I like you, your comments are well thought out and you apparently don't mind me swearing all the time.
I understand and agree with the positive sum game comment and I readily concede that some advertisement benefits the public some of the time, or that its influence has a certain positive component. I am not waging a war on all ads everywhere, I seek the balance. IMHO, today it is tilted heavily in favor of producers.
Your point that advertising is vital for the economy would be valid if not for your assumption that consumer is unable to get ads when he needs them. This is totally false, thanks in large to the Internet. AdBlock Plus does not just kill ads, it gives you the ability to mute them when you do not need them, and I maintain that you do not need them nearly all the time. When you need them, however, they are 2 clicks away. When you consider buying a car you can simply disable ABP and Google for a car for sale. You will get all the ads you need. Nothing you learned from the ads you have watched in the last 20 years will be as helpful as this one quick search. What have you learned from ads? That Toyota can swing on a swing? That GMC is the right truck for burly rugged men? Most ads have no rationale at all - this is a fact. They instruct you to consider a brand because a hired actor looks happy on the screen. My one Google search will give me all that, and also reviews, comparisons, testimonies, specs, all wrapped in a neat bundle, right when I am ready to buy a bloody car. What was the point of watching the ads?
I will take back my comment about Apple. I will not make a good point by basing a company that makes competitive, if inferior products. My other examples, however, do drive in a good point: that almost all unsolicited ads are completely useless to you, and that is mostly due to the fact that most advertisers are consciously poised to screw you. Spam may be illegal, but a lot of it is still an advertisement. I simply want the balance: I watch ads when I want them, I don't watch them when I don't, and the free software is a great tool to make that happen.
Oh, and the part about "free" stuff you are getting. It is free for YOU because you did train your mind. I admitted above, that is indeed an option for a determined individual. But most people pay a high price for "free" ad-supported stuff: their brain is littered with expensive, unfair "options". They save $10/year on hotmail, only to get suckered into buying some overpriced gadget that does little more than report their shopping preferences to the mothership. So help out others: tell them what you did and tell them about free software that can make their life ad-free.
1st paragraph: I know that cats and guitars cost money, but so do TVs and DVD players. You got the point, though: I wasn't doing any kind of careful cost analysis, just pointing out that one can get quality entertainment in many many non-commercial ways.
2nd paragraph. Are you not tired of being a sucker? I mean a fish. I mean, the gullible guy at the table. Make you aware of your options? It costs them a lot of money to bring this info to you, so why are you so inclined to believe that you are being offered a good deal, or even a fair deal? They don't give two shits about your well-being, and if the profit may be maximized by screwing you, they will do just that. If not for FDA, for example, you'd never know that feel-good drugs may cause blindness and loss of interest below the belt. Or look at Apple's products: they are pieces of shit wrapped in white plastic. Look at the movie and music industries suing their own customers. Recall the Pinto fiasco. Look at the spam in your mailbox. These are but the tips of the shit-iceberg that is the modern marketing machine. If I wanted to be better informed about consumer products, I'd buy something like Consumer Reports, the advertiser's enemy #1.
Last paragraph. I am, in a way, training my mind. My personal computer is the extension of my mind. Watch or read Ghost In The Shell, it's all there. This is the present and the future. People who ignore this will be left behind. Their computers, infected with proprietary software, will keep trying to manipulate their decisions in order to increase the bottom line for one firm or the other.
Not only that, but there is another, and may be stronger force which distorts the market operation: advertising. The entertainment industry would be dead without it. And it is not that the advertisement pays the bills, no: it is what it does to our brains. The TV-watching public is not able to make rational choices in the marketplace. An individual can, through a concentrated effort which involves skipping commercials and/or boycotting the advertised brands, but on average, enough people are brainwashed into buying shit they do not necessarily need. Entertainment is not food. You cannot get free quality food on a regular basis, but the entertainment you can. The fun factor is completely subjective and is determined, in most heads, by ads. You could rent DVDs twice a week ($10/week), or you could play with you cat ($0). You could buy an album per week from an online store ($10/week) or you could play your own guitar ($0) or a bassoon ($0). Or you can record your music and post it on your website ($5/month), or walk in the park with your dog and try to pick up chicks ($0), you get the idea.
