1. Won't comment on Kazaa specifically. I don't use it. However peer to peer is not just for downloading things illegally. I use it legitimately quite a bit.
2. There's plenty on the 'Net about the legality of downloading music. I think most people who claim they don't know it's wrong are just plain lying. I think a lot of people however don't realize or expect the law allows for such extreme penalties for what they would consider a petty circumvention of the rules (as opposed to say holding up a store or shoplifting where someone is deprived of goods and/or physically threatened).
3. You have a good point here. I don't fully agree but I can see how similar illegal vs legal download is. However I could have picked less obvious action. Say buying a car to use as a getaway car in a robbery. Driving is after all just driving. However driving to pick up some groceries is not the same as being involved in a holdup. If that's still too extreme consider street racing, or even driving too fast in a school zone vs on a highway.
4. I used the criminal act of killing as an extreme example. Copyright infringment is not just a civil tort. It's also a federal crime punishable by time in prison as the FBI warnings on videos keep reminding us. So you're just plain wrong on that count. By the way I don't live in the US so find those warnings particularly annoying. I live in Australia. Our copyright law is unfortunately much stricter but just as often left unenforced.
Hey troll, there's a difference between arguing and posing a question. You'll notice the new york lawyer actually responded and in a useful way. Stop getting your friends to mod you insightful. It's pathetic.
Nice murder strawman! Do you always compare IP law violations to physical assault
Nice misuse of the term strawman. The point was that you can't argue a tool that you legitimately bought and then used illegally makes absolves you of the illegality of your action. You're either too obtuse to understand that point or you're a troll.
I know who you are, have respect for you, and realize that I'm out of my depth arguing legalities with you, but I have to ask, how do you consider download software (or a cable descrambler) different to any other tool? I can buy a steak knife and legally use it to cut up my meat but if I use it to kill someone I can hardly argue that I thought I had the right to do so because I bought it legally.
The descrambler may be a special case - it has only one use. However download software certainly can be used to download a wide variety of things from a wide variety of sources.
I mean most people think, and correctly so in most cases, that if you pay for something, that means it is legal for you to use/have it
Huh? You can buy a steak knife or a chain saw. They have legal and legitimate uses. However if I use to tool to commit murder I shouldn't be surprised when I'm arrested and if I tried to defend myself on the basis that "I bought it legally so anything I do with it should be legal" I'd be seeing a shrink.
The difference between $200/song and $750/song goes something like this.
RIAA: She knew what she was doing. Ms Harper: No I didn't. I was 16 and everyone was doing it. Judge: Okay, I'll accept that. You'll have to take her house, her parent's house and her car as damages, but she can keep the shirt on her back. RIAA: But your honour, it's a lovely purple coloured silk shirt, and she really did know what she was doing. Judge: No. She can keep her shirt. Let that be a lesson to you RIAA.
You're talking about a slight improvment in the quality of life of a lot of people at the expense of making it more difficult (or impossible) to reach an adequate standard of living - by which I mean time and money to play and spend with family, not just enough to subsist. I shouldn't be happy about that, nor am I.
I strongly believe there are enough resources to achieve a level of comfort and prosperity for everyone and that this trend of decreasing the overall standard of living and making everyone work longer and harder for less than enough to be happy is destructive and is being put in place by those that seek to profit from the sweat of others.
I'm not sure I should even try to reason with someone who uses the phrase "only a couple of billion people". Just under a third of the world's population is not something you can minimize without losing credibility.
If by "standard of living is skyrocketing" you mean more and more people are able to work long hours for low wages and no freedom of choice in how they live their life, I'd argue that yes this is a better solution in the short term but that what you're sacrificing for this short term gain is the future of us all. People aren't going to be happy and healthy under those conditions. The only people I see benefiting are those that exploit these people under the guise of philanthropy.
When people can afford not only food and shelter, but also the odd luxury, some freedom and some time to spend with their family, then they're getting a fair go. Anything short of that is exploitation, no matter how it's painted.
