If you believe that some of the hospital staff is not partially at fault, then you are either not a proponent of personal responsibility, or you are a contradicting yourself.
No, he's not. What you're not taking into account here is active and passive contributions to the crime. The hospital staff didn't take adequate precautions to prevent this kind of an attack, true. Perhaps it's incompetence on their part, perhaps it was incompetence on management's part by not giving them the staff, training, or budget to secure things properly. Who knows? But one thing is absolutely certain: such lack of preparation is absolutely, 100% harmless unless someone takes active measures against it. By your analogy, a bank is responsible for being robbed because machine gun nests and land mines aren't situation around a Fort Knox-like structure. It's not like the hospital wasn't taking precautions; they were. The precautions just weren't good enough. I've heard similar arguments that women "invited" a rapist because of provocative clothing (or lack thereof) or cavorting in a lewd manner. Would you support this argument? Your logic would seem to indicate so, as you're arguing "the hospital was asking for it."
Consider the following examples. If a hospital did not use use sterile equiptment and patients become infected with a pathogen, should the hospital be responsible, or should the pathogen be responsible.
This is an idiotic comparison for one amazingly glaring reason: a pathogen has no volition. A pathogen doesn't wake up one day and say "hmmm, will I infect someone today or will I go play hooky instead?" A pathogen does not make a conscious decision to do anything, and as such it is best likened to a piece of inanimate machinery, performing the "job" it was "designed" to do. You do not blame a hammer for bludgeoning someone's skull, and you do not blame the skull for being insufficiently strong enough to ward off the hammer blow. No, you blame the hand that wielded the hammer! Or, more precisely, the individual persona that decided to smash someone in the head with said hammer.
If a network of computers becomes zombies after an individual invades them, would you consider the owners of the computers to be at fault?
See "lack of volition" argument above. The computers cannot decide to not be attacked. The attacker is the active force in this scenario no matter how you twist things around. Without the attack, there are no negative consequences. Therefore the attacker is solely to blame. End of story. See also: personal responsibility. The attacker knew damn well what he was doing and that it was illegal. In this world, when people get what they deserve for doing things they knew to be harmful, the result is called "justice." What a pity that happens so rarely. This student should be medically damaged to the point where he's dependent upon a piece of life support gear, and then that gear should be attacked by his botnet. Let's see how fun and profitable he thinks it is then.
If a pet kills a person, the owner is also at fault.
A pet is not an inanimate object. A computer is. Your comparison is extremely faulty.
Not an option. My cable box doesn't have an analog out for HDTV. It has an HDCP stream coming over the HDMI cable.
I think what the PP was trying to get across is that you'll still be able to record in SD off the analog ports. It's not HD, but it's better than nothing at all. It's becoming increasing clear to everyone that the HDTV "analog hole" is going to be made extinct.
I want to know the truth, and I will keep asking questions until I know it.
I'll translate this for you: "I want to know the truth that I've already come up with in my own head, and I will keep ignoring all evidence to the contrary until a super-secret agent hiding out as an Ecuadorian goat farmer comes forward with The Super Secrect Evidence That Proves A Conspiracy."
Mods: Parent post is flamebait and offtopic. If this post is modded offtopic then the parent post should be modded the same.
The parent post might be offtopic but it's not flamebait. He's legitmately poking fun at you in an attempt to show how silly your post is. While you may not like that, that doesn't make it flamebait or trolling. What's the matter? Can't you stand a little criticism?
Isn't it obvious by now that that's what happened?
You see, that's where your case falls down. I'm sorry but the "everybody knows this is true" defense doesn't hold water in a court of law. You must endure that pesky inconvenience known as "providing evidence to support your claim." Powell's address to the UN? What's that supposed to mean? "45 minutes"? What's that? Don't expect people to just take your word for it, prove it.
However, with your "buddy Blair" comment, I'm betting you're more of an angry partisan than dispassionate source of world-altering evidence. But please, do attempt to prove otherwise.
Have you considered that he might be more appropriately marked "partisan"? Why is it that any time a "former insider" comes out excoriating the current administration, he or she is immediately thought to be centrist, fair-minded, impartial, and utterly not having an axe to grind? I'm not saying the guy is partisan or isn't, but he's offering his opinion on the war rationale being a hoax.
Until he presents some solid evidence -- evidence not tainted by coming from anonymous sources that cannot be verified -- this guy is merely airing his own grievances for personal benefit. If he's got ironclad proof that the Bush administration hoaxed everyone on the way to Iraq, why the hell isn't Dan Rather beating this guy's door down?
2) That may be what bush is "thinking" but it's not what Bush said. But let's say Congress does what you think they'll do and ban federal funding for the companies producing insulin in this way. What happens then?
You've obviously never heard of this fascinating little concept known as a Free Market Economy, have you? I guess in your world, no research can be done if it isn't government funded, huh?
And as for what Bush said, it's right here in the link you provided:
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos.
Now, you might try and twist the ban on "human-animal hybrids" into saying that Bush is trying to murder millions of innocent diabetics, but that's rather ridiculous. What he's referring to is recent attempts to get around cloning bans by creating human-animal hybrids that aren't technically human yet allow human-like cloning tests to be done. I seem to recall that most of the people who are coming out against Bush on this are also passionately against using genetically-modified foods, the rationale being that we could create something that radically unbalances nature and thus really screw up the environment, the food chain, or both. This is, of course, a contradiction in their own logic, but that doesn't stop them, does it?
It proves that he's a fucking idiot. Where am I supposed to get my insulin, once he's banned the human-bacteria hybrid that produces it?
I can address your point in either of two ways:
1. You can get it from wherever it was obtained prior to the discovery of the human-bacteria hybrid you're referring to. Insulin production predates that discovery, you know. However, I will obviously concede that this is a far less convenient solution.
2. You'd think that if you're goint to go sit down and stutter out a rant you might have someone actually check it over to make sure it doesn't sound like you have absolutely no touch with reality. Bush's ideas ban federal funding for such research. Private industry is free to do as it pleases, and if there is any kind of financial incentive to produce insulin using human-bacteria hybrid, you can be it will (continue to) do so.
Maybe if you listened more to...well...anyone instead of those raving anti-Bush voices in your head, we might start looking at you as less "anti-logic."
I can understand the occasional dupe, but this is silly. The "IE7 Goes Public" link is quite visible on the right side of the page in Yesterday's News. Further, this isn't exactly a minor story, which means somebody at/. should've remembered it.
