Eh... seems to me he was saying "tain't my job to feed dem fools." But I understand the temptation to construct a straw man of another's argument, it's much easier to foist your own upon the unsuspecting reader that way.
Computer science is grand... too bad it attracts such a large population of pompous blowhards (it's nice that they take the time to talk to us unwashed masses here on/. every once in a while). Come to think of it, this could probably be said of the vast majority of academia.
I don't agree with your model, because I think with the sort of minimal regulation you propose, you will get inefficiencies in the market resulting from things like fraud (from securities fraud and insider trading to outright scams like pyramid schemes) or even organised crime.
This can be generalized as the opinion that order cannot be maintained without a central coercive authority, and the debate over it's veracity is complex and ongoing. The assumption that fraud, organized crime, and disorder will necessarily result, with greater frequency and severity than under a traditional system, if the only regulations are private contracts is a difficult one to prove. If you are interested in really discussing the subject, which requires quite a bit of effort, this is probably not the best forum.
I agree that if you're going to allow insider trading, securities fraud, and various scams, it's not inconsistent to allow copyright infringement also.
This is almost a straw man. My original locus of debate was limited to copyright; insider trading, securities fraud, scamming, and other unethical practices were not included. To expand that locus appropriately would require shifting the debate to whether or not a central coercive authority is necessary for stability and prosperity. As previously mentioned, this is a completely different and significantly larger can of worms.
To summarize, I am an anarcho-capitalist and you are not, and our debate is shifting to this fundamental difference of ours.
Do you believe that there should be laws against knowingly trafficking in stolen goods, for example ?
No, I find them redundant. A stolen good has, by definition, not had it's ownership transferred. If someone approaches you with proof that a good you have obtained was stolen from them, then in reality it is still their property to which they are entitled. The complexity required to resolve such situations will vary, but this is the gist of it. Note that I am talking about physical goods here. It is also worth noting that I believe that order can be maintained without laws as we are traditionally accustomed to them.
I think the victim's property rights trump the rights of someone to trade with criminals.
As I've hopefully made evident, I agree with you in this regard.
Allowing the sale of stolen goods creates inefficiencies in the market (because the dishonest merchant can undercut the honest merchant) and it rewards criminals.
While I do not support the sale of stolen goods, I do not believe in creating government to protect market efficiency.
Likewise, I don't see a compelling reason to allow you to be the beneficiary of an illegaly broken contract. The only "right" you gain by permission to do this is the "right" to interfere with and undermine the market.
Than you and I have different philosophys about the rights of humans. I firmly believe that the right to be free from coercion is an inalienable one. Disallowing contributory contract infringement violates this right, and is reason enough for me to disapprove of such a policy. In a nutshell, my perspective is not that you gain any rights, but that you don't lose any. Furthermore, "interfering with the market" is semantically null in a free market unless attributed to coercive agents. It also is not clear whether contributory infringement undermines the market, and the effect it has would likely vary considerably from case to case.
I think that "right" is trumped by the right of the producer to be paid according to what the market will bear.
Under my model, the producer will still be paid according to what the market will bear. The market will simply be different. The typical conclusion that my market would lead to a dearth of intangibles strikes me as less likely than humans simply adapting to the conditions, but this is not a scientific evaluation.
I'd argue that the downloaders are co-conspirators if they know that they are contributing to a contract infringment. But my belief is that the uploaders are the ones who should be hit hardest.
I'd like to clarify what we arguing about: is this a discussion of the current legality of music downloading, or how things ought to be? If the former, music downloading is absolutely illegal. I assumed the latter, however, and my perspective is that of the anarcho capitalist. You cannot violate a contract you didn't agree to without a central coercive authority calling the shots.
Even if they are not party to the contract (that is, they download from someone who violated the contract), they still bear heavy liability for contributory infringment, and interfering with legitimate business transactions (much like securities fraud where abuse of information can undermine fair trade)
I staunchly do not believe in contributory infringement. This is a legal construct, not a corollary of my "intrinsic rights," the rights from which I believe all other rights are (or rather, should be) derived from. Our current legal system recognizes it, and it is a fundamental aspect of Copyright law, but I don't agree with it.
Do you believe in the right to form contractual agreements ?
Yes, but I don't see that as an instrinsic right. The right of people to form mutual agreements is a corollary of their right to be free from coercion.
In other words, would it be reasonable to distribute music in a way that used contract law, much like EULAs ?
Yes, assuming that contract law constitutes two or more people staking their reputation on adhering to their ends of the bargain, and nothing more. However, this approach is unlikely to succeed in the traditional sense.
I believe the right to control distribution follows from the right of consenting parties to form contractual agreements
I don't.
The bits on my harddrive are bits that I own, in the sense that I control what can and cannot be done with that particular set of bits (not that particular configuration of bits, just the bits sitting on my disk). If that file is a program which spews forth an EULA on start up, I am not bound by it because the bits on my drive are my bits. They obey me, not vice versa.