It's a 'worse' case becasue it doesn't add anything new. Meaning, it won't be that interesting.
Independantly verifying an existing theory is something so "uninteresting" that scientists have gone to great expense (even sometimes their lives!) to do it.
A positive result says "we were right" - which isn't very useful as far as going forward and doing more theory development.
It's very very useful knowing you're on the right track. Look at the number of ways in which relativity has been verified and at the cost conducting those experiments. Do you really think it's wasteful doing that? Plenty of scientists would disagree.
Going forward requires that you have confidence in the facts that you have at hand which means lots of independent verification where possible.
Now theoreticians have a puzzle to solve, to find a theoretical description that still fits all the old experimental evidence
That's actually a step backwards and a setback. You don't want a new puzzle for a problem that you thought you'd already solved. It means your picture of reality doesn't fit and that you have to go back and try to understand the same old problem in a different way INSTEAD of moving forward and building on what you know. Either way what you need to do is be guided by the truth, not by what you're hoping is true. If you learn that you were wrong and need to take a step back it's still better than moving forward based on incorrect data (because at some point you'd need to go back and correct your mistake which may mean doing every piece of work built on it afresh).
Think of it this way. If you're trying to solve a complex mathematical equation (or proof) and you're almost done, but go back to check your work, would you rather find a mistake at step 2 or step 7? Which one gives you more work to do to get back to where you thought you were?
My point was that we shouldn't have a preferred bias for what the outcome is, and that we should follow where the facts lead us. For example in your analogy preferring the exist to the forrest being to the south might take you longer or get you killed if in fact the exit is in a different direction and you ignore or try to manipulate the facts.
But if you've built a life and well-known career based on something that appears to just have been invalidated, the typical human reaction isn't to accept it, and say, "oh well, time to cancel all my grants, give up my professorship, and start over, even though I'm 50 and have spent 1/2 my life 'studying' string theory".
There's no need to throw your life away or try to defend an invalidated theory. There are 2 good ways to go here: 1) Apply the knowledge you gained studying the invalidated theory to newer and current theories. 2) Change your focus to that of a scientific historian and continue to write about how the old theory was explored and eventually invalidated.
Continuing to insist that your theory still works if you apply a set of random kludges and ignore new information is a bad way of handling it. (See Einstein and his lack of acceptance of Quantum theory if you want a good example of how to throw a career away and lose touch).
You're talking about the convenience of what the truth is. One result is still inherently no better than the other, it's just more convenient. You still have the same amount of time and resources to spend on which ever theory passes the tests.
If you start to introduce such bias into your thinking, your objectivity as a scientist goes to shit and instead of eliminating a theory on a solid basis, you may end up actually eliminating it incorrectly and set yourself back even more because you may have years, decades or in the worst case centuries of incorrect thinking to fix. Think relativity and the aether.
Its not formulaic but its certainly a damn solid one in many cases and a Bus full of tourist or school kids is *not* a legit military target. To try and play it off as some grey line is f'ing insanity.
Perhaps that's true when you're not in a war ravaged country. What happens when your school kids become soldiers? 10 years old and actively killing others...
Welcome to the global economy. Also do consider that the cost of living is not the same over there as it is here. Even just within the US, look at Silicon Valley and... I dunno... Kansas? You're comparing apples to bowling balls.
The cost of some things differ. Others not so much. What do you think is the cost of life saving cancer treatment in Kansas vs Silicon Valley vs "Over there"? Realistically what happens is that some products and services are completely out of your reach and aren't offered "over there".
specialization and cost reductions are the very things that have given us the amazing level of material wealth that we enjoy,
I'd much rather see an iPod or computer cost 4 times as much than watch everyone driven to working for $50/month. What's the point of having cheap goods if no one is earning enough to contemplate buying them? It wouldn't be such a bad thing for the environment either if people had to look after their iPods because they could only buy a new one every 3 or 4 years instead of turfing it at the end of the year. Heck, companies may have more incentive to make products that last if they stopped slashing prices and people were still complaining about things dying in a year or two.
f you truly believed that more expensive goods were better for everybody, you would farm your own food by hand and cut firewood by hand for your energy, as there really isn't any way to make those jobs harder.
