Why even limit yourself to computer programming, or even computers? Here's what I mean:
Why not learn a bit about the human brain in a psych class to augment any AI knowledge?
Why not take a music history class? They're interesting, and you could learn how to code MIDI or write software that uses a sound card.
Take a world history class. Not directly applicable to computer programming, but useful nonetheless if for nothing more than ideas for a computer game.
Math is also very important to computer scientists...everything from discrete math to differential equations come up everywhere. Learn to love recurrences.
As far as I'm concerned, Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid should be required reading for any CS students...it's just now 20 years old, but much of the material is still applicable. It talks on a wide variety of subjects, including art, math, music, computer science, neurophysiology, Zen buddhism, genetics. I can't say enough good things about the book.
Reading GEB will really give you an idea of what a varied education can do for you. Now I don't mind so much that MIT makes its students take 8 humanities classes. Of course, not every college has such high-quality classes. Or perhaps I've just been very lucky and chosen only the interesting ones.
Why do I think Linux won't kill Windows? Two reasons. The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash. And Linux is 30-year-old technology.
And he's contrasting this to Windows 2000? Ummmm....waitaminit...W2K is just NT5.
Windows NT was originally written by a bunch of guys from DEC who wrote VMS. Hence, NT can be said to have derived much from VMS, which is well over 20 years old (here's some history). What does that mean for NT?
Clearly, that age doesn't mean a damn thing. Newer does not necessarily mean better. I'd rather have an OS that has evolved from decades of trial and error than something just out of Redmond, and I'm sure many others would as well.
I've been running Linux intermittently for several years (and exclusively for the last 6 months). I've also run windows 95/98, and NT4, and a beta of W2K when it was still NT5. NT5 is a pretty cool OS -- the relative (to win98) reliability and security of NT, and directx for games--yay.
This seems to be where everything is headed currently -- what used to be solely server/workstation operating systems are now becoming gaming platforms. NT is adopting directx6; Unix is getting XFree86 4.0 with all sorts of cool additions. This is A Good Thing (tm), which you should acknowledge even if you hate NT.
Curiously, the same reason that I used Windows is the reason I switched from Windows to Linux. Linux support for hardware used to suck. My TV card didn't work, there was no 3d acceleration (for my TNT), the games sucked. So, I used Windows and put up with the occasional reboot. Eventually, I got fed up with Windows. I hated having to run Exceed to be able to access some of the programs I needed for classes (Matlab, Maple, LaTeX, etc.). So I installed Linux and dealt with the lack of good hardware and game support.
I can get my TV card working with a 2.2 series kernel (which I still haven't gotten to work without breaking AFS, which kind of defeats the whole purpose), and now with NVidia releasing open source drivers, I don't have to worry about 3D acceleration. I really don't have a single qualm about not running Windows...the only games I play are Q/Q2/Q3 anyhow.
Simply put, I have no need for Windows. I haven't booted up Windows in months (I'm pretty sure mucking around with VMWare killed it anyhow), and if I do need it for anything (say, if I buy a digital camera and need to get the pictures off it), I can use VMWare (damn that's an impressive program).
Windows is not going to disappear any time soon. Neither will Linux. Both OSes have built up way too much steam to just roll over and die. Deal with it. Use whichever suits you best. Believe it or not, Linux is not the best OS for some (gasp! blasphemy!) -- my mom still has problems copying and pasting -- I don't think she's ready to be configuring XFree86 (which, while RedHat 5.2 has made some significant changes to make configuring XFree easier, still requires some knowledge about your computer's hardware, which most people haven't a clue about [horizontal refresh frequency? dot clock?]). If you want to use Linux, use it. But don't unnecessarily evangelize an OS that is not ready to replace Windows yet.
Better yet, use Linux conspicuously. Answer questions about Linux. Let them come to you -- don't force it down their throats. Then prove the esteemed Mr. Metcalfe wrong.
As far as I understand it, the way we THINK brains store memories is as a path of neurons. The weird thing is that one path of 100 neurons may be your 4th birthday party, and the same path of 99 neurons might be when you broke your arm.
