"Lets get one thing straight, websites like youtube weren't ever responsible for content posted on them"
You are incorrect. Pre-DMCA, website operators were liable for the content they hosted, and were being successfully sued. Websites "like youtube" did not exist because of this problem.
The DMCA is a big complex law with many different parts. Parts of it do exactly what they were intended to and are incredibly terrible. Parts of it were well intended, but too easily abused. One particular provision does appear to have had the very sort of positive effect it was intended to. Sorry if that's too nuanced for you.
I don't see how that would work.
A) They can't block his resignation.
B) Not being able to vote is equivalent to voting 'no' on everything, which only helps the opposition.
A Senator incapable of voting has actually been intentionally elected to the Senate (Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1856). They couldn't expel him, so his seat sat empty. The motives in that case are a bit more noble than this one, of course.
"The Republicans are going to throw every monkey-wrench they can find so that they won't just predict Obama's failure, they'll ensure it."
Nah. I mean, if the Republicans all stuck together in a cohesive bloc dedicated to obstruction, they could keep stuff fairly well messed up. But these are individuals who need to will need to get reelected in a bit, and they've got to be looking at how well hard line adherence to the Republican party line has served them in recent times. Take some random Republican Senator - sure he might like to see the Democrats look bad, but he also needs for himself to look good. The next Congressional session isn't going to offer many opportunities to look good without getting along with Democrats. I'd expect the Repulicans to start being almost as enthusiastically bipartisan as both sides always claim to be.
The flip side is that Democrats won't get as much reward for close adherence to the party as they used to. The leadership will get there way so much they won't need to lavish rewards on cooperators. So the way for Democrats to get more of what they want (press, pork, whatever) will be defection: "standing up to the party leadership".
Eventually, the Democrats may become sufficiently fractuous, and the Republican brand may become sufficiently undamaged that unity will serve Rs better... but that's a while down the road yet. Obamas challenge, IMO, will be to keep his own party in line.
"How would you feel about this man if it was your child's photograph on this man's notebook."
How would you feel if it was your notebook I said had a picture of a child in it?
If our judicial system doesn't work right, we should fix it; I'm not taking a position on whether it works right in general. But let's assume we carefully figure out a set of rules and get our judicial system to work right for all manner of crimes from shoplifting to murder; rules that properly balance the rights of the (possibly innocent) accused. Turning around and throwing those rules aside for certain crimes is madness. That's what we mean by "think of the children" stuff: it doesn't help children any to do an intentionally bad job running the justice system for crimes related to children.
What you read is correct: Only a 2/3 vote of the Senate can expel a member. This might seem unreasonable in the case of a felony conviction fro corruption like this. But the drafters of the constitution (rightly, IMO) wanted to make it very difficult for one branch of government to pull dirty tricks on another, or for anyone to override the will of the voters.
Based on my moderate understanding of Alaskan politics, the smart money says Stevens will lose the election now. It was already close, and corruption amongst the old-guard republicans is a big campaign issue. Stevens had put a lot on being exonerated here.
Even if he does win, resignation seems certain. None of his Republican "friends" are going to want him around generating press, and if he decides to ignore them and hang on just because he can, they might get pissed off, which is the only way you'll see 67 votes for expulsion.
So the election looks like the popular mayor of the states largest city vs. an unspecified Republican to be named by Sarah Palin. Hard to think there won't be an enthusiasm gap there.
"programs that are built with the expectation of 'the sky's the limit,' and hoping hardware will catch up to it."
It's not "hoping hardware will catch it"; it's noting hardware has. If I write a program or design a website that will run quite nicely on 99% of the computers people have in their homes right now, how much time and effort is it reasonable for me to spend supporting the oldest, slowest 1% ? Particularly if next year that will be 0.1%?
The inference that it's just laziness on programmers part is unwarranted. Making software work on slower hardware means more work and/or software that doesn't do as much or look as cool. Software gets written because there is a market to pay for it, or because software authors think it's fun. The rate at which new software is created for old hardware simply reflects that there isn't much market for it, and it isn't as fun to write.
Whether for fun or money , people who write for low-powered computers these days don't write for old PC's. They write for phones. Which is back to the new gizmos...
"Whether or not you want to is completely irrelevant. "
Not to my evaluation of value. Games I don't want to play are not of value to me.
