There are currently 4 cooking recipes missing. They are unobtainable, yet they are required for the Northrend Gourment achievement in which you need to cook 45 of the 46 Northrend recipes.
WTF? Cooking? Achievements? I've never played a MMORPG, but this makes it sound like an online version of the Boy Scouts. Do I get a badge I can sew onto my scarf for this stuff?!
It only seems counter intuitive if you've swallowed the procedural programming paradigm and adopted it as your own to the point where you've forgotten how counter intuitive "X = X + 1" seemed at first.
"X = X + 1" is only misleading because it uses the "=" symbol- normally associated with equality- as the assignment operator.
If we ignore that side issue, there's nothing inherently confusing about the operation itself. Pascal and COMAL use ":=" (becomes equal to) instead, and I wish that C and all its syntactical derivatives had done something like this instead of using "=" for assignment (possibly with "<>" for inequality to avoid mixing up ":=" and "!=").
(Ironically, BASIC's restrictions meant that despite using the "=" symbol for both purposes, there was never any confusion because it could only mean one or the other in a given context).
What vastly outsells iPods? Last I checked, the iPod brand still had about 85 percent market share.
Assuming that's true (*), that's almost certainly by market value, not units sold- that is, a £200 iPod Touch counts way more than a £15 no-name player.
Important perhaps from a business perspective, but from the point of view of what player a given person is likely to be using, definitely misleading in favour of the higher-priced iPod range.
(*) And even for a market leader it sounds very high; I'm sure the headline figure hides a more complex picture.
I bet Wozniak finally snapped and is doing this out of spite.
Sounds eerily reminiscent of the end of *every bloody Scooby Doo episode* where the baddie turns out to be a supposedly amiable minor character who in reality was bitter about some business dealing and trying to subvert his former partner.
Sad thing is, I almost instantly visualised this in animated form, and I didn't even like Scooby Doo that much!
Woz would have got away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky.... um, lawyers.
Perhaps meat sales would have grown faster had PETA not campaigned. Perhaps they see it as a long-term campaign. Perhaps they *will* change their strategy in response to the evidence. Who knows?
I'm sure that the supervisor appreciated some random asshole telling him how to do his job and manage his staff.
Well, yes. If he was a good supervisor. Who do you think is going to give him the most objective opinion on how his staff is helping people?
Letting them know that their service is lousy and that you're extraordinarily pissed off with it- perfectly acceptable, even if conveyed in an angry but acceptable manner.
Ordering the supervisor around and telling him his job on the other hand, smacks of bullying and assholery.
If the supervisor thought I was wrong in requesting that somebody who asked me for my operating system version four times in a row when replying to an e-mail in which I explicitly stated my operating system version, then he should be fired too.
You're probably right, but you've got a lot to learn about basic human psychology if you think ordering the supervisor around is going to be anything other than counterproductive.
If the subordinate's as bad as you imply, he'll probably be in the shit anyway.
The agent should do his damned job whether I'm a jerk or not.
Probably should. However, since his "damned job" (as defined in practice by his superiors) probably consists of getting people off the phone as quickly as possible, I doubt he's going to go out of his way to help a jerk, particularly if it's likely to get him into trouble.
Probably shouldn't be that way. But it probably is.
But let's be honest, there is no such procedure. Don't defend this idiot.
Hence "there might be some stupid and/or lazy staff"
As the manager of a tech support department I probably would have fired an agent who didn't bother to read a client note stating what was done.
*You* probably would have and it's quite possible that the bottom-level guy he spoke to really was an idiot. However, that would have been your decision, not his, and should have been made regardless of whether or not someone was telling you to fire the guy.
I'm sure that the supervisor appreciated some random asshole telling him how to do his job and manage his staff.
If he didn't, he shouldn't be in management. Here's a clue: "the customer's always right."
