You can counterbalance lives with money, governments do it all the time, when they decide not to spend enough money to give expensive treatments to people, for example, or food. But I reckon that in the fantasy world you live, lives are "sacred" and cannot be measured against anything.
You do it when you decide not to spend all your money to help the people starving, for example. To you, your money is worth more than the lives of all those people starving that you could feed with it. Even for them, money to feed half their families could be worth more than the lives of the other half. You are a spoiled child who have always lived in the abundance of resources and therefore give too little importance to those resources.
Laws are obviously not dictated by ethics, but they tend to be pragmatic. They compensate damages with money because that is what can be done and that is the sole motive I cited them. I advise you to avoid trying to infer anything else from it, as you are not very good at it.
Yes, we should avoid killing people, unless it is necessary, There are many many cases where it is necessary, and "necessary" is highly subjective, like when governments kill people by cutting healthcare expenses, for example, or by raising the speed limit in a highway, or by starting a war. Compared to this, damaging people's feelings or reputations to allow for free speech is a very low price to pay. Still the former are perfectly legal actions, and the latter is not.
But, by all means, keep trying to justify what can't be possibly justifiable.
Compensation is just that, compensation. Its intent is to give back something to a damaged part, not to rewind time. By our society laws compensation is done by money, period. Nobody is saying that money will bring the dead back, but after they are dead it is what can be done.
Does it not even occur to you that some people might rationally believe that an absolute right to say whatever you like, no matter how damaging or unfair, without any adverse consequences should not outweigh every other basic right and freedom?
Oh, I do recognize that there are such unenlightened people, but they fail to grasp the consequences of their misguided beliefs, as you do.
It is not only possible but very simple to allow for unrestricted free speech, it is just not a very good idea for governments and that is why we don't have it.
You seem to be unable to grasp the difference between speech and action. The mafia boss in your example won't be prosecuted for what he said, but because he ordered the murder and his hitman executed it. Speech was merely the media and giving the order is not a crime in itself. If he orders the murder and nothing happens he couldn't be charged with anything in most countries.
Anything can be compensate by money in our society. Even deaths are compensated by mere money. In the end that is a very low price to pay for free speech. That said, the reason why there is no country that has absolute free speech laws has nothing to do with what can or cannot be compensate, but with governments wanting to control and limit what people think and know in order to maintain their status quo.
I never said that a right must be absolutely conditional to mean anything, I said that this specific right must be absolutely unconditional in order to mean anything, and by that I don't mean people should be unaccountable regarding their use of this right, but all accountability should be a matter of civil law only, never criminal. If you slander somebody, for example, the person should be able to sue you and get adequate compensation, but nobody should be able to prevent you from doing the slandering.
That said yes, US version of "free speech" is similarly flawed, that much I agree.
You can't be more subjective than what you are describing. What is "kharma-whoring" or "drama-queening"? Where exactly something crosses the line between "useful policy discussion", and "drama-queening" for example? Should any emotional outburst be outlawed? If a people cries while talkign about something should what he is talking about be dismissed, or better, outlawed?
There is no such thing as conditional free speech. Any conditional free speech is no free speech at all, because there is always someone else who will be deciding what can be said and what cannot based on his own interpretations of abstract things like "emotional acts", as you so clearly showed.
What happens in the future remains to be seen, but our discussion is about what is happening now and which distribution is more popular. Regarding this topic I provided the data you asked.
Mint is an end-user distribution targeted to the same public that uses Ubuntu. The main difference between them is the UI. Mint decided to keep the traditional UI, while Ubuntu chose to go to Unity,
Depends, my friend. If milk suddenly becomes scarce it will be important to have the milk market cornered. Google has dominance in a lot of markets and although some give modest revenues today, and some may even endure with small losses. Unlike most myopic companies we have these days, Google plans for the long term, and they do it very well.
You seem to be in the same fantasy world where people think the next quarter is all there is. Very few Google services endure losses. Most of them give them modest revenues but a solid, and most time dominant, market presence. Unlike most companies Google works with long term goals and understands that market dominance and diversity, as long as they can be banked are worth a lot in the long term.
