Hey, don't pin the blame just on Bush. The democrats have been in the pocket of the entertainment/media industries for years. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid stand up there and shill for every new copyright enforcement law that big media writes for them.
Pay attention to this shit, because party politics is just another big, fat, red herring the corporate drones are waving in your face. Neither party has your interests at heart.
I'd like a few examples. It doesn't matter HOW the author, etc., make money with it. I just don't think anyone else should be able to do it. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, either; personally I think the music industry ought to do downloads for free as a form of marketing. If you give away low quality rips for free, most people wouldn't bother stealing tracks via bittorrent. If you really like the band you might buy a disk or at least pay a minimal fee for higher quality downloads.
For other things like books or movies you'd have to do something else.
Ever look up the definition of "sophomore"? I sincerely doubt you have ever worked hard to obtain anything of significant value, hence the belief that the communist ideal has anything to do with human reality in a universe of limited resources. How can an author make a living if he doesn't have the right to sell his book? I'm not arguing that the current system is ideal, but there needs to be some way to earn a living by trading in something other than material goods.
Value is and always will be relative, variable in nature and subject to disagreement. The best way to resolve the argument of value is a truly free market where people can decide for themselves what something is worth. Think "web 2.0" applied to economics. If you create something unique, put it up for sale. Fiddle with the price until "sales volume A" X "unit price B" = "the largest amount C". If you set "B" so high that "C" decreases you are clearly an idiot. The whole system is predictable because everyone is expected to look out for their own interests.
The only way this isn't fair is when the seller rigs the market, but even then the buyer is still free not to buy-they can also buy something similar from someone else. Maintaining a truly free market is the fairest thing any government can do-the fact that this doesn't always happen is another story. Free market forces include human ingenuity. Our main problem now isn't the market itself but the fact that it isn't as free as it needs to be to function in a fair manner.
Private property is a good system. Why should you have the right to take something I make with my own two hands? Why can't you just go make you're own? You first invoke the right to kill to take someone else's property, then later claim it's wrong for them to defend themselves. Frankly, if you tried to take my house because of some imaginary "birthright" I would consider it justification to kill YOU. So much for material property rights.
Intellectual property isn't different. How many months of labor does an author put into a book? Why do you expect them to do this work for free? The problem with our current system isn't that intellectual property isn't fair, it's that we have a bad system for authors to sell their work. Besides, the whole linux thing shows that even when someone abuses the system, the market will produce a viable alternative. The MARKET decided that OS software should be free, but I guarantee that every person who chose to contribute code is getting paid for something, somewhere. This is the only way people could afford to donate their labor.
Art like books, music, movies and games are a bit different. Because nobody NEEDS them to survive so the value best assigned by what people are willing to pay. Creators deserve to be able to trade their work for other goods, but the current system is out of whack as evidenced by the RIAA/MPAA litigations. I can't say exactly how to fix the system, but it will have to account for the market reality that production and distribution costs are essentially zero. Prices have been artificially high for years as production and distribution were limited by existing technology. Technologies changed and the market must be allowed to adapt.
By the way, please don't launch into some idiotic argument claiming that everyone's labor per unit time is valued equally. The garbageman's time is not as valuable as a doctor's. The garbageman went out one day and got a job that anyone can do. The doctor spent years learning and honing his skills, studies continually to keep his knowledge current and bears legal responibility for his decisions. How do you valuate? Let the market decide - just remember the market includes buyers AND sellers and it needs to be free.
It really is hard to believe. For some reason, nobody seems to think it's a big deal to snoop around on people's private property and private communications because they're electronic. Last I checked it was a federal crime to tamper with people's mail. Think that sort of legislation would pass in today's political climate?
You have got to be kidding me. What the hell is an "ND"? And did you happen to notice that these people are trying to sell you something? Please, stop before you hurt yourself.
You are so deluded about pharmacology, biochemistry, human physiology and science in general as to be swimming in complete and total bullshit. Both of your posts reek of "truthiness" rather than actual information.