If *you're* implying that a supervisor should (a) enjoy being told his job and more importantly (b) that he should do everything every customer suggests regarding the internal management of the company itself, then *you* shouldn't be in management!
(a) is counter-productive in terms of human psychology, regardless of whether or not it's right and for (b); Maybe the subordinate *should* be fired- but the supervisor should be making that decision for himself, not because some random customer is ordering him to do it.
So my contention is that their base assumption is wrong
That's your contention, and certainly arguable, but it's not an indisputable fact. So to imply that simply because PETA haven't based their strategy around it they aren't serious (your original point)... is incorrect (*my* original point!)
I can assure you that the type of laws I had in mind were quite plausible and are- or had been in recent decades- in force in the US. Ironically, the one I had in mind was of a guy sent to prison for performing oral sex on some woman; I didn't mention this because my recollection of the details was vague. I hadn't realised- as other replies pointed out- that so many US states still had such "crazy laws" on the books.
So there was nothing I "made up".
then blaming the results on that crazy law on something else without justification. The blame lies with the crazy law.
Well done! You get to win the abstract intellectual game of arguing who's technically to blame and still miss the point that I wasn't disagreeing with you per se- I was pointing out that it's irrelevant when it comes to the real world.
Just like no-one actually dies of AIDS itself, they die of opportunistic infections. And just like AIDS wouldn't be a problem if there were no infectious diseases. Well, it doesn't change the fact that there *are* and *will always be* infectious diseases and that any significant vector for a problem is in itself a problem.
Arguing that it's not to blame is missing the point.
Exponentially? How have you quantified enforcement then?
In a manner which favours my argument, of course! (^_^)
Seriously, are you trying score points by nitpicking over the precise meaning of some phrase which clearly wasn't meant in that way?
Don't call something a "fact" when it's just a wild guess.
You're right; it's not a "fact" that knowing virtually everything that someone is doing at all times will make it vastly easier to catch them breaking some invasive law regarding personal behaviour. It's just incredibly likely and hardly (IMHO) a "wild guess".
It would be really great if they would send you an e-mail telling you that they were shipping you a replacement motherboard and firing the representative who handled your case initially.
That would probably make you feel better, but a lot of these drones are restricted in what they're allowed to do and they're forced to go through standard scripts and procedures.
I've been through similar trouble with other companies. I had one idiot drone ask me what version of the operating system I was running four or five times in a row, when I was answering him each time. I finally asked for a supervisor and directly asked the supervisor to fire this moron.
I'm sure that the supervisor appreciated some random asshole telling him how to do his job and manage his staff.
Most companies care not even the slightest bit for providing non-terrible customer service.
Bingo. Customer support is expensive, and usually carried out by a third party who have a vested interested in "processing" you as quickly as possible, regardless of whether or not it solves your problem.
There might be some stupid and/or lazy staff, but the fundamental problem is at the top.
Why do they put so many resources into advertising "Meat is Death" if they're not trying to convince people to stop eating meat?
Where the heck did I imply that they weren't? Of course they are.
The fraction of people who eat meat "because it's death" is vanishingly small
Are you referring to a tiny percentage of people who like meat *because* it's dead animals? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here(!)
and would gladly switch if an alternative were available. But the alternative isn't Boca burgers and hummus because that doesn't meet the consumers' requirements. So, until such an alternative is available (I believe that's inevitable) most people will eat meat.
Where do you draw the line with an acceptable alternative? PETA may argue (again, you might or might not agree) that current alternatives are good enough if you're aware of the suffering involved in the creation of meat.
You can disagree, but that's still a valid perspective to argue from and therefore your glib argument that because PETA aren't devoting 100% of their effort to creating a perfect meat alternative they aren't serious is flawed. QED.
If a crazy law is passed, then the problem is the crazy law, not whether something only tangentially related makes it easier to enforce.
Hey, that's going to make the guy that gets arrested and persectued/tortured/whatever for some mildly kinky sex act feel *much* better!
