When I read "religions are recipes for life" I think I interpreted this as "religions are the recipe for life". Sorry I made a reading comprehension error.
I would never try to make the claim that it was a required path, so you kind of went there on your own.
I don't want to project a claim onto anyone, and I am sorry that it came across that way. It just seemed to me like a natural extrapolation to what you said. I am not making the assumption that you agree with this extrapolation, nor that you believe the accept the extrapolation as true even if you did agree that it was the correct extrapolation.
If you want to use that as a personal way to discount the potential link between religion and science, so be it.
There is most certainly a historic link between religion and science. What I am arguing against is the claim (whether you are making it or not), is the claim that science necessarily required religion (e.g. in the way that it necessarily requires logic and math, etc)
Maybe we could have arrived where we are today via a different path, that does not mean religion did not play a role in moving things along, or was not part of a very human natural progression.
It undoubtedly played a role. Sometimes is was helping, and other times it was hurting. I don't think we can even say definitively that it was a positive force for science on the whole. It's like a psychic employed by the police to solve crimes. You have the mindset that it doesn't hurt, and that even if the psychic helps solve 1 crime, it was a net benefit, but I would argue that you also need to count the opportunity costs of the resources spent following the trail created by the psychic, that could have been spent on more fruitful strategies.
Hypothesizing an imaginary atheistic folk mythology, as you suggest, seems not far from hypothesizing imaginary gods.
Religious people don't treat their gods as hypothetical. I think hypothesizing imaginary Gods (or any unproven phenomenon) is actually very useful for thought experiments. What I don't do is claim that my hypothetical atheistic folk mythology is reality despite the lack of any good evidence.
Diseases are not something societies elected to bring forth, so that's a really bad example.
No they are not. And that was part of my point. There are some engineered religions (which would be analogous to a bioengineered pathogen). Maybe some good examples are like Mormonism, Scientology, etc. I think what is more common is religions which were created more organically like Judaism. Most are a mixture of both natural and artificial forces.
But even for the engineered religions, they were engineered by individuals. The adoption of that religion by society is not necessarily a *choice*. Sometimes there are ideas that are just very compelling to a large group of people in a certain place and time. And this isn't always bad. When I learned about math, I didn't have a choice in whether to believe it. I just found it utterly compelling when I was exposed to it. I could not choose not to believe it once it "infected" me. Math is a good "mind virus", but many "mind viruses" are not so good.
Certainly there is a lot of good music inspired by religion. All I am saying is that there is an opportunity cost to religion (to use an economics term). But having religion, and therefore music inspired by religion, we are spending X amount of societal mental effort devoted to religion, that is now not devoted to something else. All I am saying is that if we didn't have religion, I don't think it makes sense to assume we wouldn't have good music. And that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the music that was inspired by religion.
Regarding 'based on false information'. I'm not sure how that is relevant to anything I said.
That was not directly related to anything you said. It is based on my (apparently implicit) assertion that a common thread among religions (compared with other ideologies) is that they perpetuate factually false information. That's not to say that other non-religious ideologies don't also contain falsehoods, but I do think it is a necessary requirement of religions depending on your definition of a religion (e.g. an ideology that involves the belief in a deity).
Someone might legitimately claim that carbon is a recipe for life. We have yet to find any life that exists without carbon. If we had evidence of life that was on average thriving better than carbon based lifeforms, I think the case that "carbon is the recipe for life" would be mortally weakened. Maybe religion is *a* recipe for life, but I wouldn't even go that far.
I'm an atheist, and that's abundantly obvious to me. I'm actually one of the founding members of an atheist organization designed solely to provide the kind of community that religious people have, but to atheists. It had ~1500 members last time I checked. We actually try to discourage people from focusing on disparaging religion, and instead focus on making our own community better. A lot of these people have come from oppressive religious communities, however, and do feel the need to vent.
I would probably do the same, except that having not been raised with no religion, I wouldn't know which God to pray to. I guess it would have to be the God of deism or pantheism, even though I think they don't accept prayers by definition.
I didn't say they pay him. I said they pay for his food and lodging (i.e. they give him food and a place to live). This is standard for any prisoner, because if you don't they stop being a prisoner and become a corpse.
You can certainly categorize things that way if you want to. But I feel like this logic is similar to saying "marijuana is a gateway to harder drugs" simply because most people who use harder drugs used marijuana first. But this logic can be extended to saying "water is a gateway to other drugs because *everyone* used water before they used hard drugs".