A molocule is a molocule; why would a plant (or other "natural" source as opposed to a synthetic process) make a molocule better compatible with human physiology? Wouldn't the plant make molocules better suited to it's OWN physiology? The fact that naturally derived substances have any desirable pharmacologic effects on humans is entirely accidental. You get the same problems with undesirable by-products regardless of source. How do you know the plant doesn't produce OTHER substances that are pure poison to humans? Or what if the "poison" has desirable pharmocologic properties? Do you eat the plant in blind faith that all the contents are "natural" and therefore "safer" or do you attempt to isolate the desired molocule. Will you truly isolate it or will you have quantities of other undesirable substances. How do you remove the undesirable substances? What about stereochemistry? Often one enantiomer will have desirable properties while the other will not. Do plants magically produce the correct one for our use and edification? These are the same issues raised when producing a molocule synthetically.
And what's this about optimized concentration? What the hell does this mean? Do you know what a DOSE is? None of this makes sense. And this nonsense about quantum structure - could you please cite some reputable sources for this claim, or at least explain what it's supposed to MEAN? Have you ever taken even an undergraduate-level chemistry course? All of the issues you raise are already accounted for in current medical practice, backed up by controlled studies. Just because something is found in a plant doesn't mean it's magically better.
To quote Fat Freddy from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: "I don't trust anything that doesn't come in a nice, clean gelatin capsule"!
This is great point. The dividing line between food and medicine can be vanishingly small. Food used to BE medicine and in some cultures it still is. Often medicines are derived from natural sources, some of which are foods. Caffeine is found a variety of "food" items. It seems that the difference might simply be the intent when ingested. Still, I eat food when I'm hungry and take medicine when I'm sick. There's a big difference.
There are no completely safe drugs, there are no drugs without side effects. That being said, even if these drugs are significantly safer, it just seems to be a bad idea to depend on drugs to run your everyday life. The line between theraputic and recreational use is blurring.
If I had to take non-theraputic medications to perform my job I'd get a different job.
This is a key issue and I think it's been glossed over for too long. Although I agree that most desktop features are crap, linux just cant be mainstream until someone puts out a distro that DOES cater to the illiterates. We already have dozens of distros specifically designed for programmers and super users. Let's face it, most computer users are essentially computer illiterates - they're users, not programmers and they have no interest or reason to learn more than a few basic tasks.
Before anyone says "but ubuntu already does this", the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks. This forces every office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else). Think about the huge investment in time and money that has already been spent understanding windows. Switching to a new OS means retraining costs for tech support. Hence linux needs a distro that's both idiot-proof for the basic user AND easy to learn/configure for admins without requiring CLI. This isn't the 1980's. Sure the CLI gives you extreme flexibility, etc., but most people just don't need this.
The other major issue is that switching to linux also means giving up the guaranteed compatibility with commercially available software. My guess is that this is more of an obstacle than any other reason.
You can install puppy entirely to disk if you want. It runs just as well from CD, USB flash drive or USB hard drive. Puppy doesn't care where you install the OS files, it just looks for a file containing session settings, etc.. So long as it can find that it just runs. Security through simplicity.
Sorry kid, but you have a lot to learn about life. The older you get, especially if you have kids of your own, the more you will understand how wrong you are about this. A child - and trust me, a 13 year old is still a child - doesn't have the emotional stability, strength of character or experience to rationally make the kind of "choice" you're talking about. The human brain continues to physically develop sometimes as late as age 25. I stroggly suspect that you are still developing, too.
A brain can do all sorts of bizarre things; thinking that suicide is a good idea is only one of them. Thinking that there is no value to human life is another. If you really do believe that the sanctity of human life is baseless, I can only feel sorry for you since it's the cornerstone of the family, society, civilization and the species.
Megan was deliberately manipulated by an adult. She was set up like a bowling pin. The person who CHOSE to do so knew what buttons to push so Megan would fall all the harder. I could do the same to a 13 year old by the same methods, but I CHOOSE not to do so, since not only do I value human life, but because I thoroughly understand and *respect* exactly how emotionally fragile a 13 year old can be. The basis of morality is understanding the difference between when you *can* do something and when you *should* do something.
