Zonk, I respect your use of gravitas to indicate the staid, heroic manner in which Link behaves. But please don't use it so close to words that make it seem to mean more like "gravity." Gravity, even of the emotional sort, does not have the same meaning as gravitas.
Ever intent on helping people to stop mauling Latin words!
Bottom line, if you use something of value that costs somebody else something to create and maintain, you ought to pay for it.
Because there's no reason anyone would want to give anything away for free.
(And yes, of course, people can always publish information for free, but that places significant limits on what can be accomplished, and would result in a whole lot less information being available on the web.)
Ah, right, because places like Project Gutenburg are known for their dearth of material.
Sorry, but you've offered no support for your claim that making something and offering it in a public arena puts an onus on someone who takes you up on your offer to pay you for it.
Last I checked, when you put something out on the sidewalk, you are offering it for free. And it is not the obligation of the person who scores your ratty old couch to pay you something for it, even if you're hollering out the window at them to remind them of the 'moral discomfort' they ought to be suffering.
On the other hand, most shops have security systems, locks, and inventory tracking, and when something is stolen from a shop, the cops are justifiably called. Also, you don't see proprietors charging people fees just to look around. It's called 'the cost of doing business'.
Don't like people visiting your site with adblocks? Keep it open, make your site subscription-based, or shut it down. It's all well and good to claim some lofty ideal to trap others into an obligation premised on a question-begging argument, but in the end you're just pissing in the wind until you come up with a viable means by which people agree to pay you money for services they solicit. There is no moral justification for capitalism. Like it or lump it. It's the cost of doing business.
It's just as plausible that sunspot frequency affects stock prices or hem lines.
Jeez, people, think a little more critically. Now, granted, brand quality may be a factor in these users' decisions. But it's a far leap to then suggest that it's the cause.
I think your issue here is that "the law is the law" and there's no consideration of whether the law itself (or a contract, in the case of the article) is valid. The problem with law and contracts, though, is that whether or not they're valid, a company with as much money as the MPAA can enforce them. This is known as "might makes right". I can only presume that you're completely in favor of the Baathist party's tactics in controlling the Iraqi government; after all, they could. Similarly North Korea's governments. Or the former Taliban regime. After all, they have [had] better weapons and means of enforcing the law.
Your analogy is BS. While a corporation does not have a "right" to make a profit, to use your words, it does have a right to regulate and control access to its 'property" just as the private citizen has a "right" to put a paddle lock on his shed and expect others to stay out.
The problem with your statement is that what corporations perceive as property isn't, in fact, such.
The fundamental debate here is whether you can decide that ideas are your own, and that you can control whether someone uses those ideas with or without your permission. Ideas, however, are not easily likened to physical property. You can easily deal with physical property theft because of the concept of scarcity--you have deprived a person of something they had, whether it be the contents of their shed or the items off their storefront shelves. However, when you "steal" (read: use) someone else's idea, the original "owner" has lost nothing but an opportunity, namely, the fact that others don't know how something works and the ability to leverage that knowledge for profit. When that knowledge is used to harm others, courts usually rule such an act as "blackmail".
Copyright is the control of reproduction of an idea made manifest: when an artist makes a painting on canvas, he has a right to control its reproduction and consequent sale. When an engineering company makes a certain chip, it has the right to control its reproduction and manufacture and redistribution. When a movie studio makes a movie, it has the right to control its reproduction and consequent sale. This is fine. However, once you throw something out there into the public, you lose all means of controlling its use, except by agreement. This agreement, as far as the MPAA is concerned, comes in the form of licensing its playback technology to other companies. But when resourceful individuals are able to acheive playback of their paid-for media without licensing through the company and without stealing company equipment (e.g., physical playback technology), no harm has been done, except to the company's business model. Boo fucking hoo.
Funny you agree that breaking and entry where it comes to the private citizen's right to protect his personal property is a crime, but stealing from the company by depriving them of the income they get through the limited license they provide when selling DVDs is OK.
Repeat after me: an opportunity is not a reality. The company's profit's are not actualized by the existence of the idea; they are actualized by its use. If the company can't find a way to make a profit on the idea without blackmailing others (in this instance, Linux users and manufacturers who would sell to Linux users) into agreeing to not use it, it has not been robbed; it has simply failed to make a profit. This is only a crime in a capitalistic economy, and the consequences are meted out by the market.