If a creator wants to impose restrictions on their creation, they have to get you to agree to those restrictions before you obtain a copy of their work. If somebody breaks their EULA and makes a copyrighted work available for download, the downloaders are not liable for contract infringement, the provider is.
If you don't like this idea, you could establish a central authority of coercion, a copyright registry, and threaten violators of your "right."
I don't think I clearly understand the rest of your post, hence I'm not going to respond to what is probably a misrepresentation of your position.
Think if Microsoft owned a "news for nerds"-type tech site that was always posting anti-Linux articles with the same bizarre slant Slashdot has. You'd be up in arms.
I'm terminating this thread here. You are an arrogant cretin for dictating my behavior under a hypothetical circumstance.
It is worth noting that Copyright is not an intrinsic right, but rather, a government granted privilege. Arguments which focus on how "piracy" is a violation of an author's rights are typically trying to push their point via pathos persuasion (i.e. invoking pity or sympathy). These are colloquially referred to as "crap arguments."
Of course, the definition of "intrinsic rights" is debatable; I believe they include the right to private property and freedom from coercion, and nothing else.
You don't find it a bit twisted that VA Linux owns a site called Slashdot that posts articles that bashes competitors and calls it "tech news?"
No, although I do find debate-by-interrogation to be a little perverse. I doubt you'd ever be happy with Slashdot's anti-MS tint, even if the site was funded by CmdrTaco's lottery winnings. The connection between Slashdot and OSDN is no secret, and if that perturbs you there are undoubtedly greener pastures over yon fence. Slashdot is mostly a community deal, and you're outnumbered. Deal.
Imagine the outcry if some other company owned a site that called itself a news site and posted articles negative toward Linux. We'd hear endless rants from the zealots about how it's "biased."
In essence, stupid people would do stupid stuff. No surprise there. Somewhat surprising that you don't see the connection between these zealots and Slashdot iconoclasts such as your self.
On a more serious note, I've read your comments and journal, and I'm convinced that you've nailed the issue dead on. Slashdot is horrible, and I don't think there's any hope for it (at least, I got better things to do than try to fix it). I advise seeking an alternate news source for your daily fix.
The marketting points look reasonable enough to me, OpenOffice does not do everything that Word or Office does, it does provide a clone of the core functionality. But what happened to open source being innovation and Microsoft being only able to copy? Is there anything that OpenOffice does that is new?
We want people to use this stuff.
When it comes to Microsoft the editorial line at VA Linux is even less objective than Matt Drudge.
Ok, so in general, Slashdot is anti-Microsoft. What, precisely, is your point?
Is this the most important tech story going on in the world? I don't think so.
I thought the previously posted story on the X-43A
was the most important story in tech today. But once again, what's your point? Slashdot's slogan isn't "The One Best Tech Story of the Day."
I still think the Wired story on how to get casual sex via bluetooth was more interesting. Oh and that virginity auction in the UK. Or how about Boeing being about to launch high speed internet service via WiFi on planes next month?
On the one hand, it's a shame Slashdot isn't finely tuned to your tastes. On the other, you could have chanced a submission of those stories. And on the gripping hand, you are clearly aware that Slashdot isn't the end-all be-all of internet news, so there isn't much of a point in getting your undies in a bunch if it isn't finely tuned to your tastes.
Sure the latest discovery of some perfidious Microsoft marketting litterature was desperately more important and interesting. Does it tell us anything new we did not know before?
I hardly think an anti-microsoft sentiment is dominating all other aspects of Slashdot. Of the 14 headlines currently on my Slashdot homepage, only 1 of them is about Microsoft. It got there
because a member of the Slashdot community submitted it, and the editors thought they might be interested (gauging by the discussion that followed, they were). You didn't like it? Cry me a river.
No, NO, NO! Stop it! Stop regulating everything into oblivion! I'm sick of this fucking shit! What the hell ever happened to freedom? It's going from a nominal joke to a complete and utter mockery of its former self. Regulating software... I feel like I'm going to implode.
We still can't predict the motherfucking weather, purely a natural phenomenom (yeah, I know, but we're fucking it up so bad that there's even global warming on mars now), and yet we think we can figure out both how we ought to control humans and effective methods for exercising that control.
Time and time again, throughout the course of history, the greatest atrocities have been comitted by governing bodies. Government authority has made possible the persecution and destruction of more peoples than any other force, and we're willing to keep giving it power so that we can have better software. Our world must be teetering on the brink of collapse because of our fucked up software! WE MUST TAKE ACTION!
Even if you can somehow prove that regulating software is a good thing (and I'm disgusted by the fact that you feel like you have the right to impose that regulation), you still have to implement that regulation. Nobody seems to fucking notice that a good idea with a shitty implementation does nothing but fuck shit up, not to mention that giving people power over people attracts power whores and abusers.
