The slippery slope is indeed a fallacy. The problem is that people equate "fallacy" with "incorrect," which is simply not the case, and the slippery slope is a prime example: when has it ever proven to be incorrect, given time?
The only difference between you lot and the people who whine about the use of the word "hacker" is that censorship never meant what you claim it means. It has always meant any [...] of content based on the objections about its content.
Citation needed. It has not, in fact, "always" meant that: only in recent history has it been used to whine about what a business does or does not want to sell. Before then, it has always been clear: censorship by definition requires force of law, because force of law changes everything.
For the last time, folks, it is not censorship if there is no force of law. If you can't make speech illegal, then anything toward that bent that you do still doesn't put you in the same league as real censorship: you're a severe nuisance, yes, but not a censor.
Still, perhaps there should be a word for when non-governmental entities (corporations, religious groups, "the public," etc) try to stifle or otherwise control the flow of information. It's a real problem, but overloading the word "censorship" cheapens it. Any ideas out there?
So he rips on traditional systems-programming languages for being too complex and requiring the compiler to justify everything, but then turns around and rips on dynamic typing, one of the biggest reducers of complexity in modern programming?
War is peace, complexity is simplicity, and Microsoft has always been at war with Google?
There are indeed some severe flaws in the current Firefox, but what makes you think that the entire codebase needs to be discarded? There are still some issues with the current development process -for example, standards don't seem to have been Job One for some time- but in general they seem to have good plans for fixing most of the issues, and IE9 looks like it may be able to shame the dev team into doing the rest if it can follow through with its Acid3 support and leave Firefox as the last browser not at 100/100.
Is there really a need, given all of this, to abandon the entire code base? Or are you just looking for bites?
The teacher does have a point, in that bad teachers can indeed provide a valuable lesson. The problem is, they're supposed to be teaching something else, and that subject suffers even while students get this other type of learning. I find the idea that this is a worthwhile trade to be questionable at best.
1. Copying a file is not theft. I do not deprive the original owner of the property which I am taking, therefore nothing is lost, therefore there is no crime. If somehow downloading a file made it disappear from the host machine, I could see theft being a valid argument.
Actually, it is theft. The fact that you made the copy is irrelevant, because that copy belongs to the rightsholder (in a nutshell, this is all copyright really is). By not rendering it up to them, you have stolen it.
2. Prices are going far beyond the worth of the materials they are asking me to pay for. Value should be computed based on what people are willing to pay for a particular item. By this logic, if trends are any indication, digital music and video files should be free or nearly free.
With significant numbers of people still being more than willing to pay reasonable prices for physical copies and downloads from legitimate services, there's a lot of evidence that the prices do indeed reflect the value of this stuff, and that you are simply being cheap. Theft is not a valid alternative.
3. The proceeds from sales of these items does NOT go to the people who produce it. Instead, there is a cartel of corporations with no real product to speak of who collect a majority of the money paid for these items, just to police and enforce future payments on the items. This sounds ludicrous to me and I don't understand why it's allowed to continue.
Here you have a point, and this is indeed a problem. It is not, however, indicative of fundamental flaws in the system.
4. It is often easier to get and use products illegally for free than it would be to purchase them legally, even if I was inclined to pay for them. The Pirate Bay is much easier to use than the Adobe store. It's easier to use than iTunes as well, and I don't risk the exposure of my personal information either.
Convenience is not a valid reason to steal. Also, I strongly question your ridiculous assertion that TPB is actually easier to use than iTunes: it sounds like a thin rationalization that is far too easily debunked.
5. The supposed value of these items is far beyond what I am capable of paying for them. I do not have $700 to spend on the CS4 Master Collection, nor $7000 to spend on Maya 2010. I am a poor college student, and suing me for downloading music isn't going to help me afford paying for it in the future.
This is your problem, not theirs. You are not entitled to their products for free. If you can't pay now, save up or go elsewhere.
6. The tactics used to police copyright are nothing less than bullying. The corporations with executives making tens of millions of dollars a year suing housewives and college students does not sit well with me, and therefore I will do everything in my power to defy these people and cause them problems.
While I agree with you that they are using bullying tactics and need to be smacked down for that, your petty rationalizations using class warfare have no basis in any form of reality, and deserve no respect. Come up with a more valid argument, and then we'll talk.
