Both (Clinton, Bush) of whom claim to be "close, personal friends" with Powell's father. Colin was seriously riding GW's cock around January, 2000, and THAT is the connection that Stern was citing -- GW's evil pee-pee connected to Colin's colon.
quick recap: stern = "You suck!" powell = the sound that gasbags make when they deflate. stern = "you hate me!" powell = sleazy rhetoric stern = "you fine two people differently for the same thing" powell = "look at the funny monkey!"
Powell LACKED dignity, and wound up sounding like another politician (in other words, a big fucking liar). Stern simply came off as unprepared -- honest, but unprepared.
Jon Stewart is getting a lot of positive attention appearing on other people's shows, 60 Minutes, Crossfire, so Howard Stern jumped on the bandwagon.
A few things you didn't consider here:
You assume causality based on coincidental evidence, i.e. p preceded q, therefore p caused q. That sounds like an invalid argument.
Jon Stewart went to Boston (?? I think ??) specifically for the taping of Crossfire and a book signing. He planned the trip and his arguments in advance. Howard Stern was given two hours notice prior to the phone call. I think Howard's points would naturally be less effective, because he had so little time to prepare them.
Howard faced more pressure the Jon, because the FCC specifically harmed Howard's business.
Powell sucks little bitch ass, and really deserves to get reamed much, much harder than this. Stern seemed very reluctant to really call him out on his crap. While it would have been cool to call Powell a dick on the radio, it would only result another fine.
That, and when you say He should just stop this childish behavior for now... I mean, come on.. This is Howard Stern, man.
I'd have much preferred it if Bruce Campbell was playing the lead. "The Rock" sucks "The Ass", and this movie will, too. I loved Doom, but I'm prepared to stubbornly and insanely deny the existence of this movie if/when I find that it sucks.
Either that, or I'm deliberately lowering my expectations so that this fucking great kick-ass movie will really blow me away. God dammit.. The Rock.. What a fag.
The comic even has a scene with Ash, umm, "John". whoever the main character is, standing in the middle of a room filled with dead zombies all around him, smoking gun still in hand, saying "Groovy." Dammit, man. Just, dammit.
I just want to add another important difference that I see:
When I have the source, I can perform a security audit faster, more completely, and with a much greater understanding of the program I'm working on than when I don't have the source. Performing audits without the source is much more like ad-hoc testing with a litte reverse engineering mixed in. It's unstructured, incomplete, time-consuming and it leaves me with little understanding of the code I'm examining.
This is an issue of trust. To use commercial software, I have to trust that the company I buy (oops, sorry, "license") it from has the capability to produce secure code that meets my needs. The salesman establishes that trust, and the EULAs enforce it. Reverse engineering and auditing are often prohibited by these EULAs, so I have to take the salesman at his word. Well, I don't trust a fucking salesman. I prefer open source software. In OSS, the code establishes that trust, and the level of trust I have in a piece of software rises every time I browse through the source, and since I'm confident that there are other people out there just like me browsing, poking and prodding to find bugs, my choice to support open source software seems to entirely outweigh any closed alternative.
So it comes down to this: Who do you trust, the smiling salesman or a bunch of geeks?
and I'd rather have a WELL-TESTED commercial patch that doesn't break existing dependencies than a QUICK-HACK from the OSS community.
I once provided a company with a method for hacking root with one of their suid programs, and I actually got a fix a few months later. I installed the fix, tried the exploit, it didn't work, and I was happy. I played around with it for 10 more minutes before finding a new security hole in the same program -- a hole that didn't exist before I applied their new "WELL-TESTED commercial patch."
WELL-TESTED is a poor adjective to use when priasing most commercial software. While I believe that some software houses must exist somewhere that enforce good testing practices, that belief is depreciated by my own observation that most of the software houses that I've worked for skimp when it comes to their test departments. "If it compiles, ship it." -- that's the motto.
Political speech by an elected offical should not enjoy copyright protectection regardless of the forum if that speech is publicly displayed in any form.
Balls yeah. Now let's go one further by suggesting this: Elected officials must be constantly monitored, and audiovisual recordings of all things that the person does during the course of his job should be presrved in an archive for posterity.