Whether intentional or not, you're invoking the fallacy of equivocation. I'm not a supporting member of any of the governments or organizations that you mention, nor do I necessarily agree with their policies or forms. Just because those things happened to call themselves "communist", it does not mean the word has the same meaning in the context that I apply it. From my perspective, calling the Soviet Union, an authoritarian government that was resisted and defeated in Poland by a national labor union, "communist" is ridiculous.
I am going to revise my earlier opinion of you ever so slightly. You argue your case intelligently, which puts you in a rarefied air here on Slashdot. I do enjoy an intelligent debate.
However, your taking umbrage at my "equivocation" smacks of the same kind of verbal manuvering I've had in past exchanged with Richard Stallman, namely that of saying "you cannot judge me by my self-appointed label because my label is defined in terms that only I fully understand." If I chose to call myself a white southerner in the nature of the Ku Klux Klan, you'd naturally assume me to be a racist, bigoted jerk. If I then declared that I only held to the "original" principles of the Klan -- and defined them in non-racist, non-bigoted terms -- does that somehow moot the fact that 99.9% of the world would not subscribe to your interpretation? Do not fault me for aligning you with past and present governments that also claim the label "Communist."
However, whether you consider yourself a Communist in the ilk of Stalin, Mao, Lenin, or Kim Jong Il or whether you're more of a textbook classical Karl Marx Communist really doesn't change my overall opinion of the ideology. Communism is, in my opinion, a hopelessly flawed idealism. Why? Because it requires people to put the good of the group above their own individual wants and needs. This flouts thousands of years of evolution-bred instinct, namely that of the desire to survive and prosper above all else, even to the extent of sacrificing others. It is an animal instinct, but I think it to be one of the most powerful ones we have. You can find noble people willing to give their lives for an ideal, but finding people willing to give their livelihood so that someone else who didn't earn a livelihood can have one is a much more difficult concept. Personally, I'm a Social Darwinist at heart: I have what I have because I've worked hard to earn it, and I'll be damned if anyone is going to have it or take it away from me unless I somehow deem them worthy of it. Communism is the antithesis of that, the submergence of individual accomplishment within a nebulous group identity of lowest common denominators, which is why I abhor it so.
Don't be too hasty. Surely, as a libertarian, you believe in a society based on the values and cooperation of individuals who work together for the benefit of society as a whole, organizing voluntarily when necessary, and unrestrained by an overbearing state.
I believe in individual freedom as the highest possible ideal there is, and I actively fight against anything that seeks to diminish that in any way. I believe intrinsically that people get what they deserve, and that everyone is where they are in life because of the choices they've made up to that point. If someone is a homeless bum, it's because they made poor educational choices, or they picked a poor career (if any), or they failed to buy homeowners insurance and lost everything in a fire. Either way, that person's fate is their own. I owe them nothing, and I'm not obligated to lift a finger to do a damned thing for them. Neither would I be owed anything were the situation reversed. That does not mean I am against charity (indeed, I give quite a lot), but my charity is my own choice, and I give to those I deem worthy without respect for any social/political correctness. I react quite negatively to anyone telling me I "ought to do this" or "ought to do that" to help someone else. Poppycock! My wealth and ma
And this excuses the behavior...how? If the entire batch of apples is bad, does that somehow make them collectively good because all of them are equal? The Republicans doing this are deserving of our scorn just as much as Meehan. But since this isn't a Republican-only "scandal," you can bet it's going to go nowhere.
We should be equally outraged when an elected representative does this, regardless of what party they're in. Excusing it now just means it's that much easier for them to excuse it when/if they ever regain power.
I'm fairly left-leaning, but you can count me among the "outraged."
Then I respect you, sir, even though I disagree with your political stance. It's nice to see people who will criticize their own political "allies."
I believe it should be brought to the forefront, as it's a sleazy tactic-- I just don't see it happening, regardless of who did it. Our media is lazy and ratings-hungry, and lets a lot of what I would consider important information slide into obscurity.
I agree, it is sleazy, and I'd be saying the same thing if a Libertarian did it. Facts are facts, and trying to erase them or -- dare I say it? -- mod them down does nothing to alter the facts.
I disagree with your stance on why the media won't pick this up. Too many in the media -- which is overwhelmingly left-of-center if you believe any number of the polls taken of those in the media as to who they vote for -- don't seem to have your intellectual honesty. If it's bad for "their" party, then it's not news. If it's bad for "the other guy's" party, then it might have legs.
Let's not forget the last big scandal to hit a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Who broke the Lewinsky scandal? NBC? ABC? CBS? CNN? Nope, it was the Drudge Report. Is Matt Drudge some ace reporter that does a better job than everyone else? Nope, not at all. He just wouldn't ignore a story that everyone else was quietly trying to ignore. It's difficult to go back to any president prior to Clinton to find similar kinds of behavior because the whole "alternative media" wing of the Internet didn't exist back then -- even talk radio wasn't prevalent. Before then, people got their news from TV, radio, and newspapers, and if there was any collusion -- intentional or otherwise -- nobody really ever heard about it.
Regardless, this alone ought to be enough to kick the guy from office. You lie or remove facts, and we catch you-- that's it. Why is it so hard to fire the bad ones?
Apathy, apathy, apathy. Just read some of the posts on this topic and you'll see why. Too many people are saying "everybody does it" as if that were some sort of defense for this. If everybody wallows in shit, does it make them smell any less offensive? What's too bad is that people like you and I are too few, and those who don't care are too many.
I think the existence of the article you're posting on directly refutes the entire basis of your argument (especially since you specifically mentioned Slashdot). Good job.
Mentioning it on/. does not equal outrage, or did you not bother reading the subject line of the post you're criticizing? Also, if you'd expend the effort to read the other posts on this news item, you'll see most of them consist of excusing Meehan's actions as "well, everybody does it" or "I'd do the same thing if the article was about me." Apologists, mostly. That would seem to support, not refute, my comment.
Take a look at some of the other people posting on this article; you'll find plenty of outrage. I'm a communist, and I too am outraged.
As well you should be, being a Communist. Last I heard, the World Worker's Party didn't do so hot in the last election, and North Korea is about as close as you're getting to a Worker's Paradise. Stalin, Lenin, and Marx would be so proud of what Communism has done for the world in fighting those repressive, despotic Capitalists. After all, no matter where you look in the world, Communist countries are bastions of freedom and human rights, where the average citizen lives a life of luxury, while the Capitalist countries are mired in sqaulor, ruled with an iron fist, and backwards with respect to the rest of the world...right?
Yes, in case you haven't figured it out, I'm making fun of the fact that you claim to be a Communist, an ideology so ridiculous that it's failed repeatedly throughout history despite the earnest attempts of many dictators, despots, lunatics, and strongmen. That's my opinion, and I'm sure you disagree. I am a Libertarian, practically your ideological opposite...what did you expect? But I digress.
