"But that's exactly the point. I create copyrightable works of value all the time at my job, yet I don't expect to get per-copy compensation."
Doing what? Writing reports?
I respectfully submit that when you say "perpetual revenue stream" you have no idea what actually occurs. A book author may spend years writing a book for which he's received an advance barely large enough to pay the rent. Once done, he immediately starts writing another, because that's the only way to get another advance. Most writers in the US are below the national average in salary.
And if said author is one of those VERY few who're able to write something that millions of people want to read, then I say more power to him. You try doing it if you think it's so easy.
Creativity can and should be rewarded. Almost anyone can shuffle papers at a desk... and will be paid accordingly.
"f they want to blow years and millions of dollars on its creation that's not a requirement, it's a choice."
It's not so much a choice as it's an investment, made in the hope that someday said investment will be profitable. Remove the potential for profit, and the investment would not be made.
A flawed argument which assumes that one creative work is just as good as another, hence licensing and protections are not needed. However, anyone who listens to a favorite singer, reads everything by a particular author, or patronizes works by a particular director knows that such is not the case.
One can feign moral outrage at ANYONE at the top of their profession. Of course, in any given field that's 0.01% of the people it actually employs, and as such not representitive of the profession at all. Care to count all of the people in a given film who were paid scale?
"I'm just taking issue with the argument that people have a right to earn money from art."
They don't have the "right" to earn money from art. They have the opportunity to do so, a major difference. If enough consumers value their work, then they will earn money from it... providing, of course, that those consumers pay for the value received.
Given your logic, I'm sure we can make a case for your employer not paying you for your work. I mean, who'd ever expect to get paid doing for that?
"There would be a problem though: the artists that don't do live appearences would lose a lot."
Yeah, as would the movie companies, game developers, software developers, book authors, and so on. Music IP is just a small part of the overall picture, and practically the only one where "going on tour" has any meaning whatsoever.
Efficiency. You keep using using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means. To quote: "Achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense."
Connecting every single town and city in the US with rail and duplicating the existing highway infrastucture would be dramatically inefficient, as we're concerned with both time and money. If I have fresh-picked strawberries that need to go to market, then they need to to go to market "today", and not next Friday when the train rumbles through.
We can add more trains and tracks, but they cost money too, and then, much like the mass-transit busses in my town, 50% of the time they're running around empty just to keep to their schedule.
As I said before, efficiency is relative. You may think of it as grams moved per erg of fuel, but there are other factors to consider. A rigid, secheduled point-A-to-B system may be efficient, but an anytime-to-anywhere system can be efficient in other ways which easily transcend the fuel costs.
"Small towns sprouted up right outside the military bases.... the exact same thing would happen."
Bingo. Thus negating the benefits of building them away from people. So since people are going to be next to them no matter what we do, let's build them safe and close to where they're actually needed.
"The real reason long-haul trucking shouldn't exist because its less efficient than using trains."
If trains were dramatically more efficient and cost effective then items would be shipped that way. Companies, as a rule, hate wasting both time and money. As is, tracks and stations aren't always available where goods are produced and/or consumed, and trains only go the places they do go on their own schedule.
And with chemicals, food, and many other products loading and unloading the train with them at both ends is problematical and expensive. Not everything can be packed into 40" container.
"In my opinion, we should build some mega-nuclear power plants in the middle of Nevada, hundreds of miles away from any city larger than about 200 people."
That's brilliant. Let's build major power plants hundreds upon hundreds of miles away from the point where the power is needed. Let's triple our costs building the infrastructure needed to get the power from A to B. Let's waste half our power in transmission line loses.
And let's build it hundreds of miles away from all of the people we'll need to work there on a daily basis.
"... rewriting a massive portion of Windows itself..."
How massive? Strip out all of the applications like explorer and IE and media player. Zap FreeCell and textedit and paint and "theme" managers all of that junk. Eliminate all of the control panels and user and system managers that OS X already provides. Eliminate thousands upon thousands of device drivers for hardware not supported by Apple. Slap some WinAPI facades on existing OS X networking and printer drivers.
What's left after Windows has been placed on a super-SlimFast diet? Sure, it mght not be easy, but it's not impossible either.
"Mac Classic may run some level of virtualization, but it certainly doesn't shield your OSX from any nasties the classic app might try to pull, it offers no sandbox for YOUR data..."
All true, but I brought it up only to refute the "having to boot up some virtualization layer" argument. Properly done, the virtualization or sandboxing would be invisible.
"But there are still a lot of people looking forward optimistically to the new features in Vista."
True, if we just knew which version had which features. MS needs to take another page from Apple's book here. With Apple, there's OS X, and OS X Server.
But no, MS thinks we need the lite, medium, large, extra-large, huge, and super-sized versions, all at different price points, with the versions worth using being more expensive, of course.