So let's say you have one billion neurons (which is a conservative estimate). If only 1% of those are used for memory (I'm sure most are used for functional purposes), that leaves 10 million used for memory.
Then all that remains is to form paths in those 10 million neurons, the number of possible "memories" is (10e6)^2, or 10e12 (100 trillion).
That's approximately 11 Terabytes, assuming each "memory" is one bit (it's probably more, but that's just a constant factor difference).
Don't take any of this too seriously -- I'm making up most of these numbers.
BTW, there is a development Mesa/GLX for nVidia project underway (was mentioned in/. a couple weeks ago). Looks like this is moving forward at a pretty good pace.:-)
I'm curious where I can find information about the current status of the NVidia driver...I'd love to be able to play Q3A at better than 400x300 resolution and with everything turned off just to make it playable.
I'm really curious how you figure that visible light is faster than radio or microwaves? They are all electromagnetic radiation, but of different wavelengths and frequencies. As such, they all travel at 3.0e8 m/s, our good friend c.
I disagree. Quake was a great game, and I still play it occasionally. Quake 2 was even better (more balance, etc), but lacked a few things that I wanted from Q1 (the speed mainly). Quake3 brought all of the prettiness of Q2 (and then some) and all of the fun of Q1 (and then some). Id has again perfected the FPS and I can play the game for hours. Which is a bad thing right now (damn finals). I can't wait for Q3 to be released so God^H^H^HJohn Carmack can start work on Trinity.
Well, that's to be expected...the TNT2 uses the same architecture as the TNT...it just has a smaller die size and faster clock speeds. Which means in probably uses the exact same instruction set--I don't think there's any new functionality in the TNT2. Which means that a binary driver for the TNT2 should also work on the TNT. You may be able to set your clock a tad higher than normal, but just be smart and it should be fine. Nvidia has stated that the TNT2 driver for linux should be out in a few weeks, so let's hope for the best.
So after hopping from mirror to mirror to find the damn program, I finally downloaded it and installed it.
Tried to run it. Can't run it.
I have a Riva TNT and NVidia is still without a Linux driver (not even a binary driver), so my TNT is basically a fancy 2D card and I can't play any neato games in linux. I refuse to boot into windows (i don't even think it works any more now that i've been booting into windows w/ vmware), and i don't care.
actually, it's funny you should state that game specifically. last night I got really bored so I installed TW2002 on my linux box (well, using dosemu, but whatever). It's just like i remember it. addictive as hell. come join us. telnet to minipax.mit.edu and login as "tw2002" with no password. Ken aka Juggernaut
I really hate to see articles like this. Although there are a few valid points in the article, it is overshadowed with dripping sarcasm.
The author would rather see us all get hired by m$ and write windows 2000 instead of working on "the dinky feature-weak, application-starved flavor of home-brewed Unix known as Linux".
WTF?
I think what Mr. Coates fails to realize is that there are a LOT of programmers in the world.
What's more, taste is subjective. Asking everyone to adopt a single standard solely for the sake of conformity is ludicrous. America was founded on the ideals of freedom of choice. To say that all of us (which he generalizes as young, idealistic, anti-establishment hackers) are "wasting billions more hours creating applications to take advantage of Linux and make Torvalds' colleagues at Linux software houses like Red Hat Inc. and Caldera Systems Inc. rich" is insane.
I don't think he gets it. I'd suggest everyone send him email, but I can't seem to find his email address anywhere.
Originality != genius. Id creates these types of games because they LIKE them. So do we, apparently. Ask anyone in the industry their opinion of Carmack and you'll get the exact same response. The guy is incredibly talented at optimizing code (look at the amount of STUFF in the original quake and look at what kind of hardware it ran on).
Your mistake is that you're confusing creative endeavors with boring ones. You DO have to pay people to work on an assembly line or in accounting offices because those lines of work just don't provide the kinds of mental stimulation that could make them fun. But as anyone who can play a guitar knows, making music IS fun. By paying millions for it you're just inviting people who would never have gone there in the first place (enter the Spice Girls, Nsync, etc.). By taking something that was fun (art), and turning it into a profession, you make Nsync possible, since they are a copy of a copy of a terrible boy band. Copying (just like working on an assembly line) isn't fun, so you have to conclude that the only reason such bands get formed is the possibility of making money from them.