You're kidding, right? Democrats are not all liberal, just like republicans are not all conservative. Even given my own political opinions, I refuse to support the democratic party.
You probably don't support them because they aren't left-leaning enough for you, seeing as you're a self-admitted Communist. However, if you read much about the current ideological platforms of the Democratic party, you'll find they're pushing a message that's decidedly liberal vis-a-vis what the typical American household believes in. Ergo, if you (not you personally, I mean Democrats in general) support the Democratic party, you are either ignorant of their ideology, apathetic enough not to care, or you support them. Ditto for Republican/Conservative viewpoints.
I don't "know" this, and I'm someone. I've just proved your statement absolutely false. Perhaps you should learn not to exaggerate and state your opinions as if they are facts.
Perhaps you're unable to grasp the concept of a generalization made for effect. I'm quite certain that no matter what any one person says, thinks, or believes, there can always be someone, somewhere that disagrees, thinks differently, or doesn't believe. That does not moot the efficiency of a generalization such as the one that was made, especially since there are far more cases where my generalization is true that false. Being a Communist, you should appreciate the concept of majority opinion being considered that of all, no? Or would you prefer that the minority cases be overly represented in your Worker's Paradise?
Alright, let's see some examples. Come on--let's see them.
The silence of the media is the deafening response. Outside of a couple of minor Boston newspapers, very little is being said about this
What you are has nothing to do with the truth or validity of what you're saying.
Hence my reason for posting it as a disclaimer. Of course, I could use the same pithy, petulant retort for you pointing out that you're a Communist -- but really, what would be the point unless I want to be as petulant as you about it?
According to the Lowell Sun, U.S. Rep Marty Meehan's staff has been heavily editing his Wikipedia bio...
But, since Meehan is a Democrat, expect this to get absolutely no mention in any news outlet. Nor will there be any huge outrage on Daily Kos, Slashdot, or any other website with a decidedly large portion of liberal-leaning (and thus Democrat-leaning) users. On the other hand, had Meehan been a Republican, there would be no end to diatribes condemning this as an assault against Free Speech, a symptom of the corruption of the Republican Nazis, part of the grand imperial planning of Emperor Bush, usual liberal ranting, etc. etc.
Go ahead and mod me down for saying this, but everyone knows this is the is the absolute truth. Democrats get a free pass for this kind of behavior, but Republicans get called everything but a child of God for the same kind of actions.
Disclaimer: I'm a card-carrying Libertarian, not a Republican, so take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. I call 'em as I see 'em.
Re:Ok, can we just put more empty space in now?
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Intel Makes 45nm Chip
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Something like what the VIA Epia series does, but with Intel's backing?
Why is Intel's backing even remotely important to this equation? VIA's chips are fully x86-compatible. Anything you can do with an Intel or AMD chip -- sans 64-bit stuff -- is doable on an Epia, just a bit slower but a lot cooler and quieter.
For that matter, if you're really anxious for something cool and quiet, you can get Pentium-M chips that'll go into micro-ATX or even full-size ATX motherboards. The chips sip power and put out barely enough heat to get warm, and their performance is orders of magnitude better than the Epia's. There are even completely fanless cases available that are aimed at the home theater/media PC market.
Handwave all you want, but the laws of physics and chemistry say that life is not possible in liquid lead or liquid methane.
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but it holds a measure of truth. We define life as some sort of carbon-based organism. We do that because it's the only example we've ever seen and can comprehend. But does that mean it's the only thing out there? No, it does not, and given the vastness of the universe, amazing chemical or electrical permutations that we can't even begin to imagine might be actively building campfires, cities, or starships. For that matter, who says sentience has to be corporeal at all? Just because we've never observed one doesn't mean it can't exist.
And please, stop speaking of physics and chemistry as if we knew everything there is to know about either. Physics alone holds an amazing number of mysteries that no current theory can resolve, which by default means current theories are wrong or at least incomplete. So long as there are holes in our knowledge, you are being amazingly presumptuous to claim that life can only exist according to said laws. You can speculate, you can pontificate, but you cannot rule it out of the game because you cannot accurately define the rules of the game itself.
The question is, who would try to clone such an impossible to understand and bad developed SO???
Gosh, perhaps because that OS (a two-letter word which you somehow mis-spelled) is currently running on about 85% of all x86 computers in the world, and that's a very lucrative market to be offering a clone OS to?
Or perhaps, just maybe, it would not be to clone the OS but perhaps to offer an improved-yet-fully-compatible version? Boy, that would scare the bejeezus out of a lot of OSS advocates, wouldn't it? A cleaned-up, more secure, more stable, instantly-usable Windows being offered at a competitive price by third parties. Talk about stuffing Linux desktop adoption in the dustbin...that would do it.
You have a good point, but you are discounting the enormous complexity required to build a desktop OS/system.
No, I'm not discounting it. I understand the complexity involved, which is precisely why telling someone "why don't you write your own driver?" is so assinine. Yet I see that answer tossed out far too regularly here as the answer to all hardware and software woes, as if it is somehow effortless to create such solutions. It is this mentality I'd like to see changed more than anything else, because that kind of mentality is really saying "hey, things work great for me, so I don't think we need to change anything at all" when clearly change is called for.
Whether it's Windows, Mac, or Linux, you need to look for the appropriate icon on the box - the windows logo, the apple logo, or the penguin, respectively. If you don't see it, don't buy it.
That's all fine and dandy, but finding the penguin logo on the outside of any box is an exercise in frustration. Far too often, all of your choices are products with a Windows-only slant, with perhaps some Mac support thrown in as an afterthought and a binary-only alpha driver you can download from the company's website that kind of works so long as the sun is shining, the planets are in alignment, and your dog is named Clark.
The issue then becomes how well Linux tries to accomodate people trying to make this kind of hardware work. Thus far, I think the task is so amazingly daunting that almost nobody -- save a few hardy kernel hackers who have no life at all -- ever tries to do it. The end result is a catch-22 stagnation: Linux adoption is slow because of poor hardware support, but hardware makers refuse to increase their support levels until the number of Linux users has grown significantly.
Why don't you just write your own driver? I mean, it's not like you have a life, or a job, or even classes to attend. Everyone else gleefully looks forward to debugging code on poorly-documented (or undocumented) hardware released by manufacturers who really coudl care less about Linux support. Everyone else here is well-versed in C, C++, FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, Java, Perl, CGI, and Python. And just because the command line interface is byzantine and cryptic doesn't mean it's not appropriate for children, grandmas, and Linux newbies of all ages. After all, if you haven't memorized the entire vi command set, you're just not worthy of using Linux yet.
