So the producer cannot be trusted to fairly value their product, but the user can?
If there are other terms of the licensing agreement that the user finds inconvenient, onerous, or unjustified are users free to ignore those as well? For example, if I believe that that the GNU copyleft is a pain in the butt, should I feel free to include copyleft code in my programs without redistributing the source?
You've gained nothing, but you've also lost nothing. You cannot base revenue projections on the assumption that I would purchase your product if no pirated version was available because this assumption doesn't take into consideration the fact that I might just decide to "do without".
This certainly sounds like a reasonable argument, at the individual level, but I suspect it blows up somewhere in the translation to the collective.
The closest analogy I can think of is that of toll roads and bridges. As you've argued, the builder of a toll bridge has lost nothing if you cheat on the toll. The fixed costs are already committed, and the marginal cost of increased maintenance due to one car crossing the bridge is vanishingly small. You can even tell yourself that if you had to pay, you'd simply drive the extra 10 miles to the closest free crossing. This all seems entirely reasonable, but the collective effect of everyone symmetrically applying this argument is that no one would pay the toll, and the bridge wouldn't get paid for. Is this a desireable or just result?
Questions of economics or legality aside, doesn't it seem exploitive, bad karma, or at least impolite, to benefit from someone else's labor without giving them something in return? (Excepting freely given gifts of course...)
I did read the post "BlackHawk Down = Bullshit". It is a statment of opinion not an argument.
Here are the gaps of logic and fact that I found most irriating:
It asserts that because oil ompanies had interests in Somalia that the ONLY reason the US and UN intervened in Somalia was to protect those interests. Though no evidence is presented in the post, I'm willing to grant that this might have been A reason, but no logical or factual evidence is given for it being the ONLY reason.
Barre is characterized as a pro-US. True enough from 1978 onward. However it is worth noting that he came to power in 1969 with support from the USSR, and was a Soviet client until 1978 when the USSR worked out a better accomodation with Ethiopia and prevented Barre from taking Ogaden from Ethiopia.
The post conflates Aydid's resistance to the UN/US intervention with Somalian resistance. The two are not the same. The whole reason for the crisis was that Somalia was in a state of civil war with multiple factions and shifting loyalties.
The post asserts that "Kill all Arabs" is a sub-text of the film. This has me scratching my head since I saw the film and didn't recognize a single Arab in it.
>The US, USSR, and Europe were involved in the region for centuries
Don't forget the Arabs and the Ethiopian Emperors. Imperialism is not just a western phenomena
>we may well have to let a country sort out its problems for itself in order to eventually emerge as a cohesive and free nation
Too glib by a long shot. If nothing else, refugees fleeing the fighting pile up on the borders of neighboring nations straining their govenments and economies. Furthermore, disident groups in disintegrating counties often form alliances with disident groups in otherwise stable countries. If you live in a crowded neigborhood you can't afford to let your neighbor's house burn down unattended.
I think the best we can hope to do is stumble from conflict to conflict trying to figure out whether we are stumbling into WWI (now widely regarded as a pointless slaughter) or WWII (now widely regarded as a just war).
It has long been my suspicion that the UN and US didn't intervene in Rwanda exactly because of their experience in Somailia. The massacres in Rwanda took place just one year after the US left Somailia subsequent to the events of "Blackhawk Down". I wonder if there weren't folks in the US government and UN saying "Been there, done that, don't want to do it again". Of course after the genocide in Rwanda lots of folks were full of helpful suggetions about how the US or UN could have prevented it from happening. Oddly, some of the same folks had been quite critical of the US and UN intervention in Somalia. It seems to me very much a case of damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
Thank you for contributing substansive information to the discussion!
I highly recommend Michael Maren's book "The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity" and his web site www.netnomad.com.
His perspective is bleak and cynical, but I think he states a truth when he says that it is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance in a civil war without taking sides, and that if you pretend you are not taking sides you will only make matters worse.
