Rei, everybody's seen you naked. You strut around naked all the time. Even Shinji has seen you naked, and he doesn't get out much. What's with the new sense of modesty?
Because anyone under the age of 25 or the age of 35 does not matter in the United States. req. to be a U.S. House Representative? age 25 req. to be a U.S. Senator? age 35.
If they are going to repeal laws regarding drugs, I think they have another thing coming
It's a common mistake to mangle this old phrase, but it's a peeve of mine, so I have to point it out.
This is wrong: "If that's what you think, you have another thing coming."
This is right: "If that's what you think, you have another think coming."
The latter is the original (and correct) phrase; the former doesn't even make sense. Check the entry for this phrase on Snope if you want references, historical evidence, and linguistic arguments.
After all, don't we live in a representative democracy/republic? People can actually VOTE and have a say in how the government is run.
This is all this project is... organized voting. Do you have a problem with the right of free people to vote in Democratic elections? If so, maybe YOU should leave. After all, WE (freedom advocates) where here first; we founded the country. This project is a great idea. We are the people, and we're going to vote, and we're going to lobby, just like the founders of this country intended.
Unlike many other nations, we won't stop you from leaving.
Don't you see? We are the "we". We are the people, and therefore, we are the country. If you don't like US using the Democratic process that WE created, then YOU should go to a non-Democratic country.
Might as well have posted a link to the Chrisitan Bible as disproof of libertarianism.
What?
I'm a die-hard long-time Libertarian, and an evangelical Christian (you can use the word "fundamentalist" instead if you insist, although I don't like the negative baggage attached to it) as well. Where is the contradiction between the two? I certainly haven't found one. I live by the rules in the book that God wrote, and I think others should too, but I don't think that those rules should be enforced as law by humans, because not everyone can agree on the authority of those rules, and because God gave people free will so that they could live a life of Liberty and choose their own paths in life. After the Bible, my next-most-important guiding document is the Constitution, and I treasure the writings of various Libertarian authors. I even think that Ayn Rand was right about quite a few things, even though she'd call me evil and wouldn't speak to me if she were still alive today (but she isn't, so her opinions have probably changed a bit... heh heh).
If you think there are no fundamentalist Christian Libertarians, you're wrong. There are a ton of us. I've talked to many. We're not terribly vocal, because if we speak up we risk being ostracized by the non-Christian Libertarians and the non-Libertarian Christians. We have to watch what we say depending on which group we're around at the moment, lest we get branded as disloyal by people who don't understand either philosophy. If you were a member of two groups that (wrongfully) hated each other, mostly out of misunderstanding, you probably wouldn't be too vocal about it either.
>> Sometimes a new package that I'd never have >> found out about with dselect will radically >> change my life
> In which case you should probably get out > more;-)
I won't deny it. Sigh.
But don't they say "follow your bliss"? If you get off on learning about new and exciting Debian packages, isn't that just as valid (for you) as sex is for someone who gets off on sex?
Whatever makes you happy is the right thing for you. Different things make different people happy. People say "get a life" or "you are uncool" just because they have different sets of interests. Someone who does nothing but but hang around getting drunk with his friends may look at a person who has few friends and never gets drunk, and say "get a life!" to that person. But maybe the accused person enjoys working heard, learning, accomplishing things, etc. more than he likes carousing and boozing. Maybe when he looks at his accusor and sees that his accusor is into nothing but hedonism, he'll say "no, YOU get a life!"
Which one of them is right? Neither are. They're both doing what makes them happy, even if what they do are polar opposites.
Search for what, exactly? What if you don't know what the "whatever" is? What if you don't know what to search for? What if you just want to find a cool package to play with, and no particular care for what kind of package it is? What about all the cool packages that you'd never even think to search for? What if you know something is missing from your sysetm, but you don't know what it is? That was my point.
To be honest, I would imagine that few if any people use dselect - it's horrible.
I do, and I don't think it is. apt is only useful when you know the exact name of the package you want to install. There are other tools to look through the package list, but I haven't tried them, because dselect works.
Need to know what packages are available? Why? That's what the Web is for. If you know what program you want, you know the name of it, and you can nine times out of ten apt-get install it.
