Your statement that "every single shread of evidence points to the fact that there is global warming" is bullshit. There are some that argue that the methodology that has been used to gather the temperature data is flawed or that the amount of time over which quality data has been gathered is not long enough to make a conclusion.
My statement is that every reading taken out in the field points to the fact that there is increase in temperature. While the opposition argues that this is just cyclical, or it's normal, or something of the sort. They don't really argue with the numbers, they just say "oh, it's a dry spell, it'll pass over, you're making a big deal out of nothing".
As for solutions, it's quite simple: have tax on mpg. And ban mpg's below a certain rate (basically force the industry to move away from gasoline guzzling SUV's to more friendly hybrid versions - Ford already has them in production). Build renewable energy power plants asap (which might cost more than coal plants say).
The solutions are only limited by the cries of fury that will come out of the americans who will not tolerate "their freedom of choosing-whatever-the-hell-they-want" being violated. Don't roll your eyes: I can so see people saying "who are you to say I can't drive my SUV, I *bought* it!".
As for India and China, those are entirely different ball games. Their problem is not quality, it's quantity. And quite frankly, I really doubt anyone in China will protest if the government were to impose emission quotas.
India, that's a different topic, and I frankly don't know... I'm kinda worried about the situation there, because it is probably the only place where what you say about the economy suffering is legit... since they are so third world in a sense.
Here we are faced with a situation where every single shread of evidence points to the fact that there is global warming, and still you are being skeptical about it.
Being skeptical is being mascaraded in the streets as a 'scientific trait of character', but in fact it is nothing of the sort: who is being skeptical, what does being skeptical mean? It means: not stopping current trends of production, and only industry lobbyists are being skeptical.
Sure we can be skeptical about the theories from a scientific standpoint, but that shouldn't mean inaction. It should mean stopping and assessing. Since we do not have the luxury to stop everything and see if things are going to get better, we have *no other option* but to take these theories as true.
It comes down to plain and simple risk analysis, one theory says current trends will lead us to irreversible damage, and that we must stop now, while another theory says that it might not, and stopping now will do... what? hurt the economy a bit? In any case, it is clear that reducing emissions is not going to do irreversible damage to the economy.
*Anyone* who argues the second theory is sound should be shot... IMO.
So, "Dumbass", you're saying that if I'm behind a NAT, and you over there are behind a NAT, Skype is going to establish a connection to you through me? No.
The whole point of "through me" connections is that the NATed box and the recipient box are on the same internal network.
How old are you? Your tone of voice and lack of understanding of networks is highly indicative that you are a freshman that thinks they got the whole world figured out.
Read the fucking post, if you are both behind a NATed firewall, you fall into the description that I gave: on a LAN, where several computers are situated on several levels of hierarchy.
So what if a box behind a nat is forwarding even two conversations on LAN. It's probably going to use up.5% CPU, and the LAN traffic won't increase or decrease since it's arleady on a LAN.
Yeah, but you don't understand what network topology means if you think peers' nodes will be used to relay data.
Generally speaking, end users are at the very bottom of a long hierarchy of ISPs and pipes. For example: UUNET -> AT&T -> Your local ISP -> You. As such, generally speaking, you are a leaf on a very large tree that may span several classes of IP networks. If a peer were to be used as a super node, it would mean that the data send from A to C would travel like this: A -> ISP -> AT&T -> UUNET -> Verizon -> Bell -> ISP -> B -> ISP -> Bell -> Verizon -> SomeOtherCarrier -> SomeOtherLocal -> ISP -> C.
It makes no sense since in all likelyhood, UUNET, Verizon and SomeOtherCarrier are all on the same backbone, one or two hops away from each other.
It only makes sense in a LAN situation, like in Campus setups where there are nodes that are 'above' other nodes hierarchically: like if someone has inbound Internet over one box and distributes the connection to his dorm house connected to 8 other computers.
And aside from that, Skype coms are encrypted. No third party software can intercept a properly encrypted message. That's the whole point of PKI, to avoid man in the middles.
If we can demonstrate abiogenesis, we also demonstrate a weaker possibility- if it's possible to create life from chemicals, it's possible to create life from matter that is no longer alive (i.e. dead).