Allow me to point out that the MPAA's copyright measures thus far are not inhibiting the reproduction of its artists' property; they're inhibiting its playback. The ball is in the company's court to prevent reproduction and redistribution. The ball is NOT in the US government's court to limit its citizens' actions in using something they own by any means they see fit, given the definition of theft and property.
Guess it is really just a matter of who's ox is being gored, isn't it? FYI, the corporation has precisely the same rights to its property as you, a private citizen, have to yours.
Correct. And when someone breaks into the MPAA's offices and steals the computers, desks, chairs, staplers, watercoolers, carpet, wall hangings, potted plants, overhead lamps, power strips, filing cabinets, stocks of presed DVDs, CDs, tapes, laserdisks, MV chips, digital archives of media, etc., they have a case.
If a company breaks an agreement not to sell a playback prevention mechanism to others who haven't made such an agreement, as is the case here, the obviousness of the flaw in the MPAA's business
You've been duped if you think that you can breach a contract after you've signed on the dotted line simply because it's easier to do so.
My point is that the contract and its terms are what's illegitimate. It's the same thing with Microsoft's OEM licensing of old, preventing distributors from intsalling other OSes. Sure, it's a contract, but that doesn't make it less repugnant. We're not talking about specific legal contracts at this point--we're talking about whether the legality of the practice overall is sustainable. And frankly, it's not, for the reason I laid out: a company doesn't have a guarantee to profit. The licensing employed by the MPAA is nothing more than a legalised protection racket.
You've also been duped if you think the American military is much different from Vinny & Sons. I live in the midwest, so I don't have much use for border protections or defense against foreign attack, at this point. Does this mean I don't have to pay the tab for the military? Absolutely not. My point is that your analogy is moot.
A complete, self-admitted red herring. Yes, the argument can be made that the US government and its citizens have such and such responsibilities and authorities. However, last I checked, a corporation is not bound by the same principles, or protected by the same guaranties. So, your attempt to invalidate my analogy is flawed.
These protection features are "just annoyances" in the same way that padlocks are "just annoyances". If someone wants to open something locked with a padlock, it's really *not that hard* for him to do so, either by picking or with some bolt cutters. If a company is licensed to sell someone's technology, provided they put a padlock on the box containing that technology, they had better put the padlock on there, regardless of the prevalence of boltcutters.
Care to explain that again? Sorry, bub, but unlike a citizen's private property, companies don't have a guaranteed right to profit--no matter what cockamamie ways they come up with to make it seem that way. You've been duped. The MPAA's licensing tactics are no different than kneecap-protection policies offered by Vinny & Sons.
Sure, see if anyone sticks their neck out for you. Consider that money is a good way to keep a company in business that provides an actual service of value. Ungrateful prick.
More to the point, any good teacher will cover Shakespearean works as performances--actually getting the students to participate in the text instead of just reading it aloud. I was fortunate enough to have a good teacher. Maybe I'm just a literature geek, who knows.:)
There's nothing better than a two-bagger of Red Rose that's been steeping for an hour or more. It's so full-bodied and flavorful. OK, loose tea is better. but the principle still applies: let it steep for ages.
You might have elicited that response because surprisingly enough, the manpage does an adequate job of explaining the subject matter. They have better things to be talking about than walking around like an encyclopedia.
It was a great idea, but it's run out of steam for now. Recognize that and be happy for what exists already. Then go out and watch some other SF. Or maybe go out into the Big Blue Room.
Capitalism and Free Software are at complete odds with one another. You can't mandate gift-giving; it's called a fee. Capitalism fuctions like electricity, using the path of least resistance (least $$$ for most value). No company in their right mind would pay for what they can get for zero dollars.
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Sorry you can't handle male intimacy that gets closer than slapping backs and leery grins. I thoroughly appreciated Jackson's efforts to convey just how close Sam and Frodo were.
I found one issue with it as a newcomer to Perl, not immediately familiar with the various datastructures and methods of doing things: it stressed reliance on external libraries at the expense of learning other ways to do it.