Ladies and gents, let's do it, let's educate the public. Tell your friends how to block ads: this is the first, and pretty much the last step, the nail in the coffin of the commercial pop art industry. Stop wondering why bad movies sell so well, I'll tell you the secret: the movies may be bad, but the ad campaigns are real works of art. So educate your friends, lovers, people on the street, and even enemies, on how to
Use a secure OS that answers to no one but you: Gnu/Linux.
Use a secure Web browser that respects your privacy: Firefox.
Use AdBlock and NoScript.
Use BitTorrent: given GNU/Linux, it is nothing but Transmission. A person may be unwilling to give up Survivor, so show them, at least, how to get an ad-free version.
Use vanilla XMPP for instant chat, own website for social networking. You are a geek: get them to shell out $5/month for a simple Web host and put some PHP gizmo on it with a blog and a picture gallery. If the force is strong with you, get them a wall-wart.
Last but not the least: tell them about the main difference between the free and the proprietary software. Sans the bugs, the free software does what it says it does, whereas proprietary software... Well, that's the thing, no one knows what it does. Tell them that their cell phone is reporting their location to the police right now, because we know it does; that Windows and OS X and their Web browsers report what you do with your files and which Web sites you go to, because they probably do. I personally believe they do, why the hell would they not? Even if this shit leaks, they will recover, because, after all, they don't sell on merits (they have very little in that department), they sell because a talking dog on TV told people to buy them.
Interstellar travel is wildly impractical. It makes for interesting fiction, but unless our understanding of physics is TOTALLY messed up (*way* more flawed than we currently think pure Newtonian physics was), there's absolutely zero practical application, ever.
Bur? All you need is the ability to climb out of the star's gravity well, the flight itself takes little energy. Sure, even something trivial like 1000 metric tons of spacecraft is completely impossible to launch in the near future, but that is the only big expense. 5000 Solar year travel time is feasible for a frozen DNA and a highly redundant computer that watches out for microscopic fractures and repairs them. This will take us to Proxima Centauri at 1/1000 STL. Once there, the ship will unfold a solar panel and start growing humans in vats. The first generation will have to be raised by robots, but it's clear sailing after that.
The oppression of the lower classes by the owning class is an example of such an implicit conspiracy. Far from having to admit to themselves or each other that they are oppressing the lower classes, the owning class has the privilege of believing they are in fact helping them.
I agree with your point about the explicit/implicit distinction, but I am not so sure about the strength of this particular example. It seems to me that US elite often engages in explicit conspiracies to oppress, while honestly believing that the public at large is benefiting from it overall. Their logic can be summarized as follows: since the most enterprising members of the society are able to acquire so much power and wealth, the spirit of the competition drives all individuals to work hard and succeed. This, in turn, stimulates the economy to the benefit of most everyone. It is hard to see what is wrong with this argument, and the case of US seems to show clearly that this makes for an extremely competitive state in the World arena.
IMHO, what we see today in the US are the (early?) negative consequences of this ideology, which has worked reasonably well for it so far. The power vested in the elite is so great now that they are finally able to corrupt the government, the law enforcement, and the law itself. I hate to sound like I am regurgitating something from a conservative family dinner, but the erosion of the middle class and the widening divide between people who are set for life (10 millions or more) and those who live from pay check to pay check -- this divide is a real sign of danger for the entire society. The history is very clear on what happens to 2-class states where a small minority holds all the power and wealth, while the overwhelming majority is reduced to wage slavery. Rather unpredictably, a popular movement will erupt with violence and shit will hit the fan on every level.
These are very murky waters, the politics. Having seen socialism at work (but not to say working) in Russia, I cannot say which ideology is inherently better, only that the US is a state with results deemed fantastic by the rest of the world. The reason I do not want to attribute this to the ideology is simple: the more I learn about the politics and the economy, the deeper is my disbelief that the system works AT ALL.
I do know, though, what we -- the public, the wage slaves -- are to do:) It is a very simple puzzle, really. Many think today (and I agree) that the US political process is a run-away train, affected only by the World events and its own history -- not even politicians have any semblance of control anymore. Since we cannot affect it, we should simply strike: save our energy and keep safe. Here, in US, the winners will be those who leech on the society as much as possible, while giving as little as they can in return. In the end, the land will be inherited by those who can adapt to their political system, whatever it happens to be, and make the best of it.
Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation.
Some, you are thinking about some people. Most people do not care. Millions of downloaders
disagree to the point of non-violent resistance to the law. They are breaking the law and risking
million+ fines for downloading a few $10 movies, so they obviously either don't care or disagree
with you strongly.
For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind,
because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written
She'll get over it. She basically would like to dictate what other people will do with their
culture, the one she barely contributed to. Oookay.
A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore
A lot of people did not read the books, they cannot care all that much. Those who are informed,
know that Christofer Tolkien is the only guy with the guns, having edited The Silmarillion and other
great works. Everyone else in that team is more of leech, and their efforts to defend the copyright
did nothing but set back the influence of Tolkien's work. There are no hobbits in our games or comics,
and that is not because of lack of interest or desire to introduce them.
People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work.
Pointless, meaningless generalizations.
In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only
going to find the ideal economic balance
We are already finding the economic balance, by the way of making cheap digital copies of
the monuments of our culture. The copyright, being a monopoly, can only destroy the balance.
If you believed that free markets work better than planned markets, you would agree immediately,
but you seem to be all mixed up. If we wanted to ruin the economic balance, we would tighten up
the copyright noose and started (over)charging for every freaking word you read and every moving picture
you see. Yeah, let's make everyone pay for access to culture, even though there is no sound
economic reason for doing so, unless we specifically want to segregate the society and create a
caste of content producers, the mighty Brahmins, who own all the rights to creation and modification
of content. Of course, this won't work while licenses like GPL and CC-SA provide a hedge around the
public domain. Who needs expensive pop-culture, when people voluntarily create a double-free
alternative? Look at Linux and BSD: they've dwarfed proprietary OSes in terms of how good they are,
and now they are poised to crush them in the marketplace. So if you are that commited to proprietary
culture, you better make copyleft explicitly illegal, or it will swallow the marketplace, because it will
be cheaper and of superior quality.
OK, where in the video can you see the evidence that the following statement is a lie:
This tragic incident was investigated at that time by the brigade involved and the investigation found that the forces involved were not aware of the presence of the two reporters, and that all evidence available supported the conclusion by those forces that they were engaging armed insurgents, and not civilians.
Bah, it is easy to make an honest mistake while riding a helicopter in the war zone. Unfortunately, this video only seems to distract people from the fact that the biggest war criminals (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield) whose actions resulted in deaths of thousands of Iraqi children are enjoying an early retirement.
Yes yes, all war criminals should be punished. But shouldn't the biggest criminals -- the masterminds, the Moriartys -- whose crimes are reported in the mainstream press, be punished first, or at least eventually? Otherwise the joke is on your justice system.
Because looking at a more distant future, it appears to be a happy place with only free/open source software.
I think we will have more great free games in the future, but at the same time the proprietary games are here to stay.
Even non-free OS software might survive, just as OS X does now, combining the minimal development effort (they cannot
write anything half as good as BSD) and heavy marketing artillery (it does not matter that OS X is worse than Linux in pretty
much every respect; people will still buy it because a talking head on TV told them so.)
After watching the video, I basically agree with your assessment.
I can see why the army did not want the video released: this is a clear case of mistaken identity, and there is nothing to see. If the army ever lied about the circumstances, that's bad, but the fact remains that the video doesn't show anything we didn't already know. At the same time, I am glad that wikileaks released this video: we can always use more documentary pieces like this to tell us about our history.
IMHO, it is very unjust to punish anyone in the army for any war crime committed in Iraq, while the commander in chief who authorized an unprovoked, illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign state is not only unpunished, but even heralded as a hero by some of the highest US officials.
the cost of clinical trials means drug companies need exclusivity from lab to drug store
What does this mean? That no drugs would be developed sans patent system? That fewer drugs will be developed
sans patent system? They can hand-wave all they want about incentive, but neither proposition can be justified
with stats. What we do have is statistically significant evidence of patents driving up the costs of drugs and destroying competition.
