I'm with you 100%. There are inherent risks and vulnerabilities to all systems. Our internetwork is physically vulnerable. No on promises INvulnerability.
We have back up generators for power outages, we need something for the internet... smoke-signals? Can-and-string? Hard copy (eww!)
You missed the whole lack of culture of education part. Poor uneducated families bring up similar children because their survival situations often require other actions to be taken. Example: Getting a long-hour afterschool job to help support the family.
How would you even expect uneducated and depressed parents to walk their kids to a library? It's different. You can imagine it. It's not difficult. You imagine all the time within books and games and movies.
Imagine having no social capital, no money to move out of a poverty-stricken city. Imagine not having no marketable skills. Now imagine having children. Imagine what it would be like to not get a job in a city of no jobs. Imagine what it would be like to have your children be ill and not be allowed to see a doctor because you used up all your doctor points already.
See, it's not hard. Now, in your honest opinion, can you say that it would be probable that a parent in this situation would come to an epiphany of "Oh! Let me send my kids to the library."
You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were wholeheartedly agreeing with my post. The only problem is that you convey it in such a disdain for people in poverty, you pollute what the moral of the story is.
You're right about entertainment. I never said it was good. I explained why poor people (like my old family) have cheap entertainment (cable TV). There's a big difference between reasons and justification.
Yes, fast food and McDo = bad. I never had McDo until I went to college. Never had the money to pay for it. Cigarettes on the other hand are smoked on the basis of addiction and thus their purchase could be understood (though not justified).
Some people make it out. I did. But you're still missing the point of my post which was to argue the parents lack of comprehension that life below the poverty line is not easy.
You make a mostly true post, but you wrote it in a tone that would convey that you are arguing against me, when you actually wrote for the same points I did.
A couple of your comments (between the emotional outbursts) were pretty on spot. The problem with your response to my post is that it strayed too far from my argument on my comment's parent post.
--I never said 6 kids. It was father, mother, 3 kids, and the eldest's bastard child. The father was a disabled Vietnam vet, the mother was a middle-school educated seasonal worker at a state park, the eldest couldn't work as she was taking care of her newborn, I worked in the summer while keeping myself competitively eligible for university application, and the youngest had just gotten into middle school. --- You didn't care to leave anything thing open, ranted, and then sounded like a looney.
-- Ya, 14k. She was a seasonal worker making a little more than minimum wage. Why couldn't they provide better? They had zero qualifications and limited reading abilities. Beyond that, it was a poverty stricken area. If sufficient jobs were available, it wouldn't be so poverty stricken, would it? The lack of ability to provide sufficiently drove them to many forms of escape. But, my response to the parent (nor this response to a response) isn't about me, it's about the numbers of households that are very similar due to their living below the poverty line.
--- You really have to remember that we are talking about my comment's parent who said that living below the poverty line is not difficult and easy to leave. You in no way intended to argue my views, so why respond?
-- Key words that make your post easily ignorable: lazy, blame, nothing.... you used these hyperboles in places that only hurt your argument. Come on... make a useful post.
Seriously, that is a pretty good summary. In my experience (life and work), peoples' futures are just as endangered by their actual situation as they are their ignorance of ways to help themselves.
Poor and uneducated parents rarely raise kids that respect the powers of education without a strong outside influence.
It really seems as though you missed the whole part about the lack of push for education. Luckily, my escape from that life was education. I did well, went to college, graduated, and am currently working for a public university system increasing the college going culture in underpriveleged neighbohoods and poverty-stricken cities.
I never said anyone didn't know what it's like. Anyone can so long as they take a second, remove the blinders from their current states of mind, and simply imagine what it would be like living in that situation without the educational or social capital that you obviously have now. We all do it by reading books and imagining ourselves as the hero, villian, etc. Try it in this situation.
No one blamed society. My testimony apparently struck an off-topic cord with you. My response to the parent of my post was a contradiction of HIS/HER incorrect observation that he was passing on as fact. Yes, I can easily consider this flamebait, but it really seems as though this affected you in a very offensive way so I decided to further clarify.
I think you over-estimate the quality of life at the poverty line and all the problems that go along with it. The sense that you give is that people who live under the line have all the amenities everyone else has, but only to a lower quality.
Let me help you out here. I lived with a family of 6 whose yearly average of taxable income of $14,000 (c.2000). We received welfare ($600/month), food stamps ($250/month), and received subsidized rent via HUD ($-400/month). As you can tell, we were below the poverty line.