Yes, we as humans seem to be predisposed to religion, usually as a way of trying to make sense of the confusing world around is in the absence of better information. I think it was a sure bet that we would invent bad science before we invented good science. I don't think it religion can get the credit for being the predominant progenitor to good science, simply because I think any attempt to explain the world (whether it involved imaginary gods or not) would have sufficed.
One could hypothesize an atheistic folk mythology that attempted to explain the world just as incorrectly as any religion. This mythology could conceivably be just as suitable a progenitor to real science (i.e. the specific belief in a deity is not a key factor in society developing science).
I think it is more likely that humans are just getting closer and closer to the truth, and it doesn't really matter the path way take. It is not required that we believe in false gods before we discover penicillin, etc, even if that's how it actually happened.
I think people and religions can be judged independently. It is perfectly reasonable to be critical of the ideologies of a treligion (like advocating the execution of apostates, or people found working on a holy day, etc), without being critical of members of that religion. Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam can be a horrible ideologies without the Christians, Jews, Muslims being horrible people. Lot's of good religious people simply abstain from following the worst prescriptions offered by their religions for various reasons.
From a scientific perspective, I think the emergence or religion in societies is quite a fascinating topic. Virtually all societies have independently birthed religions. That doesn't happen by chance, or by virtue of a scheme. That happens because there is a real social benefit. Of course, that does not mean there are no negatives.
Virtually every society has diseases. What is the social benefit of diseases? Some diseases do in fact bestow evolutionary benefits to their host as a way to help them survive (i.e. symbiosis), but this is clearly not necessary, and many diseases that flourish in society only offer disadvantages to their host.
I think religion, can be thought of as a disease of the mind, and like some other diseases, it can provide some benefits, but it also might be only bad.
On a lighter note, religion has provide us with some really awesome music, and a great excuse for extra holidays.
That's true, but we don't know what kind of music would have been created had society been devoid of religion. I think it's safe to say that we would have still developed music, but that it just would have been different. Would it have been better or worse? We will never know. I do know that there are ideologies that inspire people to see beauty in the world that do not involve false information.
So if religions are the recipes of life, and the quality of those recipes are measured by household income, why are atheists doing better than theists on average in that survey?
I think there is a very high likelihood that Snowden just leaked everything he stole (i.e. Russia doesn't have access to anything from Snowden that isn't already public). Why would Russia help Snowden? Let's look at some pros and cons for Russia helping Snowden even if they didn't get any additional information.
Pros:
Russia can troll the USA by...
1. claiming to be more transparent and free than the USA
2. by obstructing our justice system.
3. by giving a platform to a famous person critical of the USA.
4. Russia can make our intelligence agencies unsure of what if any additional information (even if it's nothing).
5. Russia can have a bargaining chip with the USA if they ever want something from us.
Just to name a few things I just thought of.
Cons:
1. Russia needs to pay for Snowden's food and lodging.
Or, maybe, you could call courageous the act of paying the many billions you owe around the world into the system that ensures those students have all of the resources they need in order to learn and grow.
No that's just called being responsible to society. I don't approve of misusing the word courage for removing earbuds any more than approve of it's misuse for trying to shame a company for not paying taxes. It's just the "running into a burning building" and stuff like it, and corporations can't run into burning buildings, so don't expect them to be courageous.
I'd do it for 6 or high 5. I think it would be quite entertaining watching new people try to wrap their heads around the shit show, and it may even give my employer a false sense of security that will be fun to imagine being eventually stripped away. Bwuahahaha! Ok maybe I'd do it for a mid-5.
The consumer enters into a transaction whose appearance and nature is that of a sale of chattel goods. When he offers cash for the purchase, he is within his rights to expect to fully own what he paid for. (This follows from the fact that consumers live in a world where simple sales transactions are the norm, and customized contracts of sale are not.)
I don't think this is true anymore. I think it is "normal" (although maybe not "the norm") for customers to by goods that are a mix of chattel and intellectual property. You are not required to agree to the EULA, but you will also not get all the advertised features. (e.g. if you buy a computer that comes with windows 10, but refuse to agree to the windows EULA, and instead install linux, you might not get the feature of being able to run games designed for windows). I think people are very well aware of this in 2016).
People understand that if you buy something and alter it (as you are free to do with chattel), it might not do all the things it was advertised to do.
You are perfectly free to have a computer without windows and it's associated restrictions defined in the EULA, even if it comes with windows pre-installed. What you are not entitled to is a lower than normal price for the bundle, nor advertised features that depend on windows. If all you want is chattel, then you can have that. And as with other forms of chattel, you are not free to dictate how it is bundled and sold to you, and at what price.