Right on most things, but Gecko is not being replaced. They're cleaning up the architecture, yes, but this is not the same thing as an outright replacement.
Letting the foxes run the henhouse is a bad idea, but the idea of putting these people into service-industry jobs for a while is appealing: something to teach respect for the people who work jobs like this.
Actual retail, though is probably not a good choice, for reasons mentioned above. Perhaps custodial services might work better, or (for older offenders) even some kind of unskilled construction? Tech support in a call center may work for the more technically-savvy offenders. Something which carries similar public scorn, but without the possibility of simply committing the same sorts of crimes that they're supposed to be sentenced for.
Kinesophobes need exactly two control options: take the plunge or don't play. Motion is the way forward for gaming: a better experience in every single respect.
Oh, it's quite possible to get multi-partisan agreement on just about any issue, provided you can justify it well enough. If it's really so impossible, then the problem is with the proposal, not the process. That's the entire point of setting the bar as high as the amendment process does. If it were truly impossible, then it wouldn't have been done 17 times since the Bill of Rights.
Really? The living-document folks don't seem to like actually going through all that tedious and inconvenient amendment red tape when they want to change things to suit their whims.
You've come a long way, Microsoft, but you have much much further to go. If you measure security by percentage increase in security then the evolution from Windows 95 to Windows 7 is nigh impassable.
This. It is important to acknowledge the gains that Microsoft has made, but it is equally important to acknowledge just how far behind they were, and that they have not yet caught up. Their attitudes have improved by leaps and bounds, but they are not yet where they need to be. And they might never be, at least for as long as they cling to compatibility with certain fundamentally-flawed models they used in the past rather than making clean breaks. They certainly make much more work for themselves.
But they have improved, and this should be both acknowledged and encouraged. They should not, however, be allowed to rest on their laurels or make claims that are simply untrue.
What needs to be replaced, if anything, is the DOM, not JavaScript. When you don't have to deal with the DOM and the resulting browser-compatibility issues, JavaScript is actually pretty awesome. It's not without its warts -no language is- but it's surprisingly capable.
However, that raises the question of what the DOM should be replaced with, and I don't have an answer for that.
The attach rate for the Wii has been well above that of the PS3 for years now, and most reviewers don't even bother to keep their anti-Wii bias a secret anymore. Both of these are well-known, and the first barely even matters, since the market of new gamers hasn't had the necessary condition to accept the word of "professional" reviewers as gospel.
Given that the first two things you mention have no impact on game quality, to the point where the presence of the third is debatable at best, I'd say your argument holds no water.
The new gamers that these me-too efforts were created to attracted are not impressed by the HD gimmick, they don't want to play with the people on XBL and PSN, and they haven't been convinced that the games on these consoles are much if any fun. Given the marketing that has sprung up around both Natal and Move I'd say it's a safe bet that they aren't going to be convinced, because Sony and Microsoft have proven that they don't understand that market in the slightest.
In other words, neither of these efforts presents any threat.
Slashdot Mirror
The slippery slope is indeed a fallacy. The problem is that people equate "fallacy" with "incorrect," which is simply not the case, and the slippery slope is a prime example: when has it ever proven to be incorrect, given time?
Do your Barbie dolls say "Maths are hard"?
This might hold if you had actual facts to back up your argument, but everything you've cited here is a myth.
...with 50% of that apparently being made up of people who don't get math jokes.
Citation needed. It has not, in fact, "always" meant that: only in recent history has it been used to whine about what a business does or does not want to sell. Before then, it has always been clear: censorship by definition requires force of law, because force of law changes everything.
For the last time, folks, it is not censorship if there is no force of law. If you can't make speech illegal, then anything toward that bent that you do still doesn't put you in the same league as real censorship: you're a severe nuisance, yes, but not a censor.
Still, perhaps there should be a word for when non-governmental entities (corporations, religious groups, "the public," etc) try to stifle or otherwise control the flow of information. It's a real problem, but overloading the word "censorship" cheapens it. Any ideas out there?
Nothing that shouldn't be written anyway. Using the compiler as a crutch isn't good programming practice.
