"Dobelle is a bit of a crackpot who is using high current electrodes on the surface of the brain and is kindling those patients brains increasing the likelyhood of seizures. Indeed seizures have been reported in those patients. Furthermore, from a conceptual point of view, stimulating visual cortex with crude electrical stimulii will certainly make one see phosphenes, but you can also see them by getting punched in the head. In other words it is not vision and those that are suggesting it is are either deceived or worse. To make things even more dubious, Dobelle has yet to publish his work in a peer reviewed journal and has to perform it outside the US because nobody will let him do it here."
There was a documentary on Discovery Channel (here in Europe) yesterday, which, among other topics, showed Dobelle's technology 'in action'.
By the woman who underwent the procedure two arrays with electrodes were implanted. These two arrays contained a total of 144 electrodes. After having recovered for 6 months, the functionality of the array was tested, at which point it was found that 90 out of the 144 electrodes worked (were close enough to neurons to stimulate them).
The software driving these arrays takes a video signal from a single camera and manipulates the images to reduce it to the outlines of objects (in theory). The electrodes on these points are then activated, so that the patient can 'see' the outlines of those objects.
However, for a US$100,000 procedure, the results were utterly disappointing: not only was this woman unable to make sense out of the phosphenes, which 'may or may not have anything to do with what I'm looking at' (in her own words), but the resolution is also too low to be usable.
Techniques which involve implanting a pin grid array have a far higher resolution and vastly reduce the chance on seizures and similar ill effects because a far lower drive current is required.
Pin grid arrays and artificial retinas are the best options we have right now for restoring vision in blind patients to acceptable levels.
That's the entire idea behind it. The effect would be that for a couple of generations more people would be affected by the genetic disorder, but the genetic defect would not be propagated after that, because:
- people affected by a genetic disorder are less likely to get children if there's a chance that those children will also be affected by, or become carriers for this genetic disorder.
- certain genetic disorders rapidly become lethal at a young age, or at least prevent the affected individual from interacting with other people in a 'normal' manner. With more 'hits' (i.e. two copies of the mutated gene combined), there will be fewer carriers.
Of course, if we really cared about preventing genetic disorders, we would make genetic tests prior to allowing two individuals to procreate mandatory. Unlike diseases which are spread by bacteria and viruses, genetic disorders are relatively easy to prevent.
How much are you willing to pay for that piece of album? This is what the value of that album is for you. If the owner of the material decide to sell it for more, then you don't have a deal.
That's basic laws of the market.
You mean the price-fixing the RIAA (among others) is guilty of? You really think that the sharing of copyrighted material (using audio/VHS tapes, FDs, CDs, BBSs, Usenet, FTP-servers, IRC, P2P, etc.) is just a coincidence? Perhaps some people have realized the true value of music, movies, and similar: that of a PC and internet connection.
I'd much rather see that people can donate money to artists of whom they like the products, just like which happens with a quite a number of web artists.
So you work you butt off to create a movie for like, say, 2 years, and then everyone just steals it and you get no reward? Is that your idea of what an artist is?
Ignoring the fact that it is not referred to as 'stealing', the answer to your question is simple:
The problem is that you expect to receive money for your labour. Only problem is that your labour wasn't requested by anyone, so no one is paying you for it. Then the product of your labour is finished, but because the cost of labour does not translate into a product, unless the same amount of labour is required to produce every single copy, the value of this product, this movie, is only that of the reproduction and distribution costs.
This is like a carpenter who has been creating wooden chairs for some years now and has become quite good at it, selling those chairs for $100 a piece. Then the onset of the Industrial Revolution results in the building of a furnature factory in the village next to that of the carpenter. This factory is able to produce chairs of about the same quality as those of the carpenter, but for only $20.
Even though the carpenter still makes those chairs in the same manner, the value of those chairs is no longer $100. They're worth $20 and not a penny more.
Now imagine that the carpenter represents the traditional distribution methods (8-track, LP, CD, DVD, etc.), and the factory the internet.
Obviously, the cheapest distribution (and replication) method determines the maximum price one can ask for the same product, without offering any additional features.
Ultimately, if you don't understand why we should pay for music, ask yourself the question: Why should we pay for anything? TV, VCR, books, food, etc...
You will probably say this is not the same thing because a TV is a material and has cost, but if you think about it, none of this cost is anything but labor: People driving trucks, digging oil, manufacturing plastics, etc... Music is also labor. Why should we make a difference?
If labour is done for others, and for a reward, it is called work. Work (and labour) implies mental and/or physical effort. The concept of royalties defies this principle, as no work is involved.
The artist is only involved in the initial production of the musical performance, painting, drawing, sculpture, movie, or similar, and not with the reproduction of it afterwards.
Considering this, it seems only fair that an artist gets paid when performing (i.e. doing work), but not when a copy of the product of a performance (e.g. recording) is copied, sold, or used in some form.
Then how does one define this additional 'value' that you seem to refer to? After you've accounted for all the labour, depreciation of any equipment used, fuel costs and have added a healthy profit margin, what remains? How much one likes a movie or musical performance? Or how 'good' it is? At that point you're no longer dealing with economics, but with people's opinions.
And you're right, I don't see the point of copyright (let alone patents). Only thing I can't stand is people claiming that they invented, discovered, wrote or composed something while in reality they didn't.
One thing about music is that no one really owns it, in the sense that only one person at a time can possess it and choose to create copies of it. Every single individual on this planet could 'own' a copy of one particular song, and it wouldn't change a damn thing.
