But surely, all I do is upgrade my 16GB model by plugging in a bigger memory card, right? No need to rely on buying the latest top model which would be expensive for the reasons you give, I just need to buy a new card for my old phone. The Iphone is the best phone ever, so surely it does this like every other phone on the planet, right?
Except there's nothing here suggesting that "blogs" (a vague term, most definitions of which would include Slashdot, incidentally) are dying out. All it's saying is that most individual blogs that were ever created are now no longer in use.
Well, duh. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Long term, this will be true of just about anything.
Most email accounts that have ever been created now lay fallow. Most websites ever created are abandoned. I bet a lot of people signed up to Slashdot as a fad, and then got bored of it.
But it would be ludicrous to suggest that email was a fad that was therefore dying out anyway.
A "blog" is simply a kind of website anyway - why should we hope that websites updated on a regular basis should die out? Be it Slashdot, a journalist's blog on a news organisation's website, someone who uses a blog as a journal, someone who uses it to discuss ideas with hundreds of friends, and so on?
If you don't like it, don't read it. The only thing "obnoxious" is the guy posting on Slashdot wanting things to "die" because he doesn't use them. (And the way that blogs and social networking sites are stereotyped is rather laughable, when you consider that the stereotype of Slashdot isn't exactly that great to the rest of the world...)
Indeed, if you want to "shun" or "discourage" it, that's fine. I don't think anyone would disagree with your right to do so (whether or not they shared your view).
The criticism here is precisely for those who are against the viewpoint "If you want to fantasize about breaking those laws, you are allowed to" - there are many people who think you shouldn't be allowed to, from banning distribution to criminalising possession.
It is perfectly possible to say that something is bad taste, not a good idea, should be shunned and so on, without calling for it to be a matter for the law.
(I also think it's worth noting that there is a great deal of complexity in people's thoughts - we can play games involving shooting enemies, or suspend belief whilst watching a "violent" film, with no intention of actually carrying out the act.)
Hear Hear. I too am disgusted everytime I see all the support on Slashdot for war mongering games such as the murder-simulator "World of Warcraft". I hear that millions of people are trained to carry out acts of unspeakable evil, and Slashdot seems to love it. Are there honestly no limits in what society must condone?
Oh, and just to add: If you're appealing to the "moral compass" of "millennia of civilization", then why are new laws and bans needed now? Aren't you happy with the status quo where the actual acts are rightly looked down upon and criminalised, and people can have whatever opinions they like on fictional depictions, but where the latter isn't a matter of law?
Please come back when you have a justification for that law.
Also your statement depends on the country - in many countries it isn't, in the US it seems to keep bouncing status, and in many countries such as the UK where it is, the law only specifies realistic images. Firstly that wouldn't therefore set any precedent for non-realistic images in a computer game. Secondly, the only plausible valid argument is that child abuse is a widespread problem, so criminalising fake images is necessary to avoid telling real from fake - which doesn't apply to anything involving adults since they are consensual (claims of them not being consensual have never been supported by a single piece of evidence, and seem to be, much like "snuff films", an urban legend).
(Seriously: it is of course a valid argument to show the slippery slope. Though it's worrying, the number of times I've thought or argued "Well that's mad - if we're going to apply that logic, we should also apply it to that too, which would be stupid", only to see the stupid thing being done too - often on the argument of "The previous law set a precedent, so it's fine to do this too"...)
The pro-censorship mob make unsubstantiated assertions about the effects of whatever it is they are out to stop with monotonous regularity. What I'm hoping for is to persuade people to respond with facts or reason, rather than equal and opposite unsubstantiated assertions.
Well, the problem is those people who think that evidence isn't necessary, or the level of evidence required isn't very high. "But we should ban it just in case", or "What if it just saves on person?" they cry.
In which case, it is fair game to respond with similar levels of speculation about the counter-argument that it reduces crime. This is a valid argument, because they think the only two possibilities for a ban are "No change" or "Crime is reduced", and in a Pascal's Wager style argument, claim that a ban is supported no matter how low the probabilty of crime being reduced. To rebut this argument, all that is required is to show the non-zero probability of "Crime is increased" - there is no need to actually prove that assertion (just as when someone counters Pascal's Wager by saying "But what if there's a god who punishes insincere belief?", he clearly doesn't have to prove such a god exists).
For people who agree that strong evidence is required, they shouldn't be accepting the claims for censorship in the first place.
Still legal to possess in Japan, according to TFS.... You have to come to places like the United Kingdom for simple private possession to be illegal.