Now, the preceeding sarcasm has been brought to you by someone who uses Linux on a fairly regular basis and depends upon it to run more than a few servers in my enterprise. Yet I am consistently un-surprised at the typical/. response to anyone who points out the elephant in the living room, namely that while Linux does lots of complex things very well, it's the easy things (or at least the things Windows makes look easy) that are turning off potential converts. After all, if even knowledgeable people have to wrestle for hours to get a damned USB device to install properly -- a device that will install flawless in under thirty seconds on a Windows machine -- just how many new users does Linux really expect to attract?
Are we really all satisfied with this level of user accomodation in Linux? It sure seems that way most of the time.
In other news, spiteful anarchists, communists, and socialists successfully lobbied their respective governments to cease all research into any medical advance that would help the rich, thus ensuring that nobody would ever be able to benefit from such advances.
You are, in a word, pathetic, sir.
Winston Churchill said it best: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." Congratulations! You've admirably succeeded in glomming on to the philosophy of equal suffering for all and blessings for none. Comrade Stalin would be proud!
Why do it RIGHT NOW, when there is no pressing need?
Gee, because maybe by the time there is a pressing need -- say, a giant extinction-causing asteroid six months away from ramming into Earth at 25,000mph -- there won't be time to develop a whole recolonization program from scratch. And if you discount developing colonization programs, you're also killing off propulsion research that might be beneficial in developing a rocket that could deflect said asteroid. This is just one of several examples I could make.
There are plenty of reasons why we should be doing this "RIGHT NOW" as you put it, but the best reason of all is because we can. What you propose is like a patient with early-detected cancer refusing to take treatment for the cancer because "it's not life threatening right now so why bother with the expense and discomfort?" Like it's better to wait until the cancer is in a real good position to kill you before you start thinking about doing something about it. Not.
I object, assuming facts not in evidence. Please prove that an idea is property.
Very well. I have an idea in my head for how to create practical fusion power. Such an idea (if I really had it) would hold incalculable value to the entire world.
Now, I can absolutely refuse to divulge this idea unless someone agrees to compensate me for whatever I deem fit. It's in my head, and there's no way anyone can possibly extract it against my will. I suppose torture or drugs might, but I certainly hope you're not advancing such an idea as a legitimate way of doing business or exchanging ideas.
As part of the compensation for me revealing my idea to you or anyone else, I can also stipulate via contract that you are forbidden to divulge this idea to anyone else. It's my contract, I can do what I want within the laws of the country in which I'm signing the contract. In the U.S., such stipulations are completely legal. This is also true in most developed nations worldwide.
Now, you can go and violate the contract you've just signed and distribute this idea to the world, but now I can sue you (and win!) for breaking a contract.
So, you see, it doesn't really matter whether or not you or I deem an idea "property" or not. An idea in someone's head is essentially that person's to do with as they see fit, and that conforms quite nicely to the typical definition of "personal property" be it tangible or intangible. If you want the idea, you must agree to the terms (if any) of the person with the idea, or plans, or formula, or code. If you fail to agree, the idea is not divulged. If you do agree and then change your mind, you're liable for breach of contract. Either way, you cannot short circuit the concept.
As I sit here, the comment count is only at 212. Come on folks, where's the outrage? The righteous indignation of people being oppressed?
One this is for sure: if this article were about the United States clamping down, there'd be 900 comments thus far, with 899 of them calling the U.S. everything but Satan himself. But since it's China, nobody says (much of) anything. Just goes to prove once again that everybody's eager to call the U.S. the #1 enemy of...well, just about everything, but when real oppression happens outside U.S. borders, they're given a free pass.
To understand the blatantly false statements the RIAA and their shills love to make, you have to see through their numerous incorrect premises:
Look, I'm no shill for the RIAA/MPAA, but several of the premises you're putting forth are either false, misleading, or exaggerated by yourself. You are guilty of doing exactly the same thing as they are doing, namely of spreading FUD about them in order to push your own agenda. In educated circles this is referred to as a strawman, assigning your opponent a false argument in order to defeat it and thus claim victory.
1. Copying and sharing, the basis of all human culture and advancement, are somehow heinous crimes in the digital age.
This "premise" ignores a basic fact: what you create is your property. If I write a song, or a program, or build a birdhouse, that is my property to do with as I see fit. If I choose to give that song, program, or birdhouse away for free, that is my right. If I wish to charge $1 billion for it, that is also my right, although it had better be a damned good song, program, or birdhouse if I ever expect to sell them. This is where free market principles trump everything: private property rights -- and thus value of same -- are intrisically linked to how much demand there is for said property. Britney Spears makes tons of money because people -- for some inexplicable reason -- like her music. Neither she nor her recording company holds a gun to anyone's head an forces them to buy her music. People who buy do so by choice, having decided to part with their money -- earned through their own efforts -- in exchange for the product of her work, namely her music.
Now, you're likely to point out that Mrs. Spears doesn't make nearly as much money as her record company does, and you'd be quite correct there. But Mrs. Spears has hired the company to produce and distribute her music, and they are entitled to whatever fees and markups they want. Now, they could do stupid things like charge $100 per CD, but again the free market defeats them. Prices of CD's are set at what they're set at not because the record companies decided that but because consumers have decided that's the most they're willing to pay. I'm sure they'd be happy paying less (just look at the success of iTunes), but it's in the record company's best interests to charge as much as they can for their product. They want to make a profit, and there's nothing wrong with that. If customers decide their wares are not worth what is being charged, the company won't make a profit and will eventually fold. Again, the free market cures all.
2. Seeing something is the same as doing something.
This is a vague statement on your part. Please explain your reasoning.
3. The US's laws apply to everyone in the world, and are superior to every other law.
In the U.S., U.S. law is superior to every other law. Outside our borders, either International Law applies, or there are individual copyright laws handled on a per-country basis. If you think copyright protection is some sort of U.S. racket, perhaps you ought to look at copyright laws outside the U.S. With but few exceptions, their laws more or less mirror U.S. law. You may think this is some kind of conspiracy, but it isn't. It is the natural product of intellectual property rights.
4. Legality is more important than morality.
Both are equally important. You are trying to argue that you have some intrinsic right to the fruit of someone else's labors without expending any effort or capital of your own. That is neither moral nor legal.