Once again, you are letting your personal biases get in the way of your logic. If all disaster movies are the same predictable, boring crap, then why does Hollywood create a new one every couple months? Better yet, if everyone thought the way you did, then WHY DO THE DO SO WELL? Obviously, there is a demand for these types of movies. People LIKE them.
So there's a problem. This means that in a world without copyright restrictions, only the intensely popular bands could make it. No more indie bands releasing homemade CD's recorded from their garage hoping to make enough money to support themselves enough to make more music -- only Nsync and the Spice Girls and all the other super popular crap would exist, because all of the other bands wouldn't be able to make enough money to support theirselves. Maybe you will donate to the lesser-known bands, but they will most likely have to go back to their day jobs.
So maybe the government would intervene, giving government subsidies to music makers. This system might work, but it would mean higher taxes, which no one wants. You don't want to pay to support crap bands, and neither do I.
So what we need is a way to force morality onto people. We need a way to make people pay the $15 for a CD, even if it's available for $1 on the street. How do you propose to do this? The only surefire way I can think of is to make those street copies illegal. In short, copyright laws.
May be if we abolish the system you described, the only movies that WOULD get produced would be those made "for fun". Isn't that the best of all possible worlds? Imagine - no more movies about dinasaurs, earthquakes or Leonardo Dicaprio.
Do you really think that's the case? That's a bit naive. If you honestly believe that 99% of the movies out today are conceived of, written, and filmed with the sole purpose of making the most money possible, you're just plain dumb. Perhaps the marketers for the studio that released the film think that, but the filmakers, actors, directors, and screenwriters actually LIKE what they do. The vast majority of movies don't do very well. Only a handful every year get enough notice to make the big bucks. But literally thousands of movies are released every year. Why? Is each one of these an attempt to get rich? Moviemaking is not a very lucrative business for most.
Real art doesn't require money - people do it simply because it's fun to do. Therefore, if we get commercialism (read copyright protection) out of entertainment, all that will remain is stuff created for fun. If you extend that argument to music, we'd get rid of Michael Bolton, but we'd still have Nirvana and REM. No one in their right mind would spend the time and resources it takes to record an nSync (sp?) album if it didn't pay huge amounts of money. And yet I'm sure that when the Rolling Stones were writing their songs, it was a fun experience for them - they'd probably be doing it even if they didn't have to.
Likewise, many more fail in the music industry than make it. Therefore, there must be some other reason so many try. You're letting your subjective biases get in the way of logic. Your REM is another's Nsync. I listen to a great deal of classical music. Why would anyone want to listen to anything else? Why would anyone waste money producing albums with nothing more than guitar noise? Because enough people like that stuff that it sells quite well. The same goes for Nsync...i don't think they have much trouble filling stadiums with fans to see their concerts. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean it's crap. Deal with it.
Through most of recorded history copyright didn't exist, so you couldn't really make money from entertainment.
Heh...the reason copyrights didn't exist hundreds of years ago is because there was no NEED for them to exist. There was no way to copy a book except to HAND WRITE another copy, and this task was mainly carried out by monks, who had nothing better to do (:) ). It wasn't until the printing press was created that we saw the first copyright laws. Likewise with music, the only copies of music were the actual scores. Recordings didn't exist until the late 19th century, so the only way to copy the music was to painstakingly copy the score. When technology created the ability to make copies of books or musical works, copyright laws suddenly appeared. When the technology to make copies of videos appeared, the copyright law was extended to them as well. The latest change in copyright laws happened in 1976 when software piracy became a problem.
You couldn't make money from entertainment? This is basically true...composers had to teach music to make a living, since their works didn't turn much of a profit. But that was largely due to the fact that it was such a pain in the ass to perform a symphony or opera (the major forms of entertainment of the day) and even these were few and far between, not because people could freely copy other's work. Beethoven was the first composer to live off the revenues of his works, and he lived quite poorly a great deal of his life, as did many others who did not want to sacrifice their morals to work for a king (Mozart, for example).