No, I don't like that yet. How about this: Elected officials must do what I say at all times, and make their daughters available to me at my command.
That's better, but it's not proactive enough. OK: Elected officials will enslave all of humanity except for me, and then force all the rest of the people to be my slave, so that the men will give me their money and the women will give me head, forever and ever. Amen.
Better. Real close. Hmmmm.. OK, this has got to be it: All people will spontaneously love me and give me everything that I could ever want or need before I've even thought to ask for it.
That's it. That's what I want. That's MY political system, right there.
It might be just a "midly annoying" problem to you but to someone less technically-gifted it might be the most annoying thing in the world.
Then maybe they should turn off the computer.
telemarketers might not be the bane of your life but I'm sure there are people out there who get call after call after call from the same companies that just won't take no for an answer
That's why I bought an answering machine. Damn telemarketers. "Buy our light bulbs", "Win a vacation to Florida", "Pay us the money you owe us or we'll send a collection agency after you." Sheesh.. You'd think they'd fucking take the hint.
1. Multiple airlines experience technical issues downing air traffic for several hours. 2. New York's Terror Alert Level rises as do concerns about terrorists attacking financial institutions. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
Sadly I believe that this is how our leaders actually reason.
I was going to say "If you can't tell the difference between a house and a song, then you're a fucking idiot." I figured that you'd see that music can be copied infinitely for $0 cost, whereas a house requires an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I thought that you might come to understand that a house is a physical object, whereas music appears much less corporeal. I believed that you could, if you tried, differentiate between "sharing" and "stealing", and understand how it applied.
But then I thought to myself "that guy's a fucking idiot."
Oh, and BTW, the "create a login" page at http://host.effortlessis.com/createlog.php appears broken (404). Can you fix it? Thanks.
Wait a fucking minute here. We've got 5 big media conglomerates coming together to discuss how to artificially increase the cost of their products. Exactly how is this not conspiracy and extortion? How does these actions allow for competitive market forces to drive the cost of their product to the peak price points according to the law of supply and demand? Why the fuck aren't these criminals in fucking jail where they fucking belong? Fucking anti-competitive un-American terrorist bastard dickheads. These scumbag assholes can fucking rot in hell.
... the agents, from Austin's Joint Terrorism Task Force
No WAY! *I* was investigated by the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, too, back in 98 or 99. They were just curious why we were transporting a bunch of guns from El Paso to Austin in a rental car that was paid for with cash.
It seems that people are calling "bullshit" on this and claiming the AC is a troll, which is understandable.
I've got to say, though, I agree with AC. Spaf's a dick. "In short a net.nazi" is a PERFECT description of Spaf. Now I haven't had to deal with him for a long time, and maybe he's changed for the better. I certainly hope so; but, if this AC's impressions of Spaf were formed around the same time as mine were, then I can understand where the poster is coming from.
So, no, I don't find this post to be a troll. He may be wrong in thinking that Spaf is pro-DMCA, but the Spaf I've spoken with was most certainly not an open-minded guy who "actively encourages responsible exploration" as others here have claimed.
Re:Kind of emphasizes a major point.
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
I do mean to offend when I say that the dogmatism in your post greatly surpasses those people who you try to disparage. I want to take your post sentence by sentence to show you why I think you suck so much. I choose this form because I tend to see people use it when attacking someone else's ideaology, and I want to attack your literary style.
There is no accurate model of the environment.
A model of anything serves as a metaphor for some other thing. Independent observers with conflicting opinions will measure the accuracy of this metaphor differently. It seems to me that you disagree with the opinions shown in the article, so you could have written "I don't think that their model accurately represents the changing environment," without coming off like a dogmatic asshole. I would award more points if you mention whoever's model you disagree with.
Worse, its obvious a few of these guys have a serious attitude problem.
You've made an implicit assumption that what appears obvious to you will appear obvious to the reader. You never mention which guys have the serious attitude problem, and you never show us the reasons why you believe in your claim.
What it comes down to is, whose policies are most in favor with the scientific community will get results from that community supporting their position.