A EULA places encumbrances on the consumer's ownership that, due the the asymmetrical nature of how EULAs are formulated, are beyond that which is reasonable for ordinary consumers to understand, The goods were misrepresented; to sell them that way constitutes fraud. (Strictly speaking, Dell is committing fraud, but doing so under contractual obligation with MS. Getting Dell to do the dirty work makes MS a conspirator to fraud.)
That may be true, but this doesn't fact doesn't prevent you from declining the EULA, and simply installing linux or whatever other software you want. This is true of fraudulent EULA's and fair EULA's alike.
The problem occurs when we have asymmetrical lawyering; the solution is the first sale doctrine (or, alternately, uniform contracts produced through a process that properly represents consumers' interests).
Luckily there is an open market where people can decide to buy and sell whatever hardware and software combinations they choose. There may be fraudulent products out there, but a natural check against that which markets provide is the freedom to choose not to buy them. Maybe consumers don't have the resources to fight EULA's with lawyers in court, but they certainly have the resources to do basic research and buy products that best fit their needs (i.e. in a way that a fraudulent product would not).
Also, the fact that fraudulent products exist does not entitle you to a non-fraudulent version of that exact product. If I buy a diesel VW that has misrepresented features (e.g. emissions of a certain level of cleanliness), I am certainly within my rights to a refund. I should not have the right to what was advertised (e.g. maybe what was advertised is not even possible). VW can certainly decide to offer a replacement or repair to bring it up to what was advertised (especially if they do not want to hand out refunds), but they shouldn't be compelled to.
The guy who did not want to buy windows was offered a full refund. I don't see anything about this that is not a fair resolution for that person (e.g. Maybe other people were not offered refunds for their purchase of a fraudulent product). But I don't see why he should be entitled to a non-fraudulent version of a fraudulent product for a cheaper price. I think a full refund is a perfectly fair resolution even in the case of fraud.
A have to disagree with your assessment of the facts, though: Microsoft very much does want to sell Windows at Best Buy (and every other random retail channel); they want to do so as part of a bundle.
I guess I just don't see this as microsoft selling windows at best buy. Disregarding the fact that best buy and stores like it are a dying business, those are computer vendors selling products that include windows at best buy. This is not a decision by microsoft to sell it's products at best buy, it's a decision by microsoft to bundle it's software with hardware from other vendors and have those bundles sold wherever they can be marketed (including best buy). But if best buy and every other retail computer store shuts down and all copies of windows (stand alone or bundled with hardware) happens on the internet, I don't think MS would care one bit.
Are physical computers themselves chattel? yes. What about the bundled software? No. If you go buy a car, that comes with a free xm radio trial, you can ask to have a lower price since you don't plan on using the satellite radio, but you shouldn't have a legal right to a unbundled car and an associated cheaper price. You have the right to to not listen to the radio, or disable it if you want.
sometimes chattel comes bundled with licenses. You don't need to agree to those licenses, but you are not entitled to a cheaper unbundled version of what you want.
I suppose a case can be made that the software business is mature enough now that a uniform EULA can be put in place, much like the "uniform contract of carriage" you get with an airline ticket. That avoids the asymmetrical lawyering that has heretofore gone into EULAs; the industry and consumers negotiate en masse (ideally as private sector organizations but usually this happens through the political process) the terms of a uniform EULA without one side spending, literally, a million times as much effort as the other. The most successful example of this is the GPL.
There is no reason that individuals can't form and support their own advocacy groups (e.g. EFF, etc), to compete with those of the vendors. There is also the profit potential for lawyers fighting class action lawsuits on behalf of the public. I'm not saying it's completely even, but I don't think the power is completely one-sided either.
On a final note, I would point out that a truly free market wouldn't have copyrights at all. Attacking restrictions on EULAs and software bundling on free-market grounds is a bit spurious. It's not for nothing that RMS dislikes the term "intellectual property".
I generally agree, but I might suggest that there are may be different opinions on what a "free" market is. I think it is certainly desirable to have some specific regulations. Whether to call such a situation "a free market with some regulations" or "not a purely free market", is a semantic debate.
All I am saying is that I don;t think the specific regulation (of the consumer being able to decide how goods are bundled when sold to him/her) would be beneficial on the whole to society. I think that (determining how goods and services are bundled) is one of those instances where the free market does a better job than regulation.
No, that would have been out of character. It's like saying that "real courage would have been the shark deciding to become a vegetarian rather than eating the baby seal". Private corporations exist to make money for their shareholders. If they feel they can get away with this cash grab (i.e. people will actually buy it), it would be irresponsible (and against their fiduciary duty to their shareholders) for them not to do it.
Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive. Who is apple fighting for? They are a private company, so the answer is shareholders. The cash grab is for it's shareholders. Now the question is whether it a cowardly cash grab or a courageous cash grab. Considering the shitstorm, I would say it was certainly bold.
This gets into the legal weeds a bit, but freedom of contract, in the classical sense, assumes a proper negotiation process before entering the deal.
I don't know what you mean by a "proper negotiating process", and I don't see any reason why "These are my terms, take it or leave it" would not be considered a legitimate negotiating position.
We don't allow taxi drivers to triple their rates when a rider appears to be suffering a heart attack and needs a ride to the hospital (a freely negotiated rate, eh?).
"We" don't allow taxis to change their rates at all for the most part. In fact, taxis in the US, are largely a great example of the stifling of the freedom of contract, albeit not complete considering consumers can still opt out of any individual taxi ride.
We prohibit sharecropping (bundling seed-corn purchases, land rents, and debt financing together in an exploitive way). In most cases, we don't allow drug-makers to transfer liability for poisonous contaminants to the consumer.
I agree, these are all things "we" do.
If Microsoft wants the benefits that come from mass merchandising, they should be required to play by the rules of mass-merchandising. Instead, they want to treat a retail purchase at Best Buy like a Wall Street finance deal by inserting a click-license after the fact.
My point is two fold. A: I don't think they even really want to sell windows at best buy anymore. B: I don't think this is conflating the rules of mass merchandising, with the rules of the sale of physical goods. One can certainly merchandise services defined by contracts via mass marketing.
I think there was a time when they wanted it both ways. It was a time when we as a society still couldn't decide how intellectually property that comes on a physical medium should work. I think the question was pretty much settled legally, but many people didn;t agree with it, or simply weren't aware of it. In any case, that problem was rendered moot in the mass transition away from physical media. We don't really buy software on CD's anymore (you still can if you want to). People are now familiar with the concept of purely intellectual property without a confounding physical component. And I think it is clear that Microsoft and other vendors have long given up the position of trying to treat it's software as a physical good in the few circumstances were it is to their advantage.
If Microsoft wants the benefits that come from mass merchandising, they should be required to play by the rules of mass-merchandising. Instead, they want to treat a retail purchase at Best Buy like a Wall Street finance deal by inserting a click-license after the fact. This faux-contract is replicated millions of times for Microsoft (and therefore they can spend millions on legal fees crafting the language to advance their interests) but is seen only once by the consumer, who if competent to understand it at all, has a much smaller stake and can't afford to invest much effort into it. In the end, the consumer is confused and swindled. That isn't freedom of contract, that is fraud.
Ok I'll just agree that this is 100% true for the sake of argument.
Maybe we should have restrictions on the types of things that EULAs can contain, or even better, mandate a standard EULA. What we shouldn't do is give the consumer the right to compel vendors to sell them the products in the manner that the consumer prefers. This doesn't help the problem. It just creates an untenable legal situation.
The pre-installed software is either chattel goods for sale or it isn't, one or the other.
it isn't
Microsoft (and Apple) want to have it both ways.
Maybe they wanted it both ways at one time. I think now they only want it the way where software is intellectual property. If you lose your CD, you don't need to pay full price for a replacement. In fact, you are usually given the tools to make your own backup CDs.
I don't think they care if you are selling CD's on ebay (considering you can get them for free through legal channels). I think they care that you are trying to transfer your license to someone else, in a way that was not authorized by the contract you blindly agreed to when you purchased your license.
And even when it comes to pure intellectual property, you as a consumer still don't get to decide how software is sold to you. I can't demand to be reimbursed for the features in windows 10 I don't use (but still paid for). The same is true for bundles of software, and bundles of software/hardware. The concept of freedom of association (along with freedom of contract) goes back at least to the 19th century.
You are free to reject any/all products marketed to you (e.g. a computer with windows 10). You do not (should not) have the right to compel others to sell you products that you would more prefer (a computer without windows 10) nor for a price that you would more prefer (e.g. a computer without windows 10 that is cheaper than the same computer with windows 10). And in fact there are many computers sold without windows, and you are also free to buy any of those.
It's like being mad at all the successful psychics when you were the only one who paid for the official psychic's license from the back of a psychic magazine.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I guess I can agree with that.
When I read "religions are recipes for life" I think I interpreted this as "religions are the recipe for life". Sorry I made a reading comprehension error.
I would never try to make the claim that it was a required path, so you kind of went there on your own.