5. Your property belongs to some corporation instead of to you.
The products of a company -- be they tangible assets like widgets or movies like "Lord of the Rings" -- do belong to those who produced and/or financed it. Just as tangible assets must be purchased to enjoy, so must intangibles. But since intangibles can be freely passed from one i
Slashdot Mirror
If you believe that some of the hospital staff is not partially at fault, then you are either not a proponent of personal responsibility, or you are a contradicting yourself.
No, he's not. What you're not taking into account here is active and passive contributions to the crime. The hospital staff didn't take adequate precautions to prevent this kind of an attack, true. Perhaps it's incompetence on their part, perhaps it was incompetence on management's part by not giving them the staff, training, or budget to secure things properly. Who knows? But one thing is absolutely certain: such lack of preparation is absolutely, 100% harmless unless someone takes active measures against it. By your analogy, a bank is responsible for being robbed because machine gun nests and land mines aren't situation around a Fort Knox-like structure. It's not like the hospital wasn't taking precautions; they were. The precautions just weren't good enough. I've heard similar arguments that women "invited" a rapist because of provocative clothing (or lack thereof) or cavorting in a lewd manner. Would you support this argument? Your logic would seem to indicate so, as you're arguing "the hospital was asking for it."
Consider the following examples. If a hospital did not use use sterile equiptment and patients become infected with a pathogen, should the hospital be responsible, or should the pathogen be responsible.
This is an idiotic comparison for one amazingly glaring reason: a pathogen has no volition. A pathogen doesn't wake up one day and say "hmmm, will I infect someone today or will I go play hooky instead?" A pathogen does not make a conscious decision to do anything, and as such it is best likened to a piece of inanimate machinery, performing the "job" it was "designed" to do. You do not blame a hammer for bludgeoning someone's skull, and you do not blame the skull for being insufficiently strong enough to ward off the hammer blow. No, you blame the hand that wielded the hammer! Or, more precisely, the individual persona that decided to smash someone in the head with said hammer.
If a network of computers becomes zombies after an individual invades them, would you consider the owners of the computers to be at fault?
See "lack of volition" argument above. The computers cannot decide to not be attacked. The attacker is the active force in this scenario no matter how you twist things around. Without the attack, there are no negative consequences. Therefore the attacker is solely to blame. End of story. See also: personal responsibility. The attacker knew damn well what he was doing and that it was illegal. In this world, when people get what they deserve for doing things they knew to be harmful, the result is called "justice." What a pity that happens so rarely. This student should be medically damaged to the point where he's dependent upon a piece of life support gear, and then that gear should be attacked by his botnet. Let's see how fun and profitable he thinks it is then.
If a pet kills a person, the owner is also at fault.
A pet is not an inanimate object. A computer is. Your comparison is extremely faulty.
Not an option. My cable box doesn't have an analog out for HDTV. It has an HDCP stream coming over the HDMI cable.
I think what the PP was trying to get across is that you'll still be able to record in SD off the analog ports. It's not HD, but it's better than nothing at all. It's becoming increasing clear to everyone that the HDTV "analog hole" is going to be made extinct.
I want to know the truth, and I will keep asking questions until I know it.
I'll translate this for you: "I want to know the truth that I've already come up with in my own head, and I will keep ignoring all evidence to the contrary until a super-secret agent hiding out as an Ecuadorian goat farmer comes forward with The Super Secrect Evidence That Proves A Conspiracy."
Mods: Parent post is flamebait and offtopic. If this post is modded offtopic then the parent post should be modded the same.
The parent post might be offtopic but it's not flamebait. He's legitmately poking fun at you in an attempt to show how silly your post is. While you may not like that, that doesn't make it flamebait or trolling. What's the matter? Can't you stand a little criticism?
Isn't it obvious by now that that's what happened?
You see, that's where your case falls down. I'm sorry but the "everybody knows this is true" defense doesn't hold water in a court of law. You must endure that pesky inconvenience known as "providing evidence to support your claim." Powell's address to the UN? What's that supposed to mean? "45 minutes"? What's that? Don't expect people to just take your word for it, prove it.
However, with your "buddy Blair" comment, I'm betting you're more of an angry partisan than dispassionate source of world-altering evidence. But please, do attempt to prove otherwise.
Have you considered that he might be more appropriately marked "partisan"? Why is it that any time a "former insider" comes out excoriating the current administration, he or she is immediately thought to be centrist, fair-minded, impartial, and utterly not having an axe to grind? I'm not saying the guy is partisan or isn't, but he's offering his opinion on the war rationale being a hoax.
Until he presents some solid evidence -- evidence not tainted by coming from anonymous sources that cannot be verified -- this guy is merely airing his own grievances for personal benefit. If he's got ironclad proof that the Bush administration hoaxed everyone on the way to Iraq, why the hell isn't Dan Rather beating this guy's door down?
You've obviously never heard of this fascinating little concept known as a Free Market Economy, have you? I guess in your world, no research can be done if it isn't government funded, huh?
And as for what Bush said, it's right here in the link you provided:
Now, you might try and twist the ban on "human-animal hybrids" into saying that Bush is trying to murder millions of innocent diabetics, but that's rather ridiculous. What he's referring to is recent attempts to get around cloning bans by creating human-animal hybrids that aren't technically human yet allow human-like cloning tests to be done. I seem to recall that most of the people who are coming out against Bush on this are also passionately against using genetically-modified foods, the rationale being that we could create something that radically unbalances nature and thus really screw up the environment, the food chain, or both. This is, of course, a contradiction in their own logic, but that doesn't stop them, does it?
It proves that he's a fucking idiot. Where am I supposed to get my insulin, once he's banned the human-bacteria hybrid that produces it?
I can address your point in either of two ways:
1. You can get it from wherever it was obtained prior to the discovery of the human-bacteria hybrid you're referring to. Insulin production predates that discovery, you know. However, I will obviously concede that this is a far less convenient solution.
2. You'd think that if you're goint to go sit down and stutter out a rant you might have someone actually check it over to make sure it doesn't sound like you have absolutely no touch with reality. Bush's ideas ban federal funding for such research. Private industry is free to do as it pleases, and if there is any kind of financial incentive to produce insulin using human-bacteria hybrid, you can be it will (continue to) do so.
Maybe if you listened more to...well...anyone instead of those raving anti-Bush voices in your head, we might start looking at you as less "anti-logic."
Oh, that's right, I've seen it here.
/. should've remembered it.
I can understand the occasional dupe, but this is silly. The "IE7 Goes Public" link is quite visible on the right side of the page in Yesterday's News. Further, this isn't exactly a minor story, which means somebody at
Slow news day perhaps?
