I know it's bordering on off-topic, but the parent poster does have a point. I have not yet been to a Flash site that has anything on it that I was hoping to find, unless it's artwork (which I am interested in on occasion), and generally I gave up trying to navigate in frustration a few minutes later because either it was slow, or it was very badly designed.
The bottom line is that Flash is not an effective tool for creating websites. This is what HTML was designed for. With Flash, there are two things that particularly get my goat:
you can't right-click a link and open it in the background (as I do often with Opera), in order to check out several areas of the site at once. This may sound like something that broadband users would complain about the most, because they can load several pages in parallel quickly, but actually it's something that I find not only helpful for efficiency, but necessary for my sanity as a dialup user, because if I had to click every page in serial I would spend so long waiting for the single page I can view to load that I'd stop using the internet altogether
the second thing is that Flash sites are typically rendered at 640x480 or 800x600 to cater for users with low-end monitors, and cannot be resized (afaik, ianal, blah blah) because a Flash file is effectively a bunch of raster images bunged together. This means that this stupid little website is sitting in the middle of my 1152x864 screen, with an enormous blank space around it. Some people even do this with html for some completely unknown reason; for a good example of a site that uses both Pointless Flash(TM) for a Pointless Entrypage(TM) and Huge Blank Spaces(TM) check out the personal website of someone I don't like very much. I'm sure those people with 21" monitors and 2080x1024 screen resolutions know far better than I what I am talking about
To be fair, there are sites that use Flash as a banner animation at the top, and it doesn't get in the way and is merely decorative, and that's fine, it's attractive and enhances the site. A good example of this is NZ Gamer Forums, and an example of a site that is annoying in its use of a complete Flash "gui" is its parent site. Yes, it's well-laid out and attractive, but just for starters, try entering your name into the "username" section. If you touch-type like I do, you'll very quickly get over how the animations when you enter a character are neet, and pretty quickly discover how they're very irritating. The sounds, too, are annoying to me. Basically, I think this website could have been made to look similar simply using HTML, and it would have loaded far more quickly (it took a good three minutes to load on my 56k--more than I'm normally willing to wait).
The Forums are an example of Flash used in moderation, and JavaScript used in debatable moderation. I have no problem with it; it does add to the site having those tables light up blue, but it's also not particularly necessary. Mostly the site is very usable, and while there are a lot of images, it doesn't take a hugely long time to load. I think the person who designed the gamer.net.nz site and subsites needs a lesson in accessibility, because his sites are great if you can run Flash and feel like waiting for all the images to load, but get a browser like Opera 6, assume you don't have the flash plugin, and disable images so it loads faster, and you'll get a broken frontpage, and semi-broken threads in the forums because you have to use the horizontal scroll so much--the only thing this guy knows how to do is eye-candy.
The only real gripe I have against JavaScript is the open() function. A lot of people seem to think it's a really great idea to have links open in a new window using this function. I'm all for opening in a new window; I do it on my site all the time--and you'll notice I use basic JavaScript for the image rollovers in the title, because they markedly add to the visual effect of the site without increasing much in the download time. But hey, there's already this great attribute called "target" in the <a> tag! Use it! I loathe sites where I right-click, open a window in the background without checking its exact href in the status bar of my browser, and going back to it a few seconds later expecting it to have loaded and finding a blank page with "javascript:open(window.crap)" in the address bar.
With no offence to Mike, our parent poster, I feel it is important to point out that the circumstances surrounding these lawsuits were not what one could consider standard freedom of speech issues.
Two fine fellows posting 14,000 messages on 100 message boards is a wee bit over the top, I think. So is sending emails to over 35,000 people.
I know that it's easy to be modded up if you mention the DMCA and how corporations are buying Usia, and actually I agree and I support Mike's view, but in this case I don't think that the people involved who lost their lawsuits can entirely blame the deeper pockets of the corps they were up against. This article is sketchy at best, and laughably light on details, but the kind of lengths that these individuals went to seem ridiculously extreme.
On the other side of the coin, this quote from one of the lawyers left me very disturbed, wondering whether he was aware that he was effectively contradicting himself and believing smugly that everyone would just swallow his bullshit, or if he actually truly has no understanding of the concepts involved:
"It's not about the First Amendment," says Terry Budd, a lawyer for printCafe, a provider of software and Internet-based products for the print industry. "It's to stop people from spreading vicious lies."
