The answer is abundantly clear. This type of illicit transaction CANNOT be stopped. It has never been successfully stopped, it can never be successfully stopped, and if it ever somehow became possible to control people so totally as to be able to stop it, it would be well past time to overthrow the government. The answer to how to stop all this organized crime is the same as it was during prohibition days: let the people enjoy themselves, and give them the ability to purchase the things they enjoy with some degree of confidence in it's safety.
We don't have health insurance up here. One fuck of a lot of taxes though.
Funny thing is, most of the cancer causing chemicals DONT come from the tobbacco. They're added by the cigarette companies to make them easy to store without refridgeration and to make them more addictive. They're like tobbacco-crack. So all these government inititives to make us smokers stop by spending money on advertising and charging us crazy taxes is all really bullshit. If anyone in the government really cared about it, they'd ban the toxic additives.
Oh, and I can't resist this one:
Some smokers getlucky and go their whole lives without developing cancer or emphysema. Most don't.
Which makes them different from everyone else in what way? This is true of non smokers too.
Nicotine is a stimulant in small quantities and a depressant in larger quantities.
This means that when you get stressed, you can smoke a lot and relax, and when you get lethargic, you can smoke a little and get revved up.
So you can continually modify your mood using cigarettes and remain on a more even keel than you would otherwise.
Perhaps this does nothing for you, but I think it's cool as all hell. I don't know why they put it in anti-smoking literature... if I wasn't already a smoker, that would definately catch my interest.
I've been smoking for 15 years, am in good health, and can still run most ppl into the ground. I'll quit smoking my cigarettes right after all those fatties quit poisoning themselves with aspertaine and get off the couch. Until then, quit taxing my 2nd favorite plant so goddamned much, dammit!
No, you're the one that doesn't understand. I do not SELL software. I get paid to BUILD software to solve a problem, and after that, I'm done getting paid. I do not need to OWN software. I do not care what is done with the software after it is written. I happily GIVE AWAY FOR FREE hundreds of man-hours worth of work to my clients in the form of pre-existing libraries that I have written, and I always reserve the rights to give it away again on my next job before I accept the position. Anyone who objects can go pay more for less elsewhere.
If every man woman and child on earth was given a copy of my software by the client I wrote it for, I would not care. Because I am not a manager, nor am I an owner. I am a creator, and a problem solver.
I will never be without opportunities to make money, because there will always be more problems that need to be solved, and I am not a one-trick pony who builds something and then he's all used up and needs to get paid for the rest of his life on the basis of the work he did long ago. I am not Bill Gates, or one of his useless ilk.
Ownership of software, software as a product, these are not concepts that support the creators. Talented and industrious creators will NEVER be out of work, because there will NEVER be an end to problems in need of solutions. If these legal and marketing constructs went away, there would STILL be people with problems willing to throw their money at someone who can fix it for them regardless. The only difference is that we would be working on more creative and interesting work rather than re-inventing the wheel over and over again because someone else "owns" the other copies.
The only people who would be fucked would be the vast multitude of useless managers and "owners" who get paid vast amounts of money to do useless busywork if the even do that. Perhaps they could do something more useful with themselves, like pick up garbage by the side of the road.
Do you get it now? I understand exactly what you're saying, and I'm saying that you're wrong. You can spout off your rhetoric all you want, and perhaps some of the drones around here might be swayed. But I KNOW that you're wrong, and I prove it every day of my life by earning a healthy living and support a family doing what you say is impossible for clients who absolutely fucking love me and my work.
Second of all, Microsoft *bought* a TCP stack from a Spider software when they were writing Win2k. Ironically, that TCP stack was taken from BSD - so you can be mad a spider software for 'stealing' the BSD tcp stack and laugh at Microsoft for paying for it.
This is a prime example of the strength of the BSD license over the GPL license. If the guy who wrote that stack wanted to make a lot of money, he should have sold licenses to his software.
If he wanted to see his stack improve and develop a life of its own and for everyone to share, he should have used the GPL license.
But if he didn't care about money, and he didn't care about other people sharing, and all he cared about was FINALLY seeing everyone using TCP and using a TCP stack that works, then he picked the perfect license.
Because if he'd GPL'd it, we wouldn't be discussing it. But because he chose BSD, that piece of code he wrote is being used by an overwhelming majority of computer users around the world.
Suprising as it may be, there are some brilliant people out there who are satisfied with this. They don't need money, they're brilliant and can always make money. But they positively hate stupidity, and they hate seeing something done wrong. So they do something about it. BSD is the best license for those people.