Now consider the average education level of those under the line. I think my family was a good example having a Vietnam-vet with a GED as a father and a middle-school-educated mother. They were not capable of finding significant income in an area that would allow "people like us" to live.
They eventually got a car-- an '80s junker on a 16% interest loan. We had 2 color televisions with cable. "Why?," you ask? because there is literally NO OTHER WAY OF ESCAPE in a society that focuses around entertainment! A one-time cost of $200 and a monthly cost of $25 is damn reasonable when you consider that most Slashdotters rarely think more than twice about upgrading their system (or buying a new one) with a pricetag of 200+.
Lastly, there's all the qualitative differences in a family that lives below the poverty line. There's frustration (an extreme understatement here) of being stuck and unable to provide. This anger is, more often than not, expressed physically with women and children on the receiving end. There's depression, lack of confidence, in ability to socialize outside of your born-in group as other groups cost money to associate with, no culture of education... there is no hope.
So, before you rain judgement from upon high based on severly miscalculated eyeball-assumptions, give it a shot.
--Ps. The polio thing made me laugh. If you're poor and living in California, you have a limited number of times you can see a physician, emergency room, dentist, or an optometrist in a year. When I was in high school ('96-'00) we had 6 stickers on our Medical tickets. 1) Glasses, 2) Fillings, 3) busted thumb in PE, 4,5,6) Tonsilitis. After that, and with a 104-fever, I was SOL.
I'm still running AthlonXP2000+ with 512MB. It was uber when I built it... 4 years ago. Now, a friend just got his new PC-- Athlon64 3200+, 2GB but wont let me touch it because "he's sure the Best Buy guys knows what they're doing."
I can run EQ, burn a DVD, and watch a movie with no hiccups while he's still trying to find out why his computer lags SO bad when playing WoW. Just WoW. I went to look over his shoulder and saw (I kid you not) 14 icons in his system tray. I weep for him.
It's all about optimizing. Themes? Dead. Auto update? gone. Fading menus? WTF? I would LOVE to find manufacturer that sells systems that are pre-tweaked like this. Someone I can refer users to and know I wont have to preface my suggestion with "... and let me know when you get it so I can come over and tweak it."
I have no doubt in my mind that dupes like this one are pure and simple FLAMEBAITS on the parts of the editors.
Come on guys, they're sick and tired of hearing your complaints about duplicate news stories. Why waste your time complaining about them? If you've read it or if its a dupe, you're still going to check the comments at the very least and see if some better insight has been typed out by a fellow/.er.
If I were an editor and saw how quickly all your panties got in a twist with a simple reposting of information, I would do it just as much as they do.
On a personal note: I see them more as forum "bumps" than mistaken duplicates.
I believe the parent had more in mind than in-operation failure.
Example: I recently moved. I treat my tower and monitor as if they were bestowed upon me from the heavens so they arrived at my new place in pristine condition. However, I have a 200GB "shock resistant" external drive that I had put in my book bag with other peripherals. I slung the bag over my shoulder to head out to the car with my next load and out flew my external drive... onto the concrete.
When I went to plug it in after my initial boot up at the new place, it seemed to be fine. Then I went to play some MP3s off of it. =( Skip... skip skip... skip... pause. Not all the MP3s were damaged, but there are only a few albums that are whole and wont require a new backing up.
Summary: There are many ways to damage the physical drive. The higher density the drive, the more you can ruin with less "effort".
Luckily storage is dirt cheap. I think I just saw 300GB for $70US on Slickdeals.net
I've noticed this with a lot of the Yahoo-based storefronts in the enthusiast PC-user's tech market. They will often have slightly differing prices for the same item. The concept of profit here is that most people would rather buy a quantity of their required parts from a single front and thus are willing to swallow the opportunity cost of higher prices for certain items. Furthermore, any single storefront (of many operated by a single entity) could better influence the market prices (in certain markets) through price fixing.
To add to that, I see dial-up providers (no "s"?) doing the same thing in LA. I was just fixing a colleague's cousin's desktop when I noticed that they are not using broadband. I checked the dial-up number saved in their connections (to see if they can afford a DSL flavor with what they're paying for dial-up), did a quick google search and found at least 10 different "fronts" with the same content, but different wording and languages, for the dial up service. They all had the same price for service using the same phone numbers, but they artificially control a stronger market share for it.