England already has criminalised possession of some adult images, even if staged with consenting adults; Scotland will soon criminalise depictions of non-consensual sexual acts, again even if staged with consenting adults; and the UK is also passing a law on all sexual depictions, including non-realistic images such as cartoons/drawings, that show a character that looks under 18 - even though the age of consent is 16 - as well as depictions of adults who have some features that look under 18. Even having an apparent 17 year old drawn in the background scene of a cartoon depicting something saucy in the foreground is covered by the law.
Of course, we have censorship on sales of films/games too (via the British Board of Film Censors), but these new laws apply to even something made or owned in private. Three years in prison, and slapped on the Sex Offender register.
This was an argument addressing what was being said.
And they don't say what you claim, no matter what their name is.
It's not my fault that you misunderstand their policies because you make assumptions from the name, and can't even be bothered to read their manifesto before you complain. If you want to criticise about their name, that's a separate issue - either way, it doesn't change what their policies are.
I also don't see how "piracy" means "abolish copyrights entirely" - the point is that anyone currently distributing material after the term that they want would be a "pirate", so it is still true that what they advocate is "piracy" in terms of existing laws.
A name like "party of fair use rights of intellectual property" is a mouthful, doesn't have the same ring to it; it's an awful name. It's also misleading, as they're not simply after "fair use", but what reductions in the copyright length too. Maybe you should criticise, say, the UK's Labour party, because they have policies in their manifesto other than to do with labour, and you're not happy unless they spell out their manifesto in an absurdly long party title, because you can't be bothered to read their website?
"The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead."
But without copyrights, there would never had been either Casablanca nor the Beatles.
Nice straw man. They don't advocate abolishing copyright, rather they want about reform.
The "window" here is not the CD, it's bittorrent (or generally being able to copy it). The analogy to breaking the windows is preventing copying. The flaw in the claim that "breaking windows" helps the economy (or that not "breaking windows" is harmful to the economy) is that the money that would have been spent on "repairing windows" (or buying CDs) is not actually lost, and instead spent elsewhere.
(Note, I am not saying that they are equal on an ethical point of view - I realise it is unfair to equate wanting copyright law with vandalising windows - my point is not about the ethics, but about the economical claim that downloading causes a loss for the economy as a whole, and not merely the record industry.)
Indeed - the TV I've downloaded is material I've already paid for, in that it's produced by the BBC which I pay for via compulsory licence/tax, or it's shown on the channels that I pay for on cable, and I simply decided to download rather than watch on the TV. As an even more explicit example, I discovered yesterday that one of my Rome DVDs that I bought was damaged. I suppose I could take it back, try to argue because I don't have the receipt anymore, then even if they accept it, I have to give the whole package back, wait ages for the replacement, and then hope the new one works. Or I'll just download it, and have it to watch straight away.
But furthermore, even if every download was a lost sale, whilst it would be a "loss" to them, it still wouldn't be a loss to the economy. No money is lost, the money still exists, and can be spent on other things.
Of course, I'm not surprised that the RIAA twist the truth, but to hear Government advisers falling for the fallacy? Either they are ignorant of basic economics, or they are intentionally being deceitful on economic matters. Either way, it's no wonder the economy is going down the tubes.
Actually, as much as I do love Visual Studio and agree that it is the best IDE around overall now - I do find that "Intellisense" autocompletion is often rather buggy, often being annoyingly unavailable (yes, even when the code is valid), and I can never fathom out the logic. I once recently got into a state where it wouldn't work at all for a project, until I deleted the ".ncb" file.
For comparison, the autocompletion on my old Borland C++ Builder Pro 4 worked fine always.
They lead, they don't follow. That's why the competition are catching up to them, and not the reverse.
No, they don't, and that's not true. PhOnEs were around, and continually rapidly advancing in technology, years before the Iphone joined the market, and now they're just one of many phones in the high end market. A pretty nifty phone if it matches your requirements perhaps, but not the be all and end all of phones, not the market leader, not the dominant player. Sure, perhaps Apple might have been first to add one feature in the Iphone, but all the companies were first with one thing or another, there's nothing special. That's how the market works. And there are plenty of things that Apple have been playing catch-up on, even things that are bog standard on cheap phones, and which took ages for Apple to add, if they have at all yet (3G, video, MMS, Java, copy/paste). And before anyone starts pleading "But I don't need that feature", my point is not whether features are good or bad, simply that singling out Apple as "leading" and other companies as "following" clearly makes no sense, when there is no end of demonstrable features that other companies had first, and Apple followed.
