I'm quite sure he is serious. My brother is so evangelical he talks about being tortured by thoughts about sex. I tried to explain that this is natural, and even healthy to some extent, but he is convinced it makes him perverted and seeks to avoid all temptation.
If this is true, then there is probably a theological disconnect. Christians have nothing against sex. In fact, Christians think sex is a great thing. However, obsession with sex is bad no matter what. Now "tortured by thought about sex" is rather vague description of the problem, so if you give a little more infomration perhaps I could add some insight that could help your brother, and maybe help you understand him a little more.
Some would argue that lust is the key point of adultery, in which case pornography is but one part of the almost continous act of adultery most males commit.
This is the Christian view of adultery. A lot of what Jesus talked about was the fact the following the letter of the law "Thou shalt not commit adultery" wasn't really good enough, and that people really should come face to face with their inner sinful natures. This "inner adultery" happens to have a name (lust), though this holds true for any sin. Your observation that this is a "continuous act" of males is a bit overstated, but essentially true. It is an impossible standard to maintain.
In any case, this is all a definition game; you want to pin the tag "adultery" on pornography for the same reason illegal copying is called "pirating" - it makes it sound bad. It's not that we don't admit it; it's that we don't agree with the fundamental premise of the statement.
I never asked anyone to agree with anything, I was simply stating the Christian point of view, and why Christian men find pornography dangerous. In fact, Jesus spent a lot of time hammering away on legalistic defintions of terms like "adultery". Its not a definition game at all - whether or not you are an adulterer depends not on some arbitrary legal criteria, but what is in your heart.
Ok, you need to take of your anti-religion blinders for a moment...
First of all, I'm not judging you. You are behaving exactly as I would in your situation.
Second, you have already admitted to the addictivness of pornography, so I really don't see why you are calling my statements "moral hogwash". If you are saying it's addictive, then you're implying that addition to pornography can be a problem, which is my point. It can be a problem, and the service described in the original article is designed to help people break this problematic addiction. No need to overanalize this.
The overall point is that the idea that the "Bible is quite clear" is merely wishful thinking. The Bible is massively open to interpreration.
With all due respect, this beleive is pretty much an urban legend. There are some long, impressive looking lists on the Internet floating around that have lots of supposed contradictions, but they tend to be quite shallow and created by people with a huge axe to grind. It is at least something worth investigating for yourself.
What is needed is for people to come to the insight that the problem isn't the "looking at porn" part, the problem is the "feeling guilt about it afterwards" part, a guilt that only exists because you've been _programmed_ to feel it! Guilt and fear is the core fuel of Christianity..
Then you really don't understand Christianity at all I'm afraid... Suppose you are married man. You are supposed to love your wife. In fact, the Bible says you are supposed to love your wife as Christ loved the Church, which even a secular reading of the gospel would tell is "a lot". Now imagine that instead of being with and spending time with your wife, you spend time looking looking at pornography. Are you telling me you don't even smell a whiff or moral betrayal? That it is perfectly ok to bring sexual images of other people into your home? Are you saying that your wife should be perfectly fine with the idea of you viewing pornography, and that any objection she may have is because she is "programmed" to feel that way? I don't think you have really thought about the ramifications of allowing pornography in a relationship (remember the original article said "spouse"!). You can scoff at the idea of "mental adultery" if you want (Christians would call it "lust in your heart"), but the fact is that it is something that can really damage a relationship.
The great thing about objective standards is that there's so many to choose from. Do you want the Fred Phelps brand of biblical objectivity, the Jerry Farwell brand of biblical objectivity, or the liberal brand of bibilical objectivity that allows for gay ministers?
You are looking at "human objectivity"... in nearly all areas, the Bible is quite clear. With regard to pornography, how many ways can you contrue Matthew 5:28 - "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart"? Most "brands" as you say are derived from some interpretation from the Bible that is very clearly incorrect. Like it or not, the Bible provides an excellent moral standard.
Nearly everyone who has posted so far as missed the point... pornography is a very real concern for many Christian men. Most of the world doesn't consider "lust" to bad at all... however, I think it can be incredibly destructive. Looking at pornography is a subtle form of adultery, whether you'd like to admit it or not. That being said, the Internet has an unlimited supply of porn that is available 24/7, and accessing it is completely anoymous. It is very easy to fall into this temptation, and it's very easy to become addicted to it. Please don't try to dispute this... just because *you* happen to see no problem with porn doesn't mean countless people have had real struggles with it. This program is designed for the person who wants to break an addictive cycle through accountibility, which is the basis for 12-step programs and other generally accepted methods for breaking addition. I'm really glad that someone has taken initiative to provide this kind of help.
