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User: spectecjr

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  1. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 1

    Want me to prove it? Hitman Contracts just came out for PS2. I have NO fucking idea what that game is. I know it's the third in the series, but I've never played any of them nor have I ever had the desire to. If I download that game and play it just to play it, I'm robbing them of a sale? No, because I've never had the slightest inkling EVER to buy a "hitman" game.

    YES. Because at no point have they given you permission to just download it and play it just to pay it. They set the price they are charging for you to have that privilege. If you feel that this is unfair, your only valid legal and ethical recourse is to abide by their decision and not use that software.

    [snip]
    What lame argument? It's a perfectly valid one, albeit one you don't happen to agree with. How am I depriving the vendor of a sale of a game that I had no intention on buying in the first place? Now you're just contradicting yourself.

    No, it's a perfectly lame argument. It's great for rationalizing and justifying piracy, but not much else. Saying "Hey, you know, I would have bought that game, but it was 5 times what I would have paid for it, so I copied it anyway - I wasn't going to give them money anyway" is a really rather piteous excuse for what you're doing.

    As for my argument only applying to physical items, how about this:

    1. What happens when no-one buys the game - or only one person - and everyone copies it?

    Answer: the games company stops producing games because they cannot recoup the cost of development.

    2. What happens when very few people buy the game and most people steal it?

    Answer: the games company stops producing games because they cannot recoup the cost of development.

    Games take years to develop, involve large teams of highly skilled and talented individuals to create, and are a highly risky proposition - the chances that a game will flop are much higher than that it will be a hit, and no-one knows the magic formula to create a hit game --- because there IS NO MAGIC FORMULA. (The same, by the way, applies to making movies).

    As such, the cost to produce all games increases, because only 1 in 5 (or less) will make enough money to cover the development of all of the other games in the portfolio.

    Are you seriously saying that you have a RIGHT to use commercial software that you haven't paid for?

    If so, show me WHY.

  2. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 1

    no doubt about it, copying something without paying is wrong in a way, but not in the manner you are trying to convey. you have too much of a 'stealing a candy bar from a store' mentality going on here, which is frequently disregarded and out of place in a debate such as this.


    If everyone copies a game, and no-one buys it, do you still believe that no-one will be hurt?

  3. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 1

    A fallacious argument - does the air have value to you? What about sunshine? What about freeware and open source applications? Have you paid for all that?

    The difference being that air and sunshine are free by virtue of them being part of the environment. Freeware and OSS apps are given to you by the author's decision to release those things for free.

    Pirating software, however, is in direct contravention of the terms and conditions that the author has set on your use of their work.

    I am not going to buy a lot of games. If I couldn't get very cheap pirated copies, I wouldn't play them. And I only should do what I consider right, not what someone else says I "should do". And piracy is right.

    Ahhhhh... ok... so it's your natural born right to pirate games because you deserve (somehow) to be entertained?

    I wish I could live in your freeloader "entitled to everything because I want it" state. You're in for a big shock when you get out into the real world and discover that other people get pissed when you do that.

    Or when you end up in jail.

  4. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 1

    Piracy != Copyright Infringment, and I think your post just proved it.


    According to the dictionary definition they are equivalent. But go ahead... keep arguing to absurdity.

    Downloading video games isn't robbing anyone of anything if you had no intention on buying it in the first place. You're assuming those who downloaded would've purchased either way, and that's not always the case. If I had no intention on buying a game and I download it, please explain (to those reading this thread) how they lost money. That logic is EXTREMELY flawed almost every which way you look at it.

    If you have no intention of buying it in the first place, what makes you think you have the right to have it anyway?

    You don't.

    By taking it anyway - and using that lame argument to justify what you're doing - you are depriving the vendor of the sale of that game.

    You see, in civilized society we have this thing called "free trade" and the "marketplace". One of the ideas behind this free trade system is that the market is policed so that people don't take things anyway if they don't like the price they're being sold for.

    If you REALLLLLLLLLLY wanted that game, why didn't you pay for it?

    If you weren't willing to pay that much for it, then you should have just left it there - and NOT copied it. Instead you break the law.