75% of the Comp Sci degree is well rounded crap from all the figting factions of the Liberal Arts college demanding to brain wash the masses. And they detest computer programmers and their rosy futures of pockets full of cash
Why go to a Chinese restaurant and then complain that you can't get a pizza? If you didn't want a liberal arts education why did you enroll in a a liberal arts university? As many folks in this thread have pointed out there are lots of good technical and vocational schools available. If what you want is a technical education then a technical school is a natural choice. I've worked with some very sharp people who went to technical schools.
Given that there are excellent technical schools out there, why rag on liberal arts universities and colleges for not being technical schools? I have found my well rounded liberal arts education invaluable. If we turn the liberal arts programs into trade schools where are folks like me supposed to go?
Consult the old Microsoft Press book about famous legendary programmers "Programmers at Work"... a few of the oldest had collegiate training most taught themselves.
This is incorrect. Of the 19 programmers profiled only Toru Iwatani, designer of Pac Man, explicitly said he had no formal training. Five didn't mention their education. One dropped out after two years at Harvard. Five had Bachelor's Degrees, two more had Master's degrees, and four beyond that had a Ph.D. A couple of the Bachelor's degrees were Computer Science but others were in "well rounded crap" areas like math, philosophy, and music. The advanced degrees were all in Math and/or Computer Science.
Re:It's been said before...
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Two Points:
One, I think it an absurd trvialization to classify curbside check-in as an essential liberty.
Two, you are indulging in fatuously binary thinking: these terrorists could not have been stopped by any but the most draconian security measures, therefore all security measures are useless.
There was a period in the 70's when planes were being hijacked on a monthly if not weekly basis. These hijackings stopped (for the most part) when airlines universely implemented the security measures we are now familiar with, including the placment of armed sky marshalls on random flights.
Just because there is a small pool of terrorists you cannot deter doesn't mean you can ignore the much larger pool of potential hijackers that you can deter.
I also believe that taking over airplanes with box cutters and razor blades has just become a lot more unlikely. You can intimidate people with very simple weapons as long folks beleive that by going along with you, they have good odds of surviving. Most hijackings have ended with many of the passengers being safely released, so folks were reasonably reluctant to challenge hijackers despite outnumbering them 20 to 1. This week's disaster has re-written the hijacking "script" so
I suspect that the next hijacker who tries to take over a plane with anything less then explosives or automatic weapons is going to get beaten to death.
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So the producer cannot be trusted to fairly value their product, but the user can?
If there are other terms of the licensing agreement that the user finds inconvenient, onerous, or unjustified are users free to ignore those as well? For example, if I believe that that the GNU copyleft is a pain in the butt, should I feel free to include copyleft code in my programs without redistributing the source?
So your are suggesting the appropriate response to someone who provides a public benefit in expectation of a financial reward is to say
"Sucker!"?
This certainly sounds like a reasonable argument, at the individual level, but I suspect it blows up somewhere in the translation to the collective.
The closest analogy I can think of is that of toll roads and bridges. As you've argued, the builder of a toll bridge has lost nothing if you cheat on the toll. The fixed costs are already committed, and the marginal cost of increased maintenance due to one car crossing the bridge is vanishingly small. You can even tell yourself that if you had to pay, you'd simply drive the extra 10 miles to the closest free crossing. This all seems entirely reasonable, but the collective effect of everyone symmetrically applying this argument is that no one would pay the toll, and the bridge wouldn't get paid for. Is this a desireable or just result?
Questions of economics or legality aside, doesn't it seem exploitive, bad karma, or at least impolite, to benefit from someone else's labor without giving them something in return? (Excepting freely given gifts of course
I did read the post "BlackHawk Down = Bullshit". It is a statment of opinion not an argument.
Here are the gaps of logic and fact that I found most irriating:
It asserts that because oil ompanies had interests in Somalia that the ONLY reason the US and UN intervened in Somalia was to protect those interests. Though no evidence is presented in the post, I'm willing to grant that this might have been A reason, but no logical or factual evidence is given for it being the ONLY reason.