What happened wasn't murder but there was deliberate intent to harm. It's an abuse case that deserves to be prosecuted because it ended in the child's death. All this is cut and dried. The really scary thing is the way it's being prosecuted.
Yeah, I get your point; I mostly just use the machine. Security issues haven't been a problem for me under windows much less linux so it isnt an issue. I have had to swap hardware or rebuild machines often enough that I appreciate the simplicity. Booting to a puppy desktop from cd takes about a minute. I(t doesn't take much longer to do a full HDD install. Last time I installed windows it was 2hrs+. Ubuntu never really got running due the the wifi issues.
Because of the way Puppy is structured, it's virtually impossible to get a virus as you can boot from a cd and save only session settings to the HDD.
Yeah, which is what I like about it. You have more direct control. I hated ubuntu because you have to sudo everything to get anything done. Puppy didnt demand I already be a linux god in order to get my wifi working.
Yeah, Puppy is awesome. When I first used it I knew I would never use Ubuntu again. WAY too easy and getting better with every release. It's really a testament to the power of open source.
The game kind of sucked, but the setup and back story (and artwork) were among the best ever. The story itself is really about the failure of a philosophy or ideology.
I don't think this director is the one to pull that off. He might make a fun movie but then again a movie about philosophy would be kind of boring.
I'm not sure M$ ever did really listen to their customers; they certainly have never seemed to put them ahead of their partners.
The music companies have been sort of backing away from DRM, but the movie industry isn't. It's not clear if they're getting industry pressure to support DRM in exchange for some sort of agreement (exclusivity?) allowing video downloads for the zune. After the "play for sure" debacle, who would trust them anyway? There are plenty of fine alternatives to Ipod and Zune anyway.
I'd take that a step farther: everyone is required to wear a USB powered wrist strap that has a sensor to verify it is being worn (in the future it could incorporate on-the-fly DNA verification). The strap would be designed to administer an electric shock and would be controlled by other users. Users would earn "shock points" similar to mod points or diggs by posting things that are highly rated by other users. Shock points could be used in two ways: to shock other users for posting things you don't like or to nullify incoming shocks. Thus, people who indulge in asshaberdashery could be punished via shock, while good posters could store shock points to protect themselves from asshats. Additionally, you could save shock points to absorb punishment for the inevitable rant or bad posting.
There, that was easy; I fixed the internet. Happy?
There was a news item about the RIAA sending out huge numbers of letters to universities within the last month or so (I forget the exact details). Seems to me that they realize their time is running out and are tryinbg to get while the getting is good. Where exactly does the settlement money go? Are the RIAA guys themselves just trying to get paid as much as possible while they can?
Didn't EMI stop supporting them? If so, them what legal right do they have to sue for EMI copyrights?
I think you get the essence here. This dude pulls quantification out of his ass. The hours I spend watching tv are essentially different than those spent working. Who wants to work all the time? A lot of folks used to watch more tv because that was the only way to see video. New tech is changing that, with more convenient ways to get information and entertainment. Even tv itself is different with on demand services.
Tech enables mass collaboration in a way never before possible and this is the basic difference. Instead of reading or tinkering in garages or sitting on the porch knitting or whatever, we can now go online and collaborate in our off hours. Besides, what's teh internets about but information? It's not possible to knit online, but you can trade information about knitting. Once you post a knitting pattern, it's there forever. If every knitter spends 30 seconds posting a knitting pattern that's archived permanently, the archive will eventually get pretty big but the archive itself only represents a small fraction of knitters collective free time.
Bottom line: this dude wants to sell a book, so he sensationalizes the fact that people share and store information online. My local church has a file cabinet full of knitting patterns shared by a group of knitters that use space at the church. No difference except the knitting group and file cabinet's bigger.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, don't pin the blame just on Bush. The democrats have been in the pocket of the entertainment/media industries for years. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid stand up there and shill for every new copyright enforcement law that big media writes for them.
Pay attention to this shit, because party politics is just another big, fat, red herring the corporate drones are waving in your face. Neither party has your interests at heart.
