Umm, sorry, it is true. Hate to be the one to break it to you.
From a legal point of view, all the court decisions on segregration should be more than enough to prove that.
No, it should not be. Desegregation laws state that government and publicly funded organizations cannot discriminate, but private organizations are free to do whatever they want, and this is perfectly within the bounds of the Constitution by the Right of Freedom to Associate. Try looking at your Constitution a bit and you'll see that you can choose to associate with whomever you like and you cannot be compelled to associate with someone you don't.
grocery store can't refuse to sell food to people based on race,
Yes, it can. It would be stupid for someone to do so, but it most certainly can. If you disagree with me, then kindly point out the exact article and paragraph of any law in the United States that forces a private business owner to accept a particular type of customer. But you won't be able to do so, because such laws do not exist, and they would be unconstitutional.
restaurant can't refuse to serve people based on race.
Yes, you can, for exactly the same reasons as outlined above.
You can't refuse to sell your house to someone for racial reasons
Again, YES, YOU CAN. It's against the law for a publicly funded loan organization to deny someone a loan because of their race, color, creed, sex, age, or national origin, but a private owner of a home can choose to sell to whomever he or she wishes. What kind of society would you have? One that forces someone to sell their property or services, regardless of that person's wishes? Not a very free society.
The rest of your post just shows how far unbridled libertarianism can lead you
And your posts show just how shallow your thinking processes really are. You've spent absolutely zero brainpower thinking about the actual consequence of the implementation of what you propose. You've essentially said, "we don't care if it's your business, your property, your time, or whatever, we, the government, will force you to use your life/liberty/property in the way we see fit, and your free will has nothing to do with it." I'm sure you're a big fan of democracy, too...so long as it's your brand of democracy.
The point of our society, as framed by the Founding Fathers, is that every person should have the rights to do whatever they want, whenver they want, however they want, so long as the exercise thereof does not impinge upon someone else's similar rights. It is the most fundamental law of the land! If I want to don a white sheet, chant racist slogans, and burn a cross in my front yard along with a bunch of other like-minded goons, I have every right to do so. You, as a free-thinking individual, have every right to refuse to serve me food at your restaurant (see, this racism thing works both ways, doesn't it?) because you don't like the Klan. Conversely, if that Klan member you refused to serve runs a gas station down the road, he's within his rights to refuse to sell you gas.
It goes on and on, but the results the Founding Fathers intended is that socially undesirable traits will be naturally weeded out over time. Racists tend to congregate with more their kind but are generally shunned by enlightened society. If they wish to associate within their own inbred group, they're entitled to do so, and we have no right whatsoever to impose our collective wills upon them. We can, however, by exemption, keep them from associating with us, and they have no rights to force us to include them.
Final comment: you, in your high-minded liberalism, have said that it ought to be illegal to refuse service to someone you don't like. I wonder how you'd feel if it was you who were providing the service to someone that you despi
The point that you're trying to make is that it's immoral to enjoy the fruits of someone's labor without compensating them for it. That's true. However, as Ronald Coase posits in his economic theory of externalities, a victim is rarely a simple innocent bystander. Most victims have put themselves in a situation where they will be victimized
So, what you're essentially saying is that if a woman dresses in a provacative dress and goes into a seedy part of town, she deserves to raped because she "put herself in a situation where she could be victimized"? My God, it's amazing that you can come to such a conclusion and think yourself to be a logical person. You're putting forth that if someone puts themselves in a position where they might be victimized, it's perfectly already to go ahead and victimize them because, hey, they put themselves into the situation! Gosh, your honor, murdering that cheating husband isn't immoral, he put himself in a position where I felt the need to murder him! This is the ultimate in the "blame the victim" mentality that so pervades the unthinking Left. And no wonder, because it allows you to justify any behavior that you like by claiming that the other guy is at fault. Must be nice to live in your world where everything you do is good and noble, no matter what the consequences are to anyone else.
Sorry, but that's a poor example.
Really? How? Your argument does not dispell the concept of copyright laws at all. Instead you simply sweep the whole thing under the rug by saying "there is no implied contract", when all copyright law, consumer law, and criminal law in existence says the opposite. Music companies demand to be paid for their music. If you don't pay, you don't get the music, it's that simple. You can equivocate all you want on the subject, but in the end, if you dismiss the fact that the copyright owner has the right to control his or her works, you're just flat wrong.
I've wondered why they don't make the silica surface out of larger pieces as opposed to the smaller tiles. The answer I got was:
1. Smaller tiles are more fault-tolerant (to a degree). You can lose a few small tiles with no serious effects (depending upon location and the number of lost tiles), whereas losing a large tile would be uniformly catastrophic.
2. Thermal expansion. Smaller tiles have room to expand without moving around too much. Larger tiles would exert more stress on the attachment points when the tile heats up during re-entry.
3. Maintenance. It's unavoidable that tiles will be damaged during a mission, mostly due to ice strikes during liftoff. It's easier to replace a few smaller damaged tiles than one larger damaged tile.
I wrote a new computer program (which I'be been known to do), that does something similar to an existing commercial product (or sometimes not yet existing). Now I have something I didn't have, and dang, I didn't pay for any of them. What exactly did I steal? An idea?
If your implementation is based on the copyrighted works of someone else (i.e. copying) then you've stolen someone else's works and are fraudulently putting them forth as your own. If you've clean-roomed your design then you've made a new creation. Congrats! It's now yours to either give away or charge for...just like anybody else who makes software.
I read a recipe that allows me to cook a tasty meal. I didn't have that knowledge before. Must have stolen something! Worse, I go and apply that knowledge. Am I now guilty of hiding stolen property?
You're getting sillier here, but I'll continue for the sake of your sanity. If you remember the recipe and use it, that's your good fortune. If you memorize the entire recipe book and attempt to publish your own version, you've violated copyright law and should be punished. Remember this phrase: all of life does not fit neatly into black or white...there are gray areas...concentrate and it might just penetrate your skull a bit.
I hear a tune (on radio, TV, whatever), and play it on keyboard. Perhaps I even sing along. Didn't know the song before, now I do. What did I steal?
This is a perfect example of "fair use" copyright law. You have rights to remember the song, to hum it, sing it, and so forth. You do NOT, however, own the song. It is not yours to distribute as you will simply because you can remember a tune. Again, this falls underneath the aforementioned gray area of how intellectual property laws work. You're attempting to confuse the issue by making up some otherwise easily explainable situations. You have not proven one iota with regards to how illegal music sharing is a moral endeavor, and I doubt that you can.
Seriously, this whole attempt that I constantly see in this discussion to bring it down to "the level of the common man" disgusts me. "You evil music traders are even stealing from the poor old janitor". Get real. The janitor did his job, collected his paycheque, and doesn't give two shits whether you buy the CD or not.