I would like to know if there's a website to archive/collect a listing of all such businesses. Can anyone help here?
Can we seriously STOP calling non-materialized projected profits "LOSSES"? Sony hasn't lost a single dollar on their "rootkit fiasco." At the worst, they could be making less than they expected, but they're not losing any money that was already in their pockets. Their "lost profits" are based on their predictions of how their products would sell given certain predicted factors.
Yes, this "LOSSES" arguement easily fits into the piracy problem and how the MPAA has "LOST" so much money.
Stop! Just stop falling for their vocabulary changes.
By all means training is necessary. Unless you want an "INSIDE the computer?" moment.
But what I was conveying is that there is too often a pattern of User-Hate from jaded techies when the techies forget that it is THEIR JOB to HELP people less knowledgable than they.
All users should, and most do, know the basics, but give me a break. Quit the whining about having to follow your job description.
Assume users know little, fix their stuff with a smile, and be worshipped like a genius. Yes, the admin CAN be loved!
I'm all with you on duct tape, don't get me wrong. But shouldn't the prevailing philosophy be "Let's make sure we don't do anything to put ourselves in such a situation" instead of "lets buy EVERYTHING (thus increasing the deficit further) because we never know --IF-- we'll need it.
And to save digital space, in repsonse to the "jingoism" and Black Hawk Down argument:
There were SO many things that went wrong, that NOTHING could have prevented that disaster.
You can only prepare for a worst case scenario SO much. Anything beyond that rational limit is simple profiteering.
To bring the responses back on topic: Sonic torpedo detonation because we realisitcally forsee naval combat? Gooood.
Buying it based on the "we might find a use for it someday" philosophy? Baaaaad-- simply because of the precedence it sets.
You know, I'm ALL for educating the user, but being in education, I know when and when it's not possible to teach.
If it's a system of users on a network of a non-500 company, then mass education and mandatory training of employees just WILL NOT happen.
So, what's the realistic answer? Real tech troubleshooters. Yes, real-- because there are plenty of admins out there that are so jaded with users that they won't even help them as much as they need to be helped.
What is needed is a scramble crew of techies that know there way around windows like we all want our users to be. They should know how to get rid of viruses, spyware, install drivers, programs, back up, migrate, import/export, troubleshoot, etc. Common sense to us, but completely foreign to your standard user.
Users do NOT have time to be techies. They don't have the drive to be techies.
We don't expect NASCAR drivers to jump out of their cars when they go into a pitstop do we? No! There are professionals waiting and willing to fix the problems with a smile!
SUMMARY: Yes, it would be nice to have educated users, but they won't be educated. Thus, we techies have to work around them. That's why techies are hired. Any techies that complain about ignorant users need to reread their job descriptions. If you don't like helping people with their shortcommings, you don't belong in tech.
Right, they don't OWE you anything. No one who I have known to have pirated software dares complain about bugs. That's just silly.
But the only argument that people are making is that this still hurts everyone.
Back to the cara analogy. There's the recall. Something's wrong with the brakes. You built your own car off copied blue prints and are afraid to take it in to get fixed. Your brakes being out puts EVERYONE ON THE ROAD at risk.
Spelling it out further: Weak and risky computers propagate malware. If they are not allowed to be updated they pose a risk to all other systems.
Right, they don't OWE you anything. No one who I have known to have pirated software dares complain about bugs. That's just silly.
But the only argument that people are making is that this still hurts everyone.
Back to the cara analogy. There's the recall. Something's wrong with the brakes. You built your own car off copied blue prints and are afraid to take it in to get fixed. Your brakes being out puts EVERYONE ON THE ROAD at risk.
Spelling it out further: Weak and risky computers propagate malware. If they are not allowed to be updated they pose a risk to all other systems.
The kicker is that if a person hacks, does 2 million dollars in damage, and gets the death penalty, his life will have been said to have been worth $2,000,000.
But then, the public (whether or not they wish) will spends hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions) to actually kill him. Thus, we're paying to kill him.
So which is more valuable: The life of a person or the death of a criminal?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm with you 100%. There are inherent risks and vulnerabilities to all systems. Our internetwork is physically vulnerable. No on promises INvulnerability.
We have back up generators for power outages, we need something for the internet... smoke-signals? Can-and-string? Hard copy (eww!)
A couple points real quick:
You missed the whole lack of culture of education part. Poor uneducated families bring up similar children because their survival situations often require other actions to be taken. Example: Getting a long-hour afterschool job to help support the family.