That wasn't how things worked 30-50 years ago. The extreme situation you portray is just propaganda you've bought into. Companies will fight tooth and nail to get the competitive edge that paying "slave" wages in other countries can give them.
Alive and not alive are classifications we impose. That's all. Nature works as it does regardless of them. Is a virus alive? The only correct answer is: It depends on how you define alive. Getting into these debates is nonsensical. It's the same sort of gibberish as "Is pluto a planet?". There's no natural answer.
So while I wouldn't trade my life for theirs (as an understatement), their lives (and the lives of their families) are appreciably BETTER - not worse - due to Apple's contractor's factory.
Your life and the lives of others in your country are made worse, because they have to compete with those who are only paid $50/month. What happens if you allow wages like these to thrive is that everyone's standard of living eventually decreases and everyone can be expected to live in squalor and be paid peanuts.
Oh and one more thing. I'm not Lebanese, but that shouldn't matter. I've known nice people of all nationalities and arseholes of all nationalities. Guess which group you fit into. I find your rascism disgusting. Talk about polluting the environment! You're a human turd. Worse you're a human turd who decides to talk about how clean he is.
No. You made a piss-poor attempt at a troll about fitting three trolleyloads into a bag, which is total bollocks as I already pointed out.
Oh yeah I'm the one trolling. Go get some lessons in comprehension, twit!
Tough luck. Are you a man or a mouse?
I'm a man, not a mouse, and not a troll like your good self. I'm bound by the laws and social customs of men, and I know how to fit into society. I don't live under a bridge and do as I please.
Do they allow tinfoil hats?
Oh yes I must be a nutty conspiracy theorist (even though the stores are making a mint selling crappy bags to morons like yourself). Tell you what, save the environment the stress of processing alfoil and put the bag over your head. It'll even double as a cosmetic aid.
Aren't you used to that?
Nope, you're the one who lives under a bridge buddy.
Tell you what, if you stop wasting oxygen we've got a deal.
Tell ya what I've got this new environmentally friendly oxygen in this here bag to sell you. The free oxygen isn't good for the environment but this stuff actually belches fairy dust when you inhale it instead of expelling CO2. Only $100 a bag.
The wonderful irony of a wanker like you calling me a troll. Here, take your piss weak insults and straw men with you. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.
More expensive plastic bags means less people use the bags only once, they reuse or find alternate means of carrying groceries
Nice little theory. I suspect in practice that people just wear the cost of the plastic bags, use them and bitch about using them, or praise themselves for using enviro bags even though they break quite often, they don't get the hundreds of uses (vs plastic bags) that are wildly claimed by biased companies, and they may be a net DRAIN on the environment rather than a benefit. The fact is people aren't that organized. They don't always remember to bring their bags and are quite likely to say stuff it and just buy more enviro bags (or plastic bags) if they reach the counter and realize they've left their old enviro bags behind. Meanwhile they're being used for everything from storage bags for homeless people to handy bags for the garage. They're environmentally friendly right? So using more must be a good thing. So if I start using them for everything and use more than I'd use plastic bags, I can still pat myself on the back while I ruin our environment because hey it's doubleplusgood according to the group think.
It's the same way that increased fuel prices reduces usage with a net benefit in reduced emissions of NOx, CO2, etc.. The "energy owners" benefit from more profit, but the environment benefits too.
Oh yeah that really works. Have you seen the trend for fuel emissions lately? Or are those pesky facts not important enough to get in the way of you being a goddamn sheep? Instead of ruining struggling families with crippling fuel prices what we need to do is start really working on alternative fuels and collecting and converting the energy with a minimal impact. Unfortunately you have to convince rich oil men to give up a very lucrative source of revenue to accomplish that. Fuels need to be taxed more heavily but that money should either be going back into alternative fuel research, or be distributed elsewhere instead of encouraging the rich to get richer selling us oil. When it starts to become unprofitable to sell carbon based fuels and is more profitable to sell alternatives that don't fuck up the environment, only then will we see reduction in emissions. What you're suggesting - letting oil tycoons prosper by raising the price is so fucking counter productive that I question the sanity let alone logic of the bunk you're spreading.