Ah, it never ceases to amaze me at how close someone can come to the truth, yet miss it so badly. Your pathetic attempt to make it seem like the "common man" working at the recording company is paid directly via royalties is inane and stupid, and I'm sure you know that. In fact, those people are paid by the company, and the company is paid by the royalties. Ergo, if the company doesn't get paid, the employees get laid off. Even your simplistic brain should be able to understand this rudimentary concept, but instead I'm sure you'll ignore it and continue to function in your blindered, logic-free world.
Thanks for finding this link. I had been looking for it just to refute this fool's argument and hadn't found it yet.
Alas, I'm sure it won't matter. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. You can lead an idiot to logic but you can't make him think.
And you've made a conscious decision to offer your services for free. Goddammit, you cannot force others to give their services away just because you do! Don't you realize how arrogant it is to even assume that you could do such a thing? "Hey, I give my music away, so everyone else should!" I'm willing to bet that there are people who would not want to listen to your music even though it is free, but would prefer to pay for someone else's talents. That's their choice!
My God, the arrogance you're displaying here is just plain earthshattering. I'm not going to take this up any further, as you're obviously so far beyond any possible objective reality that it's pointless to continue. The blinders you wear are gargantuan, and it must be nice to life in your own little world. Let me know if you ever become reconnected to reality.
Okay, steer around this one, o high and mighty one: you're sharing information that the information creator has declared to be unshareable. You are going against the wishes of the person who created the info in the first place.
Take the GPL for a good analogy. You are free to share all sorts of stuff under the GPL, but you must meet certain criteria set forth by the creators of the GPL and the software authors. I recall that in the past several companies have attempted to take GPL-protected works and use them in commercial software without crediting or compensating the original software authors. What a horrendous outrage ensued on Slashdot, with everyone screaming for blood at how awful it all was! I'm sure you were somewhere in the crowd, raging on how unprincipled the violator must've been to violate the GPL in such a manner.
Now, here you stand advocating the exact same kind of action! The author of the works has decreed that you must comply with certain criteria if you wish to make use of their work. In this case, they demand to be paid. You, feeling smug and self-assured of your righteousness, violate their wishes, partake of their efforts, and give no thought whatosever to the fact that you've done something wrong. Quite to the contrary, you think you've done something noble! What a farce! What an amazing, absolutely mind-boggling amount of self-deception you've engaged in! You're more than happy to tread on rights, so long as they're not your rights! How self centered and egotistical you are to think in this manner!
So, go ahead, continue to keep your blinders on. Continue to deceive yourself over and over again that what you're doing isn't hurting anyone, that nothing is being diminished, that you're just standing up for the poor and impoverished, and against the rich and powerful. If everyone thought like you, music companies would go out of business. And while I'm sure that'd give your smug anti-capitalist mind some sort of bizarre satisfaction, I'm sure that the secretaries, janitors, couriers, and thousands of other folks who barely cleared $30K/year before being laid off will gladly bow down to you and worship your righteousness, since you're so obviously right in this matter.
Bah, why do I bother? You've chosen to brainwash yourself beyond hope. You've chosen to disregard reason where it's convenient to you, and it's impossible for a rational person to convince you of a rational argument so long as you insist on being irrational.
You've evidently never heard of the concept of an implied contract, of which copyright law is. When you violate copyright law, you're violating the implied contract between you, the consumer, and the artist, the producer. The artist demands to be compensated for his/her time/efforts/talents or you don't get to hear the music. You disregard their wishes and consume anyway. You've violated the law. You've taken something that has been assigned a value and given nothing in return. It is not within your rights to redefine the value of the object, dammit! You can offer a lower price (which the artist is free to reject) or you can elect not to partake, but you cannot simply declare that their works are free for the taking! Can't you get that simple concept through your head?
Look, as I've said before, I despise the current state of affairs. I haven't purchased a CD in years, but I also don't attempt to get music through illegal means. I have simply opted out, and that's not only legal, it's moral. You, on the other hand, are claiming some high moral purpose in first claiming that something has no value (so that you can justify taking it without paying for it) but then turning around and claiming it does have value (because you derive enjoyment from listening to it). You live in a contradiction, a hypocritical construct that you are willfully blind to. I hold a particular place of despisement for hypocrites, and that's why I'm riding you so much. If you'd just come out and admit that what you're doing is wrong but you're going to keep on doing it, I'd have more respect for you.
Why don't you quit trying to justify your actions, which by any possible rational definition is stealing. Cloak it, obfuscate it, deflect it, muddle it...that's all you've tried to do. Look, I'm not upset that you steal music. That's between you and your conscience. I'm upset that you think it's right to do so.
You are correct, but the gist of the prosecution will be the same: you took something that has value, and you didn't pay the required fee for it. Messing with the diction doesn't change the overall fact that you're doing something that is morally reprehensible.
It's like arguing that you didn't murder someone, instead it was manslaughter, or negligent homicide. The end results are the same: someone is dead, and you had something to do with it. Only the punishment differs.
It's interesting that you mentioned slavery, because it's useful in proving my argument. In slavery, one group of people took the fruits of the labor of slaves but failed to compensate them for it. Further, the slaves had no say-so in the matter.
In your argument, you are taking the fruits of labor from someone else but not compensating them for it. Artists/music companies are not slaves, but they do deserve to be paid for their efforts, and like it or not, they have the right to demand whatever wage they like. You have the right to not partake of their efforts, but you do not have the right to partake of their efforts and not pay their asking price. To do anything else is stealing, and all your equivocating in the world cannot change that.
If you don't believe you're doing something immoral, you're engaging in a huge amount of self-delusion.
The incentive to create has never been driven by money. People actually SPEND money to learn how to create, just for the satisfaction of creating. Do you think everybody who buys a guitar expects to become a musician able to recoup the costs? Money is an incentive but not the only one or even the highest one.
I agree with this. However, this does not discount that if someone wishes to sell their talents, they have every right to do so. If someone says "I'll play my song for you at your party, but you must pay me $20 per hour for my time", you're obliged to either pay them or they're not obliged to show up. You cannot take what someone else is offering without paying them what they're asking for it. If you do, you're stealing.
Technology has made it so that anybody with relatively cheap equipment can reproduce these sounds to a satisfactory level. Why should you continue to pay them at the prices they demand when you can perform the service they provide for a much lower cost?
Because you're not paying for the damned bits and bytes, you're paying for the damned talent that arranged it in that fashion in the first place. Could you have composed one of Beethoven's symphony? Probably not! He has a skill that you do not. Thus, if he wishes to demand that you pay for his skills or not partake of them, you must do one or the other if you plan to respect his wishes. You cannot simply take and then fail to pay. You've not held up your side of the bargain!