What if you don't know the name of the program you want? What if you don't even know what program you want? What if you don't even know what KIND of program you want?
I've discovered hundreds of programs that I never knew existed, while looking through the dselect list, that wound up enhancing my life greatly. Sure, you can decide what you need/want to do, then find a program that does it, but are you really omniscient when it comes to what software is out there? Literally hundreds of times, I've seen a new package and thought, "Hey, that's killer-radical, I never would have thought that something like this would have existed." If you don't know it exists, how can you search for it?
Running apt-get update and seeing that the package list is larger than it was last time is always like Christmas morning for me: bright, shiny, brand-new packages under the tree, and I don't know what's in them, until I open them and unwrap the surprises inside! They are surprise gifts that I receive at least several of every week! Dselect even puts all your presents (new packages) at the top of the list so you can tear into the new toys waiting for you and decide what you want and what you don't.
Running my weekly apt-get update and then tearing into Dselect like a kid on Christmas is always the highlight of my week, because I usually get at least 2-3 new packages that I actually want to play with. Sometimes the new toys they give me will occupy me all night long. Sometimes a new package that I'd never have found out about with dselect will radically change my life, and always in a good way. Because I see every new package that comes through the system, I always know more about more packages than anyone else I talk to, and I'm always able to tell my friends, "hey, guess what new really cool software is out there now?"
Assume that for every person, there is one package that, if he knew about it, he could use it to radically change his life, find real happiness, acquire great personal fortune, etc. What if he NEVER finds out about it, because he doesn't know what the nature of it is and he doesn't know what to look for? What if he NEVER finds it, because he silently downloads its package listing with an apt-get update but never looks at the description? His life has been impaired, possibly forever, out of ignorance.
I can't take that risk. I'm not willing to accept the risk that a package will appear on my package list that could revolutionize my life, and I never find out about it because I never check the list.
If you never use dselect, you don't know what you're missing. You might be missing nothing of value to you, you might be missing something of minor value to you, or you might be missing out on EVERYTHING.
I'm too afraid that I might be wrong in order to actually try it, but I'm 95% sure this won't do what you think it will.
Remember,/dev/hda isn't your hard drive, it's a device file that, when read from or written to, will trigger some code in the kernel that will read from or write to your hard drive. Unlinking/dev/hda shouldn't have any effect on your hard drive (although you'll have some trouble mounting/unmounting filesystems until you recreate the device!). When you cp over an existing file, the kernel unlinks the destination file first (at this point you no longer have a device file that points at your hard drive) and then copies the source file over. So you'd have a useless file named/dev/hda that was just a normal, non-device file because that's what happens when you try to copy a device. You should be able to use mknod to recreate any devices that you clobbered while playing around.
If you did this, however...
cat/dev/urandom >/dev/hda
... then you'd be fucked. You might want to consider updating your.sig. HTH HAND. YMMV. IANAL. RTFMBTTOTPSAW.
Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today?
on
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
·
· Score: 4, Funny
That is, I suspect, a little like thinking that it might be nice to affix Pamela Anderson's knockers to Natalie Portman's front side.
Blasphemy. This outrage will not go unanswered. Have you no concept of balance, symmetry, proportion, applied aesthetics, and physical/spiritual curvature??
All the devices, black boxes, and "do not call" lists in the article sound rather troublesome, because each telemarketer can still call you one time. It's easy enough to keep them from calling again, either by asking to be placed on their "do not call" list, or by having a device do the same thing, but there are still thousands of other comapnies out there.
A much better solution is to either cancel your home phone service, or, if you're stuck with dialup Internet access, unplug all the telephones from your home phone line and use it ONLY for Internet access. Use your cellular phone(s) for all voice communication.
It is completely illegal in the US for telemarketers to call a cellular phone. Not only can they be heavily fined if they do, but they're required by law to take proactive steps to make sure that they never actually do call a cellular phone. They have lists of cellular prefixes that they must check phone numbers against before calling them.
Since switching to cellular-only nearly a year ago, I've received zero telemarking calls and only three wrong numbers, compared to several of each per week on my home phone line. Sure, my home phone line is probably still GETTING those calls, but since there are no telephones plugged into it and my computer is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day (my ISP is seriously regretting the whole "unlimited Internet" thing), the telemarketers will never get anything but a busy signal from me.