Incidentally, this case is the only one where it seems the corporation really may be out of line--only one "lambastation" is mentioned on a single website, and then there's the curious way that "officials say the postings were defamatory and a misappropriation of confidential company information", while the lawyers are harping on about vicious lies. Which is it to be, printCafe?
I guess you could have been joking, but the logic of this is a bit flawed (aside from in the context of Star Trek).
If the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, then surely the billions of dollars worth of damages (that can't be sued for because of good old eulas) caused by the bad security implementation in Microsoft's programs indicates that it is in the best interest of "the many" for increased security to be in place?
Does Microsoft even doubt this?
Hell no. But they know they can't be touched, because their licenses protect them from responsibility for the damage their badly-designed software causes, and as long as they don't start getting a reputation for bad software with consumers (not high-end users), they can continue to ignore the problems in favour of increased revenue by charging very high prices for much-hyped software that anyone in the know can see is just a slightly modified and patched version of existing software (thinking of Windows XP specifically here, but it's a general rule that's applicable to most of what they do).
Oh, and btw, I don't think that Spock said that sentence with capitalisation on each word...
Wow, just look at the condescension dripping off this guy's words:
I can't believe I'm replying to apparent flamebait here from a 500000+ userid, but everyone was new some time, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
My word, aren't you high and mighty Mr acceleriter, after this "apparent flamebait" from a disgusting 500,000+ uid pig got modded +1: Interesting and your clearly more valuable <250,000 uid post gracing the page was modded -1: Offtopic.
Sheesh, what a fruitcake. Elitism at its radiant best.
Yeah, it got befuddled by me too. Curiously, I'm on a free dialup ISP in New Zealand:
Number of locations following:<%numberofrecords%>
Is proxy:Unknown
At this time, the location of 203.167.156.113 is unknown.
And you can do what you like with that IP#, because by the time you do I'll be on another one and some poor random bastard in.nz will be spammed out of his mind, muahaha...oh gee, that's not very neighbourly of me now is it? Really, it hardly matters since I have my homepage on my dialup so anyone can DoS me without even mildly taxing their cable router...
Incidentally, Visualthingiebackland was slashdotted so I couldn't test it. Might have been interesting.
Re:Once more, for all the slow JBT's.
on
The Eyes Have It
·
· Score: 1
People look at a polygrapgh and see needles and paper and wires all being run by some clown who's "certified".
Certified? They let mental patients run these things now? Personally I'd be pretty uncomfortable if I was being hooked up to a machine with "needles and...wires", and a certified nutcase was at the helm.
Don't be such a tight-arsed snob. "Growing up" isn't supposed to involve losing your sense of fun. The Ewoks rocked. And I still have a teddy bear. And I'm 18. By social law, it seems that I shouldn't be seen dead admitting to either of those things. Why?
I believe that you may be violating the requirements outlined in your sig by arguing with the moderators. Besides, the parent that you referred to wasn't supposed to be a troll or an insightful comment--it's called dry humour, and was using a form of irony to make a point.
No surprise that none of the mucking forons who choose to moderate actually got it. Why is it that only intelligent people select not to moderate? Something to do with power trips?
Torn apart? I'm curious. What other countries, aside from New Zealand and Australia (I think), use plastic bank notes? It seems that plastic would be a much more convenient material to manufacture the notes out of if you're planning to stick wee chips in them. I assumed that.nz got the idea of plastic notes from.us or somesuchthing, but I guess not.
The Olympic Committee bans any unauthorized coverage of the games - they consider the games their "intellectual property". Even the athletes are forbidden to keep diaries.
A bit ot, but could you be kind enough to back that up with a link? It sounds just about insane enough to be true, but I'm having a hard time believing it. Would be much appreciated.
Why are we applying United States laws to this anyway? Isn't this happening in Amsterdam? Different country. Hi. It's somewhere in that big other place called Europe.
You need to remember that reporters/journalists/comentators in the print media want desperately to be in the non-print media (radio / tv).
Erm...no?
As a journalist-to-be, I can tell you that my interest is not in TV or radio. I'm a writer, not a parrot. Where voice recognition really would be helpful to me is in dictating passages and editing them. I'm rather surprised at your suggestion that print media journalists "want desperately to be in the non-print media". What basis do you have for this odd assumption?
Are your kids hypertensive, anal-retentive psychopaths on speed too? Coz I think the parent poster's kids may have more to worry about by going to the same school as your kids than vice versa. Take your pills before you post man.