It is the same way with any human (or group of humans) that has a skill that is in demand. Do you work for free? You must perform some work to pay for your car, apartment, etc. How would you like it if someone took your skills and failed to pay you? Oh, I forget, stealing is only okay when it happens to other people.
i'm really sorry that your arguments are so weak that you feel have to resort to blatant ad hominem attacks. very nice. when you feel like growing up and discussing as adults, drop me an email.
It has nothing to do with weakness, I assure you, since your argument is the one that cannot be backed in any legal, moral, or realistic fashion. It is my opinion of your thinking skills, which at this point are not anything remotely approaching "respectful".
if you honestly beleive that money is the primary motive behind science you are much more sheltered and ignorant than i had thought
If you believe that all science is motivated by altruism, you're the one living in a sheltered dreamworld. Billions of dollars are spent every year working on things like Rogain and Viagra. Did the companies that created these products do so solely out of the desire to allow men to have hairy heads and more sex? Of course not! They did so because they know that people will pay even more billions for products that allow them to do so!
And while individual scientists may be altruistic enough to donate their time, knowledge, and efforts, huge projects like fusion power, cures for cancer, etc. require huge teams of researchers will billion-dollar labs and equipment. People don't just give this stuff away, it requires money. Investors will not invest if there's no return to be had. If you don't believe this, you're the one living in the unrealistic, simplistic worldview.
why bother implementing an entire OS and give it away for free? your suggestion that people wouldnt innovate if it wernt for a cash insintive is laughable and has been proven wrong by people deeds throughout all of history.
Your spelling is the laughable component of this argument, but I'll ignore it for the moment and concentrate on what appears to be your point.
Yes, Linux grew out of thousands of people's efforts, and many of them received nothing more than passing gratification for their efforts. You've proven my point while being ignorant of it, it seems. These people chose to make their time available, volunteering if you will. They made a choice to say the dollar value of their time spent was zero. That is their choice, just like it's someone else's choice to say their time is worth $40 an hour, or $400 an hour. It is not your right to say what anyone else charges for their time is right or wrong. Quit playing God with everyone else's pocketbooks. You'd have quite a different tune if it was your money at stake.
pigopolists...Asses of America...law is now the embodiment of the will of the corporations...our government is the best that money can buy
Nope, no built-in bias there, nosiree. You do realize that these statements sound pretty damn close to things Josef Stalin (a great humanitarian if there ever was one) just a few decades ago.
it is obvious that there is no morally justifiable reason for the state of copyright law as it is today.
What arrogance! My God, how can you keep a straight face and say that? Just about everything you see around you is the result of a system based on compensating people for their efforts, thoughts, and inventions. You can get a certain amount of altruism from humanity, but you cannot count on it. You can, however, always count on people to do things that will benefit them. Who are you to judge the morality of a system that have so benefitted from?
I couldn't agree more. However, the method to combat this business model is to boycott their products. By stealing their product, you are intrinsically admitting that their product has value (at least to you), otherwise you wouldn't do it. You have obtained something of value, yet have given nothing of value in return. This is a one-sided transaction no matter how you look at it.
If the artists don't get the money I would have paid -- boohoo, they can always get a real job or find some other way to make money
Would you listen to yourself for a minute? Can you grasp exactly what you just stated? Imagine for a minute that you were the person with the valuable commodity (say, your programming skills). You have just advocated that people have a right to your skills to use however they see fit, and you have absolutely no right to demand any recompense for it. That's beatiful! I'd love to have you working for me, since I'd never have to pay you!
Most talented artists don't make music for the money anyway.
That's a pretty big generalization. I'm sure interviewed all these artists and they responded in this fashion, right? Of course you didn't.
Regardless of whether they'd do it "for the money" or not, the point is it takes money to live. Without money you have no food, clothing, or shelter. Even musicians who compose because they love music must have a regular job to pay the bills. Professional musicians have devoted their lives to their music in lieu of a typical job, and you have no right whatsoever to pass judgement on the rightness of their choice -- it is their liberty to do what they like, just as it is your liberty to not partake of their product.
Sure, it is illegal to copy copyrighted stuff. But it is not immoral
That has got to be the most twisted, abhorrent, ridiculous statement I've yet to see in this argument. What you're proposing is tantamount to saying that no one has any rights to recompense for their works unless you say so. What arrogance you display!
You are using the letter of the law to violate the spirit of the law.
Here's a test I guarantee you can't equivocate: call up the RIAA legal counsel, tell them that you've just downloaded a copyrighted piece of music without paying for it. Give them your name, your address, and your phone number, and dare them to prosecute you.
If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear, right?
But you are not, in any sense, depriving someone else of something that they had, only something that they were entitled to on principle.
So if I hire you and allow you to work for me for two weeks, but then deny you a paycheck, I haven't stolen anything from you, have I?
Of course I've stolen something from you! I've stolen your time, your effort, and your creativity for my own personal gain, and I've refused to compensate you for it as was agreed before you began work. If I, as an employer, were to do such a thing, you could sue me for breach of contract and most certainly win.
You, as a consumer, have the same "contract" with the provider to compensate them for the assigned value of the works you are enjoying. That contract is called "copyright law", and you're completely in the wrong if you think it doesn't apply to the situation.
You're advocating hypocrisy here, but that's nothing new on Slashdot. Can't you rise above this petty thievery?
walking by a car that is blasting the latest p. diddy song is "enjoying the fruits of someone else's labors" without paying them for the priveledge
That falls under the realm of something you can't avoid, and you have no active control over not hearing the music. If you choose to be within aural range of the music and don't wish to wear earplugs, you have to hear it. You don't have a choice in the matter.
Copyright law acknowledges these circumstances under the guise of "fair use", and it's very well documented what you can and can't do. You can play something for yourself or a group of friends. You cannot, however, make a copy for your friends for them to enjoy outside of your listening pleasure. You can give them your copy, but then you no longer have it. You can make a copy, but only for your own pleasure and only so long as you retain the original without giving it to someone else.
have never seen a convincing arguement that aquiring information is theft, because its an impossible argument. theft implies the deprivation of something, and information can be copied infinitely to only gain.
Okay, how 'bout this. My company spends billions of dollars researching a cure for cancer, and we find it. That information now has incredible value, both because it's in high demand and because it cost billions of dollars to discover the cure. In your pathetic little mind, however, that information should be "free", right? Okay, you've just removed the primary motivation to find the cure in the first place. Bang! No more cure! Why bother researching ANYTHING anymore (faster processors, better food, space travel) when there's no way you can ever recoup your costs for it?
Music is no different than any other form of "creative" endeavor. The artist/scientist/researcher has created/discovered something that wasn't there before. If no incentive exists for people to do these things, they won't be done. Like it or not, money is a powerful incentive.
If the artist has a million of his CD's stashed away in his basement, I can take one without him noticing. He won't miss it. That's cool.