An object database is a different paradigm from a relational database, and it has to be thought about in a different way. The problem is that the RDBMS paradigm is very well suited for its purpose. I am not sure what the purpose of an object database will be, but I am fairly sure that for it to work we will have to use it for something very different from what we use relational databases for.
An object database will win with a process that requires random access to entire objects. For example, I write software that merges records together from many large databases - in this case a OO database is ideal. A record lookup requires a single index lookup to a single block on disk to retrieve a record of arbitrary complexity. With a RDMBS holding the data, it may take several index lookups over several disk blocks, which can be a lot slower - furthermore, as the data model complexity goes up, the longer this will take. An RDBMS needs to jump through hoops to deserialize a logical object. However if a process needs to scan properties for some reason (SELECT and UPDATE queries for example), the RDBMS wins, and the OODB needs to jump through hoops, often duplicating the data in the process. I think the OO aproach is only being "rediscovered" because SQL just got too much tout in the first place.
In fact, this concept actually predates SQL-based databases! The first one I am aware of is MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System) which goes back to 1966. One company that continues this legacy is Sanchez. Another commercial version is Caché. This makes sense, really - the most obvious solution to serializing an object is to store all properties of a single object together (the OO solution), rather than store a single property of all objects togther (the RDBMS solution)
I have been told that this technique was/is used all the time by Warez couriers
Re:The best NES Game ever is not SMB 3, it is:
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 0
Nintendo, if you're listening, I would pay another $50 to see this game ported 100% exactly to my GBA or even PC - assuming I could get an authentic 2 button controller to go with it.:-)
(Yes, I've played it on Mame, and the sound and gameplay isn't quite the same.)
Although there are no plans for it, I would not be surprised to see this game appear for the e-reader. Also, don't sell emulators short - in my experience, with the right one (I have heard good things about NESticle) the experience can be as good (or better - quick save + quick load) as the original.
I think the question is confusing the "black box" concept with "design patterns". Unless you are programming assembly for Atari 2600 and need to pay attention to how many CPU cycles each instruction takes, there is no reason to consider underlying hardware (embedded issues aside). A black box in this classic sense is simply an abstraction for the zillion types of hardware ever made. The STDOUT file handle is a perfect illustration of this as it has migrated from physical devices to VT100 telnet sessions across the world. Design patterns, OTOH, can easily lead to "cargo-cult" programming, which is always bad.
Apparently nobody has noticed the Sony Bono Moore's Law Extension Act, which retroactively extended Moore's Law an additional 10 years after Moore's Law was due to expire
Don't bring your anti-American liberalistic ideas into the shuttle explosion. Like you said, PEOPLE died today, this is no time for you to start a liberal tirade. Go hug a tree, commie.
Nice troll, but I think my point has escaped you. You are exhibiting the exact same America-centric attitude that OP was complaining about in the first place! I haven't complained about anything - I simply pointed out that because the media serves people like you, who have no real interest in Zimbabwe or the lives of 40 souls in Zimbabwe, then we're going to get full-day coverage of an event that is *less* horrifying from a sanctity-of-life standpoint.
Why does Microsoft's "grade" drop when they released a patch for the worm a long time ago? All OS's have security problems. It think it is more accurate to say that Microsoft SQL Server Admins get an "F", not Microsoft itself. This is not to say that I think MS has good security, but it's an unfair slam when the worm is really the fault of admins who failed to apply a vendor patch.
I keep switching stations, and I'm tired of hearing about "6 Americans and 1 Israeli". 7 people were in that shuttle. It's frustrating that the media can't let go of war sensationalism even now, at a time like this.
40 people died today in a train wreck in Zimbabwe, but it is of course not as tragic as these 7 people dying. Obviously a shuttle disaster is more sensational an even more horrifying disaster in Afrrica. It will be a long time if ever before this country starts looking at "people" and not "Americans".
It seems like the patent is really covering only the "browser". A website only produces tags between funny little characters, and the human at the other side uses a browser which formats it nicely, presumably violating the patent. It seems like SBC has a nice case against Netscape and Microsoft, not content providers.
When I have a thirteen year old kid, I don't want him looking at Nazi propoganda. Shall we pass a law restricting that from him? How about birth control information, or information on other religions, or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition?