Apple does not manufacture its own hardware, and a great part of its software is made by third parties. Following your own poor excuse for a logic, while Google lives solely from advertisement, Apple lives solely from aesthetic design and brand, and those things are only as good as the next trend.
But enough of nonsense. If you are so confident about Apple, by all means, Invest all your money in Apple shares and just wait. We will see who is right soon enough.
Exactly, PE ratio and debt-equity have nothing to do with growth ratios, and stagnation in growth ratio is what burst bubbles. Share prices can only keep artificially high while there is perspective of growth. As soon as growth stops share prices are soon to follow and companies start to sink.
Apple has an extremely restrict product portfolio, especially compared to Google in the real world (which is not your fantasy world), and Android is far from being a economical failure for Google as you paint, quite the opposite, actually.
But keep to your delusions. Lets see in a few years where Apple and Google stand and then you can come and apologize to me. I will be waiting.
Obviously the one that can't possibly grow much longer for lack of where to grow to, i. e., Apple. Everything else you posted is irrelevant to the argument in hand. You may dislike Google's policies and like Apple, but that has very little to do with both companies capacity to keep growing.
My point is that Apple bubbles inflated very fast, far beyond their ability to sustain it, especially considering the increased competition they are having to endure.
Yes, Google's bubble will eventually pop, but it may take a decade or more for it to happen, and Google has a lot of time to create safeguards, which they have actively being doing for some time now.
Apple's bubble, on the other hand is going to burst much sooner and they havent been doing much in order to safeguard themselves against the eventuality.
If the prices drop that low, Apple wont likely survive. All the functionality of Apple products can be replaced by similar devices of other systems. If it gets to a point, by any chance, that Apple products are twice or more as expensive as the competition, Apple will again become a niche company, iOS market will shrink to the Levels of OS X market and Apple shares will drop like there is no tomorrow. That is why Apple and Samsung high end devices are sold at roughly the same prices. If Samsung starts to sell Galaxy Tabs at half the current price Apple will be forced to sell iPads at similar prices, period.
Nope. First there was no "theft" here, period. Copyright infringement is not theft by any definition of the term, and will never be.
Second I am not justifying anything. I am blatantly stating that if someone cannot make money selling his IP because of piracy, what he "created" does not really have enough perceived value, is therefore of very little use to society, and should not be protected by society at all.
Copyright is not a guarantee of profits, and much less a guarantee of life long profits.
Even if he declares personal bankruptcy his credit is compromised for life and he won't be able to own anything anytime soon if ever. Bankruptcy laws are not very forgiving in US.
Regarding your other statement failing a business is not news. Actually most people who start a business do fail, but very few of them end incurring into a debt of 1.5 million dollars. And failing to produce something people want to pay for is hardly a problem of piracy, it is a problem of perceived value. People do buy non DRM games from GOG and music from iTunes, regardless of any piracy.
The hard truth you want to deny is that some stuff is not valuable enough to grant a livelihood to the creator, and some people would be better doing something else other than trying to hit the jackpot and live the rest of their lives as the result of a single or a few "creations". How about working everyday like everyone else and earning your money by performing or teaching?
But the fact that people can do that means they provide all the services of a bank, even if you choose not to use them, and therefore should be regulated as one.
The main problem is not the watermarks themselves, but the abusive charges imposed upon the defendant. The watermarks were a tool to single him out and allow for the increasingly absurd copyright laws to be applied over him. I would have no problem with watermarks if he had been ordered to pay U$ 1500,00 for this, but 1.5 million is beyond ridiculous.
Or if it may affect you in the future, or if it may be used for one party or another in a way to gain political leverage and win elections, or if it affects corporate interests even if they go against the majority's interests. If you add all "ORs" there is very little left out in the end...
Slashdot Mirror
You can counterbalance lives with money, governments do it all the time, when they decide not to spend enough money to give expensive treatments to people, for example, or food. But I reckon that in the fantasy world you live, lives are "sacred" and cannot be measured against anything.