Ah! So, just because someone has a lot of something, that gives you the right to take some of it, because they "won't notice it"?
Great! I'm sure you've got some money in your bank account somewhere. I'll just take some of it! You shouldn't care, because you had a lot of it in there to begin with!
Now, imagine if you looked at your bank statement and noticed that an unauthorized withdrawal had been made. You'd damn sure contact the bank and demand to be made whole again, wouldn't you? Of course you would, because it's yours. But when it's someone else's stuff, it's okay.
Wake up and smell the hypocrisy. If you want to steal/infringe/whatever, go right ahead. I could care less about what your actions are. Just don't attempt to cloak yourself in some kind of white-knight moral justice, because you're nothing but a thief. Be proud of being a thief, or just stop being one, but quit acting like you're claiming the high moral ground.
Here's a hint, if I shoplift a CD, the store doesn't have it anymore, if I use Napster, no one is deprived of anything.
And that's where you're wrong. You are enjoying the fruits of someone else's labors, namely that of the artist, the producer, the sound mixer, the recording booth operator, the marketing company, and all the secretaries, managers, and janitors that work for the above companies. They all work for a living, and they get paid when people buy the music that you just stole.
That's right, you stole it. You now have something you didn't have before, and you didn't pay for it. Copyright law says you have to pay for it. Intellectual property law says you have to pay for it. Common decency says you ought to pay for it. And if the long arm of the law catches you, you can be damn sure they're going to make you pay for it.
Look, you can hate the RIAA/MPAA all you want. I have no love for them at all. I think CD's are ridiculously overpriced, that the companies are gouging us while providing us with horrid content. I think the MPAA's control over the DVD format vis-a-vis region coding, CSS, and Macrovision is one of the most belligerent things a provider can do to a customer. However, none of that gives me the right to steal from them, and it sure as hell doesn't give you any moral credibility to be justifying your theft.
If you had any morals or principles at all, other than your own self satisfaction at someone else's expense, you'd be content to simply boycott the labels you don't agree with and trade music from bands that allow you to legally do so. Instead, you're just content to be a thief, attempting to moralize your actions because it allows you to steal and feel smug about it.
Face it, information is not free, nor will it ever be free unless the owner of that information chooses to make it so. Information is worth whatever the owner wishes to charge for it, and the rarer it is, the more they can charge. If you don't like it, I'm sure there's some nice socialist country somewhere that'd take you in. North Korea, for example.
Your are so ignorant, you'd prefer a brutal dictator who's killed thousands of his own innocent people without a valid reason over liberated Iraqi's dancing in the streets and screaming "We love U.S." and "Thank you, Mr. Bush."
No, massdestruction weapons have been found yet, since the mission of the military was to topple the regime first, look for weapons second. When someone is firing at you, it's a little difficult to read the Geiger counter. Remember, Iraq is the size of California, and much of it is wasteland. Saddam could've buried thousands of chemical weapons and we'd have to search years before we'd find them. Even the U.N. wanted six months to try and find these weapons, and that's WITHOUT the Republican Guard shooting at them. Now you want the U.S. military to find them in three weeks or "they're not there"? You are a fool!
Who's next? Syria, if they've sheltered war criminals or are holding onto Saddam's weapons "just for safe keeping", is high on the list, as is saber-rattling Kim Jong Il and North Korea. It's high time folks figured out that if they keep treating the U.S. like an enemy, sooner or later we're going to start acting like one...and you don't want us as an enemy, as Saddam has found out.
The truth: you're so anti-American biased that no matter what we do, you're going to hate us and blame us for the worst things you can come up with. So we're going to do you a favor: we're going to start living up to your expectations of us. You say we're the great Satan? You got what you asked for. More's on the way if you keep it up.
Don't like it? Too bad. Go build your own superpower nation and then we'll talk. Folks like you are fond of blaming us when the bombs start falling, yet you seem to forget that we're not bombing countries that haven't been chanting "Death to America" for years. I wonder...could it be the behavior of these countries and their corrupt regimes that's brought the might of the American military down on them? Nah...it couldn't be. It has to be our imperialistic ways, right? Hey, wait...listen...is that the sound of a falling smart bomb over your head?
Fifty years ago, consumers were promised automation gadgets that would give us more free time. What do we have now? Remote controlled ovens to cook our food because we're too busy to cook it ourselves.
What have we come to?
I leave the house before the sun comes up every day. I wade through an hour's worth of traffic. I spend ten hours a day at my job, but only about twenty minutes at lunch, then wade through an hour's worth of traffic on the way home. It's dark when I get there. Weekends exist only to catch up on things I couldn't get done during the week.
I'm certain I'm not the only one out there that lives like this. Gadgets like this freezer/oven seem neat, but to me it suddenly throws into sharp contrast just what we're doing with our lives. Have we gotten so busy that we no longer have time to cook a meal? That's pretty fucking pitiful, if you ask me.
You might've been right a few years ago, but your comments on the pro and the consumer lines being made "on the same hardware" are no longer correct.
It used to be that the Quadro lines used the same chip as the GeForce line, and that swapping a resistor (and the BIOS) would turn a GF card into a Quadro. Starting with the GF4/Quadro4 line, this is no longer true. I have a Quadro4 and the chip is most definitely different than the GF4 chip. Further, people have attempted to "hack" a GF4 into a Quadro4, and while they've gotten the driver to recognize the card as a Quadro, the benchmarks clearly show that it is not.
I'm not sure about ATI's products, but it'd be a cold day in hell when I use their professional card line.
And, beyond the dubious value of lofting one human into orbit, just what could you expect to accomplish with a Mercury-style capsule? You can't carry any cargo to speak of, and the capsule occupant can hardly move, much less perform any in-cockpit experiements. The Mercury program was designed to test the feasibility of putting a human into orbit, and in that it succeeded. The Gemini program expanded upon that and they toyed with extended stays and orbital mechanics. After that, there was very little science either of those two programs could've done. Apollo was needed to build upon what went before. Going back to a Mercury-style design would be foolish.
What we do need is a return to big, dumb boosters like the Saturn V. I don't recall any of the Saturn V launches ever being scrubbed due to the slight weather changes that ground the shuttle so frequently. For that matter, in inflation-adjusted dollars, that big, wasteful, use-it-once-and-throw-it-away booster was an order of magnitude cheaper to operate than today's shuttle. Everything was overengineered, but it was overengineered for only one flight. Hell, about 70% of the cost of running the shuttle is all the refurbishing that goes on in between launches. Calling it a "reusable" vehicle is kind of stupid considering how much rebuilding goes on between flights. Throwaway boosters would be cheaper, more reliable, and could carry more stuff. Anybody remember what carried Skylab? Yup, it was a modified Saturn V.
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This is just not true...
