Spot on. Publishers sell to third-world markets as a bonus. Unfortunately for them consumer access to global trade (e.g. eBay) allows consumers to bypass the 'fair' first-world price. If this became a big enough problem they would be forced to equalise prices in third-world countries or cease selling there altogether.
but a means of maintaining an injustice that all of us rich westerners profit from
Not sure I agree that this is an injustice. The wealth imbalance mostly comes from the fact that first-world countries are better educated, better organised and more politically stable. Third-world countries benefit from having such neighbours or trading partners rather than other third-world countries.
Oddly I sound disgustingly right-wing there, which is not how I consider myself, so to balance it out I acknowledge that many third-world countries are that way from having been screwed over by first-world imperialism and free trade bullying.
This is something I find fascinating. The theory makes sense, especially in the cutthroat world of capitalism and the free market. Surely any business that hires the best candidates irrespective of race and sex is going to have a strong competitive advantage and those that don't will become bankrupt, right? Still, you only need to go back 50 years to see when society simply wouldn't do this, so clearly we can't discount the possibly of endemic bias.
As an aside, it's crucial for productivity that the workers get on with each other.
I don't know how to take Cunningham. On one hand subtle sexism can be a legitimate problem. On the other hand her example ("Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!"* ) is so far from subtle that I wonder if it's made up. On the third hand brogrammers seems a newly-coined term done for effect. It doesn't describe the reality of the almost all-male programming environments in which I've worked, and these include groups dominated by early 20s.
The unfortunate reality is that humans are both tribal and very motivated by sex. We're never going to eliminate sexism completely.
* This is strikingly similar to recent jokes at my current job where the company has just rebranded and given us cheap, incredibly thin polo shirts, leading to jokes about nipples etc. The difference, of course, is that there is no substance behind the sexualised talk. Were it directed at a female programmer the nature of the joke would be very different.
It's because they are considered community groups which is something that governments want to encourage. I don't know US law in particular but the same is generally true for political and other activist groups.
The key is the 'non-profit' nature. Yes, in one sense even the local knitting group having a bake sale or a pro-gay marriage group canvassing donations to buy a newspaper ad is making a profit, but it is considered differently from commercial or business profit.
The larger these groups become the more they start to look like actual businesses but the distinction is in the purpose of the 'profit'.
There may be the odd exception but this is true of the vast majority of racists, sexists, homophobes and everybody else who has ever tried to deny anybody else the right to be equal before the law.
Even if this is true* it is simply against the 'rules' of argument to claim that because someone has a psychological reason for a belief then that belief is incorrect and any arguments they make for it can be disregarded. Using loaded terms in an attempt to belittle a position is simply newspeak and does nothing to convince your opponent. In fact it is likely to make them dig in even more. Plus, if an argument is the result of fear then chances are it can be easily refuted without resorting to name-calling.
I'd make the same argument for similar words. For example "racist" is preferable to "xenophobe". A genuine (self-conscious) racist is likely to accept that term, then you can move on to debate them instead of discussing the insult.
Interesting note on the original definition of homophobia by the way.
* You could phrase all political positions as phobia: socialism is the fear of capitalists leaving you poor, libertarians fear the government etc. etc. Technically a phobia is irrational fear but simply claiming something is a phobia is begging the question.
Geographical content restriction is stupid and impossible to enforce. I will *never* understand why content producers want to limit the potential audience for their work, and why sponsors are so willing to go along with it.
It's because TV stations are local to a country, and if Netflix (or the streaming part of a regular TV station's website) makes it available to another country then the producers lose the ability to sell it to a local station in that country.
The price is dependent on the number of buyers (i.e. TV stations, including Netflix). Generally a show will be exclusively sold to a single TV station in an area/country. Internet stations could bypass this by being global, so for producers to allow Netflix to broadcast across the world means they would have to either sell later to local stations at a much-reduced price (remember it takes time to form agreements especially internationally) or sell exclusively to Netflix at a much-increased price that would likely be unfeasible for Netflix.
If Netflix becomes more popular then in theory it could support the price required for global streaming.