Being able to re-create life from dead things does not mean making them alive again... it just means you create a new life from the remains (inert) of another life form. Let's not get into "Pet Cemetary" like arguments here =)
IMHO, abiogenesis is inevitably possible. But I also think that that raises another point which you did not:
What is life worth if it can actually be created from inert matter? My personal belief is that life isn't actually worth that much, but the consciousness that it implements is priceless. I also happen to think that life is not the only medium possible for consciousness, and that there *has* to be conscious systems out there that are not based on living organisms. (Computers maybe in the distant future)
I also happen to think that consciousness is very fundamentally linked with quantum physics and how nothing is deterministic. But that's just really far out there, and people are going to call me crazy...
Maybe the analogy is poor, but the idea is the same: for example when Bridgestone's tires were shown to be flawed by design (making SUVs flip if not inflated fully), it was disclosed to the public and the tires were recalled.
In fact recalls occur very often. Your point about media being damaged is the same as "warranty for parts and labor", reverse engineering is what causes recalls to happen. Two different things. So the analogy, while a bit weak, still holds.
Because the API has a structure: any object running in the current interactive desktop is considered part of that security context. Period. It's not a question of having left the door unlocked. In fact, anyone who defends that "rm -rf/" should not be hidden from the user can have no legitimate protest to this system design.
Consoles apps (not consoles themselves*) are not vulnerable because they are not part of the windowing system, they output to the window via stdout/stdin/stderr.
As for X, I don't know the structure of the windowing system, but the basic problem is not that apps are broken into, the problem is that any window sitting on your desktop is assumed by the OS to be owned by YOU. So, it shouldn't be illegal for a different app owned by you to send it a window message (like typing "rm -rf/").
* A console app is any app like cp or mv that you can invoke from a command prompt. These apps are unaware of windows and its messaging structure and therefor not vulnerable. Cmd.exe itself is probably aware of the messaging system though, since I'm sure it actually implements its own console.
And before you go off on a stupid proof rant, let me point out that it *is* in fact the same situation: actors and singers can not do anything to paparazzi's because they have no proof... In the same way, I don't think there was any proof pointing to tresspassing in the Valve case. It was more like a leak, or an intercept. Both of which are 'moderately' legal.
In both cases though, there is a (granted morbid) curiosity that drives the populace to acquire (via tabloid or torrent) the said illicit pictures/source code.
When I say moderately legal, I mean that sure, maybe it's not nice... but if it were trivially illegal, we would be living in a police state.
At the end of the day, Valve made it's money, so get off the high horse... Half-Life 2 is *not* a lump of coal.
I don't understand your fucking point man. I downloaded Valve's source just out of curiosity. I also bought Half-Life 2 because a) I wouldn't settle for anything less than release quality code, b) the game rocks to the point of deserving my money, and c) you actually can't play the god damn thing unless you have a real key (and, btw, I hate that: I have relatively up to date hardware, and it took around 50 minutes just decrypting the files on the DVD, and it also 'phones home' every time I want to play the game... If Microsoft did that, I'm sure you'd be waiting at the Redmond gates with a sawed off shotgun).
I also love the quote: Valve stood helplessly by watching its big Christmas blockbuster turn into a lump of coal
Ease up on the melodrama man, Valve is doing JUST FINE.
Your journal is archived, so I couldn't reply there, but buddy, you gotta calm down. There's something called a discussion, and then there's totalitarianism. Calling everyone who doesn't side with you 'treasonous' is kind of pushing the limits on what logical discussions are all about.
The part that says: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Btw, I just love it how people like you are transparent in intellectual arguments:
At any rate, you are free to make your diatribes and I'll feel free to take them apart point by point.
So I guess that makes you a complete moron
Well first of all you have contradicted yourself by using the term "pirated",
Again you contradict yourself.
Nice argument. I'm atheist, and what I do remember hearing from the Bible didn't say anything about copyright (I'm fairly certain the Bible was written long before the conventional notion of copyright). So I guess that makes you a complete moron. (joke's on you: I said stealing was mentionned in the bible, not copyright).
Well you've gone beyond making my argument for me; the implications of this are even more hardline than my arguments. Thanks!
Yeah, I just love it how any chance you get, you pump up your moderator-based-ego instead of actually laying out some intelligent points while hiding behind a "this is slashdot, it's not an intelligent discussion anyways" shield. Ironically, the only reason slashdot might *not* be a place for intelligent discussions is because of people like you who instead of making points, go for ad-hominem remarks and "it doesn't count" defenses any time they can't actually articulate their thoughts coherently.
