I must admit this is one of the more cool headed yet vigorous defenses of piracy I have yet seen. Excellent try. You are however, mistaken. Also, there was no name calling.
The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance changes the moral and economic landscape, and your attempt at arguing otherwise is completely empty.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least. By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation. That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation. This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods. Producers of such must, by your reasoning, not only accept that anyone can make free copies of their goods, but that it is morally acceptable to do so. You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it. Repeating the "abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost" argument doesn't make it true, even if you heard it from the wise old professor in Econ 101.
Honestly, where you lack solid arguments you resort to insult. That is a technique appropriate to pre-adolescents.
What insult? Did you follow the link? Piaget's stages of cognitive development are very well established criteria. But you already knew that, right? Right?
Theft has a precise legal definition. It is a crime. Copyright infringement also has a precise legal definition, and it is also illegal. But the two are not the same thing. If you don't believe me, ask the American supreme court, who ruled that they are not the same thing.
A link here would be useful. However, distinguishing between a crime that is theft and a crime that is not theft seems tangential.
When you say "something was indeed stolen" you are clearly speaking allegorically. If something was "indeed stolen" in a concrete sense, then the rightful owner would be lacking something he previously had, which (in this case) he clearly does not. This is not a matter of abstract vs concrete understanding, but of simple semantics. The word "theft" has a definition, the act of copyright infringement does not fit that definition, and that's it. The act of copyright infringement, while illegal and (in your opinion) morally wrong, is merely analogous to stealing, at best.
Here you really stumble over yourself. It is not really clear what you mean. You weakly attempt to dismiss the Piaget reference but don't really get anywhere. I don't think you know who Piaget was or what he wrote about. It would be worth your while to find out. At best you simply insist on the argument that infringement is not theft but then concede that they are analogous. Look, you are wrong. You are behind the times. This is the 21st century. Here it is perfectly reasonable to sell digital goods. That they are abundant and easily copyable is irrelevant. This isn't the 1950s. Post-war economics had their day, and that day is gone. Get up to speed with the rest of us.
A lot of the resistance to paying for music would go away, if the people paying were confident that a) the money was going to the people who created the music, and b) it was a "fair" payment for that music.
Are you proposing that in general commerce people should not be required to pay if these touchy-feely criteria are not met? Can your employer also invoke them and decide not to pay you for your labor? After all, while you worked at your job, no physical good was exchanged, so you didn't lose anything, right?
The guy has a point, though. The number of people justifying piracy of music, videos, games, etc. is overwhelming. It is also inconsistent with expecting open source licenses to be sustainable.
Interesting that this gets modded down to zero, and the many, many specious rationalizations of theft get modded up to 4 or 5 "Interesting" or "Insightful."
Keep trying. Your flaw is that if taken to the extreme of all digital media being pirated, the creators would indeed be deprived of the fruits of their labor. Even if only a fraction of the output is pirated, the business model of selling digital goods is subverted. It is specious to insist that nothing is lost simply because a material item did not change hands.
Another way to look at it is that the artist gains no benefit when people choose not to download his works. His life isn't any richer or easier when his work is seen by 10 paying customers than when it's seen by 10 paying customers and 500 pirates. The pirates cause him no extra effort and take nothing away from him.
You are destroying the notion of selling digital goods. That "no extra effort" is caused is not the point. The point is that the artist was not compensated for a digital good that changed hands. Copying a digital good causes the transfer of information. Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create. Copying it without compensation or in violation of the artist's chosen license does indeed transfer a good from the artist to the thief. The thief previously did not possess it, now he does. That it is an easy to make copy does not justify the theft.
Keep denying it. You are stuck in the past. In this century, digital goods are a valid commercial entity.
The central issue is that the guy is just flat wrong. People can insist all they want with bogus examples and shallow rehashing of macroeconomic theory. Piracy robs someone of labor. It is simple. You know it. Grow up. What if you were trying to make a living selling media on the web and everyone stole it?
Please don't trot out the old "you can make all your money from touring" crap, either.