It is true, though, that the current business model of the pharmaceutical industry in US is based on exploiting the patent law and
has no chance of working without it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, and if you don't know how to get free sex, try looking outside of your mom's basement.
That's great, guy. By the way, can you hook me up with a free DVD player and a free TV?
I like you, your comments are well thought out and you apparently don't mind me swearing all the time.
I understand and agree with the positive sum game comment and I readily concede that some advertisement benefits the public some of the time, or that its influence has a certain positive component. I am not waging a war on all ads everywhere, I seek the balance. IMHO, today it is tilted heavily in favor of producers.
Your point that advertising is vital for the economy would be valid if not for your assumption that consumer is unable to get ads when he needs them. This is totally false, thanks in large to the Internet. AdBlock Plus does not just kill ads, it gives you the ability to mute them when you do not need them, and I maintain that you do not need them nearly all the time. When you need them, however, they are 2 clicks away. When you consider buying a car you can simply disable ABP and Google for a car for sale. You will get all the ads you need. Nothing you learned from the ads you have watched in the last 20 years will be as helpful as this one quick search. What have you learned from ads? That Toyota can swing on a swing? That GMC is the right truck for burly rugged men? Most ads have no rationale at all - this is a fact. They instruct you to consider a brand because a hired actor looks happy on the screen. My one Google search will give me all that, and also reviews, comparisons, testimonies, specs, all wrapped in a neat bundle, right when I am ready to buy a bloody car. What was the point of watching the ads?
I will take back my comment about Apple. I will not make a good point by basing a company that makes competitive, if inferior products. My other examples, however, do drive in a good point: that almost all unsolicited ads are completely useless to you, and that is mostly due to the fact that most advertisers are consciously poised to screw you. Spam may be illegal, but a lot of it is still an advertisement. I simply want the balance: I watch ads when I want them, I don't watch them when I don't, and the free software is a great tool to make that happen.
Oh, and the part about "free" stuff you are getting. It is free for YOU because you did train your mind. I admitted above, that is indeed an option for a determined individual. But most people pay a high price for "free" ad-supported stuff: their brain is littered with expensive, unfair "options". They save $10/year on hotmail, only to get suckered into buying some overpriced gadget that does little more than report their shopping preferences to the mothership. So help out others: tell them what you did and tell them about free software that can make their life ad-free.
1st paragraph: I know that cats and guitars cost money, but so do TVs and DVD players. You got the point, though: I wasn't doing any kind of careful cost analysis, just pointing out that one can get quality entertainment in many many non-commercial ways.
2nd paragraph. Are you not tired of being a sucker? I mean a fish. I mean, the gullible guy at the table. Make you aware of your options? It costs them a lot of money to bring this info to you, so why are you so inclined to believe that you are being offered a good deal, or even a fair deal? They don't give two shits about your well-being, and if the profit may be maximized by screwing you, they will do just that. If not for FDA, for example, you'd never know that feel-good drugs may cause blindness and loss of interest below the belt. Or look at Apple's products: they are pieces of shit wrapped in white plastic. Look at the movie and music industries suing their own customers. Recall the Pinto fiasco. Look at the spam in your mailbox. These are but the tips of the shit-iceberg that is the modern marketing machine. If I wanted to be better informed about consumer products, I'd buy something like Consumer Reports, the advertiser's enemy #1.
Last paragraph. I am, in a way, training my mind. My personal computer is the extension of my mind. Watch or read Ghost In The Shell, it's all there. This is the present and the future. People who ignore this will be left behind. Their computers, infected with proprietary software, will keep trying to manipulate their decisions in order to increase the bottom line for one firm or the other.
Not only that, but there is another, and may be stronger force which distorts the market operation: advertising. The entertainment industry would be dead without it. And it is not that the advertisement pays the bills, no: it is what it does to our brains. The TV-watching public is not able to make rational choices in the marketplace. An individual can, through a concentrated effort which involves skipping commercials and/or boycotting the advertised brands, but on average, enough people are brainwashed into buying shit they do not necessarily need. Entertainment is not food. You cannot get free quality food on a regular basis, but the entertainment you can. The fun factor is completely subjective and is determined, in most heads, by ads. You could rent DVDs twice a week ($10/week), or you could play with you cat ($0). You could buy an album per week from an online store ($10/week) or you could play your own guitar ($0) or a bassoon ($0). Or you can record your music and post it on your website ($5/month), or walk in the park with your dog and try to pick up chicks ($0), you get the idea.