As soon as cable Internet service becomes available in the area, I'll be cancelling my home phone line completely. Just a basic residential phone line costs more than a basic cellular plan these days once you add up all the taxes and fees the phone companies charge that the cellular companies don't, PLUS with cellular there are usually no long distance charges, and if you're a typical Slashdotter, you don't actually talk on the phone enough to risk using up all your airtime minutes and having to pay a per-minute rate.
(This information applies to the United States, YMMV.)
I hope for a utopia, but I fear for a world like RMS's The Right To Read. That document was written to warn us about how things could go. Let's try to avoid it.
Don't blame the competition for your inability to make a profit.
In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged the weak, evil people blamed the competition when they couldn't make a profit. The strong, motivated people, when they found themselves not making a profit, blamed themselves and did their best to improve.
But it still costs money *up-front* to write the program, debug it, market it, improve it, etc. It also costs money up-front in the music and movie businesses too. How are providers supposed to recover those costs and make a profit?
By marketing and selling their product better, cheaper, or more conveniently than the competition can market and sell it.
Copyright is just an excuse to avoid competition. It's a government-granted monopoly.
Let the company that can sell the most copies of a novel be the company that makes a profit off of it. The company that produced the norel originally will have a strong edge because they'll be first out the gate, but if they drop the ball and market the novel poorly or too expensively, I should be free to buy the novel from a rival company.
Warez has the advantage of a low price, but a high level of inconvenience. Many people will stick with a more convenient, but also more expensive route of getting software. Let the various methods of getting the software compete with each other. Some people will want the affordability of warez. Some will want a more convenient way of getting the software, as well as manuals, support, and upgrade opportunities. They'll purchase the software. Let both groups of people live their lives. It's THEIR decision. The presence of group #1 doesn't mean the company can't make a profit from group #2.
*YOU* don't care, but I'll bet the car manufacturer cares, because that's one car less he could have sold to recover his costs (yes, yes, and make a profit too). Since it cost money to *develop* the product, and to *market* the product, and to *improve* the product, why shouldn't you have to *pay* for the product? Under your logic, once a single CD is sold, the product is then "represented in digital form", and the seller can do nothing to prevent unlimited copies from happening, thus never recovering his costs, or making a profit.
If I decide that I'd rather ride a bicycle than own a car, am I stealing from Ford or General Motors? After all, I'm *not* paying money for the product that they spent so much to develop. Should I be FORCED to own a car, just because car companies spend so much money designing them?
If you spend all your money developing a product that is so poor that nobody wants to purchase it, you get what you deserve. If you don't make a profit, it means that either your product sucked or you marketed it poorly.
I may have seemed harsh in my previous replies. I apologize. I just don't want to wind up as a slave in the future.
Read this. This is an honest plea. This is what the future will be like if the concept of Intellectual Property continues to grow without restraint.
For the past couple hundred years, Intellecual Property has grown stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and the rights of the people who buy the intellectual property have grown weaker, and weaker, and weaker, and weaker. What if the trend never reverses?
What happens when it becomes illegal to buy a television that lets you change the channel? After all, changing the channel would deprive one network of advertising revenue, and that would be unethical, right?
Never happen? Don't be so sure. In many places, it's already illegal to buy or build a multi-region DVD player, and in just a few years it'll be illegal to own a computer that can run non-government-approved software.
Imagine 500 years from now if the trend continues. Our entire lives could be scheduled and controlled by Microsoft. Instead of being merely told what we can and can't do with the property we've purchased, we won't even have a choice in what we purchase. The party line will be "not buying this book deprives the author of payment for his hard work, so you MUST buy this book!" We'll be required to buy every work that is produced whether we want it or not, because not buying it steals money from the author, and if everybody is forced to buy it, there'll be no danger from the boogie-man of pirates.
If you're an Intellectual Property absolutist, then shouldn't making the decision not to buy a book be illegal, because it deprives the author of money he would have gotten if he'd bought the book?