You haven't said a single thing on topic in this conversation. You just go for the good ol' "stealin's bad... if you disagree, WELL YOU'RE A MORON" tactic. Good for you buddy. Do you feel more intelligent today?
At any rate, I have nothing against civil disobedience, if that is what you are calling for. I simply think that civil disobedience should be reserved for more worthwhile causes than being
My point is that Law != justice/moral/ethic. Law is determined by the powers of the time. In our times, the corporations.
Whether or not their revenue projections are inflated (as you point out, a significant portion of the offenders may simply have chosen not to use the software/media if they could not pirate it) is not material. Allow me to turn your argument around: if someone is obtaining an unauthorized copy of a work (be it software, movie, etc.) and not using it for profit, then presumably they suffer no damages if that work is prohibited to them. You do not have a 1st Amendment right to duplicate another person's work (that's why the Constitution explicitely allows for patents and copyrights, and grants Congress [blah blah]...
My point isn't either that it's ethically correct to steal, or that we should condone it. My point is that it's a sharade, a hoax, an illusion that you are buying into to believe that these companies would have been making profit. It's a lie.
... No one requires free use of Photoshop in order to survive, so this is not a life or death question. Not being able to afford it does not justify using it for free.
Again, right aside the point. You heard of Alias|Wavefront? They make Maya. Maya sells for $7000. You can also download Maya on their site for free. How does that work, have you ever thought? It works because the business unit at Maya isn't lazy. It works because when they project revenues, and plan for expenditures, they don't have an extra line in their spreadsheet that reads "expecting 4 million in revenue from 18-24 year old college students". No, they don't play that sort of wishful thinking, instead, they go and make sound business decisions and realize that in order to be profitable, they need to cut costs, make better software, raise license prices etc. etc.
What's different from the MPAA here? Do you *still* not see?
The MPAA says: "fuck this planning stuff, let's just go and sue". They don't ever think about cutting costs, increasing quality or, god forbid, changing business models (of pay-per-watch). No, that would be crazy talk. How dare we push the idea that maybe the market isn't performing that well after all (what with the world economy being in one of the most severe recessions since the oil crisis of '79). The Market OWES them money. They want THEIR money.
That's the mentality. Sure, go ahead, sue Loki torrent. My question to you is: what are you achieving? What really, are you achieving? Are you squarely saying that someone is going to make *more* money because of it?
I'm saying that no, and I'm saying that supporting actions like these is only making the industry more lazy.
AMD and Intel had a court ruling that allows anyone to cleanroom reverse engineer chips. That's tantamount to stealing in my books.
Again you contradict yourself. Regardless, chip technology is not protected by copyright, it is protected by patents and trade secrets, and therefore is irrelevant to a discussion of copyright.
No, I don't contradict myself. I reinforce the concept that I pointed out in the beginning: laws are made by the ruling class of the times. A perfect proof is that when Corporations decide it's good, stealing becomes legal.
Ahh. Man, look. I'm really not a "told you so" kind of guy, and I'm just being jovial here, but it turns out I was right. It *was* an internal scalability issue after all! =)
Last I checked, a Alias|Wavefront Maya license runs for around $7000. And yet, you can download the software for free on their site (only limitation is that it renders with a watermark). How come I don't see any pirated versions of Maya on Torrent sites?
For those of you who don't know, Maya is what is used to make CG effects in films like Star Wars.
You see, I don't agree with you in any bit. And I'm not going to quote your every sentence to prove you wrong point by point, because you are wrong ideologically.
Copyrights weren't created so people could selectively deny others from hearing your oh so precious jingle. They were created so that if you came up with a clever jingle, your neighbour couldn't just go ahead and use it to make money behind your back (or in your face).
Now you think it is wrong to steal whether you are an individual or a corporation, that's fine to think. But what is considered to be stealing? That's the critical part where you have been brainwashed, either because you just didn't take time to think for yourself, or because you are siding with the corporations with the capitalist belief that you should be making money off of everything you own.
It comes down to basic human dynamics here, fuck the law, because you know what: back in ancient greece, the equivalent of our times' going bankrupt was becoming a slave. A hardcore real ass slave. That's what their legal system dictated back then. It doesn't anymore.
Stealing is bad, sure, but in my opinion, that term can only be applied when you create an idea, and I go ahead and shout your idea louder than you to make money off of it. Stealing is not related to the people who hear you shout despite what all these corporations want you to believe, and that's the crux of the matter with 'Intellectual Property'.