That is why there was no artistic equivalent of the Spice Girls during the Renaissance. Makes you think, doesn't it?
But there did exist a "Spice Girls" in the Renaissance. Bards travelled all over Europe singing their songs in exchange for a nights' stay at an inn or for spare change. They were called troubadors in southern France, trouveres in northern France, Minnesingers in Germany.
The abolition of copyright laws would mean that no one would want to make movies or books or software any more.
If moviemakers knew that all money they spent making a movie would go to waste, who the hell in their right mind is going to spend 5 years and several million dollars to write The Matrix? The Wachowski brothers wrote that movie because they love anime and cyberpunk, not because they wanted to make tons of cash. It just turned out that their ideal vision of a movie appeals to a great many of us, and they are reaping the rewards for it. Good for them.
But your argument that everything released today is purely selfish and profit-oriented is ridiculous.
Intelectual property rights is totally bullshit! We all depend on knowledge invented centuries ago. IPR is preventing the continued natural evolution of mankind.
Hehe. You're missing the point. Intellectual property rights are not meant to restrict the flow of information -- they are meant to protect others from stealing your ideas and claiming them as their own.
Copyright and patent laws are there for a reason. If there were no copyright laws, how would movie companies make any money? Videos could be copied freely and sold on the street for the cost of the tape. Literally anything would be game. This may sound like a dream come true to you, but it's a nightmare that moviemakers live in. Other countries don't have copyright laws or don't enforce them, and you can purchase VCD's of movies on the streets for ridiculous prices. Who does this benefit?
We're lucky we have copyight laws. They make moviemakers want to make movies. Yay capitalism.
You may not agree with the laws, but you still have to follow them. That's how a democracy works. You may not vote for the president or others in office, but because the majority of others did, you must do what they tell you to. That's how ALL governments work -- you give up a certain amount of personal freedom for protection from yourself.
In short, it doesn't matter what you think. The law is the law, and regardless of whether you agree with it, you must obey it. Deal with it.
I hear these ads on ZDTV and on the Kim Kommando radio show by the SPA or whatever that say copying software is exactly like walking into a store, sticking the software in your jacket, and walking out of the store. How lame. If I steal something from someplace, there's a space where the stolen item was and someone else is deprived of using it. If I copy, no one is missing anything. If there are x items before and now there are x+1, how can you claim something was stolen?
Bullshit. I used to think exactly like you--that stealing implied that I took a physical object from someone else. But it doesn't work like that in these cases.
Simply put, you are violating the software's copyright license by downloading it from the latest WaReZ sites. If you did not purchase the software, you do not have the right to run the program.
It's a fine point, but it is a valid one. Software is intellectual property, and by pirating software, you violate these intellectual property rights. Whether you WANT to follow the law or not is irrelevant. You must.
You can rationalize it any way you want ("I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so there is no lost sale", "It's not like I walked into a store and lifted a box with the CD in it", "I might buy it later if I like it", etc. etc.), but face it: you are committing a CRIME when you pirate software, and you should admit that to yourself.
I myself have my share of "borrowed" software from friends on my computer, as I'm sure a great deal of you do. But the difference is that I realize it's a crime. I'm not trying to fool myself into thinking that I'm not doing anything wrong. Just try to pull that "it's not theft if nothing is missing" crap in court and see how it flies with the judge. Copyright laws are there for a REASON: to protect the rights of software makers.
The name of the new building will be the Stata Complex...the Stata family is donating much more than Mr. Gates, and the way I understand it, there will be a WING named after Billy. Not a building.
From yesterday's copy of The Tech (MIT's main newspaper):
"...At the event, LCS directory Michael L. Dertouzos announced a major gift by Gates towards the Stata complex, the future house of LCS
"
MIT has known about Gates's intention to donate for over a year, and the name is still the Stata Complex. Gates donated $20 million. The Statas donated $25 million. Billy gets a wing, the Statas get a building. Hehe. I love it. Yay MIT.