I worry that in the future, we may never even see our paychecks our our money... rather, once we complete the education that the government selects for us, we'll go to work at the job they select for us, and we'll do what they tell us to do, and rather than being paid for working, we will be "allocated" a specific amount of food, clothing, consumer goods, and entertainment material based on a government/corporate allocation system. They'll TELL us that we're getting paid, but really, we're just laboring for them like slaves and they're throwing content and possessions at us to keep us from rebelling... we'll never even have a choice in what to buy.
After all, deciding to buy Product A instead of Product B, because you genuinely think Product A is a better product, deprives Company B of the revenue that went into the development of Product B!
There are two possible ways the future can go: good or bad.
I prefer to be an optimist. The future might NOT turn out well, but I prefer to hope that it will, and at the same time to my best to make sure that it does.
The pessimist position is a very important one, too, because it can help us see how things might turn out if we DON'T fight the good fight.
I personally think that in the future, Intellectual Property will be a thing of the past, but if we don't work hard to make this happen, we could just as well go the other way.
RMS's The Right to Read is a WONDERFUL and chilling document that'll describe what the future will be life if the concept of Intellectual Property continues to grow out of control.
"I have written this calendar software. I hereby demand that anyone who wishes to use this software pay me $50 for the right to use it. If you do not may me $50, you may not use my software."
Fair enough. But once I pay you $50 for the software, it becomes my software, and I'm free to give it away to my friends and family if I choose to do so.
At that point, my copy of the software is MY property, NOT yours. You have NO RIGHT to tell me what I can do with MY PROPERTY. Taking away the rights of people to use their own property in the manner they choose is called Communism, and I think history has proven very well (1 billion people murdered in a 50-year period) that it doesn't work.
How can you OWN something that you've already SOLD or GIVEN AWAY to SOMEONE ELSE? If you SELL it, it isn't YOURS anymore, it belongs to WHOEVER YOU SOLD IT TO.
I'm talking morally, not legally. The law hasn't yet caught up with morality.
Do you also think all physical products should be free (beer and speech)?
I believe that once you own something, you should be free to do with it whatever you want (other than bashing someone in the head with it, or something violent of that nature, of course). It's wrong to tell someone else what they can and can't do with their own property. If I buy a copy of that song, that song is my property, just like if I buy a copy of a car, that car is my property, and I should be free to give it away or sell it to whoever I want!!!
I'm getting pissed off at your Communist-In-Capitalist-Clothing game. If this were Kuro5hin, I would give you a "1" or "0". This being Slashdot, all I can do is mark you as a "Foe".
I know, I know, I'm feeding the trolls. I guess I'm bored enough to humor them for a while longer.
My television has scarcity. There is only one of it. The same with my car. Only one of it. The same with my computer (well, actually, four of them rather than one, but still a finite number). Also, they are mine and you can't have them unless I give them to you. If I gave you my television, I wouldn't have one.
However, if I have an infinite number of televisions, and I sell an infinite number of them to your friend, and he gives an infinite number to you, what's the problem? I still have an infinite number of televisions, your friend has an infinite number of televisions and he obtained them in a moral way (buying them from me), and you have an infinite number of telivisions and you obtained them in a moral manner (your friend, who obtained them in a moral manner, gave them to you). What's the problem?
If I give you a copy of a song I write, it becomes YOUR property (morally, if not legally), and it would be morally wrong and Communistic of me to try to FORCE you to use it or not use your own new property in a certain way.
You should expand your mind and learn to care about freedom. You should start by visiting the Libertarian Party and learning why government interference in the private lives of consenting adults is BAD. Next, you should take The World's Smallest Political Quiz, sponsored by the Libertarian Party. Chances are, you may already have many Libertarian views! The transition to Libertarianism might not be as hard as you think. I used to be just like you until I learned to care about freedom.
Next, to learn about real Capitalism, not fake enforced-by-government-mandate capitalism (also known as Socialism/Communism), you should visit The Ayn Rand Institute. She's is, in many ways, the father of modern pro-capitalist anti-government-regulation thought. You should read her books, too.
Do these things, and you'll see the world from a different perspective. A *free* perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
Rei, everybody's seen you naked. You strut around naked all the time. Even Shinji has seen you naked, and he doesn't get out much. What's with the new sense of modesty?