I don't want to project a claim onto anyone, and I am sorry that it came across that way. It just seemed to me like a natural extrapolation to what you said. I am not making the assumption that you agree with this extrapolation, nor that you believe the accept the extrapolation as true even if you did agree that it was the correct extrapolation.
If you want to use that as a personal way to discount the potential link between religion and science, so be it.
There is most certainly a historic link between religion and science. What I am arguing against is the claim (whether you are making it or not), is the claim that science necessarily required religion (e.g. in the way that it necessarily requires logic and math, etc)
Maybe we could have arrived where we are today via a different path, that does not mean religion did not play a role in moving things along, or was not part of a very human natural progression.
It undoubtedly played a role. Sometimes is was helping, and other times it was hurting. I don't think we can even say definitively that it was a positive force for science on the whole. It's like a psychic employed by the police to solve crimes. You have the mindset that it doesn't hurt, and that even if the psychic helps solve 1 crime, it was a net benefit, but I would argue that you also need to count the opportunity costs of the resources spent following the trail created by the psychic, that could have been spent on more fruitful strategies.
Hypothesizing an imaginary atheistic folk mythology, as you suggest, seems not far from hypothesizing imaginary gods.
Religious people don't treat their gods as hypothetical. I think hypothesizing imaginary Gods (or any unproven phenomenon) is actually very useful for thought experiments. What I don't do is claim that my hypothetical atheistic folk mythology is reality despite the lack of any good evidence.
Diseases are not something societies elected to bring forth, so that's a really bad example.
No they are not. And that was part of my point. There are some engineered religions (which would be analogous to a bioengineered pathogen). Maybe some good examples are like Mormonism, Scientology, etc. I think what is more common is religions which were created more organically like Judaism. Most are a mixture of both natural and artificial forces.
But even for the engineered religions, they were engineered by individuals. The adoption of that religion by society is not necessarily a *choice*. Sometimes there are ideas that are just very compelling to a large group of people in a certain place and time. And this isn't always bad. When I learned about math, I didn't have a choice in whether to believe it. I just found it utterly compelling when I was exposed to it. I could not choose not to believe it once it "infected" me. Math is a good "mind virus", but many "mind viruses" are not so good.
Certainly there is a lot of good music inspired by religion. All I am saying is that there is an opportunity cost to religion (to use an economics term). But having religion, and therefore music inspired by religion, we are spending X amount of societal mental effort devoted to religion, that is now not devoted to something else. All I am saying is that if we didn't have religion, I don't think it makes sense to assume we wouldn't have good music. And that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the music that was inspired by religion.
Regarding 'based on false information'. I'm not sure how that is relevant to anything I said.
That was not directly related to anything you said. It is based on my (apparently implicit) assertion that a common thread among religions (compared with other ideologies) is that they perpetuate factually false information. That's not to say that other non-religious ideologies don't also contain falsehoods, but I do think it is a necessary requirement of religions depending on your definition of a religion (e.g. an ideology that involves the belief in a deity).
Someone might legitimately claim that carbon is a recipe for life. We have yet to find any life that exists without carbon. If we had evidence of life that was on average thriving better than carbon based lifeforms, I think the case that "carbon is the recipe for life" would be mortally weakened. Maybe religion is *a* recipe for life, but I wouldn't even go that far.
I think it's just that most people are religious. There is a good chance that the most X person you meet, is religious, just by probability.
I'm an atheist, and that's abundantly obvious to me. I'm actually one of the founding members of an atheist organization designed solely to provide the kind of community that religious people have, but to atheists. It had ~1500 members last time I checked. We actually try to discourage people from focusing on disparaging religion, and instead focus on making our own community better. A lot of these people have come from oppressive religious communities, however, and do feel the need to vent.
I would probably do the same, except that having not been raised with no religion, I wouldn't know which God to pray to. I guess it would have to be the God of deism or pantheism, even though I think they don't accept prayers by definition.
I didn't say they pay him. I said they pay for his food and lodging (i.e. they give him food and a place to live). This is standard for any prisoner, because if you don't they stop being a prisoner and become a corpse.
You can certainly categorize things that way if you want to. But I feel like this logic is similar to saying "marijuana is a gateway to harder drugs" simply because most people who use harder drugs used marijuana first. But this logic can be extended to saying "water is a gateway to other drugs because *everyone* used water before they used hard drugs".
Yes, we as humans seem to be predisposed to religion, usually as a way of trying to make sense of the confusing world around is in the absence of better information. I think it was a sure bet that we would invent bad science before we invented good science. I don't think it religion can get the credit for being the predominant progenitor to good science, simply because I think any attempt to explain the world (whether it involved imaginary gods or not) would have sufficed.