I'd like a few examples. It doesn't matter HOW the author, etc., make money with it. I just don't think anyone else should be able to do it. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, either; personally I think the music industry ought to do downloads for free as a form of marketing. If you give away low quality rips for free, most people wouldn't bother stealing tracks via bittorrent. If you really like the band you might buy a disk or at least pay a minimal fee for higher quality downloads.
For other things like books or movies you'd have to do something else.
Ever look up the definition of "sophomore"? I sincerely doubt you have ever worked hard to obtain anything of significant value, hence the belief that the communist ideal has anything to do with human reality in a universe of limited resources. How can an author make a living if he doesn't have the right to sell his book? I'm not arguing that the current system is ideal, but there needs to be some way to earn a living by trading in something other than material goods.
Value is and always will be relative, variable in nature and subject to disagreement. The best way to resolve the argument of value is a truly free market where people can decide for themselves what something is worth. Think "web 2.0" applied to economics. If you create something unique, put it up for sale. Fiddle with the price until "sales volume A" X "unit price B" = "the largest amount C". If you set "B" so high that "C" decreases you are clearly an idiot. The whole system is predictable because everyone is expected to look out for their own interests.
The only way this isn't fair is when the seller rigs the market, but even then the buyer is still free not to buy-they can also buy something similar from someone else. Maintaining a truly free market is the fairest thing any government can do-the fact that this doesn't always happen is another story. Free market forces include human ingenuity. Our main problem now isn't the market itself but the fact that it isn't as free as it needs to be to function in a fair manner.
Private property is a good system. Why should you have the right to take something I make with my own two hands? Why can't you just go make you're own? You first invoke the right to kill to take someone else's property, then later claim it's wrong for them to defend themselves. Frankly, if you tried to take my house because of some imaginary "birthright" I would consider it justification to kill YOU. So much for material property rights.
Intellectual property isn't different. How many months of labor does an author put into a book? Why do you expect them to do this work for free? The problem with our current system isn't that intellectual property isn't fair, it's that we have a bad system for authors to sell their work. Besides, the whole linux thing shows that even when someone abuses the system, the market will produce a viable alternative. The MARKET decided that OS software should be free, but I guarantee that every person who chose to contribute code is getting paid for something, somewhere. This is the only way people could afford to donate their labor.
Art like books, music, movies and games are a bit different. Because nobody NEEDS them to survive so the value best assigned by what people are willing to pay. Creators deserve to be able to trade their work for other goods, but the current system is out of whack as evidenced by the RIAA/MPAA litigations. I can't say exactly how to fix the system, but it will have to account for the market reality that production and distribution costs are essentially zero. Prices have been artificially high for years as production and distribution were limited by existing technology. Technologies changed and the market must be allowed to adapt.
By the way, please don't launch into some idiotic argument claiming that everyone's labor per unit time is valued equally. The garbageman's time is not as valuable as a doctor's. The garbageman went out one day and got a job that anyone can do. The doctor spent years learning and honing his skills, studies continually to keep his knowledge current and bears legal responibility for his decisions. How do you valuate? Let the market decide - just remember the market includes buyers AND sellers and it needs to be free.
It really is hard to believe. For some reason, nobody seems to think it's a big deal to snoop around on people's private property and private communications because they're electronic. Last I checked it was a federal crime to tamper with people's mail. Think that sort of legislation would pass in today's political climate?
Never happen.
This trend of creeping fascism has to stop.
You have got to be kidding me. What the hell is an "ND"? And did you happen to notice that these people are trying to sell you something? Please, stop before you hurt yourself.
You are so deluded about pharmacology, biochemistry, human physiology and science in general as to be swimming in complete and total bullshit. Both of your posts reek of "truthiness" rather than actual information.