CmdrTaco for president!
on
Quickielanche
·
· Score: 2
Let's put that slashdot to good use and get a decent president in office!
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Proof positive that ACs are the most obnoxious /. posters in the world.
But of course, everyone knows that there are actually four days in one. Or at least that's what the guy at timecube.com says.
P.S.: Don't bother trying to convince him he's wrong...it's like trying to convince the Pope that God doesn't exist.
Actually, the carbonation in the soft drink makes the alcohol get absorbed more quickly.
I think you missed the point.
Why even limit yourself to computer programming, or even computers? Here's what I mean:
Why not learn a bit about the human brain in a psych class to augment any AI knowledge?
Why not take a music history class? They're interesting, and you could learn how to code MIDI or write software that uses a sound card.
Take a world history class. Not directly applicable to computer programming, but useful nonetheless if for nothing more than ideas for a computer game.
Math is also very important to computer scientists...everything from discrete math to differential equations come up everywhere. Learn to love recurrences.
As far as I'm concerned, Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid should be required reading for any CS students...it's just now 20 years old, but much of the material is still applicable. It talks on a wide variety of subjects, including art, math, music, computer science, neurophysiology, Zen buddhism, genetics. I can't say enough good things about the book.
Reading GEB will really give you an idea of what a varied education can do for you. Now I don't mind so much that MIT makes its students take 8 humanities classes. Of course, not every college has such high-quality classes. Or perhaps I've just been very lucky and chosen only the interesting ones.
Actually, isn't the next incarnation of MS Office going to use XML as the underlying file format?
I hate to say it, but MS has a good idea there.
Personally, I still use LaTeX for all typing of any great length. Who the hell uses MS Word for writing books anyway?
Here you can find an iwheel rpm.
You *do* run Red Hat, don't you? If not, use alien or something.
To make it work, you'll have to make a few changes to your XF86Config file (add the line "ZAxisMapping 4 5" to the Pointer section for your mouse).
After that, just run imwheel and stuff should just magically work. Run "imwheel -k". Read the docs in /usr/doc/iwheel* for more info.
Actually, Intel never officially released the 80186. The next cpu after the 8086 (and 8088) was the 80286. We only see 80186 in the instruction set.
And he's contrasting this to Windows 2000? Ummmm....waitaminit...W2K is just NT5.
Windows NT was originally written by a bunch of guys from DEC who wrote VMS. Hence, NT can be said to have derived much from VMS, which is well over 20 years old (here's some history). What does that mean for NT?
Clearly, that age doesn't mean a damn thing. Newer does not necessarily mean better. I'd rather have an OS that has evolved from decades of trial and error than something just out of Redmond, and I'm sure many others would as well.
I've been running Linux intermittently for several years (and exclusively for the last 6 months). I've also run windows 95/98, and NT4, and a beta of W2K when it was still NT5. NT5 is a pretty cool OS -- the relative (to win98) reliability and security of NT, and directx for games--yay.
This seems to be where everything is headed currently -- what used to be solely server/workstation operating systems are now becoming gaming platforms. NT is adopting directx6; Unix is getting XFree86 4.0 with all sorts of cool additions. This is A Good Thing (tm), which you should acknowledge even if you hate NT.
Curiously, the same reason that I used Windows is the reason I switched from Windows to Linux. Linux support for hardware used to suck. My TV card didn't work, there was no 3d acceleration (for my TNT), the games sucked. So, I used Windows and put up with the occasional reboot. Eventually, I got fed up with Windows. I hated having to run Exceed to be able to access some of the programs I needed for classes (Matlab, Maple, LaTeX, etc.). So I installed Linux and dealt with the lack of good hardware and game support.
I can get my TV card working with a 2.2 series kernel (which I still haven't gotten to work without breaking AFS, which kind of defeats the whole purpose), and now with NVidia releasing open source drivers, I don't have to worry about 3D acceleration. I really don't have a single qualm about not running Windows...the only games I play are Q/Q2/Q3 anyhow.