QOS systems won't help if your sole server is getting hammered. In fact a "fair" allocation system could quite easily make things worse by forcing allocation of time to virtual server's who're idling in comparison.
No one is going to want to run their servers at a high utilization rate as it leaves no headroom. Let one of those combined "virtual" servers get Slashdotted or mentioned in a blog or Time and you bring down the whole shooting match.
A better way to do what you suggest would be figuring out some way to run all of those "virtual" machines/applications in a cluster so that if one gets/.'ed the load spreads out and is handled across multiple boxes. In a sense, you need to make the cluster look like a single server to the application as well as the client, so that to both it's balanced transparently.
"It's far more efficient to just write the app properly."
That's right. But how many do? I mean, it's not as if most application developers deliberately set out to write buggy insecure software.
Being able to, say, bring up a perferences dialog and totally sandbox an application would be cool. After all, do you really trust that utility you just downloaded? Should that browser have full access to your system.
And as to "booting a sub-OS", you obviously haven't used an OS 9 "Classic" app on OS X. You just double-click it and it runs. Such can happen automatically, behind the scenes, without intervention.
Precisely. All we need are more parked domains chock full of Google ads and banners. Google should just block all of them so that they stop clogging up search results, and especially so if the page contains the words "This Doman For Sale!"
Nice circular argument. If the information is already available to anyone who really looks for it then the "white hats" already have access to it as well. Face it, the site simply encourages proliferation of a technology that should NOT be readily available to any script kiddie in the middle of Kansas with access to Google and a compiler.
Last time I looked I noticed we don't leave assault weapons, high explosives, or other dangerous materials lying around so just anyone can lay their hands on them. Yes, "white hats" may need access to them, but you, I, and the kid down the street do not.
A really bad analogy, because to continue it in this case we're placing a sledgehammer next to your door, bricks next to your windows, a ladder next to your balcony, and hanging a pair of wirecutters next to your alarm system.
Without readily available sources of information, wanna-be rootkit hackers would be forced to invent (bring) their own tools to the party. And it's pretty easy to guess that more script-kiddies can tweek and compile free code than can create their own from scratch.
Slashdot Mirror
"But that's exactly the point. I create copyrightable works of value all the time at my job, yet I don't expect to get per-copy compensation."
Doing what? Writing reports?
I respectfully submit that when you say "perpetual revenue stream" you have no idea what actually occurs. A book author may spend years writing a book for which he's received an advance barely large enough to pay the rent. Once done, he immediately starts writing another, because that's the only way to get another advance. Most writers in the US are below the national average in salary.
And if said author is one of those VERY few who're able to write something that millions of people want to read, then I say more power to him. You try doing it if you think it's so easy.
Creativity can and should be rewarded. Almost anyone can shuffle papers at a desk... and will be paid accordingly.
"f they want to blow years and millions of dollars on its creation that's not a requirement, it's a choice."
It's not so much a choice as it's an investment, made in the hope that someday said investment will be profitable. Remove the potential for profit, and the investment would not be made.
Have to love the question though, "Is Piracy In the Consumers' Best Interests? Much like ID, even getting people to debate it is a win.
A flawed argument which assumes that one creative work is just as good as another, hence licensing and protections are not needed. However, anyone who listens to a favorite singer, reads everything by a particular author, or patronizes works by a particular director knows that such is not the case.
One can feign moral outrage at ANYONE at the top of their profession. Of course, in any given field that's 0.01% of the people it actually employs, and as such not representitive of the profession at all. Care to count all of the people in a given film who were paid scale?
"Today, it's much different - the geographical and production/reproduction issues have been drastically reduced..."
Yeah, LOTR only took, what, eight YEARS to produce?
"I'm just taking issue with the argument that people have a right to earn money from art."
They don't have the "right" to earn money from art. They have the opportunity to do so, a major difference. If enough consumers value their work, then they will earn money from it... providing, of course, that those consumers pay for the value received.
Given your logic, I'm sure we can make a case for your employer not paying you for your work. I mean, who'd ever expect to get paid doing for that?
"many people download music to try it out"
Yeah, I know quite a few people who've "tried out" the same song at least 50 times by now...
"There would be a problem though: the artists that don't do live appearences would lose a lot."
Yeah, as would the movie companies, game developers, software developers, book authors, and so on. Music IP is just a small part of the overall picture, and practically the only one where "going on tour" has any meaning whatsoever.
Efficiency. You keep using using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means. To quote: "Achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense."
Connecting every single town and city in the US with rail and duplicating the existing highway infrastucture would be dramatically inefficient, as we're concerned with both time and money. If I have fresh-picked strawberries that need to go to market, then they need to to go to market "today", and not next Friday when the train rumbles through.
We can add more trains and tracks, but they cost money too, and then, much like the mass-transit busses in my town, 50% of the time they're running around empty just to keep to their schedule.