It doesn't cost Adobe or Microsoft anything (physically) when a copy of their software is pirated over the internet. It only costs them in 'projected' revenues. This is where the capitalist pig slight of hand comes in: would they have bought the software, or would they have not bought the software? Corporations and business men would love to argue it's revenue lost because we would have bought the software. I fundamentally disagree, I say that unless I am a business making profit out of the software, it is completely irrelevant whether I have your software or not, since you're not losing money by my having it and I'm certainly not making money by having it.
You say "let them download GIMP" from your little tower of indifference. Deep down, you don't really care at all about these people, so really, it makes no difference if they use GIMP or Photoshop - I don't think you're even spiteful enough to want them to use substandard software... all you want is the money in your pocket. And your flat logic dictates that if they get Photoshop, you're losing money.
The real sad thing, is that giant corporations fight battles in court over these disputes, with billions at stake. Case in example: AMD and Intel had a court ruling that allows anyone to cleanroom reverse engineer chips. That's tantamount to stealing in my books. But courts ruled it was ok, and now we have AMD making Intel clones perfectly legally. It's not a case of Morals here, as they come from The Bible (which I'm sure deep down is your justification for all of this), it's a case of cut throat business tactics, and guess what: corporations just realized that consumers don't have enough money to fight back.
So either you're a complacent idiot, or you're one of them. Which is it?
And to go in a full circle and return to China, Russia and other countries which actively support piracy: that all goes double for them. They could have a thriving local market in locally-produced software, music and movies. A Russian or Chinese family who can't pay 50$ on HL2 or Doom3, could have paid 5$ for a locally produced game with cheap local programmers and artists. Providing jobs and taxes to their own country. But instead they all pirate Doom 3 and HL2, and that market never even started.
Your assessment of the situation is completely flawed: the problem in Russia is not that people are downloading software for free, it's that organized crime mobs are reselling the software for NOT free. Why do you think Microsoft has the whole "Authentic Logo" program? It's not because end users feel 'dirty' when they use software that doesn't have a hologram on it, it's because they want everyone to be able to identify whether or not a CD they're buying actually came from Microsoft, or from some joint in bulgaria where they actually stamp CDs (as opposed to burning them).
Aside that point, if the economy has no money in it, creating software is not going to inject anything into the cycle, as you somehow imply. Software is a tertiary sector activity. It can't create wealth out of air, unless they export the software, in which case the fact that software is being pirated locally makes no difference.
Man, how can you say such crazy things. You're on slashdot for crying out loud. The whole debate here is that people shouldn't have to pay for *any* software. That you should use OpenOffice. And people already do: when governments such as Brazil's find that Microsoft is overpriced, they say to hell with it and switch to linux.
The same applies to music or movies. Everyone bemoans about how independent labels and artists are better, and how the MPAA and RIAA just rehash the exact same crap that sold before. But everyone goes and downloads Britney Spears and N'Sync and Eminem and god knows what other corporate-blessed crap on P2P
You fit exactly my statement from before... You've even begun thinking like a corporation: how does downloading Spears (which I certainly don't do) harm my 'consuming' other more palatable music? Are you going by the square and mathematical thinking that every household buys 4.7 albums a month, and that my downloading Britney Spears somehow is reducing my actual amount of purchases, and this in turn hurts RIAA? Bullshit. We don't owe you any percentage from our houseold income as you imply we do. You don't realize how fucked up your little point of view is, do you?
And don't spread your horeseshit about how China and Russia could have an actively thriving community, the economy in Russia is in a state of disarray at the moment, some people are barely making end's meet. Russia is *not* a market, if the RIAA could somehow enforce russians to buy, they would problably get $50 of sales total out of that country... How can you not see the absurdity!!? It's like if starbucks opened up shop in Mogadishu, Somalia with starving people on the street, and somehow _expected_ there to be sales. You can't except there to be anything. So don't expect that Russia OWES YOU FUCKING MONEY. Get off your little corporate high horse that makes you think you have a fantastic product, and that the market MUST buy it.
The MPAA has hit the end of the road, and they're on a witch hunt to save their status-quo. The fucking problem is not so much rooted in these people who steal who should be sued sensless for stealing, it's rooted in the fact that Corporate America has gotten fat and greedy, and is now using 'below the belt' tactics to obtain what is 'duefully theirs'. It's a problem because America is slowly going down the hill of being industrious towards (quite ironically) the plain of being leechers themselves.