Simply put, I have no need for Windows. I haven't booted up Windows in months (I'm pretty sure mucking around with VMWare killed it anyhow), and if I do need it for anything (say, if I buy a digital camera and need to get the pictures off it), I can use VMWare (damn that's an impressive program).
Windows is not going to disappear any time soon. Neither will Linux. Both OSes have built up way too much steam to just roll over and die. Deal with it. Use whichever suits you best. Believe it or not, Linux is not the best OS for some (gasp! blasphemy!) -- my mom still has problems copying and pasting -- I don't think she's ready to be configuring XFree86 (which, while RedHat 5.2 has made some significant changes to make configuring XFree easier, still requires some knowledge about your computer's hardware, which most people haven't a clue about [horizontal refresh frequency? dot clock?]). If you want to use Linux, use it. But don't unnecessarily evangelize an OS that is not ready to replace Windows yet.
Better yet, use Linux conspicuously. Answer questions about Linux. Let them come to you -- don't force it down their throats. Then prove the esteemed Mr. Metcalfe wrong.
So let's say you have one billion neurons (which is a conservative estimate). If only 1% of those are used for memory (I'm sure most are used for functional purposes), that leaves 10 million used for memory.
Then all that remains is to form paths in those 10 million neurons, the number of possible "memories" is (10e6)^2, or 10e12 (100 trillion).
That's approximately 11 Terabytes, assuming each "memory" is one bit (it's probably more, but that's just a constant factor difference).
Don't take any of this too seriously -- I'm making up most of these numbers.
I'm curious where I can find information about the current status of the NVidia driver...I'd love to be able to play Q3A at better than 400x300 resolution and with everything turned off just to make it playable.
I'm really curious how you figure that visible light is faster than radio or microwaves? They are all electromagnetic radiation, but of different wavelengths and frequencies. As such, they all travel at 3.0e8 m/s, our good friend c.
Bruce's post isn't nearly as offtopic as your post about how offtopic he is (and by induction, this one).
I disagree. Quake was a great game, and I still play it occasionally. Quake 2 was even better (more balance, etc), but lacked a few things that I wanted from Q1 (the speed mainly). Quake3 brought all of the prettiness of Q2 (and then some) and all of the fun of Q1 (and then some). Id has again perfected the FPS and I can play the game for hours. Which is a bad thing right now (damn finals). I can't wait for Q3 to be released so God^H^H^HJohn Carmack can start work on Trinity.
Yeah, but at least the male:female ratio is approximately .5 here.
Well, that's to be expected...the TNT2 uses the same architecture as the TNT...it just has a smaller die size and faster clock speeds. Which means in probably uses the exact same instruction set--I don't think there's any new functionality in the TNT2. Which means that a binary driver for the TNT2 should also work on the TNT. You may be able to set your clock a tad higher than normal, but just be smart and it should be fine. Nvidia has stated that the TNT2 driver for linux should be out in a few weeks, so let's hope for the best.
Tried to run it. Can't run it.
I have a Riva TNT and NVidia is still without a Linux driver (not even a binary driver), so my TNT is basically a fancy 2D card and I can't play any neato games in linux. I refuse to boot into windows (i don't even think it works any more now that i've been booting into windows w/ vmware), and i don't care.
Damn NVidia! Damn you to HELL!
actually, it's funny you should state that game specifically. last night I got really bored so I installed TW2002 on my linux box (well, using dosemu, but whatever). It's just like i remember it. addictive as hell. come join us. telnet to minipax.mit.edu and login as "tw2002" with no password. Ken aka Juggernaut
I really hate to see articles like this. Although there are a few valid points in the article, it is overshadowed with dripping sarcasm.
The author would rather see us all get hired by m$ and write windows 2000 instead of working on "the dinky feature-weak, application-starved flavor of home-brewed Unix known as Linux".
WTF?
I think what Mr. Coates fails to realize is that there are a LOT of programmers in the world.