You do it when you decide not to spend all your money to help the people starving, for example. To you, your money is worth more than the lives of all those people starving that you could feed with it. Even for them, money to feed half their families could be worth more than the lives of the other half. You are a spoiled child who have always lived in the abundance of resources and therefore give too little importance to those resources.
Laws are obviously not dictated by ethics, but they tend to be pragmatic. They compensate damages with money because that is what can be done and that is the sole motive I cited them. I advise you to avoid trying to infer anything else from it, as you are not very good at it.
Yes, we should avoid killing people, unless it is necessary, There are many many cases where it is necessary, and "necessary" is highly subjective, like when governments kill people by cutting healthcare expenses, for example, or by raising the speed limit in a highway, or by starting a war. Compared to this, damaging people's feelings or reputations to allow for free speech is a very low price to pay. Still the former are perfectly legal actions, and the latter is not.
But, by all means, keep trying to justify what can't be possibly justifiable.
Does it not even occur to you that some people might rationally believe that an absolute right to say whatever you like, no matter how damaging or unfair, without any adverse consequences should not outweigh every other basic right and freedom?
Oh, I do recognize that there are such unenlightened people, but they fail to grasp the consequences of their misguided beliefs, as you do.
It is not only possible but very simple to allow for unrestricted free speech, it is just not a very good idea for governments and that is why we don't have it.
You seem to be unable to grasp the difference between speech and action. The mafia boss in your example won't be prosecuted for what he said, but because he ordered the murder and his hitman executed it. Speech was merely the media and giving the order is not a crime in itself. If he orders the murder and nothing happens he couldn't be charged with anything in most countries.
Anything can be compensate by money in our society. Even deaths are compensated by mere money. In the end that is a very low price to pay for free speech. That said, the reason why there is no country that has absolute free speech laws has nothing to do with what can or cannot be compensate, but with governments wanting to control and limit what people think and know in order to maintain their status quo.
I never said that a right must be absolutely conditional to mean anything, I said that this specific right must be absolutely unconditional in order to mean anything, and by that I don't mean people should be unaccountable regarding their use of this right, but all accountability should be a matter of civil law only, never criminal. If you slander somebody, for example, the person should be able to sue you and get adequate compensation, but nobody should be able to prevent you from doing the slandering.
That said yes, US version of "free speech" is similarly flawed, that much I agree.
You can't be more subjective than what you are describing. What is "kharma-whoring" or "drama-queening"? Where exactly something crosses the line between "useful policy discussion", and "drama-queening" for example? Should any emotional outburst be outlawed? If a people cries while talkign about something should what he is talking about be dismissed, or better, outlawed?
There is no such thing as conditional free speech. Any conditional free speech is no free speech at all, because there is always someone else who will be deciding what can be said and what cannot based on his own interpretations of abstract things like "emotional acts", as you so clearly showed.
And certainly your idea of what is useful and what is not is the correct one and should be enforced by law, right?
What happens in the future remains to be seen, but our discussion is about what is happening now and which distribution is more popular. Regarding this topic I provided the data you asked.
Mint is an end-user distribution targeted to the same public that uses Ubuntu. The main difference between them is the UI. Mint decided to keep the traditional UI, while Ubuntu chose to go to Unity,
Mint is on the lead since the beginning of 2012:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/246826/as_2012_dawns_mint_leads_the_list_of_top_linux_distros.html
And was in first place at least until August 2012:
http://www.zdnet.com/the-5-most-popular-linux-distributions-7000003183/
Yes, it is. It absorbed a lot of Ubuntu's user base.
Depends, my friend. If milk suddenly becomes scarce it will be important to have the milk market cornered. Google has dominance in a lot of markets and although some give modest revenues today, and some may even endure with small losses. Unlike most myopic companies we have these days, Google plans for the long term, and they do it very well.
You seem to be in the same fantasy world where people think the next quarter is all there is. Very few Google services endure losses. Most of them give them modest revenues but a solid, and most time dominant, market presence. Unlike most companies Google works with long term goals and understands that market dominance and diversity, as long as they can be banked are worth a lot in the long term.