I'm sorry for sticking to the dry science of economics instead of indulging in emotional rants about poor artists who should be paid for imaginary labour ($0.XX per song/CD/DVD sold, etc.).
The value of the movie is more than just the cost to distribute. If your film has a good story, good acting, and good production values, it will attract more viewers than a movie made by amateurs in their backyard.
The value of a movie, from a strictly economical point of view, is just the costs associated with reproducing and distributing the aforementioned movie. A good movie will not have a higher value, but it'll create more demand. Because the supply in the case of movies and similar is virtually infinite (until we run out of energy to create DVDs and run the projectors), the value of the movie can not in- or decrease, unless the overhead associated with producing and distributing in- or decreases (or the fat cats want more money;) )
You couldn't charge your parents a dollar to see your movie because it's so awful. (You probably couldn't sell it for the 25 cents it cost to burn it to a CD.) But you can easily sell movies for $10-50 on DVD. Why? Again, perceived value.
Perceived value is totally unrelated to the actual value of a product or service, however. Perceived value is one of the concepts behind donations, actually.
You're paying to see something that people put work into [..] and that has a value beyond the unit cost of a medium.
Again, you're using two definitions of the term 'value' as if it were one. What you're referring to here is the way people regard a product, in this case a movie. Everyone has a movie he or she likes, while other people (there are always some) who think that this particular movie is the worst junk ever produced in the history of mankind.
This is the perceived value you mentioned earlier. It should have no effect whatsoever on the price you pay for the actual product (DVD or ticket), however. Barring any changes in the associated overhead, of course.
Plus, my time is worth something as well. I don't need to waste bandwidth and time searching for a copy of a movie and then spend hours downloading it (even if in the background) and joining rars or decompressing it and then burning it to a CD. Think the time=money equation is BS? You've clearly never freelanced.
I'm quite certain that most people are well aware of the value (in an economical sense) of their own time.
If you pay a flat fee for your internet access, what is there are against downloading that movie or music which took you about 30 seconds to find on Kazaa or eDonkey2k? You spend 30 seconds of your time searching for those files. You don't need those files immediately, so you don't lose any time or money with that. Those files are also immediately ready to be used (usually, that is), so other than adding those music files to your playlist and double-clicking a video file, you don't waste any time there.
Most people I know pretty much always listen to music at their computer (or connect a PC to their receiver for playing back music), so you save the time of not having to rip the music to the HD.
Depending on your needs, you may actually save money and time by not buying music on CDs:)
Whereas the production costs of, say, a movie are pretty much fixed, with the value of the used products and services (electrical equipment, costumes, actors, etc.) being well above zero $ per hour/day/whatever, the value of the resulting product is only that of the reproduction and distribution costs. In other words, the production costs do not translate into the value of the product.
So while it may have cost $100 million to produce a movie, if this movie can be reproduced and distributed for $1, its value is exactly $1.
However, if you buy this same movie on a DVD, in a shop (on- or offline), you also pay for the pressing of the DVD(s), the box in which the DVD is placed, the art on this box and the fuel and maintenance costs of the truck which brough the DVD from the distribution center to the shop and the personnel involved in this, plus the profit margin of the shop. This is called the mark-up.
Similarly, if you view this movie in a cinema, you pay a mark-up.
So, there's nothing wrong with paying for a DVD, or watching a movie in a cinema, because you are (or should be) paying for additional products and/or services. Return on investment is still possible, as well as making a profit, even when you place the value of a copy of a movie on a near-zero value.
No, I'm not saying (or even implying) that copyright is pointless. All I'm saying that it's important that one realizes the true value of certain products.
value, n. 1 the regard that something is held to deserve; importance or worth > material or monetary worth.
(emphasis added; source: Oxford Dictionary, Tenth Edition)
thinking about it, wouldn't having multiple partners just be spreading the same genes from one parent to many children thus polluting the gene pool with the same dna over and over again?
When I mentioned 'linear spread' in reference to monogamy, I meant that the available genetic material is spread just like without monogamy, but at a much slower pace.
Mutations will spread through the population regardless, unless you employ DNA tests and prevent individuals affected by or carrying genetic defects from procreating, but monogamy makes this process many times slower.
Just look at how long certain genetic defects can last within a single family. A hereditary disease like Huntington's chorea can plague a family for tens of generations, if not longer. Without monogamy, basic statistics indicates that such a disease could be gone in a couple of generations, as it requires two copies of the same faulty gene.
There is loss. Loss in seeing the value of the movie being diluted because some cretin put it on the internet for free.
What is the value of something if it can be copied (reproduced) for (near to) zero cost?
Fact is, after a song, a movie and anything else which can be stored in digital form has been produced, its value is as high as the cost of reproducing and distributing it. Using cheap PCs and broadband internet, this cost is usually pretty much negligible.
Money is an abstract representation of the value of an object or service. While one might need more coins to pay for the same product if more money is added to 'the system', the value of the products remains the same.
3. Your argument sounds like you are saying "those with obvious genetic defects should not be allowed to breed". What are you saying? If I have a genetic defect that causes me to have a weaker back than others (so I can't do any heavy labour) then how in any reality would this sexual revolution reduce my chances of procreating any more than a monogamous culture? In fact, my chances of procreation in a sexually liberal society would be increased (IF such a society desired offspring, which this one doesn't).
Looking at other societies (e.g. in Africa) where polygamy is common, there are fewer 'free' women (in most forms of polygamy). This in turn means that more men, especially those of lower social status, have less chance of procreating.