So he rips on traditional systems-programming languages for being too complex and requiring the compiler to justify everything, but then turns around and rips on dynamic typing, one of the biggest reducers of complexity in modern programming?
War is peace, complexity is simplicity, and Microsoft has always been at war with Google?
There are indeed some severe flaws in the current Firefox, but what makes you think that the entire codebase needs to be discarded? There are still some issues with the current development process -for example, standards don't seem to have been Job One for some time- but in general they seem to have good plans for fixing most of the issues, and IE9 looks like it may be able to shame the dev team into doing the rest if it can follow through with its Acid3 support and leave Firefox as the last browser not at 100/100.
Is there really a need, given all of this, to abandon the entire code base? Or are you just looking for bites?
The teacher does have a point, in that bad teachers can indeed provide a valuable lesson. The problem is, they're supposed to be teaching something else, and that subject suffers even while students get this other type of learning. I find the idea that this is a worthwhile trade to be questionable at best.
Man, if I were a US soldier on the ground now, I'd be thinking this was a real kick in macaque.
Right on most things, but Gecko is not being replaced. They're cleaning up the architecture, yes, but this is not the same thing as an outright replacement.
So is it me, or is the timing on this just perfect to be an attempt to stop the vuvuzela craze before it starts in the US?
Letting the foxes run the henhouse is a bad idea, but the idea of putting these people into service-industry jobs for a while is appealing: something to teach respect for the people who work jobs like this.
Actual retail, though is probably not a good choice, for reasons mentioned above. Perhaps custodial services might work better, or (for older offenders) even some kind of unskilled construction? Tech support in a call center may work for the more technically-savvy offenders. Something which carries similar public scorn, but without the possibility of simply committing the same sorts of crimes that they're supposed to be sentenced for.
It's a thought, anyway.
Yep; late bloomer, just like I thought. Let me guess: you're 15, just out of high school for the year, and want to see some blood?
Most people outgrow outgrowing Nintendo eventually. Perhaps the grandparent post is simply a late bloomer.
Kinesophobes need exactly two control options: take the plunge or don't play. Motion is the way forward for gaming: a better experience in every single respect.
The real question is, has it got electrolytes?
Oh, it's quite possible to get multi-partisan agreement on just about any issue, provided you can justify it well enough. If it's really so impossible, then the problem is with the proposal, not the process. That's the entire point of setting the bar as high as the amendment process does. If it were truly impossible, then it wouldn't have been done 17 times since the Bill of Rights.
Really? The living-document folks don't seem to like actually going through all that tedious and inconvenient amendment red tape when they want to change things to suit their whims.
This. It is important to acknowledge the gains that Microsoft has made, but it is equally important to acknowledge just how far behind they were, and that they have not yet caught up. Their attitudes have improved by leaps and bounds, but they are not yet where they need to be. And they might never be, at least for as long as they cling to compatibility with certain fundamentally-flawed models they used in the past rather than making clean breaks. They certainly make much more work for themselves.
But they have improved, and this should be both acknowledged and encouraged. They should not, however, be allowed to rest on their laurels or make claims that are simply untrue.
What needs to be replaced, if anything, is the DOM, not JavaScript. When you don't have to deal with the DOM and the resulting browser-compatibility issues, JavaScript is actually pretty awesome. It's not without its warts -no language is- but it's surprisingly capable.
However, that raises the question of what the DOM should be replaced with, and I don't have an answer for that.
The attach rate for the Wii has been well above that of the PS3 for years now, and most reviewers don't even bother to keep their anti-Wii bias a secret anymore. Both of these are well-known, and the first barely even matters, since the market of new gamers hasn't had the necessary condition to accept the word of "professional" reviewers as gospel.
Given that the first two things you mention have no impact on game quality, to the point where the presence of the third is debatable at best, I'd say your argument holds no water.
The new gamers that these me-too efforts were created to attracted are not impressed by the HD gimmick, they don't want to play with the people on XBL and PSN, and they haven't been convinced that the games on these consoles are much if any fun. Given the marketing that has sprung up around both Natal and Move I'd say it's a safe bet that they aren't going to be convinced, because Sony and Microsoft have proven that they don't understand that market in the slightest.
In other words, neither of these efforts presents any threat.