Hello I'm sheik Rattle and Roll. I see you're having a pollution problem. I can help fix that by selling oil to you for more denar. Make us both happy.
How is that illogical?
I already explained that there is a conflict of interest. What do I need to do to get the message through? Tattoo it on my forehead and point at it repeatedly? A supermarket chain telling you enviro bags are good for the environment and selling them is no different to tobacco companies claiming cigarettes are good for you and selling them. You can't rely on the source of the information or any source you suspect has been influenced by the corporation.
I use some organic hemp bags, some cotton (unbleached), some plastic (I have a bad memory and don't always remember to take the bags with me).
Are you a South Park fan? Smug alert! Do you spend the day sniffing your own farts?
Even if you truly do remember your bags you're in the fucking minority.
At our store we use recycled brown paper bags, we're the only shop in our city that doesn't use plastic AFAIK, I guess I'm just following the crowd?
If you work at the store and make the policy, good for you. Try also offering incentives for using the packaging the goods are delivered in. If you don't work at the store, I guess rather than following the crowd you're taking credit for the work of others.
Yeah, your customers are all thieves anyway who would avoid paying you if they had a chance. Much better to add hurdles in their way that actually detract from the value of your product by making it only usable in a narrow set of pre-mandated ways. Don't forget to hold onto the keys as tightly as you possibly can and make them jump through hoops to use your product legitimately. Then when your product fails because it's unusable shite point to this one example and rattle your sabres.
How about I find one game commerical game that flopped and decree that "See, writing games for profit doesn't work"! Just as rational as your point of view that since people have taken this guy's game and not paid, all non-DRM games must be flawed and doomed to be stolen. I should just point out that since every popular game gets cracked, and people get it without paying, by your own logic DRM is a bad solution.
Don't let the fact that there are many intermediate ways to manage the problem (eg. shareware or nagware, corporate sponsorship) get in the way of a perfectly good rant.
Do you have a family? As a new dad (my boy's just 8 days old), and has just heard some rather awful news about a close family friend being terminally ill and requiring expensive treatment to buy her another 12-18 months, I have to say I'm feeling very bound to my established career even though I most certainly am not always happy about it.
3) Now you have to shoot it down. You may not realize this, but a passenger jet is FREAKING HUGE. One missile isn't going to take out a jet with 2, 3, or 4 engines. You're going to have to really go to work on that bad boy... and now it's just an out of control ball of metal and fire... braaaavoooo.
You seem to be confusing shooting down a jet with playing space invaders.
You don't need to take out 4 engines (thought that's certainly doable, despite what you say). A plane needs an intact tail for stabilization, and most large passenger aircraft have a single tail which conveniently holds your elevator and rudder control surfaces. Not to mention that the wing and belly of the plane usually hold plenty of jet fuel (mixed with air if the tanks aren't completely full).
I wish planes were as robust as you seem to imagine.
Your argument appears to be that as large corporations helped to change a habit with a solution that may have benefited them too that you should simply revert to the more environmentally damaging behaviour. Who's being illogical?
You either misunderstood my argument in a spectacular way, or you just constructed a very weak straw man.
My argument was that large corporations helped change a habit with a solution that benefited them and DID NOT benefit the environment. Years from now they'll be talking about how these bags made things worse not better. I'm tired of smug sheep who've been brainwashed into thinking these bags are fantastic looking down on me for not fitting into the sheep mentality. It's no different to security theatre. You choose to believe the large corporations who've done well in creating a conflict of interest (since they profit if you buy the bags) despite independent sources stating that these bags don't help. Presumably you do so because it's the trend, without analysing any facts beyond what you've been fed by these corporations. So I believe it is most certainly you that's being illogical, and a sheep to boot.