You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that it is OK to steal. You know this. Your example is childish and disingenuous because you are ignoring the labor that went into a product. You are stuck in Piaget's Concrete stage, unable to understand events unless they are intrinsically associated with material objects. Since piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good, you are unable to understand that something was indeed stolen.
This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development.
It's worth wondering if it isn't cheaper over the medium and long term to just start upgrading to Windows 7 in phases as soon as it comes out. First to users that have shown the least need for hand-holding, then at an ever faster pace to users in ascending order of needyness. The XP/Vista options do not look cheaper or any more attractive.
At some point science has take the crap or get off the pot, stop endlessly theorizing about doing and just try and do it.
Who modded this "Interesting"? This is vapid adolescent bluster. "Just try and do it?" Do what? "Get" 10^45 joules? "Use" or "put" them behind a "spaceship?" Grow up, kid.
"These calculations are based on some arbitrary advance in technology or some alien technology that would let us manipulate the extra dimension," said Cleaver.
What the scientists were able to estimate was the amount of energy necessary, if the technology was available, to change these dimensions: about 10^45 joules.
This is somewhere between blue sky scientific speculation and plain old mental masturbation. I suspect that beer drinking played a key role somewhere.
Before all you young parents rejoice at this newfound panacea, I can tell you for certain that it is not even close to being a sure fire solution. There are none. We've tried paying for grades, getting angry, being cool, punishing, withholding desired things, rewarding, ignoring, cajoling, helping, you name it. For most kinds, one or more of these techniques will work, unless you are blessed with kids that do their schoolwork on their own without you having to lift a finger. There are such kids out there, oddly enough. Two of our three kids do well in school, partly as a result of such standard parenting techniques. However, we have one child who, in around 7th grade, decided homework was a useless and profoundly irritating burden, so he stopped doing it. All of it. He is now a junior in high school and gets mainly Fs, except in music which he enjoys so he gets an A, usually. He consistently scores at or above the 97th percentile in the numerous standardized tests that kids take these days, including the PSAT. He will soon start taking the SAT and will presumably do well enough.
The catch, of course, is that 60% or more of his school grades are contributed by homework. Achieving 60% or less of the class credits gets you an F. So, here's a case where the kid does well on tests, usually getting As and Bs, but consistently gets Fs overall. He knows the material better than most of his peers, but is failing. I don't buy the BS that homework is an important life lesson that prepares you for the future, blah blah blah. I do realize, and my son either doesn't or just doesn't care, that any college education worth getting requires a lot of homework.
We know of at least one other child among his peers with pretty much the same picture. Neither cares much for monetary incentives.
A field sobriety test for marijuana intoxication? I have no idea what that could entail, but it's bound to be hilarious. I hope they record them on video.
This is not getting much press. At the time of the merger, it was abundantly clear to everyone who was paying attention that it was not just a colossally dumb idea, but a massive scam carried out by one of the craftiest con artists of our time. AOL was already a dog by then, falling rapidly out of favor even among its natural user base of technically uninformed people. The huge payoffs for those immediately involved in the deal were by far the most important driving force. It must have been obvious to them at the time that it was a shit deal, but the short term payoff was so powerfully compelling that they went ahead anyway. How it hasn't been found to be fraudulent is beyond me, but then again the people who make these deals know what side the bread is buttered on. It is that kind of complicity that keeps the financial industry together. We have seen that on more than one occasion in the recent past.
An Anonymous Coward writes "Despite the fact that Windows 7 is based on many of the same core elements as Vista, Microsoft claims it is a different sort of animal and that it should be looked at in a fresh, new light, especially in terms of accessing your wallet for no compelling reason. With that in mind, this article looks at how various types of subsytsems perform under Windows 7, ginning up a bunch of vague and ambiguous statistics for this or that functionality. Overall performance between Vista and Win7 is compared using boxes that have been carefully tweaked to favor Windows 7. Performance with and without cheating enabled is tested. Application performance is also tested on a variety of other boxes. Looking at the performance data, it seems MS has succeeded in improving Windows 7 performance, particularly with regard to the carefully skewed hardware."