The open source community has some pipe dream that when you can't make money from software, you will contribute your software for free. What actually happens is people stop writing software so they can do something that makes money.
That's such a load of bullshit. I take the free enterprise stack. I sell clients on my ability to develop software that will fix their problems using the free enterprise stack as a base. I discover that the free enterprise stack doesn't have some feature I could really use to more effectively service these clients. So I write the new feature. And I deliver a solution to them that works. Now I've got this new feature in the stack, I can't really sell it to anyone on its own, and if I don't roll it back into the main trunk, I'll have to maintain it if I ever wish to use it again. So I give it back to the community because it's in my best interest to do so.
This is how the software gets contributed for free. One itch at a time. And you can spout off all your rhetoric about the "open source pipe dream", but that's all it is, spouting off. It exists, it progresses, it takes market share from the most powerful company on earth, and it appears to be gaining momentum. The existance of the thriving community is PROOF that you are wrong.
This is clear evidence that there is an untapped market for the first company to release easy to use ghosting software, publicise it well and drop their price to the impulse range. Marketing and pricing it as a professionals tool when ordinary people are throwing their computers in the garbage over the problem your tool solves is crying stupid. Norton should be all over this sort of thing with a $20 for-dummies ghost product.
The answer is simple: He (or she) rejects the premise of copyright and is acting upon that. He doen't consider it to be wrong, or he wouldn't have done it.
It got moderated +5 informative because the majority of people also reject copyright and do not consider it to be wrong, or there would have been more negative moderations than positive.
It's possible that he posted anonymously out of fear of consequences, consequences do seem to have supplanted a healthy morality as the reason for any legal compliance these days, but I'd say it's more likely that he wants to be moderated on the basis of his points and opinions rather than on the basis of a casual petty rejection of something everyone knows to be wrong (aka copyright). That's just my opinion there...
But then, you weren't really looking for an answer, were you. You just wanted to put forth your own opinion and have a bit of a rant, but you didn't have the decency to do so in an upstanding sort of fashion, you had to twist it around so your opinion (that violating copyright is wrong) was presented as a fact beyond discussion and anyone who disagrees with you is a morally reprehensable person.
For example, say there is a college kid who really likes beer and porn. He likes it so much, he sets up a website that becomes popular, it lists different beers, and reviews porn. One drunken night, this college kid uses his cell phone to take a couple low resolution pictures of himself having sex, and he puts it up.
A few years pass, somehow he graduates and starts looking for work. Someone tells him that his website comes up when googled, and that might not be the best thing when it comes for finding work.
So the guy pulls the plug. beerandporn dot com dies. Or did it? It seems others liked his hobby as well, and downloaded all the content, and started hosting it. Problem is, google now links to these new sites, with his face and work for the world to see.
Should this guy have a right to erase his past creations?
No, he shouldn't. If we're ever going to get over judging each other for such stupid bullshit when most of us have done something comperable or worse, the first thing we need is to have them all out in the open.
Keyboards are powerful as hell if you know how to use them, but most people don't have the time to learn everything their applications can do. If something like this caught on and became prevelant enough for all applications to include a keyboard configuration, it could really make the full use of keyboard shortcuts available to more people and dramatically increase their productivity. People who would never dream of reading the documentation would notice what their keys turned into when they hit control buttons and use the functionality.
Not bullshit. DVDs cost pennies to make. People in the middle and far east have little money to spend, but they can afford a dollar, and there is a large return on the manufacturing cost at that price. That is the ONLY reason why region coding exists.
Commodity products are sold cheaper elsewhere because they have to choose between a miniscule profit or no market at all. Just like you said. And if it's profitable to buy them there and ship them here, then that is fair game. That's the way a free market works. That's the way business is supposed to work.
Yes, it's entirely possible that the media cartels might choose not to sell their product in those developing markets when faced with competition from resellers. They wouldn't be able to get them. They'd cry, and moan, and then a local film industry would spring up to fill the market void.
And no, I don't characterise your attitude as being that of an 8 year old. I characterise your intellect that way. I'm basically calling you stupid, and bemoaning my fate at being surrounded by your ilk.
My position is pro-business, anti-cartel, anti-price-fixing and pro-free-market. And I've labourously explained to you exactly what is going on, and it's easy to see it for yourself and easy to verify it with very little research. It has nothing to do with the merits of copyright or lack thereof. That is an entirely different kettle of fish. This has to do with monopolies, cartels, gouging and price fixing.