"Hey, I realise that you probably wouldn't have got caught if they hadn't been able to spy on you like that... but that's really not the problem here! In a world where only fair and sensible laws are passed and fluffy bunnies and magical fairies live, it wouldn't have mattered."
Wake up and get real. It's nice that you have the luxury of arguing this in idealised, abstract and separate terms. However, in the real world, the fact that this would make it exponentially easier to enforce repressive laws *is* as much the problem.
If they didn't ask me before they started shooting if I wanted to donate my efforts and resources to their cultural work, then why should I give them anything after it is finished? What a warped view of the world you have.
Huh? Are you seriously suggesting every person/organization that plans to create a cultural work should come to you in advance to request a donation? And then you accuse somebody else (!) of having a warped view of the world?
That's a typical libertarian-on-Slashdot style response that blatantly ignores (or rather, relies upon) its total impracticality in society.
If they want money in their bank account, they can print their own. That's the fashionable thing to do these days.
Was that a serious suggestion (in which case; no, for obvious reasons), or just something to hold a satirical comment off of?
I'm a computer programmer. My girlfriend is a painter and artist. We are both musicians. We are the people these copyright rules are intended to promote. And we don't want them, and we don't need them, and we think we'd be better off without them.
Assuming that you're making a livable income off one or more of these, how does that work- i.e. what's your personal "business model"?
Nice try... My God, you've posted at least 24 comments to this thread alone (*), most of them in the same vein. Vague, pompous, semi-meaningful, open-ended replies trying to pass off their lack of substance as someone intellectually superior teasing the idiots.
Rather than the pretentious, trollish crap they actually are.
(*) Probably more, but you know someone's hogging the thread when they've posted so much that they won't all fit in their recent comments list.
If PETA were serious, they'd put 100% of their efforts into developing an ethically superior food that's cheaper and tastier than meat.
They don't, so they're not. QED.
Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of PETA. I'm not even a vegetarian, but that's a crap argument, and slapping "QED" at the end doesn't make it more valid.
Stupid fucking analogy coming up: Suppose I got my kicks by driving around residential streets at 110mph, and some do-gooder whined that it was ethically wrong because of the danger to residents and all the dead pensioners wrapped around my bumper. Would it be a valid response to say that the road safety campaigners should STFU until they come up with an ethically superior and cheaper alternative to running people over at high speed a la Death Race 2000?
No, of course it wouldn't. PETA *could* argue (whether you or I agree or not) that eating animals is wrong, regardless of whether or not it was "tasty". Obviously it could be cool if they could come up with a really good meat substitute, but that's not their main aim.
Linux could implement them - except the GPL prevents it. [..] Linux (thanks to the GPL) is the one saying 'I'm not going to play unless we can use my ball'
You imply that Linux is to blame for insisting on the GPL. While on a nitpicking technical level this may be correct, it's misleading and inasmuch as we can anthropomorphise an OS, you're putting words in its mouth.
Linux is fundamentally licensed around the GPL. Even if Linus and all the major contributors were to suddenly change their minds, they'd have to persuade all those who contributed- either directly or indirectly- to agree to a new ZFS-compatible license. Even if they were all cooperative, this would be a major undertaking, but it's going to be exponentially more of a PITA if even a small fraction disagreed and they had to work around that.
Basically, whether or not you think it's a good thing, Linux is stuck with the GPL, and it's misleading to portray this as ideological stroppiness.
I'd love to see someone port ZFS to Linux and distribute it as a set of patches for people to download and apply to their own kernel [..] Maybe it's time to put functionality before ideology?
See above. Of course, it's probably doable on a technical level, but it would still break the licensing (unless there was a clever workaround which I assume that there isn't).
There are doubtless plenty of patches out there that break the GPL (IIRC some of the kernel code contains macros to warn the user about tainting in this manner). No-one's going to sue you for installing them on your home copy of Linux. However, this doesn't change the fact that these break the GPL and couldn't be included with any notable distros for that reason alone.