Umm, sorry, it is true. Hate to be the one to break it to you.
From a legal point of view, all the court decisions on segregration should be more than enough to prove that.
No, it should not be. Desegregation laws state that government and publicly funded organizations cannot discriminate, but private organizations are free to do whatever they want, and this is perfectly within the bounds of the Constitution by the Right of Freedom to Associate. Try looking at your Constitution a bit and you'll see that you can choose to associate with whomever you like and you cannot be compelled to associate with someone you don't.
grocery store can't refuse to sell food to people based on race,
Yes, it can. It would be stupid for someone to do so, but it most certainly can. If you disagree with me, then kindly point out the exact article and paragraph of any law in the United States that forces a private business owner to accept a particular type of customer. But you won't be able to do so, because such laws do not exist, and they would be unconstitutional.
restaurant can't refuse to serve people based on race.
Yes, you can, for exactly the same reasons as outlined above.
You can't refuse to sell your house to someone for racial reasons
Again, YES, YOU CAN. It's against the law for a publicly funded loan organization to deny someone a loan because of their race, color, creed, sex, age, or national origin, but a private owner of a home can choose to sell to whomever he or she wishes. What kind of society would you have? One that forces someone to sell their property or services, regardless of that person's wishes? Not a very free society.
The rest of your post just shows how far unbridled libertarianism can lead you
And your posts show just how shallow your thinking processes really are. You've spent absolutely zero brainpower thinking about the actual consequence of the implementation of what you propose. You've essentially said, "we don't care if it's your business, your property, your time, or whatever, we, the government, will force you to use your life/liberty/property in the way we see fit, and your free will has nothing to do with it." I'm sure you're a big fan of democracy, too...so long as it's your brand of democracy.
The point of our society, as framed by the Founding Fathers, is that every person should have the rights to do whatever they want, whenver they want, however they want, so long as the exercise thereof does not impinge upon someone else's similar rights. It is the most fundamental law of the land! If I want to don a white sheet, chant racist slogans, and burn a cross in my front yard along with a bunch of other like-minded goons, I have every right to do so. You, as a free-thinking individual, have every right to refuse to serve me food at your restaurant (see, this racism thing works both ways, doesn't it?) because you don't like the Klan. Conversely, if that Klan member you refused to serve runs a gas station down the road, he's within his rights to refuse to sell you gas.
It goes on and on, but the results the Founding Fathers intended is that socially undesirable traits will be naturally weeded out over time. Racists tend to congregate with more their kind but are generally shunned by enlightened society. If they wish to associate within their own inbred group, they're entitled to do so, and we have no right whatsoever to impose our collective wills upon them. We can, however, by exemption, keep them from associating with us, and they have no rights to force us to include them.
Final comment: you, in your high-minded liberalism, have said that it ought to be illegal to refuse service to someone you don't like. I wonder how you'd feel if it was you who were providing the service to someone that you despi
The point that you're trying to make is that it's immoral to enjoy the fruits of someone's labor without compensating them for it. That's true. However, as Ronald Coase posits in his economic theory of externalities, a victim is rarely a simple innocent bystander. Most victims have put themselves in a situation where they will be victimized
So, what you're essentially saying is that if a woman dresses in a provacative dress and goes into a seedy part of town, she deserves to raped because she "put herself in a situation where she could be victimized"? My God, it's amazing that you can come to such a conclusion and think yourself to be a logical person. You're putting forth that if someone puts themselves in a position where they might be victimized, it's perfectly already to go ahead and victimize them because, hey, they put themselves into the situation! Gosh, your honor, murdering that cheating husband isn't immoral, he put himself in a position where I felt the need to murder him! This is the ultimate in the "blame the victim" mentality that so pervades the unthinking Left. And no wonder, because it allows you to justify any behavior that you like by claiming that the other guy is at fault. Must be nice to live in your world where everything you do is good and noble, no matter what the consequences are to anyone else.
Sorry, but that's a poor example.
Really? How? Your argument does not dispell the concept of copyright laws at all. Instead you simply sweep the whole thing under the rug by saying "there is no implied contract", when all copyright law, consumer law, and criminal law in existence says the opposite. Music companies demand to be paid for their music. If you don't pay, you don't get the music, it's that simple. You can equivocate all you want on the subject, but in the end, if you dismiss the fact that the copyright owner has the right to control his or her works, you're just flat wrong.
I've wondered why they don't make the silica surface out of larger pieces as opposed to the smaller tiles. The answer I got was:
1. Smaller tiles are more fault-tolerant (to a degree). You can lose a few small tiles with no serious effects (depending upon location and the number of lost tiles), whereas losing a large tile would be uniformly catastrophic.
2. Thermal expansion. Smaller tiles have room to expand without moving around too much. Larger tiles would exert more stress on the attachment points when the tile heats up during re-entry.
3. Maintenance. It's unavoidable that tiles will be damaged during a mission, mostly due to ice strikes during liftoff. It's easier to replace a few smaller damaged tiles than one larger damaged tile.
I wrote a new computer program (which I'be been known to do), that does something similar to an existing commercial product (or sometimes not yet existing). Now I have something I didn't have, and dang, I didn't pay for any of them. What exactly did I steal? An idea?
If your implementation is based on the copyrighted works of someone else (i.e. copying) then you've stolen someone else's works and are fraudulently putting them forth as your own. If you've clean-roomed your design then you've made a new creation. Congrats! It's now yours to either give away or charge for...just like anybody else who makes software.
I read a recipe that allows me to cook a tasty meal. I didn't have that knowledge before. Must have stolen something! Worse, I go and apply that knowledge. Am I now guilty of hiding stolen property?
You're getting sillier here, but I'll continue for the sake of your sanity. If you remember the recipe and use it, that's your good fortune. If you memorize the entire recipe book and attempt to publish your own version, you've violated copyright law and should be punished. Remember this phrase: all of life does not fit neatly into black or white...there are gray areas...concentrate and it might just penetrate your skull a bit.
I hear a tune (on radio, TV, whatever), and play it on keyboard. Perhaps I even sing along. Didn't know the song before, now I do. What did I steal?
This is a perfect example of "fair use" copyright law. You have rights to remember the song, to hum it, sing it, and so forth. You do NOT, however, own the song. It is not yours to distribute as you will simply because you can remember a tune. Again, this falls underneath the aforementioned gray area of how intellectual property laws work. You're attempting to confuse the issue by making up some otherwise easily explainable situations. You have not proven one iota with regards to how illegal music sharing is a moral endeavor, and I doubt that you can.
Seriously, this whole attempt that I constantly see in this discussion to bring it down to "the level of the common man" disgusts me. "You evil music traders are even stealing from the poor old janitor". Get real. The janitor did his job, collected his paycheque, and doesn't give two shits whether you buy the CD or not.