Barre is characterized as a pro-US. True enough from 1978 onward. However it is worth noting that he came to power in 1969 with support from the USSR, and was a Soviet client until 1978 when the USSR worked out a better accomodation with Ethiopia and prevented Barre from taking Ogaden from Ethiopia.
The post conflates Aydid's resistance to the UN/US intervention with Somalian resistance. The two are not the same. The whole reason for the crisis was that Somalia was in a state of civil war with multiple factions and shifting loyalties.
The post asserts that "Kill all Arabs" is a sub-text of the film. This has me scratching my head since I saw the film and didn't recognize a single Arab in it.
I think the best we can hope to do is stumble from conflict to conflict trying to figure out whether we are stumbling into WWI (now widely regarded as a pointless slaughter) or WWII (now widely regarded as a just war).
It has long been my suspicion that the UN and US didn't intervene in Rwanda exactly because of their experience in Somailia. The massacres in Rwanda took place just one year after the US left Somailia subsequent to the events of "Blackhawk Down". I wonder if there weren't folks in the US government and UN saying "Been there, done that, don't want to do it again". Of course after the genocide in Rwanda lots of folks were full of helpful suggetions about how the US or UN could have prevented it from happening. Oddly, some of the same folks had been quite critical of the US and UN intervention in Somalia. It seems to me very much a case of damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
Thank you for contributing substansive information to the discussion!
I highly recommend Michael Maren's book "The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity" and his web site www.netnomad.com.
His perspective is bleak and cynical, but I think he states a truth when he says that it is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance in a civil war without taking sides, and that if you pretend you are not taking sides you will only make matters worse.
75% of the Comp Sci degree is well rounded crap from all the figting factions of the Liberal Arts college demanding to brain wash the masses. And they detest computer programmers and their rosy futures of pockets full of cash
Why go to a Chinese restaurant and then complain that you can't get a pizza? If you didn't want a liberal arts education why did you enroll in a a liberal arts university? As many folks in this thread have pointed out there are lots of good technical and vocational schools available. If what you want is a technical education then a technical school is a natural choice. I've worked with some very sharp people who went to technical schools.
Given that there are excellent technical schools out there, why rag on liberal arts universities and colleges for not being technical schools? I have found my well rounded liberal arts education invaluable. If we turn the liberal arts programs into trade schools where are folks like me supposed to go?
Consult the old Microsoft Press book about famous legendary programmers "Programmers at Work"... a few of the oldest had collegiate training most taught themselves.
This is incorrect. Of the 19 programmers profiled only Toru Iwatani, designer of Pac Man, explicitly said he had no formal training. Five didn't mention their education. One dropped out after two years at Harvard. Five had Bachelor's Degrees, two more had Master's degrees, and four beyond that had a Ph.D. A couple of the Bachelor's degrees were Computer Science but others were in "well rounded crap" areas like math, philosophy, and music. The advanced degrees were all in Math and/or Computer Science.
Two Points:
One, I think it an absurd trvialization to classify curbside check-in as an essential liberty.
Two, you are indulging in fatuously binary thinking: these terrorists could not have been stopped by any but the most draconian security measures, therefore all security measures are useless.
There was a period in the 70's when planes were being hijacked on a monthly if not weekly basis. These hijackings stopped (for the most part) when airlines universely implemented the security measures we are now familiar with, including the placment of armed sky marshalls on random flights.
Just because there is a small pool of terrorists you cannot deter doesn't mean you can ignore the much larger pool of potential hijackers that you can deter.
I also believe that taking over airplanes with box cutters and razor blades has just become a lot more unlikely. You can intimidate people with very simple weapons as long folks beleive that by going along with you, they have good odds of surviving. Most hijackings have ended with many of the passengers being safely released, so folks were reasonably reluctant to challenge hijackers despite outnumbering them 20 to 1. This week's disaster has re-written the hijacking "script" so
I suspect that the next hijacker who tries to take over a plane with anything less then explosives or automatic weapons is going to get beaten to death.