Apple does not manufacture its own hardware, and a great part of its software is made by third parties. Following your own poor excuse for a logic, while Google lives solely from advertisement, Apple lives solely from aesthetic design and brand, and those things are only as good as the next trend.
But enough of nonsense. If you are so confident about Apple, by all means, Invest all your money in Apple shares and just wait. We will see who is right soon enough.
Exactly, PE ratio and debt-equity have nothing to do with growth ratios, and stagnation in growth ratio is what burst bubbles. Share prices can only keep artificially high while there is perspective of growth. As soon as growth stops share prices are soon to follow and companies start to sink.
Apple has an extremely restrict product portfolio, especially compared to Google in the real world (which is not your fantasy world), and Android is far from being a economical failure for Google as you paint, quite the opposite, actually.
But keep to your delusions. Lets see in a few years where Apple and Google stand and then you can come and apologize to me. I will be waiting.
Obviously the one that can't possibly grow much longer for lack of where to grow to, i. e., Apple. Everything else you posted is irrelevant to the argument in hand. You may dislike Google's policies and like Apple, but that has very little to do with both companies capacity to keep growing.
My point is that Apple bubbles inflated very fast, far beyond their ability to sustain it, especially considering the increased competition they are having to endure.
Yes, Google's bubble will eventually pop, but it may take a decade or more for it to happen, and Google has a lot of time to create safeguards, which they have actively being doing for some time now.
Apple's bubble, on the other hand is going to burst much sooner and they havent been doing much in order to safeguard themselves against the eventuality.
If the prices drop that low, Apple wont likely survive. All the functionality of Apple products can be replaced by similar devices of other systems. If it gets to a point, by any chance, that Apple products are twice or more as expensive as the competition, Apple will again become a niche company, iOS market will shrink to the Levels of OS X market and Apple shares will drop like there is no tomorrow. That is why Apple and Samsung high end devices are sold at roughly the same prices. If Samsung starts to sell Galaxy Tabs at half the current price Apple will be forced to sell iPads at similar prices, period.
They can't keep up for the simple reason that they are riding a bubble, and sooner or later the bubble will pop, as it happens to all bubbles.
Nope. First there was no "theft" here, period. Copyright infringement is not theft by any definition of the term, and will never be.
Second I am not justifying anything. I am blatantly stating that if someone cannot make money selling his IP because of piracy, what he "created" does not really have enough perceived value, is therefore of very little use to society, and should not be protected by society at all.
Copyright is not a guarantee of profits, and much less a guarantee of life long profits.
Even if he declares personal bankruptcy his credit is compromised for life and he won't be able to own anything anytime soon if ever. Bankruptcy laws are not very forgiving in US.
Regarding your other statement failing a business is not news. Actually most people who start a business do fail, but very few of them end incurring into a debt of 1.5 million dollars. And failing to produce something people want to pay for is hardly a problem of piracy, it is a problem of perceived value. People do buy non DRM games from GOG and music from iTunes, regardless of any piracy.
The hard truth you want to deny is that some stuff is not valuable enough to grant a livelihood to the creator, and some people would be better doing something else other than trying to hit the jackpot and live the rest of their lives as the result of a single or a few "creations". How about working everyday like everyone else and earning your money by performing or teaching?
But the fact that people can do that means they provide all the services of a bank, even if you choose not to use them, and therefore should be regulated as one.
He bought something and then gave it away for free without permission.
You are what is wrong with our World, sir.
The main problem is not the watermarks themselves, but the abusive charges imposed upon the defendant. The watermarks were a tool to single him out and allow for the increasingly absurd copyright laws to be applied over him. I would have no problem with watermarks if he had been ordered to pay U$ 1500,00 for this, but 1.5 million is beyond ridiculous.
Sharing the "blame" is mostly irrelevant and a illusion. Blame is of little importance when the consequences are the same.
Or if it may affect you in the future, or if it may be used for one party or another in a way to gain political leverage and win elections, or if it affects corporate interests even if they go against the majority's interests. If you add all "ORs" there is very little left out in the end...
You fool yourself if you think elected leaders are much better. Neither kind relates even remotely to the will of the people they represent.