How would you even expect uneducated and depressed parents to walk their kids to a library? It's different. You can imagine it. It's not difficult. You imagine all the time within books and games and movies.
Imagine having no social capital, no money to move out of a poverty-stricken city. Imagine not having no marketable skills. Now imagine having children. Imagine what it would be like to not get a job in a city of no jobs. Imagine what it would be like to have your children be ill and not be allowed to see a doctor because you used up all your doctor points already.
See, it's not hard. Now, in your honest opinion, can you say that it would be probable that a parent in this situation would come to an epiphany of "Oh! Let me send my kids to the library."
Ya, didn't think so.
Next time try writing a useful post.
You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were wholeheartedly agreeing with my post. The only problem is that you convey it in such a disdain for people in poverty, you pollute what the moral of the story is.
You're right about entertainment. I never said it was good. I explained why poor people (like my old family) have cheap entertainment (cable TV). There's a big difference between reasons and justification.
Yes, fast food and McDo = bad. I never had McDo until I went to college. Never had the money to pay for it. Cigarettes on the other hand are smoked on the basis of addiction and thus their purchase could be understood (though not justified).
Some people make it out. I did. But you're still missing the point of my post which was to argue the parents lack of comprehension that life below the poverty line is not easy.
You make a mostly true post, but you wrote it in a tone that would convey that you are arguing against me, when you actually wrote for the same points I did.
Very well put. If I had mod points, I would mod you up.
A couple of your comments (between the emotional outbursts) were pretty on spot. The problem with your response to my post is that it strayed too far from my argument on my comment's parent post. --I never said 6 kids. It was father, mother, 3 kids, and the eldest's bastard child. The father was a disabled Vietnam vet, the mother was a middle-school educated seasonal worker at a state park, the eldest couldn't work as she was taking care of her newborn, I worked in the summer while keeping myself competitively eligible for university application, and the youngest had just gotten into middle school. --- You didn't care to leave anything thing open, ranted, and then sounded like a looney. -- Ya, 14k. She was a seasonal worker making a little more than minimum wage. Why couldn't they provide better? They had zero qualifications and limited reading abilities. Beyond that, it was a poverty stricken area. If sufficient jobs were available, it wouldn't be so poverty stricken, would it? The lack of ability to provide sufficiently drove them to many forms of escape. But, my response to the parent (nor this response to a response) isn't about me, it's about the numbers of households that are very similar due to their living below the poverty line. --- You really have to remember that we are talking about my comment's parent who said that living below the poverty line is not difficult and easy to leave. You in no way intended to argue my views, so why respond? -- Key words that make your post easily ignorable: lazy, blame, nothing .... you used these hyperboles in places that only hurt your argument. Come on... make a useful post.
Seriously, that is a pretty good summary. In my experience (life and work), peoples' futures are just as endangered by their actual situation as they are their ignorance of ways to help themselves. Poor and uneducated parents rarely raise kids that respect the powers of education without a strong outside influence.
It really seems as though you missed the whole part about the lack of push for education. Luckily, my escape from that life was education. I did well, went to college, graduated, and am currently working for a public university system increasing the college going culture in underpriveleged neighbohoods and poverty-stricken cities.
I never said anyone didn't know what it's like. Anyone can so long as they take a second, remove the blinders from their current states of mind, and simply imagine what it would be like living in that situation without the educational or social capital that you obviously have now. We all do it by reading books and imagining ourselves as the hero, villian, etc. Try it in this situation.
No one blamed society. My testimony apparently struck an off-topic cord with you. My response to the parent of my post was a contradiction of HIS/HER incorrect observation that he was passing on as fact. Yes, I can easily consider this flamebait, but it really seems as though this affected you in a very offensive way so I decided to further clarify.
I think you over-estimate the quality of life at the poverty line and all the problems that go along with it. The sense that you give is that people who live under the line have all the amenities everyone else has, but only to a lower quality.
Let me help you out here. I lived with a family of 6 whose yearly average of taxable income of $14,000 (c.2000). We received welfare ($600/month), food stamps ($250/month), and received subsidized rent via HUD ($-400/month). As you can tell, we were below the poverty line.
Now consider the average education level of those under the line. I think my family was a good example having a Vietnam-vet with a GED as a father and a middle-school-educated mother. They were not capable of finding significant income in an area that would allow "people like us" to live.