"Oh, but if we made sure that we had a good ruler, we wouldn't have to worry." This is the brillant solution I hear, in various forms, over and over again. I call it the Fucking Retarded Benevolent King Theory, since the idea seems to be to keep giving power to the government and expecting that in the battle for power, professionals won't beat amateurs, and we'll get good and kindly rulers. Never mind the fact that, in addition to the overwhelming lack of participation (here in the states) of citizens in voting we had a huge debachle over a possibly stolen election last time! Why am I the only one who is fucking terrified of this?
And have you ever stopped to consider exactly what the fuck it takes to pass a regulation (assuming a working democracy)? We didn't get a mandate for safety in cars until most people refused to drive anything that wasn't safe.
BULLSHIT that we needed a law for that. And take something like prohibition, where you start to wonder about our "democracy." "Most" people decide that they don't want alcohol, so they outlaw it, only to create an immense and violent black market and repeal it years later.
I think the problem is that people don't know shit about the way free markets really work, and since it's in the best interests of the selfish agents which create/maintain/are-employed-by government to grow their institution, they're not keen on helping. In a free market, there is a profit to be made by establishing a firm to rate the safety of vehicles. Charge manufacturers for the privilege of safety testing so that they can get the wider safety-conscious market. What are the problems with this model? Well:
Testing agencies could be bought off by manufacturers
Manufacturers could lie about their safeness
People might not demand safe cars, thus eliminating the market for safety boards
Here's the motherfucking KICKER, though: all these problems apply to government agencies as well (and are more likely to, since a free market has competition and culls slackers rather rapidly)! Anybody who thinks that government bribery doesn't happen has their head so far up their ass it must be lodged in their aorta. And a manufacturer could lie about their safeness, but it would brew up a storm of shit for them. Same in a free market, and besides that, people would verify that a car was indeed approved as safe by checking the safety board's website. And if people were apathetic to the safety of automobiles, we wouldn't have the
RH, btw, does not guarantee anything like security updates for Fedora.
I once heard somebody say that Source Code is Free Speech. See, if RedHat decides that it's worth all that bad face to have the fun of dropping security updates, somebody else can (and likely will) provide them.
But why the hell would they stop security updates? There's no guarantee for all of Free Software that it won't suck, but it generally doesn't. Magic, I suppose. I don't see why security updates will disappear.
Apart from freedom, most community distros don't guarantee anything. If you want a guarantee, pay for it.
Actually, community support -- IRC, newsgroups -- is excellent, compared to some monkey sitting in a cubicle answering phones.
Yeah, I hate when I call for tech support and I get a friggin' monkey. That's why I only give repeat business to companies that have the sense to employ knowledgeable homo sapiens for tech support. But geez, imagine that if, by decree of the heavens, all tech support personell were replaced by monkeys? That would really suck. It's a good thing that's not the way the world works.
they are going to stop updating RH9 in April.
Bastards. Why don't they just extend the support contracts? That would be the sensible thing to do. It would get rid of all that extra cash they have by perpetuating an unsupportable business model. Geez, suits just don't get it.
What if...
Oh shut the fuck up! Do you realize that you can say "what if" about ANY distro and it will have just as much credibility as it would applied to Fedora? That is to say, quite close to NILL. Now go get me a weather forecast.
Well, that is all news to me. I've only been with emusic for a couple of months, when they became independently owned again. As I understand, emusic started out independent, got bought by Universal, and is now independent again. I avoided them while they were a Universal company as I had heard they were rather crummy (your experience confirms this). In my eyes, they are a completely different company now.
As for your suggested alternatives, Epitonic strikes me as what I call "pedantic indie," and I'm basing my evaluation completely on the fact that they don't have a Metal category but do have a Math Rock category. The iRate concept sounds interesting, but emusic already provides suggestions which, much to my amazement, have been incredibly useful. In the 2 months that I've been an emusic user, I've discovered 9 bands on recommendation that I really like, and the only reason that number isn't closer to 30 is because I can only download so many songs per month. As for iTunes, it has two fatal shortcomings: no Linux client and restricted files.
But thanks for the leads, if you got anything else you'd like to share, feel free to email me (this is getting a little bit off topic).
Wow, that does suck... although I'm going to be harsh here and tell you that failing to download a song you purchased strikes me as akin to flunking high school. I mean, how the...?
Thanks for the info, but unless a superior cost-competive online independent music distributor that provides unrestricted files happens to pop up, I'm sticking with emusic.
If you break a CD from the store, are they obligated to give you a new one?
No, but emusic.com keeps track of every song you've ever downloaded and allows you to redownload them as many times as you want for free. Very nice of them, wouldn't you say?
I wasn't aware that the law extends only to packaging, and I thank you for pointing out my erring. As for the thrust of your response:
Would you buy drugs with the side effects written only in cantonese? How about food? What if your allergic to nuts, can you read 'may contain nuts' in arabic? Cyrillic? Greek?
Obviously not. My stance is that I don't consider legislation requiring labeling to be in a specific language a reasonable solution to this problem. The market works well enough, and has the ability to satisfy various demands in various ways, whereas democratic law only determines the will of the majority and imposes it. I might buy an entertainment product written and advertised in a foreign language (I have done so before, and the import media market should prove that I'm not alone), but I am not willing to risk my life on a product I can't read. Most people won't. I'm relatively certain the 5 million citizens of Quebec wouldn't either.