Sure, Laziness is a virtue and all that, but to cite a specific example, I looked up how to parse program options. All Cookbook has to say on the matter is to use GetOpt. This is fine, and is decent advice, until you realize that GetOpt is by no means a complete solution, as it doesn't handle special characters. I beat my head on this for too long before having to search around and learn a graceful way to parse @ARGV (being new). I would have appreciated a reminder that you don't have to stick with GetOpt, and there is in fact, MTOWTDI.
Lesson having been learned, I would like to save other neophytes the trouble.
Indeed. Sarah works at SCO. Recent moves spur her to seek other employment. She's unhireable. Why? Because she didn't immeditately quit and beg for quarters on the street until she got a new job? What an insane overreaction.
That's why they said "any resumes which include the SCO Group after September of 2003 will be immediately deleted" - they're specifically giving SCO employees until the end of the month to quit if they want to be eligible for employment at Damage Studios. That seems fair to me - anyone who is still working at SCO in a month is clearly part of the problem. They've known about SCO's actions for nine months - if they haven't been looking for a new job and preparing to quit, then clearly their ethics do not agree with mine and I don't want to work with them.
Revisionist history at work...the Web site said May as of this morning when I first read it. They've changed their minds in response to exactly this kind of thing. Good on them for listening.
I've been wondering for years why I can't get anything done--I just goof off. I can do things when I let my idle fantasies quiet down for a while, but more often then not I'm distracted by reminding myself of all the other things I have to do. I used to think it was a problem of "forgetfulness", especially when I was younger:
Mom: why didn't you do your chores? Me: I forgot...:-\
Things started to change when I started sitting.
Meditation has been dismissed by lots of posters, especially in that last story about meditation in the workplace, but your story rang out a clarion call that sounded eerily familiar. I stumbled into it from a completely different angle, but have found that sitting has allowed me the mental clarity to pay more attention to the things around me. This, in turn, lets me do the right things at the right time. When it's work time, I work. When it's goof off time, I goof off. When it's time to go to the bathroom, I go to the bathroom.:)
I came to the realization that when it comes down to it, I'm the only one who can live my life. There's no easy way to do it. However, if you practice mindfulness, you've got a walking stick to help you on the path.
Despite the fact that we're two different people and no two folks are the same, I'd recommend that you take the time, once a week, to sit. Just count your breath. Exhale, inhale. That's one. Exhale, inhale. That's two. If you lose count, don't sweat it, just start over. Set a timer for twenty minutes. Or just keep an eye on a clock that's in sight. Here's a guide to practice that you may find helpful. Some of it may not apply--you don't need to jump into a monastery and shave your head:)
...who thinks that this would make a cool anime series? Imagine, a group of shady characters with dubious histories, coming together through necessity and circumstance to bust baddies. Think of the storytelling possibilities!
Grow your own clothes. Grow the plants that you get the fiber from (hemp, cotton) and make your own. You know the source and the methods of manufacture. If you're not self-sufficient enough to do that, just buy cloth to makle your clothes from trusted textile companies.
There are some pretty wild things going out out in the desert--people find all sorts of applications for technology. Some are artistic, some are practical. One of my friends is learning how to build a flame cannon...I learned engineering skills to make a temporary, stable structure (a 33' geodesic dome). The cool thing is that each of the people behind the projects they bring will gladly share what they learned. The free software community and the Burning Man ideal aren't so different when it comes down to it.
Slashdot Mirror
Zonk, I respect your use of gravitas to indicate the staid, heroic manner in which Link behaves. But please don't use it so close to words that make it seem to mean more like "gravity." Gravity, even of the emotional sort, does not have the same meaning as gravitas.
Ever intent on helping people to stop mauling Latin words!
Because there's no reason anyone would want to give anything away for free.
(And yes, of course, people can always publish information for free, but that places significant limits on what can be accomplished, and would result in a whole lot less information being available on the web.)
Ah, right, because places like Project Gutenburg are known for their dearth of material.
Sorry, but you've offered no support for your claim that making something and offering it in a public arena puts an onus on someone who takes you up on your offer to pay you for it.
Last I checked, when you put something out on the sidewalk, you are offering it for free. And it is not the obligation of the person who scores your ratty old couch to pay you something for it, even if you're hollering out the window at them to remind them of the 'moral discomfort' they ought to be suffering.
On the other hand, most shops have security systems, locks, and inventory tracking, and when something is stolen from a shop, the cops are justifiably called. Also, you don't see proprietors charging people fees just to look around. It's called 'the cost of doing business'.