  5. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 1

    Websters is written by fucking americans and is full of hideous american newspeakings of common queen's english terms. Just because something's in a dictionary doesn't make it right. It just makes it in the dictionary. If the nazis published a dictionary saying "Jew: primate related but distinct from human, capable of great deceit", would that make the definition right? You have just appealed to an authority I do not acknowledge.

    You're more than welcome to get a subscription to the OED and post their definition of piracy here.

  6. One more point... on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 1

    Why should he have to deprive himself? This is silly. We aren't obligated to masochistically thrash ourselves with the spiked whip of capitalist 'ethics'. If he wasn't going to buy it, he hurts no one.

    By your logic, I am well within my ethical rights to take any GPL software I want, and use it in my own closed source software, without releasing my software under the GPL. After all, no-one is hurt, and I shouldn't have to deprive myself of using the GPL'd source code in my own closed-source binary.

  7. Re:Well, I hate to break it to you on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 1

    Why should he have to deprive himself? This is silly. We aren't obligated to masochistically thrash ourselves with the spiked whip of capitalist 'ethics'. If he wasn't going to buy it, he hurts no one.
    ... except the author of that software who is now deprived of the right to set a price for the goods they have created. If anyone can come along and say "Hey, you know what, I'm not going to buy that for $20 - instead, I'll take it for free - and you can't do anything about that", then what is stopping everyone from doing that?

    That's right. Ethics. Of which you have none.


    Typical american conservative. "It doesn't hurt anybody,
    ... except the software developer ...

    but it goes against my 'ethics', so don't do it or I'll smack you." That's also why Bush wants his anti-gay ammendment, and why the US prisons are full of people who were caught smoking a naturally-occuring plant.


    Nice attempt to marr the debate there by bringing in two completely unrelated topics.

  8. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Actually, he's just a copyright infringer. "piracy" would have more raping and pillaging, if you ask me.

    Let's ask an 1828 copy of Webster's dictionary instead of you... as you don't seem to know what you're talking about.

    Yep just as we thought. Copyright Infringment = Piracy.

    PI'RACY, n. [L. piratica, from Gr. to attempt, to dare, to enterprise, whence L. periculum, experior; Eng. to fare.]

    1. The act, practice or crime of robbing on the high seas; the taking of property from others by open violence and without authority, on the sea; a crime that answers to robbery on land.

    Other acts than robbery on the high seas, are declared by statute to be piracy. See Act of Congress, April 30, 1790.

    2. The robbing of another by taking his writings.


  9. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    But if he couldn't afford to buy it, and thus wouldn't have, no money is lost.


    That's a specious argument. Fact of the matter is, he wanted the game - it has value to him - but isn't willing to pay what the author is asking for it. So he takes it anyway.

    What do we call people who take things of value to them without the permission of the owner - who it also has value to?

    That's right. We call them theives.

  10. Re:It costs $ 0.00 to copy the games on Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming · · Score: 4, Informative

    if im not going to buy them anyway, does anyone lose out?


    If they had no value to you, you wouldn't want to copy them anyway.

    Ergo, they do have value to you - which means that you should pay for them.

  11. Re:Digging his own grave? on The War Of The Word · · Score: 1

    "I thought Microsoft was, if not an evil empire, at least a maker of substandard products that didn't deserve its success." If you have any doubt, see the page c program doesnt compile

    I fail to see why that code not compiling is a Microsoft problem? There were two typos in the text.

  12. Re:99% certainty the buyer is ... on Delorean Time Machine Replica Up For Auction · · Score: 1

    Assuming the shocks don't punch through the frame under his weight and the underpowered engine somehow moves with him in it, you can look forward to him cruising past your neighbourhood with "Developers! Developers! Developers!" blasting on the stereo.


    Nah, he'll just be cruising through *your* neighborhood, and you'll either be the top billing at a drive-by, or he'll just run you over.

  13. Re:It isn't SCOish on Former Anti-Piracy 'Bag Man' Turns On DirecTV · · Score: 1

    Why, if I was a little more cynical, I'd say that it's almost as though those who have used "theft" and "piracy" for copyright infringement deliberately chose those words for their negative connotation. In 1828.