And once again, you have no intellect, no vision, no imagination, and no capacity to see the ripple effect that comes from this. "I can buy my DVDs and play them, everythings cool, I'm not a pirate, it doesn't affect me." Fuckin hell. Don't be so blind. The picture is a lot bigger than kids burning DVDs from Blockbuster.
Oh, and btw, I've been all over the world in my short years, and none of this stuff I'm saying is bullshit. It is the facts. I have seen it with my own eyes. Try informing yourself, for fucks sake. I don't come onto these forums and spell this shit out because I need the karma if I'm ever going to come back as a womens bicycle seat in my next life. I do it because it really pisses me off, it's wrong, it hurts me and everyone I know and my kid and its getting worse and will only change if everyone grabs themselves a firm hold of a clue and uses it. This is a global forum and it gives me the opportunity to lay this shit out for everyone in a fashion that's a little more articulate than "copyright sucks, mp3s rule!". Try actually considering what you read for a change rather than blithly spouting off the company line.
No one who claims to be pro-business should be sticking up for a system where a few massive companies pay the same 50 actors and actresses year after year to remake the same old schlock over and over again and use tactics legal and illegal to ensure that anyone interested in producing something better has no hope in hell of success. This isn't a vibrant market. This is sitting in an old folks home getting spoon fed shit while someone else is off spending all your money....
Well, that got the blood fired up! Thanks, you make a great strawman.
I don't see how a multi-criminal rapist would get an easier sentence than a kid who altered a VB script that was already out there. I don't see how this whole article could even be considered when the crooks at Enron get off without the death penalty first.
A multi-criminal rapist doesn't threaten governmental/corporate control over the populace. A hacker does. Who do you think the laws are there to serve?
I think that you've got it backwards. The first world countries are less inventive and on a steady path of stepwise refinement and are using military and economic power to keep the poorer people, who are less comfortable and more motivated, and SHOULD be the driving force behind innovation, from having an environment conductive to it.
Look what happened during the early years of North America. Europe was stagnant and full to the brim with powerful people and organizations with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. North America rejected all that crap, and proceeded to become one of the most inventive places in the world. The Europeans tried very hard to stop them, but because they had to ship their troops across the Atlantic in wooden boats, they were unsuccessful. Then slowly North America became the next "Europe". Except that they don't have wooden boats, they've got aircraft carriers and bombers, and they WILL put the boots to any small, disorganized country that decides to reject their claims of ownership over ideas. Of course, it's usually easier to install a puppet dictatorship and draft all the population to help rape their country of the natural resources that they're not permitted to exploit intelligently without delivering up a small "ton of flesh".
Comfortable people don't have much reason to be creative, and none of the uncomfortable people are allowed to play with ideas to improve their lives because they can't afford to pay for the right to use them (fuck that's twisted).
Doesn't suprise me in the slightest that we're less innovative. We're working pretty fucking hard to make the environment as unfriendly to innovation as we can.
One of my systems has a water block on both the CPU and a heavy duty sandwich-style air cooler on the graphics card. I never worry about those parts overheating. I've got about a 7% overclock on the processor
Um... yeah. I'm gonna take advice from YOU? I think I'll stick with my air-cooled setup. It's only running at a 97% overclock, but it does the trick.
Problem is, Intel is being pursued for supposedly monopolistic practices defending a market they originated. AMD did not come up with the x86 chips, they don't own the original IP this springboards from, all of Intels x86 competitors have to do everything through reverse engineering, licensing, or both.
Actually, IBM created the market. They GAVE the manufacturing of the chips over to Intel ON THE CONDITION that there be a second source for the chips so Intel wouldn't pull a Microsoft on them. AMD had their own architecture at that time, but agreed to let it go and co-operate with Intel in manufacturing chips for IBMs new platform.
Intel got their start the same way Microsoft did. IBM gave it to them all wrapped up and they've both been using what they were given to screw everyone, competitors, cohorts and consumers, ever since.
And as for "what have you done for me lately"... I'd say coming to market with dual-core chips that are pin compatible with the motherboard you already own is a hell of a lot better than anything Intel has done lately. Whats their cutting edge these days, P3 architecture with modern fab and free Wi-Fi?
DVDs are legitimately available for less than a dollar in poorer countries. If not for region coding, enterprising individuals could purchase these DVDs, ship them around the world to here where the big companies are gouging us, and sell them to us for a song. This would result in market pressure driving the cost down dramatically.