I download software *all* the time. Do I feel guilty? Absolutely not. Why? Because I'm professional in IT, and to this day I have never used software professionally (i.e. made a profit off of it) without buying it. But then again, I've never bought software that I haven't used before.
Torrent sites, are an unfortunate side effect of the grass fuckers in Hollywood, and big corporations, who think that squeezing every cent of profit out of The Consummer is the only thing that's worth a damn. Most of these people that download photoshop for free are kids in their basements, people who would not buy the software in any case. But business men and lawyers love to add those pretty numbers up and project what should have been theirs but is now 'lost' because of these nefarious social deviants... and they oh so love to make up all that lost money by suing people... because, suing after all, is the American way (oh, aren't we so proud of that).
Fuck you all who hide behind the pretense that it's wrong to steal while simultaneously and implicitly condoning this destructive corporate behaviour. You're selling your souls to Big Brother in little chunks of 8 hours in exchange for commercial blocked prime time "must see tv" crapfests all the meanwhile cheering along for America's moral saviour, the almighty MPAA/RIAA.
Hipocrisy really has no limit.
I really do hope Loki succeeds, in fact, I'm on my way to donate right now. Thanks for convincing me Anyonmous Coward.
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Path b) you don't die. The odds that you don't are really high. So why the fuck take a precaution?
You routinely choose path A) by wearing a seat belt. I don't see that the situation is any different.
My statement is that every reading taken out in the field points to the fact that there is increase in temperature. While the opposition argues that this is just cyclical, or it's normal, or something of the sort. They don't really argue with the numbers, they just say "oh, it's a dry spell, it'll pass over, you're making a big deal out of nothing".
As for solutions, it's quite simple: have tax on mpg. And ban mpg's below a certain rate (basically force the industry to move away from gasoline guzzling SUV's to more friendly hybrid versions - Ford already has them in production). Build renewable energy power plants asap (which might cost more than coal plants say).
The solutions are only limited by the cries of fury that will come out of the americans who will not tolerate "their freedom of choosing-whatever-the-hell-they-want" being violated. Don't roll your eyes: I can so see people saying "who are you to say I can't drive my SUV, I *bought* it!".
As for India and China, those are entirely different ball games. Their problem is not quality, it's quantity. And quite frankly, I really doubt anyone in China will protest if the government were to impose emission quotas.
India, that's a different topic, and I frankly don't know... I'm kinda worried about the situation there, because it is probably the only place where what you say about the economy suffering is legit... since they are so third world in a sense.
Here we are faced with a situation where every single shread of evidence points to the fact that there is global warming, and still you are being skeptical about it.
Being skeptical is being mascaraded in the streets as a 'scientific trait of character', but in fact it is nothing of the sort: who is being skeptical, what does being skeptical mean? It means: not stopping current trends of production, and only industry lobbyists are being skeptical.
Sure we can be skeptical about the theories from a scientific standpoint, but that shouldn't mean inaction. It should mean stopping and assessing. Since we do not have the luxury to stop everything and see if things are going to get better, we have *no other option* but to take these theories as true.
It comes down to plain and simple risk analysis, one theory says current trends will lead us to irreversible damage, and that we must stop now, while another theory says that it might not, and stopping now will do... what? hurt the economy a bit? In any case, it is clear that reducing emissions is not going to do irreversible damage to the economy.
*Anyone* who argues the second theory is sound should be shot... IMO.
The whole point of "through me" connections is that the NATed box and the recipient box are on the same internal network.
How old are you? Your tone of voice and lack of understanding of networks is highly indicative that you are a freshman that thinks they got the whole world figured out.
So what if a box behind a nat is forwarding even two conversations on LAN. It's probably going to use up .5% CPU, and the LAN traffic won't increase or decrease since it's arleady on a LAN.
Your point?
Generally speaking, end users are at the very bottom of a long hierarchy of ISPs and pipes. For example: UUNET -> AT&T -> Your local ISP -> You. As such, generally speaking, you are a leaf on a very large tree that may span several classes of IP networks. If a peer were to be used as a super node, it would mean that the data send from A to C would travel like this: A -> ISP -> AT&T -> UUNET -> Verizon -> Bell -> ISP -> B -> ISP -> Bell -> Verizon -> SomeOtherCarrier -> SomeOtherLocal -> ISP -> C.