Don't like people visiting your site with adblocks? Keep it open, make your site subscription-based, or shut it down. It's all well and good to claim some lofty ideal to trap others into an obligation premised on a question-begging argument, but in the end you're just pissing in the wind until you come up with a viable means by which people agree to pay you money for services they solicit. There is no moral justification for capitalism. Like it or lump it. It's the cost of doing business.
It's just as plausible that sunspot frequency affects stock prices or hem lines.
Jeez, people, think a little more critically. Now, granted, brand quality may be a factor in these users' decisions. But it's a far leap to then suggest that it's the cause.
I think your issue here is that "the law is the law" and there's no consideration of whether the law itself (or a contract, in the case of the article) is valid. The problem with law and contracts, though, is that whether or not they're valid, a company with as much money as the MPAA can enforce them. This is known as "might makes right". I can only presume that you're completely in favor of the Baathist party's tactics in controlling the Iraqi government; after all, they could. Similarly North Korea's governments. Or the former Taliban regime. After all, they have [had] better weapons and means of enforcing the law.
The problem with your statement is that what corporations perceive as property isn't, in fact, such.
The fundamental debate here is whether you can decide that ideas are your own, and that you can control whether someone uses those ideas with or without your permission. Ideas, however, are not easily likened to physical property. You can easily deal with physical property theft because of the concept of scarcity--you have deprived a person of something they had, whether it be the contents of their shed or the items off their storefront shelves. However, when you "steal" (read: use) someone else's idea, the original "owner" has lost nothing but an opportunity, namely, the fact that others don't know how something works and the ability to leverage that knowledge for profit. When that knowledge is used to harm others, courts usually rule such an act as "blackmail".
Copyright is the control of reproduction of an idea made manifest: when an artist makes a painting on canvas, he has a right to control its reproduction and consequent sale. When an engineering company makes a certain chip, it has the right to control its reproduction and manufacture and redistribution. When a movie studio makes a movie, it has the right to control its reproduction and consequent sale. This is fine. However, once you throw something out there into the public, you lose all means of controlling its use, except by agreement. This agreement, as far as the MPAA is concerned, comes in the form of licensing its playback technology to other companies. But when resourceful individuals are able to acheive playback of their paid-for media without licensing through the company and without stealing company equipment (e.g., physical playback technology), no harm has been done, except to the company's business model. Boo fucking hoo.
Funny you agree that breaking and entry where it comes to the private citizen's right to protect his personal property is a crime, but stealing from the company by depriving them of the income they get through the limited license they provide when selling DVDs is OK.
Repeat after me: an opportunity is not a reality. The company's profit's are not actualized by the existence of the idea; they are actualized by its use. If the company can't find a way to make a profit on the idea without blackmailing others (in this instance, Linux users and manufacturers who would sell to Linux users) into agreeing to not use it, it has not been robbed; it has simply failed to make a profit. This is only a crime in a capitalistic economy, and the consequences are meted out by the market.
Allow me to point out that the MPAA's copyright measures thus far are not inhibiting the reproduction of its artists' property; they're inhibiting its playback. The ball is in the company's court to prevent reproduction and redistribution. The ball is NOT in the US government's court to limit its citizens' actions in using something they own by any means they see fit, given the definition of theft and property.
Guess it is really just a matter of who's ox is being gored, isn't it? FYI, the corporation has precisely the same rights to its property as you, a private citizen, have to yours.
Correct. And when someone breaks into the MPAA's offices and steals the computers, desks, chairs, staplers, watercoolers, carpet, wall hangings, potted plants, overhead lamps, power strips, filing cabinets, stocks of presed DVDs, CDs, tapes, laserdisks, MV chips, digital archives of media, etc., they have a case.
If a company breaks an agreement not to sell a playback prevention mechanism to others who haven't made such an agreement, as is the case here, the obviousness of the flaw in the MPAA's business
My point is that the contract and its terms are what's illegitimate. It's the same thing with Microsoft's OEM licensing of old, preventing distributors from intsalling other OSes. Sure, it's a contract, but that doesn't make it less repugnant. We're not talking about specific legal contracts at this point--we're talking about whether the legality of the practice overall is sustainable. And frankly, it's not, for the reason I laid out: a company doesn't have a guarantee to profit. The licensing employed by the MPAA is nothing more than a legalised protection racket.