On a sidenote, I think that not precreating is more than just common sense if you have one or more latent or active genes which are known to be responsible for certain genetic diseases. To willingly risk that your child will be affected by a serious genetic disease, because either you knew that you and the person you're having the child with do have those 'bad' genes, or you refuse to have a test performed to check for those genes, is more than just cruel and inhumane.
Not precreating is for now the only 100% foolproof way of curing genetic diseases.
Having children with close relatives is called homogamy, which is another term for inbreeding.
Because monogamy restricts the sexual relations of a man to a single woman, in a healthy population, this means that more of those with genetic defects (active or latent) can procreate, whereas otherwise only a small subset of such individuals would be able to produce offspring.
Furthermore, because monogamy by its very nature restricts the genetic diversity of a population, creating more of a linear spread (through generations) of genes, genetic defects can last far longer than is necessary.
"define us as people" might be interpreted as meaning "is an essential part of being human".
I merely meant to say that all actions taken in the past, including those of a violent and/or sexual nature, shape the present, of which we are a part.
Nice little logical twist you put in there. Because traditional Judeo-Christian views on sex were more common prior to the sexual revolution and because women had a lower standing prior to the world war II, you associate the idea that sex should be between man and wife with oppression of women.
Did I? I'm sorry if that's how it appeared to you. I merely tried to describe some of the, now outdated, views held by many before the sexual revolution and feminism.
Now, I think sex is 'special' and not because of historical matters. It's just the closest you can be to someone. It's intimate and great.
If that's how you experience it, that's fine. Just realize that not everyone thinks about this subject in the same manner.
I do find it amusing that you take the poster's most sensuous point (ALL YOU YOU!) and can only respond with a trite remark about threesomes. Every piece of relationship advice I've ever seen, be it at church, in the newspaper, online, in Cosmo... has said that if you value the relationship, don't do a threesome. More often than not, someone is going to be jealous and the relationship will be strained.
Then you missed the point of the remark I made. The parent made it sound like to a man, having sex with a single woman is what any man instinctively craves, whereas it's a commonly known fact that monogamy is definitely not natural behaviour for humans, and might possibly contribute to the sharp rise in genetic defects we're witnessing.
Perhaps I should have elaborated on this point, but I refrained from doing so, lest I might inadvertently 'feed a troll', so to speak.
I think that if you ask people who believe in the sacredness of the marriage bed, few will say that women should only concern herself with family and home duties. The "rules" are as strict for men as women and are geared for the joy of each.
Again, I apologize if I made it sound like monogamy and the suppression of women's rights are directly related.
On a sidenote, according to the statistics, individuals who believe in the 'sacredness of the marriage bed', let alone marriage, are a dying breed. Apparently the views held by those individuals are not that convincing to younger generations. One might consider this to be the continuing 'sexual revolution'.
Such a way of thinking about sex was typical before the sexual revolution. It was accompanied by strict rules for how a woman should behave herself, before and after marriage.
A woman should never take the initiative, leave all important decisions to men, including who to marry (which was decided upon by the potential groom and both families). Once married, a woman should only concern herself with keeping the house tidy, taking care of the children, and ensure the continuing comfort of her husband, regardless of her own condition.
It took a world war (when women had to work in the factories, because most men were away, fighting) to shake up these widely held convictions and a revolution (from the '60s and onwards) to get things to change.
Sexual behaviour (e.g. flirting) has been accepted for a while now, and sex itself is becoming less of a taboo as well. The reason why sex was treated like something 'special' for such a long time was because it was a taboo, thanks to good old-fashioned Christian values (re virgin birth), not because not talking about it made it somehow 'better'.
The man can say, "She wants to have sex with me and no one else!" The woman can say, "He wants to have sex with me and no one else!" Man: "My body is ALL for YOU!" Woman: "My body is ALL for YOU!" You can imagine what that does to the hormones! And the mutual love. A third person, whether a participant or spectator, contaminates the marital purity and spoils the "one flesh" sexual intimacy.
...which is why all men absolutely can't stand the thought of a trisome.
Violence and sexual behavior are facts of life, true, but that doesn't mean everyone has to condone it.
I agree. Any kind of behaviour which is aimed at causing harm to anyone is not a good thing.
And no, I do not agree that they define us as people.
I never said they do.
I only said that those types of behaviour have made us what we are today. Unless you disagree that those last two world wars and the sexual revolution during the '60s were just hype.
People should be able to choose what kinds of values they want to have without being subject to derision. And that doesn't necessarily have to mean that they're necessarily divorced from reality. They just have different values.
You'll never find me actively trying to 'convert' people. I'll state my view(s), and if they don't agree with it, fine.
However, don't forget that there are people who believe in creationism and similar things which are completely unfounded. Recommending not to use condoms because they would promote the spread of HIV/AIDS is another one of those views which are detached from reality.
I think we're all sick of holier-than-thou attitudes, but let's not stoop to that level ourselves.
Your post confirms something: smugness isn't limited to fundamentalist Christian groups.
I wouldn't describe it as smugness. It's closer to confusion and puzzlement. How in the world does one deal with people who often refuse to acknowledge even the most basic facts without offering any kind of credible defense?
From the press release: "Digital Praise is committed to releasing fun, exciting game titles that promote virtues and family values like forgiveness, tolerance and kindness, rather than the violent and sexual behavior that is the mainstay of most popular computer games today."
This single sentence implies two things:
- most games today actively promote violent and/or sexual behaviour;
- any kind of violent and sexual behaviour is a bad thing.