To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns. [emphasis mine]
</snip>
Please stop spouting nonsense now. Your "definitions" are just as bogus as those of anyone else who tries to relate physical and intellectual concepts to further their own, generally flawed, arguments.
What kids need to be taught is logic and critical thinking, rather than receive drill in corporate-endorsed moral standards. While we may get just as much software piracy, we might hear some better rationalizations than those quoted in the article; and maybe the next generation will get copyright laws that make sense for the times.
And this is why corporations don't want this to happen. As long as the only way to get justice is to buy it, copyright laws that make sense will never be achieved, and brainwashing will continue. However, I have my doubts that time is on the side of corporations as the article suggests. The more computer-literate the people they're trying to screw, the less the people will put up with it. In two generations, nearly everyone is going to be using computers to a large degree, and a high percentage more than is current will be very familiar with them, and with the concept of critical thinking. I don't think a time will ever come when nearly everyone is smart enough to see the stupidity of "owning a bitrate" because human nature precludes it; people are sheep and believe what they are told because it's easier than thinking for themselves.
But there are smart people out there too. And other people who are selfish, but realise that being screwed by corporations isn't in their best interests. That's when things will become intriguing.
You would also think that parents would not teach as truth to their children that which they only believe to be true, without giving them a chance to grow up and decide whether they think that Christianity/Judaism/Islam/religion-of-choice/beli ef-of-choice makes sense to them or not. I know this is probably a less permanent thing than a chip in your kid (although a lot of kids get so ingrained into the religion they're taught that they never question it), but it's essentially the same thing.
Parents do what they believe is best for their children and for the family. It's hard to fault them for that, even when you think they're totally wrong and completely detached from reality.
I don't think I've seen a troll posting at +1 before. The frightening this is that I don't thinks HanzoSan is trolling. I get the feeling he honestly believes the lunacy he's ranting.
cars can't be copied, so stealing cars isn't going to reduce the need for them
software can be copied, so you're not stealing it
if I don't feel the software is worth its price, and I still want the software, what will I do? That's right, I'll copy it from somewhere else
Hypothetically speaking of course. Personally, what people call "pirating" is a ridiculous attempt by capitalists to apply archaic definitions to new concepts that won't support them, in order to maintain what they see as a fast-slipping hold on some industrial sectors (vastly simplified view).
So really, the unlicensed copy of Windows 2000 that I could be running is perfectly legal according to my own values, and the only thing that I need to worry about is the law, and how to get it changed to what I (and many, many other people) see as fair. My conscience is quite clean.
Therefore programmers make as much as artists, garbage collectors, ditch diggers, etc? No, of course not. Programmers can make tons of money for not so much work simply because the product they produce is worth a lot of money.
Slightly off-topic now, but I'm curious. Who decides that a long series of ones and zeros is worth so much more than the service of a garbage collector or artist? Generally, it seems that the more abstract the work you do, the higher you can expect to be paid if you're good at it (take something like a banker--he deals with nothing but an abstract concept called "money").
On the other hand, people who provide a vital service like garbage collection get paid peanuts. If we compared how our lives would be without artists (probably a bit more boring, but quite livable), as compared to how they'd be without someone picking up our garbage (not so nice at all, methinks) one gets the distinct impression that garbage collectors should be the more highly-paid of the two examples I used.
Just for interest's stake, I'm an artist and a writer, so I have no reason to say this other than my own belief that the values society places on certain things are fundamentally twisted.
It's not the spelling. Most people can spell museum. But ".museum" is a lot more cumbersome than your average TLD..com,.net,.org...you see what I'm getting at?
Why not.mus? I thought the idea was that it was a small suffix...a TLD that takes up more space than the domain is kinda stupid surely?
Without getting into flames over personal opinions, one of the best game companies, Bungie, is owned by Microsoft. I guess this means that Microsoft "cant[sic] be all that bad"?
No one is suggesting disallowing thoughts. They are suggesting disallowing expression of those thoughts, which in my mind is simultaneously just as bad, and completely doomed because one is trying to treat the symptoms, not the cause. If you were to find a way to disallow thoughts themselves, and enforce that, these problems would stop. As it is, simply disallowing expression of these thoughts is going to achieve nothing other than creating more secretive undergrounds that will be even harder to police.