"The people at blockbuster know what they are getting."
They are getting a videotape that may or may not have anything particular on it. With Steam I'm getting future access to a game that may or may not happen. The legal disclaimers about how little they are responsible if it doesn't work out the way you expect are similar between the blockbuster rental agreement and the Steam TOS. (Yes, I've read both) On the practical way it has worked out in the past for me, Steam is slightly ahead - I've gotten a bad tape from Blockbuster and had to make a trip back to the store, to find out they didn't have another copy. A problem that is notably impossible on a service such as Steam that removes such stupid hassles of the outdated physical copy ownership model.
I know exactly what I'm getting from Steam. I've read their agreements and disclaimers. I understand how they could theoretically hose me in the future if they felt like it. I'll knowingly take the chance that they won't in the next week before I feel I've gotten value for my money. It's worth it to me. Knowing all this, I still like the service they provide more than owning a disc. It's better.
"You could have reinstalled the OS. You had it at one point or you could have never run the game in the first place."
Ya, hours spent installing Win95 for the 5 minutes of nostalgia before I realize the graphics on a 1995 game are too crap to deal with anymore. Good times. Old games are not a thing of value I'm giving up. As a practical matter, the chances of being able to play old Steam games in the future looks like a vastly better bet than my not losing the original disk and having a suitable system for a game I purchased.
"This is the crux of the issue."
I entirely agree.
"For some reason people think giving up the concept of ownership is a good idea."
I also agree; I'm not interested in owning old games. I believe I understand what that reason is, and have tried to explain it to you, but I'm out of steam (no pun intended). For further guidance, go down to Blockbuster and ask any of the people there waiting in line for the chance to pay for something that isn't ownership. They, like me, don't see the problem in engaging in transactions that don't involve ownership.
We give them our money and get what we want. Owning a thing isn't our goal.
There's a difference between yeah I'd rent something and You'd walk into a store pay full price for a TV and agree if the salesman said, "Hey just so you know we can come to your house and take this back at any time. No notice required"?
And there are differences between either of those and what Steam offers.
"This paragraph is the definition of slippery slope. Yeah I'm giving things up but it's ok I never use them. That's a logical fallacy."
You misunderstand. I am willing to give them up as part of the bargain with Steam, a bargain I understand wholly, agree to, and even like. The fact I never used the privileges I might have got with purchase that I do not get with Steam is an aside; meant purely to help you understand why I don't care about giving these up.
As an example, yes, with Steam I may not be able to go back and play games I paid for now at some point a couple years in the future. With purchased games, I have tried to do this exactly once. Failure. I no longer have the OS it required. It's not like tainted meat. I'm not going to die. I'm just not going to be allowed to play a game that probably won't run anyway. I pay for games on steam when I expect I'll get my moneys worth of fun out of them inside a week, at most. If a game isn't fun enough to do that, forget the money, it's not worth my time. Value beyond that week is a bonus. Beyond a month doesn't exist; I'll be playing something else.
Owning a thing in perpetuity is not what Steam offers. If want entertainment products you can own in perpetuity: a) don't use Steam. b) for Gods sake, why?
"What if we use more highly refined fuel that carries more energy per unit? "
If you know of a way to store energy much more densely than gasoline, do tell. Besides, the point of increasing MPG is presumably not to have a smaller tank in the car, it's to use less oil as it comes out of the ground. "More refined" petroleum (jet fuel) doesn't help.
Other than that, Your ideas seem a bit speculative, but that's OK. There's lots of things, speculative and practical, we might do to reduce the energy required by transportaion. But not many of them wind up looking much like driving around in cars much the way we do now and just having them be more efficient. You might argue around the detailed math of the GP, but it's not completely irrelevant. His larger point stands: More efficient car technology doesn't look like it's going to be the better part of a solution to our energy crisis.
Yes, I changed it to rent, because it seems a better analogy to what Steam does. I can try to use as neutral language as possible:
Would I engage in a transaction whereby I exchanged money for the use of a TV, understanding that the provider of the TV would be taking it back at the end of the specified term, providing that the price asked was acceptable to me in light of transaction terms specified?
In that case the answer is: Yes. Yes, I would rent a TV.