Starting with the second point, I think that we can all agree that this is utter nonsense. Violence and sexual behaviour are facts of life, and are two of the things which most actively define ourselves and our surroundings. Apparently it refers to the 'turning the other cheek', and the 'no sex before marriage/sex is solely for reproductive purposes' parts of fundamentalistic Christian beliefs.
Moving on, I'm guessing that even a game like the Sims is considered to be offensive by certain people. FPSs are violent by nature, but it would be ridiculous to state that the violence in this type of games promotes more violence (looking at the crime statistics for the US, the number of crimes committed since the introduction of Doom in the early '90s has sharply decreased, and never can a criminal act be directly attributed to a game).
Besides, there are already plenty of games which are totally PC and 'lots of fun'. They're called children's games:p
Anyway, those smug, fundamentalistic Christian types never seem to change, so this press release isn't exactly news, or even mildly shocking. With a couple of minor adaptations you could turn it into a press release regarding Christian music.
No need for something so complex. All one has to do to recover from such a state is to extend (or emulate one of volatile RAM's 'features', if you wish) the 'reset'-function:
The moment you push the 'reset' button, not only does the system reboot, but the memory is also wiped, after which a non-corrupted copy is loaded from the 'HDD' (or whatever is used for storage).
So in other words, the 'power'-button would be used to power the system down, while the entire state would be preserved (like the hibernate feature).
The 'reset'-button would literally reset the system to its default state, just like when you boot a system employing volatile RAM.
How does RAID 1 help loading times? RAID 1 is all about mirroring.
In essence, that's correct. However, because the same data is written to two (or more) disks, chunks of a single file can be read from multiple disks at once, much like with RAID 0. So while write times are the same as for a single disk, read speeds are higher.
False. With Socialism there still is a government, as it (in Marxism) has the task of distributing all resources.
Capitalism -> Socialism -> Communism
With Capitalism individuals (companies) pursue their own goals, with a government standing at the sidelines to keep things from getting out of control.
With Socialism, the resources produced by the capitalistic system are re-distributed by a strong government. Individuals are still able to pursue their own goals, but have more duties to the rest of society.
With Communism all individuals work together without requiring any outside influence (i.e. a government). There are no hierarchies (which also rules out the existence of any kind of government). What is good for the individual is good for society.
Communism is the ultimate form of democracy, because it elminates any form of government and hierarchy. In a truly communistic system, everybody is equal, and everybody works towards a common goal.
"If you're a 'normal' male, could you just 'abandon' your personality of finding 17 - 30 year old women attractive?"
Leaving aside the definition of a "normal male", I have to answer your question with 'yes'. It's a commonly known fact that males can shift the subject of their sexual behaviour. Now, if you want to debate whether or not these males are somehow not 'normal', you're more than welcome, but it's one debate I'd rather avoid.
Because of my involvement in neuroscience, I can not accept the statement that certain types of behaviour are predefined through genetic means (a biological fact) _and_ unchangeable (hardwired). Problem is that at the moment we understand very little of the dynamics of biological neural networks, so there's no proof yet for this or any other theory, although research so far shows that the brain has a remarkable ability to remap and re-use complete sections of itself, for example after part of a cerebral hemisphere is somehow damaged.
Considering that most of the population still has this crazy notion that 'emotions' are somehow an integral part of being 'human', despite these being merely side-effects of a single process (the desire to understand, to turn chaos into order), it definitely seems that humans behave the way they do because they lack the required level of understanding of their own 'hardware', so to speak, to explain and quantify their own behaviour in scientific terms, consequently using pseudo-science/'spiritualism' and similar as a substitute.
"If they like it, then I am happy for them and will support them completely, because I too understand that you really can't help what you find sexually attractive."
Thing is that the sexual behaviour (and behaviour in general) of humans (and not just humans) can be fully explained in scientific terms. Only problem is that most humans are not ready yet to accept the fact that there's no such thing as a unique identity/personality. There are only so many ways in which a biological neural network can shape itself; there's an end to the number of possible interpretations of the entirety of the universe, or just a small subset of it. And only by clinging to things they consider to be facts, things which they're familiar with, which provide them with a sense of order in a chaotic world, can they keep themselves from changing towards a state of complete understanding of one's surroundings.
It just happens that with paedophiles this sense of order, their personality, happens to include the appearance and/or feeling of a children's body in relation to their sexual behaviour 'sub-routines', if you wish.
Point is that even paedophiles can abandon this personality once they realize that it's utter nonsense to maintain it.
"It's the repression of your natural feelings that leads to problems, not the encouragement, understanding and support of them."
Well said. There's not been a single example where repression was actually helpful in changing or correcting types of behaviour considered to be 'wrong'.
Leaving the question or whether blocking sites with content related to the subject in question should be done or not aside, fact is that this is once more an example of trying to 'solve' purely social issues through technological means. It's no different from the RIAA and other's approach in regards to copyright infringement through file-sharing networks. In both cases the real issue isn't addressed at all, just suppressed in a less than subtle manner.
Just because no one appears to be willing or able to answer the question why people are interested in images of (semi) naked 'underage' individuals (children) doesn't mean that by continuing to evade the issue in the long term even more damage will be inflicted than when society as a whole would stop pretending that things one doesn't like can just be ignored and/or suppressed without any negative side-effects.
On a sidenote, I've got loads of images of (semi) naked young children in my possession, in various positions, including a number of close-ups. I would assume that they are mostly underage.
