Yes, this story is utter, complete, bull crap, just like the Audi "unintended acceleration" stories where the car supposedly suddenly lurched forward. It's generally recognized now that the drivers hit the accelerator instead of the brake.
There is NO WAY that a car motor would overpower the brakes.
No, that's exactly what I meant. Your point assumes that the current system is moral. I do not see how it could be called 'moral' by any human-centric standard. It's merely a system which rewards businesses/corporations and works against both the musician and the listener.
What is moral is to not use something that someone else created without their permission. That's an objective standard of morality. If someone doesn't want you to do something with their creation, then you shouldn't.
And it's a little silly to argue that it works against the musician for them to be paid for their work.
I've never heard an objective reason an mp3 should be considered property. I've heard subjective reasons, but in the subjective realm, our current system does more harm than good.
The objective reason is that intellectual property should be property is so people have an incentive to create more of it. The same reason we have patents -- if we didn't have patents, then whenever a little guy created something, the big companies would simply steal the idea, mass produce it on a scale the little guy could never hope to do, and the little guy gets screwed.
For music, if no one could make money at it, we'd 1) have a whole lot less of it, and 2) what their was of it would be produced with a lot less quality. A quality recording takes real money to produce.
Why? If you don't believe "The Man" deserves the payment, why pay him?
Here's a novel idea... how about if something isn't worth paying for, then don't buy it? Guess what? Music is a luxury, not a necessity. If you don't like their terms, then don't buy it. Simple as that.
Oh wait, that would be the moral thing to do. This is Slashdot.
Greens have moved beyond a lesser-evil approach to politics as well as to the issues you describe above. I cannot under any circumstances accept nuclear power and genetically modified foods as a healthy alternative.
"Under any circumstances"??? So Fusion power is out, too? Or any future nuclear power that solved the waste issues?
And, of course, we know that genetically modified foods are by definition unhealthy. And nice "Frankenfood" reference later on.
There are such simpler and more sensible ways to approach these issues. We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy.
No. Conservation will never work; our power needs will continue to increase, and I have no problem with that. I don't want to live back in the dark ages again, sorry.
I'm signed up for the 500 anytime minute Vonage plan for $14.95. I've been extremely impressed with the service so far. They sent out the box right away, I plugged it into my network, and it "just worked". The online control panel is really slick, too. Very well designed, all the options right there, including listening to voicemail.
Even transferring my phone number was painless. I just faxed them a phone bill and they took care of the rest.
I was a little concerned with "voice lag", where you get that delay effect, but so far it's been unnoticeable. (but I also have a four megabit cable modem).
In short, Vonage has rocked so far. I had my doubts about VoIP, but no doubts any longer.
Looking back now, it feels completely absurd that anyone would complain about an operating system company including a browser with the operating system. How much more of an essential tool is there these days? How stupid would it be if you bought a computer, and then had to spend $50 for a separate browser?
There are things they could have targeted for antitrust, but that they picked Netscape was completely stupid. Microsoft was completely in the right to bundle a browser.
Personally, while I respect the engineering that went into this, I don't consider this space travel. Space travel to me means at least a controlled orbital entry and return.
I don't care that "they" have defined space at 100km. It ain't space travel.
really what laws would I be breaking? there are no laws protecting undiscovered endangered species on another planet.
The ones that will be created when the technology exists to necessitate the laws.
as technology increases so does personal power. it will get more and more feasible as technology marches forward and access to space grows.
Yes, but as personal technology grows, government technology grows faster. If you have the tech to send a personal spacecraft to Mars, chances are, the government has a better spacecraft to blow yours up.
Theoretically possible, although I tend to think you could bomb the area with high temp bombs to sterilize the landing area. In any case, sure, it's possible, if you want your ass landed in jail for the rest of your life. One nut can't just send a "simple probe", it takes a lot of nuts with a lot of money, who don't mind being villainized for the rest of human history.
As for whether it's a "waste" to not colonize it, I'm not convinced that it isn't a waste. Mars a big freaking ROCK. It's not that interesting of a place to colonize.
I personally believe the future of colonization are huge human-built space stations with spin gravity (probably Cylinders) with earth-like environments. There's little that can't provide over living on a rock.