As far as Steam, you can make it sound how ever bad you want, but I'm having a hard time being outraged. I pay money for fun; I get fun. The total cost for fun, figuring money and hassle, is much lower than it used to be. I understand that to make things easier for me, I'm giving up certain rights and privileges (that I never used anyway). I'm OK with that.
Anyone can correct you, it only requires that you be wrong.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.
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The Walking House
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· Score: 1
I stand by my statement that NASA rovers, along with basically all man-made off-road vehicles, use wheels, sometimes tracks. Those are not off-road vehicles; they are in-lab toys.
People, even NASA, talk about all sorts of impractical things. They use the ones that work.
Legs are great for looking cool moving a few feet across a lab somewhere; they get press. Getting press doing pointless things is a NASA specialty. But when they go to the Moon or Mars, they bring wheels. When people go off-road on earth, they bring wheels. Wheels are better.
Would you rent a car you had to give back? People rent games all the time.
I see no problem with Steam offering games on terms different than exist elsewhere. The whole problem here is that traditional physical-goods distribution & business models aren't a very good fit for digital goods. We need new models. Steam isn't perfect, but strikes me as one of the better attempts so far.
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.
on
The Walking House
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· Score: 1
"Jah, legs are good for traversing terrain that is uneven, e.g., NASA looks hard at walking robots for their extra-planetary adventures. So wheels are OK as long as you have roads or a relatively flat surface."
Um, NASA rovers, along with basically all man-made off-road vehicles, use wheels. Sometimes tracks. Never legs except for artistic reasons. Mechanical legs are a big failure-prone, inefficient PITA. Just making your wheels twice as big is cheap, easy and effective.
"Maybe someone in the U.S. is far too accustomed to lots of pavement and a sedentary lifestyle that might be lacking in less developed areas?"
Maybe someone in the wherever you're from is too accustomed to sitting around day-dreaming about how to get around outside. People who actually do it use wheels.
I was speaking of branching and merging within the source control system. If you want to call any different version of code a branch, then of course those exist.
Mind you, our "production" branch is binaries handed off to fulfillment every 3-6 months when a release happens, so if I'm not going to break that if I check in the wrong thing. I guess I don't do many "experiments" with the potential to break much else; I seldom leave for the day with anything not checked in.
Whatever; I'll not debate whether you think my project is of "consequence" as I don't care.
SVN works great for us. If you don't feel the need for more branch management than it provides, I highly recommend it. If you feel the need for greater branch management capabilities, you might want something else.
Ok, now we just need a new word that means "the part of code that's not comments", because it's useful to be able to refer to that. You know, what used to be called 'code'.
Comments do not affect the function of the program, and therefore are not code. Just like whitespace (in most sane languages).
They got sent a registration form with Princess's name helpfully filled in. You can have as many blank registration forms as you like and fill in any name you want. That doesn't mean jack until the registrations get accepted, which in this case, has not even been attempted.
"Honestly, if you've never seen the need to branch-and-merge, you've never worked on a large project. Period."
You can always tell when someone is making an unfounded claim based on their own narrow experience being all that matters: They say "Period" at the end.
Some large projects are organized and run in ways that require branching and merging. Some are organized and run in ways that don't. Generally these decisions are mandated by factors that have nothing to with any developers preference about source control or anything else, but are based on the external nature of the project at hand or management decisions or whatever.
As far as reccomendations: I work on a project that does very little branching & merging. We use SVN, and I like it (Tortoise in particular) very much, so I recommend it if you don't need a lot of branching and merging. If you do need a lot of branching and merging, I've heard it's a PITA, so you should check into that. You probably know if you do, or will do, a lot of branching and merging, and you should choose an SVN system based on that, and not worry what anyone else thinks it says about the size of your project or ability to form teams.
I saw pictures of the Moller prototype and read about how they were taking pre-orders when I was the same age that my kids are now.
They have the "range, safety, and power" of whatever model of crane lifts them off the ground for another round of suspiciously-cropped publicity stills.
Moller was a fraud 20 years ago; now it is a just joke.
"I can understand why the Little Big Planet studios were afraid of this."
Horseshit. Millions of their potential customers are Muslims who might be offended enough by this to not buy their game; that's what they are "afraid" of.
Slashdot Mirror
"Lets get one thing straight, websites like youtube weren't ever responsible for content posted on them"
You are incorrect. Pre-DMCA, website operators were liable for the content they hosted, and were being successfully sued. Websites "like youtube" did not exist because of this problem.