You overuse the word "is". Remove "X is Y" and dogmatism will steadily disappear from your writing.
Screw the fact they don't have all the facts, it doesn't prevent either camp from making claims.
I simply can't wrap my head around this argument. Do you maintain that scientists should remain silent until they have all the facts? Do you believe someone could have all the facts? Do you have all the facts? If you don't, then how can you make this claim? Either I don't understand what you say (a high probability of this), or your argument simply fails to stand up to scrutiny (a lower probability).
Its Global Warming this past 15 years, before then it was Global Cooling.
To remove dogmatism, I recommend that you convert the "X is Y" portions of this sentence to "X seems like Y to me." For instance, "I've seen people claim for the past 15 years that Global Warming was the most important environmental issue, and before that they claimed it was Global Cooling." expresses the point in a less dogmatic way, so that people can understand that the viewpoint that you express comes directly from your own observations.
Environmentalism is much more about ideaology than realism.
Funny, since I classify Realism, as well as Catholicism, Fascism, Patriotism, and most other things that end in "-ism", as ideaologies. When I read that setence, my brain automatically interpreted it as "Environmentalism seems to me much more about other people's ideaology than my ideaology." I find that amusing, especially since I view your ideaology as highly dogmatic, and I tend to dismiss dogmatism as unhappy, unhealthy, an unhip.
If what you claimed in your post was that this seems like another attempt by environmental scientists to create a fad by overblowing the importance of the data, then I agree with your statement. The way you say it makes the bile rise.
Programming in the United States was never a career. Get over it and find something else to do now that it's being outsourced to other countries where people work for less.
I program computers for a living. While I don't consider it a "career", either, I'm sure some do. A group of people required a piece of software, then paid people like me to write that software and then finally continued paying for the the software authors to maintain and expand that software. I understand when other people call this scenario a career.
Yes, because doing composition in a studio for hundreds of hours isn't work, or anything.
If someone paid the author of these musical compositions (I assume music here) to create them before this work began, then I would probably call that a career as well. If the author works on some piece of music and then expects to be paid later by people he doesn't know, then I'd call that a misguided gamble, and not a career.
P2P apps don't make music on their own.
Correct. Nature (human and otherwise) creates music.
If you don't mind listening to 100% machine-generated music, then don't worry about supporting artists. If you want to hear original music, they need to get paid.
I expect that many people would continue to write music whether they get paid or not, because I write music without getting paid, and I know many others who do as well. Your last sentence seems ironic to me also, because I notice that many of the musicians who get paid by major labels use computers to generate the loops instead of using real musicians who can peform the same function more creatively than the computer.
While debating this with others, I have noticed another unexpected, interesting outcome that I'd like to share with everyone. I judge the music made for little or no cost to have a higher quality then the music made at the whims of the RIAA affiliates. I've inauspiciously dubbed this "the Metallica syndrome". I find that the early Metallica years were passionate but unfocused. Once they got a little label money they refined their sound and improved their technique, producing some great albums. Then they got rich off of the sales of this music and relaxed, losing much of their drive, until they finally degenerated into a bunch of whiny little bitches who have no more passion, but must pretend like they do in order to keep themselves in this new lifestyle that they enjoy. I now personally regret buying their albums. I feel that I have contributed to the decline in the quality of their music, and I wonder whether they would still produce the aggressive music I enjoyed so much if the majority of listeners avioded "purchasing the right to listen", consequently eroding the band's passion to create it.
This said, I expect that music made by those artists who do not get paid for it will have a greater value to me (and to the world) than the music currently produced by those artists who have a career with an RIAA-affiliated company.
This message was written in accordance with the rules of the language "E-Prime". Please feel free to point out any errors in grammar or sentence form.
I've just recently been informed about the work of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, and I have to say if the attitudes and actions of these students represent your school, then I want my children attending Swarthmore College. The dedication that these students have in finding and supporting the truth should serve as an example of how honest, studious Americans can aid their country. Your support of the SCDC shows me that you are a man of integrity and honor, and I highly respect both you and Swarthmore College for shining a light in the darkness. Thank you for remaining strong in these chaotic times.