One could hypothesize an atheistic folk mythology that attempted to explain the world just as incorrectly as any religion. This mythology could conceivably be just as suitable a progenitor to real science (i.e. the specific belief in a deity is not a key factor in society developing science).
I think it is more likely that humans are just getting closer and closer to the truth, and it doesn't really matter the path way take. It is not required that we believe in false gods before we discover penicillin, etc, even if that's how it actually happened.
I think people and religions can be judged independently. It is perfectly reasonable to be critical of the ideologies of a treligion (like advocating the execution of apostates, or people found working on a holy day, etc), without being critical of members of that religion. Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam can be a horrible ideologies without the Christians, Jews, Muslims being horrible people. Lot's of good religious people simply abstain from following the worst prescriptions offered by their religions for various reasons.
From a scientific perspective, I think the emergence or religion in societies is quite a fascinating topic. Virtually all societies have independently birthed religions. That doesn't happen by chance, or by virtue of a scheme. That happens because there is a real social benefit. Of course, that does not mean there are no negatives.
Virtually every society has diseases. What is the social benefit of diseases? Some diseases do in fact bestow evolutionary benefits to their host as a way to help them survive (i.e. symbiosis), but this is clearly not necessary, and many diseases that flourish in society only offer disadvantages to their host.
I think religion, can be thought of as a disease of the mind, and like some other diseases, it can provide some benefits, but it also might be only bad.
On a lighter note, religion has provide us with some really awesome music, and a great excuse for extra holidays.
That's true, but we don't know what kind of music would have been created had society been devoid of religion. I think it's safe to say that we would have still developed music, but that it just would have been different. Would it have been better or worse? We will never know. I do know that there are ideologies that inspire people to see beauty in the world that do not involve false information.
So if religions are the recipes of life, and the quality of those recipes are measured by household income, why are atheists doing better than theists on average in that survey?
I think there is a very high likelihood that Snowden just leaked everything he stole (i.e. Russia doesn't have access to anything from Snowden that isn't already public). Why would Russia help Snowden? Let's look at some pros and cons for Russia helping Snowden even if they didn't get any additional information.
Pros:
Russia can troll the USA by...
1. claiming to be more transparent and free than the USA
2. by obstructing our justice system.
3. by giving a platform to a famous person critical of the USA.
4. Russia can make our intelligence agencies unsure of what if any additional information (even if it's nothing).
5. Russia can have a bargaining chip with the USA if they ever want something from us.
Just to name a few things I just thought of.
Cons:
1. Russia needs to pay for Snowden's food and lodging.
Or, maybe, you could call courageous the act of paying the many billions you owe around the world into the system that ensures those students have all of the resources they need in order to learn and grow.
No that's just called being responsible to society. I don't approve of misusing the word courage for removing earbuds any more than approve of it's misuse for trying to shame a company for not paying taxes. It's just the "running into a burning building" and stuff like it, and corporations can't run into burning buildings, so don't expect them to be courageous.
I'd do it for 6 or high 5. I think it would be quite entertaining watching new people try to wrap their heads around the shit show, and it may even give my employer a false sense of security that will be fun to imagine being eventually stripped away. Bwuahahaha! Ok maybe I'd do it for a mid-5.
And then our IT industry can finally be as good as our school system.
Fine! They will just hire contractors to train the new contractors!
Microaggressions may seem harmless, but they can soon develop into macro-microaggressions.
The consumer enters into a transaction whose appearance and nature is that of a sale of chattel goods. When he offers cash for the purchase, he is within his rights to expect to fully own what he paid for. (This follows from the fact that consumers live in a world where simple sales transactions are the norm, and customized contracts of sale are not.)
I don't think this is true anymore. I think it is "normal" (although maybe not "the norm") for customers to by goods that are a mix of chattel and intellectual property. You are not required to agree to the EULA, but you will also not get all the advertised features. (e.g. if you buy a computer that comes with windows 10, but refuse to agree to the windows EULA, and instead install linux, you might not get the feature of being able to run games designed for windows). I think people are very well aware of this in 2016).
People understand that if you buy something and alter it (as you are free to do with chattel), it might not do all the things it was advertised to do.
You are perfectly free to have a computer without windows and it's associated restrictions defined in the EULA, even if it comes with windows pre-installed. What you are not entitled to is a lower than normal price for the bundle, nor advertised features that depend on windows. If all you want is chattel, then you can have that. And as with other forms of chattel, you are not free to dictate how it is bundled and sold to you, and at what price.