Whether intentional or not, you're invoking the fallacy of equivocation. I'm not a supporting member of any of the governments or organizations that you mention, nor do I necessarily agree with their policies or forms. Just because those things happened to call themselves "communist", it does not mean the word has the same meaning in the context that I apply it. From my perspective, calling the Soviet Union, an authoritarian government that was resisted and defeated in Poland by a national labor union, "communist" is ridiculous.
I am going to revise my earlier opinion of you ever so slightly. You argue your case intelligently, which puts you in a rarefied air here on Slashdot. I do enjoy an intelligent debate.
However, your taking umbrage at my "equivocation" smacks of the same kind of verbal manuvering I've had in past exchanged with Richard Stallman, namely that of saying "you cannot judge me by my self-appointed label because my label is defined in terms that only I fully understand." If I chose to call myself a white southerner in the nature of the Ku Klux Klan, you'd naturally assume me to be a racist, bigoted jerk. If I then declared that I only held to the "original" principles of the Klan -- and defined them in non-racist, non-bigoted terms -- does that somehow moot the fact that 99.9% of the world would not subscribe to your interpretation? Do not fault me for aligning you with past and present governments that also claim the label "Communist."
However, whether you consider yourself a Communist in the ilk of Stalin, Mao, Lenin, or Kim Jong Il or whether you're more of a textbook classical Karl Marx Communist really doesn't change my overall opinion of the ideology. Communism is, in my opinion, a hopelessly flawed idealism. Why? Because it requires people to put the good of the group above their own individual wants and needs. This flouts thousands of years of evolution-bred instinct, namely that of the desire to survive and prosper above all else, even to the extent of sacrificing others. It is an animal instinct, but I think it to be one of the most powerful ones we have. You can find noble people willing to give their lives for an ideal, but finding people willing to give their livelihood so that someone else who didn't earn a livelihood can have one is a much more difficult concept. Personally, I'm a Social Darwinist at heart: I have what I have because I've worked hard to earn it, and I'll be damned if anyone is going to have it or take it away from me unless I somehow deem them worthy of it. Communism is the antithesis of that, the submergence of individual accomplishment within a nebulous group identity of lowest common denominators, which is why I abhor it so.
Don't be too hasty. Surely, as a libertarian, you believe in a society based on the values and cooperation of individuals who work together for the benefit of society as a whole, organizing voluntarily when necessary, and unrestrained by an overbearing state.
I believe in individual freedom as the highest possible ideal there is, and I actively fight against anything that seeks to diminish that in any way. I believe intrinsically that people get what they deserve, and that everyone is where they are in life because of the choices they've made up to that point. If someone is a homeless bum, it's because they made poor educational choices, or they picked a poor career (if any), or they failed to buy homeowners insurance and lost everything in a fire. Either way, that person's fate is their own. I owe them nothing, and I'm not obligated to lift a finger to do a damned thing for them. Neither would I be owed anything were the situation reversed. That does not mean I am against charity (indeed, I give quite a lot), but my charity is my own choice, and I give to those I deem worthy without respect for any social/political correctness. I react quite negatively to anyone telling me I "ought to do this" or "ought to do that" to help someone else. Poppycock! My wealth and ma
This applies to both parties.
And this excuses the behavior...how? If the entire batch of apples is bad, does that somehow make them collectively good because all of them are equal? The Republicans doing this are deserving of our scorn just as much as Meehan. But since this isn't a Republican-only "scandal," you can bet it's going to go nowhere.
We should be equally outraged when an elected representative does this, regardless of what party they're in. Excusing it now just means it's that much easier for them to excuse it when/if they ever regain power.
I'm fairly left-leaning, but you can count me among the "outraged."
Then I respect you, sir, even though I disagree with your political stance. It's nice to see people who will criticize their own political "allies."
I believe it should be brought to the forefront, as it's a sleazy tactic-- I just don't see it happening, regardless of who did it. Our media is lazy and ratings-hungry, and lets a lot of what I would consider important information slide into obscurity.
I agree, it is sleazy, and I'd be saying the same thing if a Libertarian did it. Facts are facts, and trying to erase them or -- dare I say it? -- mod them down does nothing to alter the facts.
I disagree with your stance on why the media won't pick this up. Too many in the media -- which is overwhelmingly left-of-center if you believe any number of the polls taken of those in the media as to who they vote for -- don't seem to have your intellectual honesty. If it's bad for "their" party, then it's not news. If it's bad for "the other guy's" party, then it might have legs.
Let's not forget the last big scandal to hit a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Who broke the Lewinsky scandal? NBC? ABC? CBS? CNN? Nope, it was the Drudge Report. Is Matt Drudge some ace reporter that does a better job than everyone else? Nope, not at all. He just wouldn't ignore a story that everyone else was quietly trying to ignore. It's difficult to go back to any president prior to Clinton to find similar kinds of behavior because the whole "alternative media" wing of the Internet didn't exist back then -- even talk radio wasn't prevalent. Before then, people got their news from TV, radio, and newspapers, and if there was any collusion -- intentional or otherwise -- nobody really ever heard about it.
Regardless, this alone ought to be enough to kick the guy from office. You lie or remove facts, and we catch you-- that's it. Why is it so hard to fire the bad ones?
Apathy, apathy, apathy. Just read some of the posts on this topic and you'll see why. Too many people are saying "everybody does it" as if that were some sort of defense for this. If everybody wallows in shit, does it make them smell any less offensive? What's too bad is that people like you and I are too few, and those who don't care are too many.
I think the existence of the article you're posting on directly refutes the entire basis of your argument (especially since you specifically mentioned Slashdot). Good job.
/. does not equal outrage, or did you not bother reading the subject line of the post you're criticizing? Also, if you'd expend the effort to read the other posts on this news item, you'll see most of them consist of excusing Meehan's actions as "well, everybody does it" or "I'd do the same thing if the article was about me." Apologists, mostly. That would seem to support, not refute, my comment.
Mentioning it on
Take a look at some of the other people posting on this article; you'll find plenty of outrage. I'm a communist, and I too am outraged.
As well you should be, being a Communist. Last I heard, the World Worker's Party didn't do so hot in the last election, and North Korea is about as close as you're getting to a Worker's Paradise. Stalin, Lenin, and Marx would be so proud of what Communism has done for the world in fighting those repressive, despotic Capitalists. After all, no matter where you look in the world, Communist countries are bastions of freedom and human rights, where the average citizen lives a life of luxury, while the Capitalist countries are mired in sqaulor, ruled with an iron fist, and backwards with respect to the rest of the world...right?
Yes, in case you haven't figured it out, I'm making fun of the fact that you claim to be a Communist, an ideology so ridiculous that it's failed repeatedly throughout history despite the earnest attempts of many dictators, despots, lunatics, and strongmen. That's my opinion, and I'm sure you disagree. I am a Libertarian, practically your ideological opposite...what did you expect? But I digress.