The DMCA is a big complex law with many different parts. Parts of it do exactly what they were intended to and are incredibly terrible. Parts of it were well intended, but too easily abused. One particular provision does appear to have had the very sort of positive effect it was intended to. Sorry if that's too nuanced for you.
I don't see how that would work.
A) They can't block his resignation.
B) Not being able to vote is equivalent to voting 'no' on everything, which only helps the opposition.
A Senator incapable of voting has actually been intentionally elected to the Senate (Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1856). They couldn't expel him, so his seat sat empty. The motives in that case are a bit more noble than this one, of course.
"The Republicans are going to throw every monkey-wrench they can find so that they won't just predict Obama's failure, they'll ensure it."
Nah. I mean, if the Republicans all stuck together in a cohesive bloc dedicated to obstruction, they could keep stuff fairly well messed up. But these are individuals who need to will need to get reelected in a bit, and they've got to be looking at how well hard line adherence to the Republican party line has served them in recent times. Take some random Republican Senator - sure he might like to see the Democrats look bad, but he also needs for himself to look good. The next Congressional session isn't going to offer many opportunities to look good without getting along with Democrats. I'd expect the Repulicans to start being almost as enthusiastically bipartisan as both sides always claim to be.
The flip side is that Democrats won't get as much reward for close adherence to the party as they used to. The leadership will get there way so much they won't need to lavish rewards on cooperators. So the way for Democrats to get more of what they want (press, pork, whatever) will be defection: "standing up to the party leadership".
Eventually, the Democrats may become sufficiently fractuous, and the Republican brand may become sufficiently undamaged that unity will serve Rs better... but that's a while down the road yet. Obamas challenge, IMO, will be to keep his own party in line.
But then you can't pretend it's not a search and you don't need a warrant.
"How would you feel about this man if it was your child's photograph on this man's notebook."
How would you feel if it was your notebook I said had a picture of a child in it?
If our judicial system doesn't work right, we should fix it; I'm not taking a position on whether it works right in general. But let's assume we carefully figure out a set of rules and get our judicial system to work right for all manner of crimes from shoplifting to murder; rules that properly balance the rights of the (possibly innocent) accused. Turning around and throwing those rules aside for certain crimes is madness. That's what we mean by "think of the children" stuff: it doesn't help children any to do an intentionally bad job running the justice system for crimes related to children.
What you read is correct: Only a 2/3 vote of the Senate can expel a member. This might seem unreasonable in the case of a felony conviction fro corruption like this. But the drafters of the constitution (rightly, IMO) wanted to make it very difficult for one branch of government to pull dirty tricks on another, or for anyone to override the will of the voters.
Based on my moderate understanding of Alaskan politics, the smart money says Stevens will lose the election now. It was already close, and corruption amongst the old-guard republicans is a big campaign issue. Stevens had put a lot on being exonerated here.
Even if he does win, resignation seems certain. None of his Republican "friends" are going to want him around generating press, and if he decides to ignore them and hang on just because he can, they might get pissed off, which is the only way you'll see 67 votes for expulsion.
So the election looks like the popular mayor of the states largest city vs. an unspecified Republican to be named by Sarah Palin. Hard to think there won't be an enthusiasm gap there.
"programs that are built with the expectation of 'the sky's the limit,' and hoping hardware will catch up to it."
It's not "hoping hardware will catch it"; it's noting hardware has. If I write a program or design a website that will run quite nicely on 99% of the computers people have in their homes right now, how much time and effort is it reasonable for me to spend supporting the oldest, slowest 1% ? Particularly if next year that will be 0.1%?
The inference that it's just laziness on programmers part is unwarranted. Making software work on slower hardware means more work and/or software that doesn't do as much or look as cool. Software gets written because there is a market to pay for it, or because software authors think it's fun. The rate at which new software is created for old hardware simply reflects that there isn't much market for it, and it isn't as fun to write.
Whether for fun or money , people who write for low-powered computers these days don't write for old PC's. They write for phones. Which is back to the new gizmos...
"Whether or not you want to is completely irrelevant. "
Not to my evaluation of value. Games I don't want to play are not of value to me.
"The people at blockbuster know what they are getting."