We're not talking about "limit[ing] the human mind". Short of a labotomy, that's pretty impossible. The human mind has boundaries we have yet to find.
not-entirely-on topic
The reason for this is simple: no one person knows the absolute truth.
There are a couple of things wrong with this statement. First, you are assuming that there is such thing as absolute truth. Then you state that no one person knows it. I ask you, if there is indeed such a thing as absolute truth, isn't it likely that somewhere, someone knows it? Isn't the problem then determining who knows it? And then, doesn't that simply negate the idea that anything can be regarded as absolutely true, because if this "absolute truth" was absolutely true everyone would agree on it?
Then there's another problem when you say "Not just about morality..." How can this absolute truth somehow be a general and solid rule that can be applied to the whole of a very vague topic called "morality"?
It is only at some point in between all the differing viewpoints that the truth can ever be found.
And yet more problems. Clearly you haven't thought this topic through carefully, though I don't blame you coz it's kinda complicated and tends to wander in circles. If the truth is in between all the different viewpoints, how does one distinguish it from just another viewpoint? Do you mean we should average all the viewpoints, and that will give us the truth? But how can you average such things? The point is, the truth is the viewpoints; it is in the viewpoints themselves, not in between them. You can't find some absolute truth in between different viewpoints, because, to quote your Uncertainty Principle example, when you observe something you change it. An observation of something is simply what the object is to you. It isn't what that object is, and yet at the same time it is what that object is. In morality, something can exist in as many forms as there are minds to consider it differently. The thing itself is always there, and its name may always be the same, but you cannot say that any one perception of it is absolute until you have an absolute point of reference. And since we hopefully consider all people equal in their validity of perception, there is no absolute point of reference, only subjective ones. Therefore absolute truth cannot exist to the subjective mind without some "higher being" telling us what it is. Which of course is where religions come in, but that's a whole separate ball game dealing with human inadequacy.
This post demonstrates well what I meant when I commented that the media loves to pontificate on the opinions of the people involved with an issue, and what has already been said, but fails to do any real research of its own to attempt to put the situation in an objective light (as is its duty as far as I am concerned).
I read a fair amount of coverage on the Kyoto treaty, mostly from BBC News which I consider a fairly reputable news source, and yet they told me virtually nothing about it that allowed me to form a reasonable and balanced opinion. What they did tell me was that a bunch of scientists were saying it was a Very Good Thing(TM). They attempted to demonstrate why it was a Very Good Thing, but they didn't try to demonstrate why it might be Not a Good Thing(TM). They just told me that Bush's scientists had advised him to stay clear, and then rambled on about how other countries were seeing this as typical Usian money-comes-firsting. This, of course, had the effect of leading one to believe that this was the case without actually having to report it as fact.
For all I know, the parent poster may be trolling, but I feel inclined to believe he is very likely right. However, both myself and many others have formed opinions on the Kyoto treaty based on what can best be described as poor reporting, and subsequently the United States' image suffers, and a huge cycle of people becoming opinionated, speaking to other people, who in turn propogate the cycle of inaccurate information, begins. We think we're well informed, but we're not. And how do you break the cycle? Inform people. And who should be doing it? The media. Fucking brilliant.
(As an aside, I find The Register to be a great source of tech news because of their reputation for cynicism. Sometimes it can be counter-productive, but generally it results in much more balanced reporting (although bear in mind that you need an irony and personal-flaming filter) because, rather than following the leader, they play Devil's Advocate.)