The video game industry is not like the others, except perhaps the SI swimsuit edition. The difference is that the game industry produces content then *themselves* deem inappropriate for minors with "M" ratings and the like. Yet it is well established that that actively market such content to teenagers. Please see the FTC report on the issue to learn more about why restricting purchases helps with the problem:
I agree with you in princple - this law is not a substitute for good parenting, and it is possible to be a good parent without this law. However, we are talking about an agressive multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. This is not a po-dunk nazi web site, or the Jehovah's Witness that visits your house once a year. Furthermore, the interests of this industry (making money) conflict directly with the interests of good parenting. I think laws protecting people from potentially predatory industries are a good thing.
Video game makers advertise on kids TV channels, and during cartoon time slots, and in magazines read by kids. The porno industry does not, never has, and never complains about it because, I repeat, they have no interest in kids.
Who is more interested in sex than teenage boys? If there were money to be made in something, the pornography industry would cater to it. Just look at all the obsucure things they already cater too. Now we know today that the pornography industry does not market to kids today - as you say, they have no interest in kids. Why is this so? By your resononing, because:
They can't make money doing it - unlikely, as I think that teenage boys being who they are would be willing to spend money on it. Given the nature of the Internet, there would be minimal overhead in adding new customers, so it would most likely be profitable.
They feel morally obligated to not to sell porn to teenagers - ok, this just may be the case, but I doubt it.
They are prevented to by law - this is the most plausible explanation. It is confirmed by the fact that any disclaimer for a pornographic web site will insist that you obey "local laws". The "Adult Entertainment Industry" stays as close to the legal edge as possible with many activities, and I don't see why this is very different.
Of the three, I see the fact that it is illegal to be the main reason why they have no interest in marketing to children. I am curious what the situation is in countries where there are lower age restrictions, or none at all.
Instead they relied on the tried and true method of actually being parents, involving themselves in my life, paying attention to me, striving to instill ethics in me, setting limits, and punishing me when I violated those limits. I seem to have turned out okay.
Laws like this are designed to help parents protect children. For example - when I have a kid and hes 13, I will not want him looking at pornography, which is a very understandable temptation. However, there is a very agressive pornography industry that would like nothing better then to sell porography to my child. As a future parent, a appreciate the fact that my 13 year old child can't walk down to the local drug store and buy pornographic magazines, can't go to the video store and rent pornographic videos, etc.
As it happens, the entertainmaint/video grame industry also quite agressive and will try very hard to get my child to get involved with content, regardless of how approprite it may be. Furthermore, the current trend is that games are becoming more and more violent and sexual. It's hard enough to be a parent without having to actively defend my family from companies whose only real concern is making money. Laws like this can really help a parent, and if one accepts the premise that a parent should be restricting content to their children, there is no real downside.
Uh no, it is not illegal at this time. Sharing a VHS tape with your sister of a show you recorded is not illegal. It has been proven in courts. The Replay simply extends that sharing. I have been over this is my lawyers and right now it is not illegal to share over the air broadcasts.
I'm sure Napster lawyers told them it was perfectly legal too... Sure its ok to lend your tape to your sister, but saying that Replay "extends" sharing is like saying Napster "extends" sharing of my personal collection of music files to tens of thousands of anonymous users. By your argument, I should have the right to record stuff over the airwaves and next day be able to rebroadcast it to 25 of my closest friends who I have never met face-to-face and found my name by searching a database. This is *not* equivalent to giving a tape to your sister, and an insult to the intelligence of the judge who has to consider it.
You keep saying there is some fundamental difference between music and TV, but there isn't. Every single song that was available on Napster was played on the radio at some point in the past. Some dinky "time-shifting" argument certainly would not have held up there. Just because it was broadcast over public frequencies doesn't mean you have some special rights to redistribute the content. Remember how fast www.icravetv.com was buried?
explicity illegal? Funny, my facts do not point to that.
Of course it's illegal - anonymous sharing of copyrighted material (Joe Millionare) is illegal, or else Napster would still be around. Just because you missed a show doesn't mean the person who sends it to you is allowed to violate copyright. There's nothing about video vs audio that makes it ok either - heck, you can't even find Simpson's WAV files anymore. Now you can dress it up as "matchmaking" or whatever, but it's still illegal.
I wouldn't The assumption your basing your argument on is that the selection process is better than it actually is. The good stuff bubbles to the top and the bad stuff settles to the bottom. And the majority audience is capable of making the distinctions necessary to make it work well. The history of television has shown that on average, both the audience and the media producer/managers are rather bad at this, and the "quality" content out there suffers greatly. The light-bulb, MacOS and powered flight would have never been invented if candles, Dos and walking were "Good enough". "Good enough" produces mediocre software and terrible media content among other things, and ultimately at best, stagnates a society, and at worst, regresses it.