Conclusion: Look into my eyes. You are going to sleep. Your eyelids are falling, falling. The numbers, they look good. Computer, it go faster, faster. You are going deeper and deeper to sleep. Way down, to sleep. Oh Windows 7! So fast, so good! Ah yes, soft, warm, moist, so so good. So deep into delicious sleep. Your body tingles, the kundalini rises, slowly at first then quickly, with all its rousing power, a release that causes you to cry out unintentionally in your dreams. Then, peace, satisfaction, oneness. When I snap my fingers, you will awaken, refreshed and satiated. You will take out your wallet. You will take out your credit card. You will buy the first Windows 7 box you see, no questions asked. You will love it. You will tell your friends what a great computer it is. You will help them buy one as soon as possible. You will feel warm and happy, as if your skin glowed with a golden spiritual light. You will be happy. You will then buy the newest release of Microsoft Office.
That is absolutely horrible. If I were a Microsoft Bing marketing drone, I would suddenly have gotten a disagreeable spurt of adrenaline into my abdominal circulation, goosebumps, the sudden urge to urinate, cold cold sweat, an incipient migraine, and the urge to run. Run anywhere. Run far away.
How can you possibly imagine that such a phrase could mean "I searched the web for information on her?" "I bing'd her" can only mean "I banged her," "I nailed her," "I balled her lights out," etc.
This is insane rubbish! Can't you see it? From TFA:
A federal research director fantasized about a cellphone that could simultaneously text and detect biochemical attacks. Multiple cellphones in a crowd would confirm and track the spread. The master of ceremonies for the week was Greg Bear, the sci-fi novelist whose book "Quantico" featured FBI agents battling a designer plague targeting specific ethnic groups.
"What if we had a black box that IDs DNA on the scene?" Bear asked a panel of firefighters and police officers. "Put a swab in the box. How long would it take us to do that? Would that be of interest to anybody here?"
Yeah sure. Detecting biochemical attacks in crowds (what crowds?) is a constant, vexing problem. It is urgent that we get cell phones with gas chromatographs that are constantly on and working or some such crap. ID DNA "on the scene?" You realize that it would only ID DNA that is already in its database, right? Not like on Heroes wher you put DNA in a gadget and a little icon appears on a Google map showing where the person is. Dou you want everyones DNA data on such devices? Your DNA?
This is complete and utter totalitarian Roman Circus bullshit! I don't know which is more disturbing, that the government, particularly the nefarious DHS, is doing this or that so many Slashdot readers and other citizens not only believe this drivel but think it is a just dandy idea. God help us.
Slashdot Mirror
I must admit this is one of the more cool headed yet vigorous defenses of piracy I have yet seen. Excellent try. You are however, mistaken. Also, there was no name calling.
The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance changes the moral and economic landscape, and your attempt at arguing otherwise is completely empty.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least. By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation. That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation. This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods. Producers of such must, by your reasoning, not only accept that anyone can make free copies of their goods, but that it is morally acceptable to do so. You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it. Repeating the "abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost" argument doesn't make it true, even if you heard it from the wise old professor in Econ 101.
Honestly, where you lack solid arguments you resort to insult. That is a technique appropriate to pre-adolescents.
What insult? Did you follow the link? Piaget's stages of cognitive development are very well established criteria. But you already knew that, right? Right?
Theft has a precise legal definition. It is a crime. Copyright infringement also has a precise legal definition, and it is also illegal. But the two are not the same thing. If you don't believe me, ask the American supreme court, who ruled that they are not the same thing.
A link here would be useful. However, distinguishing between a crime that is theft and a crime that is not theft seems tangential.
When you say "something was indeed stolen" you are clearly speaking allegorically. If something was "indeed stolen" in a concrete sense, then the rightful owner would be lacking something he previously had, which (in this case) he clearly does not. This is not a matter of abstract vs concrete understanding, but of simple semantics. The word "theft" has a definition, the act of copyright infringement does not fit that definition, and that's it. The act of copyright infringement, while illegal and (in your opinion) morally wrong, is merely analogous to stealing, at best.