They are getting a videotape that may or may not have anything particular on it. With Steam I'm getting future access to a game that may or may not happen. The legal disclaimers about how little they are responsible if it doesn't work out the way you expect are similar between the blockbuster rental agreement and the Steam TOS. (Yes, I've read both) On the practical way it has worked out in the past for me, Steam is slightly ahead - I've gotten a bad tape from Blockbuster and had to make a trip back to the store, to find out they didn't have another copy. A problem that is notably impossible on a service such as Steam that removes such stupid hassles of the outdated physical copy ownership model.
I know exactly what I'm getting from Steam. I've read their agreements and disclaimers. I understand how they could theoretically hose me in the future if they felt like it. I'll knowingly take the chance that they won't in the next week before I feel I've gotten value for my money. It's worth it to me. Knowing all this, I still like the service they provide more than owning a disc. It's better.
"You could have reinstalled the OS. You had it at one point or you could have never run the game in the first place."
Ya, hours spent installing Win95 for the 5 minutes of nostalgia before I realize the graphics on a 1995 game are too crap to deal with anymore. Good times. Old games are not a thing of value I'm giving up. As a practical matter, the chances of being able to play old Steam games in the future looks like a vastly better bet than my not losing the original disk and having a suitable system for a game I purchased.
"This is the crux of the issue."
I entirely agree.
"For some reason people think giving up the concept of ownership is a good idea."
I also agree; I'm not interested in owning old games. I believe I understand what that reason is, and have tried to explain it to you, but I'm out of steam (no pun intended). For further guidance, go down to Blockbuster and ask any of the people there waiting in line for the chance to pay for something that isn't ownership. They, like me, don't see the problem in engaging in transactions that don't involve ownership.
We give them our money and get what we want. Owning a thing isn't our goal.
There's a difference between yeah I'd rent something and You'd walk into a store pay full price for a TV and agree if the salesman said, "Hey just so you know we can come to your house and take this back at any time. No notice required"?
And there are differences between either of those and what Steam offers.
"This paragraph is the definition of slippery slope. Yeah I'm giving things up but it's ok I never use them. That's a logical fallacy."
You misunderstand. I am willing to give them up as part of the bargain with Steam, a bargain I understand wholly, agree to, and even like. The fact I never used the privileges I might have got with purchase that I do not get with Steam is an aside; meant purely to help you understand why I don't care about giving these up.
As an example, yes, with Steam I may not be able to go back and play games I paid for now at some point a couple years in the future. With purchased games, I have tried to do this exactly once. Failure. I no longer have the OS it required. It's not like tainted meat. I'm not going to die. I'm just not going to be allowed to play a game that probably won't run anyway. I pay for games on steam when I expect I'll get my moneys worth of fun out of them inside a week, at most. If a game isn't fun enough to do that, forget the money, it's not worth my time. Value beyond that week is a bonus. Beyond a month doesn't exist; I'll be playing something else.
Owning a thing in perpetuity is not what Steam offers. If want entertainment products you can own in perpetuity: a) don't use Steam. b) for Gods sake, why?
"What if we use more highly refined fuel that carries more energy per unit? "
If you know of a way to store energy much more densely than gasoline, do tell. Besides, the point of increasing MPG is presumably not to have a smaller tank in the car, it's to use less oil as it comes out of the ground. "More refined" petroleum (jet fuel) doesn't help.
Other than that, Your ideas seem a bit speculative, but that's OK. There's lots of things, speculative and practical, we might do to reduce the energy required by transportaion. But not many of them wind up looking much like driving around in cars much the way we do now and just having them be more efficient. You might argue around the detailed math of the GP, but it's not completely irrelevant. His larger point stands: More efficient car technology doesn't look like it's going to be the better part of a solution to our energy crisis.
If you can't, move, then ride a bike. :)
Yes, I changed it to rent, because it seems a better analogy to what Steam does. I can try to use as neutral language as possible:
Would I engage in a transaction whereby I exchanged money for the use of a TV, understanding that the provider of the TV would be taking it back at the end of the specified term, providing that the price asked was acceptable to me in light of transaction terms specified?
In that case the answer is: Yes. Yes, I would rent a TV.
As far as Steam, you can make it sound how ever bad you want, but I'm having a hard time being outraged. I pay money for fun; I get fun. The total cost for fun, figuring money and hassle, is much lower than it used to be. I understand that to make things easier for me, I'm giving up certain rights and privileges (that I never used anyway). I'm OK with that.