It's illegal to prevent this in most countries, and rightfully so. Region coding was nothing but a thinly veiled and largely successful attempt to engage in global price fixing. If not for the region coding making foreign-market DVDs a hit or miss affair and thus impractical as a mass market product for resellers, the media companies would have two choices:
1) Equalize their prices globally, with the result that YOU, Mr. "Never been adversely affected by copy protection on DVDs", could purchase a large media library for the price you currently spend on a few discs, or
2) Maintain their gouging prices in the first world countries where the can afford to pay it, lose the majority of the population of the planet as customers, including vast developing markets, and leave a wide-open path for enterprising individuals to target that market, inevitably resulting in a vast number of foreign-films being available to YOU and the rest of us at negligable cost.
Like I said. Typical brainwashed consumer with no imagination who can't see the big picture or how he's being screwed, parroting the company propaganda.
Oh, and trust you me, I derive no joy in "looking down my nose" at anyone. Sometimes I feel like a teenager being forced by my parents to hang out with 8 year olds who think fart jokes are clever. Except that I don't get to grow up and move out, I'm stuck with them until I die.
I have to somewhat agree with the ancestor posts in that when you commit crimes you are effectively saying that you don't want to adhere to the social contract established, so I don't believe a criminal is entitled to all the rights afforded to non-criminals.
It's a social contract that has to be accepted by the majority to work. Think about it.
You impose the death penalty for murderers. 0.01% of the population is now anti-social and has a vested interest in laying society low.
You impose the death penalty for theft. 10% of the population is now anti-social and has a vested interest in laying society low.
You impose the death penalty for copyright infringement. 90% of the population is now under threat of death for their normal living behavior and has a vested interest in laying society low.
At this point, the majority of the people are now anti-social. Sometimes this means rebellion, sometimes it means subversion, but it eventually means the end of the society unless things change.
The social contract is where we all agree that this is the way we want to behave and the way we want to live. If it ceases to be about wanting to comply and becomes something handed down from on high (like the current trend of corporate-bought laws) then it's time to burn the rulebooks and start fresh. Personally, I think we're going to see that time arrive before we die. You can see signs of it all over the place. People don't respect the system. Instead of being precious and treasured to them as it should be, it is generally resented, subverted and ignored. This is all in addition to an ever rising level of violence by the general populace, both against each other and against representatives of the system (terrorism anyone?).
Figuring out the precise way to live and act that produces maximum economic productivity for the benefit of those who control the means of production and using the threat of law (which amounts to the threat of violence) to force everyone to comply is not the way to run a society, at least not in the long term. If it's harming the many for the benefit of a few, that is by its very nature anti-social. The way to run a society is to strip it down so that the laws reflect the way most people wish to live.
Killing people who refuse to behave in a fashion that increases profits for businesses does not seem very social to me. As a matter of fact, it sounds a lot like the kind of slavery that lends moral justification to "Killing the Masters so we can be Free".
Think about that the next time you lend your support to these fear-of-death type laws. Could be a day when you're the one in fear of your life because your lifestyle is no longer approved, or could even be a day when you're the one being slaughtered by those former-slaves-to-the-system you placed in that position with your support.
Yeah, right. Just like when the original DVD came out. Copy protection, advertising enforcement and thinly-veiled illegal price fixing in one neat package, and they eat it up like hotcakes.
Typical consumers have no imagination and accept what they are told. If you complain, you're met with either the same resigned agreement you get when you complain about the weather, or the "company line" about how it's all good and necessary and looked at as an idiot or a communist.
It's damn near impossible to underestimate the stupidity of the masses.
Hmmm... those OSS projects that get a large commercial entity behind them with development and marketing teams in tow, and add those resources to their existing base of developers and grass-roots marketing prove to grow faster and be more prominent. Therefore, all those OSS projects that do not are failures.
It's not like walking up to some stranger on the street and asking for uninterrupted charity work. It's more like mounting a sign in every computer store asking "Got any code kicking around you're not selling? Chuck it our way, would you? No utility too obscure."
It is what it is, and while its character is not that of commercially developed software, progress does continue to be made.
Costing people time is irrelevant (no honestly it is) unless that time is expensed or billed (then it becomes relevant).
How do you justify this? Most people work the number of hours in each day that they are willing, and keep the rest for themselves. Which means that that extra time is not for sale. That sounds a good deal more valueable than the "time I don't really need and am prepared to sell".
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The answer is abundantly clear. This type of illicit transaction CANNOT be stopped. It has never been successfully stopped, it can never be successfully stopped, and if it ever somehow became possible to control people so totally as to be able to stop it, it would be well past time to overthrow the government. The answer to how to stop all this organized crime is the same as it was during prohibition days: let the people enjoy themselves, and give them the ability to purchase the things they enjoy with some degree of confidence in it's safety.