You're kidding, right? Democrats are not all liberal, just like republicans are not all conservative. Even given my own political opinions, I refuse to support the democratic party.
You probably don't support them because they aren't left-leaning enough for you, seeing as you're a self-admitted Communist. However, if you read much about the current ideological platforms of the Democratic party, you'll find they're pushing a message that's decidedly liberal vis-a-vis what the typical American household believes in. Ergo, if you (not you personally, I mean Democrats in general) support the Democratic party, you are either ignorant of their ideology, apathetic enough not to care, or you support them. Ditto for Republican/Conservative viewpoints.
I don't "know" this, and I'm someone. I've just proved your statement absolutely false. Perhaps you should learn not to exaggerate and state your opinions as if they are facts.
Perhaps you're unable to grasp the concept of a generalization made for effect. I'm quite certain that no matter what any one person says, thinks, or believes, there can always be someone, somewhere that disagrees, thinks differently, or doesn't believe. That does not moot the efficiency of a generalization such as the one that was made, especially since there are far more cases where my generalization is true that false. Being a Communist, you should appreciate the concept of majority opinion being considered that of all, no? Or would you prefer that the minority cases be overly represented in your Worker's Paradise?
Alright, let's see some examples. Come on--let's see them.
The silence of the media is the deafening response. Outside of a couple of minor Boston newspapers, very little is being said about this
What you are has nothing to do with the truth or validity of what you're saying.
Hence my reason for posting it as a disclaimer. Of course, I could use the same pithy, petulant retort for you pointing out that you're a Communist -- but really, what would be the point unless I want to be as petulant as you about it?
According to the Lowell Sun, U.S. Rep Marty Meehan's staff has been heavily editing his Wikipedia bio...
But, since Meehan is a Democrat, expect this to get absolutely no mention in any news outlet. Nor will there be any huge outrage on Daily Kos, Slashdot, or any other website with a decidedly large portion of liberal-leaning (and thus Democrat-leaning) users. On the other hand, had Meehan been a Republican, there would be no end to diatribes condemning this as an assault against Free Speech, a symptom of the corruption of the Republican Nazis, part of the grand imperial planning of Emperor Bush, usual liberal ranting, etc. etc.
Go ahead and mod me down for saying this, but everyone knows this is the is the absolute truth. Democrats get a free pass for this kind of behavior, but Republicans get called everything but a child of God for the same kind of actions.
Disclaimer: I'm a card-carrying Libertarian, not a Republican, so take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. I call 'em as I see 'em.
Something like what the VIA Epia series does, but with Intel's backing?
Why is Intel's backing even remotely important to this equation? VIA's chips are fully x86-compatible. Anything you can do with an Intel or AMD chip -- sans 64-bit stuff -- is doable on an Epia, just a bit slower but a lot cooler and quieter.
For that matter, if you're really anxious for something cool and quiet, you can get Pentium-M chips that'll go into micro-ATX or even full-size ATX motherboards. The chips sip power and put out barely enough heat to get warm, and their performance is orders of magnitude better than the Epia's. There are even completely fanless cases available that are aimed at the home theater/media PC market.
Handwave all you want, but the laws of physics and chemistry say that life is not possible in liquid lead or liquid methane.
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but it holds a measure of truth. We define life as some sort of carbon-based organism. We do that because it's the only example we've ever seen and can comprehend. But does that mean it's the only thing out there? No, it does not, and given the vastness of the universe, amazing chemical or electrical permutations that we can't even begin to imagine might be actively building campfires, cities, or starships. For that matter, who says sentience has to be corporeal at all? Just because we've never observed one doesn't mean it can't exist.
And please, stop speaking of physics and chemistry as if we knew everything there is to know about either. Physics alone holds an amazing number of mysteries that no current theory can resolve, which by default means current theories are wrong or at least incomplete. So long as there are holes in our knowledge, you are being amazingly presumptuous to claim that life can only exist according to said laws. You can speculate, you can pontificate, but you cannot rule it out of the game because you cannot accurately define the rules of the game itself.
The question is, who would try to clone such an impossible to understand and bad developed SO???
Gosh, perhaps because that OS (a two-letter word which you somehow mis-spelled) is currently running on about 85% of all x86 computers in the world, and that's a very lucrative market to be offering a clone OS to?
Or perhaps, just maybe, it would not be to clone the OS but perhaps to offer an improved-yet-fully-compatible version? Boy, that would scare the bejeezus out of a lot of OSS advocates, wouldn't it? A cleaned-up, more secure, more stable, instantly-usable Windows being offered at a competitive price by third parties. Talk about stuffing Linux desktop adoption in the dustbin...that would do it.
You have a good point, but you are discounting the enormous complexity required to build a desktop OS/system.
No, I'm not discounting it. I understand the complexity involved, which is precisely why telling someone "why don't you write your own driver?" is so assinine. Yet I see that answer tossed out far too regularly here as the answer to all hardware and software woes, as if it is somehow effortless to create such solutions. It is this mentality I'd like to see changed more than anything else, because that kind of mentality is really saying "hey, things work great for me, so I don't think we need to change anything at all" when clearly change is called for.
Whether it's Windows, Mac, or Linux, you need to look for the appropriate icon on the box - the windows logo, the apple logo, or the penguin, respectively. If you don't see it, don't buy it.
That's all fine and dandy, but finding the penguin logo on the outside of any box is an exercise in frustration. Far too often, all of your choices are products with a Windows-only slant, with perhaps some Mac support thrown in as an afterthought and a binary-only alpha driver you can download from the company's website that kind of works so long as the sun is shining, the planets are in alignment, and your dog is named Clark.
The issue then becomes how well Linux tries to accomodate people trying to make this kind of hardware work. Thus far, I think the task is so amazingly daunting that almost nobody -- save a few hardy kernel hackers who have no life at all -- ever tries to do it. The end result is a catch-22 stagnation: Linux adoption is slow because of poor hardware support, but hardware makers refuse to increase their support levels until the number of Linux users has grown significantly.
Why don't you just write your own driver? I mean, it's not like you have a life, or a job, or even classes to attend. Everyone else gleefully looks forward to debugging code on poorly-documented (or undocumented) hardware released by manufacturers who really coudl care less about Linux support. Everyone else here is well-versed in C, C++, FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, Java, Perl, CGI, and Python. And just because the command line interface is byzantine and cryptic doesn't mean it's not appropriate for children, grandmas, and Linux newbies of all ages. After all, if you haven't memorized the entire vi command set, you're just not worthy of using Linux yet.