Here you really stumble over yourself. It is not really clear what you mean. You weakly attempt to dismiss the Piaget reference but don't really get anywhere. I don't think you know who Piaget was or what he wrote about. It would be worth your while to find out. At best you simply insist on the argument that infringement is not theft but then concede that they are analogous. Look, you are wrong. You are behind the times. This is the 21st century. Here it is perfectly reasonable to sell digital goods. That they are abundant and easily copyable is irrelevant. This isn't the 1950s. Post-war economics had their day, and that day is gone. Get up to speed with the rest of us.
A lot of the resistance to paying for music would go away, if the people paying were confident that a) the money was going to the people who created the music, and b) it was a "fair" payment for that music.
Are you proposing that in general commerce people should not be required to pay if these touchy-feely criteria are not met? Can your employer also invoke them and decide not to pay you for your labor? After all, while you worked at your job, no physical good was exchanged, so you didn't lose anything, right?
The reasoning is pre-adolescent. Follow the link.
He didn't say copyright infringement was acceptable, he said it wasn't theft.
This requires explanation. If it isn't theft, why isn't it acceptable?
The guy has a point, though. The number of people justifying piracy of music, videos, games, etc. is overwhelming. It is also inconsistent with expecting open source licenses to be sustainable.
Interesting that this gets modded down to zero, and the many, many specious rationalizations of theft get modded up to 4 or 5 "Interesting" or "Insightful."
Slashdot is jumping the shark.
Keep trying. Your flaw is that if taken to the extreme of all digital media being pirated, the creators would indeed be deprived of the fruits of their labor. Even if only a fraction of the output is pirated, the business model of selling digital goods is subverted. It is specious to insist that nothing is lost simply because a material item did not change hands.
Another way to look at it is that the artist gains no benefit when people choose not to download his works. His life isn't any richer or easier when his work is seen by 10 paying customers than when it's seen by 10 paying customers and 500 pirates. The pirates cause him no extra effort and take nothing away from him.
You are destroying the notion of selling digital goods. That "no extra effort" is caused is not the point. The point is that the artist was not compensated for a digital good that changed hands. Copying a digital good causes the transfer of information. Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create. Copying it without compensation or in violation of the artist's chosen license does indeed transfer a good from the artist to the thief. The thief previously did not possess it, now he does. That it is an easy to make copy does not justify the theft.
Keep denying it. You are stuck in the past. In this century, digital goods are a valid commercial entity.
I'm tempted to say "finally someone expresses it in a way even the average slashdot reader can understand." I know, I know. They won't.
I wonder when John Carmack's next concert tour is...
The central issue is that the guy is just flat wrong. People can insist all they want with bogus examples and shallow rehashing of macroeconomic theory. Piracy robs someone of labor. It is simple. You know it. Grow up. What if you were trying to make a living selling media on the web and everyone stole it?
Please don't trot out the old "you can make all your money from touring" crap, either.
You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that it is OK to steal. You know this. Your example is childish and disingenuous because you are ignoring the labor that went into a product. You are stuck in Piaget's Concrete stage, unable to understand events unless they are intrinsically associated with material objects. Since piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good, you are unable to understand that something was indeed stolen.
This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development.
I wonder if you are trading a risky-sounding strategy that is actually better for a less risky-sounding strategy that is worse.
It's worth wondering if it isn't cheaper over the medium and long term to just start upgrading to Windows 7 in phases as soon as it comes out. First to users that have shown the least need for hand-holding, then at an ever faster pace to users in ascending order of needyness. The XP/Vista options do not look cheaper or any more attractive.
At some point science has take the crap or get off the pot, stop endlessly theorizing about doing and just try and do it.
Who modded this "Interesting"? This is vapid adolescent bluster. "Just try and do it?" Do what? "Get" 10^45 joules? "Use" or "put" them behind a "spaceship?" Grow up, kid.
"These calculations are based on some arbitrary advance in technology or some alien technology that would let us manipulate the extra dimension," said Cleaver.
What the scientists were able to estimate was the amount of energy necessary, if the technology was available, to change these dimensions: about 10^45 joules.
This is somewhere between blue sky scientific speculation and plain old mental masturbation. I suspect that beer drinking played a key role somewhere.
I commend you. This sort of thing is not for kids who get it. It's for kids who don't.