We don't have health insurance up here. One fuck of a lot of taxes though.
Funny thing is, most of the cancer causing chemicals DONT come from the tobbacco. They're added by the cigarette companies to make them easy to store without refridgeration and to make them more addictive. They're like tobbacco-crack. So all these government inititives to make us smokers stop by spending money on advertising and charging us crazy taxes is all really bullshit. If anyone in the government really cared about it, they'd ban the toxic additives.
Oh, and I can't resist this one:
Some smokers getlucky and go their whole lives without developing cancer or emphysema. Most don't.
Which makes them different from everyone else in what way? This is true of non smokers too.
Nicotine is a stimulant in small quantities and a depressant in larger quantities.
This means that when you get stressed, you can smoke a lot and relax, and when you get lethargic, you can smoke a little and get revved up.
So you can continually modify your mood using cigarettes and remain on a more even keel than you would otherwise.
Perhaps this does nothing for you, but I think it's cool as all hell. I don't know why they put it in anti-smoking literature... if I wasn't already a smoker, that would definately catch my interest.
I've been smoking for 15 years, am in good health, and can still run most ppl into the ground. I'll quit smoking my cigarettes right after all those fatties quit poisoning themselves with aspertaine and get off the couch. Until then, quit taxing my 2nd favorite plant so goddamned much, dammit!
No, you're the one that doesn't understand. I do not SELL software. I get paid to BUILD software to solve a problem, and after that, I'm done getting paid. I do not need to OWN software. I do not care what is done with the software after it is written. I happily GIVE AWAY FOR FREE hundreds of man-hours worth of work to my clients in the form of pre-existing libraries that I have written, and I always reserve the rights to give it away again on my next job before I accept the position. Anyone who objects can go pay more for less elsewhere.
If every man woman and child on earth was given a copy of my software by the client I wrote it for, I would not care. Because I am not a manager, nor am I an owner. I am a creator, and a problem solver.
I will never be without opportunities to make money, because there will always be more problems that need to be solved, and I am not a one-trick pony who builds something and then he's all used up and needs to get paid for the rest of his life on the basis of the work he did long ago. I am not Bill Gates, or one of his useless ilk.
Ownership of software, software as a product, these are not concepts that support the creators. Talented and industrious creators will NEVER be out of work, because there will NEVER be an end to problems in need of solutions. If these legal and marketing constructs went away, there would STILL be people with problems willing to throw their money at someone who can fix it for them regardless. The only difference is that we would be working on more creative and interesting work rather than re-inventing the wheel over and over again because someone else "owns" the other copies.
The only people who would be fucked would be the vast multitude of useless managers and "owners" who get paid vast amounts of money to do useless busywork if the even do that. Perhaps they could do something more useful with themselves, like pick up garbage by the side of the road.
Do you get it now? I understand exactly what you're saying, and I'm saying that you're wrong. You can spout off your rhetoric all you want, and perhaps some of the drones around here might be swayed. But I KNOW that you're wrong, and I prove it every day of my life by earning a healthy living and support a family doing what you say is impossible for clients who absolutely fucking love me and my work.
Go peddle that shit somewhere else.
Second of all, Microsoft *bought* a TCP stack from a Spider software when they were writing Win2k. Ironically, that TCP stack was taken from BSD - so you can be mad a spider software for 'stealing' the BSD tcp stack and laugh at Microsoft for paying for it.
This is a prime example of the strength of the BSD license over the GPL license. If the guy who wrote that stack wanted to make a lot of money, he should have sold licenses to his software.
If he wanted to see his stack improve and develop a life of its own and for everyone to share, he should have used the GPL license.
But if he didn't care about money, and he didn't care about other people sharing, and all he cared about was FINALLY seeing everyone using TCP and using a TCP stack that works, then he picked the perfect license.
Because if he'd GPL'd it, we wouldn't be discussing it. But because he chose BSD, that piece of code he wrote is being used by an overwhelming majority of computer users around the world.
Suprising as it may be, there are some brilliant people out there who are satisfied with this. They don't need money, they're brilliant and can always make money. But they positively hate stupidity, and they hate seeing something done wrong. So they do something about it. BSD is the best license for those people.
The open source community has some pipe dream that when you can't make money from software, you will contribute your software for free. What actually happens is people stop writing software so they can do something that makes money.