Ah, it never ceases to amaze me at how close someone can come to the truth, yet miss it so badly. Your pathetic attempt to make it seem like the "common man" working at the recording company is paid directly via royalties is inane and stupid, and I'm sure you know that. In fact, those people are paid by the company, and the company is paid by the royalties. Ergo, if the company doesn't get paid, the employees get laid off. Even your simplistic brain should be able to understand this rudimentary concept, but instead I'm sure you'll ignore it and continue to function in your blindered, logic-free world.
Thanks for finding this link. I had been looking for it just to refute this fool's argument and hadn't found it yet.
Alas, I'm sure it won't matter. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. You can lead an idiot to logic but you can't make him think.
And you've made a conscious decision to offer your services for free. Goddammit, you cannot force others to give their services away just because you do! Don't you realize how arrogant it is to even assume that you could do such a thing? "Hey, I give my music away, so everyone else should!" I'm willing to bet that there are people who would not want to listen to your music even though it is free, but would prefer to pay for someone else's talents. That's their choice!
My God, the arrogance you're displaying here is just plain earthshattering. I'm not going to take this up any further, as you're obviously so far beyond any possible objective reality that it's pointless to continue. The blinders you wear are gargantuan, and it must be nice to life in your own little world. Let me know if you ever become reconnected to reality.
Okay, steer around this one, o high and mighty one: you're sharing information that the information creator has declared to be unshareable. You are going against the wishes of the person who created the info in the first place.
Take the GPL for a good analogy. You are free to share all sorts of stuff under the GPL, but you must meet certain criteria set forth by the creators of the GPL and the software authors. I recall that in the past several companies have attempted to take GPL-protected works and use them in commercial software without crediting or compensating the original software authors. What a horrendous outrage ensued on Slashdot, with everyone screaming for blood at how awful it all was! I'm sure you were somewhere in the crowd, raging on how unprincipled the violator must've been to violate the GPL in such a manner.
Now, here you stand advocating the exact same kind of action! The author of the works has decreed that you must comply with certain criteria if you wish to make use of their work. In this case, they demand to be paid. You, feeling smug and self-assured of your righteousness, violate their wishes, partake of their efforts, and give no thought whatosever to the fact that you've done something wrong. Quite to the contrary, you think you've done something noble! What a farce! What an amazing, absolutely mind-boggling amount of self-deception you've engaged in! You're more than happy to tread on rights, so long as they're not your rights! How self centered and egotistical you are to think in this manner!
So, go ahead, continue to keep your blinders on. Continue to deceive yourself over and over again that what you're doing isn't hurting anyone, that nothing is being diminished, that you're just standing up for the poor and impoverished, and against the rich and powerful. If everyone thought like you, music companies would go out of business. And while I'm sure that'd give your smug anti-capitalist mind some sort of bizarre satisfaction, I'm sure that the secretaries, janitors, couriers, and thousands of other folks who barely cleared $30K/year before being laid off will gladly bow down to you and worship your righteousness, since you're so obviously right in this matter.
Bah, why do I bother? You've chosen to brainwash yourself beyond hope. You've chosen to disregard reason where it's convenient to you, and it's impossible for a rational person to convince you of a rational argument so long as you insist on being irrational.
You've evidently never heard of the concept of an implied contract, of which copyright law is. When you violate copyright law, you're violating the implied contract between you, the consumer, and the artist, the producer. The artist demands to be compensated for his/her time/efforts/talents or you don't get to hear the music. You disregard their wishes and consume anyway. You've violated the law. You've taken something that has been assigned a value and given nothing in return. It is not within your rights to redefine the value of the object, dammit! You can offer a lower price (which the artist is free to reject) or you can elect not to partake, but you cannot simply declare that their works are free for the taking! Can't you get that simple concept through your head?
Look, as I've said before, I despise the current state of affairs. I haven't purchased a CD in years, but I also don't attempt to get music through illegal means. I have simply opted out, and that's not only legal, it's moral. You, on the other hand, are claiming some high moral purpose in first claiming that something has no value (so that you can justify taking it without paying for it) but then turning around and claiming it does have value (because you derive enjoyment from listening to it). You live in a contradiction, a hypocritical construct that you are willfully blind to. I hold a particular place of despisement for hypocrites, and that's why I'm riding you so much. If you'd just come out and admit that what you're doing is wrong but you're going to keep on doing it, I'd have more respect for you.
Why don't you quit trying to justify your actions, which by any possible rational definition is stealing. Cloak it, obfuscate it, deflect it, muddle it...that's all you've tried to do. Look, I'm not upset that you steal music. That's between you and your conscience. I'm upset that you think it's right to do so.
You are correct, but the gist of the prosecution will be the same: you took something that has value, and you didn't pay the required fee for it. Messing with the diction doesn't change the overall fact that you're doing something that is morally reprehensible.
It's like arguing that you didn't murder someone, instead it was manslaughter, or negligent homicide. The end results are the same: someone is dead, and you had something to do with it. Only the punishment differs.
It's interesting that you mentioned slavery, because it's useful in proving my argument. In slavery, one group of people took the fruits of the labor of slaves but failed to compensate them for it. Further, the slaves had no say-so in the matter.
In your argument, you are taking the fruits of labor from someone else but not compensating them for it. Artists/music companies are not slaves, but they do deserve to be paid for their efforts, and like it or not, they have the right to demand whatever wage they like. You have the right to not partake of their efforts, but you do not have the right to partake of their efforts and not pay their asking price. To do anything else is stealing, and all your equivocating in the world cannot change that.
If you don't believe you're doing something immoral, you're engaging in a huge amount of self-delusion.
The incentive to create has never been driven by money. People actually SPEND money to learn how to create, just for the satisfaction of creating. Do you think everybody who buys a guitar expects to become a musician able to recoup the costs? Money is an incentive but not the only one or even the highest one.
I agree with this. However, this does not discount that if someone wishes to sell their talents, they have every right to do so. If someone says "I'll play my song for you at your party, but you must pay me $20 per hour for my time", you're obliged to either pay them or they're not obliged to show up. You cannot take what someone else is offering without paying them what they're asking for it. If you do, you're stealing.
Technology has made it so that anybody with relatively cheap equipment can reproduce these sounds to a satisfactory level. Why should you continue to pay them at the prices they demand when you can perform the service they provide for a much lower cost?
Because you're not paying for the damned bits and bytes, you're paying for the damned talent that arranged it in that fashion in the first place. Could you have composed one of Beethoven's symphony? Probably not! He has a skill that you do not. Thus, if he wishes to demand that you pay for his skills or not partake of them, you must do one or the other if you plan to respect his wishes. You cannot simply take and then fail to pay. You've not held up your side of the bargain!