Linux's use of the GPL may have started as ideology- though it's open to question whether it would have taken off in the same way if it *hadn't* used the GPL, and regardless, it's easier with hindsight to criticise a choice Linus made over 15 years ago. Fact is that *now* the GPL licensing is a legal issue, and not simply childish ideology as you imply.
after about ten years ceased to exist due to other formats like DVD Audio and MP3s
MP3? Arguably. DVD Audio? Don't make me laugh- outside an audiophile niche, that went nowhere and likely never will now.
Monopolies do not last forever. Therefore there's no need for government to break them up.
Poor logic and an easy get-out since very few things last "forever". (Even if we use a non-pedantic definition of "forever" as being your lifetime and those of your next few generations of descendants).
If the monopoly has a damaging influence for what one could consider an extended period of time (e.g. sets an otherwise fast-moving industry back 25 years) or is having an extremely pernicious influence during even a shorter period, that's bad enough for me.
Was it the social disapproval of being fat that motivated you to lose the weight in the first place? Is being "insensitive" to a possibly unhealthy condition (even if that's not the motivation behind the assholery) an entirely bad thing?
Ironically, you both missed my point and proved it at the same time.
On the contrary- you completely misunderstood *my* point(!)
I was simply pointing out that Tape/CD singles were the same price to produce as Tape/CD albums, because the physical medium was the same (unlike vinyl where singles were physically cheaper to produce because they were smaller and generally came with far less packaging/inserts/etc).
Let's keep this simple.
It had to be possible to manufacture all those AOL CDs- complete with thin cardboard sleeves (*1)- for pennies. I would assume the music industry's cost for bulk CD duplication to be in the same ballpark. Clearly, this isn't the only expense involved, and I wasn't implying that it was.
However, your entire argument revolved around the supposed high cost of CD duplication being the reason for the high price- "record companies were unable to make them cheap enough to make a profit and still give you your money's worth." (*2) Hence the counterexample showing that your argument was fundamentally flawed.
In fact, since duplication is likely a fairly *small* proportion of the price, the fact that a CD single and album (minus packaging) cost the same to produce hardly means that they should be closer in price. As I said above, the likely manufacturing cost of the CD itself is probably so small as to be irrelevant.
More applicable to the argument is the cost of manufacturing a cardboard-sleeved CD versus a 7" single. I doubt that the difference is that major; even if it was twice the price (say 20p instead of 10p), that's still a small proportion of the total, and wouldn't justify doubling the selling price(!) It sure as heck doesn't justify £4 for a single, CD or not.
So the fact that you go on and on about how much CD singles sucked makes sense, because
I certainly went "on and on" about it, no doubt:) But although it may have made sense, it sure as heck wasn't "because"...
record companies were unable to make them cheap enough to make a profit and still give you your money's worth.
!
Another thing I'd like to point out is that you seem to think that record companies could sell CDs for the cost of the materials. Yes the actual CD might cost a few pennies to mass produce, but what about packaging? What about marketing? [etc, snip]
No shit, Sherlock. You'd have had to have *totally* missed my point to have thought that's what I meant or believed! (Had I thought this I'd have said "I want my CDs for 10p!", or whatever AOL's marginal duplication cost was).
(*1) Yes, some CD singles *did* come in cardboard sleeves, so it was doable.
(*2) Having re-read your original post, you don't actually say this as such and for a second I thought I'd read too much into what you said. But going by your reply, it's clear that this was what you meant anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
There are currently 4 cooking recipes missing. They are unobtainable, yet they are required for the Northrend Gourment achievement in which you need to cook 45 of the 46 Northrend recipes.
WTF? Cooking? Achievements? I've never played a MMORPG, but this makes it sound like an online version of the Boy Scouts. Do I get a badge I can sew onto my scarf for this stuff?!