That's such a load of bullshit. I take the free enterprise stack. I sell clients on my ability to develop software that will fix their problems using the free enterprise stack as a base. I discover that the free enterprise stack doesn't have some feature I could really use to more effectively service these clients. So I write the new feature. And I deliver a solution to them that works. Now I've got this new feature in the stack, I can't really sell it to anyone on its own, and if I don't roll it back into the main trunk, I'll have to maintain it if I ever wish to use it again. So I give it back to the community because it's in my best interest to do so. This is how the software gets contributed for free. One itch at a time. And you can spout off all your rhetoric about the "open source pipe dream", but that's all it is, spouting off. It exists, it progresses, it takes market share from the most powerful company on earth, and it appears to be gaining momentum. The existance of the thriving community is PROOF that you are wrong.
This is clear evidence that there is an untapped market for the first company to release easy to use ghosting software, publicise it well and drop their price to the impulse range. Marketing and pricing it as a professionals tool when ordinary people are throwing their computers in the garbage over the problem your tool solves is crying stupid. Norton should be all over this sort of thing with a $20 for-dummies ghost product.
Master of Orion II doesn't work under W2K unless you disable DirectX completely.
The answer is simple: He (or she) rejects the premise of copyright and is acting upon that. He doen't consider it to be wrong, or he wouldn't have done it.
It got moderated +5 informative because the majority of people also reject copyright and do not consider it to be wrong, or there would have been more negative moderations than positive.
It's possible that he posted anonymously out of fear of consequences, consequences do seem to have supplanted a healthy morality as the reason for any legal compliance these days, but I'd say it's more likely that he wants to be moderated on the basis of his points and opinions rather than on the basis of a casual petty rejection of something everyone knows to be wrong (aka copyright). That's just my opinion there...
But then, you weren't really looking for an answer, were you. You just wanted to put forth your own opinion and have a bit of a rant, but you didn't have the decency to do so in an upstanding sort of fashion, you had to twist it around so your opinion (that violating copyright is wrong) was presented as a fact beyond discussion and anyone who disagrees with you is a morally reprehensable person.
So, I give myself permission to flame a bit...
Why don't you just fuck off?
Luke turns to the dark side.
Leia becomes a Jedi and kills Luke, but dies in the process.
There's no one left to teach about the force, thus it is balanced. Prophecy fulfilled.
For example, say there is a college kid who really likes beer and porn. He likes it so much, he sets up a website that becomes popular, it lists different beers, and reviews porn. One drunken night, this college kid uses his cell phone to take a couple low resolution pictures of himself having sex, and he puts it up.
A few years pass, somehow he graduates and starts looking for work. Someone tells him that his website comes up when googled, and that might not be the best thing when it comes for finding work.
So the guy pulls the plug. beerandporn dot com dies. Or did it? It seems others liked his hobby as well, and downloaded all the content, and started hosting it. Problem is, google now links to these new sites, with his face and work for the world to see.
Should this guy have a right to erase his past creations?
No, he shouldn't. If we're ever going to get over judging each other for such stupid bullshit when most of us have done something comperable or worse, the first thing we need is to have them all out in the open.
Narrow minded viewpoint.
Keyboards are powerful as hell if you know how to use them, but most people don't have the time to learn everything their applications can do. If something like this caught on and became prevelant enough for all applications to include a keyboard configuration, it could really make the full use of keyboard shortcuts available to more people and dramatically increase their productivity. People who would never dream of reading the documentation would notice what their keys turned into when they hit control buttons and use the functionality.
This should replace every keyboard in the world.
Not bullshit. DVDs cost pennies to make. People in the middle and far east have little money to spend, but they can afford a dollar, and there is a large return on the manufacturing cost at that price. That is the ONLY reason why region coding exists.
...
Commodity products are sold cheaper elsewhere because they have to choose between a miniscule profit or no market at all. Just like you said. And if it's profitable to buy them there and ship them here, then that is fair game. That's the way a free market works. That's the way business is supposed to work.
Yes, it's entirely possible that the media cartels might choose not to sell their product in those developing markets when faced with competition from resellers. They wouldn't be able to get them. They'd cry, and moan, and then a local film industry would spring up to fill the market void.
And no, I don't characterise your attitude as being that of an 8 year old. I characterise your intellect that way. I'm basically calling you stupid, and bemoaning my fate at being surrounded by your ilk.
My position is pro-business, anti-cartel, anti-price-fixing and pro-free-market. And I've labourously explained to you exactly what is going on, and it's easy to see it for yourself and easy to verify it with very little research. It has nothing to do with the merits of copyright or lack thereof. That is an entirely different kettle of fish. This has to do with monopolies, cartels, gouging and price fixing.