You miss my point entirely - by "good enough", I mean that enough people like it to make it profitable to broadcast, not the quality of the programming. The quality issue solves itself. Can you find an example of a quality television show that hasn't seen the light of syndication? They are few and far between. Entire networks (TV Land, Sci-Fi) have been based upon release the quality and/or niche shows from the past. The vast majority of "quality" shows from the past are available in reruns or VHS/DVD.
When you have a TB worth of data to move, I don't think the 'net will ever catch up to the speed of a van.
This will be an issue only when it takes a terrabyte to encode a TV show, which won't be happening anytime soon. With compression, a hour-long (42 min w/o commercials) program can be trimmed to a very watchable 150 MB, a full quality 450 MB, or a widescreen HDTV 800 MB - all quite doable on the average cable modem. I can grab 800 MB from usenet in about 2 hours on my home connection.
If a show was good but got canceled (e.g. Sports Night, Futurama, etc), then some cable channel will pick it up without fail. If a show was bad and got canceled, there is *still* a good chance someone will pick it up (e.g. Brimstone) on Sci-Fi. The point is that you can either have a TiVo which allows you download "Firefly" via P2P where the company is being hammered for integrating P2P technology, or you can wait for the "Firefly" reruns to be shown on the Sci-Fi channel and use your P2P-lacking-but-more-likely-to-survive TiVo to record it then. And yes, there is a small collection of shows that just don't attract enough of a niche to make them profitable for even cable networks to rerun, but I will sacrifice them for the 99% of other good-enough shows.
Slashdot Mirror
If this is true, then there is probably a theological disconnect. Christians have nothing against sex. In fact, Christians think sex is a great thing. However, obsession with sex is bad no matter what. Now "tortured by thought about sex" is rather vague description of the problem, so if you give a little more infomration perhaps I could add some insight that could help your brother, and maybe help you understand him a little more.
This is the Christian view of adultery. A lot of what Jesus talked about was the fact the following the letter of the law "Thou shalt not commit adultery" wasn't really good enough, and that people really should come face to face with their inner sinful natures. This "inner adultery" happens to have a name (lust), though this holds true for any sin. Your observation that this is a "continuous act" of males is a bit overstated, but essentially true. It is an impossible standard to maintain.
In any case, this is all a definition game; you want to pin the tag "adultery" on pornography for the same reason illegal copying is called "pirating" - it makes it sound bad. It's not that we don't admit it; it's that we don't agree with the fundamental premise of the statement.
I never asked anyone to agree with anything, I was simply stating the Christian point of view, and why Christian men find pornography dangerous. In fact, Jesus spent a lot of time hammering away on legalistic defintions of terms like "adultery". Its not a definition game at all - whether or not you are an adulterer depends not on some arbitrary legal criteria, but what is in your heart.
Ok, you need to take of your anti-religion blinders for a moment...
First of all, I'm not judging you. You are behaving exactly as I would in your situation.
Second, you have already admitted to the addictivness of pornography, so I really don't see why you are calling my statements "moral hogwash". If you are saying it's addictive, then you're implying that addition to pornography can be a problem, which is my point. It can be a problem, and the service described in the original article is designed to help people break this problematic addiction. No need to overanalize this.
The overall point is that the idea that the "Bible is quite clear" is merely wishful thinking. The Bible is massively open to interpreration.
With all due respect, this beleive is pretty much an urban legend. There are some long, impressive looking lists on the Internet floating around that have lots of supposed contradictions, but they tend to be quite shallow and created by people with a huge axe to grind. It is at least something worth investigating for yourself.
Then you really don't understand Christianity at all I'm afraid... Suppose you are married man. You are supposed to love your wife. In fact, the Bible says you are supposed to love your wife as Christ loved the Church, which even a secular reading of the gospel would tell is "a lot". Now imagine that instead of being with and spending time with your wife, you spend time looking looking at pornography. Are you telling me you don't even smell a whiff or moral betrayal? That it is perfectly ok to bring sexual images of other people into your home? Are you saying that your wife should be perfectly fine with the idea of you viewing pornography, and that any objection she may have is because she is "programmed" to feel that way? I don't think you have really thought about the ramifications of allowing pornography in a relationship (remember the original article said "spouse"!). You can scoff at the idea of "mental adultery" if you want (Christians would call it "lust in your heart"), but the fact is that it is something that can really damage a relationship.
