that happens Comcast needs to be restrained by the government from abusing its monopoly, just the same way the Power and Telephone monopolies are restrained/regulated.
Net neutrality is needed because Comcast/Verizon/et al operate monopolies, and take away choice.
The solution is to remove the perversion of the market - revoke the exclusive licenses that state/local governments granted to Comcast/Verizon/et al. Restore the free/liberated market so people have power to choose.
BTW, per usual, the Slashdot summary is poor. If you read the frakking article it says clear as day,
The free software movement is textbook example of the libertarian thesis: its a private, voluntary community producing public goods without a dime of taxpayer support. Some leaders of the free software movement dont realize theyre walking libertarian case studies, and some have an unfortunate tendency to employ left-wing rhetoric to describe what theyre doing. But if you look at the substance of their views, and even more if you look at their actions, its hard to find anything for libertarians to object to. ..... The libertarian quarrel with socialism isnt with their egalitarianism, but with their willingness to impose that egalitarianism by force of law. Libertarians argue that free markets and robust civil society are good for the poor precisely because they are bottom-up, participatory structures that give every individual the opportunity to make the most of their own lives.
>>>Irrelevant. In a truly free market -- one that is free of regulation -- there will eventually a single winner for every segment of the market, and that winner will follow its best interests and prevent anyone from ever becoming a serious competitor.
>>>
False.
The false part is when you say they "prevent" new competition from rising. In a FREE market, there is no way for a monopolist (like me for example) to stop a newbie (like you) from creating a product. I can kill you, but that's illegal. I could burn down your factory, but that too is illegal. Bottom line: there's nothing I can do to stop you from entering, because the market is open to all entrepreneurs who wish to enter.
Therefore the only way a monopoly can happen is for me to get government to grant me an exclusive license. That is what Comcast has done in may towns across this nation. That's not a free market; it's a closed market and according to libertarians should never be allowed to happen. Government should not be handing-out monopolies. The government should take a minimal approach - regulation, but that's it.
Look up Von Mises on wikipedia and
study his ideas (Austrian economics).
>>>I've got 5 Mbps cable Internet.
"Nobody needs more than 640kbps." What is the cap your cable provider places on you?
No actually it's more like this (two forks):
MS-DOS + Windows desktop: 1, 2, 3.x, 4.x (95/98/Me) - terminated
NT line: 3.1, 4.x, 5.x (2000/XP), 6.x (Vista), Windows 7
+1 insightful. And informative. Thanks.
Kubuntu says it requires 256 megabytes of RAM, which is kinda surprising. My Win98 laptop only uses 96 megabytes, and I thought Kubuntu would have similar specs since it's supposed to "particularly focus on low memory footprint." I guess Kubuntu is more akin to XP in memory size.