Slashdot Mirror
The bottom line is that Flash is not an effective tool for creating websites. This is what HTML was designed for. With Flash, there are two things that particularly get my goat:
- you can't right-click a link and open it in the background (as I do often with Opera), in order to check out several areas of the site at once. This may sound like something that broadband users would complain about the most, because they can load several pages in parallel quickly, but actually it's something that I find not only helpful for efficiency, but necessary for my sanity as a dialup user, because if I had to click every page in serial I would spend so long waiting for the single page I can view to load that I'd stop using the internet altogether
- the second thing is that Flash sites are typically rendered at 640x480 or 800x600 to cater for users with low-end monitors, and cannot be resized (afaik, ianal, blah blah) because a Flash file is effectively a bunch of raster images bunged together. This means that this stupid little website is sitting in the middle of my 1152x864 screen, with an enormous blank space around it. Some people even do this with html for some completely unknown reason; for a good example of a site that uses both Pointless Flash(TM) for a Pointless Entrypage(TM) and Huge Blank Spaces(TM) check out the personal website of someone I don't like very much. I'm sure those people with 21" monitors and 2080x1024 screen resolutions know far better than I what I am talking about
To be fair, there are sites that use Flash as a banner animation at the top, and it doesn't get in the way and is merely decorative, and that's fine, it's attractive and enhances the site. A good example of this is NZ Gamer Forums, and an example of a site that is annoying in its use of a complete Flash "gui" is its parent site. Yes, it's well-laid out and attractive, but just for starters, try entering your name into the "username" section. If you touch-type like I do, you'll very quickly get over how the animations when you enter a character are neet, and pretty quickly discover how they're very irritating. The sounds, too, are annoying to me. Basically, I think this website could have been made to look similar simply using HTML, and it would have loaded far more quickly (it took a good three minutes to load on my 56k--more than I'm normally willing to wait).The Forums are an example of Flash used in moderation, and JavaScript used in debatable moderation. I have no problem with it; it does add to the site having those tables light up blue, but it's also not particularly necessary. Mostly the site is very usable, and while there are a lot of images, it doesn't take a hugely long time to load. I think the person who designed the gamer.net.nz site and subsites needs a lesson in accessibility, because his sites are great if you can run Flash and feel like waiting for all the images to load, but get a browser like Opera 6, assume you don't have the flash plugin, and disable images so it loads faster, and you'll get a broken frontpage, and semi-broken threads in the forums because you have to use the horizontal scroll so much--the only thing this guy knows how to do is eye-candy.
The only real gripe I have against JavaScript is the open() function. A lot of people seem to think it's a really great idea to have links open in a new window using this function. I'm all for opening in a new window; I do it on my site all the time--and you'll notice I use basic JavaScript for the image rollovers in the title, because they markedly add to the visual effect of the site without increasing much in the download time. But hey, there's already this great attribute called "target" in the <a> tag! Use it! I loathe sites where I right-click, open a window in the background without checking its exact href in the status bar of my browser, and going back to it a few seconds later expecting it to have loaded and finding a blank page with "javascript:open(window.crap)" in the address bar.
Just my little rant. Please mod down accordingly.
Two fine fellows posting 14,000 messages on 100 message boards is a wee bit over the top, I think. So is sending emails to over 35,000 people.
I know that it's easy to be modded up if you mention the DMCA and how corporations are buying Usia, and actually I agree and I support Mike's view, but in this case I don't think that the people involved who lost their lawsuits can entirely blame the deeper pockets of the corps they were up against. This article is sketchy at best, and laughably light on details, but the kind of lengths that these individuals went to seem ridiculously extreme.
On the other side of the coin, this quote from one of the lawyers left me very disturbed, wondering whether he was aware that he was effectively contradicting himself and believing smugly that everyone would just swallow his bullshit, or if he actually truly has no understanding of the concepts involved:
- "It's not about the First Amendment," says Terry Budd, a lawyer for printCafe, a provider of software and Internet-based products for the print industry. "It's to stop people from spreading vicious lies."
Incidentally, this case is the only one where it seems the corporation really may be out of line--only one "lambastation" is mentioned on a single website, and then there's the curious way that "officials say the postings were defamatory and a misappropriation of confidential company information", while the lawyers are harping on about vicious lies. Which is it to be, printCafe?If the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, then surely the billions of dollars worth of damages (that can't be sued for because of good old eulas) caused by the bad security implementation in Microsoft's programs indicates that it is in the best interest of "the many" for increased security to be in place?
Does Microsoft even doubt this?
Hell no. But they know they can't be touched, because their licenses protect them from responsibility for the damage their badly-designed software causes, and as long as they don't start getting a reputation for bad software with consumers (not high-end users), they can continue to ignore the problems in favour of increased revenue by charging very high prices for much-hyped software that anyone in the know can see is just a slightly modified and patched version of existing software (thinking of Windows XP specifically here, but it's a general rule that's applicable to most of what they do).
Oh, and btw, I don't think that Spock said that sentence with capitalisation on each word...
My word, aren't you high and mighty Mr acceleriter, after this "apparent flamebait" from a disgusting 500,000+ uid pig got modded +1: Interesting and your clearly more valuable <250,000 uid post gracing the page was modded -1: Offtopic.
Sheesh, what a fruitcake. Elitism at its radiant best.