I agree. Having just set up a MythTV box on brand new hardware I'm realising that the advantages for the general community are diminishing.
1. Pre-done DVR solutions are much closer in price.
2. Internet-streaming devices are replacing free-to-air TV.
3. Portable, TV-connectable HDD devices are more prominent.
4. To me and my wife, personally, TV is much less important than it was. In its place are downloaded movies and shows that just aren't available on the lowest-common-denominator that is broadcast television. I suspect this is true for the general population, if for different reasons.
For my purposes MythTV is still the best solution and, like you, MythTV was the impetus to learn Linux.
Somehow you've confused Santorum's homophobia [...] You should praise the beauty that is the living language we call English.
I know you mean that in a flippant way, but there are two ugly uses of English here;
1. Use of the word homophobe to describe an anti-homosexuality position. The problem is there's no good word to describe this but it always grates when people use a slanderous term that assumes a psychological motivation to describe a political position.
2. The attempt to redefine Santorum. This is about as mature as "I know you are but what am I?".
Ah, the old argument-by-euphimism. The crime is not simply linking. This is like saying "shooting someone in the head is just moving a few atoms, and we all move atoms, why is this illegal?"
To be as fair as possible to your point, are you suggesting that linking to illegal/banned/infringing content is so indirect that is becomes too easy to accidentally break the law? Or that somehow the indirect nature excuses the evasion if you are doing it deliberately?
If the latter, I would argue it is similar to rich individuals or companies evading tax; if they find a loophole in the current laws then the government moves to close it, because their end goal is for people and corporations to pay their 'fair share' of tax. Similarly here, the end goal is to remove access to pirated content.
Exactly, but the summary is shooting for the angle that Facebook has provided new and easier means of obtaining photos, and by extension we can discuss how technology changes our expectations in society (ready: have a flamewar over Facebook).
Of course the attacked girl could have whipped out her mobile phone and taken a photo of the girl who allegedy attacked her then taken that to the police. Perhaps we should have a similar argument about how evil it is to put cameras in mobile phones?
Why do we make art? It's not for money. It's not for social prestige. We make art as an act of self expression and as a way of passing the time when we're not engaged in activities necessary for our own survival.
Self-expression is perhaps the purest form of art, but to whom are artists expressing? Themselves only? The vast majority of artists want the affirmation of having their expression validated by others, and the more the better. This is basically social prestige, and why they chase major labels. They also have other, less lofty motivations in life (like everyone), and so they also chase money, sex and so on. Generally these come later when they realise they can leverage their social prestige.
Art has no survival value -- and yet it has persisted since before recorded history. Cave paintings and such, jewelry, etc.
Art has plenty of survival value, it's just higher order, like philosophy. It leads us to examine ourselves and create better communities.
Copyright is a prohibition on sharing. You are now claiming that its absence would be to force people to share. This is obviously a lie; something is not mandatory just because it isn't prohibited.
You're doing the same thing. Copyright is not forcing people to not share, it just gives them the right to choose how they share.
The thing people object to is not "enforcing the laws" it is "enforcing the laws in a way that causes massive collateral damage
I'm not so sure. There is a wide array of opinions but many seem to argue that copyright itself is unnatural and should be abolished. The GP seems to be responding, or assuming, that. This stance is more interesting to debate than "big lobby conglomerate behaves unethically".
Rather, it's due to the studios being so consolidated that it's more profitable to make fewer movies that each have a higher gross
Agreed, capitalism and globalisation seem to head towards monopolies. With instant global distribution the world needs less movies and musicians - we can choose the best worldwide, not just in our village.
I appreciate your thoughtful post, but I think there's something to the modding complaints. In most discussions there are far less trolls than people believe (the old incompetence vs malice thing) and it's really tricky to try to see an opposing viewpoint as 'interesting perspective' rather than 'unbelievably stupid'. Further, almost all comments make use of fallacies, and if you disagree with the comment this will really stand out. In fact, being more on the anti-piracy side myself, your post revealed a few mistakes in the GP that my mind naturally skipped over.