Ladies and gents, let's do it, let's educate the public. Tell your friends how to block ads: this is the first, and pretty much the last step, the nail in the coffin of the commercial pop art industry. Stop wondering why bad movies sell so well, I'll tell you the secret: the movies may be bad, but the ad campaigns are real works of art. So educate your friends, lovers, people on the street, and even enemies, on how to
Invader Zim, is that you?
STL? What the hell is that? I meant, speed of light.
Interstellar travel is wildly impractical. It makes for interesting fiction, but unless our understanding of physics is TOTALLY messed up (*way* more flawed than we currently think pure Newtonian physics was), there's absolutely zero practical application, ever.
Bur? All you need is the ability to climb out of the star's gravity well, the flight itself takes little energy. Sure, even something trivial like 1000 metric tons of spacecraft is completely impossible to launch in the near future, but that is the only big expense. 5000 Solar year travel time is feasible for a frozen DNA and a highly redundant computer that watches out for microscopic fractures and repairs them. This will take us to Proxima Centauri at 1/1000 STL. Once there, the ship will unfold a solar panel and start growing humans in vats. The first generation will have to be raised by robots, but it's clear sailing after that.
Places for user streams? That's a funny name for a urinal.
The oppression of the lower classes by the owning class is an example of such an implicit conspiracy. Far from having to admit to themselves or each other that they are oppressing the lower classes, the owning class has the privilege of believing they are in fact helping them.
I agree with your point about the explicit/implicit distinction, but I am not so sure about the strength of this particular example. It seems to me that US elite often engages in explicit conspiracies to oppress, while honestly believing that the public at large is benefiting from it overall. Their logic can be summarized as follows: since the most enterprising members of the society are able to acquire so much power and wealth, the spirit of the competition drives all individuals to work hard and succeed. This, in turn, stimulates the economy to the benefit of most everyone. It is hard to see what is wrong with this argument, and the case of US seems to show clearly that this makes for an extremely competitive state in the World arena.
IMHO, what we see today in the US are the (early?) negative consequences of this ideology, which has worked reasonably well for it so far. The power vested in the elite is so great now that they are finally able to corrupt the government, the law enforcement, and the law itself. I hate to sound like I am regurgitating something from a conservative family dinner, but the erosion of the middle class and the widening divide between people who are set for life (10 millions or more) and those who live from pay check to pay check -- this divide is a real sign of danger for the entire society. The history is very clear on what happens to 2-class states where a small minority holds all the power and wealth, while the overwhelming majority is reduced to wage slavery. Rather unpredictably, a popular movement will erupt with violence and shit will hit the fan on every level.
These are very murky waters, the politics. Having seen socialism at work (but not to say working) in Russia, I cannot say which ideology is inherently better, only that the US is a state with results deemed fantastic by the rest of the world. The reason I do not want to attribute this to the ideology is simple: the more I learn about the politics and the economy, the deeper is my disbelief that the system works AT ALL.
I do know, though, what we -- the public, the wage slaves -- are to do :) It is a very simple puzzle, really. Many think today (and I agree) that the US political process is a run-away train, affected only by the World events and its own history -- not even politicians have any semblance of control anymore. Since we cannot affect it, we should simply strike: save our energy and keep safe. Here, in US, the winners will be those who leech on the society as much as possible, while giving as little as they can in return. In the end, the land will be inherited by those who can adapt to their political system, whatever it happens to be, and make the best of it.
(.) ! (.)
Here, fixed it for you.
Fuck them. My phone runs mplayer.
Most people agree that the original author should have control of his creation.
Some, you are thinking about some people. Most people do not care. Millions of downloaders disagree to the point of non-violent resistance to the law. They are breaking the law and risking million+ fines for downloading a few $10 movies, so they obviously either don't care or disagree with you strongly.
For example, my sister was very upset that someone wrote a sequel to Gone With the Wind, because the original author didn't want a sequel to be written
She'll get over it. She basically would like to dictate what other people will do with their culture, the one she barely contributed to. Oookay.