You are looking at "human objectivity"... in nearly all areas, the Bible is quite clear. With regard to pornography, how many ways can you contrue Matthew 5:28 - "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart"? Most "brands" as you say are derived from some interpretation from the Bible that is very clearly incorrect. Like it or not, the Bible provides an excellent moral standard.
Nearly everyone who has posted so far as missed the point... pornography is a very real concern for many Christian men. Most of the world doesn't consider "lust" to bad at all... however, I think it can be incredibly destructive. Looking at pornography is a subtle form of adultery, whether you'd like to admit it or not. That being said, the Internet has an unlimited supply of porn that is available 24/7, and accessing it is completely anoymous. It is very easy to fall into this temptation, and it's very easy to become addicted to it. Please don't try to dispute this... just because *you* happen to see no problem with porn doesn't mean countless people have had real struggles with it. This program is designed for the person who wants to break an addictive cycle through accountibility, which is the basis for 12-step programs and other generally accepted methods for breaking addition. I'm really glad that someone has taken initiative to provide this kind of help.
An object database will win with a process that requires random access to entire objects. For example, I write software that merges records together from many large databases - in this case a OO database is ideal. A record lookup requires a single index lookup to a single block on disk to retrieve a record of arbitrary complexity. With a RDMBS holding the data, it may take several index lookups over several disk blocks, which can be a lot slower - furthermore, as the data model complexity goes up, the longer this will take. An RDBMS needs to jump through hoops to deserialize a logical object. However if a process needs to scan properties for some reason (SELECT and UPDATE queries for example), the RDBMS wins, and the OODB needs to jump through hoops, often duplicating the data in the process. I think the OO aproach is only being "rediscovered" because SQL just got too much tout in the first place.
In fact, this concept actually predates SQL-based databases! The first one I am aware of is MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System) which goes back to 1966. One company that continues this legacy is Sanchez. Another commercial version is Caché. This makes sense, really - the most obvious solution to serializing an object is to store all properties of a single object together (the OO solution), rather than store a single property of all objects togther (the RDBMS solution)
I have been told that this technique was/is used all the time by Warez couriers
Nintendo, if you're listening, I would pay another $50 to see this game ported 100% exactly to my GBA or even PC - assuming I could get an authentic 2 button controller to go with it. :-)
(Yes, I've played it on Mame, and the sound and gameplay isn't quite the same.)
Although there are no plans for it, I would not be surprised to see this game appear for the e-reader. Also, don't sell emulators short - in my experience, with the right one (I have heard good things about NESticle) the experience can be as good (or better - quick save + quick load) as the original.
I think the question is confusing the "black box" concept with "design patterns". Unless you are programming assembly for Atari 2600 and need to pay attention to how many CPU cycles each instruction takes, there is no reason to consider underlying hardware (embedded issues aside). A black box in this classic sense is simply an abstraction for the zillion types of hardware ever made. The STDOUT file handle is a perfect illustration of this as it has migrated from physical devices to VT100 telnet sessions across the world. Design patterns, OTOH, can easily lead to "cargo-cult" programming, which is always bad.
Apparently nobody has noticed the Sony Bono Moore's Law Extension Act, which retroactively extended Moore's Law an additional 10 years after Moore's Law was due to expire
Nice troll, but I think my point has escaped you. You are exhibiting the exact same America-centric attitude that OP was complaining about in the first place! I haven't complained about anything - I simply pointed out that because the media serves people like you, who have no real interest in Zimbabwe or the lives of 40 souls in Zimbabwe, then we're going to get full-day coverage of an event that is *less* horrifying from a sanctity-of-life standpoint.
Why does Microsoft's "grade" drop when they released a patch for the worm a long time ago? All OS's have security problems. It think it is more accurate to say that Microsoft SQL Server Admins get an "F", not Microsoft itself. This is not to say that I think MS has good security, but it's an unfair slam when the worm is really the fault of admins who failed to apply a vendor patch.
40 people died today in a train wreck in Zimbabwe, but it is of course not as tragic as these 7 people dying. Obviously a shuttle disaster is more sensational an even more horrifying disaster in Afrrica. It will be a long time if ever before this country starts looking at "people" and not "Americans".
It seems like the patent is really covering only the "browser". A website only produces tags between funny little characters, and the human at the other side uses a browser which formats it nicely, presumably violating the patent. It seems like SBC has a nice case against Netscape and Microsoft, not content providers.