It is the same way with any human (or group of humans) that has a skill that is in demand. Do you work for free? You must perform some work to pay for your car, apartment, etc. How would you like it if someone took your skills and failed to pay you? Oh, I forget, stealing is only okay when it happens to other people.
i'm really sorry that your arguments are so weak that you feel have to resort to blatant ad hominem attacks. very nice. when you feel like growing up and discussing as adults, drop me an email.
It has nothing to do with weakness, I assure you, since your argument is the one that cannot be backed in any legal, moral, or realistic fashion. It is my opinion of your thinking skills, which at this point are not anything remotely approaching "respectful".
if you honestly beleive that money is the primary motive behind science you are much more sheltered and ignorant than i had thought
If you believe that all science is motivated by altruism, you're the one living in a sheltered dreamworld. Billions of dollars are spent every year working on things like Rogain and Viagra. Did the companies that created these products do so solely out of the desire to allow men to have hairy heads and more sex? Of course not! They did so because they know that people will pay even more billions for products that allow them to do so!
And while individual scientists may be altruistic enough to donate their time, knowledge, and efforts, huge projects like fusion power, cures for cancer, etc. require huge teams of researchers will billion-dollar labs and equipment. People don't just give this stuff away, it requires money. Investors will not invest if there's no return to be had. If you don't believe this, you're the one living in the unrealistic, simplistic worldview.
why bother implementing an entire OS and give it away for free? your suggestion that people wouldnt innovate if it wernt for a cash insintive is laughable and has been proven wrong by people deeds throughout all of history.
Your spelling is the laughable component of this argument, but I'll ignore it for the moment and concentrate on what appears to be your point.
Yes, Linux grew out of thousands of people's efforts, and many of them received nothing more than passing gratification for their efforts. You've proven my point while being ignorant of it, it seems. These people chose to make their time available, volunteering if you will. They made a choice to say the dollar value of their time spent was zero. That is their choice, just like it's someone else's choice to say their time is worth $40 an hour, or $400 an hour. It is not your right to say what anyone else charges for their time is right or wrong. Quit playing God with everyone else's pocketbooks. You'd have quite a different tune if it was your money at stake.
pigopolists...Asses of America...law is now the embodiment of the will of the corporations...our government is the best that money can buy
Nope, no built-in bias there, nosiree. You do realize that these statements sound pretty damn close to things Josef Stalin (a great humanitarian if there ever was one) just a few decades ago.
it is obvious that there is no morally justifiable reason for the state of copyright law as it is today.
What arrogance! My God, how can you keep a straight face and say that? Just about everything you see around you is the result of a system based on compensating people for their efforts, thoughts, and inventions. You can get a certain amount of altruism from humanity, but you cannot count on it. You can, however, always count on people to do things that will benefit them. Who are you to judge the morality of a system that have so benefitted from?
Nobody has the right to a business model.
I couldn't agree more. However, the method to combat this business model is to boycott their products. By stealing their product, you are intrinsically admitting that their product has value (at least to you), otherwise you wouldn't do it. You have obtained something of value, yet have given nothing of value in return. This is a one-sided transaction no matter how you look at it.
If the artists don't get the money I would have paid -- boohoo, they can always get a real job or find some other way to make money
Would you listen to yourself for a minute? Can you grasp exactly what you just stated? Imagine for a minute that you were the person with the valuable commodity (say, your programming skills). You have just advocated that people have a right to your skills to use however they see fit, and you have absolutely no right to demand any recompense for it. That's beatiful! I'd love to have you working for me, since I'd never have to pay you!
Most talented artists don't make music for the money anyway.
That's a pretty big generalization. I'm sure interviewed all these artists and they responded in this fashion, right? Of course you didn't.
Regardless of whether they'd do it "for the money" or not, the point is it takes money to live. Without money you have no food, clothing, or shelter. Even musicians who compose because they love music must have a regular job to pay the bills. Professional musicians have devoted their lives to their music in lieu of a typical job, and you have no right whatsoever to pass judgement on the rightness of their choice -- it is their liberty to do what they like, just as it is your liberty to not partake of their product.
Sure, it is illegal to copy copyrighted stuff. But it is not immoral
That has got to be the most twisted, abhorrent, ridiculous statement I've yet to see in this argument. What you're proposing is tantamount to saying that no one has any rights to recompense for their works unless you say so. What arrogance you display!
You are using the letter of the law to violate the spirit of the law.
Here's a test I guarantee you can't equivocate: call up the RIAA legal counsel, tell them that you've just downloaded a copyrighted piece of music without paying for it. Give them your name, your address, and your phone number, and dare them to prosecute you.
If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear, right?
But you are not, in any sense, depriving someone else of something that they had, only something that they were entitled to on principle.
So if I hire you and allow you to work for me for two weeks, but then deny you a paycheck, I haven't stolen anything from you, have I?
Of course I've stolen something from you! I've stolen your time, your effort, and your creativity for my own personal gain, and I've refused to compensate you for it as was agreed before you began work. If I, as an employer, were to do such a thing, you could sue me for breach of contract and most certainly win.
You, as a consumer, have the same "contract" with the provider to compensate them for the assigned value of the works you are enjoying. That contract is called "copyright law", and you're completely in the wrong if you think it doesn't apply to the situation.
You're advocating hypocrisy here, but that's nothing new on Slashdot. Can't you rise above this petty thievery?
walking by a car that is blasting the latest p. diddy song is "enjoying the fruits of someone else's labors" without paying them for the priveledge
That falls under the realm of something you can't avoid, and you have no active control over not hearing the music. If you choose to be within aural range of the music and don't wish to wear earplugs, you have to hear it. You don't have a choice in the matter.
Copyright law acknowledges these circumstances under the guise of "fair use", and it's very well documented what you can and can't do. You can play something for yourself or a group of friends. You cannot, however, make a copy for your friends for them to enjoy outside of your listening pleasure. You can give them your copy, but then you no longer have it. You can make a copy, but only for your own pleasure and only so long as you retain the original without giving it to someone else.
have never seen a convincing arguement that aquiring information is theft, because its an impossible argument. theft implies the deprivation of something, and information can be copied infinitely to only gain.
Okay, how 'bout this. My company spends billions of dollars researching a cure for cancer, and we find it. That information now has incredible value, both because it's in high demand and because it cost billions of dollars to discover the cure. In your pathetic little mind, however, that information should be "free", right? Okay, you've just removed the primary motivation to find the cure in the first place. Bang! No more cure! Why bother researching ANYTHING anymore (faster processors, better food, space travel) when there's no way you can ever recoup your costs for it?
Music is no different than any other form of "creative" endeavor. The artist/scientist/researcher has created/discovered something that wasn't there before. If no incentive exists for people to do these things, they won't be done. Like it or not, money is a powerful incentive.
If the artist has a million of his CD's stashed away in his basement, I can take one without him noticing. He won't miss it. That's cool.