What I see are plenty of pro-piracy (or anti-**AA), sarcastic and exaggerated one-liners that get modded +5 when to me they are throw-away lines that don't contribute to the debate. In an emotionally-charged topic such as copyright modders are more inclined to use negative mods which just ends up silencing the minority opinion.
Copyright originally had a limited term and it no longer effectively does, to society's detriment. [...] like in Cowboys and Aliens.
Your arguments seem to revolve around the length of copyright (which I agree is currently stupid), yet tellingly your example is a movie from last year. I'd wager that 99% of pirated material is from the last decade. Even if copyrights expired after the original 14 years, this conflict would be largely unchanged.
Just like the laws against pot [...] cure the tumors
Similarly, you've chosen an edge case, when 99% of marijuana use is recreational. Even if medicinal use was legalised, this conflict would be largely unchanged.
2. file sharers: swamping/polluting file sharing sites and protocols with infringing content
3. MPAA/RIAA: ignoring legitimate uses of file sharing in their quest to remove infringing content
Not that I like defending them, but to my mind the MPAA/RIAA is least to blame because the ratio of legitimate to infringing content is very small on some of these sites.
Unfortunately for legitimate users of the technology, such as your band, this is why you can't have nice things.
I'd say the offtopic was about turning this into a Linux vx Windows discussion, however your post was almost the opposite (pointing out your parent was doing exactly that), just depends on your point of view.
The mention of Linux is still an answer to the question, maybe it would make more sense like this;
Q: What advantages do you see over Windows media center in Windows 7?
A: One advantage is that it is free and cross-platform, so it can be run on a free OS such as Linux.
I hope they aren't complaining about the actual automatic updates, but instead the way they are done currently in Firefox (most annoyingly, the need to hit UAC to perform the update in Windows).
Actually I'm complaining about the new way, where they run an admin service in the background specifically to avoid the UAC prompt. This is side-stepping the purpose of UAC and effectively going back to the system where programs ran with administrative privileges. Chrome does the same thing I believe.
Clearly what I wrote came out wrongly, although I hope the second sentence shows that I think this discrimination is wrong.
What I was trying to say is that employees are people, and people are often unprofessional and discriminatory, and of course naturally get on better with others who share their values. From this I can understand why employers may care about such things alongside job competence. As a society, though, we have said that this is not good enough and have made it illegal.
Yes, strictly you don't, but the smaller the company the more important it is to get someone who fits the office culture, and religous, poltical and even sexual orientation can have a massive impact. Nevertheless, most governments have said, mostly rightly in my opinion, that an office culture that cannot accomodate these things is inappropriate.
This is a good idea but probably impractical. Your work colleagues will soon notice you have no family in your friends list. Worse they may even be Facebook friends with some of your family or friends whom you have friended on your personal account, and see you comment from that.
Overall this practice seems borderline illegal given than (I'm guessing) the Facebook terms and services forbid you from sharing your password.
Perhaps I have simply worked for sane employers, but it's difficult to conceive why any of them would want this access. The best I can come up with is they want to control what you say about them (best left to your common sense) or research your personality before hiring (clearly crossing the line of invasion of privacy).
One annoyance is that your instant settings are stored in the site cookies, not your Google account, so even if you are logged into GMail it will not remember that you turned instant off if you clear your cookies.
It always struck me as odd that you can't take in a 100mL bottle of water but they allow devices that can supposedly interfere with the plane, ensuring they are turned off only with an honour system.
If there was the remotest chance their $millions worth of plane and PR could be brought down by your phone no one would be allowed them.
The article, though, is pretty light - suggesting aviation authorities should maintain the ban to give for the 'spiritual' reason of giving us a break from technology.
Out of interest, how do you argue against the original article, which addresses all of your points and reaches the conclusion that several decades of peer-reviewed research has failed to find any audophiles, let alone average people, who can tell the difference between 44.1/16 and 192/24? I mean this genuinely, not in a snide way.
Live music is clearly different in quality from recorded music, however I'd attribute this to the spacial and environmental limitations of recording (such that binaural techniques seek to eliminate, although I have personally not heard any), not frequency.