Indeed, I was amused by that. We have a word for "iPhone-like devices"... why not just say phone.
Just as the iPod was one of the later mp3 players on the market, yet became the standard by which others were measured.
Although it's not "just as", as unlike the Ipod, the Iphone is in no kind of dominant position, nor any kind of standard, despite what Apple and the pro-Apple hype might like to claim. Sometimes trademarks get used to mean a generic product (walkman, Ipod, Hoover), but the idea that people are trying to replace the word "phone" with "Iphone" or "iPhone-like device" is rather laughable, in my opinion.
Another problem is bugs. E.g, Medieval Total War, completely riddled with bugs rendering the game unplayable - sometimes the game would randomly crash, and you can't save during a battle; another problem is a crash that happens every time at a certain point, even if you reload from save game (and this is tested on three entirely different computers with a range of CPUs, chipsets, graphics cards etc). The demo had no such problems, and the reviews didn't seem to mention this. When you search now, you can find no end of people complaining on forums, but that wasn't any good when the game was new.
NIMBYs? There are people living on the Moon who don't want landings near them? I don't think so.
You can debate the value of historical sites all you like, but I don't see what NIMBYism has to do with anything. Last time I looked, the Moon wasn't in anyone's back yard.
It is a shame that some people exist merely to hold the rest of us back from our ideal Star Trek future with green alien babes.
On the contrary, their viewpoint is looking forward to a time when people might visit or live on the Moon, and the first human landing site would be a natural place of great historical importance. It's those people saying "Who cares, no one can go there" who don't seem to be looking towards the future.
Unless you have a specific desire to engage with alien babes on the Apollo landing site as opposed to anywhere else on the entire Moon, I don't see the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Except when it doesn't Just Work, then you'll need a paperclip to eject it...
But surely, all I do is upgrade my 16GB model by plugging in a bigger memory card, right? No need to rely on buying the latest top model which would be expensive for the reasons you give, I just need to buy a new card for my old phone. The Iphone is the best phone ever, so surely it does this like every other phone on the planet, right?
Except there's nothing here suggesting that "blogs" (a vague term, most definitions of which would include Slashdot, incidentally) are dying out. All it's saying is that most individual blogs that were ever created are now no longer in use.
Well, duh. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Long term, this will be true of just about anything.
Most email accounts that have ever been created now lay fallow. Most websites ever created are abandoned. I bet a lot of people signed up to Slashdot as a fad, and then got bored of it.
But it would be ludicrous to suggest that email was a fad that was therefore dying out anyway.
A "blog" is simply a kind of website anyway - why should we hope that websites updated on a regular basis should die out? Be it Slashdot, a journalist's blog on a news organisation's website, someone who uses a blog as a journal, someone who uses it to discuss ideas with hundreds of friends, and so on?
If you don't like it, don't read it. The only thing "obnoxious" is the guy posting on Slashdot wanting things to "die" because he doesn't use them. (And the way that blogs and social networking sites are stereotyped is rather laughable, when you consider that the stereotype of Slashdot isn't exactly that great to the rest of the world...)
Indeed, if you want to "shun" or "discourage" it, that's fine. I don't think anyone would disagree with your right to do so (whether or not they shared your view).
The criticism here is precisely for those who are against the viewpoint "If you want to fantasize about breaking those laws, you are allowed to" - there are many people who think you shouldn't be allowed to, from banning distribution to criminalising possession.
It is perfectly possible to say that something is bad taste, not a good idea, should be shunned and so on, without calling for it to be a matter for the law.
(I also think it's worth noting that there is a great deal of complexity in people's thoughts - we can play games involving shooting enemies, or suspend belief whilst watching a "violent" film, with no intention of actually carrying out the act.)
Hear Hear. I too am disgusted everytime I see all the support on Slashdot for war mongering games such as the murder-simulator "World of Warcraft". I hear that millions of people are trained to carry out acts of unspeakable evil, and Slashdot seems to love it. Are there honestly no limits in what society must condone?
Oh, and just to add: If you're appealing to the "moral compass" of "millennia of civilization", then why are new laws and bans needed now? Aren't you happy with the status quo where the actual acts are rightly looked down upon and criminalised, and people can have whatever opinions they like on fictional depictions, but where the latter isn't a matter of law?
-1, Straw man.
Citing one stupid law, justifies another?
Please come back when you have a justification for that law.