It only seems counter intuitive if you've swallowed the procedural programming paradigm and adopted it as your own to the point where you've forgotten how counter intuitive "X = X + 1" seemed at first.
"X = X + 1" is only misleading because it uses the "=" symbol- normally associated with equality- as the assignment operator.
If we ignore that side issue, there's nothing inherently confusing about the operation itself. Pascal and COMAL use ":=" (becomes equal to) instead, and I wish that C and all its syntactical derivatives had done something like this instead of using "=" for assignment (possibly with "<>" for inequality to avoid mixing up ":=" and "!=").
(Ironically, BASIC's restrictions meant that despite using the "=" symbol for both purposes, there was never any confusion because it could only mean one or the other in a given context).
What vastly outsells iPods? Last I checked, the iPod brand still had about 85 percent market share.
Assuming that's true (*), that's almost certainly by market value, not units sold- that is, a £200 iPod Touch counts way more than a £15 no-name player.
Important perhaps from a business perspective, but from the point of view of what player a given person is likely to be using, definitely misleading in favour of the higher-priced iPod range.
(*) And even for a market leader it sounds very high; I'm sure the headline figure hides a more complex picture.
It sounds silly, but I see how this was a parody
I suppose if Michael Stone can claim that forcing his way into the Stormont parliament and attempting to kill Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness was "an act of performance art" then one can claim anything :)
I bet Wozniak finally snapped and is doing this out of spite.
Sounds eerily reminiscent of the end of *every bloody Scooby Doo episode* where the baddie turns out to be a supposedly amiable minor character who in reality was bitter about some business dealing and trying to subvert his former partner.
Sad thing is, I almost instantly visualised this in animated form, and I didn't even like Scooby Doo that much!
Woz would have got away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky.... um, lawyers.
That's what I've been using with various versions of Windows the last 12 years and I've never had any problems.
I'm not keen on that Common Sense software. I tried it out once and it overwrote my whole damn Windows installation with Linux!
Perhaps meat sales would have grown faster had PETA not campaigned. Perhaps they see it as a long-term campaign. Perhaps they *will* change their strategy in response to the evidence. Who knows?
It's not indisputable.
That's your contention, and certainly arguable, but it's not an indisputable fact.
Well, how would one measure success then?
No idea, and not my problem! Since you were the one whose an argument relied on this being clearly true, the onus is on you, not me. :)
I'm sure that the supervisor appreciated some random asshole telling him how to do his job and manage his staff.
Well, yes. If he was a good supervisor. Who do you think is going to give him the most objective opinion on how his staff is helping people?
Letting them know that their service is lousy and that you're extraordinarily pissed off with it- perfectly acceptable, even if conveyed in an angry but acceptable manner.
Ordering the supervisor around and telling him his job on the other hand, smacks of bullying and assholery.
If the supervisor thought I was wrong in requesting that somebody who asked me for my operating system version four times in a row when replying to an e-mail in which I explicitly stated my operating system version, then he should be fired too.
You're probably right, but you've got a lot to learn about basic human psychology if you think ordering the supervisor around is going to be anything other than counterproductive.
If the subordinate's as bad as you imply, he'll probably be in the shit anyway.
The agent should do his damned job whether I'm a jerk or not.
Probably should. However, since his "damned job" (as defined in practice by his superiors) probably consists of getting people off the phone as quickly as possible, I doubt he's going to go out of his way to help a jerk, particularly if it's likely to get him into trouble.
Probably shouldn't be that way. But it probably is.
But let's be honest, there is no such procedure. Don't defend this idiot.
Hence "there might be some stupid and/or lazy staff"
As the manager of a tech support department I probably would have fired an agent who didn't bother to read a client note stating what was done.
*You* probably would have and it's quite possible that the bottom-level guy he spoke to really was an idiot. However, that would have been your decision, not his, and should have been made regardless of whether or not someone was telling you to fire the guy.