And once again, you have no intellect, no vision, no imagination, and no capacity to see the ripple effect that comes from this. "I can buy my DVDs and play them, everythings cool, I'm not a pirate, it doesn't affect me." Fuckin hell. Don't be so blind. The picture is a lot bigger than kids burning DVDs from Blockbuster.
Oh, and btw, I've been all over the world in my short years, and none of this stuff I'm saying is bullshit. It is the facts. I have seen it with my own eyes. Try informing yourself, for fucks sake. I don't come onto these forums and spell this shit out because I need the karma if I'm ever going to come back as a womens bicycle seat in my next life. I do it because it really pisses me off, it's wrong, it hurts me and everyone I know and my kid and its getting worse and will only change if everyone grabs themselves a firm hold of a clue and uses it. This is a global forum and it gives me the opportunity to lay this shit out for everyone in a fashion that's a little more articulate than "copyright sucks, mp3s rule!". Try actually considering what you read for a change rather than blithly spouting off the company line.
No one who claims to be pro-business should be sticking up for a system where a few massive companies pay the same 50 actors and actresses year after year to remake the same old schlock over and over again and use tactics legal and illegal to ensure that anyone interested in producing something better has no hope in hell of success. This isn't a vibrant market. This is sitting in an old folks home getting spoon fed shit while someone else is off spending all your money.
Well, that got the blood fired up! Thanks, you make a great strawman.
I don't see how a multi-criminal rapist would get an easier sentence than a kid who altered a VB script that was already out there. I don't see how this whole article could even be considered when the crooks at Enron get off without the death penalty first.
A multi-criminal rapist doesn't threaten governmental/corporate control over the populace. A hacker does. Who do you think the laws are there to serve?
LOL
That was a quote from the article, not a reply to your post on cryrogenics. I just wanted to stick my 2c in at the top where ppl actually read it.
I think that you've got it backwards. The first world countries are less inventive and on a steady path of stepwise refinement and are using military and economic power to keep the poorer people, who are less comfortable and more motivated, and SHOULD be the driving force behind innovation, from having an environment conductive to it.
Look what happened during the early years of North America. Europe was stagnant and full to the brim with powerful people and organizations with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. North America rejected all that crap, and proceeded to become one of the most inventive places in the world. The Europeans tried very hard to stop them, but because they had to ship their troops across the Atlantic in wooden boats, they were unsuccessful. Then slowly North America became the next "Europe". Except that they don't have wooden boats, they've got aircraft carriers and bombers, and they WILL put the boots to any small, disorganized country that decides to reject their claims of ownership over ideas. Of course, it's usually easier to install a puppet dictatorship and draft all the population to help rape their country of the natural resources that they're not permitted to exploit intelligently without delivering up a small "ton of flesh".
Comfortable people don't have much reason to be creative, and none of the uncomfortable people are allowed to play with ideas to improve their lives because they can't afford to pay for the right to use them (fuck that's twisted).
Doesn't suprise me in the slightest that we're less innovative. We're working pretty fucking hard to make the environment as unfriendly to innovation as we can.
One of my systems has a water block on both the CPU and a heavy duty sandwich-style air cooler on the graphics card. I never worry about those parts overheating. I've got about a 7% overclock on the processor
Um... yeah. I'm gonna take advice from YOU? I think I'll stick with my air-cooled setup. It's only running at a 97% overclock, but it does the trick.
Amateurs.
Problem is, Intel is being pursued for supposedly monopolistic practices defending a market they originated. AMD did not come up with the x86 chips, they don't own the original IP this springboards from, all of Intels x86 competitors have to do everything through reverse engineering, licensing, or both.
Actually, IBM created the market. They GAVE the manufacturing of the chips over to Intel ON THE CONDITION that there be a second source for the chips so Intel wouldn't pull a Microsoft on them. AMD had their own architecture at that time, but agreed to let it go and co-operate with Intel in manufacturing chips for IBMs new platform.
Intel got their start the same way Microsoft did. IBM gave it to them all wrapped up and they've both been using what they were given to screw everyone, competitors, cohorts and consumers, ever since.
And as for "what have you done for me lately"... I'd say coming to market with dual-core chips that are pin compatible with the motherboard you already own is a hell of a lot better than anything Intel has done lately. Whats their cutting edge these days, P3 architecture with modern fab and free Wi-Fi?
DVDs are legitimately available for less than a dollar in poorer countries. If not for region coding, enterprising individuals could purchase these DVDs, ship them around the world to here where the big companies are gouging us, and sell them to us for a song. This would result in market pressure driving the cost down dramatically.