Also your statement depends on the country - in many countries it isn't, in the US it seems to keep bouncing status, and in many countries such as the UK where it is, the law only specifies realistic images. Firstly that wouldn't therefore set any precedent for non-realistic images in a computer game. Secondly, the only plausible valid argument is that child abuse is a widespread problem, so criminalising fake images is necessary to avoid telling real from fake - which doesn't apply to anything involving adults since they are consensual (claims of them not being consensual have never been supported by a single piece of evidence, and seem to be, much like "snuff films", an urban legend).
Don't give the politicians ideas! ;)
(Seriously: it is of course a valid argument to show the slippery slope. Though it's worrying, the number of times I've thought or argued "Well that's mad - if we're going to apply that logic, we should also apply it to that too, which would be stupid", only to see the stupid thing being done too - often on the argument of "The previous law set a precedent, so it's fine to do this too"...)
The pro-censorship mob make unsubstantiated assertions about the effects of whatever it is they are out to stop with monotonous regularity. What I'm hoping for is to persuade people to respond with facts or reason, rather than equal and opposite unsubstantiated assertions.
Well, the problem is those people who think that evidence isn't necessary, or the level of evidence required isn't very high. "But we should ban it just in case", or "What if it just saves on person?" they cry.
In which case, it is fair game to respond with similar levels of speculation about the counter-argument that it reduces crime. This is a valid argument, because they think the only two possibilities for a ban are "No change" or "Crime is reduced", and in a Pascal's Wager style argument, claim that a ban is supported no matter how low the probabilty of crime being reduced. To rebut this argument, all that is required is to show the non-zero probability of "Crime is increased" - there is no need to actually prove that assertion (just as when someone counters Pascal's Wager by saying "But what if there's a god who punishes insincere belief?", he clearly doesn't have to prove such a god exists).
For people who agree that strong evidence is required, they shouldn't be accepting the claims for censorship in the first place.
Still legal to possess in Japan, according to TFS. ... You have to come to places like the United Kingdom for simple private possession to be illegal.
England already has criminalised possession of some adult images, even if staged with consenting adults; Scotland will soon criminalise depictions of non-consensual sexual acts, again even if staged with consenting adults; and the UK is also passing a law on all sexual depictions, including non-realistic images such as cartoons/drawings, that show a character that looks under 18 - even though the age of consent is 16 - as well as depictions of adults who have some features that look under 18. Even having an apparent 17 year old drawn in the background scene of a cartoon depicting something saucy in the foreground is covered by the law.
Of course, we have censorship on sales of films/games too (via the British Board of Film Censors), but these new laws apply to even something made or owned in private. Three years in prison, and slapped on the Sex Offender register.
This was an argument addressing what was being said.
And they don't say what you claim, no matter what their name is.
It's not my fault that you misunderstand their policies because you make assumptions from the name, and can't even be bothered to read their manifesto before you complain. If you want to criticise about their name, that's a separate issue - either way, it doesn't change what their policies are.
I also don't see how "piracy" means "abolish copyrights entirely" - the point is that anyone currently distributing material after the term that they want would be a "pirate", so it is still true that what they advocate is "piracy" in terms of existing laws.
A name like "party of fair use rights of intellectual property" is a mouthful, doesn't have the same ring to it; it's an awful name. It's also misleading, as they're not simply after "fair use", but what reductions in the copyright length too. Maybe you should criticise, say, the UK's Labour party, because they have policies in their manifesto other than to do with labour, and you're not happy unless they spell out their manifesto in an absurdly long party title, because you can't be bothered to read their website?
Should copyrights exist? Absolutely! But for much shorter periods of time than they do now.
Well just like the Pirate Party then - http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english :
"The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead."
But without copyrights, there would never had been either Casablanca nor the Beatles.
Nice straw man. They don't advocate abolishing copyright, rather they want about reform.
I never said "parable of the downloaded CD".
The "window" here is not the CD, it's bittorrent (or generally being able to copy it). The analogy to breaking the windows is preventing copying. The flaw in the claim that "breaking windows" helps the economy (or that not "breaking windows" is harmful to the economy) is that the money that would have been spent on "repairing windows" (or buying CDs) is not actually lost, and instead spent elsewhere.
(Note, I am not saying that they are equal on an ethical point of view - I realise it is unfair to equate wanting copyright law with vandalising windows - my point is not about the ethics, but about the economical claim that downloading causes a loss for the economy as a whole, and not merely the record industry.)