A corollary of this is that medicine and food are likely to be prepared with French labeling. Entertainment products, on the other hand, probably aren't a life and death matter, and most people aren't that perturbed if their packaging is in a foreign language. If they were so perturbed, why not simply refuse to buy the product? It's a videogame, not food|clothing|shelter.
This concept boggles my brain. I don't have any contempt for the government of Quebec, but the fact that there are at least 2.5 million people (assuming a majority of Quebec citizens support the law) who think that a law requiring media/art to speak a certain language is reasonable scares me a wee bit. Am I alone in this? This runs somewhat parallel to the vehemence I observe here in the states toward the proliferation of Spanish; some people talk of legislating it out of existence. Stuff like this makes it difficult for me to have faith in humanity. It also reminds me that the source of 99.999% of all our woes stem not from bad policy or legislation or other societal mechanisms which could be altered like any other piece of machinery, but from a vast majority of, IMHO, warped individuals.
Am I the only RedHat fan who not only thinks this is a good idea, but is relieved that they're finally doing it?
The business model for Aunt Tillie desktop Linux just isn't there for 3 reasons:
Linux isn't easy and smooth enough for people who don't love the idea of Linux.
Linux doesn't have all the readily accessible functionality that normal people expect.
People who grok Linux are more inclined to obtain it for free than not.
I envision the first two points becoming invalid within a couple of years, but the last one isn't likely to change. Since the vast majority of desktop Linux users are also free riding (nothing wrong with that, it's what I do), making money off of the Linux desktop is just a dangerous game to be playing.
RedHat didn't sell us out. The Fedora Project is The Right Thing. If you don't know what that is, follow that link and don't return until you grok in fullness.
The average consumer doesn't like Windows, but they like it more than anything else because of what it can do. Linux is technically superior, of this I am sure, but until we can get the average consumer to like it more than Windows, we're not gonna sell it to them. RedHat's move to maintain profitability by pushing Enterprise Linux, coupled with the open development of the Fedora Project, is only going to accelerate this process by combining the best aspects of a profitable corporation and a loosely knit coalition of hackers.
Remember, we are striving for world domination here...
To the first point, I do not feel qualified to pass judgement, but I will assert that the statement rang of disdain, not thoughtful advice. I would agree with the second.
Your third point makes little sense: if not mutually exclusive, why would a separation exist? While the prototypical conservative and libertarian generally see eye to eye on matters of economic government, they are polar opposites on matters of personal government, stemming from their fundamentally different views on the nature of government (the former considering it a necessary good, the latter considering it at best a necessary evil, and possibly unnecessary). It is the different philosophies with which these parties approach government that separates them, not their individual opinions on particular issues. They are mutually exclusive in this regard.
Environmental policy, possibly synonymous with "resource management," is likely considered an economic issue for libertarians and conservatives, and thus best managed by the free market in their eyes. This article advocated the same position, and its parent website has analogous stances for healthcare and education. Assuming these are all economic matters, then the site's proponents could be secretly conservative or libertarian (secret because they publicly state that they are not affiliated with any party). There isn't sufficient information to tell which one, however, and they cannot be both. Lacking opinions on matters of personal government and being self-consistent throughout, the most that could be assumed about this organization is what it proclaims.
The only thing that addendum accomplished was indicating that you are not a conservative or a libertarian and you don't think much of those ideologies. As for my ad hominem attack, I wasn't aware I made one, and I'd appreciate being shown how to more effectively seek truth through honest discussion, which you could help to faciliate by pointing out my erring.
So your premise is to debunk the "politically charged" assertions of environmental groups with "scientific "evidence, but you cite a right-wing libertarian think tank? Do I detect a little "small town logging bias"?
"Libertarian" and "Right-Wing" are too completely different things, and if you wish to mock the evidence provided, consider providing some evidence of your own, rather than assuming that every reader considers libertarianism to be a Bad Thing. Veiled ad-hominem attacks are an impediment to intellectual progress, not to mention childish.
Your reasoning is fallacious. If the RIAA owned the webspace which hosted the student's program, and revoked his service because they didn't like the potential to share music, then it would not have been a violation of free speech. However, such is not the case. The RIAA invoked the _law_
to shutdown a website they didn't control.
If it was merely a contract issue, the student would be free to seek an alternate location to host his program, but the RIAA wants it to be illegal to run the program anywhere under any circumstances. That is, the RIAA wants the Government to shutdown a program which conflicts with their interests. If your previous definition of censorship is correct ("If you write an article critical of the government and the newspaper decides to publish it, the government can not come in and tell the paper to remove it"), then this is absolutely censorship.
I for one appreciate the contributions of the British (and everyone else) with all my heart. Anyone who attempts to start a pissing contest about who is sacrificing more in this war will receive a swift and brutal ass kicking from me.