/. response to anyone who points out the elephant in the living room, namely that while Linux does lots of complex things very well, it's the easy things (or at least the things Windows makes look easy) that are turning off potential converts. After all, if even knowledgeable people have to wrestle for hours to get a damned USB device to install properly -- a device that will install flawless in under thirty seconds on a Windows machine -- just how many new users does Linux really expect to attract?
Now, the preceeding sarcasm has been brought to you by someone who uses Linux on a fairly regular basis and depends upon it to run more than a few servers in my enterprise. Yet I am consistently un-surprised at the typical
Are we really all satisfied with this level of user accomodation in Linux? It sure seems that way most of the time.
In other news, spiteful anarchists, communists, and socialists successfully lobbied their respective governments to cease all research into any medical advance that would help the rich, thus ensuring that nobody would ever be able to benefit from such advances.
You are, in a word, pathetic, sir.
Winston Churchill said it best: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." Congratulations! You've admirably succeeded in glomming on to the philosophy of equal suffering for all and blessings for none. Comrade Stalin would be proud!
Why do it RIGHT NOW, when there is no pressing need?
Gee, because maybe by the time there is a pressing need -- say, a giant extinction-causing asteroid six months away from ramming into Earth at 25,000mph -- there won't be time to develop a whole recolonization program from scratch. And if you discount developing colonization programs, you're also killing off propulsion research that might be beneficial in developing a rocket that could deflect said asteroid. This is just one of several examples I could make.
There are plenty of reasons why we should be doing this "RIGHT NOW" as you put it, but the best reason of all is because we can. What you propose is like a patient with early-detected cancer refusing to take treatment for the cancer because "it's not life threatening right now so why bother with the expense and discomfort?" Like it's better to wait until the cancer is in a real good position to kill you before you start thinking about doing something about it. Not.
I object, assuming facts not in evidence. Please prove that an idea is property.
Very well. I have an idea in my head for how to create practical fusion power. Such an idea (if I really had it) would hold incalculable value to the entire world.
Now, I can absolutely refuse to divulge this idea unless someone agrees to compensate me for whatever I deem fit. It's in my head, and there's no way anyone can possibly extract it against my will. I suppose torture or drugs might, but I certainly hope you're not advancing such an idea as a legitimate way of doing business or exchanging ideas.
As part of the compensation for me revealing my idea to you or anyone else, I can also stipulate via contract that you are forbidden to divulge this idea to anyone else. It's my contract, I can do what I want within the laws of the country in which I'm signing the contract. In the U.S., such stipulations are completely legal. This is also true in most developed nations worldwide.
Now, you can go and violate the contract you've just signed and distribute this idea to the world, but now I can sue you (and win!) for breaking a contract.
So, you see, it doesn't really matter whether or not you or I deem an idea "property" or not. An idea in someone's head is essentially that person's to do with as they see fit, and that conforms quite nicely to the typical definition of "personal property" be it tangible or intangible. If you want the idea, you must agree to the terms (if any) of the person with the idea, or plans, or formula, or code. If you fail to agree, the idea is not divulged. If you do agree and then change your mind, you're liable for breach of contract. Either way, you cannot short circuit the concept.
As I sit here, the comment count is only at 212. Come on folks, where's the outrage? The righteous indignation of people being oppressed?
One this is for sure: if this article were about the United States clamping down, there'd be 900 comments thus far, with 899 of them calling the U.S. everything but Satan himself. But since it's China, nobody says (much of) anything. Just goes to prove once again that everybody's eager to call the U.S. the #1 enemy of...well, just about everything, but when real oppression happens outside U.S. borders, they're given a free pass.
To understand the blatantly false statements the RIAA and their shills love to make, you have to see through their numerous incorrect premises:
Look, I'm no shill for the RIAA/MPAA, but several of the premises you're putting forth are either false, misleading, or exaggerated by yourself. You are guilty of doing exactly the same thing as they are doing, namely of spreading FUD about them in order to push your own agenda. In educated circles this is referred to as a strawman, assigning your opponent a false argument in order to defeat it and thus claim victory.
1. Copying and sharing, the basis of all human culture and advancement, are somehow heinous crimes in the digital age.
This "premise" ignores a basic fact: what you create is your property. If I write a song, or a program, or build a birdhouse, that is my property to do with as I see fit. If I choose to give that song, program, or birdhouse away for free, that is my right. If I wish to charge $1 billion for it, that is also my right, although it had better be a damned good song, program, or birdhouse if I ever expect to sell them. This is where free market principles trump everything: private property rights -- and thus value of same -- are intrisically linked to how much demand there is for said property. Britney Spears makes tons of money because people -- for some inexplicable reason -- like her music. Neither she nor her recording company holds a gun to anyone's head an forces them to buy her music. People who buy do so by choice, having decided to part with their money -- earned through their own efforts -- in exchange for the product of her work, namely her music.
Now, you're likely to point out that Mrs. Spears doesn't make nearly as much money as her record company does, and you'd be quite correct there. But Mrs. Spears has hired the company to produce and distribute her music, and they are entitled to whatever fees and markups they want. Now, they could do stupid things like charge $100 per CD, but again the free market defeats them. Prices of CD's are set at what they're set at not because the record companies decided that but because consumers have decided that's the most they're willing to pay. I'm sure they'd be happy paying less (just look at the success of iTunes), but it's in the record company's best interests to charge as much as they can for their product. They want to make a profit, and there's nothing wrong with that. If customers decide their wares are not worth what is being charged, the company won't make a profit and will eventually fold. Again, the free market cures all.
2. Seeing something is the same as doing something.
This is a vague statement on your part. Please explain your reasoning.
3. The US's laws apply to everyone in the world, and are superior to every other law.
In the U.S., U.S. law is superior to every other law. Outside our borders, either International Law applies, or there are individual copyright laws handled on a per-country basis. If you think copyright protection is some sort of U.S. racket, perhaps you ought to look at copyright laws outside the U.S. With but few exceptions, their laws more or less mirror U.S. law. You may think this is some kind of conspiracy, but it isn't. It is the natural product of intellectual property rights.
4. Legality is more important than morality.
Both are equally important. You are trying to argue that you have some intrinsic right to the fruit of someone else's labors without expending any effort or capital of your own. That is neither moral nor legal.
5. Your property belongs to some corporation instead of to you.
The products of a company -- be they tangible assets like widgets or movies like "Lord of the Rings" -- do belong to those who produced and/or financed it. Just as tangible assets must be purchased to enjoy, so must intangibles. But since intangibles can be freely passed from one i