Bank robbers can't use the arguement that walking in to a Bank of America with guns...
They'd better watch out for the sentient ATM.
Because anyone under the age of 25 or the age of 35 does not matter in the United States. req. to be a U.S. House Representative? age 25 req. to be a U.S. Senator? age 35.
Oxford is in the United States now?
If so, tell him that I said hello.
If they are going to repeal laws regarding drugs, I think they have another thing coming
It's a common mistake to mangle this old phrase, but it's a peeve of mine, so I have to point it out.
This is wrong:
"If that's what you think, you have another thing coming."
This is right:
"If that's what you think, you have another think coming."
The latter is the original (and correct) phrase; the former doesn't even make sense. Check the entry for this phrase on Snope if you want references, historical evidence, and linguistic arguments.
That's bad logic.
How about this, instead?
If you don't like it in the U.S....
...then VOTE.
After all, don't we live in a representative democracy/republic? People can actually VOTE and have a say in how the government is run.
This is all this project is... organized voting. Do you have a problem with the right of free people to vote in Democratic elections? If so, maybe YOU should leave. After all, WE (freedom advocates) where here first; we founded the country. This project is a great idea. We are the people, and we're going to vote, and we're going to lobby, just like the founders of this country intended.
Unlike many other nations, we won't stop you from leaving.
Don't you see? We are the "we". We are the people, and therefore, we are the country. If you don't like US using the Democratic process that WE created, then YOU should go to a non-Democratic country.
Might as well have posted a link to the Chrisitan Bible as disproof of libertarianism.
What?
I'm a die-hard long-time Libertarian, and an evangelical Christian (you can use the word "fundamentalist" instead if you insist, although I don't like the negative baggage attached to it) as well. Where is the contradiction between the two? I certainly haven't found one. I live by the rules in the book that God wrote, and I think others should too, but I don't think that those rules should be enforced as law by humans, because not everyone can agree on the authority of those rules, and because God gave people free will so that they could live a life of Liberty and choose their own paths in life. After the Bible, my next-most-important guiding document is the Constitution, and I treasure the writings of various Libertarian authors. I even think that Ayn Rand was right about quite a few things, even though she'd call me evil and wouldn't speak to me if she were still alive today (but she isn't, so her opinions have probably changed a bit... heh heh).
If you think there are no fundamentalist Christian Libertarians, you're wrong. There are a ton of us. I've talked to many. We're not terribly vocal, because if we speak up we risk being ostracized by the non-Christian Libertarians and the non-Libertarian Christians. We have to watch what we say depending on which group we're around at the moment, lest we get branded as disloyal by people who don't understand either philosophy. If you were a member of two groups that (wrongfully) hated each other, mostly out of misunderstanding, you probably wouldn't be too vocal about it either.
>> Sometimes a new package that I'd never have
;-)
>> found out about with dselect will radically
>> change my life
> In which case you should probably get out
> more
I won't deny it. Sigh.
But don't they say "follow your bliss"? If you get off on learning about new and exciting Debian packages, isn't that just as valid (for you) as sex is for someone who gets off on sex?
Whatever makes you happy is the right thing for you. Different things make different people happy. People say "get a life" or "you are uncool" just because they have different sets of interests. Someone who does nothing but but hang around getting drunk with his friends may look at a person who has few friends and never gets drunk, and say "get a life!" to that person. But maybe the accused person enjoys working heard, learning, accomplishing things, etc. more than he likes carousing and boozing. Maybe when he looks at his accusor and sees that his accusor is into nothing but hedonism, he'll say "no, YOU get a life!"
Which one of them is right? Neither are. They're both doing what makes them happy, even if what they do are polar opposites.
apt-cache search whatever
Search for what, exactly? What if you don't know what the "whatever" is? What if you don't know what to search for? What if you just want to find a cool package to play with, and no particular care for what kind of package it is? What about all the cool packages that you'd never even think to search for? What if you know something is missing from your sysetm, but you don't know what it is? That was my point.
To be honest, I would imagine that few if any people use dselect - it's horrible.