What's more, taste is subjective. Asking everyone to adopt a single standard solely for the sake of conformity is ludicrous. America was founded on the ideals of freedom of choice. To say that all of us (which he generalizes as young, idealistic, anti-establishment hackers) are "wasting billions more hours creating applications to take advantage of Linux and make Torvalds' colleagues at Linux software houses like Red Hat Inc. and Caldera Systems Inc. rich" is insane.
I don't think he gets it. I'd suggest everyone send him email, but I can't seem to find his email address anywhere.
Originality != genius. Id creates these types of games because they LIKE them. So do we, apparently. Ask anyone in the industry their opinion of Carmack and you'll get the exact same response. The guy is incredibly talented at optimizing code (look at the amount of STUFF in the original quake and look at what kind of hardware it ran on).
Once again, you are letting your personal biases get in the way of your logic. If all disaster movies are the same predictable, boring crap, then why does Hollywood create a new one every couple months? Better yet, if everyone thought the way you did, then WHY DO THE DO SO WELL? Obviously, there is a demand for these types of movies. People LIKE them.
So there's a problem. This means that in a world without copyright restrictions, only the intensely popular bands could make it. No more indie bands releasing homemade CD's recorded from their garage hoping to make enough money to support themselves enough to make more music -- only Nsync and the Spice Girls and all the other super popular crap would exist, because all of the other bands wouldn't be able to make enough money to support theirselves. Maybe you will donate to the lesser-known bands, but they will most likely have to go back to their day jobs.
So maybe the government would intervene, giving government subsidies to music makers. This system might work, but it would mean higher taxes, which no one wants. You don't want to pay to support crap bands, and neither do I.
So what we need is a way to force morality onto people. We need a way to make people pay the $15 for a CD, even if it's available for $1 on the street. How do you propose to do this? The only surefire way I can think of is to make those street copies illegal. In short, copyright laws.
May be if we abolish the system you described, the only movies that WOULD get produced would be those made "for fun". Isn't that the best of all possible worlds? Imagine - no more movies about dinasaurs, earthquakes or Leonardo Dicaprio.
Do you really think that's the case? That's a bit naive. If you honestly believe that 99% of the movies out today are conceived of, written, and filmed with the sole purpose of making the most money possible, you're just plain dumb. Perhaps the marketers for the studio that released the film think that, but the filmakers, actors, directors, and screenwriters actually LIKE what they do. The vast majority of movies don't do very well. Only a handful every year get enough notice to make the big bucks. But literally thousands of movies are released every year. Why? Is each one of these an attempt to get rich? Moviemaking is not a very lucrative business for most.Real art doesn't require money - people do it simply because it's fun to do. Therefore, if we get commercialism (read copyright protection) out of entertainment, all that will remain is stuff created for fun. If you extend that argument to music, we'd get rid of Michael Bolton, but we'd still have Nirvana and REM. No one in their right mind would spend the time and resources it takes to record an nSync (sp?) album if it didn't pay huge amounts of money. And yet I'm sure that when the Rolling Stones were writing their songs, it was a fun experience for them - they'd probably be doing it even if they didn't have to.
Likewise, many more fail in the music industry than make it. Therefore, there must be some other reason so many try. You're letting your subjective biases get in the way of logic. Your REM is another's Nsync. I listen to a great deal of classical music. Why would anyone want to listen to anything else? Why would anyone waste money producing albums with nothing more than guitar noise? Because enough people like that stuff that it sells quite well. The same goes for Nsync...i don't think they have much trouble filling stadiums with fans to see their concerts. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean it's crap. Deal with it.Through most of recorded history copyright didn't exist, so you couldn't really make money from entertainment.
Heh...the reason copyrights didn't exist hundreds of years ago is because there was no NEED for them to exist. There was no way to copy a book except to HAND WRITE another copy, and this task was mainly carried out by monks, who had nothing better to do ( :) ). It wasn't until the printing press was created that we saw the first copyright laws. Likewise with music, the only copies of music were the actual scores. Recordings didn't exist until the late 19th century, so the only way to copy the music was to painstakingly copy the score. When technology created the ability to make copies of books or musical works, copyright laws suddenly appeared. When the technology to make copies of videos appeared, the copyright law was extended to them as well. The latest change in copyright laws happened in 1976 when software piracy became a problem.