I'm amazed noone has mentioned softice yet. What kind of nerds are you? You can't _run_ Windows without softice, what with all those "Please enter your registration code" messages popping up all over the place! And don't get me started with those GPFs. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you run IE without having to patch it manually every ten or twenty minutes? And what do you do on a BSOD, just let it crash? Come on. It's like a dying patient on the operating table, you've GOT to try and revive it and keep it breathing, or else it might die and go to hell or something.
I don't think anybody is claiming that Microsoft doesn't have the right to sell or not sell XBox's wherever they please.
I would like to take a minute and say that I claim (nearly) exactly that. Microsoft does not have the right to discriminate against some potential buyers of their product.
If Ballmer were saying that gay people or black people weren't allowed to purchase the console, it would be more clearly discriminatory. Instead, what he is saying is that "given the way the economic model works" his company will not sell the Xbox to most Austrailians. It's not due to his of his personal distaste for Oz, but because "it wouldn't make economic sense" to sell to Ozzies when their legal system contains certain laws that Microsoft opposes. This is discrimination based on politics, instead of sexual orientation or heredity, and is of questionable legality.
Imagine a world without copyrights. A movie is created, and instantly people with professional equipment are in there getting cam copies of the movie.
Yay. This brings the power of duplication to those who want to duplicate, which is good.
They sell it in legitimate stores.
This does not follow. They can TRY to sell the duplicate at legitimate stores, but anyone who would really want the duplicate could simply, well, copy it, which is good.
More copies are made.
Which is also good.
A DVD is released, and since it is very easy to make a perfect copy, these are made. There are sold in legitimate stores, as this is perfectly legal.
I'm not sure how I follow that these bogus DVDs would be sold on the market. Why wouldn't I just copy the damned DVD myself, since, well, duplication wouldn't be illegal.
A CD is released, and perfect copies are made and sold for $1 each in stores. Software is made and immediately sold for the cost of the media in stores.
Which is still too expensive, imho. That's what makes the net so much better than a music or software store, because bandwidth is cheaper than media (or something like that), and the media that I am forced to buy and maintain can be erased and reused when I get sick of the information on it.
See the dilemna here?
No.
the fact is that there is much quality content created as books, audio CDs, movies, and software, that takes a large initial investment in order to create.
Then let the people who want to make those large initial investments pay for it. If the only reason that rock band X or movie company Y creates a product is for money, then why don't they just print their own money instead and stop infecting society with their vomituous, base spew. Take out the middle man, so to speak. If you want to make art, paint. If you want to make money, counterfeit.
If some company spends $8 million creating a piece of software then how are they going to recoup their profits... ?
I don't see why I should care what they spent on it. It's their money, let them spend it the way they please. If this is what they wanted to do with it, fine, but if they view it as a problem, then it's THEIR problem, and not mine, yours, or the guy down the street who thinks he's Jesus'. As far as I'm concerned, if they wanted to staple 8 million dollar bills to each butt cheek of 4 million monkeys and call it art, go for it (provided that the monkey don't rebel and take over the world). It's their money to do with as they please, and I for one am not going to stand in their way, and in fact, I will support their right to blow their own money however they like.
So, you say they're worried about how their going to recoup their profits. Well, you know, they damn well should be! Hell, if I blew $8 Million dollars by stapling it to the asses of 4 million monkeys, I'd be worried about it, too. If they're worried about saving their money, then maybe they shouldn't be inconveniencing those poor innocent monkeys.
I should call PETA on them. Well, at least the monkeys will have toilet paper now.
This is my argument for why limited copyrights are needed.
That I can agree with. The copyright law would certainly make better monkey toilet paper than single dollar bills. For starters, it would be printed on full sized paper, so they wouldn't have to worry about accidentally getting shit on their hands. Also, singles don't flush well.
No, Bruce, Snosoft saying "Our advisory release policy is full disclosure unless bound by contract" does not seem like a shakedown to me. HP saying "If SnoSoft and its members fail to cooperate with HP, then this will be considered further evidence of SnoSoft's bad faith" seems much closer to the language used by blackmailing thugs. There is no implied threat in the former, because full disclosure is not a threat. The letter from HP to Snosoft, if the news.com report is accurate, is nothing but a threat.