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1. Won't comment on Kazaa specifically. I don't use it. However peer to peer is not just for downloading things illegally. I use it legitimately quite a bit.
2. There's plenty on the 'Net about the legality of downloading music. I think most people who claim they don't know it's wrong are just plain lying. I think a lot of people however don't realize or expect the law allows for such extreme penalties for what they would consider a petty circumvention of the rules (as opposed to say holding up a store or shoplifting where someone is deprived of goods and/or physically threatened).
3. You have a good point here. I don't fully agree but I can see how similar illegal vs legal download is. However I could have picked less obvious action. Say buying a car to use as a getaway car in a robbery. Driving is after all just driving. However driving to pick up some groceries is not the same as being involved in a holdup. If that's still too extreme consider street racing, or even driving too fast in a school zone vs on a highway.
4. I used the criminal act of killing as an extreme example. Copyright infringment is not just a civil tort. It's also a federal crime punishable by time in prison as the FBI warnings on videos keep reminding us. So you're just plain wrong on that count. By the way I don't live in the US so find those warnings particularly annoying. I live in Australia. Our copyright law is unfortunately much stricter but just as often left unenforced.
Hey troll, there's a difference between arguing and posing a question. You'll notice the new york lawyer actually responded and in a useful way. Stop getting your friends to mod you insightful. It's pathetic.
Nice murder strawman! Do you always compare IP law violations to physical assault
Nice misuse of the term strawman. The point was that you can't argue a tool that you legitimately bought and then used illegally makes absolves you of the illegality of your action. You're either too obtuse to understand that point or you're a troll.
I know who you are, have respect for you, and realize that I'm out of my depth arguing legalities with you, but I have to ask, how do you consider download software (or a cable descrambler) different to any other tool? I can buy a steak knife and legally use it to cut up my meat but if I use it to kill someone I can hardly argue that I thought I had the right to do so because I bought it legally.
The descrambler may be a special case - it has only one use. However download software certainly can be used to download a wide variety of things from a wide variety of sources.
I mean most people think, and correctly so in most cases, that if you pay for something, that means it is legal for you to use/have it
Huh? You can buy a steak knife or a chain saw. They have legal and legitimate uses. However if I use to tool to commit murder I shouldn't be surprised when I'm arrested and if I tried to defend myself on the basis that "I bought it legally so anything I do with it should be legal" I'd be seeing a shrink.
Download software is just another tool.
The difference between $200/song and $750/song goes something like this.
RIAA: She knew what she was doing.
Ms Harper: No I didn't. I was 16 and everyone was doing it.
Judge: Okay, I'll accept that. You'll have to take her house, her parent's house and her car as damages, but she can keep the shirt on her back.
RIAA: But your honour, it's a lovely purple coloured silk shirt, and she really did know what she was doing.
Judge: No. She can keep her shirt. Let that be a lesson to you RIAA.
You're talking about a slight improvment in the quality of life of a lot of people at the expense of making it more difficult (or impossible) to reach an adequate standard of living - by which I mean time and money to play and spend with family, not just enough to subsist. I shouldn't be happy about that, nor am I.
I strongly believe there are enough resources to achieve a level of comfort and prosperity for everyone and that this trend of decreasing the overall standard of living and making everyone work longer and harder for less than enough to be happy is destructive and is being put in place by those that seek to profit from the sweat of others.
I'm not sure I should even try to reason with someone who uses the phrase "only a couple of billion people". Just under a third of the world's population is not something you can minimize without losing credibility.
If by "standard of living is skyrocketing" you mean more and more people are able to work long hours for low wages and no freedom of choice in how they live their life, I'd argue that yes this is a better solution in the short term but that what you're sacrificing for this short term gain is the future of us all. People aren't going to be happy and healthy under those conditions. The only people I see benefiting are those that exploit these people under the guise of philanthropy.
When people can afford not only food and shelter, but also the odd luxury, some freedom and some time to spend with their family, then they're getting a fair go. Anything short of that is exploitation, no matter how it's painted.
It's a 'worse' case becasue it doesn't add anything new.