    Tell ya what... why don't you quit yer bitchin', and hop back in time in your time machine and ask someone?

    Either that, or pay for a subscription to the OED and get the full etymological history. (I'm not willing to pay *that* much)

    Until then, just accept it. The term piracy has been around for years. Get used to it. It's no use bitching about the language now, when for 200 years it has been like this. Just admit it. Websters pwns j00!

  14. Re:Java is fast. on C, Objective-C, C++... D! Future Or failure? · · Score: 1

    That's after avoiding complex data structures because they're too hard to explicitly manage the memory for

    You meant:

    That's after avoiding complex data structures because they're too hard for glorified script programmers who don't understand RIIA patterns to explicitly manage the memory for

  15. Re:Qt is almost a like a language on A Taste of Qt 4 · · Score: 1

    You could argue that COM teaches bad practice because you never explicitly deallocate a COM object. You just call unlock() on it.


    You meant "Release()".

  16. Re:Coerce how? on Former Anti-Piracy 'Bag Man' Turns On DirecTV · · Score: 1

    no, i'm going to say "mr congressman, if this company's business model isn't working, let their business fail. that's how a free market works. Legislation to keep a failed business model on its feet is the opposite of a free market (which I, due to my idealist nature, tend to want to believe that we still have, regardless of all this retarded shit that goes on).

    Markets where people can go around stealing whatever they want are not free markets.

  17. Re:It isn't SCOish on Former Anti-Piracy 'Bag Man' Turns On DirecTV · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Bickering about language will accomplish little, but those who have used "theft" and "piracy" for copyright infringement deliberately chose those words for their negative connotation.


    You do realize that the term "Piracy" has been used as a synonym for "Copyright Infringement" since at least the year 1828, don't you?

    It's not like someone just got up in the morning and decided "Hey, I think I'm going to come up with emotionally charged language today... and boy do I feel like a salty sea-dog!".

    Piracy has meant taking someone else's intellectual property without permission for a very long time - nearly 200 years. Get used to the phrase.

    Webster's 1828 dictionary entry on "Piracy"


    PI'RACY, n. [L. piratica, from Gr. to attempt, to dare, to enterprise, whence L. periculum, experior; Eng. to fare.]

    1. The act, practice or crime of robbing on the high seas; the taking of property from others by open violence and without authority, on the sea; a crime that answers to robbery on land.

    Other acts than robbery on the high seas, are declared by statute to be piracy. See Act of Congress, April 30, 1790.

    2. The robbing of another by taking his writings.

    PI'RATING, ppr. Robbing on the high seas; taking without right, as a book or writing.

    1. a. Undertaken for the sake of piracy; as a pirating expedition.

  18. What bout the V5 area of the visual cortex? on Brain's Cache Memory Found · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Surely the V5 area of the visual cortex is the actual cached short-term memory store?

    The entire area is a nest of feedback loops - with the visual information looping round in that area through several layers of neurons both above and below.

    It could be that there are two caches: the visual cache is in the V5 layer, and the semantic cache is this one that they've found with the MRI.

  19. Hasn't it always had that shape???? on Is the Universe Shaped Like a Funnel? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Take the big bang. Infinitesimal point.

    Explode that shape over time.

    Now look at it four dimensionally...

    Surely you end up with an r^2 curve rotated through 3 dimensions, with r on the time axis... ... which looks exactly like a horn.

  20. Re:Integrating Software on Microsoft's Long-Playing Business Record · · Score: 1

    The fact that Microsoft "smacked down" anyone for bundling Netscape, whether they uninstalled IE or not, proves the point I was trying to make.

    No, it doesn't. There's a huge difference between what you were originally claiming and what actually happened.

  21. Re:Integrating Software on Microsoft's Long-Playing Business Record · · Score: 1

    A modern OS should not, however, require threats from Microsoft to raise prices to OEMs who bundle alternative browser or media player software with their PCs--which is exactly what Microsoft has been caught doing.

    I wish I could figure out where people like you keep getting this idea that Microsoft were threatening people who bundled alternative browser/media software with PCs.