That is my call on this. I answered, since you asked. And the reason why I'm not calling you on the phone telling you this is because I think (and I suspect there are others as well that feel similarly) that cold-calling someone like that would be rude. So that would explain why you're getting calls from soulless "reporters" instead of maladjusted geeks.
Slashdot Mirror
I fear my government.
Both (Clinton, Bush) of whom claim to be "close, personal friends" with Powell's father. Colin was seriously riding GW's cock around January, 2000, and THAT is the connection that Stern was citing -- GW's evil pee-pee connected to Colin's colon.
stern = "You suck!"
powell = the sound that gasbags make when they deflate.
stern = "you hate me!"
powell = sleazy rhetoric
stern = "you fine two people differently for the same thing"
powell = "look at the funny monkey!"
Powell LACKED dignity, and wound up sounding like another politician (in other words, a big fucking liar). Stern simply came off as unprepared -- honest, but unprepared.
A few things you didn't consider here:
That, and when you say He should just stop this childish behavior for now... I mean, come on.. This is Howard Stern, man.
I'd have much preferred it if Bruce Campbell was playing the lead. "The Rock" sucks "The Ass", and this movie will, too. I loved Doom, but I'm prepared to stubbornly and insanely deny the existence of this movie if/when I find that it sucks.
Either that, or I'm deliberately lowering my expectations so that this fucking great kick-ass movie will really blow me away. God dammit.. The Rock.. What a fag.
The comic even has a scene with Ash, umm, "John". whoever the main character is, standing in the middle of a room filled with dead zombies all around him, smoking gun still in hand, saying "Groovy." Dammit, man. Just, dammit.
Where is Bruce when you need him?
I just want to add another important difference that I see:
When I have the source, I can perform a security audit faster, more completely, and with a much greater understanding of the program I'm working on than when I don't have the source. Performing audits without the source is much more like ad-hoc testing with a litte reverse engineering mixed in. It's unstructured, incomplete, time-consuming and it leaves me with little understanding of the code I'm examining.
This is an issue of trust. To use commercial software, I have to trust that the company I buy (oops, sorry, "license") it from has the capability to produce secure code that meets my needs. The salesman establishes that trust, and the EULAs enforce it. Reverse engineering and auditing are often prohibited by these EULAs, so I have to take the salesman at his word. Well, I don't trust a fucking salesman. I prefer open source software. In OSS, the code establishes that trust, and the level of trust I have in a piece of software rises every time I browse through the source, and since I'm confident that there are other people out there just like me browsing, poking and prodding to find bugs, my choice to support open source software seems to entirely outweigh any closed alternative.
So it comes down to this: Who do you trust, the smiling salesman or a bunch of geeks?
and I'd rather have a WELL-TESTED commercial patch that doesn't break existing dependencies than a QUICK-HACK from the OSS community.
I once provided a company with a method for hacking root with one of their suid programs, and I actually got a fix a few months later. I installed the fix, tried the exploit, it didn't work, and I was happy. I played around with it for 10 more minutes before finding a new security hole in the same program -- a hole that didn't exist before I applied their new "WELL-TESTED commercial patch."
WELL-TESTED is a poor adjective to use when priasing most commercial software. While I believe that some software houses must exist somewhere that enforce good testing practices, that belief is depreciated by my own observation that most of the software houses that I've worked for skimp when it comes to their test departments. "If it compiles, ship it." -- that's the motto.
Political speech by an elected offical should not enjoy copyright protectection regardless of the forum if that speech is publicly displayed in any form.
Balls yeah. Now let's go one further by suggesting this: Elected officials must be constantly monitored, and audiovisual recordings of all things that the person does during the course of his job should be presrved in an archive for posterity.
No, I don't like that yet. How about this: Elected officials must do what I say at all times, and make their daughters available to me at my command.
That's better, but it's not proactive enough. OK: Elected officials will enslave all of humanity except for me, and then force all the rest of the people to be my slave, so that the men will give me their money and the women will give me head, forever and ever. Amen.