Number of locations following:<%numberofrecords%>
Is proxy:Unknown
At this time, the location of 203.167.156.113 is unknown.
And you can do what you like with that IP#, because by the time you do I'll be on another one and some poor random bastard in .nz will be spammed out of his mind, muahaha...oh gee, that's not very neighbourly of me now is it? Really, it hardly matters since I have my homepage on my dialup so anyone can DoS me without even mildly taxing their cable router...
Incidentally, Visualthingiebackland was slashdotted so I couldn't test it. Might have been interesting.
Certified? They let mental patients run these things now? Personally I'd be pretty uncomfortable if I was being hooked up to a machine with "needles and...wires", and a certified nutcase was at the helm.
Don't be such a tight-arsed snob. "Growing up" isn't supposed to involve losing your sense of fun. The Ewoks rocked. And I still have a teddy bear. And I'm 18. By social law, it seems that I shouldn't be seen dead admitting to either of those things. Why?
No surprise that none of the mucking forons who choose to moderate actually got it. Why is it that only intelligent people select not to moderate? Something to do with power trips?
Torn apart? I'm curious. What other countries, aside from New Zealand and Australia (I think), use plastic bank notes? It seems that plastic would be a much more convenient material to manufacture the notes out of if you're planning to stick wee chips in them. I assumed that .nz got the idea of plastic notes from .us or somesuchthing, but I guess not.
A bit ot, but could you be kind enough to back that up with a link? It sounds just about insane enough to be true, but I'm having a hard time believing it. Would be much appreciated.
Like this?
Why are we applying United States laws to this anyway? Isn't this happening in Amsterdam? Different country. Hi. It's somewhere in that big other place called Europe.
Erm...no?
As a journalist-to-be, I can tell you that my interest is not in TV or radio. I'm a writer, not a parrot. Where voice recognition really would be helpful to me is in dictating passages and editing them. I'm rather surprised at your suggestion that print media journalists "want desperately to be in the non-print media". What basis do you have for this odd assumption?
Are your kids hypertensive, anal-retentive psychopaths on speed too? Coz I think the parent poster's kids may have more to worry about by going to the same school as your kids than vice versa. Take your pills before you post man.
sharing : v. shared, sharing, shares
- To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion.
- To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns. [emphasis mine]
</snip>Please stop spouting nonsense now. Your "definitions" are just as bogus as those of anyone else who tries to relate physical and intellectual concepts to further their own, generally flawed, arguments.
And this is why corporations don't want this to happen. As long as the only way to get justice is to buy it, copyright laws that make sense will never be achieved, and brainwashing will continue. However, I have my doubts that time is on the side of corporations as the article suggests. The more computer-literate the people they're trying to screw, the less the people will put up with it. In two generations, nearly everyone is going to be using computers to a large degree, and a high percentage more than is current will be very familiar with them, and with the concept of critical thinking. I don't think a time will ever come when nearly everyone is smart enough to see the stupidity of "owning a bitrate" because human nature precludes it; people are sheep and believe what they are told because it's easier than thinking for themselves.
But there are smart people out there too. And other people who are selfish, but realise that being screwed by corporations isn't in their best interests. That's when things will become intriguing.
This be true. I've seen a number of posts by this guy and they were all pretty good up until now.
Parents do what they believe is best for their children and for the family. It's hard to fault them for that, even when you think they're totally wrong and completely detached from reality.
I don't think I've seen a troll posting at +1 before. The frightening this is that I don't thinks HanzoSan is trolling. I get the feeling he honestly believes the lunacy he's ranting.
- cars can't be copied, so stealing cars isn't going to reduce the need for them
- software can be copied, so you're not stealing it
- if I don't feel the software is worth its price, and I still want the software, what will I do? That's right, I'll copy it from somewhere else
Hypothetically speaking of course. Personally, what people call "pirating" is a ridiculous attempt by capitalists to apply archaic definitions to new concepts that won't support them, in order to maintain what they see as a fast-slipping hold on some industrial sectors (vastly simplified view).So really, the unlicensed copy of Windows 2000 that I could be running is perfectly legal according to my own values, and the only thing that I need to worry about is the law, and how to get it changed to what I (and many, many other people) see as fair. My conscience is quite clean.