I do, and I don't think it is. apt is only useful when you know the exact name of the package you want to install. There are other tools to look through the package list, but I haven't tried them, because dselect works.
Need to know what packages are available? Why? That's what the Web is for. If you know what program you want, you know the name of it, and you can nine times out of ten apt-get install it.
What if you don't know the name of the program you want? What if you don't even know what program you want? What if you don't even know what KIND of program you want?
I've discovered hundreds of programs that I never knew existed, while looking through the dselect list, that wound up enhancing my life greatly. Sure, you can decide what you need/want to do, then find a program that does it, but are you really omniscient when it comes to what software is out there? Literally hundreds of times, I've seen a new package and thought, "Hey, that's killer-radical, I never would have thought that something like this would have existed." If you don't know it exists, how can you search for it?
Running apt-get update and seeing that the package list is larger than it was last time is always like Christmas morning for me: bright, shiny, brand-new packages under the tree, and I don't know what's in them, until I open them and unwrap the surprises inside! They are surprise gifts that I receive at least several of every week! Dselect even puts all your presents (new packages) at the top of the list so you can tear into the new toys waiting for you and decide what you want and what you don't.
Running my weekly apt-get update and then tearing into Dselect like a kid on Christmas is always the highlight of my week, because I usually get at least 2-3 new packages that I actually want to play with. Sometimes the new toys they give me will occupy me all night long. Sometimes a new package that I'd never have found out about with dselect will radically change my life, and always in a good way. Because I see every new package that comes through the system, I always know more about more packages than anyone else I talk to, and I'm always able to tell my friends, "hey, guess what new really cool software is out there now?"
Assume that for every person, there is one package that, if he knew about it, he could use it to radically change his life, find real happiness, acquire great personal fortune, etc. What if he NEVER finds out about it, because he doesn't know what the nature of it is and he doesn't know what to look for? What if he NEVER finds it, because he silently downloads its package listing with an apt-get update but never looks at the description? His life has been impaired, possibly forever, out of ignorance.
I can't take that risk. I'm not willing to accept the risk that a package will appear on my package list that could revolutionize my life, and I never find out about it because I never check the list.
If you never use dselect, you don't know what you're missing. You might be missing nothing of value to you, you might be missing something of minor value to you, or you might be missing out on EVERYTHING.
I'm too afraid that I might be wrong in order to actually try it, but I'm 95% sure this won't do what you think it will.
Remember,
If you did this, however...
cat
There is no installer.
That is, I suspect, a little like thinking that it might be nice to affix Pamela Anderson's knockers to Natalie Portman's front side.
Blasphemy. This outrage will not go unanswered. Have you no concept of balance, symmetry, proportion, applied aesthetics, and physical/spiritual curvature??
If you die, it was massive.
bsharitt wrote:
>> In the past MS has appeared to be moving towards
>> consumer rights, only to to take a couple step
>> back in their next move.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
> Name one time.
Sir, you are completely right. Microsoft has never even appeared to move towards consumer rights.
Like this.
All the devices, black boxes, and "do not call" lists in the article sound rather troublesome, because each telemarketer can still call you one time. It's easy enough to keep them from calling again, either by asking to be placed on their "do not call" list, or by having a device do the same thing, but there are still thousands of other comapnies out there.
A much better solution is to either cancel your home phone service, or, if you're stuck with dialup Internet access, unplug all the telephones from your home phone line and use it ONLY for Internet access. Use your cellular phone(s) for all voice communication.
It is completely illegal in the US for telemarketers to call a cellular phone. Not only can they be heavily fined if they do, but they're required by law to take proactive steps to make sure that they never actually do call a cellular phone. They have lists of cellular prefixes that they must check phone numbers against before calling them.
Since switching to cellular-only nearly a year ago, I've received zero telemarking calls and only three wrong numbers, compared to several of each per week on my home phone line. Sure, my home phone line is probably still GETTING those calls, but since there are no telephones plugged into it and my computer is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day (my ISP is seriously regretting the whole "unlimited Internet" thing), the telemarketers will never get anything but a busy signal from me.