Ah! So, just because someone has a lot of something, that gives you the right to take some of it, because they "won't notice it"?
Great! I'm sure you've got some money in your bank account somewhere. I'll just take some of it! You shouldn't care, because you had a lot of it in there to begin with!
Now, imagine if you looked at your bank statement and noticed that an unauthorized withdrawal had been made. You'd damn sure contact the bank and demand to be made whole again, wouldn't you? Of course you would, because it's yours. But when it's someone else's stuff, it's okay.
Wake up and smell the hypocrisy. If you want to steal/infringe/whatever, go right ahead. I could care less about what your actions are. Just don't attempt to cloak yourself in some kind of white-knight moral justice, because you're nothing but a thief. Be proud of being a thief, or just stop being one, but quit acting like you're claiming the high moral ground.
Here's a hint, if I shoplift a CD, the store doesn't have it anymore, if I use Napster, no one is deprived of anything.
And that's where you're wrong. You are enjoying the fruits of someone else's labors, namely that of the artist, the producer, the sound mixer, the recording booth operator, the marketing company, and all the secretaries, managers, and janitors that work for the above companies. They all work for a living, and they get paid when people buy the music that you just stole.
That's right, you stole it. You now have something you didn't have before, and you didn't pay for it. Copyright law says you have to pay for it. Intellectual property law says you have to pay for it. Common decency says you ought to pay for it. And if the long arm of the law catches you, you can be damn sure they're going to make you pay for it.
Look, you can hate the RIAA/MPAA all you want. I have no love for them at all. I think CD's are ridiculously overpriced, that the companies are gouging us while providing us with horrid content. I think the MPAA's control over the DVD format vis-a-vis region coding, CSS, and Macrovision is one of the most belligerent things a provider can do to a customer. However, none of that gives me the right to steal from them, and it sure as hell doesn't give you any moral credibility to be justifying your theft.
If you had any morals or principles at all, other than your own self satisfaction at someone else's expense, you'd be content to simply boycott the labels you don't agree with and trade music from bands that allow you to legally do so. Instead, you're just content to be a thief, attempting to moralize your actions because it allows you to steal and feel smug about it.
Face it, information is not free, nor will it ever be free unless the owner of that information chooses to make it so. Information is worth whatever the owner wishes to charge for it, and the rarer it is, the more they can charge. If you don't like it, I'm sure there's some nice socialist country somewhere that'd take you in. North Korea, for example.
Yes, sad but true!
Your are so ignorant, you'd prefer a brutal dictator who's killed thousands of his own innocent people without a valid reason over liberated Iraqi's dancing in the streets and screaming "We love U.S." and "Thank you, Mr. Bush."
No, massdestruction weapons have been found yet, since the mission of the military was to topple the regime first, look for weapons second. When someone is firing at you, it's a little difficult to read the Geiger counter. Remember, Iraq is the size of California, and much of it is wasteland. Saddam could've buried thousands of chemical weapons and we'd have to search years before we'd find them. Even the U.N. wanted six months to try and find these weapons, and that's WITHOUT the Republican Guard shooting at them. Now you want the U.S. military to find them in three weeks or "they're not there"? You are a fool!
Who's next? Syria, if they've sheltered war criminals or are holding onto Saddam's weapons "just for safe keeping", is high on the list, as is saber-rattling Kim Jong Il and North Korea. It's high time folks figured out that if they keep treating the U.S. like an enemy, sooner or later we're going to start acting like one...and you don't want us as an enemy, as Saddam has found out.
The truth: you're so anti-American biased that no matter what we do, you're going to hate us and blame us for the worst things you can come up with. So we're going to do you a favor: we're going to start living up to your expectations of us. You say we're the great Satan? You got what you asked for. More's on the way if you keep it up.
Don't like it? Too bad. Go build your own superpower nation and then we'll talk. Folks like you are fond of blaming us when the bombs start falling, yet you seem to forget that we're not bombing countries that haven't been chanting "Death to America" for years. I wonder...could it be the behavior of these countries and their corrupt regimes that's brought the might of the American military down on them? Nah...it couldn't be. It has to be our imperialistic ways, right? Hey, wait...listen...is that the sound of a falling smart bomb over your head?
Fifty years ago, consumers were promised automation gadgets that would give us more free time. What do we have now? Remote controlled ovens to cook our food because we're too busy to cook it ourselves.
What have we come to?
I leave the house before the sun comes up every day. I wade through an hour's worth of traffic. I spend ten hours a day at my job, but only about twenty minutes at lunch, then wade through an hour's worth of traffic on the way home. It's dark when I get there. Weekends exist only to catch up on things I couldn't get done during the week.
I'm certain I'm not the only one out there that lives like this. Gadgets like this freezer/oven seem neat, but to me it suddenly throws into sharp contrast just what we're doing with our lives. Have we gotten so busy that we no longer have time to cook a meal? That's pretty fucking pitiful, if you ask me.
You might've been right a few years ago, but your comments on the pro and the consumer lines being made "on the same hardware" are no longer correct.
It used to be that the Quadro lines used the same chip as the GeForce line, and that swapping a resistor (and the BIOS) would turn a GF card into a Quadro. Starting with the GF4/Quadro4 line, this is no longer true. I have a Quadro4 and the chip is most definitely different than the GF4 chip. Further, people have attempted to "hack" a GF4 into a Quadro4, and while they've gotten the driver to recognize the card as a Quadro, the benchmarks clearly show that it is not.
I'm not sure about ATI's products, but it'd be a cold day in hell when I use their professional card line.
And, beyond the dubious value of lofting one human into orbit, just what could you expect to accomplish with a Mercury-style capsule? You can't carry any cargo to speak of, and the capsule occupant can hardly move, much less perform any in-cockpit experiements. The Mercury program was designed to test the feasibility of putting a human into orbit, and in that it succeeded. The Gemini program expanded upon that and they toyed with extended stays and orbital mechanics. After that, there was very little science either of those two programs could've done. Apollo was needed to build upon what went before. Going back to a Mercury-style design would be foolish.
What we do need is a return to big, dumb boosters like the Saturn V. I don't recall any of the Saturn V launches ever being scrubbed due to the slight weather changes that ground the shuttle so frequently. For that matter, in inflation-adjusted dollars, that big, wasteful, use-it-once-and-throw-it-away booster was an order of magnitude cheaper to operate than today's shuttle. Everything was overengineered, but it was overengineered for only one flight. Hell, about 70% of the cost of running the shuttle is all the refurbishing that goes on in between launches. Calling it a "reusable" vehicle is kind of stupid considering how much rebuilding goes on between flights. Throwaway boosters would be cheaper, more reliable, and could carry more stuff. Anybody remember what carried Skylab? Yup, it was a modified Saturn V.