We just need to get over the romantic notion that it's fun to live on a rock that's not the earth. The only thing that makes it exciting is the fact that no one has done it, but from a realistic standpoint, there just ain't that much that's interesting about it.
My prediction: If any private company gets within sniffing distance of sending people to Mars, the environmentalists and scientists will go hand-in-hand screaming about contaminating the native environment.
And they'll get a lot of sympathetic ears, too. The crowd here on Slashdot who grew up on "gee wow" Science Fiction stories won't want to believe it, but my gut feeling is that once regular people start thinking about it, they won't want to see Mars screwed up.
And settlements on Mars are even less likely. Mars is a completely unique environment. It simply won't be allowed.
And please spare me talk about treaties, and land rights, etc, etc, blah blah. Planetary exploration is not like anything else. There is no precident.
What will the earth governments do about it, you ask? A Mars colony will not be able to be self sufficient from a single launch. Without support from the Earth, it will die, period.
Not that the NY Times is a great source of political wisdom, but I was curious about that quote. And now I'm curious to see if it matters to you that Chomsky flat out LIED and took that quote of context (which is apparently put on his books). According to this blog entry, here is the exact quote:
Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today. He is also a disturbingly divided intellectual. On the one hand there is a large body of revolutionary and highly technical linguistic scholarship, much of it too difficult for anyone but the professional linguist or philosopher; on the other, an equally substantial body of political writings, accessible to any literate person but often maddeningly simple-minded. The 'Chomsky problem' is to explain how these two fit together.
"Most important intellectual" primarily refers to his linguistic research!! His politics are called "maddeningly simple-minded", which I embrace wholeheartedly.
Man, if this doesn't describe Chomsky in a nutshell, I don't know what does. He pulls out a quote from a NY Times article that implies the opposite of what it really says. EVERYTHING he says is like that! He is infamous for pulling things out of context and twisting them around.
Does that tell you anything? Does that disturb you at all?
LOL!! You ask me to read some books and then you recommend CHOMSKY, of all people?? Good lord, man. Back slowly away from the books. Go outside, breath the air. Broaden your sources a bit.
Chomsky is a nut case, pure and simple. He is the epitome of the "proof by selection of facts" logic flaw. He ignores anything that doesn't fit his twisted world view, and what he does use, he warps and flakes and forms it into the worse possible interpretations with no regard for actual truth.
Chomsky is even worse than Michael Moore, and that's saying something.
The only thing Chomsky is good for is being a test for political naivete. If you like him, then you are political naieve and ignorant. Go educate yourself.
Um, there's a whole Libertarian wing of the Republican party. There's also a religious wing and a "country club" wing, along with a few other wings.
The Libertarian Republicans are the ones who actually make a difference, while the Liberatarian Party whines and complains that one cares about them (and they're right, of course, because they are generally more interested in theory than practicality).
And your authority is? I don't respond to argument by assertion.
And I don't respond to argument by authority. One is either knowledgeable or one isn't. I gave you a specific example of your ignorance: your belief that your personal behavior matters in any way to economics.
I do find it amusing that you claim I argue by assertion when I loaded my post with verifiable facts to support my conclusions. You have yet to actually post a fact to support any statement you've made.
I know a lot more about economics than you appear to believe.
A lot of people think they understand economics, certainly. But sorry, you really don't.
Typical zealot mantra. If everybody was educated (i.e. blinkered) like me then the world would be a better place. Many people have goals other than money and economic reward. I for one want a world that doesn't squeeze them out. Deal with it.
LOL. No, I don't expect people to have the same opinion as me. But that doesn't mean that all opinions are equal. Some are just plain based on a lack of knowledge of a subject.
For example: economics doesn't care what you PERSONALLY believe about money and economic reward. Economics deals with average behavior. Incidently, this should be the proof that you have no understanding of economics. [And, frankly, it also doesn't matter that you claim to not care about money, because the nature of the world forces you to care about it.]
Nonsense. We have no way of knowing what might've happened in a 25 year old competitive computer industry not dominated by a monopolist. For all you know M$ has stifled what might have been. About the only positive thing M$ has done has been to impose a few standards. A pity most are closed and not subject to realistic competition as a result. $35,000,000,000 per year is not even a remotely minor monopolistic practice.