As soon as cable Internet service becomes available in the area, I'll be cancelling my home phone line completely. Just a basic residential phone line costs more than a basic cellular plan these days once you add up all the taxes and fees the phone companies charge that the cellular companies don't, PLUS with cellular there are usually no long distance charges, and if you're a typical Slashdotter, you don't actually talk on the phone enough to risk using up all your airtime minutes and having to pay a per-minute rate.
(This information applies to the United States, YMMV.)
I hope for a utopia, but I fear for a world like RMS's The Right To Read. That document was written to warn us about how things could go. Let's try to avoid it.
Don't blame the competition for your inability to make a profit.
In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged the weak, evil people blamed the competition when they couldn't make a profit. The strong, motivated people, when they found themselves not making a profit, blamed themselves and did their best to improve.
But it still costs money *up-front* to write the program, debug it, market it, improve it, etc. It also costs money up-front in the music and movie businesses too. How are providers supposed to recover those costs and make a profit?
By marketing and selling their product better, cheaper, or more conveniently than the competition can market and sell it.
Copyright is just an excuse to avoid competition. It's a government-granted monopoly.
Let the company that can sell the most copies of a novel be the company that makes a profit off of it. The company that produced the norel originally will have a strong edge because they'll be first out the gate, but if they drop the ball and market the novel poorly or too expensively, I should be free to buy the novel from a rival company.
Warez has the advantage of a low price, but a high level of inconvenience. Many people will stick with a more convenient, but also more expensive route of getting software. Let the various methods of getting the software compete with each other. Some people will want the affordability of warez. Some will want a more convenient way of getting the software, as well as manuals, support, and upgrade opportunities. They'll purchase the software. Let both groups of people live their lives. It's THEIR decision. The presence of group #1 doesn't mean the company can't make a profit from group #2.
*YOU* don't care, but I'll bet the car manufacturer cares, because that's one car less he could have sold to recover his costs (yes, yes, and make a profit too). Since it cost money to *develop* the product, and to *market* the product, and to *improve* the product, why shouldn't you have to *pay* for the product? Under your logic, once a single CD is sold, the product is then "represented in digital form", and the seller can do nothing to prevent unlimited copies from happening, thus never recovering his costs, or making a profit.
If I decide that I'd rather ride a bicycle than own a car, am I stealing from Ford or General Motors? After all, I'm *not* paying money for the product that they spent so much to develop. Should I be FORCED to own a car, just because car companies spend so much money designing them?
If you spend all your money developing a product that is so poor that nobody wants to purchase it, you get what you deserve. If you don't make a profit, it means that either your product sucked or you marketed it poorly.
I may have seemed harsh in my previous replies. I apologize. I just don't want to wind up as a slave in the future.
Read this. This is an honest plea. This is what the future will be like if the concept of Intellectual Property continues to grow without restraint.
For the past couple hundred years, Intellecual Property has grown stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and the rights of the people who buy the intellectual property have grown weaker, and weaker, and weaker, and weaker. What if the trend never reverses?
What happens when it becomes illegal to buy a television that lets you change the channel? After all, changing the channel would deprive one network of advertising revenue, and that would be unethical, right?
Never happen? Don't be so sure. In many places, it's already illegal to buy or build a multi-region DVD player, and in just a few years it'll be illegal to own a computer that can run non-government-approved software.
Imagine 500 years from now if the trend continues. Our entire lives could be scheduled and controlled by Microsoft. Instead of being merely told what we can and can't do with the property we've purchased, we won't even have a choice in what we purchase. The party line will be "not buying this book deprives the author of payment for his hard work, so you MUST buy this book!" We'll be required to buy every work that is produced whether we want it or not, because not buying it steals money from the author, and if everybody is forced to buy it, there'll be no danger from the boogie-man of pirates.
If you're an Intellectual Property absolutist, then shouldn't making the decision not to buy a book be illegal, because it deprives the author of money he would have gotten if he'd bought the book?
I worry that in the future, we may never even see our paychecks our our money... rather, once we complete the education that the government selects for us, we'll go to work at the job they select for us, and we'll do what they tell us to do, and rather than being paid for working, we will be "allocated" a specific amount of food, clothing, consumer goods, and entertainment material based on a government/corporate allocation system. They'll TELL us that we're getting paid, but really, we're just laboring for them like slaves and they're throwing content and possessions at us to keep us from rebelling... we'll never even have a choice in what to buy.