    In 1998 - before the antitrust trial - I could buy a Packard Bell machine with Windows 98, which came bundled with Netscape and RealPlayer pre-installed.

    They could do this because they didn't try to uninstall Internet Explorer or Media Player - they shipped both browsers and both media players.

    Quite simply, people who keep propogating this myth that OEMs were "punished" for shipping other browsers or media players should do some more research and figure out the truth. The truth is this:

    Compaq were smacked down by MS for trying to REMOVE IE and REPLACE IT with Netscape, and to ADVERTIZE IT MORE THAN IE ON THAT SYSTEM.

    They WERE NOT smacked down for trying to give the user a choice. They WERE smacked down because Netscape were trying to arrange a deal where they would be the ONLY browser shipped with Windows systems.

    Now do you understand why MS were against that deal?

  22. Re:EULA on Will Linux For Windows Change The World? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Whaddya bet that MS changes their EULA to make running another OS concurrently a violation of said EULA? I can see that happening judging by their history

    Well, first they'd have to stop selling this:

    VirtualPC ... which (surprise!) lets you run several OSes concurrently on Windows.

  23. Re:the problem is that Industrial Designers LOVE t on The Blues for LEDs · · Score: 1
    The eye is relatively insensitive to deep blue. As an approximation, sensitivity is 10 times greater to yellow-green light. Sensitivity is also low for deep red. To find a graph, look for "luminous efficacy".

    *cough*
    "Blue" Cone Distinctions

    The "blue" cones are identified by the peak of their light response curve at about 445 nm. They are unique among the cones in that they constitute only about 2% of the total number and are found outside the fovea centralis where the green and red cones are concentrated. Although they are much more light sensitive than the green and red cones, it is not enough to overcome their disadvantage in numbers. However, the blue sensitivity of our final visual perception is comparable to that of red and green, suggesting that there is a somewhat selective "blue amplifier" somewhere in the visual processing in the brain.

    The visual perception of intensely blue objects is less distinct than the perception of objects of red and green. This reduced acuity is attributed to two effects. First, the blue cones are outside the fovea,[1] where the close-packed cones give the greatest resolution. All of our most distinct vision comes from focusing the light on the fovea. Second, the refractive index for blue light is enough different from red and green that when they are in focus, the blue is slightly out of focus (chromatic aberration). For an "off the wall" example of this defocusing effect on blue light, try viewing a hologram with a mercury vapor lamp. You will get three images with the dominant green, orange and blue lines of mercury, but the blue image looks less focused than the other two.


    [1] Which means that averted viewing will pick up blue better than direct viewing... which means that blue will tend to distract you if you look away from it.
  24. Re:I'm amazed on Code Copying Survey for Developers · · Score: 1

    Did you grant written permission to the company to use your library code? In the US, you can't implicitly assign copyright -- it has to be in black-and-white.

    Yes, it's in the header file.

    This is serious business -- I used to work with a guy who was threatening to sue a previous employer because they (really he) used a bunch of his personal library code. Even though nothing came of that, it had to be a pain in their asses.

    There are assholes everywhere.

    Alos, a few years back, I got hired onto a consultancy and was asked to review their code library. Almost of all of it had comments saying (C) Guy Who Recently Quit. We basically had to toss it because the idiots didn't have rights for their own library (and it was buggy spaghetti code).

    Mine says: Copyright (C) 2003 Simon Cooke - Licensed for free and in perpetuity to $COMPANYNAME Inc.

  25. Re:I'm amazed on Code Copying Survey for Developers · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    If I ever saw in a code review or evaluation what looked like code that can from a personal code library I'd freak and ask management to let the person go.

    This is serious stuff. Copying code without permission is stealing. Period.


    If I'm re-using code from my personal code library, how:

    1) Can I be copying it without permission? I gave myself permission when I copied it.

    2) Can I be stealing? After all, I'd be stealing from myself.

    Some of us do work on our own not-work-related projects after work, you know. And those of us who do so often find that the people at work appreciate it when something we were playing with "just because" turns out to be useful later, shaving weeks off the development time because we can take that code right out of the library we developed for ourselves.

    All I really want now is a better way of storing code in my own personal library. But I've not figured out the best way to do that yet.