Slightly off-topic now, but I'm curious. Who decides that a long series of ones and zeros is worth so much more than the service of a garbage collector or artist? Generally, it seems that the more abstract the work you do, the higher you can expect to be paid if you're good at it (take something like a banker--he deals with nothing but an abstract concept called "money").
On the other hand, people who provide a vital service like garbage collection get paid peanuts. If we compared how our lives would be without artists (probably a bit more boring, but quite livable), as compared to how they'd be without someone picking up our garbage (not so nice at all, methinks) one gets the distinct impression that garbage collectors should be the more highly-paid of the two examples I used.
Just for interest's stake, I'm an artist and a writer, so I have no reason to say this other than my own belief that the values society places on certain things are fundamentally twisted.
Why not .mus? I thought the idea was that it was a small suffix...a TLD that takes up more space than the domain is kinda stupid surely?
Without getting into flames over personal opinions, one of the best game companies, Bungie, is owned by Microsoft. I guess this means that Microsoft "cant[sic] be all that bad"?
No one is suggesting disallowing thoughts. They are suggesting disallowing expression of those thoughts, which in my mind is simultaneously just as bad, and completely doomed because one is trying to treat the symptoms, not the cause. If you were to find a way to disallow thoughts themselves, and enforce that, these problems would stop. As it is, simply disallowing expression of these thoughts is going to achieve nothing other than creating more secretive undergrounds that will be even harder to police.
We're not talking about "limit[ing] the human mind". Short of a labotomy, that's pretty impossible. The human mind has boundaries we have yet to find.
not-entirely-on topic
There are a couple of things wrong with this statement. First, you are assuming that there is such thing as absolute truth. Then you state that no one person knows it. I ask you, if there is indeed such a thing as absolute truth, isn't it likely that somewhere, someone knows it? Isn't the problem then determining who knows it? And then, doesn't that simply negate the idea that anything can be regarded as absolutely true, because if this "absolute truth" was absolutely true everyone would agree on it?
Then there's another problem when you say "Not just about morality..." How can this absolute truth somehow be a general and solid rule that can be applied to the whole of a very vague topic called "morality"?
And yet more problems. Clearly you haven't thought this topic through carefully, though I don't blame you coz it's kinda complicated and tends to wander in circles. If the truth is in between all the different viewpoints, how does one distinguish it from just another viewpoint? Do you mean we should average all the viewpoints, and that will give us the truth? But how can you average such things? The point is, the truth is the viewpoints; it is in the viewpoints themselves, not in between them. You can't find some absolute truth in between different viewpoints, because, to quote your Uncertainty Principle example, when you observe something you change it. An observation of something is simply what the object is to you. It isn't what that object is, and yet at the same time it is what that object is. In morality, something can exist in as many forms as there are minds to consider it differently. The thing itself is always there, and its name may always be the same, but you cannot say that any one perception of it is absolute until you have an absolute point of reference. And since we hopefully consider all people equal in their validity of perception, there is no absolute point of reference, only subjective ones. Therefore absolute truth cannot exist to the subjective mind without some "higher being" telling us what it is. Which of course is where religions come in, but that's a whole separate ball game dealing with human inadequacy.
I read a fair amount of coverage on the Kyoto treaty, mostly from BBC News which I consider a fairly reputable news source, and yet they told me virtually nothing about it that allowed me to form a reasonable and balanced opinion. What they did tell me was that a bunch of scientists were saying it was a Very Good Thing(TM). They attempted to demonstrate why it was a Very Good Thing, but they didn't try to demonstrate why it might be Not a Good Thing(TM). They just told me that Bush's scientists had advised him to stay clear, and then rambled on about how other countries were seeing this as typical Usian money-comes-firsting. This, of course, had the effect of leading one to believe that this was the case without actually having to report it as fact.
For all I know, the parent poster may be trolling, but I feel inclined to believe he is very likely right. However, both myself and many others have formed opinions on the Kyoto treaty based on what can best be described as poor reporting, and subsequently the United States' image suffers, and a huge cycle of people becoming opinionated, speaking to other people, who in turn propogate the cycle of inaccurate information, begins. We think we're well informed, but we're not. And how do you break the cycle? Inform people. And who should be doing it? The media. Fucking brilliant.
(As an aside, I find The Register to be a great source of tech news because of their reputation for cynicism. Sometimes it can be counter-productive, but generally it results in much more balanced reporting (although bear in mind that you need an irony and personal-flaming filter) because, rather than following the leader, they play Devil's Advocate.)