You've also been duped if you think the American military is much different from Vinny & Sons. I live in the midwest, so I don't have much use for border protections or defense against foreign attack, at this point. Does this mean I don't have to pay the tab for the military? Absolutely not. My point is that your analogy is moot.
A complete, self-admitted red herring. Yes, the argument can be made that the US government and its citizens have such and such responsibilities and authorities. However, last I checked, a corporation is not bound by the same principles, or protected by the same guaranties. So, your attempt to invalidate my analogy is flawed.
Care to explain that again? Sorry, bub, but unlike a citizen's private property, companies don't have a guaranteed right to profit--no matter what cockamamie ways they come up with to make it seem that way. You've been duped. The MPAA's licensing tactics are no different than kneecap-protection policies offered by Vinny & Sons.
Yes, and you pay through the nose for it. Some of us prefer to try to scrape that kind of service from someone who charges somewhat less money.
You won't get any support. The attitude towards psychology and the idea of mental disorders there is downright hostile.
Sure, see if anyone sticks their neck out for you. Consider that money is a good way to keep a company in business that provides an actual service of value. Ungrateful prick.
Down.
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Sorry you can't handle male intimacy that gets closer than slapping backs and leery grins. I thoroughly appreciated Jackson's efforts to convey just how close Sam and Frodo were.
Sure, Laziness is a virtue and all that, but to cite a specific example, I looked up how to parse program options. All Cookbook has to say on the matter is to use GetOpt. This is fine, and is decent advice, until you realize that GetOpt is by no means a complete solution, as it doesn't handle special characters. I beat my head on this for too long before having to search around and learn a graceful way to parse @ARGV (being new). I would have appreciated a reminder that you don't have to stick with GetOpt, and there is in fact, MTOWTDI.
Lesson having been learned, I would like to save other neophytes the trouble.
That's why they said "any resumes which include the SCO Group after September of 2003 will be immediately deleted" - they're specifically giving SCO employees until the end of the month to quit if they want to be eligible for employment at Damage Studios. That seems fair to me - anyone who is still working at SCO in a month is clearly part of the problem. They've known about SCO's actions for nine months - if they haven't been looking for a new job and preparing to quit, then clearly their ethics do not agree with mine and I don't want to work with them.
Revisionist history at work...the Web site said May as of this morning when I first read it. They've changed their minds in response to exactly this kind of thing. Good on them for listening.
Mom: why didn't you do your chores?
Me: I forgot...:-\
Things started to change when I started sitting.
Meditation has been dismissed by lots of posters, especially in that last story about meditation in the workplace, but your story rang out a clarion call that sounded eerily familiar. I stumbled into it from a completely different angle, but have found that sitting has allowed me the mental clarity to pay more attention to the things around me. This, in turn, lets me do the right things at the right time. When it's work time, I work. When it's goof off time, I goof off. When it's time to go to the bathroom, I go to the bathroom. :)
I came to the realization that when it comes down to it, I'm the only one who can live my life. There's no easy way to do it. However, if you practice mindfulness, you've got a walking stick to help you on the path.
Despite the fact that we're two different people and no two folks are the same, I'd recommend that you take the time, once a week, to sit. Just count your breath. Exhale, inhale. That's one. Exhale, inhale. That's two. If you lose count, don't sweat it, just start over. Set a timer for twenty minutes. Or just keep an eye on a clock that's in sight. Here's a guide to practice that you may find helpful. Some of it may not apply--you don't need to jump into a monastery and shave your head :)
I hope you find the peace you're seeking.
This login session: $13.99
...who thinks that this would make a cool anime series? Imagine, a group of shady characters with dubious histories, coming together through necessity and circumstance to bust baddies. Think of the storytelling possibilities!
You don't have to support the industry.
There are some pretty wild things going out out in the desert--people find all sorts of applications for technology. Some are artistic, some are practical. One of my friends is learning how to build a flame cannon...I learned engineering skills to make a temporary, stable structure (a 33' geodesic dome). The cool thing is that each of the people behind the projects they bring will gladly share what they learned. The free software community and the Burning Man ideal aren't so different when it comes down to it.