It makes no sense since in all likelyhood, UUNET, Verizon and SomeOtherCarrier are all on the same backbone, one or two hops away from each other.
It only makes sense in a LAN situation, like in Campus setups where there are nodes that are 'above' other nodes hierarchically: like if someone has inbound Internet over one box and distributes the connection to his dorm house connected to 8 other computers.
And aside from that, Skype coms are encrypted. No third party software can intercept a properly encrypted message. That's the whole point of PKI, to avoid man in the middles.
And I didn't know about Penrose, I will have to investigate.
Thanks!
Being able to re-create life from dead things does not mean making them alive again... it just means you create a new life from the remains (inert) of another life form. Let's not get into "Pet Cemetary" like arguments here =)
IMHO, abiogenesis is inevitably possible. But I also think that that raises another point which you did not:
What is life worth if it can actually be created from inert matter? My personal belief is that life isn't actually worth that much, but the consciousness that it implements is priceless. I also happen to think that life is not the only medium possible for consciousness, and that there *has* to be conscious systems out there that are not based on living organisms. (Computers maybe in the distant future)
I also happen to think that consciousness is very fundamentally linked with quantum physics and how nothing is deterministic. But that's just really far out there, and people are going to call me crazy...
In fact recalls occur very often. Your point about media being damaged is the same as "warranty for parts and labor", reverse engineering is what causes recalls to happen. Two different things. So the analogy, while a bit weak, still holds.
Consoles apps (not consoles themselves*) are not vulnerable because they are not part of the windowing system, they output to the window via stdout/stdin/stderr.
As for X, I don't know the structure of the windowing system, but the basic problem is not that apps are broken into, the problem is that any window sitting on your desktop is assumed by the OS to be owned by YOU. So, it shouldn't be illegal for a different app owned by you to send it a window message (like typing "rm -rf /").
* A console app is any app like cp or mv that you can invoke from a command prompt. These apps are unaware of windows and its messaging structure and therefor not vulnerable. Cmd.exe itself is probably aware of the messaging system though, since I'm sure it actually implements its own console.
And I've known forever why 12 is a good number of eggs: because it's so divisible...
YOU, sir, are a genius!
In both cases though, there is a (granted morbid) curiosity that drives the populace to acquire (via tabloid or torrent) the said illicit pictures/source code.
When I say moderately legal, I mean that sure, maybe it's not nice... but if it were trivially illegal, we would be living in a police state.
At the end of the day, Valve made it's money, so get off the high horse... Half-Life 2 is *not* a lump of coal.
Besides, you are aside the point: I was pointing out that the 'lump of coal' comment was exagerated.
I also love the quote: Valve stood helplessly by watching its big Christmas blockbuster turn into a lump of coal
Ease up on the melodrama man, Valve is doing JUST FINE.
Your journal is archived, so I couldn't reply there, but buddy, you gotta calm down. There's something called a discussion, and then there's totalitarianism. Calling everyone who doesn't side with you 'treasonous' is kind of pushing the limits on what logical discussions are all about.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually didn't have the source anymore. But I'm sure they do now, since they're a responsible company, right? =)
At any rate, you are free to make your diatribes and I'll feel free to take them apart point by point.
So I guess that makes you a complete moron
Well first of all you have contradicted yourself by using the term "pirated",
Again you contradict yourself.
Nice argument. I'm atheist, and what I do remember hearing from the Bible didn't say anything about copyright (I'm fairly certain the Bible was written long before the conventional notion of copyright). So I guess that makes you a complete moron. (joke's on you: I said stealing was mentionned in the bible, not copyright).
Well you've gone beyond making my argument for me; the implications of this are even more hardline than my arguments. Thanks!
Yeah, I just love it how any chance you get, you pump up your moderator-based-ego instead of actually laying out some intelligent points while hiding behind a "this is slashdot, it's not an intelligent discussion anyways" shield. Ironically, the only reason slashdot might *not* be a place for intelligent discussions is because of people like you who instead of making points, go for ad-hominem remarks and "it doesn't count" defenses any time they can't actually articulate their thoughts coherently.
You haven't said a single thing on topic in this conversation. You just go for the good ol' "stealin's bad... if you disagree, WELL YOU'RE A MORON" tactic. Good for you buddy. Do you feel more intelligent today?