A lot of people view the descendants of Tolkien as the official guardians of the lore
A lot of people did not read the books, they cannot care all that much. Those who are informed, know that Christofer Tolkien is the only guy with the guns, having edited The Silmarillion and other great works. Everyone else in that team is more of leech, and their efforts to defend the copyright did nothing but set back the influence of Tolkien's work. There are no hobbits in our games or comics, and that is not because of lack of interest or desire to introduce them.
People like the feeling of officialness. They want the original author to be able to own the work.
Pointless, meaningless generalizations.
In other words, if you want to get political motion behind copyright reform, you are not only going to find the ideal economic balance
We are already finding the economic balance, by the way of making cheap digital copies of the monuments of our culture. The copyright, being a monopoly, can only destroy the balance. If you believed that free markets work better than planned markets, you would agree immediately, but you seem to be all mixed up. If we wanted to ruin the economic balance, we would tighten up the copyright noose and started (over)charging for every freaking word you read and every moving picture you see. Yeah, let's make everyone pay for access to culture, even though there is no sound economic reason for doing so, unless we specifically want to segregate the society and create a caste of content producers, the mighty Brahmins, who own all the rights to creation and modification of content. Of course, this won't work while licenses like GPL and CC-SA provide a hedge around the public domain. Who needs expensive pop-culture, when people voluntarily create a double-free alternative? Look at Linux and BSD: they've dwarfed proprietary OSes in terms of how good they are, and now they are poised to crush them in the marketplace. So if you are that commited to proprietary culture, you better make copyleft explicitly illegal, or it will swallow the marketplace, because it will be cheaper and of superior quality.
Oh yeah, that they did. I don't want to argue about the rules of engagement, though.
This tragic incident was investigated at that time by the brigade involved and the investigation found that the forces involved were not aware of the presence of the two reporters, and that all evidence available supported the conclusion by those forces that they were engaging armed insurgents, and not civilians.
No need to prepare, just wait. With iPad, Apple is building up to its killer product: iStab, a translucent suicide booth with an interface to die for.
Bah, it is easy to make an honest mistake while riding a helicopter in the war zone. Unfortunately, this video only seems to distract people from the fact that the biggest war criminals (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield) whose actions resulted in deaths of thousands of Iraqi children are enjoying an early retirement.
Yes yes, all war criminals should be punished. But shouldn't the biggest criminals -- the masterminds, the Moriartys -- whose crimes are reported in the mainstream press, be punished first, or at least eventually? Otherwise the joke is on your justice system.
Because looking at a more distant future, it appears to be a happy place with only free/open source software.
I think we will have more great free games in the future, but at the same time the proprietary games are here to stay. Even non-free OS software might survive, just as OS X does now, combining the minimal development effort (they cannot write anything half as good as BSD) and heavy marketing artillery (it does not matter that OS X is worse than Linux in pretty much every respect; people will still buy it because a talking head on TV told them so.)
After watching the video, I basically agree with your assessment.
I can see why the army did not want the video released: this is a clear case of mistaken identity, and there is nothing to see. If the army ever lied about the circumstances, that's bad, but the fact remains that the video doesn't show anything we didn't already know. At the same time, I am glad that wikileaks released this video: we can always use more documentary pieces like this to tell us about our history.
IMHO, it is very unjust to punish anyone in the army for any war crime committed in Iraq, while the commander in chief who authorized an unprovoked, illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign state is not only unpunished, but even heralded as a hero by some of the highest US officials.
Apple is refined and locked down revolution for the masses.
"The masses," you mean, the upper middle class?
the cost of clinical trials means drug companies need exclusivity from lab to drug store
What does this mean? That no drugs would be developed sans patent system? That fewer drugs will be developed sans patent system? They can hand-wave all they want about incentive, but neither proposition can be justified with stats. What we do have is statistically significant evidence of patents driving up the costs of drugs and destroying competition.
It is true, though, that the current business model of the pharmaceutical industry in US is based on exploiting the patent law and has no chance of working without it.
Net.
Exactly. Meth is almost certainly local. Cocaine, otoh, is from Columbia, and it has its own very secretive and dangerous supply chain.