A EULA places encumbrances on the consumer's ownership that, due the the asymmetrical nature of how EULAs are formulated, are beyond that which is reasonable for ordinary consumers to understand, The goods were misrepresented; to sell them that way constitutes fraud. (Strictly speaking, Dell is committing fraud, but doing so under contractual obligation with MS. Getting Dell to do the dirty work makes MS a conspirator to fraud.)
That may be true, but this doesn't fact doesn't prevent you from declining the EULA, and simply installing linux or whatever other software you want. This is true of fraudulent EULA's and fair EULA's alike.
The problem occurs when we have asymmetrical lawyering; the solution is the first sale doctrine (or, alternately, uniform contracts produced through a process that properly represents consumers' interests).
Luckily there is an open market where people can decide to buy and sell whatever hardware and software combinations they choose. There may be fraudulent products out there, but a natural check against that which markets provide is the freedom to choose not to buy them. Maybe consumers don't have the resources to fight EULA's with lawyers in court, but they certainly have the resources to do basic research and buy products that best fit their needs (i.e. in a way that a fraudulent product would not).
Also, the fact that fraudulent products exist does not entitle you to a non-fraudulent version of that exact product. If I buy a diesel VW that has misrepresented features (e.g. emissions of a certain level of cleanliness), I am certainly within my rights to a refund. I should not have the right to what was advertised (e.g. maybe what was advertised is not even possible). VW can certainly decide to offer a replacement or repair to bring it up to what was advertised (especially if they do not want to hand out refunds), but they shouldn't be compelled to.
The guy who did not want to buy windows was offered a full refund. I don't see anything about this that is not a fair resolution for that person (e.g. Maybe other people were not offered refunds for their purchase of a fraudulent product). But I don't see why he should be entitled to a non-fraudulent version of a fraudulent product for a cheaper price. I think a full refund is a perfectly fair resolution even in the case of fraud.
A have to disagree with your assessment of the facts, though: Microsoft very much does want to sell Windows at Best Buy (and every other random retail channel); they want to do so as part of a bundle.
I guess I just don't see this as microsoft selling windows at best buy. Disregarding the fact that best buy and stores like it are a dying business, those are computer vendors selling products that include windows at best buy. This is not a decision by microsoft to sell it's products at best buy, it's a decision by microsoft to bundle it's software with hardware from other vendors and have those bundles sold wherever they can be marketed (including best buy). But if best buy and every other retail computer store shuts down and all copies of windows (stand alone or bundled with hardware) happens on the internet, I don't think MS would care one bit.
Are physical computers themselves chattel? yes. What about the bundled software? No. If you go buy a car, that comes with a free xm radio trial, you can ask to have a lower price since you don't plan on using the satellite radio, but you shouldn't have a legal right to a unbundled car and an associated cheaper price. You have the right to to not listen to the radio, or disable it if you want.
sometimes chattel comes bundled with licenses. You don't need to agree to those licenses, but you are not entitled to a cheaper unbundled version of what you want.
I suppose a case can be made that the software business is mature enough now that a uniform EULA can be put in place, much like the "uniform contract of carriage" you get with an airline ticket. That avoids the asymmetrical lawyering that has heretofore gone into EULAs; the industry and consumers negotiate en masse (ideally as private sector organizations but usually this happens through the political process) the terms of a uniform EULA without one side spending, literally, a million times as much effort as the other. The most successful example of this is the GPL.
There is no reason that individuals can't form and support their own advocacy groups (e.g. EFF, etc), to compete with those of the vendors. There is also the profit potential for lawyers fighting class action lawsuits on behalf of the public. I'm not saying it's completely even, but I don't think the power is completely one-sided either.
On a final note, I would point out that a truly free market wouldn't have copyrights at all. Attacking restrictions on EULAs and software bundling on free-market grounds is a bit spurious. It's not for nothing that RMS dislikes the term "intellectual property".
I generally agree, but I might suggest that there are may be different opinions on what a "free" market is. I think it is certainly desirable to have some specific regulations. Whether to call such a situation "a free market with some regulations" or "not a purely free market", is a semantic debate.
All I am saying is that I don;t think the specific regulation (of the consumer being able to decide how goods are bundled when sold to him/her) would be beneficial on the whole to society. I think that (determining how goods and services are bundled) is one of those instances where the free market does a better job than regulation.