It's illegal to prevent this in most countries, and rightfully so. Region coding was nothing but a thinly veiled and largely successful attempt to engage in global price fixing. If not for the region coding making foreign-market DVDs a hit or miss affair and thus impractical as a mass market product for resellers, the media companies would have two choices:
1) Equalize their prices globally, with the result that YOU, Mr. "Never been adversely affected by copy protection on DVDs", could purchase a large media library for the price you currently spend on a few discs, or
2) Maintain their gouging prices in the first world countries where the can afford to pay it, lose the majority of the population of the planet as customers, including vast developing markets, and leave a wide-open path for enterprising individuals to target that market, inevitably resulting in a vast number of foreign-films being available to YOU and the rest of us at negligable cost.
Like I said. Typical brainwashed consumer with no imagination who can't see the big picture or how he's being screwed, parroting the company propaganda.
Oh, and trust you me, I derive no joy in "looking down my nose" at anyone. Sometimes I feel like a teenager being forced by my parents to hang out with 8 year olds who think fart jokes are clever. Except that I don't get to grow up and move out, I'm stuck with them until I die.
I have to somewhat agree with the ancestor posts in that when you commit crimes you are effectively saying that you don't want to adhere to the social contract established, so I don't believe a criminal is entitled to all the rights afforded to non-criminals.
It's a social contract that has to be accepted by the majority to work. Think about it.
You impose the death penalty for murderers. 0.01% of the population is now anti-social and has a vested interest in laying society low.
You impose the death penalty for theft. 10% of the population is now anti-social and has a vested interest in laying society low.
You impose the death penalty for copyright infringement. 90% of the population is now under threat of death for their normal living behavior and has a vested interest in laying society low.
At this point, the majority of the people are now anti-social. Sometimes this means rebellion, sometimes it means subversion, but it eventually means the end of the society unless things change.
The social contract is where we all agree that this is the way we want to behave and the way we want to live. If it ceases to be about wanting to comply and becomes something handed down from on high (like the current trend of corporate-bought laws) then it's time to burn the rulebooks and start fresh. Personally, I think we're going to see that time arrive before we die. You can see signs of it all over the place. People don't respect the system. Instead of being precious and treasured to them as it should be, it is generally resented, subverted and ignored. This is all in addition to an ever rising level of violence by the general populace, both against each other and against representatives of the system (terrorism anyone?).
Figuring out the precise way to live and act that produces maximum economic productivity for the benefit of those who control the means of production and using the threat of law (which amounts to the threat of violence) to force everyone to comply is not the way to run a society, at least not in the long term. If it's harming the many for the benefit of a few, that is by its very nature anti-social. The way to run a society is to strip it down so that the laws reflect the way most people wish to live.
Killing people who refuse to behave in a fashion that increases profits for businesses does not seem very social to me. As a matter of fact, it sounds a lot like the kind of slavery that lends moral justification to "Killing the Masters so we can be Free".
Think about that the next time you lend your support to these fear-of-death type laws. Could be a day when you're the one in fear of your life because your lifestyle is no longer approved, or could even be a day when you're the one being slaughtered by those former-slaves-to-the-system you placed in that position with your support.
Intolerance kills.
Yeah, right. Just like when the original DVD came out. Copy protection, advertising enforcement and thinly-veiled illegal price fixing in one neat package, and they eat it up like hotcakes.
Typical consumers have no imagination and accept what they are told. If you complain, you're met with either the same resigned agreement you get when you complain about the weather, or the "company line" about how it's all good and necessary and looked at as an idiot or a communist.
It's damn near impossible to underestimate the stupidity of the masses.
Hmmm... those OSS projects that get a large commercial entity behind them with development and marketing teams in tow, and add those resources to their existing base of developers and grass-roots marketing prove to grow faster and be more prominent. Therefore, all those OSS projects that do not are failures.
Your logic leaves a great deal to be desired.
Nicknamed the Crazy J
Yeah, but will it fit in the bong?
It's not like walking up to some stranger on the street and asking for uninterrupted charity work. It's more like mounting a sign in every computer store asking "Got any code kicking around you're not selling? Chuck it our way, would you? No utility too obscure."
It is what it is, and while its character is not that of commercially developed software, progress does continue to be made.
Costing people time is irrelevant (no honestly it is) unless that time is expensed or billed (then it becomes relevant).
How do you justify this? Most people work the number of hours in each day that they are willing, and keep the rest for themselves. Which means that that extra time is not for sale. That sounds a good deal more valueable than the "time I don't really need and am prepared to sell".