You couldn't make money from entertainment? This is basically true...composers had to teach music to make a living, since their works didn't turn much of a profit. But that was largely due to the fact that it was such a pain in the ass to perform a symphony or opera (the major forms of entertainment of the day) and even these were few and far between, not because people could freely copy other's work. Beethoven was the first composer to live off the revenues of his works, and he lived quite poorly a great deal of his life, as did many others who did not want to sacrifice their morals to work for a king (Mozart, for example).
That is why there was no artistic equivalent of the Spice Girls during the Renaissance. Makes you think, doesn't it?
But there did exist a "Spice Girls" in the Renaissance. Bards travelled all over Europe singing their songs in exchange for a nights' stay at an inn or for spare change. They were called troubadors in southern France, trouveres in northern France, Minnesingers in Germany.
The abolition of copyright laws would mean that no one would want to make movies or books or software any more.
If moviemakers knew that all money they spent making a movie would go to waste, who the hell in their right mind is going to spend 5 years and several million dollars to write The Matrix? The Wachowski brothers wrote that movie because they love anime and cyberpunk, not because they wanted to make tons of cash. It just turned out that their ideal vision of a movie appeals to a great many of us, and they are reaping the rewards for it. Good for them.
But your argument that everything released today is purely selfish and profit-oriented is ridiculous.
Hehe. You're missing the point. Intellectual property rights are not meant to restrict the flow of information -- they are meant to protect others from stealing your ideas and claiming them as their own.
Copyright and patent laws are there for a reason. If there were no copyright laws, how would movie companies make any money? Videos could be copied freely and sold on the street for the cost of the tape. Literally anything would be game. This may sound like a dream come true to you, but it's a nightmare that moviemakers live in. Other countries don't have copyright laws or don't enforce them, and you can purchase VCD's of movies on the streets for ridiculous prices. Who does this benefit?
We're lucky we have copyight laws. They make moviemakers want to make movies. Yay capitalism.
You may not agree with the laws, but you still have to follow them. That's how a democracy works. You may not vote for the president or others in office, but because the majority of others did, you must do what they tell you to. That's how ALL governments work -- you give up a certain amount of personal freedom for protection from yourself.
In short, it doesn't matter what you think. The law is the law, and regardless of whether you agree with it, you must obey it. Deal with it.
Bullshit. I used to think exactly like you--that stealing implied that I took a physical object from someone else. But it doesn't work like that in these cases.
Simply put, you are violating the software's copyright license by downloading it from the latest WaReZ sites. If you did not purchase the software, you do not have the right to run the program.
It's a fine point, but it is a valid one. Software is intellectual property, and by pirating software, you violate these intellectual property rights. Whether you WANT to follow the law or not is irrelevant. You must.
You can rationalize it any way you want ("I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so there is no lost sale", "It's not like I walked into a store and lifted a box with the CD in it", "I might buy it later if I like it", etc. etc.), but face it: you are committing a CRIME when you pirate software, and you should admit that to yourself.
I myself have my share of "borrowed" software from friends on my computer, as I'm sure a great deal of you do. But the difference is that I realize it's a crime. I'm not trying to fool myself into thinking that I'm not doing anything wrong. Just try to pull that "it's not theft if nothing is missing" crap in court and see how it flies with the judge. Copyright laws are there for a REASON: to protect the rights of software makers.
The name of the new building will be the Stata Complex...the Stata family is donating much more than Mr. Gates, and the way I understand it, there will be a WING named after Billy. Not a building.
From yesterday's copy of The Tech (MIT's main newspaper):
"...At the event, LCS directory Michael L. Dertouzos announced a major gift by Gates towards the Stata complex, the future house of LCS
"MIT has known about Gates's intention to donate for over a year, and the name is still the Stata Complex. Gates donated $20 million. The Statas donated $25 million. Billy gets a wing, the Statas get a building. Hehe. I love it. Yay MIT.
Let's put that slashdot to good use and get a decent president in office!