Slashdot Mirror
Spot on. Publishers sell to third-world markets as a bonus. Unfortunately for them consumer access to global trade (e.g. eBay) allows consumers to bypass the 'fair' first-world price. If this became a big enough problem they would be forced to equalise prices in third-world countries or cease selling there altogether.
but a means of maintaining an injustice that all of us rich westerners profit from
Not sure I agree that this is an injustice. The wealth imbalance mostly comes from the fact that first-world countries are better educated, better organised and more politically stable. Third-world countries benefit from having such neighbours or trading partners rather than other third-world countries.
Oddly I sound disgustingly right-wing there, which is not how I consider myself, so to balance it out I acknowledge that many third-world countries are that way from having been screwed over by first-world imperialism and free trade bullying.
This is something I find fascinating. The theory makes sense, especially in the cutthroat world of capitalism and the free market. Surely any business that hires the best candidates irrespective of race and sex is going to have a strong competitive advantage and those that don't will become bankrupt, right? Still, you only need to go back 50 years to see when society simply wouldn't do this, so clearly we can't discount the possibly of endemic bias.
As an aside, it's crucial for productivity that the workers get on with each other.
I don't know how to take Cunningham. On one hand subtle sexism can be a legitimate problem. On the other hand her example ("Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!"* ) is so far from subtle that I wonder if it's made up. On the third hand brogrammers seems a newly-coined term done for effect. It doesn't describe the reality of the almost all-male programming environments in which I've worked, and these include groups dominated by early 20s.
The unfortunate reality is that humans are both tribal and very motivated by sex. We're never going to eliminate sexism completely.
* This is strikingly similar to recent jokes at my current job where the company has just rebranded and given us cheap, incredibly thin polo shirts, leading to jokes about nipples etc. The difference, of course, is that there is no substance behind the sexualised talk. Were it directed at a female programmer the nature of the joke would be very different.
It's because they are considered community groups which is something that governments want to encourage. I don't know US law in particular but the same is generally true for political and other activist groups.
The key is the 'non-profit' nature. Yes, in one sense even the local knitting group having a bake sale or a pro-gay marriage group canvassing donations to buy a newspaper ad is making a profit, but it is considered differently from commercial or business profit.
The larger these groups become the more they start to look like actual businesses but the distinction is in the purpose of the 'profit'.
There may be the odd exception but this is true of the vast majority of racists, sexists, homophobes and everybody else who has ever tried to deny anybody else the right to be equal before the law.
Even if this is true* it is simply against the 'rules' of argument to claim that because someone has a psychological reason for a belief then that belief is incorrect and any arguments they make for it can be disregarded. Using loaded terms in an attempt to belittle a position is simply newspeak and does nothing to convince your opponent. In fact it is likely to make them dig in even more. Plus, if an argument is the result of fear then chances are it can be easily refuted without resorting to name-calling.
I'd make the same argument for similar words. For example "racist" is preferable to "xenophobe". A genuine (self-conscious) racist is likely to accept that term, then you can move on to debate them instead of discussing the insult.
Interesting note on the original definition of homophobia by the way.
* You could phrase all political positions as phobia: socialism is the fear of capitalists leaving you poor, libertarians fear the government etc. etc. Technically a phobia is irrational fear but simply claiming something is a phobia is begging the question.
Geographical content restriction is stupid and impossible to enforce. I will *never* understand why content producers want to limit the potential audience for their work, and why sponsors are so willing to go along with it.
It's because TV stations are local to a country, and if Netflix (or the streaming part of a regular TV station's website) makes it available to another country then the producers lose the ability to sell it to a local station in that country.
The price is dependent on the number of buyers (i.e. TV stations, including Netflix). Generally a show will be exclusively sold to a single TV station in an area/country. Internet stations could bypass this by being global, so for producers to allow Netflix to broadcast across the world means they would have to either sell later to local stations at a much-reduced price (remember it takes time to form agreements especially internationally) or sell exclusively to Netflix at a much-increased price that would likely be unfeasible for Netflix.
If Netflix becomes more popular then in theory it could support the price required for global streaming.
I agree. Having just set up a MythTV box on brand new hardware I'm realising that the advantages for the general community are diminishing.