And BTW, is anyone else interested in helping the low income people in thier community? Computers are a great place to start in helping out in your inner cities.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh... seems to me he was saying "tain't my job to feed dem fools." But I understand the temptation to construct a straw man of another's argument, it's much easier to foist your own upon the unsuspecting reader that way.
Computer science is grand... too bad it attracts such a large population of pompous blowhards (it's nice that they take the time to talk to us unwashed masses here on /. every once in a while). Come to think of it, this could probably be said of the vast majority of academia.
I don't agree with your model, because I think with the sort of minimal regulation you propose, you will get inefficiencies in the market resulting from things like fraud (from securities fraud and insider trading to outright scams like pyramid schemes) or even organised crime.
This can be generalized as the opinion that order cannot be maintained without a central coercive authority, and the debate over it's veracity is complex and ongoing. The assumption that fraud, organized crime, and disorder will necessarily result, with greater frequency and severity than under a traditional system, if the only regulations are private contracts is a difficult one to prove. If you are interested in really discussing the subject, which requires quite a bit of effort, this is probably not the best forum.
I agree that if you're going to allow insider trading, securities fraud, and various scams, it's not inconsistent to allow copyright infringement also.
This is almost a straw man. My original locus of debate was limited to copyright; insider trading, securities fraud, scamming, and other unethical practices were not included. To expand that locus appropriately would require shifting the debate to whether or not a central coercive authority is necessary for stability and prosperity. As previously mentioned, this is a completely different and significantly larger can of worms.
To summarize, I am an anarcho-capitalist and you are not, and our debate is shifting to this fundamental difference of ours.
Do you believe that there should be laws against knowingly trafficking in stolen goods, for example ?
No, I find them redundant. A stolen good has, by definition, not had it's ownership transferred. If someone approaches you with proof that a good you have obtained was stolen from them, then in reality it is still their property to which they are entitled. The complexity required to resolve such situations will vary, but this is the gist of it. Note that I am talking about physical goods here. It is also worth noting that I believe that order can be maintained without laws as we are traditionally accustomed to them.
I think the victim's property rights trump the rights of someone to trade with criminals.
As I've hopefully made evident, I agree with you in this regard.
Allowing the sale of stolen goods creates inefficiencies in the market (because the dishonest merchant can undercut the honest merchant) and it rewards criminals.
While I do not support the sale of stolen goods, I do not believe in creating government to protect market efficiency.
Likewise, I don't see a compelling reason to allow you to be the beneficiary of an illegaly broken contract. The only "right" you gain by permission to do this is the "right" to interfere with and undermine the market.
Than you and I have different philosophys about the rights of humans. I firmly believe that the right to be free from coercion is an inalienable one. Disallowing contributory contract infringement violates this right, and is reason enough for me to disapprove of such a policy. In a nutshell, my perspective is not that you gain any rights, but that you don't lose any. Furthermore, "interfering with the market" is semantically null in a free market unless attributed to coercive agents. It also is not clear whether contributory infringement undermines the market, and the effect it has would likely vary considerably from case to case.
I think that "right" is trumped by the right of the producer to be paid according to what the market will bear.
Under my model, the producer will still be paid according to what the market will bear. The market will simply be different. The typical conclusion that my market would lead to a dearth of intangibles strikes me as less likely than humans simply adapting to the conditions, but this is not a scientific evaluation.
I'd argue that the downloaders are co-conspirators if they know that they are contributing to a contract infringment. But my belief is that the uploaders are the ones who should be hit hardest.
I'd like to clarify what we arguing about: is this a discussion of the current legality of music downloading, or how things ought to be? If the former, music downloading is absolutely illegal. I assumed the latter, however, and my perspective is that of the anarcho capitalist. You cannot violate a contract you didn't agree to without a central coercive authority calling the shots.
Even if they are not party to the contract (that is, they download from someone who violated the contract), they still bear heavy liability for contributory infringment, and interfering with legitimate business transactions (much like securities fraud where abuse of information can undermine fair trade)
I staunchly do not believe in contributory infringement. This is a legal construct, not a corollary of my "intrinsic rights," the rights from which I believe all other rights are (or rather, should be) derived from. Our current legal system recognizes it, and it is a fundamental aspect of Copyright law, but I don't agree with it.
Do you believe in the right to form contractual agreements ?
Yes, but I don't see that as an instrinsic right. The right of people to form mutual agreements is a corollary of their right to be free from coercion.
In other words, would it be reasonable to distribute music in a way that used contract law, much like EULAs ?
Yes, assuming that contract law constitutes two or more people staking their reputation on adhering to their ends of the bargain, and nothing more. However, this approach is unlikely to succeed in the traditional sense.
I believe the right to control distribution follows from the right of consenting parties to form contractual agreements
I don't.
The bits on my harddrive are bits that I own, in the sense that I control what can and cannot be done with that particular set of bits (not that particular configuration of bits, just the bits sitting on my disk). If that file is a program which spews forth an EULA on start up, I am not bound by it because the bits on my drive are my bits. They obey me, not vice versa.