Well, duh. Of course, there are infinitely many possibilities of things that might have happened. But you are simply ignorant of computer history if you think that Microsoft wasn't one of the more-better-than-worse scenerios.
For example, let's say Apple had won. That would have been a disaster for the computer industry. It would have taken years to throw off the yolk of proprietary, expensive Hardware. An Apple monopoly would have made Microsoft look like child's play.
The one thing Microsoft gave us was commodity hardware. Note that they didn't have to -- they could have leveraged their software monopoly into a "Microsoft PC" hardware monopoly. But Microsoft was smart -- they realized that open hardware benefited them.
People don't remember that Microsoft was the young upstart against IBM. The good guys won! Microsoft were the people pushing for open hardware.
An operating system is a natural monopology... even if Microsoft didn't try and push it in certain ways, it's inevitable than an operating system company tends to be a monopoly.
But also remember how incoompetent Microsoft's competitors are. IBM had a shot with OS/2, but they were too stupid to do 100% application compatibility. If they had, Microsoft would have had a true competitor.
[Second: 27 billion dollars in a single charity can do a lot of things that 27 million $1000 donations can't.]
Yep, and the opposite is also true. Your point?
Geez. Don't be obtuse. $1000 donations are much easier to come by than 27 billion dollar charities (in fact, it's the ONLY one).
Hmmm. Honestly, your statements are so ignorant of basic economics and wrong in so many dimensions that I don't know where to begin.
[Can I repeat my call that economics should be taught ALL FOUR YEARS of high school and should be a fundamental subject drilled into people? That would solve so many problems in the world. But I digress.]
I don't really feel like unraveling all the wrongness, but here's a couple of points:
The pie is not limited. Microsoft has created an enormous amount of wealth, beyond even what's in their coffers. The world is far better because of Microsoft on balance, even with their relatively minor (and I mean/really/ minor) monopolistic practices.
Second: 27 billion dollars in a single charity can do a lot of things that 27 million $1000 donations can't.
Then I would liquidate the entire company and find better uses for those hundreds of billions of dollars. Like feeding people with no food. Or curing deadly diseases. I think those things are more important than companies needing an office suite.
Let's examine this. If you were in charge of Microsoft, then those billions wouldn't exist in the first place!
The Gates foundation wouldn't have the tens of billions of dollars to do what they do (including curing deadly deseases, which is what you claim you want).
And even if you were to suddenly take over Microsoft, look at what you would do. You would piss it all away by liquidating the company, the very entity that makes it possible to do all this charity work.
This is a great example of why people like you should be kept as far away from policy as possible. You would rather dogmatically cling to your prejudicies than have actual results happen.
Don't say goodbye to coal and oil, yet, though; unless cell technology increases substantially, when we run out of oil we will convert coal to synthetic fuel.
Statements like this just bug me, because it's such a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. And this attitude is SO pervasive among the enviro-people.
We will NEVER EVER run out of oil. Never. Ever.
What WILL happen is that eventually oil because more expensive to pull out of the ground as the reserves get lower. At that point, other sources of energy get more economical, and we inevitably switch over.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever tried to slice a loaf of bread into nice, neat slices? It's a PAIN IN THE ASS.
Space travel is controlled space travel, not shoot a box as high as you can go.
Wake me when we have orbital insertions (a MUCH more difficult problem), and then we'll talk about space tourism.
There is NO WAY that a car motor would overpower the brakes.
No, that's exactly what I meant. Your point assumes that the current system is moral. I do not see how it could be called 'moral' by any human-centric standard. It's merely a system which rewards businesses/corporations and works against both the musician and the listener.
What is moral is to not use something that someone else created without their permission. That's an objective standard of morality. If someone doesn't want you to do something with their creation, then you shouldn't.
And it's a little silly to argue that it works against the musician for them to be paid for their work.
I've never heard an objective reason an mp3 should be considered property. I've heard subjective reasons, but in the subjective realm, our current system does more harm than good.
The objective reason is that intellectual property should be property is so people have an incentive to create more of it. The same reason we have patents -- if we didn't have patents, then whenever a little guy created something, the big companies would simply steal the idea, mass produce it on a scale the little guy could never hope to do, and the little guy gets screwed.