Anyone can correct you, it only requires that you be wrong.
I stand by my statement that NASA rovers, along with basically all man-made off-road vehicles, use wheels, sometimes tracks. Those are not off-road vehicles; they are in-lab toys.
People, even NASA, talk about all sorts of impractical things. They use the ones that work.
Legs are great for looking cool moving a few feet across a lab somewhere; they get press. Getting press doing pointless things is a NASA specialty. But when they go to the Moon or Mars, they bring wheels. When people go off-road on earth, they bring wheels. Wheels are better.
Would you rent a car you had to give back? People rent games all the time.
I see no problem with Steam offering games on terms different than exist elsewhere. The whole problem here is that traditional physical-goods distribution & business models aren't a very good fit for digital goods. We need new models. Steam isn't perfect, but strikes me as one of the better attempts so far.
"Jah, legs are good for traversing terrain that is uneven, e.g., NASA looks hard at walking robots for their extra-planetary adventures. So wheels are OK as long as you have roads or a relatively flat surface."
Um, NASA rovers, along with basically all man-made off-road vehicles, use wheels. Sometimes tracks. Never legs except for artistic reasons. Mechanical legs are a big failure-prone, inefficient PITA. Just making your wheels twice as big is cheap, easy and effective.
"Maybe someone in the U.S. is far too accustomed to lots of pavement and a sedentary lifestyle that might be lacking in less developed areas?"
Maybe someone in the wherever you're from is too accustomed to sitting around day-dreaming about how to get around outside. People who actually do it use wheels.
I was speaking of branching and merging within the source control system. If you want to call any different version of code a branch, then of course those exist.
Mind you, our "production" branch is binaries handed off to fulfillment every 3-6 months when a release happens, so if I'm not going to break that if I check in the wrong thing. I guess I don't do many "experiments" with the potential to break much else; I seldom leave for the day with anything not checked in.
Whatever; I'll not debate whether you think my project is of "consequence" as I don't care.
SVN works great for us. If you don't feel the need for more branch management than it provides, I highly recommend it. If you feel the need for greater branch management capabilities, you might want something else.
Ok, now we just need a new word that means "the part of code that's not comments", because it's useful to be able to refer to that. You know, what used to be called 'code'.
Comments do not affect the function of the program, and therefore are not code. Just like whitespace (in most sane languages).
No, they wouldn't.
They got sent a registration form with Princess's name helpfully filled in. You can have as many blank registration forms as you like and fill in any name you want. That doesn't mean jack until the registrations get accepted, which in this case, has not even been attempted.
"Honestly, if you've never seen the need to branch-and-merge, you've never worked on a large project. Period."
You can always tell when someone is making an unfounded claim based on their own narrow experience being all that matters: They say "Period" at the end.
Some large projects are organized and run in ways that require branching and merging. Some are organized and run in ways that don't. Generally these decisions are mandated by factors that have nothing to with any developers preference about source control or anything else, but are based on the external nature of the project at hand or management decisions or whatever.
As far as reccomendations:
I work on a project that does very little branching & merging. We use SVN, and I like it (Tortoise in particular) very much, so I recommend it if you don't need a lot of branching and merging. If you do need a lot of branching and merging, I've heard it's a PITA, so you should check into that. You probably know if you do, or will do, a lot of branching and merging, and you should choose an SVN system based on that, and not worry what anyone else thinks it says about the size of your project or ability to form teams.
I saw pictures of the Moller prototype and read about how they were taking pre-orders when I was the same age that my kids are now.
They have the "range, safety, and power" of whatever model of crane lifts them off the ground for another round of suspiciously-cropped publicity stills.
Moller was a fraud 20 years ago; now it is a just joke.
You're threatening to not buy the game if they cave into people who are threatening to not buy the game.
Not to suggest anyones position is more or less reasonable, but that's pretty funny.
"I can understand why the Little Big Planet studios were afraid of this."
Horseshit. Millions of their potential customers are Muslims who might be offended enough by this to not buy their game; that's what they are "afraid" of.
Do you have the right to not buy housewares with crosses on them?
Do makers of housewares, aware of your preferences, have the right to make stuff without crosses on it?
Nobody is firebombing anything. They're pointing out they won't buy the product if it includes this audio track.