If a creator wants to impose restrictions on their creation, they have to get you to agree to those restrictions before you obtain a copy of their work. If somebody breaks their EULA and makes a copyrighted work available for download, the downloaders are not liable for contract infringement, the provider is.
If you don't like this idea, you could establish a central authority of coercion, a copyright registry, and threaten violators of your "right."
I don't think I clearly understand the rest of your post, hence I'm not going to respond to what is probably a misrepresentation of your position.
Think if Microsoft owned a "news for nerds"-type tech site that was always posting anti-Linux articles with the same bizarre slant Slashdot has. You'd be up in arms.
I'm terminating this thread here. You are an arrogant cretin for dictating my behavior under a hypothetical circumstance.
It is worth noting that Copyright is not an intrinsic right, but rather, a government granted privilege. Arguments which focus on how "piracy" is a violation of an author's rights are typically trying to push their point via pathos persuasion (i.e. invoking pity or sympathy). These are colloquially referred to as "crap arguments."
Of course, the definition of "intrinsic rights" is debatable; I believe they include the right to private property and freedom from coercion, and nothing else.
You don't find it a bit twisted that VA Linux owns a site called Slashdot that posts articles that bashes competitors and calls it "tech news?"
No, although I do find debate-by-interrogation to be a little perverse. I doubt you'd ever be happy with Slashdot's anti-MS tint, even if the site was funded by CmdrTaco's lottery winnings. The connection between Slashdot and OSDN is no secret, and if that perturbs you there are undoubtedly greener pastures over yon fence. Slashdot is mostly a community deal, and you're outnumbered. Deal.
Imagine the outcry if some other company owned a site that called itself a news site and posted articles negative toward Linux. We'd hear endless rants from the zealots about how it's "biased."
In essence, stupid people would do stupid stuff. No surprise there. Somewhat surprising that you don't see the connection between these zealots and Slashdot iconoclasts such as your self.
On a more serious note, I've read your comments and journal, and I'm convinced that you've nailed the issue dead on. Slashdot is horrible, and I don't think there's any hope for it (at least, I got better things to do than try to fix it). I advise seeking an alternate news source for your daily fix.
The marketting points look reasonable enough to me, OpenOffice does not do everything that Word or Office does, it does provide a clone of the core functionality. But what happened to open source being innovation and Microsoft being only able to copy? Is there anything that OpenOffice does that is new?
We want people to use this stuff.
When it comes to Microsoft the editorial line at VA Linux is even less objective than Matt Drudge.
Ok, so in general, Slashdot is anti-Microsoft. What, precisely, is your point?
Is this the most important tech story going on in the world? I don't think so.
I thought the previously posted story on the X-43A was the most important story in tech today. But once again, what's your point? Slashdot's slogan isn't "The One Best Tech Story of the Day."
I still think the Wired story on how to get casual sex via bluetooth was more interesting. Oh and that virginity auction in the UK. Or how about Boeing being about to launch high speed internet service via WiFi on planes next month?
On the one hand, it's a shame Slashdot isn't finely tuned to your tastes. On the other, you could have chanced a submission of those stories. And on the gripping hand, you are clearly aware that Slashdot isn't the end-all be-all of internet news, so there isn't much of a point in getting your undies in a bunch if it isn't finely tuned to your tastes.
Sure the latest discovery of some perfidious Microsoft marketting litterature was desperately more important and interesting. Does it tell us anything new we did not know before?
I hardly think an anti-microsoft sentiment is dominating all other aspects of Slashdot. Of the 14 headlines currently on my Slashdot homepage, only 1 of them is about Microsoft. It got there because a member of the Slashdot community submitted it, and the editors thought they might be interested (gauging by the discussion that followed, they were). You didn't like it? Cry me a river.
No, NO, NO! Stop it! Stop regulating everything into oblivion! I'm sick of this fucking shit! What the hell ever happened to freedom? It's going from a nominal joke to a complete and utter mockery of its former self. Regulating software... I feel like I'm going to implode.
We still can't predict the motherfucking weather, purely a natural phenomenom (yeah, I know, but we're fucking it up so bad that there's even global warming on mars now), and yet we think we can figure out both how we ought to control humans and effective methods for exercising that control.
Time and time again, throughout the course of history, the greatest atrocities have been comitted by governing bodies. Government authority has made possible the persecution and destruction of more peoples than any other force, and we're willing to keep giving it power so that we can have better software. Our world must be teetering on the brink of collapse because of our fucked up software! WE MUST TAKE ACTION!
Even if you can somehow prove that regulating software is a good thing (and I'm disgusted by the fact that you feel like you have the right to impose that regulation), you still have to implement that regulation. Nobody seems to fucking notice that a good idea with a shitty implementation does nothing but fuck shit up, not to mention that giving people power over people attracts power whores and abusers.