Slashdot Mirror
"Dobelle is a bit of a crackpot who is using high current electrodes on the surface of the brain and is kindling those patients brains increasing the likelyhood of seizures. Indeed seizures have been reported in those patients. Furthermore, from a conceptual point of view, stimulating visual cortex with crude electrical stimulii will certainly make one see phosphenes, but you can also see them by getting punched in the head. In other words it is not vision and those that are suggesting it is are either deceived or worse. To make things even more dubious, Dobelle has yet to publish his work in a peer reviewed journal and has to perform it outside the US because nobody will let him do it here."
There was a documentary on Discovery Channel (here in Europe) yesterday, which, among other topics, showed Dobelle's technology 'in action'.
By the woman who underwent the procedure two arrays with electrodes were implanted. These two arrays contained a total of 144 electrodes. After having recovered for 6 months, the functionality of the array was tested, at which point it was found that 90 out of the 144 electrodes worked (were close enough to neurons to stimulate them).
The software driving these arrays takes a video signal from a single camera and manipulates the images to reduce it to the outlines of objects (in theory). The electrodes on these points are then activated, so that the patient can 'see' the outlines of those objects.
However, for a US$100,000 procedure, the results were utterly disappointing: not only was this woman unable to make sense out of the phosphenes, which 'may or may not have anything to do with what I'm looking at' (in her own words), but the resolution is also too low to be usable.
Techniques which involve implanting a pin grid array have a far higher resolution and vastly reduce the chance on seizures and similar ill effects because a far lower drive current is required.
Pin grid arrays and artificial retinas are the best options we have right now for restoring vision in blind patients to acceptable levels.
That's the entire idea behind it. The effect would be that for a couple of generations more people would be affected by the genetic disorder, but the genetic defect would not be propagated after that, because:
- people affected by a genetic disorder are less likely to get children if there's a chance that those children will also be affected by, or become carriers for this genetic disorder.
- certain genetic disorders rapidly become lethal at a young age, or at least prevent the affected individual from interacting with other people in a 'normal' manner. With more 'hits' (i.e. two copies of the mutated gene combined), there will be fewer carriers.
Of course, if we really cared about preventing genetic disorders, we would make genetic tests prior to allowing two individuals to procreate mandatory. Unlike diseases which are spread by bacteria and viruses, genetic disorders are relatively easy to prevent.
How much are you willing to pay for that piece of album? This is what the value of that album is for you. If the owner of the material decide to sell it for more, then you don't have a deal. That's basic laws of the market.
You mean the price-fixing the RIAA (among others) is guilty of? You really think that the sharing of copyrighted material (using audio/VHS tapes, FDs, CDs, BBSs, Usenet, FTP-servers, IRC, P2P, etc.) is just a coincidence? Perhaps some people have realized the true value of music, movies, and similar: that of a PC and internet connection.
I'd much rather see that people can donate money to artists of whom they like the products, just like which happens with a quite a number of web artists.
So you work you butt off to create a movie for like, say, 2 years, and then everyone just steals it and you get no reward? Is that your idea of what an artist is?
Ignoring the fact that it is not referred to as 'stealing', the answer to your question is simple:
The problem is that you expect to receive money for your labour. Only problem is that your labour wasn't requested by anyone, so no one is paying you for it. Then the product of your labour is finished, but because the cost of labour does not translate into a product, unless the same amount of labour is required to produce every single copy, the value of this product, this movie, is only that of the reproduction and distribution costs.
This is like a carpenter who has been creating wooden chairs for some years now and has become quite good at it, selling those chairs for $100 a piece. Then the onset of the Industrial Revolution results in the building of a furnature factory in the village next to that of the carpenter. This factory is able to produce chairs of about the same quality as those of the carpenter, but for only $20.
Even though the carpenter still makes those chairs in the same manner, the value of those chairs is no longer $100. They're worth $20 and not a penny more.
Now imagine that the carpenter represents the traditional distribution methods (8-track, LP, CD, DVD, etc.), and the factory the internet.
Obviously, the cheapest distribution (and replication) method determines the maximum price one can ask for the same product, without offering any additional features.
Ultimately, if you don't understand why we should pay for music, ask yourself the question: Why should we pay for anything? TV, VCR, books, food, etc... You will probably say this is not the same thing because a TV is a material and has cost, but if you think about it, none of this cost is anything but labor: People driving trucks, digging oil, manufacturing plastics, etc... Music is also labor. Why should we make a difference?
If labour is done for others, and for a reward, it is called work. Work (and labour) implies mental and/or physical effort. The concept of royalties defies this principle, as no work is involved.
The artist is only involved in the initial production of the musical performance, painting, drawing, sculpture, movie, or similar, and not with the reproduction of it afterwards.
Considering this, it seems only fair that an artist gets paid when performing (i.e. doing work), but not when a copy of the product of a performance (e.g. recording) is copied, sold, or used in some form.
Then how does one define this additional 'value' that you seem to refer to? After you've accounted for all the labour, depreciation of any equipment used, fuel costs and have added a healthy profit margin, what remains? How much one likes a movie or musical performance? Or how 'good' it is? At that point you're no longer dealing with economics, but with people's opinions.
And you're right, I don't see the point of copyright (let alone patents). Only thing I can't stand is people claiming that they invented, discovered, wrote or composed something while in reality they didn't.
One thing about music is that no one really owns it, in the sense that only one person at a time can possess it and choose to create copies of it. Every single individual on this planet could 'own' a copy of one particular song, and it wouldn't change a damn thing.
I'm sorry for sticking to the dry science of economics instead of indulging in emotional rants about poor artists who should be paid for imaginary labour ($0.XX per song/CD/DVD sold, etc.).