After all, deciding to buy Product A instead of Product B, because you genuinely think Product A is a better product, deprives Company B of the revenue that went into the development of Product B!
This is where Intellectual Property leads.
See what the future could hold, and do whatever you can to avoid it!!! Please!
There are two possible ways the future can go: good or bad.
I prefer to be an optimist. The future might NOT turn out well, but I prefer to hope that it will, and at the same time to my best to make sure that it does.
The pessimist position is a very important one, too, because it can help us see how things might turn out if we DON'T fight the good fight.
I personally think that in the future, Intellectual Property will be a thing of the past, but if we don't work hard to make this happen, we could just as well go the other way.
RMS's The Right to Read is a WONDERFUL and chilling document that'll describe what the future will be life if the concept of Intellectual Property continues to grow out of control.
Read this, and don't let it happen!!!
"I have written this calendar software. I hereby demand that anyone who wishes to use this software pay me $50 for the right to use it. If you do not may me $50, you may not use my software."
Fair enough. But once I pay you $50 for the software, it becomes my software, and I'm free to give it away to my friends and family if I choose to do so.
At that point, my copy of the software is MY property, NOT yours. You have NO RIGHT to tell me what I can do with MY PROPERTY. Taking away the rights of people to use their own property in the manner they choose is called Communism, and I think history has proven very well (1 billion people murdered in a 50-year period) that it doesn't work.
How can you OWN something that you've already SOLD or GIVEN AWAY to SOMEONE ELSE? If you SELL it, it isn't YOURS anymore, it belongs to WHOEVER YOU SOLD IT TO.
I'm talking morally, not legally. The law hasn't yet caught up with morality.
Learn truth; don't be idiodic.
Do you also think all physical products should be free (beer and speech)?
I believe that once you own something, you should be free to do with it whatever you want (other than bashing someone in the head with it, or something violent of that nature, of course). It's wrong to tell someone else what they can and can't do with their own property. If I buy a copy of that song, that song is my property, just like if I buy a copy of a car, that car is my property, and I should be free to give it away or sell it to whoever I want!!!
I'm getting pissed off at your Communist-In-Capitalist-Clothing game. If this were Kuro5hin, I would give you a "1" or "0". This being Slashdot, all I can do is mark you as a "Foe".
Learn more about what I believe at The Ayn Rand Institute and The Libertarian Party. Read them, educate yourself, become a better person. And don't troll Slashdot.
I know, I know, I'm feeding the trolls. I guess I'm bored enough to humor them for a while longer.
My television has scarcity. There is only one of it. The same with my car. Only one of it. The same with my computer (well, actually, four of them rather than one, but still a finite number). Also, they are mine and you can't have them unless I give them to you. If I gave you my television, I wouldn't have one.
However, if I have an infinite number of televisions, and I sell an infinite number of them to your friend, and he gives an infinite number to you, what's the problem? I still have an infinite number of televisions, your friend has an infinite number of televisions and he obtained them in a moral way (buying them from me), and you have an infinite number of telivisions and you obtained them in a moral manner (your friend, who obtained them in a moral manner, gave them to you). What's the problem?
If I give you a copy of a song I write, it becomes YOUR property (morally, if not legally), and it would be morally wrong and Communistic of me to try to FORCE you to use it or not use your own new property in a certain way.
You should expand your mind and learn to care about freedom. You should start by visiting the Libertarian Party and learning why government interference in the private lives of consenting adults is BAD. Next, you should take The World's Smallest Political Quiz, sponsored by the Libertarian Party. Chances are, you may already have many Libertarian views! The transition to Libertarianism might not be as hard as you think. I used to be just like you until I learned to care about freedom.
Next, to learn about real Capitalism, not fake enforced-by-government-mandate capitalism (also known as Socialism/Communism), you should visit The Ayn Rand Institute. She's is, in many ways, the father of modern pro-capitalist anti-government-regulation thought. You should read her books, too.
Do these things, and you'll see the world from a different perspective. A *free* perspective.