My point is that Law != justice/moral/ethic. Law is determined by the powers of the time. In our times, the corporations.
Whether or not their revenue projections are inflated (as you point out, a significant portion of the offenders may simply have chosen not to use the software/media if they could not pirate it) is not material. Allow me to turn your argument around: if someone is obtaining an unauthorized copy of a work (be it software, movie, etc.) and not using it for profit, then presumably they suffer no damages if that work is prohibited to them. You do not have a 1st Amendment right to duplicate another person's work (that's why the Constitution explicitely allows for patents and copyrights, and grants Congress [blah blah]...
My point isn't either that it's ethically correct to steal, or that we should condone it. My point is that it's a sharade, a hoax, an illusion that you are buying into to believe that these companies would have been making profit. It's a lie.
Again, right aside the point. You heard of Alias|Wavefront? They make Maya. Maya sells for $7000. You can also download Maya on their site for free. How does that work, have you ever thought? It works because the business unit at Maya isn't lazy. It works because when they project revenues, and plan for expenditures, they don't have an extra line in their spreadsheet that reads "expecting 4 million in revenue from 18-24 year old college students". No, they don't play that sort of wishful thinking, instead, they go and make sound business decisions and realize that in order to be profitable, they need to cut costs, make better software, raise license prices etc. etc.
What's different from the MPAA here? Do you *still* not see?
The MPAA says: "fuck this planning stuff, let's just go and sue". They don't ever think about cutting costs, increasing quality or, god forbid, changing business models (of pay-per-watch). No, that would be crazy talk. How dare we push the idea that maybe the market isn't performing that well after all (what with the world economy being in one of the most severe recessions since the oil crisis of '79). The Market OWES them money. They want THEIR money.
That's the mentality. Sure, go ahead, sue Loki torrent. My question to you is: what are you achieving? What really, are you achieving? Are you squarely saying that someone is going to make *more* money because of it?
I'm saying that no, and I'm saying that supporting actions like these is only making the industry more lazy.
AMD and Intel had a court ruling that allows anyone to cleanroom reverse engineer chips. That's tantamount to stealing in my books.
Again you contradict yourself. Regardless, chip technology is not protected by copyright, it is protected by patents and trade secrets, and therefore is irrelevant to a discussion of copyright.
No, I don't contradict myself. I reinforce the concept that I pointed out in the beginning: laws are made by the ruling class of the times. A perfect proof is that when Corporations decide it's good, stealing becomes legal.
Ahh. Man, look. I'm really not a "told you so" kind of guy, and I'm just being jovial here, but it turns out I was right. It *was* an internal scalability issue after all! =)
For those of you who don't know, Maya is what is used to make CG effects in films like Star Wars.
Copyrights weren't created so people could selectively deny others from hearing your oh so precious jingle. They were created so that if you came up with a clever jingle, your neighbour couldn't just go ahead and use it to make money behind your back (or in your face).
Now you think it is wrong to steal whether you are an individual or a corporation, that's fine to think. But what is considered to be stealing? That's the critical part where you have been brainwashed, either because you just didn't take time to think for yourself, or because you are siding with the corporations with the capitalist belief that you should be making money off of everything you own.
It comes down to basic human dynamics here, fuck the law, because you know what: back in ancient greece, the equivalent of our times' going bankrupt was becoming a slave. A hardcore real ass slave. That's what their legal system dictated back then. It doesn't anymore.
Stealing is bad, sure, but in my opinion, that term can only be applied when you create an idea, and I go ahead and shout your idea louder than you to make money off of it. Stealing is not related to the people who hear you shout despite what all these corporations want you to believe, and that's the crux of the matter with 'Intellectual Property'.
It doesn't cost Adobe or Microsoft anything (physically) when a copy of their software is pirated over the internet. It only costs them in 'projected' revenues. This is where the capitalist pig slight of hand comes in: would they have bought the software, or would they have not bought the software? Corporations and business men would love to argue it's revenue lost because we would have bought the software. I fundamentally disagree, I say that unless I am a business making profit out of the software, it is completely irrelevant whether I have your software or not, since you're not losing money by my having it and I'm certainly not making money by having it.
You say "let them download GIMP" from your little tower of indifference. Deep down, you don't really care at all about these people, so really, it makes no difference if they use GIMP or Photoshop - I don't think you're even spiteful enough to want them to use substandard software... all you want is the money in your pocket. And your flat logic dictates that if they get Photoshop, you're losing money.