"Oh, but if we made sure that we had a good ruler, we wouldn't have to worry." This is the brillant solution I hear, in various forms, over and over again. I call it the Fucking Retarded Benevolent King Theory, since the idea seems to be to keep giving power to the government and expecting that in the battle for power, professionals won't beat amateurs, and we'll get good and kindly rulers. Never mind the fact that, in addition to the overwhelming lack of participation (here in the states) of citizens in voting we had a huge debachle over a possibly stolen election last time! Why am I the only one who is fucking terrified of this?
And have you ever stopped to consider exactly what the fuck it takes to pass a regulation (assuming a working democracy)? We didn't get a mandate for safety in cars until most people refused to drive anything that wasn't safe. BULLSHIT that we needed a law for that. And take something like prohibition, where you start to wonder about our "democracy." "Most" people decide that they don't want alcohol, so they outlaw it, only to create an immense and violent black market and repeal it years later.
I think the problem is that people don't know shit about the way free markets really work, and since it's in the best interests of the selfish agents which create/maintain/are-employed-by government to grow their institution, they're not keen on helping. In a free market, there is a profit to be made by establishing a firm to rate the safety of vehicles. Charge manufacturers for the privilege of safety testing so that they can get the wider safety-conscious market. What are the problems with this model? Well:
Here's the motherfucking KICKER, though: all these problems apply to government agencies as well (and are more likely to, since a free market has competition and culls slackers rather rapidly)! Anybody who thinks that government bribery doesn't happen has their head so far up their ass it must be lodged in their aorta. And a manufacturer could lie about their safeness, but it would brew up a storm of shit for them. Same in a free market, and besides that, people would verify that a car was indeed approved as safe by checking the safety board's website. And if people were apathetic to the safety of automobiles, we wouldn't have the
Your dragon style cannot compete with my phoenix style!
RH, btw, does not guarantee anything like security updates for Fedora.
I once heard somebody say that Source Code is Free Speech. See, if RedHat decides that it's worth all that bad face to have the fun of dropping security updates, somebody else can (and likely will) provide them.
But why the hell would they stop security updates? There's no guarantee for all of Free Software that it won't suck, but it generally doesn't. Magic, I suppose. I don't see why security updates will disappear.
Apart from freedom, most community distros don't guarantee anything. If you want a guarantee, pay for it.
Actually, community support -- IRC, newsgroups -- is excellent, compared to some monkey sitting in a cubicle answering phones.
Yeah, I hate when I call for tech support and I get a friggin' monkey. That's why I only give repeat business to companies that have the sense to employ knowledgeable homo sapiens for tech support. But geez, imagine that if, by decree of the heavens, all tech support personell were replaced by monkeys? That would really suck. It's a good thing that's not the way the world works.
they are going to stop updating RH9 in April.
Bastards. Why don't they just extend the support contracts? That would be the sensible thing to do. It would get rid of all that extra cash they have by perpetuating an unsupportable business model. Geez, suits just don't get it.
What if...
Oh shut the fuck up! Do you realize that you can say "what if" about ANY distro and it will have just as much credibility as it would applied to Fedora? That is to say, quite close to NILL. Now go get me a weather forecast.
Long story short...
Well, that is all news to me. I've only been with emusic for a couple of months, when they became independently owned again. As I understand, emusic started out independent, got bought by Universal, and is now independent again. I avoided them while they were a Universal company as I had heard they were rather crummy (your experience confirms this). In my eyes, they are a completely different company now.
As for your suggested alternatives, Epitonic strikes me as what I call "pedantic indie," and I'm basing my evaluation completely on the fact that they don't have a Metal category but do have a Math Rock category. The iRate concept sounds interesting, but emusic already provides suggestions which, much to my amazement, have been incredibly useful. In the 2 months that I've been an emusic user, I've discovered 9 bands on recommendation that I really like, and the only reason that number isn't closer to 30 is because I can only download so many songs per month. As for iTunes, it has two fatal shortcomings: no Linux client and restricted files.
But thanks for the leads, if you got anything else you'd like to share, feel free to email me (this is getting a little bit off topic).
Wow, that does suck... although I'm going to be harsh here and tell you that failing to download a song you purchased strikes me as akin to flunking high school. I mean, how the...?
Thanks for the info, but unless a superior cost-competive online independent music distributor that provides unrestricted files happens to pop up, I'm sticking with emusic.
If you break a CD from the store, are they obligated to give you a new one?
No, but emusic.com keeps track of every song you've ever downloaded and allows you to redownload them as many times as you want for free. Very nice of them, wouldn't you say?
I wasn't aware that the law extends only to packaging, and I thank you for pointing out my erring. As for the thrust of your response:
Would you buy drugs with the side effects written only in cantonese? How about food? What if your allergic to nuts, can you read 'may contain nuts' in arabic? Cyrillic? Greek?
Obviously not. My stance is that I don't consider legislation requiring labeling to be in a specific language a reasonable solution to this problem. The market works well enough, and has the ability to satisfy various demands in various ways, whereas democratic law only determines the will of the majority and imposes it. I might buy an entertainment product written and advertised in a foreign language (I have done so before, and the import media market should prove that I'm not alone), but I am not willing to risk my life on a product I can't read. Most people won't. I'm relatively certain the 5 million citizens of Quebec wouldn't either.