Indeed - the TV I've downloaded is material I've already paid for, in that it's produced by the BBC which I pay for via compulsory licence/tax, or it's shown on the channels that I pay for on cable, and I simply decided to download rather than watch on the TV. As an even more explicit example, I discovered yesterday that one of my Rome DVDs that I bought was damaged. I suppose I could take it back, try to argue because I don't have the receipt anymore, then even if they accept it, I have to give the whole package back, wait ages for the replacement, and then hope the new one works. Or I'll just download it, and have it to watch straight away.
But furthermore, even if every download was a lost sale, whilst it would be a "loss" to them, it still wouldn't be a loss to the economy. No money is lost, the money still exists, and can be spent on other things.
Exactly - this is basically the parable of the broken window. Also see: http://notnews.today.com/2009/06/06/downloading-keeping-billions-inside-the-uk/ .
Of course, I'm not surprised that the RIAA twist the truth, but to hear Government advisers falling for the fallacy? Either they are ignorant of basic economics, or they are intentionally being deceitful on economic matters. Either way, it's no wonder the economy is going down the tubes.
Whether or not that's a valid argument, that's an issue with .NET. You don't have to use .NET with Visual Studio...
Actually, as much as I do love Visual Studio and agree that it is the best IDE around overall now - I do find that "Intellisense" autocompletion is often rather buggy, often being annoyingly unavailable (yes, even when the code is valid), and I can never fathom out the logic. I once recently got into a state where it wouldn't work at all for a project, until I deleted the ".ncb" file.
For comparison, the autocompletion on my old Borland C++ Builder Pro 4 worked fine always.
They lead, they don't follow. That's why the competition are catching up to them, and not the reverse.
No, they don't, and that's not true. PhOnEs were around, and continually rapidly advancing in technology, years before the Iphone joined the market, and now they're just one of many phones in the high end market. A pretty nifty phone if it matches your requirements perhaps, but not the be all and end all of phones, not the market leader, not the dominant player. Sure, perhaps Apple might have been first to add one feature in the Iphone, but all the companies were first with one thing or another, there's nothing special. That's how the market works. And there are plenty of things that Apple have been playing catch-up on, even things that are bog standard on cheap phones, and which took ages for Apple to add, if they have at all yet (3G, video, MMS, Java, copy/paste). And before anyone starts pleading "But I don't need that feature", my point is not whether features are good or bad, simply that singling out Apple as "leading" and other companies as "following" clearly makes no sense, when there is no end of demonstrable features that other companies had first, and Apple followed.
and many would argue the same about the phone
Indeed they would, but they'd be wrong, as they aren't in anywhere near a dominant position in the phone market - not even close.
Indeed, I was amused by that. We have a word for "iPhone-like devices" ... why not just say phone.
Just as the iPod was one of the later mp3 players on the market, yet became the standard by which others were measured.
Although it's not "just as", as unlike the Ipod, the Iphone is in no kind of dominant position, nor any kind of standard, despite what Apple and the pro-Apple hype might like to claim. Sometimes trademarks get used to mean a generic product (walkman, Ipod, Hoover), but the idea that people are trying to replace the word "phone" with "Iphone" or "iPhone-like device" is rather laughable, in my opinion.
Doesn't support my 68060 either :(
It means paying more than the market value of a good.
If you were willing to pay that extra amount, surely that means the market value is the amount you paid?
I don't think there's a strict definition of the term. I think the OP's use was perfectly fair - you're paying a premium because the games are new.
Another problem is bugs. E.g, Medieval Total War, completely riddled with bugs rendering the game unplayable - sometimes the game would randomly crash, and you can't save during a battle; another problem is a crash that happens every time at a certain point, even if you reload from save game (and this is tested on three entirely different computers with a range of CPUs, chipsets, graphics cards etc). The demo had no such problems, and the reviews didn't seem to mention this. When you search now, you can find no end of people complaining on forums, but that wasn't any good when the game was new.
NIMBYs? There are people living on the Moon who don't want landings near them? I don't think so.
You can debate the value of historical sites all you like, but I don't see what NIMBYism has to do with anything. Last time I looked, the Moon wasn't in anyone's back yard.
It is a shame that some people exist merely to hold the rest of us back from our ideal Star Trek future with green alien babes.
On the contrary, their viewpoint is looking forward to a time when people might visit or live on the Moon, and the first human landing site would be a natural place of great historical importance. It's those people saying "Who cares, no one can go there" who don't seem to be looking towards the future.
Unless you have a specific desire to engage with alien babes on the Apollo landing site as opposed to anywhere else on the entire Moon, I don't see the problem.