A molocule is a molocule; why would a plant (or other "natural" source as opposed to a synthetic process) make a molocule better compatible with human physiology? Wouldn't the plant make molocules better suited to it's OWN physiology? The fact that naturally derived substances have any desirable pharmacologic effects on humans is entirely accidental. You get the same problems with undesirable by-products regardless of source. How do you know the plant doesn't produce OTHER substances that are pure poison to humans? Or what if the "poison" has desirable pharmocologic properties? Do you eat the plant in blind faith that all the contents are "natural" and therefore "safer" or do you attempt to isolate the desired molocule. Will you truly isolate it or will you have quantities of other undesirable substances. How do you remove the undesirable substances? What about stereochemistry? Often one enantiomer will have desirable properties while the other will not. Do plants magically produce the correct one for our use and edification? These are the same issues raised when producing a molocule synthetically.
And what's this about optimized concentration? What the hell does this mean? Do you know what a DOSE is? None of this makes sense. And this nonsense about quantum structure - could you please cite some reputable sources for this claim, or at least explain what it's supposed to MEAN? Have you ever taken even an undergraduate-level chemistry course? All of the issues you raise are already accounted for in current medical practice, backed up by controlled studies. Just because something is found in a plant doesn't mean it's magically better.
To quote Fat Freddy from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: "I don't trust anything that doesn't come in a nice, clean gelatin capsule"!
Yup. I call shenanigans until it's both peer reviewed in a respectable physics journal and replicated by competent researchers at a major university.
This is great point. The dividing line between food and medicine can be vanishingly small. Food used to BE medicine and in some cultures it still is. Often medicines are derived from natural sources, some of which are foods. Caffeine is found a variety of "food" items. It seems that the difference might simply be the intent when ingested. Still, I eat food when I'm hungry and take medicine when I'm sick. There's a big difference.
There are no completely safe drugs, there are no drugs without side effects. That being said, even if these drugs are significantly safer, it just seems to be a bad idea to depend on drugs to run your everyday life. The line between theraputic and recreational use is blurring.
If I had to take non-theraputic medications to perform my job I'd get a different job.
Meh. This is not news. Call when the distro is demonstrably better than most of the others. What exactly is broken that they are trying to fix?
This is a key issue and I think it's been glossed over for too long. Although I agree that most desktop features are crap, linux just cant be mainstream until someone puts out a distro that DOES cater to the illiterates. We already have dozens of distros specifically designed for programmers and super users. Let's face it, most computer users are essentially computer illiterates - they're users, not programmers and they have no interest or reason to learn more than a few basic tasks.
Before anyone says "but ubuntu already does this", the problem is that currently you have no choice but to learn the CLI in order to accomplish anything but basic user tasks. This forces every office (or family) to have at least one go-to person that understands the OS thoroughly (or at least better than everyone else). Think about the huge investment in time and money that has already been spent understanding windows. Switching to a new OS means retraining costs for tech support. Hence linux needs a distro that's both idiot-proof for the basic user AND easy to learn/configure for admins without requiring CLI. This isn't the 1980's. Sure the CLI gives you extreme flexibility, etc., but most people just don't need this.
The other major issue is that switching to linux also means giving up the guaranteed compatibility with commercially available software. My guess is that this is more of an obstacle than any other reason.
Oh, I've worked for those types as well. I never said all brains developed very far.
You can install puppy entirely to disk if you want. It runs just as well from CD, USB flash drive or USB hard drive. Puppy doesn't care where you install the OS files, it just looks for a file containing session settings, etc.. So long as it can find that it just runs. Security through simplicity.
Sorry kid, but you have a lot to learn about life. The older you get, especially if you have kids of your own, the more you will understand how wrong you are about this. A child - and trust me, a 13 year old is still a child - doesn't have the emotional stability, strength of character or experience to rationally make the kind of "choice" you're talking about. The human brain continues to physically develop sometimes as late as age 25. I stroggly suspect that you are still developing, too.
A brain can do all sorts of bizarre things; thinking that suicide is a good idea is only one of them. Thinking that there is no value to human life is another. If you really do believe that the sanctity of human life is baseless, I can only feel sorry for you since it's the cornerstone of the family, society, civilization and the species.
Megan was deliberately manipulated by an adult. She was set up like a bowling pin. The person who CHOSE to do so knew what buttons to push so Megan would fall all the harder. I could do the same to a 13 year old by the same methods, but I CHOOSE not to do so, since not only do I value human life, but because I thoroughly understand and *respect* exactly how emotionally fragile a 13 year old can be. The basis of morality is understanding the difference between when you *can* do something and when you *should* do something.