The value of the movie is more than just the cost to distribute. If your film has a good story, good acting, and good production values, it will attract more viewers than a movie made by amateurs in their backyard.
;) )
:)
The value of a movie, from a strictly economical point of view, is just the costs associated with reproducing and distributing the aforementioned movie. A good movie will not have a higher value, but it'll create more demand. Because the supply in the case of movies and similar is virtually infinite (until we run out of energy to create DVDs and run the projectors), the value of the movie can not in- or decrease, unless the overhead associated with producing and distributing in- or decreases (or the fat cats want more money
You couldn't charge your parents a dollar to see your movie because it's so awful. (You probably couldn't sell it for the 25 cents it cost to burn it to a CD.) But you can easily sell movies for $10-50 on DVD. Why? Again, perceived value.
Perceived value is totally unrelated to the actual value of a product or service, however. Perceived value is one of the concepts behind donations, actually.
You're paying to see something that people put work into [..] and that has a value beyond the unit cost of a medium.
Again, you're using two definitions of the term 'value' as if it were one. What you're referring to here is the way people regard a product, in this case a movie. Everyone has a movie he or she likes, while other people (there are always some) who think that this particular movie is the worst junk ever produced in the history of mankind.
This is the perceived value you mentioned earlier. It should have no effect whatsoever on the price you pay for the actual product (DVD or ticket), however. Barring any changes in the associated overhead, of course.
Plus, my time is worth something as well. I don't need to waste bandwidth and time searching for a copy of a movie and then spend hours downloading it (even if in the background) and joining rars or decompressing it and then burning it to a CD. Think the time=money equation is BS? You've clearly never freelanced.
I'm quite certain that most people are well aware of the value (in an economical sense) of their own time.
If you pay a flat fee for your internet access, what is there are against downloading that movie or music which took you about 30 seconds to find on Kazaa or eDonkey2k? You spend 30 seconds of your time searching for those files. You don't need those files immediately, so you don't lose any time or money with that. Those files are also immediately ready to be used (usually, that is), so other than adding those music files to your playlist and double-clicking a video file, you don't waste any time there.
Most people I know pretty much always listen to music at their computer (or connect a PC to their receiver for playing back music), so you save the time of not having to rip the music to the HD.
Depending on your needs, you may actually save money and time by not buying music on CDs
And that's the whole problem, isn't it?
Whereas the production costs of, say, a movie are pretty much fixed, with the value of the used products and services (electrical equipment, costumes, actors, etc.) being well above zero $ per hour/day/whatever, the value of the resulting product is only that of the reproduction and distribution costs. In other words, the production costs do not translate into the value of the product.
So while it may have cost $100 million to produce a movie, if this movie can be reproduced and distributed for $1, its value is exactly $1.
However, if you buy this same movie on a DVD, in a shop (on- or offline), you also pay for the pressing of the DVD(s), the box in which the DVD is placed, the art on this box and the fuel and maintenance costs of the truck which brough the DVD from the distribution center to the shop and the personnel involved in this, plus the profit margin of the shop. This is called the mark-up.
Similarly, if you view this movie in a cinema, you pay a mark-up.
So, there's nothing wrong with paying for a DVD, or watching a movie in a cinema, because you are (or should be) paying for additional products and/or services. Return on investment is still possible, as well as making a profit, even when you place the value of a copy of a movie on a near-zero value.
No, I'm not saying (or even implying) that copyright is pointless. All I'm saying that it's important that one realizes the true value of certain products.
value, n. 1 the regard that something is held to deserve; importance or worth > material or monetary worth.
(emphasis added; source: Oxford Dictionary, Tenth Edition)
thinking about it, wouldn't having multiple partners just be spreading the same genes from one parent to many children thus polluting the gene pool with the same dna over and over again?
When I mentioned 'linear spread' in reference to monogamy, I meant that the available genetic material is spread just like without monogamy, but at a much slower pace.
Mutations will spread through the population regardless, unless you employ DNA tests and prevent individuals affected by or carrying genetic defects from procreating, but monogamy makes this process many times slower.
Just look at how long certain genetic defects can last within a single family. A hereditary disease like Huntington's chorea can plague a family for tens of generations, if not longer. Without monogamy, basic statistics indicates that such a disease could be gone in a couple of generations, as it requires two copies of the same faulty gene.
There is loss. Loss in seeing the value of the movie being diluted because some cretin put it on the internet for free.
What is the value of something if it can be copied (reproduced) for (near to) zero cost?
Fact is, after a song, a movie and anything else which can be stored in digital form has been produced, its value is as high as the cost of reproducing and distributing it. Using cheap PCs and broadband internet, this cost is usually pretty much negligible.
Money is an abstract representation of the value of an object or service. While one might need more coins to pay for the same product if more money is added to 'the system', the value of the products remains the same.
3. Your argument sounds like you are saying "those with obvious genetic defects should not be allowed to breed". What are you saying? If I have a genetic defect that causes me to have a weaker back than others (so I can't do any heavy labour) then how in any reality would this sexual revolution reduce my chances of procreating any more than a monogamous culture? In fact, my chances of procreation in a sexually liberal society would be increased (IF such a society desired offspring, which this one doesn't).
Looking at other societies (e.g. in Africa) where polygamy is common, there are fewer 'free' women (in most forms of polygamy). This in turn means that more men, especially those of lower social status, have less chance of procreating.