Meaning, it won't be that interesting.
Independantly verifying an existing theory is something so "uninteresting" that scientists have gone to great expense (even sometimes their lives!) to do it.
A positive result says "we were right" - which isn't very useful as far as going forward and doing more theory development.
It's very very useful knowing you're on the right track. Look at the number of ways in which relativity has been verified and at the cost conducting those experiments. Do you really think it's wasteful doing that? Plenty of scientists would disagree.
Going forward requires that you have confidence in the facts that you have at hand which means lots of independent verification where possible.
Now theoreticians have a puzzle to solve, to find a theoretical description that still fits all the old experimental evidence
That's actually a step backwards and a setback. You don't want a new puzzle for a problem that you thought you'd already solved. It means your picture of reality doesn't fit and that you have to go back and try to understand the same old problem in a different way INSTEAD of moving forward and building on what you know. Either way what you need to do is be guided by the truth, not by what you're hoping is true. If you learn that you were wrong and need to take a step back it's still better than moving forward based on incorrect data (because at some point you'd need to go back and correct your mistake which may mean doing every piece of work built on it afresh).
Think of it this way. If you're trying to solve a complex mathematical equation (or proof) and you're almost done, but go back to check your work, would you rather find a mistake at step 2 or step 7? Which one gives you more work to do to get back to where you thought you were?
I think you are missing my point.
My point was that we shouldn't have a preferred bias for what the outcome is, and that we should follow where the facts lead us. For example in your analogy preferring the exist to the forrest being to the south might take you longer or get you killed if in fact the exit is in a different direction and you ignore or try to manipulate the facts.
But if you've built a life and well-known career based on something that appears to just have been invalidated, the typical human reaction isn't to accept it, and say, "oh well, time to cancel all my grants, give up my professorship, and start over, even though I'm 50 and have spent 1/2 my life 'studying' string theory".
There's no need to throw your life away or try to defend an invalidated theory. There are 2 good ways to go here:
1) Apply the knowledge you gained studying the invalidated theory to newer and current theories.
2) Change your focus to that of a scientific historian and continue to write about how the old theory was explored and eventually invalidated.
Continuing to insist that your theory still works if you apply a set of random kludges and ignore new information is a bad way of handling it. (See Einstein and his lack of acceptance of Quantum theory if you want a good example of how to throw a career away and lose touch).
You're talking about the convenience of what the truth is. One result is still inherently no better than the other, it's just more convenient. You still have the same amount of time and resources to spend on which ever theory passes the tests.
If you start to introduce such bias into your thinking, your objectivity as a scientist goes to shit and instead of eliminating a theory on a solid basis, you may end up actually eliminating it incorrectly and set yourself back even more because you may have years, decades or in the worst case centuries of incorrect thinking to fix. Think relativity and the aether.
Its not formulaic but its certainly a damn solid one in many cases and a Bus full of tourist or school kids is *not* a legit military target. To try and play it off as some grey line is f'ing insanity.
Perhaps that's true when you're not in a war ravaged country. What happens when your school kids become soldiers? 10 years old and actively killing others...
The trouble is that warfare is f'ing insanity.
Welcome to the global economy. Also do consider that the cost of living is not the same over there as it is here. Even just within the US, look at Silicon Valley and... I dunno... Kansas? You're comparing apples to bowling balls.
The cost of some things differ. Others not so much. What do you think is the cost of life saving cancer treatment in Kansas vs Silicon Valley vs "Over there"? Realistically what happens is that some products and services are completely out of your reach and aren't offered "over there".
specialization and cost reductions are the very things that have given us the amazing level of material wealth that we enjoy,
I'd much rather see an iPod or computer cost 4 times as much than watch everyone driven to working for $50/month. What's the point of having cheap goods if no one is earning enough to contemplate buying them? It wouldn't be such a bad thing for the environment either if people had to look after their iPods because they could only buy a new one every 3 or 4 years instead of turfing it at the end of the year. Heck, companies may have more incentive to make products that last if they stopped slashing prices and people were still complaining about things dying in a year or two.
f you truly believed that more expensive goods were better for everybody, you would farm your own food by hand and cut firewood by hand for your energy, as there really isn't any way to make those jobs harder.