They eventually got a car-- an '80s junker on a 16% interest loan. We had 2 color televisions with cable. "Why?," you ask? because there is literally NO OTHER WAY OF ESCAPE in a society that focuses around entertainment! A one-time cost of $200 and a monthly cost of $25 is damn reasonable when you consider that most Slashdotters rarely think more than twice about upgrading their system (or buying a new one) with a pricetag of 200+.
Lastly, there's all the qualitative differences in a family that lives below the poverty line. There's frustration (an extreme understatement here) of being stuck and unable to provide. This anger is, more often than not, expressed physically with women and children on the receiving end. There's depression, lack of confidence, in ability to socialize outside of your born-in group as other groups cost money to associate with, no culture of education... there is no hope.
So, before you rain judgement from upon high based on severly miscalculated eyeball-assumptions, give it a shot.
--Ps. The polio thing made me laugh. If you're poor and living in California, you have a limited number of times you can see a physician, emergency room, dentist, or an optometrist in a year. When I was in high school ('96-'00) we had 6 stickers on our Medical tickets. 1) Glasses, 2) Fillings, 3) busted thumb in PE, 4,5,6) Tonsilitis. After that, and with a 104-fever, I was SOL.
That is a fantastic piece of information now permanently stored in my brain. Thank you for making my day a little brighter. =)
I'm still running AthlonXP2000+ with 512MB. It was uber when I built it... 4 years ago. Now, a friend just got his new PC-- Athlon64 3200+, 2GB but wont let me touch it because "he's sure the Best Buy guys knows what they're doing."
I can run EQ, burn a DVD, and watch a movie with no hiccups while he's still trying to find out why his computer lags SO bad when playing WoW. Just WoW. I went to look over his shoulder and saw (I kid you not) 14 icons in his system tray. I weep for him.
It's all about optimizing. Themes? Dead. Auto update? gone. Fading menus? WTF? I would LOVE to find manufacturer that sells systems that are pre-tweaked like this. Someone I can refer users to and know I wont have to preface my suggestion with "... and let me know when you get it so I can come over and tweak it."
I have no doubt in my mind that dupes like this one are pure and simple FLAMEBAITS on the parts of the editors.
/.er.
Come on guys, they're sick and tired of hearing your complaints about duplicate news stories. Why waste your time complaining about them? If you've read it or if its a dupe, you're still going to check the comments at the very least and see if some better insight has been typed out by a fellow
If I were an editor and saw how quickly all your panties got in a twist with a simple reposting of information, I would do it just as much as they do.
On a personal note: I see them more as forum "bumps" than mistaken duplicates.
I believe the parent had more in mind than in-operation failure.
Example: I recently moved. I treat my tower and monitor as if they were bestowed upon me from the heavens so they arrived at my new place in pristine condition. However, I have a 200GB "shock resistant" external drive that I had put in my book bag with other peripherals. I slung the bag over my shoulder to head out to the car with my next load and out flew my external drive... onto the concrete.
When I went to plug it in after my initial boot up at the new place, it seemed to be fine. Then I went to play some MP3s off of it. =( Skip... skip skip... skip... pause. Not all the MP3s were damaged, but there are only a few albums that are whole and wont require a new backing up.
Summary: There are many ways to damage the physical drive. The higher density the drive, the more you can ruin with less "effort".
Luckily storage is dirt cheap. I think I just saw 300GB for $70US on Slickdeals.net
I've noticed this with a lot of the Yahoo-based storefronts in the enthusiast PC-user's tech market. They will often have slightly differing prices for the same item. The concept of profit here is that most people would rather buy a quantity of their required parts from a single front and thus are willing to swallow the opportunity cost of higher prices for certain items. Furthermore, any single storefront (of many operated by a single entity) could better influence the market prices (in certain markets) through price fixing.
To add to that, I see dial-up providers (no "s"?) doing the same thing in LA. I was just fixing a colleague's cousin's desktop when I noticed that they are not using broadband. I checked the dial-up number saved in their connections (to see if they can afford a DSL flavor with what they're paying for dial-up), did a quick google search and found at least 10 different "fronts" with the same content, but different wording and languages, for the dial up service. They all had the same price for service using the same phone numbers, but they artificially control a stronger market share for it.
I would like to know if there's a website to archive/collect a listing of all such businesses. Can anyone help here?
Thanks for this clarification.
I had always wondered this and was never able to stop the judge who taught my punishments course to ask her about this very concept.