A corollary of this is that medicine and food are likely to be prepared with French labeling. Entertainment products, on the other hand, probably aren't a life and death matter, and most people aren't that perturbed if their packaging is in a foreign language. If they were so perturbed, why not simply refuse to buy the product? It's a videogame, not food|clothing|shelter.
This concept boggles my brain. I don't have any contempt for the government of Quebec, but the fact that there are at least 2.5 million people (assuming a majority of Quebec citizens support the law) who think that a law requiring media/art to speak a certain language is reasonable scares me a wee bit. Am I alone in this? This runs somewhat parallel to the vehemence I observe here in the states toward the proliferation of Spanish; some people talk of legislating it out of existence. Stuff like this makes it difficult for me to have faith in humanity. It also reminds me that the source of 99.999% of all our woes stem not from bad policy or legislation or other societal mechanisms which could be altered like any other piece of machinery, but from a vast majority of, IMHO, warped individuals.
Am I the only RedHat fan who not only thinks this is a good idea, but is relieved that they're finally doing it?
The business model for Aunt Tillie desktop Linux just isn't there for 3 reasons:
I envision the first two points becoming invalid within a couple of years, but the last one isn't likely to change. Since the vast majority of desktop Linux users are also free riding (nothing wrong with that, it's what I do), making money off of the Linux desktop is just a dangerous game to be playing.
RedHat didn't sell us out. The Fedora Project is The Right Thing. If you don't know what that is, follow that link and don't return until you grok in fullness.
The average consumer doesn't like Windows, but they like it more than anything else because of what it can do. Linux is technically superior, of this I am sure, but until we can get the average consumer to like it more than Windows, we're not gonna sell it to them. RedHat's move to maintain profitability by pushing Enterprise Linux, coupled with the open development of the Fedora Project, is only going to accelerate this process by combining the best aspects of a profitable corporation and a loosely knit coalition of hackers.
Remember, we are striving for world domination here...
To the first point, I do not feel qualified to pass judgement, but I will assert that the statement rang of disdain, not thoughtful advice. I would agree with the second.
Your third point makes little sense: if not mutually exclusive, why would a separation exist? While the prototypical conservative and libertarian generally see eye to eye on matters of economic government, they are polar opposites on matters of personal government, stemming from their fundamentally different views on the nature of government (the former considering it a necessary good, the latter considering it at best a necessary evil, and possibly unnecessary). It is the different philosophies with which these parties approach government that separates them, not their individual opinions on particular issues. They are mutually exclusive in this regard.
Environmental policy, possibly synonymous with "resource management," is likely considered an economic issue for libertarians and conservatives, and thus best managed by the free market in their eyes. This article advocated the same position, and its parent website has analogous stances for healthcare and education. Assuming these are all economic matters, then the site's proponents could be secretly conservative or libertarian (secret because they publicly state that they are not affiliated with any party). There isn't sufficient information to tell which one, however, and they cannot be both. Lacking opinions on matters of personal government and being self-consistent throughout, the most that could be assumed about this organization is what it proclaims.
The only thing that addendum accomplished was indicating that you are not a conservative or a libertarian and you don't think much of those ideologies. As for my ad hominem attack, I wasn't aware I made one, and I'd appreciate being shown how to more effectively seek truth through honest discussion, which you could help to faciliate by pointing out my erring.
So your premise is to debunk the "politically charged" assertions of environmental groups with "scientific "evidence, but you cite a right-wing libertarian think tank? Do I detect a little "small town logging bias"?
"Libertarian" and "Right-Wing" are too completely different things, and if you wish to mock the evidence provided, consider providing some evidence of your own, rather than assuming that every reader considers libertarianism to be a Bad Thing. Veiled ad-hominem attacks are an impediment to intellectual progress, not to mention childish.
Your reasoning is fallacious. If the RIAA owned the webspace which hosted the student's program, and revoked his service because they didn't like the potential to share music, then it would not have been a violation of free speech. However, such is not the case. The RIAA invoked the _law_ to shutdown a website they didn't control.
If it was merely a contract issue, the student would be free to seek an alternate location to host his program, but the RIAA wants it to be illegal to run the program anywhere under any circumstances. That is, the RIAA wants the Government to shutdown a program which conflicts with their interests. If your previous definition of censorship is correct ("If you write an article critical of the government and the newspaper decides to publish it, the government can not come in and tell the paper to remove it"), then this is absolutely censorship.
I for one appreciate the contributions of the British (and everyone else) with all my heart. Anyone who attempts to start a pissing contest about who is sacrificing more in this war will receive a swift and brutal ass kicking from me.
And BTW, is anyone else interested in helping the low income people in thier community? Computers are a great place to start in helping out in your inner cities.
Yes! Any pointers on getting started?
I don't care what anybody else thinks, RMS is one bad mother fucker.
Keep fighting the good fight, you stalwart fuck! I got your back!