Better. Real close. Hmmmm.. OK, this has got to be it: All people will spontaneously love me and give me everything that I could ever want or need before I've even thought to ask for it.
That's it. That's what I want. That's MY political system, right there.
Yawn.
It might be just a "midly annoying" problem to you but to someone less technically-gifted it might be the most annoying thing in the world.
Then maybe they should turn off the computer.
telemarketers might not be the bane of your life but I'm sure there are people out there who get call after call after call from the same companies that just won't take no for an answer
That's why I bought an answering machine. Damn telemarketers. "Buy our light bulbs", "Win a vacation to Florida", "Pay us the money you owe us or we'll send a collection agency after you." Sheesh.. You'd think they'd fucking take the hint.
Dude, if I had mod points, you'd be +6 right now.
People these days have no critical thinking skills at all.
Bullshit.
They aren't telling the whole story.
1. Multiple airlines experience technical issues downing air traffic for several hours.
2. New York's Terror Alert Level rises as do concerns about terrorists attacking financial institutions.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Sadly I believe that this is how our leaders actually reason.
I am *so* stoned right now.
why is music any different?
You're a fucking idiot.
I was going to say "If you can't tell the difference between a house and a song, then you're a fucking idiot." I figured that you'd see that music can be copied infinitely for $0 cost, whereas a house requires an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I thought that you might come to understand that a house is a physical object, whereas music appears much less corporeal. I believed that you could, if you tried, differentiate between "sharing" and "stealing", and understand how it applied.
But then I thought to myself "that guy's a fucking idiot."
Oh, and BTW, the "create a login" page at http://host.effortlessis.com/createlog.php appears broken (404). Can you fix it? Thanks.
Wait a fucking minute here. We've got 5 big media conglomerates coming together to discuss how to artificially increase the cost of their products. Exactly how is this not conspiracy and extortion? How does these actions allow for competitive market forces to drive the cost of their product to the peak price points according to the law of supply and demand? Why the fuck aren't these criminals in fucking jail where they fucking belong? Fucking anti-competitive un-American terrorist bastard dickheads. These scumbag assholes can fucking rot in hell.
... the agents, from Austin's Joint Terrorism Task Force
No WAY! *I* was investigated by the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, too, back in 98 or 99. They were just curious why we were transporting a bunch of guns from El Paso to Austin in a rental car that was paid for with cash.
Ah, the fun times we had...
It seems that people are calling "bullshit" on this and claiming the AC is a troll, which is understandable.
I've got to say, though, I agree with AC. Spaf's a dick. "In short a net.nazi" is a PERFECT description of Spaf. Now I haven't had to deal with him for a long time, and maybe he's changed for the better. I certainly hope so; but, if this AC's impressions of Spaf were formed around the same time as mine were, then I can understand where the poster is coming from.
So, no, I don't find this post to be a troll. He may be wrong in thinking that Spaf is pro-DMCA, but the Spaf I've spoken with was most certainly not an open-minded guy who "actively encourages responsible exploration" as others here have claimed.
There is no accurate model of the environment.
A model of anything serves as a metaphor for some other thing. Independent observers with conflicting opinions will measure the accuracy of this metaphor differently. It seems to me that you disagree with the opinions shown in the article, so you could have written "I don't think that their model accurately represents the changing environment," without coming off like a dogmatic asshole. I would award more points if you mention whoever's model you disagree with.
Worse, its obvious a few of these guys have a serious attitude problem.
You've made an implicit assumption that what appears obvious to you will appear obvious to the reader. You never mention which guys have the serious attitude problem, and you never show us the reasons why you believe in your claim.
What it comes down to is, whose policies are most in favor with the scientific community will get results from that community supporting their position.
You overuse the word "is". Remove "X is Y" and dogmatism will steadily disappear from your writing.
Screw the fact they don't have all the facts, it doesn't prevent either camp from making claims.
I simply can't wrap my head around this argument. Do you maintain that scientists should remain silent until they have all the facts? Do you believe someone could have all the facts? Do you have all the facts? If you don't, then how can you make this claim? Either I don't understand what you say (a high probability of this), or your argument simply fails to stand up to scrutiny (a lower probability).