1. Pre-done DVR solutions are much closer in price.
2. Internet-streaming devices are replacing free-to-air TV.
3. Portable, TV-connectable HDD devices are more prominent.
4. To me and my wife, personally, TV is much less important than it was. In its place are downloaded movies and shows that just aren't available on the lowest-common-denominator that is broadcast television. I suspect this is true for the general population, if for different reasons.
For my purposes MythTV is still the best solution and, like you, MythTV was the impetus to learn Linux.
Somehow you've confused Santorum's homophobia [...] You should praise the beauty that is the living language we call English.
I know you mean that in a flippant way, but there are two ugly uses of English here;
1. Use of the word homophobe to describe an anti-homosexuality position. The problem is there's no good word to describe this but it always grates when people use a slanderous term that assumes a psychological motivation to describe a political position.
2. The attempt to redefine Santorum. This is about as mature as "I know you are but what am I?".
porn which effects many nerds!
This is delicious for a grammar Nazi as porn is likely to do the opposite.
To be cynical he may have been trying to create future work?
Ah, the old argument-by-euphimism. The crime is not simply linking. This is like saying "shooting someone in the head is just moving a few atoms, and we all move atoms, why is this illegal?"
To be as fair as possible to your point, are you suggesting that linking to illegal/banned/infringing content is so indirect that is becomes too easy to accidentally break the law? Or that somehow the indirect nature excuses the evasion if you are doing it deliberately?
If the latter, I would argue it is similar to rich individuals or companies evading tax; if they find a loophole in the current laws then the government moves to close it, because their end goal is for people and corporations to pay their 'fair share' of tax. Similarly here, the end goal is to remove access to pirated content.
Exactly, but the summary is shooting for the angle that Facebook has provided new and easier means of obtaining photos, and by extension we can discuss how technology changes our expectations in society (ready: have a flamewar over Facebook).
Of course the attacked girl could have whipped out her mobile phone and taken a photo of the girl who allegedy attacked her then taken that to the police. Perhaps we should have a similar argument about how evil it is to put cameras in mobile phones?
Why do we make art? It's not for money. It's not for social prestige. We make art as an act of self expression and as a way of passing the time when we're not engaged in activities necessary for our own survival.
Self-expression is perhaps the purest form of art, but to whom are artists expressing? Themselves only? The vast majority of artists want the affirmation of having their expression validated by others, and the more the better. This is basically social prestige, and why they chase major labels. They also have other, less lofty motivations in life (like everyone), and so they also chase money, sex and so on. Generally these come later when they realise they can leverage their social prestige.
Art has no survival value -- and yet it has persisted since before recorded history. Cave paintings and such, jewelry, etc.
Art has plenty of survival value, it's just higher order, like philosophy. It leads us to examine ourselves and create better communities.
Copyright is a prohibition on sharing. You are now claiming that its absence would be to force people to share. This is obviously a lie; something is not mandatory just because it isn't prohibited.
You're doing the same thing. Copyright is not forcing people to not share, it just gives them the right to choose how they share.
The thing people object to is not "enforcing the laws" it is "enforcing the laws in a way that causes massive collateral damage
I'm not so sure. There is a wide array of opinions but many seem to argue that copyright itself is unnatural and should be abolished. The GP seems to be responding, or assuming, that. This stance is more interesting to debate than "big lobby conglomerate behaves unethically".
Rather, it's due to the studios being so consolidated that it's more profitable to make fewer movies that each have a higher gross
Agreed, capitalism and globalisation seem to head towards monopolies. With instant global distribution the world needs less movies and musicians - we can choose the best worldwide, not just in our village.
I appreciate your thoughtful post, but I think there's something to the modding complaints. In most discussions there are far less trolls than people believe (the old incompetence vs malice thing) and it's really tricky to try to see an opposing viewpoint as 'interesting perspective' rather than 'unbelievably stupid'. Further, almost all comments make use of fallacies, and if you disagree with the comment this will really stand out. In fact, being more on the anti-piracy side myself, your post revealed a few mistakes in the GP that my mind naturally skipped over.