I'm sure that the supervisor appreciated some random asshole telling him how to do his job and manage his staff.
If he didn't, he shouldn't be in management. Here's a clue: "the customer's always right."
If *you're* implying that a supervisor should (a) enjoy being told his job and more importantly (b) that he should do everything every customer suggests regarding the internal management of the company itself, then *you* shouldn't be in management!
(a) is counter-productive in terms of human psychology, regardless of whether or not it's right and for (b); Maybe the subordinate *should* be fired- but the supervisor should be making that decision for himself, not because some random customer is ordering him to do it.
So my contention is that their base assumption is wrong
That's your contention, and certainly arguable, but it's not an indisputable fact. So to imply that simply because PETA haven't based their strategy around it they aren't serious (your original point)... is incorrect (*my* original point!)
My point was that you are making up a crazy law
I can assure you that the type of laws I had in mind were quite plausible and are- or had been in recent decades- in force in the US. Ironically, the one I had in mind was of a guy sent to prison for performing oral sex on some woman; I didn't mention this because my recollection of the details was vague. I hadn't realised- as other replies pointed out- that so many US states still had such "crazy laws" on the books.
So there was nothing I "made up".
then blaming the results on that crazy law on something else without justification. The blame lies with the crazy law.
Well done! You get to win the abstract intellectual game of arguing who's technically to blame and still miss the point that I wasn't disagreeing with you per se- I was pointing out that it's irrelevant when it comes to the real world.
Just like no-one actually dies of AIDS itself, they die of opportunistic infections. And just like AIDS wouldn't be a problem if there were no infectious diseases. Well, it doesn't change the fact that there *are* and *will always be* infectious diseases and that any significant vector for a problem is in itself a problem.
Arguing that it's not to blame is missing the point.
Exponentially? How have you quantified enforcement then?
In a manner which favours my argument, of course! (^_^)
Seriously, are you trying score points by nitpicking over the precise meaning of some phrase which clearly wasn't meant in that way?
Don't call something a "fact" when it's just a wild guess.
You're right; it's not a "fact" that knowing virtually everything that someone is doing at all times will make it vastly easier to catch them breaking some invasive law regarding personal behaviour. It's just incredibly likely and hardly (IMHO) a "wild guess".
It would be really great if they would send you an e-mail telling you that they were shipping you a replacement motherboard and firing the representative who handled your case initially.
That would probably make you feel better, but a lot of these drones are restricted in what they're allowed to do and they're forced to go through standard scripts and procedures.
I've been through similar trouble with other companies. I had one idiot drone ask me what version of the operating system I was running four or five times in a row, when I was answering him each time. I finally asked for a supervisor and directly asked the supervisor to fire this moron.
I'm sure that the supervisor appreciated some random asshole telling him how to do his job and manage his staff.
Most companies care not even the slightest bit for providing non-terrible customer service.
Bingo. Customer support is expensive, and usually carried out by a third party who have a vested interested in "processing" you as quickly as possible, regardless of whether or not it solves your problem.
There might be some stupid and/or lazy staff, but the fundamental problem is at the top.
Why do they put so many resources into advertising "Meat is Death" if they're not trying to convince people to stop eating meat?
Where the heck did I imply that they weren't? Of course they are.
The fraction of people who eat meat "because it's death" is vanishingly small
Are you referring to a tiny percentage of people who like meat *because* it's dead animals? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here(!)
and would gladly switch if an alternative were available. But the alternative isn't Boca burgers and hummus because that doesn't meet the consumers' requirements. So, until such an alternative is available (I believe that's inevitable) most people will eat meat.
Where do you draw the line with an acceptable alternative? PETA may argue (again, you might or might not agree) that current alternatives are good enough if you're aware of the suffering involved in the creation of meat.
You can disagree, but that's still a valid perspective to argue from and therefore your glib argument that because PETA aren't devoting 100% of their effort to creating a perfect meat alternative they aren't serious is flawed. QED.