Its Global Warming this past 15 years, before then it was Global Cooling.
To remove dogmatism, I recommend that you convert the "X is Y" portions of this sentence to "X seems like Y to me." For instance, "I've seen people claim for the past 15 years that Global Warming was the most important environmental issue, and before that they claimed it was Global Cooling." expresses the point in a less dogmatic way, so that people can understand that the viewpoint that you express comes directly from your own observations.
Environmentalism is much more about ideaology than realism.
Funny, since I classify Realism, as well as Catholicism, Fascism, Patriotism, and most other things that end in "-ism", as ideaologies. When I read that setence, my brain automatically interpreted it as "Environmentalism seems to me much more about other people's ideaology than my ideaology." I find that amusing, especially since I view your ideaology as highly dogmatic, and I tend to dismiss dogmatism as unhappy, unhealthy, an unhip.
If what you claimed in your post was that this seems like another attempt by environmental scientists to create a fad by overblowing the importance of the data, then I agree with your statement. The way you say it makes the bile rise.
I program computers for a living. While I don't consider it a "career", either, I'm sure some do. A group of people required a piece of software, then paid people like me to write that software and then finally continued paying for the the software authors to maintain and expand that software. I understand when other people call this scenario a career.
Yes, because doing composition in a studio for hundreds of hours isn't work, or anything.
If someone paid the author of these musical compositions (I assume music here) to create them before this work began, then I would probably call that a career as well. If the author works on some piece of music and then expects to be paid later by people he doesn't know, then I'd call that a misguided gamble, and not a career.
P2P apps don't make music on their own.
Correct. Nature (human and otherwise) creates music.
If you don't mind listening to 100% machine-generated music, then don't worry about supporting artists. If you want to hear original music, they need to get paid.
I expect that many people would continue to write music whether they get paid or not, because I write music without getting paid, and I know many others who do as well. Your last sentence seems ironic to me also, because I notice that many of the musicians who get paid by major labels use computers to generate the loops instead of using real musicians who can peform the same function more creatively than the computer.
While debating this with others, I have noticed another unexpected, interesting outcome that I'd like to share with everyone. I judge the music made for little or no cost to have a higher quality then the music made at the whims of the RIAA affiliates. I've inauspiciously dubbed this "the Metallica syndrome". I find that the early Metallica years were passionate but unfocused. Once they got a little label money they refined their sound and improved their technique, producing some great albums. Then they got rich off of the sales of this music and relaxed, losing much of their drive, until they finally degenerated into a bunch of whiny little bitches who have no more passion, but must pretend like they do in order to keep themselves in this new lifestyle that they enjoy. I now personally regret buying their albums. I feel that I have contributed to the decline in the quality of their music, and I wonder whether they would still produce the aggressive music I enjoyed so much if the majority of listeners avioded "purchasing the right to listen", consequently eroding the band's passion to create it.
This said, I expect that music made by those artists who do not get paid for it will have a greater value to me (and to the world) than the music currently produced by those artists who have a career with an RIAA-affiliated company.
This message was written in accordance with the rules of the language "E-Prime". Please feel free to point out any errors in grammar or sentence form.
I've just recently been informed about the work of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, and I have to say if the attitudes and actions of these students represent your school, then I want my children attending Swarthmore College. The dedication that these students have in finding and supporting the truth should serve as an example of how honest, studious Americans can aid their country. Your support of the SCDC shows me that you are a man of integrity and honor, and I highly respect both you and Swarthmore College for shining a light in the darkness. Thank you for remaining strong in these chaotic times.
-Brian
I'm amazed noone has mentioned softice yet. What kind of nerds are you? You can't _run_ Windows without softice, what with all those "Please enter your registration code" messages popping up all over the place! And don't get me started with those GPFs. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you run IE without having to patch it manually every ten or twenty minutes? And what do you do on a BSOD, just let it crash? Come on. It's like a dying patient on the operating table, you've GOT to try and revive it and keep it breathing, or else it might die and go to hell or something.
And you call yourself nerds. P'shaw.