No, that would have been out of character. It's like saying that "real courage would have been the shark deciding to become a vegetarian rather than eating the baby seal". Private corporations exist to make money for their shareholders. If they feel they can get away with this cash grab (i.e. people will actually buy it), it would be irresponsible (and against their fiduciary duty to their shareholders) for them not to do it.
That's not courage. That's a cash-grab.
Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive. Who is apple fighting for? They are a private company, so the answer is shareholders. The cash grab is for it's shareholders. Now the question is whether it a cowardly cash grab or a courageous cash grab. Considering the shitstorm, I would say it was certainly bold.
This gets into the legal weeds a bit, but freedom of contract, in the classical sense, assumes a proper negotiation process before entering the deal.
I don't know what you mean by a "proper negotiating process", and I don't see any reason why "These are my terms, take it or leave it" would not be considered a legitimate negotiating position.
We don't allow taxi drivers to triple their rates when a rider appears to be suffering a heart attack and needs a ride to the hospital (a freely negotiated rate, eh?).
"We" don't allow taxis to change their rates at all for the most part. In fact, taxis in the US, are largely a great example of the stifling of the freedom of contract, albeit not complete considering consumers can still opt out of any individual taxi ride.
We prohibit sharecropping (bundling seed-corn purchases, land rents, and debt financing together in an exploitive way). In most cases, we don't allow drug-makers to transfer liability for poisonous contaminants to the consumer.
I agree, these are all things "we" do.
If Microsoft wants the benefits that come from mass merchandising, they should be required to play by the rules of mass-merchandising. Instead, they want to treat a retail purchase at Best Buy like a Wall Street finance deal by inserting a click-license after the fact.
My point is two fold. A: I don't think they even really want to sell windows at best buy anymore. B: I don't think this is conflating the rules of mass merchandising, with the rules of the sale of physical goods. One can certainly merchandise services defined by contracts via mass marketing.
I think there was a time when they wanted it both ways. It was a time when we as a society still couldn't decide how intellectually property that comes on a physical medium should work. I think the question was pretty much settled legally, but many people didn;t agree with it, or simply weren't aware of it. In any case, that problem was rendered moot in the mass transition away from physical media. We don't really buy software on CD's anymore (you still can if you want to). People are now familiar with the concept of purely intellectual property without a confounding physical component. And I think it is clear that Microsoft and other vendors have long given up the position of trying to treat it's software as a physical good in the few circumstances were it is to their advantage.
If Microsoft wants the benefits that come from mass merchandising, they should be required to play by the rules of mass-merchandising. Instead, they want to treat a retail purchase at Best Buy like a Wall Street finance deal by inserting a click-license after the fact. This faux-contract is replicated millions of times for Microsoft (and therefore they can spend millions on legal fees crafting the language to advance their interests) but is seen only once by the consumer, who if competent to understand it at all, has a much smaller stake and can't afford to invest much effort into it. In the end, the consumer is confused and swindled. That isn't freedom of contract, that is fraud.
Ok I'll just agree that this is 100% true for the sake of argument.
Maybe we should have restrictions on the types of things that EULAs can contain, or even better, mandate a standard EULA. What we shouldn't do is give the consumer the right to compel vendors to sell them the products in the manner that the consumer prefers. This doesn't help the problem. It just creates an untenable legal situation.
The pre-installed software is either chattel goods for sale or it isn't, one or the other.
it isn't
Microsoft (and Apple) want to have it both ways.
Maybe they wanted it both ways at one time. I think now they only want it the way where software is intellectual property. If you lose your CD, you don't need to pay full price for a replacement. In fact, you are usually given the tools to make your own backup CDs.
I don't think they care if you are selling CD's on ebay (considering you can get them for free through legal channels). I think they care that you are trying to transfer your license to someone else, in a way that was not authorized by the contract you blindly agreed to when you purchased your license.
And even when it comes to pure intellectual property, you as a consumer still don't get to decide how software is sold to you. I can't demand to be reimbursed for the features in windows 10 I don't use (but still paid for). The same is true for bundles of software, and bundles of software/hardware. The concept of freedom of association (along with freedom of contract) goes back at least to the 19th century.
You are free to reject any/all products marketed to you (e.g. a computer with windows 10). You do not (should not) have the right to compel others to sell you products that you would more prefer (a computer without windows 10) nor for a price that you would more prefer (e.g. a computer without windows 10 that is cheaper than the same computer with windows 10). And in fact there are many computers sold without windows, and you are also free to buy any of those.
It's like being mad at all the successful psychics when you were the only one who paid for the official psychic's license from the back of a psychic magazine.
Apparently there is already a screenshot feature described later on in this thread.