For music, if no one could make money at it, we'd 1) have a whole lot less of it, and 2) what their was of it would be produced with a lot less quality. A quality recording takes real money to produce.
You implied, "not buying it but downloading it anyway." If that's not what you meant, then I apologize.
Here's a novel idea... how about if something isn't worth paying for, then don't buy it? Guess what? Music is a luxury, not a necessity. If you don't like their terms, then don't buy it. Simple as that.
Oh wait, that would be the moral thing to do. This is Slashdot.
Um, you have no idea what any of the parties stand for, do you?
I know, I know. "Anyone has to be better than Bush". Alas, that seems to be about as deeply as anyone thinks about politics.
"Under any circumstances"??? So Fusion power is out, too? Or any future nuclear power that solved the waste issues?
And, of course, we know that genetically modified foods are by definition unhealthy. And nice "Frankenfood" reference later on.
There are such simpler and more sensible ways to approach these issues. We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy.
No. Conservation will never work; our power needs will continue to increase, and I have no problem with that. I don't want to live back in the dark ages again, sorry.
He's just another anti-science nut.
Even transferring my phone number was painless. I just faxed them a phone bill and they took care of the rest.
I was a little concerned with "voice lag", where you get that delay effect, but so far it's been unnoticeable. (but I also have a four megabit cable modem).
In short, Vonage has rocked so far. I had my doubts about VoIP, but no doubts any longer.
There are things they could have targeted for antitrust, but that they picked Netscape was completely stupid. Microsoft was completely in the right to bundle a browser.
Personally, while I respect the engineering that went into this, I don't consider this space travel. Space travel to me means at least a controlled orbital entry and return.
I don't care that "they" have defined space at 100km. It ain't space travel.
I call bullshit.
Yes, in small, isolated benchmarks, occasionally Java can compare to C. But in large applications, it's dreadfully slow.
They had Nuclear Powered Limbs way back in 1974! I specifically remember Steve hacking his nuclear battery out of his arm! :)
really what laws would I be breaking? there are no laws protecting undiscovered endangered species on another planet.
The ones that will be created when the technology exists to necessitate the laws.
as technology increases so does personal power. it will get more and more feasible as technology marches forward and access to space grows.
Yes, but as personal technology grows, government technology grows faster. If you have the tech to send a personal spacecraft to Mars, chances are, the government has a better spacecraft to blow yours up.
As for whether it's a "waste" to not colonize it, I'm not convinced that it isn't a waste. Mars a big freaking ROCK. It's not that interesting of a place to colonize.
I personally believe the future of colonization are huge human-built space stations with spin gravity (probably Cylinders) with earth-like environments. There's little that can't provide over living on a rock.
We just need to get over the romantic notion that it's fun to live on a rock that's not the earth. The only thing that makes it exciting is the fact that no one has done it, but from a realistic standpoint, there just ain't that much that's interesting about it.
And they'll get a lot of sympathetic ears, too. The crowd here on Slashdot who grew up on "gee wow" Science Fiction stories won't want to believe it, but my gut feeling is that once regular people start thinking about it, they won't want to see Mars screwed up.
And settlements on Mars are even less likely. Mars is a completely unique environment. It simply won't be allowed.
And please spare me talk about treaties, and land rights, etc, etc, blah blah. Planetary exploration is not like anything else. There is no precident.
What will the earth governments do about it, you ask? A Mars colony will not be able to be self sufficient from a single launch. Without support from the Earth, it will die, period.
"Most important intellectual" primarily refers to his linguistic research!! His politics are called "maddeningly simple-minded", which I embrace wholeheartedly.
Man, if this doesn't describe Chomsky in a nutshell, I don't know what does. He pulls out a quote from a NY Times article that implies the opposite of what it really says. EVERYTHING he says is like that! He is infamous for pulling things out of context and twisting them around.
Does that tell you anything? Does that disturb you at all?
Chomsky is a nut case, pure and simple. He is the epitome of the "proof by selection of facts" logic flaw. He ignores anything that doesn't fit his twisted world view, and what he does use, he warps and flakes and forms it into the worse possible interpretations with no regard for actual truth.
Chomsky is even worse than Michael Moore, and that's saying something.
The only thing Chomsky is good for is being a test for political naivete. If you like him, then you are political naieve and ignorant. Go educate yourself.