What happened wasn't murder but there was deliberate intent to harm. It's an abuse case that deserves to be prosecuted because it ended in the child's death. All this is cut and dried. The really scary thing is the way it's being prosecuted.
Yeah, I get your point; I mostly just use the machine. Security issues haven't been a problem for me under windows much less linux so it isnt an issue. I have had to swap hardware or rebuild machines often enough that I appreciate the simplicity. Booting to a puppy desktop from cd takes about a minute. I(t doesn't take much longer to do a full HDD install. Last time I installed windows it was 2hrs+. Ubuntu never really got running due the the wifi issues.
Because of the way Puppy is structured, it's virtually impossible to get a virus as you can boot from a cd and save only session settings to the HDD.
Yeah, which is what I like about it. You have more direct control. I hated ubuntu because you have to sudo everything to get anything done. Puppy didnt demand I already be a linux god in order to get my wifi working.
You want to fund it? These guys are making a TV SHOW for ENTERTAINMENT.
Yeah, Puppy is awesome. When I first used it I knew I would never use Ubuntu again. WAY too easy and getting better with every release. It's really a testament to the power of open source.
The internet: The same crap, over and over, forever.
The game kind of sucked, but the setup and back story (and artwork) were among the best ever. The story itself is really about the failure of a philosophy or ideology.
I don't think this director is the one to pull that off. He might make a fun movie but then again a movie about philosophy would be kind of boring.
I'm not sure M$ ever did really listen to their customers; they certainly have never seemed to put them ahead of their partners.
The music companies have been sort of backing away from DRM, but the movie industry isn't. It's not clear if they're getting industry pressure to support DRM in exchange for some sort of agreement (exclusivity?) allowing video downloads for the zune. After the "play for sure" debacle, who would trust them anyway? There are plenty of fine alternatives to Ipod and Zune anyway.
I'd take that a step farther: everyone is required to wear a USB powered wrist strap that has a sensor to verify it is being worn (in the future it could incorporate on-the-fly DNA verification). The strap would be designed to administer an electric shock and would be controlled by other users. Users would earn "shock points" similar to mod points or diggs by posting things that are highly rated by other users. Shock points could be used in two ways: to shock other users for posting things you don't like or to nullify incoming shocks. Thus, people who indulge in asshaberdashery could be punished via shock, while good posters could store shock points to protect themselves from asshats. Additionally, you could save shock points to absorb punishment for the inevitable rant or bad posting.
There, that was easy; I fixed the internet. Happy?
There was a news item about the RIAA sending out huge numbers of letters to universities within the last month or so (I forget the exact details). Seems to me that they realize their time is running out and are tryinbg to get while the getting is good. Where exactly does the settlement money go? Are the RIAA guys themselves just trying to get paid as much as possible while they can?
Didn't EMI stop supporting them? If so, them what legal right do they have to sue for EMI copyrights?
I think you get the essence here. This dude pulls quantification out of his ass. The hours I spend watching tv are essentially different than those spent working. Who wants to work all the time? A lot of folks used to watch more tv because that was the only way to see video. New tech is changing that, with more convenient ways to get information and entertainment. Even tv itself is different with on demand services.
Tech enables mass collaboration in a way never before possible and this is the basic difference. Instead of reading or tinkering in garages or sitting on the porch knitting or whatever, we can now go online and collaborate in our off hours. Besides, what's teh internets about but information? It's not possible to knit online, but you can trade information about knitting. Once you post a knitting pattern, it's there forever. If every knitter spends 30 seconds posting a knitting pattern that's archived permanently, the archive will eventually get pretty big but the archive itself only represents a small fraction of knitters collective free time.
Bottom line: this dude wants to sell a book, so he sensationalizes the fact that people share and store information online. My local church has a file cabinet full of knitting patterns shared by a group of knitters that use space at the church. No difference except the knitting group and file cabinet's bigger.