That wasn't how things worked 30-50 years ago. The extreme situation you portray is just propaganda you've bought into. Companies will fight tooth and nail to get the competitive edge that paying "slave" wages in other countries can give them.
Alive and not alive are classifications we impose. That's all. Nature works as it does regardless of them. Is a virus alive? The only correct answer is: It depends on how you define alive. Getting into these debates is nonsensical. It's the same sort of gibberish as "Is pluto a planet?". There's no natural answer.
So while I wouldn't trade my life for theirs (as an understatement), their lives (and the lives of their families) are appreciably BETTER - not worse - due to Apple's contractor's factory.
Your life and the lives of others in your country are made worse, because they have to compete with those who are only paid $50/month. What happens if you allow wages like these to thrive is that everyone's standard of living eventually decreases and everyone can be expected to live in squalor and be paid peanuts.
Oh and one more thing. I'm not Lebanese, but that shouldn't matter. I've known nice people of all nationalities and arseholes of all nationalities. Guess which group you fit into. I find your rascism disgusting. Talk about polluting the environment! You're a human turd. Worse you're a human turd who decides to talk about how clean he is.
No. You made a piss-poor attempt at a troll about fitting three trolleyloads into a bag, which is total bollocks as I already pointed out.
Oh yeah I'm the one trolling. Go get some lessons in comprehension, twit!
Tough luck. Are you a man or a mouse?
I'm a man, not a mouse, and not a troll like your good self. I'm bound by the laws and social customs of men, and I know how to fit into society. I don't live under a bridge and do as I please.
Do they allow tinfoil hats?
Oh yes I must be a nutty conspiracy theorist (even though the stores are making a mint selling crappy bags to morons like yourself). Tell you what, save the environment the stress of processing alfoil and put the bag over your head. It'll even double as a cosmetic aid.
Aren't you used to that?
Nope, you're the one who lives under a bridge buddy.
Tell you what, if you stop wasting oxygen we've got a deal.
Tell ya what I've got this new environmentally friendly oxygen in this here bag to sell you. The free oxygen isn't good for the environment but this stuff actually belches fairy dust when you inhale it instead of expelling CO2. Only $100 a bag.
The wonderful irony of a wanker like you calling me a troll. Here, take your piss weak insults and straw men with you. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out.
More expensive plastic bags means less people use the bags only once, they reuse or find alternate means of carrying groceries
Nice little theory. I suspect in practice that people just wear the cost of the plastic bags, use them and bitch about using them, or praise themselves for using enviro bags even though they break quite often, they don't get the hundreds of uses (vs plastic bags) that are wildly claimed by biased companies, and they may be a net DRAIN on the environment rather than a benefit. The fact is people aren't that organized. They don't always remember to bring their bags and are quite likely to say stuff it and just buy more enviro bags (or plastic bags) if they reach the counter and realize they've left their old enviro bags behind. Meanwhile they're being used for everything from storage bags for homeless people to handy bags for the garage. They're environmentally friendly right? So using more must be a good thing. So if I start using them for everything and use more than I'd use plastic bags, I can still pat myself on the back while I ruin our environment because hey it's doubleplusgood according to the group think.
It's the same way that increased fuel prices reduces usage with a net benefit in reduced emissions of NOx, CO2, etc.. The "energy owners" benefit from more profit, but the environment benefits too.
Oh yeah that really works. Have you seen the trend for fuel emissions lately? Or are those pesky facts not important enough to get in the way of you being a goddamn sheep? Instead of ruining struggling families with crippling fuel prices what we need to do is start really working on alternative fuels and collecting and converting the energy with a minimal impact. Unfortunately you have to convince rich oil men to give up a very lucrative source of revenue to accomplish that. Fuels need to be taxed more heavily but that money should either be going back into alternative fuel research, or be distributed elsewhere instead of encouraging the rich to get richer selling us oil. When it starts to become unprofitable to sell carbon based fuels and is more profitable to sell alternatives that don't fuck up the environment, only then will we see reduction in emissions. What you're suggesting - letting oil tycoons prosper by raising the price is so fucking counter productive that I question the sanity let alone logic of the bunk you're spreading.