If a crazy law is passed, then the problem is the crazy law, not whether something only tangentially related makes it easier to enforce.
Hey, that's going to make the guy that gets arrested and persectued/tortured/whatever for some mildly kinky sex act feel *much* better!
"Hey, I realise that you probably wouldn't have got caught if they hadn't been able to spy on you like that... but that's really not the problem here! In a world where only fair and sensible laws are passed and fluffy bunnies and magical fairies live, it wouldn't have mattered."
Wake up and get real. It's nice that you have the luxury of arguing this in idealised, abstract and separate terms. However, in the real world, the fact that this would make it exponentially easier to enforce repressive laws *is* as much the problem.
If they didn't ask me before they started shooting if I wanted to donate my efforts and resources to their cultural work, then why should I give them anything after it is finished? What a warped view of the world you have.
Huh? Are you seriously suggesting every person/organization that plans to create a cultural work should come to you in advance to request a donation? And then you accuse somebody else (!) of having a warped view of the world?
That's a typical libertarian-on-Slashdot style response that blatantly ignores (or rather, relies upon) its total impracticality in society.
If they want money in their bank account, they can print their own. That's the fashionable thing to do these days.
Was that a serious suggestion (in which case; no, for obvious reasons), or just something to hold a satirical comment off of?
I'm a computer programmer. My girlfriend is a painter and artist. We are both musicians. We are the people these copyright rules are intended to promote. And we don't want them, and we don't need them, and we think we'd be better off without them.
Assuming that you're making a livable income off one or more of these, how does that work- i.e. what's your personal "business model"?
Nice try... My God, you've posted at least 24 comments to this thread alone (*), most of them in the same vein. Vague, pompous, semi-meaningful, open-ended replies trying to pass off their lack of substance as someone intellectually superior teasing the idiots.
Rather than the pretentious, trollish crap they actually are.
(*) Probably more, but you know someone's hogging the thread when they've posted so much that they won't all fit in their recent comments list.
If PETA were serious, they'd put 100% of their efforts into developing an ethically superior food that's cheaper and tastier than meat. They don't, so they're not. QED.
Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of PETA. I'm not even a vegetarian, but that's a crap argument, and slapping "QED" at the end doesn't make it more valid.
Stupid fucking analogy coming up: Suppose I got my kicks by driving around residential streets at 110mph, and some do-gooder whined that it was ethically wrong because of the danger to residents and all the dead pensioners wrapped around my bumper. Would it be a valid response to say that the road safety campaigners should STFU until they come up with an ethically superior and cheaper alternative to running people over at high speed a la Death Race 2000?
No, of course it wouldn't. PETA *could* argue (whether you or I agree or not) that eating animals is wrong, regardless of whether or not it was "tasty". Obviously it could be cool if they could come up with a really good meat substitute, but that's not their main aim.
Linux could implement them - except the GPL prevents it. [..] Linux (thanks to the GPL) is the one saying 'I'm not going to play unless we can use my ball'
You imply that Linux is to blame for insisting on the GPL. While on a nitpicking technical level this may be correct, it's misleading and inasmuch as we can anthropomorphise an OS, you're putting words in its mouth.
Linux is fundamentally licensed around the GPL. Even if Linus and all the major contributors were to suddenly change their minds, they'd have to persuade all those who contributed- either directly or indirectly- to agree to a new ZFS-compatible license. Even if they were all cooperative, this would be a major undertaking, but it's going to be exponentially more of a PITA if even a small fraction disagreed and they had to work around that.
Basically, whether or not you think it's a good thing, Linux is stuck with the GPL, and it's misleading to portray this as ideological stroppiness.
I'd love to see someone port ZFS to Linux and distribute it as a set of patches for people to download and apply to their own kernel [..] Maybe it's time to put functionality before ideology?