On a sidenote, I think that not precreating is more than just common sense if you have one or more latent or active genes which are known to be responsible for certain genetic diseases. To willingly risk that your child will be affected by a serious genetic disease, because either you knew that you and the person you're having the child with do have those 'bad' genes, or you refuse to have a test performed to check for those genes, is more than just cruel and inhumane.
Not precreating is for now the only 100% foolproof way of curing genetic diseases.
Having children with close relatives is called homogamy, which is another term for inbreeding.
Because monogamy restricts the sexual relations of a man to a single woman, in a healthy population, this means that more of those with genetic defects (active or latent) can procreate, whereas otherwise only a small subset of such individuals would be able to produce offspring.
Furthermore, because monogamy by its very nature restricts the genetic diversity of a population, creating more of a linear spread (through generations) of genes, genetic defects can last far longer than is necessary.
"define us as people" might be interpreted as meaning "is an essential part of being human".
I merely meant to say that all actions taken in the past, including those of a violent and/or sexual nature, shape the present, of which we are a part.
Nice little logical twist you put in there. Because traditional Judeo-Christian views on sex were more common prior to the sexual revolution and because women had a lower standing prior to the world war II, you associate the idea that sex should be between man and wife with oppression of women.
Did I? I'm sorry if that's how it appeared to you. I merely tried to describe some of the, now outdated, views held by many before the sexual revolution and feminism.
Now, I think sex is 'special' and not because of historical matters. It's just the closest you can be to someone. It's intimate and great.
If that's how you experience it, that's fine. Just realize that not everyone thinks about this subject in the same manner.
I do find it amusing that you take the poster's most sensuous point (ALL YOU YOU!) and can only respond with a trite remark about threesomes. Every piece of relationship advice I've ever seen, be it at church, in the newspaper, online, in Cosmo... has said that if you value the relationship, don't do a threesome. More often than not, someone is going to be jealous and the relationship will be strained.
Then you missed the point of the remark I made. The parent made it sound like to a man, having sex with a single woman is what any man instinctively craves, whereas it's a commonly known fact that monogamy is definitely not natural behaviour for humans, and might possibly contribute to the sharp rise in genetic defects we're witnessing.
Perhaps I should have elaborated on this point, but I refrained from doing so, lest I might inadvertently 'feed a troll', so to speak.
I think that if you ask people who believe in the sacredness of the marriage bed, few will say that women should only concern herself with family and home duties. The "rules" are as strict for men as women and are geared for the joy of each.
Again, I apologize if I made it sound like monogamy and the suppression of women's rights are directly related.
On a sidenote, according to the statistics, individuals who believe in the 'sacredness of the marriage bed', let alone marriage, are a dying breed. Apparently the views held by those individuals are not that convincing to younger generations. One might consider this to be the continuing 'sexual revolution'.
Such a way of thinking about sex was typical before the sexual revolution. It was accompanied by strict rules for how a woman should behave herself, before and after marriage.
...which is why all men absolutely can't stand the thought of a trisome.
:)
A woman should never take the initiative, leave all important decisions to men, including who to marry (which was decided upon by the potential groom and both families). Once married, a woman should only concern herself with keeping the house tidy, taking care of the children, and ensure the continuing comfort of her husband, regardless of her own condition.
It took a world war (when women had to work in the factories, because most men were away, fighting) to shake up these widely held convictions and a revolution (from the '60s and onwards) to get things to change.
Sexual behaviour (e.g. flirting) has been accepted for a while now, and sex itself is becoming less of a taboo as well. The reason why sex was treated like something 'special' for such a long time was because it was a taboo, thanks to good old-fashioned Christian values (re virgin birth), not because not talking about it made it somehow 'better'.
The man can say, "She wants to have sex with me and no one else!" The woman can say, "He wants to have sex with me and no one else!" Man: "My body is ALL for YOU!" Woman: "My body is ALL for YOU!" You can imagine what that does to the hormones! And the mutual love. A third person, whether a participant or spectator, contaminates the marital purity and spoils the "one flesh" sexual intimacy.
Thank you, please come again
Violence and sexual behavior are facts of life, true, but that doesn't mean everyone has to condone it.
I agree. Any kind of behaviour which is aimed at causing harm to anyone is not a good thing.
And no, I do not agree that they define us as people.
I never said they do.
I only said that those types of behaviour have made us what we are today. Unless you disagree that those last two world wars and the sexual revolution during the '60s were just hype.
People should be able to choose what kinds of values they want to have without being subject to derision. And that doesn't necessarily have to mean that they're necessarily divorced from reality. They just have different values.
You'll never find me actively trying to 'convert' people. I'll state my view(s), and if they don't agree with it, fine.
However, don't forget that there are people who believe in creationism and similar things which are completely unfounded. Recommending not to use condoms because they would promote the spread of HIV/AIDS is another one of those views which are detached from reality.
I think we're all sick of holier-than-thou attitudes, but let's not stoop to that level ourselves. Your post confirms something: smugness isn't limited to fundamentalist Christian groups.
I wouldn't describe it as smugness. It's closer to confusion and puzzlement. How in the world does one deal with people who often refuse to acknowledge even the most basic facts without offering any kind of credible defense?
From the press release:
:p
"Digital Praise is committed to releasing fun, exciting game titles that promote virtues and family values like forgiveness, tolerance and kindness, rather than the violent and sexual behavior that is the mainstay of most popular computer games today."
This single sentence implies two things:
- most games today actively promote violent and/or sexual behaviour;
- any kind of violent and sexual behaviour is a bad thing.