The video game industry is not like the others, except perhaps the SI swimsuit edition. The difference is that the game industry produces content then *themselves* deem inappropriate for minors with "M" ratings and the like. Yet it is well established that that actively market such content to teenagers. Please see the FTC report on the issue to learn more about why restricting purchases helps with the problem:
FTC Report
I agree with you in princple - this law is not a substitute for good parenting, and it is possible to be a good parent without this law. However, we are talking about an agressive multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. This is not a po-dunk nazi web site, or the Jehovah's Witness that visits your house once a year. Furthermore, the interests of this industry (making money) conflict directly with the interests of good parenting. I think laws protecting people from potentially predatory industries are a good thing.
Who is more interested in sex than teenage boys? If there were money to be made in something, the pornography industry would cater to it. Just look at all the obsucure things they already cater too. Now we know today that the pornography industry does not market to kids today - as you say, they have no interest in kids. Why is this so? By your resononing, because:
Of the three, I see the fact that it is illegal to be the main reason why they have no interest in marketing to children. I am curious what the situation is in countries where there are lower age restrictions, or none at all.
Laws like this are designed to help parents protect children. For example - when I have a kid and hes 13, I will not want him looking at pornography, which is a very understandable temptation. However, there is a very agressive pornography industry that would like nothing better then to sell porography to my child. As a future parent, a appreciate the fact that my 13 year old child can't walk down to the local drug store and buy pornographic magazines, can't go to the video store and rent pornographic videos, etc.
As it happens, the entertainmaint/video grame industry also quite agressive and will try very hard to get my child to get involved with content, regardless of how approprite it may be. Furthermore, the current trend is that games are becoming more and more violent and sexual. It's hard enough to be a parent without having to actively defend my family from companies whose only real concern is making money. Laws like this can really help a parent, and if one accepts the premise that a parent should be restricting content to their children, there is no real downside.
I'm sure Napster lawyers told them it was perfectly legal too... Sure its ok to lend your tape to your sister, but saying that Replay "extends" sharing is like saying Napster "extends" sharing of my personal collection of music files to tens of thousands of anonymous users. By your argument, I should have the right to record stuff over the airwaves and next day be able to rebroadcast it to 25 of my closest friends who I have never met face-to-face and found my name by searching a database. This is *not* equivalent to giving a tape to your sister, and an insult to the intelligence of the judge who has to consider it.
You keep saying there is some fundamental difference between music and TV, but there isn't. Every single song that was available on Napster was played on the radio at some point in the past. Some dinky "time-shifting" argument certainly would not have held up there. Just because it was broadcast over public frequencies doesn't mean you have some special rights to redistribute the content. Remember how fast www.icravetv.com was buried?
Of course it's illegal - anonymous sharing of copyrighted material (Joe Millionare) is illegal, or else Napster would still be around. Just because you missed a show doesn't mean the person who sends it to you is allowed to violate copyright. There's nothing about video vs audio that makes it ok either - heck, you can't even find Simpson's WAV files anymore. Now you can dress it up as "matchmaking" or whatever, but it's still illegal.
You miss my point entirely - by "good enough", I mean that enough people like it to make it profitable to broadcast, not the quality of the programming. The quality issue solves itself. Can you find an example of a quality television show that hasn't seen the light of syndication? They are few and far between. Entire networks (TV Land, Sci-Fi) have been based upon release the quality and/or niche shows from the past. The vast majority of "quality" shows from the past are available in reruns or VHS/DVD.
This will be an issue only when it takes a terrabyte to encode a TV show, which won't be happening anytime soon. With compression, a hour-long (42 min w/o commercials) program can be trimmed to a very watchable 150 MB, a full quality 450 MB, or a widescreen HDTV 800 MB - all quite doable on the average cable modem. I can grab 800 MB from usenet in about 2 hours on my home connection.
If a show was good but got canceled (e.g. Sports Night, Futurama, etc), then some cable channel will pick it up without fail. If a show was bad and got canceled, there is *still* a good chance someone will pick it up (e.g. Brimstone) on Sci-Fi. The point is that you can either have a TiVo which allows you download "Firefly" via P2P where the company is being hammered for integrating P2P technology, or you can wait for the "Firefly" reruns to be shown on the Sci-Fi channel and use your P2P-lacking-but-more-likely-to-survive TiVo to record it then. And yes, there is a small collection of shows that just don't attract enough of a niche to make them profitable for even cable networks to rerun, but I will sacrifice them for the 99% of other good-enough shows.