See above. Of course, it's probably doable on a technical level, but it would still break the licensing (unless there was a clever workaround which I assume that there isn't).
There are doubtless plenty of patches out there that break the GPL (IIRC some of the kernel code contains macros to warn the user about tainting in this manner). No-one's going to sue you for installing them on your home copy of Linux. However, this doesn't change the fact that these break the GPL and couldn't be included with any notable distros for that reason alone.
Linux's use of the GPL may have started as ideology- though it's open to question whether it would have taken off in the same way if it *hadn't* used the GPL, and regardless, it's easier with hindsight to criticise a choice Linus made over 15 years ago. Fact is that *now* the GPL licensing is a legal issue, and not simply childish ideology as you imply.
after about ten years ceased to exist due to other formats like DVD Audio and MP3s
MP3? Arguably. DVD Audio? Don't make me laugh- outside an audiophile niche, that went nowhere and likely never will now.
Monopolies do not last forever. Therefore there's no need for government to break them up.
Poor logic and an easy get-out since very few things last "forever". (Even if we use a non-pedantic definition of "forever" as being your lifetime and those of your next few generations of descendants).
If the monopoly has a damaging influence for what one could consider an extended period of time (e.g. sets an otherwise fast-moving industry back 25 years) or is having an extremely pernicious influence during even a shorter period, that's bad enough for me.
Going to play devil's advocate here.
Was it the social disapproval of being fat that motivated you to lose the weight in the first place? Is being "insensitive" to a possibly unhealthy condition (even if that's not the motivation behind the assholery) an entirely bad thing?
Ironically, you both missed my point and proved it at the same time.
On the contrary- you completely misunderstood *my* point(!)
I was simply pointing out that Tape/CD singles were the same price to produce as Tape/CD albums, because the physical medium was the same (unlike vinyl where singles were physically cheaper to produce because they were smaller and generally came with far less packaging/inserts/etc).
Let's keep this simple.
It had to be possible to manufacture all those AOL CDs- complete with thin cardboard sleeves (*1)- for pennies. I would assume the music industry's cost for bulk CD duplication to be in the same ballpark. Clearly, this isn't the only expense involved, and I wasn't implying that it was.
However, your entire argument revolved around the supposed high cost of CD duplication being the reason for the high price- "record companies were unable to make them cheap enough to make a profit and still give you your money's worth." (*2) Hence the counterexample showing that your argument was fundamentally flawed.
In fact, since duplication is likely a fairly *small* proportion of the price, the fact that a CD single and album (minus packaging) cost the same to produce hardly means that they should be closer in price. As I said above, the likely manufacturing cost of the CD itself is probably so small as to be irrelevant.
More applicable to the argument is the cost of manufacturing a cardboard-sleeved CD versus a 7" single. I doubt that the difference is that major; even if it was twice the price (say 20p instead of 10p), that's still a small proportion of the total, and wouldn't justify doubling the selling price(!) It sure as heck doesn't justify £4 for a single, CD or not.
So the fact that you go on and on about how much CD singles sucked makes sense, because
I certainly went "on and on" about it, no doubt :) But although it may have made sense, it sure as heck wasn't "because"...
record companies were unable to make them cheap enough to make a profit and still give you your money's worth.
!
Another thing I'd like to point out is that you seem to think that record companies could sell CDs for the cost of the materials. Yes the actual CD might cost a few pennies to mass produce, but what about packaging? What about marketing? [etc, snip]
No shit, Sherlock. You'd have had to have *totally* missed my point to have thought that's what I meant or believed! (Had I thought this I'd have said "I want my CDs for 10p!", or whatever AOL's marginal duplication cost was).
(*1) Yes, some CD singles *did* come in cardboard sleeves, so it was doable.
(*2) Having re-read your original post, you don't actually say this as such and for a second I thought I'd read too much into what you said. But going by your reply, it's clear that this was what you meant anyway.