Can we seriously STOP calling non-materialized projected profits "LOSSES"? Sony hasn't lost a single dollar on their "rootkit fiasco." At the worst, they could be making less than they expected, but they're not losing any money that was already in their pockets. Their "lost profits" are based on their predictions of how their products would sell given certain predicted factors.
Yes, this "LOSSES" arguement easily fits into the piracy problem and how the MPAA has "LOST" so much money.
Stop! Just stop falling for their vocabulary changes.
I second this observation. I'm running OSX here at work and RC2 is (finally) just as fast as Safari, if not faster. I am a happy nerd.
I'm not sure if those are qualities you want in a laptop which tend to get hot and rub against the table.
NOR a terrier... believe you me.
By all means training is necessary. Unless you want an "INSIDE the computer?" moment. But what I was conveying is that there is too often a pattern of User-Hate from jaded techies when the techies forget that it is THEIR JOB to HELP people less knowledgable than they. All users should, and most do, know the basics, but give me a break. Quit the whining about having to follow your job description. Assume users know little, fix their stuff with a smile, and be worshipped like a genius. Yes, the admin CAN be loved!
I'm all with you on duct tape, don't get me wrong. But shouldn't the prevailing philosophy be "Let's make sure we don't do anything to put ourselves in such a situation" instead of "lets buy EVERYTHING (thus increasing the deficit further) because we never know --IF-- we'll need it.
And to save digital space, in repsonse to the "jingoism" and Black Hawk Down argument:
There were SO many things that went wrong, that NOTHING could have prevented that disaster.
You can only prepare for a worst case scenario SO much. Anything beyond that rational limit is simple profiteering.
To bring the responses back on topic: Sonic torpedo detonation because we realisitcally forsee naval combat? Gooood.
Buying it based on the "we might find a use for it someday" philosophy? Baaaaad-- simply because of the precedence it sets.
You know, I completely agree in this context because there are many more detrimental ways to this end...
but don't you think
It's better to have it and not need it, than it is to need it and not have it.
is a bit more likely to be the military industrial complex's motto than a useful philosophy?
You know, I'm ALL for educating the user, but being in education, I know when and when it's not possible to teach.
If it's a system of users on a network of a non-500 company, then mass education and mandatory training of employees just WILL NOT happen.
So, what's the realistic answer? Real tech troubleshooters. Yes, real-- because there are plenty of admins out there that are so jaded with users that they won't even help them as much as they need to be helped.
What is needed is a scramble crew of techies that know there way around windows like we all want our users to be. They should know how to get rid of viruses, spyware, install drivers, programs, back up, migrate, import/export, troubleshoot, etc. Common sense to us, but completely foreign to your standard user.
Users do NOT have time to be techies. They don't have the drive to be techies.
We don't expect NASCAR drivers to jump out of their cars when they go into a pitstop do we? No! There are professionals waiting and willing to fix the problems with a smile!
SUMMARY: Yes, it would be nice to have educated users, but they won't be educated. Thus, we techies have to work around them. That's why techies are hired. Any techies that complain about ignorant users need to reread their job descriptions. If you don't like helping people with their shortcommings, you don't belong in tech.
Right, they don't OWE you anything. No one who I have known to have pirated software dares complain about bugs. That's just silly.
But the only argument that people are making is that this still hurts everyone.
Back to the cara analogy. There's the recall. Something's wrong with the brakes. You built your own car off copied blue prints and are afraid to take it in to get fixed. Your brakes being out puts EVERYONE ON THE ROAD at risk.
Spelling it out further: Weak and risky computers propagate malware. If they are not allowed to be updated they pose a risk to all other systems.
Right, they don't OWE you anything. No one who I have known to have pirated software dares complain about bugs. That's just silly. But the only argument that people are making is that this still hurts everyone. Back to the cara analogy. There's the recall. Something's wrong with the brakes. You built your own car off copied blue prints and are afraid to take it in to get fixed. Your brakes being out puts EVERYONE ON THE ROAD at risk. Spelling it out further: Weak and risky computers propagate malware. If they are not allowed to be updated they pose a risk to all other systems.
The kicker is that if a person hacks, does 2 million dollars in damage, and gets the death penalty, his life will have been said to have been worth $2,000,000.
But then, the public (whether or not they wish) will spends hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions) to actually kill him. Thus, we're paying to kill him.
So which is more valuable: The life of a person or the death of a criminal?
Well, I'm screwed. I can only get darker =\