As I said before, efficiency is relative. You may think of it as grams moved per erg of fuel, but there are other factors to consider. A rigid, secheduled point-A-to-B system may be efficient, but an anytime-to-anywhere system can be efficient in other ways which easily transcend the fuel costs.
"Small towns sprouted up right outside the military bases. ... the exact same thing would happen."
Bingo. Thus negating the benefits of building them away from people. So since people are going to be next to them no matter what we do, let's build them safe and close to where they're actually needed.
"The real reason long-haul trucking shouldn't exist because its less efficient than using trains."
If trains were dramatically more efficient and cost effective then items would be shipped that way. Companies, as a rule, hate wasting both time and money. As is, tracks and stations aren't always available where goods are produced and/or consumed, and trains only go the places they do go on their own schedule.
And with chemicals, food, and many other products loading and unloading the train with them at both ends is problematical and expensive. Not everything can be packed into 40" container.
"Efficiency" is a relative term.
"In my opinion, we should build some mega-nuclear power plants in the middle of Nevada, hundreds of miles away from any city larger than about 200 people."
That's brilliant. Let's build major power plants hundreds upon hundreds of miles away from the point where the power is needed. Let's triple our costs building the infrastructure needed to get the power from A to B. Let's waste half our power in transmission line loses.
And let's build it hundreds of miles away from all of the people we'll need to work there on a daily basis.
Have you considered running for office?
"... rewriting a massive portion of Windows itself..."
How massive? Strip out all of the applications like explorer and IE and media player. Zap FreeCell and textedit and paint and "theme" managers all of that junk. Eliminate all of the control panels and user and system managers that OS X already provides. Eliminate thousands upon thousands of device drivers for hardware not supported by Apple. Slap some WinAPI facades on existing OS X networking and printer drivers.
What's left after Windows has been placed on a super-SlimFast diet? Sure, it mght not be easy, but it's not impossible either.
And we probably need 60MB or so to get equal to 4x5...
"Mac Classic may run some level of virtualization, but it certainly doesn't shield your OSX from any nasties the classic app might try to pull, it offers no sandbox for YOUR data..." All true, but I brought it up only to refute the "having to boot up some virtualization layer" argument. Properly done, the virtualization or sandboxing would be invisible.
"But there are still a lot of people looking forward optimistically to the new features in Vista."
True, if we just knew which version had which features. MS needs to take another page from Apple's book here. With Apple, there's OS X, and OS X Server.
But no, MS thinks we need the lite, medium, large, extra-large, huge, and super-sized versions, all at different price points, with the versions worth using being more expensive, of course.
QOS systems won't help if your sole server is getting hammered. In fact a "fair" allocation system could quite easily make things worse by forcing allocation of time to virtual server's who're idling in comparison.
No one is going to want to run their servers at a high utilization rate as it leaves no headroom. Let one of those combined "virtual" servers get Slashdotted or mentioned in a blog or Time and you bring down the whole shooting match.
/.'ed the load spreads out and is handled across multiple boxes. In a sense, you need to make the cluster look like a single server to the application as well as the client, so that to both it's balanced transparently.
A better way to do what you suggest would be figuring out some way to run all of those "virtual" machines/applications in a cluster so that if one gets
"It's far more efficient to just write the app properly."
That's right. But how many do? I mean, it's not as if most application developers deliberately set out to write buggy insecure software.
Being able to, say, bring up a perferences dialog and totally sandbox an application would be cool. After all, do you really trust that utility you just downloaded? Should that browser have full access to your system.
And as to "booting a sub-OS", you obviously haven't used an OS 9 "Classic" app on OS X. You just double-click it and it runs. Such can happen automatically, behind the scenes, without intervention.
Precisely. All we need are more parked domains chock full of Google ads and banners. Google should just block all of them so that they stop clogging up search results, and especially so if the page contains the words "This Doman For Sale!"
Nice circular argument. If the information is already available to anyone who really looks for it then the "white hats" already have access to it as well. Face it, the site simply encourages proliferation of a technology that should NOT be readily available to any script kiddie in the middle of Kansas with access to Google and a compiler.
Last time I looked I noticed we don't leave assault weapons, high explosives, or other dangerous materials lying around so just anyone can lay their hands on them. Yes, "white hats" may need access to them, but you, I, and the kid down the street do not.
Wow. Way to respond to the salient points of the argument.
> What percentage of honda drivers are mass murderers? 80%
I can see you did well on your SATs...
A really bad analogy, because to continue it in this case we're placing a sledgehammer next to your door, bricks next to your windows, a ladder next to your balcony, and hanging a pair of wirecutters next to your alarm system.
Without readily available sources of information, wanna-be rootkit hackers would be forced to invent (bring) their own tools to the party. And it's pretty easy to guess that more script-kiddies can tweek and compile free code than can create their own from scratch.