Moo
I don't think anybody is claiming that Microsoft doesn't have the right to sell or not sell XBox's wherever they please.
I would like to take a minute and say that I claim (nearly) exactly that. Microsoft does not have the right to discriminate against some potential buyers of their product.
If Ballmer were saying that gay people or black people weren't allowed to purchase the console, it would be more clearly discriminatory. Instead, what he is saying is that "given the way the economic model works" his company will not sell the Xbox to most Austrailians. It's not due to his of his personal distaste for Oz, but because "it wouldn't make economic sense" to sell to Ozzies when their legal system contains certain laws that Microsoft opposes. This is discrimination based on politics, instead of sexual orientation or heredity, and is of questionable legality.
Moo
Imagine a world without copyrights. A movie is created, and instantly people with professional equipment are in there getting cam copies of the movie.
... ?
Yay. This brings the power of duplication to those who want to duplicate, which is good.
They sell it in legitimate stores.
This does not follow. They can TRY to sell the duplicate at legitimate stores, but anyone who would really want the duplicate could simply, well, copy it, which is good.
More copies are made.
Which is also good.
A DVD is released, and since it is very easy to make a perfect copy, these are made. There are sold in legitimate stores, as this is perfectly legal.
I'm not sure how I follow that these bogus DVDs would be sold on the market. Why wouldn't I just copy the damned DVD myself, since, well, duplication wouldn't be illegal.
A CD is released, and perfect copies are made and sold for $1 each in stores. Software is made and immediately sold for the cost of the media in stores.
Which is still too expensive, imho. That's what makes the net so much better than a music or software store, because bandwidth is cheaper than media (or something like that), and the media that I am forced to buy and maintain can be erased and reused when I get sick of the information on it.
See the dilemna here?
No.
the fact is that there is much quality content created as books, audio CDs, movies, and software, that takes a large initial investment in order to create.
Then let the people who want to make those large initial investments pay for it. If the only reason that rock band X or movie company Y creates a product is for money, then why don't they just print their own money instead and stop infecting society with their vomituous, base spew. Take out the middle man, so to speak. If you want to make art, paint. If you want to make money, counterfeit.
If some company spends $8 million creating a piece of software then how are they going to recoup their profits
I don't see why I should care what they spent on it. It's their money, let them spend it the way they please. If this is what they wanted to do with it, fine, but if they view it as a problem, then it's THEIR problem, and not mine, yours, or the guy down the street who thinks he's Jesus'. As far as I'm concerned, if they wanted to staple 8 million dollar bills to each butt cheek of 4 million monkeys and call it art, go for it (provided that the monkey don't rebel and take over the world). It's their money to do with as they please, and I for one am not going to stand in their way, and in fact, I will support their right to blow their own money however they like.
So, you say they're worried about how their going to recoup their profits. Well, you know, they damn well should be! Hell, if I blew $8 Million dollars by stapling it to the asses of 4 million monkeys, I'd be worried about it, too. If they're worried about saving their money, then maybe they shouldn't be inconveniencing those poor innocent monkeys.
I should call PETA on them. Well, at least the monkeys will have toilet paper now.
This is my argument for why limited copyrights are needed.
That I can agree with. The copyright law would certainly make better monkey toilet paper than single dollar bills. For starters, it would be printed on full sized paper, so they wouldn't have to worry about accidentally getting shit on their hands. Also, singles don't flush well.
Dammit!! I KNEW I shouldn't have picked 69!
No, Bruce, Snosoft saying "Our advisory release policy is full disclosure unless bound by contract" does not seem like a shakedown to me. HP saying "If SnoSoft and its members fail to cooperate with HP, then this will be considered further evidence of SnoSoft's bad faith" seems much closer to the language used by blackmailing thugs. There is no implied threat in the former, because full disclosure is not a threat. The letter from HP to Snosoft, if the news.com report is accurate, is nothing but a threat.
That is my call on this. I answered, since you asked. And the reason why I'm not calling you on the phone telling you this is because I think (and I suspect there are others as well that feel similarly) that cold-calling someone like that would be rude. So that would explain why you're getting calls from soulless "reporters" instead of maladjusted geeks.