Starting with the second point, I think that we can all agree that this is utter nonsense. Violence and sexual behaviour are facts of life, and are two of the things which most actively define ourselves and our surroundings. Apparently it refers to the 'turning the other cheek', and the 'no sex before marriage/sex is solely for reproductive purposes' parts of fundamentalistic Christian beliefs.
Moving on, I'm guessing that even a game like the Sims is considered to be offensive by certain people. FPSs are violent by nature, but it would be ridiculous to state that the violence in this type of games promotes more violence (looking at the crime statistics for the US, the number of crimes committed since the introduction of Doom in the early '90s has sharply decreased, and never can a criminal act be directly attributed to a game).
Besides, there are already plenty of games which are totally PC and 'lots of fun'. They're called children's games
Anyway, those smug, fundamentalistic Christian types never seem to change, so this press release isn't exactly news, or even mildly shocking. With a couple of minor adaptations you could turn it into a press release regarding Christian music.
You make it sound like it's impossible to add a reset button.
No need for something so complex. All one has to do to recover from such a state is to extend (or emulate one of volatile RAM's 'features', if you wish) the 'reset'-function:
The moment you push the 'reset' button, not only does the system reboot, but the memory is also wiped, after which a non-corrupted copy is loaded from the 'HDD' (or whatever is used for storage).
So in other words, the 'power'-button would be used to power the system down, while the entire state would be preserved (like the hibernate feature).
The 'reset'-button would literally reset the system to its default state, just like when you boot a system employing volatile RAM.
How does RAID 1 help loading times? RAID 1 is all about mirroring.
In essence, that's correct. However, because the same data is written to two (or more) disks, chunks of a single file can be read from multiple disks at once, much like with RAID 0. So while write times are the same as for a single disk, read speeds are higher.
False. With Socialism there still is a government, as it (in Marxism) has the task of distributing all resources.
Capitalism -> Socialism -> Communism
With Capitalism individuals (companies) pursue their own goals, with a government standing at the sidelines to keep things from getting out of control.
With Socialism, the resources produced by the capitalistic system are re-distributed by a strong government. Individuals are still able to pursue their own goals, but have more duties to the rest of society.
With Communism all individuals work together without requiring any outside influence (i.e. a government). There are no hierarchies (which also rules out the existence of any kind of government). What is good for the individual is good for society.
"Communism isn't necessarily bad."
Communism is the ultimate form of democracy, because it elminates any form of government and hierarchy. In a truly communistic system, everybody is equal, and everybody works towards a common goal.
Definitely sounds like Open Source.
"If you're a 'normal' male, could you just 'abandon' your personality of finding 17 - 30 year old women attractive?"
Leaving aside the definition of a "normal male", I have to answer your question with 'yes'. It's a commonly known fact that males can shift the subject of their sexual behaviour. Now, if you want to debate whether or not these males are somehow not 'normal', you're more than welcome, but it's one debate I'd rather avoid.
Because of my involvement in neuroscience, I can not accept the statement that certain types of behaviour are predefined through genetic means (a biological fact) _and_ unchangeable (hardwired). Problem is that at the moment we understand very little of the dynamics of biological neural networks, so there's no proof yet for this or any other theory, although research so far shows that the brain has a remarkable ability to remap and re-use complete sections of itself, for example after part of a cerebral hemisphere is somehow damaged.
Considering that most of the population still has this crazy notion that 'emotions' are somehow an integral part of being 'human', despite these being merely side-effects of a single process (the desire to understand, to turn chaos into order), it definitely seems that humans behave the way they do because they lack the required level of understanding of their own 'hardware', so to speak, to explain and quantify their own behaviour in scientific terms, consequently using pseudo-science/'spiritualism' and similar as a substitute.
"If they like it, then I am happy for them and will support them completely, because I too understand that you really can't help what you find sexually attractive."
Thing is that the sexual behaviour (and behaviour in general) of humans (and not just humans) can be fully explained in scientific terms. Only problem is that most humans are not ready yet to accept the fact that there's no such thing as a unique identity/personality. There are only so many ways in which a biological neural network can shape itself; there's an end to the number of possible interpretations of the entirety of the universe, or just a small subset of it. And only by clinging to things they consider to be facts, things which they're familiar with, which provide them with a sense of order in a chaotic world, can they keep themselves from changing towards a state of complete understanding of one's surroundings.
It just happens that with paedophiles this sense of order, their personality, happens to include the appearance and/or feeling of a children's body in relation to their sexual behaviour 'sub-routines', if you wish.
Point is that even paedophiles can abandon this personality once they realize that it's utter nonsense to maintain it.
"It's the repression of your natural feelings that leads to problems, not the encouragement, understanding and support of them."
Well said. There's not been a single example where repression was actually helpful in changing or correcting types of behaviour considered to be 'wrong'.
Leaving the question or whether blocking sites with content related to the subject in question should be done or not aside, fact is that this is once more an example of trying to 'solve' purely social issues through technological means. It's no different from the RIAA and other's approach in regards to copyright infringement through file-sharing networks. In both cases the real issue isn't addressed at all, just suppressed in a less than subtle manner.
Just because no one appears to be willing or able to answer the question why people are interested in images of (semi) naked 'underage' individuals (children) doesn't mean that by continuing to evade the issue in the long term even more damage will be inflicted than when society as a whole would stop pretending that things one doesn't like can just be ignored and/or suppressed without any negative side-effects.
On a sidenote, I've got loads of images of (semi) naked young children in my possession, in various positions, including a number of close-ups. I would assume that they are mostly underage.
It's called a friggin' medical encyclopedia.