Hello I'm sheik Rattle and Roll. I see you're having a pollution problem. I can help fix that by selling oil to you for more denar. Make us both happy.
How is that illogical?
I already explained that there is a conflict of interest. What do I need to do to get the message through? Tattoo it on my forehead and point at it repeatedly? A supermarket chain telling you enviro bags are good for the environment and selling them is no different to tobacco companies claiming cigarettes are good for you and selling them. You can't rely on the source of the information or any source you suspect has been influenced by the corporation.
I use some organic hemp bags, some cotton (unbleached), some plastic (I have a bad memory and don't always remember to take the bags with me).
Are you a South Park fan? Smug alert! Do you spend the day sniffing your own farts?
Even if you truly do remember your bags you're in the fucking minority.
At our store we use recycled brown paper bags, we're the only shop in our city that doesn't use plastic AFAIK, I guess I'm just following the crowd?
If you work at the store and make the policy, good for you. Try also offering incentives for using the packaging the goods are delivered in. If you don't work at the store, I guess rather than following the crowd you're taking credit for the work of others.
Yeah, your customers are all thieves anyway who would avoid paying you if they had a chance. Much better to add hurdles in their way that actually detract from the value of your product by making it only usable in a narrow set of pre-mandated ways. Don't forget to hold onto the keys as tightly as you possibly can and make them jump through hoops to use your product legitimately. Then when your product fails because it's unusable shite point to this one example and rattle your sabres.
How about I find one game commerical game that flopped and decree that "See, writing games for profit doesn't work"! Just as rational as your point of view that since people have taken this guy's game and not paid, all non-DRM games must be flawed and doomed to be stolen. I should just point out that since every popular game gets cracked, and people get it without paying, by your own logic DRM is a bad solution.
Don't let the fact that there are many intermediate ways to manage the problem (eg. shareware or nagware, corporate sponsorship) get in the way of a perfectly good rant.
Do you have a family? As a new dad (my boy's just 8 days old), and has just heard some rather awful news about a close family friend being terminally ill and requiring expensive treatment to buy her another 12-18 months, I have to say I'm feeling very bound to my established career even though I most certainly am not always happy about it.
3) Now you have to shoot it down. You may not realize this, but a passenger jet is FREAKING HUGE. One missile isn't going to take out a jet with 2, 3, or 4 engines. You're going to have to really go to work on that bad boy... and now it's just an out of control ball of metal and fire... braaaavoooo.
You seem to be confusing shooting down a jet with playing space invaders.
You don't need to take out 4 engines (thought that's certainly doable, despite what you say). A plane needs an intact tail for stabilization, and most large passenger aircraft have a single tail which conveniently holds your elevator and rudder control surfaces. Not to mention that the wing and belly of the plane usually hold plenty of jet fuel (mixed with air if the tanks aren't completely full).
I wish planes were as robust as you seem to imagine.
Your argument appears to be that as large corporations helped to change a habit with a solution that may have benefited them too that you should simply revert to the more environmentally damaging behaviour. Who's being illogical?
You either misunderstood my argument in a spectacular way, or you just constructed a very weak straw man.
My argument was that large corporations helped change a habit with a solution that benefited them and DID NOT benefit the environment. Years from now they'll be talking about how these bags made things worse not better. I'm tired of smug sheep who've been brainwashed into thinking these bags are fantastic looking down on me for not fitting into the sheep mentality. It's no different to security theatre. You choose to believe the large corporations who've done well in creating a conflict of interest (since they profit if you buy the bags) despite independent sources stating that these bags don't help. Presumably you do so because it's the trend, without analysing any facts beyond what you've been fed by these corporations. So I believe it is most certainly you that's being illogical, and a sheep to boot.