P.S. Yes, I've read him.
Did you ever think the left fails because they're just bad ideas?
The Libertarian Republicans are the ones who actually make a difference, while the Liberatarian Party whines and complains that one cares about them (and they're right, of course, because they are generally more interested in theory than practicality).
And I don't respond to argument by authority. One is either knowledgeable or one isn't. I gave you a specific example of your ignorance: your belief that your personal behavior matters in any way to economics.
I do find it amusing that you claim I argue by assertion when I loaded my post with verifiable facts to support my conclusions. You have yet to actually post a fact to support any statement you've made.
A lot of people think they understand economics, certainly. But sorry, you really don't.
Typical zealot mantra. If everybody was educated (i.e. blinkered) like me then the world would be a better place. Many people have goals other than money and economic reward. I for one want a world that doesn't squeeze them out. Deal with it.
LOL. No, I don't expect people to have the same opinion as me. But that doesn't mean that all opinions are equal. Some are just plain based on a lack of knowledge of a subject.
For example: economics doesn't care what you PERSONALLY believe about money and economic reward. Economics deals with average behavior. Incidently, this should be the proof that you have no understanding of economics. [And, frankly, it also doesn't matter that you claim to not care about money, because the nature of the world forces you to care about it.]
Nonsense. We have no way of knowing what might've happened in a 25 year old competitive computer industry not dominated by a monopolist. For all you know M$ has stifled what might have been. About the only positive thing M$ has done has been to impose a few standards. A pity most are closed and not subject to realistic competition as a result. $35,000,000,000 per year is not even a remotely minor monopolistic practice.
Well, duh. Of course, there are infinitely many possibilities of things that might have happened. But you are simply ignorant of computer history if you think that Microsoft wasn't one of the more-better-than-worse scenerios.
For example, let's say Apple had won. That would have been a disaster for the computer industry. It would have taken years to throw off the yolk of proprietary, expensive Hardware. An Apple monopoly would have made Microsoft look like child's play.
The one thing Microsoft gave us was commodity hardware. Note that they didn't have to -- they could have leveraged their software monopoly into a "Microsoft PC" hardware monopoly. But Microsoft was smart -- they realized that open hardware benefited them.
People don't remember that Microsoft was the young upstart against IBM. The good guys won! Microsoft were the people pushing for open hardware.
An operating system is a natural monopology... even if Microsoft didn't try and push it in certain ways, it's inevitable than an operating system company tends to be a monopoly.
But also remember how incoompetent Microsoft's competitors are. IBM had a shot with OS/2, but they were too stupid to do 100% application compatibility. If they had, Microsoft would have had a true competitor.
[Second: 27 billion dollars in a single charity can do a lot of things that 27 million $1000 donations can't.]
Yep, and the opposite is also true. Your point?
Geez. Don't be obtuse. $1000 donations are much easier to come by than 27 billion dollar charities (in fact, it's the ONLY one).
[Can I repeat my call that economics should be taught ALL FOUR YEARS of high school and should be a fundamental subject drilled into people? That would solve so many problems in the world. But I digress.]
I don't really feel like unraveling all the wrongness, but here's a couple of points:
The pie is not limited. Microsoft has created an enormous amount of wealth, beyond even what's in their coffers. The world is far better because of Microsoft on balance, even with their relatively minor (and I mean /really/ minor) monopolistic practices.
Second: 27 billion dollars in a single charity can do a lot of things that 27 million $1000 donations can't.
Let's examine this. If you were in charge of Microsoft, then those billions wouldn't exist in the first place!
The Gates foundation wouldn't have the tens of billions of dollars to do what they do (including curing deadly deseases, which is what you claim you want).
And even if you were to suddenly take over Microsoft, look at what you would do. You would piss it all away by liquidating the company, the very entity that makes it possible to do all this charity work.
This is a great example of why people like you should be kept as far away from policy as possible. You would rather dogmatically cling to your prejudicies than have actual results happen.
Statements like this just bug me, because it's such a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. And this attitude is SO pervasive among the enviro-people.
We will NEVER EVER run out of oil. Never. Ever.
What WILL happen is that eventually oil because more expensive to pull out of the ground as the reserves get lower. At that point, other sources of energy get more economical, and we inevitably switch over.