The real sad thing, is that giant corporations fight battles in court over these disputes, with billions at stake. Case in example: AMD and Intel had a court ruling that allows anyone to cleanroom reverse engineer chips. That's tantamount to stealing in my books. But courts ruled it was ok, and now we have AMD making Intel clones perfectly legally. It's not a case of Morals here, as they come from The Bible (which I'm sure deep down is your justification for all of this), it's a case of cut throat business tactics, and guess what: corporations just realized that consumers don't have enough money to fight back.
So either you're a complacent idiot, or you're one of them. Which is it?
Your assessment of the situation is completely flawed: the problem in Russia is not that people are downloading software for free, it's that organized crime mobs are reselling the software for NOT free. Why do you think Microsoft has the whole "Authentic Logo" program? It's not because end users feel 'dirty' when they use software that doesn't have a hologram on it, it's because they want everyone to be able to identify whether or not a CD they're buying actually came from Microsoft, or from some joint in bulgaria where they actually stamp CDs (as opposed to burning them).
Aside that point, if the economy has no money in it, creating software is not going to inject anything into the cycle, as you somehow imply. Software is a tertiary sector activity. It can't create wealth out of air, unless they export the software, in which case the fact that software is being pirated locally makes no difference.
The same applies to music or movies. Everyone bemoans about how independent labels and artists are better, and how the MPAA and RIAA just rehash the exact same crap that sold before. But everyone goes and downloads Britney Spears and N'Sync and Eminem and god knows what other corporate-blessed crap on P2P
You fit exactly my statement from before... You've even begun thinking like a corporation: how does downloading Spears (which I certainly don't do) harm my 'consuming' other more palatable music? Are you going by the square and mathematical thinking that every household buys 4.7 albums a month, and that my downloading Britney Spears somehow is reducing my actual amount of purchases, and this in turn hurts RIAA? Bullshit. We don't owe you any percentage from our houseold income as you imply we do. You don't realize how fucked up your little point of view is, do you?
And don't spread your horeseshit about how China and Russia could have an actively thriving community, the economy in Russia is in a state of disarray at the moment, some people are barely making end's meet. Russia is *not* a market, if the RIAA could somehow enforce russians to buy, they would problably get $50 of sales total out of that country... How can you not see the absurdity!!? It's like if starbucks opened up shop in Mogadishu, Somalia with starving people on the street, and somehow _expected_ there to be sales. You can't except there to be anything. So don't expect that Russia OWES YOU FUCKING MONEY. Get off your little corporate high horse that makes you think you have a fantastic product, and that the market MUST buy it.
Let me tell you what's wrong: it's called waving a dead chinken.
The MPAA has hit the end of the road, and they're on a witch hunt to save their status-quo. The fucking problem is not so much rooted in these people who steal who should be sued sensless for stealing, it's rooted in the fact that Corporate America has gotten fat and greedy, and is now using 'below the belt' tactics to obtain what is 'duefully theirs'. It's a problem because America is slowly going down the hill of being industrious towards (quite ironically) the plain of being leechers themselves.
I download software *all* the time. Do I feel guilty? Absolutely not. Why? Because I'm professional in IT, and to this day I have never used software professionally (i.e. made a profit off of it) without buying it. But then again, I've never bought software that I haven't used before.
Torrent sites, are an unfortunate side effect of the grass fuckers in Hollywood, and big corporations, who think that squeezing every cent of profit out of The Consummer is the only thing that's worth a damn. Most of these people that download photoshop for free are kids in their basements, people who would not buy the software in any case. But business men and lawyers love to add those pretty numbers up and project what should have been theirs but is now 'lost' because of these nefarious social deviants... and they oh so love to make up all that lost money by suing people... because, suing after all, is the American way (oh, aren't we so proud of that).
Fuck you all who hide behind the pretense that it's wrong to steal while simultaneously and implicitly condoning this destructive corporate behaviour. You're selling your souls to Big Brother in little chunks of 8 hours in exchange for commercial blocked prime time "must see tv" crapfests all the meanwhile cheering along for America's moral saviour, the almighty MPAA/RIAA.
Hipocrisy really has no limit.
I really do hope Loki succeeds, in fact, I'm on my way to donate right now. Thanks for convincing me Anyonmous Coward.