The catch, of course, is that 60% or more of his school grades are contributed by homework. Achieving 60% or less of the class credits gets you an F. So, here's a case where the kid does well on tests, usually getting As and Bs, but consistently gets Fs overall. He knows the material better than most of his peers, but is failing. I don't buy the BS that homework is an important life lesson that prepares you for the future, blah blah blah. I do realize, and my son either doesn't or just doesn't care, that any college education worth getting requires a lot of homework.
We know of at least one other child among his peers with pretty much the same picture. Neither cares much for monetary incentives.
A field sobriety test for marijuana intoxication? I have no idea what that could entail, but it's bound to be hilarious. I hope they record them on video.
This is not getting much press. At the time of the merger, it was abundantly clear to everyone who was paying attention that it was not just a colossally dumb idea, but a massive scam carried out by one of the craftiest con artists of our time. AOL was already a dog by then, falling rapidly out of favor even among its natural user base of technically uninformed people. The huge payoffs for those immediately involved in the deal were by far the most important driving force. It must have been obvious to them at the time that it was a shit deal, but the short term payoff was so powerfully compelling that they went ahead anyway. How it hasn't been found to be fraudulent is beyond me, but then again the people who make these deals know what side the bread is buttered on. It is that kind of complicity that keeps the financial industry together. We have seen that on more than one occasion in the recent past.
Conclusion: Look into my eyes. You are going to sleep. Your eyelids are falling, falling. The numbers, they look good. Computer, it go faster, faster. You are going deeper and deeper to sleep. Way down, to sleep. Oh Windows 7! So fast, so good! Ah yes, soft, warm, moist, so so good. So deep into delicious sleep. Your body tingles, the kundalini rises, slowly at first then quickly, with all its rousing power, a release that causes you to cry out unintentionally in your dreams. Then, peace, satisfaction, oneness. When I snap my fingers, you will awaken, refreshed and satiated. You will take out your wallet. You will take out your credit card. You will buy the first Windows 7 box you see, no questions asked. You will love it. You will tell your friends what a great computer it is. You will help them buy one as soon as possible. You will feel warm and happy, as if your skin glowed with a golden spiritual light. You will be happy. You will then buy the newest release of Microsoft Office.
That is absolutely horrible. If I were a Microsoft Bing marketing drone, I would suddenly have gotten a disagreeable spurt of adrenaline into my abdominal circulation, goosebumps, the sudden urge to urinate, cold cold sweat, an incipient migraine, and the urge to run. Run anywhere. Run far away.
Unfortunately, they are once again just binging their head against a wall.
How can you possibly imagine that such a phrase could mean "I searched the web for information on her?" "I bing'd her" can only mean "I banged her," "I nailed her," "I balled her lights out," etc.
Surely it must have occurred to at least a single person at the Pentagon to upgrade to Windows 7 and not to Vista?
So there!
A federal research director fantasized about a cellphone that could simultaneously text and detect biochemical attacks. Multiple cellphones in a crowd would confirm and track the spread. The master of ceremonies for the week was Greg Bear, the sci-fi novelist whose book "Quantico" featured FBI agents battling a designer plague targeting specific ethnic groups.
"What if we had a black box that IDs DNA on the scene?" Bear asked a panel of firefighters and police officers. "Put a swab in the box. How long would it take us to do that? Would that be of interest to anybody here?"
Yeah sure. Detecting biochemical attacks in crowds (what crowds?) is a constant, vexing problem. It is urgent that we get cell phones with gas chromatographs that are constantly on and working or some such crap. ID DNA "on the scene?" You realize that it would only ID DNA that is already in its database, right? Not like on Heroes wher you put DNA in a gadget and a little icon appears on a Google map showing where the person is. Dou you want everyones DNA data on such devices? Your DNA?
This is complete and utter totalitarian Roman Circus bullshit! I don't know which is more disturbing, that the government, particularly the nefarious DHS, is doing this or that so many Slashdot readers and other citizens not only believe this drivel but think it is a just dandy idea. God help us.
9:30 pm - Sweet Sixteen with a rahfull - Al Qaeda Killer Chick