What I see are plenty of pro-piracy (or anti-**AA), sarcastic and exaggerated one-liners that get modded +5 when to me they are throw-away lines that don't contribute to the debate. In an emotionally-charged topic such as copyright modders are more inclined to use negative mods which just ends up silencing the minority opinion.
Copyright originally had a limited term and it no longer effectively does, to society's detriment. [...] like in Cowboys and Aliens.
Your arguments seem to revolve around the length of copyright (which I agree is currently stupid), yet tellingly your example is a movie from last year. I'd wager that 99% of pirated material is from the last decade. Even if copyrights expired after the original 14 years, this conflict would be largely unchanged.
Just like the laws against pot [...] cure the tumors
Similarly, you've chosen an edge case, when 99% of marijuana use is recreational. Even if medicinal use was legalised, this conflict would be largely unchanged.
Really I see 3 parties with blame here;
Not that I like defending them, but to my mind the MPAA/RIAA is least to blame because the ratio of legitimate to infringing content is very small on some of these sites.
Unfortunately for legitimate users of the technology, such as your band, this is why you can't have nice things.
I'd say the offtopic was about turning this into a Linux vx Windows discussion, however your post was almost the opposite (pointing out your parent was doing exactly that), just depends on your point of view.
The mention of Linux is still an answer to the question, maybe it would make more sense like this;
Q: What advantages do you see over Windows media center in Windows 7?
A: One advantage is that it is free and cross-platform, so it can be run on a free OS such as Linux.
I hope they aren't complaining about the actual automatic updates, but instead the way they are done currently in Firefox (most annoyingly, the need to hit UAC to perform the update in Windows).
Actually I'm complaining about the new way, where they run an admin service in the background specifically to avoid the UAC prompt. This is side-stepping the purpose of UAC and effectively going back to the system where programs ran with administrative privileges. Chrome does the same thing I believe.
Clearly what I wrote came out wrongly, although I hope the second sentence shows that I think this discrimination is wrong.
What I was trying to say is that employees are people, and people are often unprofessional and discriminatory, and of course naturally get on better with others who share their values. From this I can understand why employers may care about such things alongside job competence. As a society, though, we have said that this is not good enough and have made it illegal.
Yes, strictly you don't, but the smaller the company the more important it is to get someone who fits the office culture, and religous, poltical and even sexual orientation can have a massive impact. Nevertheless, most governments have said, mostly rightly in my opinion, that an office culture that cannot accomodate these things is inappropriate.
This is a good idea but probably impractical. Your work colleagues will soon notice you have no family in your friends list. Worse they may even be Facebook friends with some of your family or friends whom you have friended on your personal account, and see you comment from that.
Overall this practice seems borderline illegal given than (I'm guessing) the Facebook terms and services forbid you from sharing your password.
Perhaps I have simply worked for sane employers, but it's difficult to conceive why any of them would want this access. The best I can come up with is they want to control what you say about them (best left to your common sense) or research your personality before hiring (clearly crossing the line of invasion of privacy).
One annoyance is that your instant settings are stored in the site cookies, not your Google account, so even if you are logged into GMail it will not remember that you turned instant off if you clear your cookies.
To get around this I use this URL as my homepage instead; http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0
This may be because people are worried about being rude and rejecting someone they really do know but have forgotten.
It always struck me as odd that you can't take in a 100mL bottle of water but they allow devices that can supposedly interfere with the plane, ensuring they are turned off only with an honour system.
If there was the remotest chance their $millions worth of plane and PR could be brought down by your phone no one would be allowed them.
The article, though, is pretty light - suggesting aviation authorities should maintain the ban to give for the 'spiritual' reason of giving us a break from technology.
Out of interest, how do you argue against the original article, which addresses all of your points and reaches the conclusion that several decades of peer-reviewed research has failed to find any audophiles, let alone average people, who can tell the difference between 44.1/16 and 192/24? I mean this genuinely, not in a snide way.
Live music is clearly different in quality from recorded music, however I'd attribute this to the spacial and environmental limitations of recording (such that binaural techniques seek to eliminate, although I have personally not heard any), not frequency.