Whoever modded this up as anything but funny is an idiot. Of course distinguishing the correct answer from random text is part and parcel of cracking the code.
I bet when this guy takes a multiple choice exam, he just fills in *all* the boxes, and then claims that he got every answer right.
Okay, you're right. I'm going to evade the question, as I see no point in continuing this charade any further. As far as I can determine, you are the most belligerent, condescending prick I have ever argued with on/.. A lot of/. debates start out with violent confrontation, but a rapport develops after a couple of messages. That's clearly not happening here. Anyway, if you want to feel like you've won, feel free.
P.S. I deliberately inserted 3 spelling/grammar mistakes into the above paragraph in order to give you something to look for.
Wrong. No matter how big open source gets these allegations have to be proven in a court of law.
Interesting how the "chilling effect" of record companies suing users who are "merely suspected" of copyright violations is a big issue in the P2P discussions, but it's not so important when the shoe is on the other foot.
Yeah... lucky that *you* happen to know what's good for everyone. Hey Microsoft, you'll support the GPL if you know what's good for you. Hey RIAA, don't you know P2P is good for business? Hey Billy, eat your broccoli.
I didn't know about that site electionmethods.org. The link I sent you before was just something that I found through google. I didn't realize that the problems with IRV were that significant. I thought they only happened in contrived cases. In that case, I guess the system they propose (Condorcet) is better, even if it can theoretically end in a tie.
The reason I don't agree with Approval voting is that I don't think your support for a candidate can be boiled down to a yes/no decision. If I strongly support one candidate and think another is merely tolerable then I should still be able to express my preference.
You didn't pleasantly surprise me. Perhaps the reason why my messages are shorter than yours and thus 'lacking substance' is that I don't spend most of the message belittling you.
Analogies are not always a form of argument, but they are often used that way on/. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a nice little maxim that is usually right, but I'm not going to defend it to the death. I thought your counter-example was kind of dumb because 2WDMAW is the precise reason why we have a court system that tries to give every defendant a fair trial instead of relying on vigilante justice.
Vote swapping is wrong because it corrupts the system. Voting is not a commodity market. You have the right to vote if you want to, but you can't buy and sell votes or assign them to a proxy and you shouldn't be able to trade them either.
If you want a more precise definition of "human thought works by rationalization", let me say that "humans don't generally make decisions based on logic, but they justify them using rationalization". Of course humans use logic, but they are not good at fuzzy logic; when there are arguments for both courses of action, the final decision is generally made based on intuition even though the subject can usually rationalize it afterwards. And after making a really tough decision, humans become more convinced, not less convinced that they are right. Furthermore, once a person has formed an opinion, they normally stick with it, even in the face of opposing evidence. The rationalization process allows them to always interpret new data in a favourable light.
Let me get something straight. The curtness of my previous post is not due to "the questions getting tough" or your "calling a spade a spade". I just don't like your attitude; your tone is brash and conceited. I have in depth conversations with lots of other people. Check my posting history.
The line between an analogy and a straw man can be subjective. I find your analogy to be a straw man with deliberately provocative wording.
I don't dislike analogies; in fact, I have to resist the temptation to use them. But I recognize that they are not a valid form of argument.
Human beings are great at rationalization. I still remember that from psych 101. Evolution didn't provide us with an innate sense of logic. Logic is a learned skill, and a lot of people aren't very good at it. Psychologists have shown that people treat new evidence differently when they have already formed an opinion on an issue. I invite you to research cognitive dissonance.
Or do with what the telcos do. If a users spends every waking hour making local calls to friends and family, the telcos.... do nothing. They eat it and build a business model that reflects the full range of use.
Well, let me tell you that the telcos that sold "unlimited" flat-rate long distance plans have capped those.
Anyway, I love your logic... The telcos have no business sense, so therefore the ISPs should copy them. Brilliant!
Oops. I noticed that it doesn't literally violate the axiom, but it is possible for 99% of the voters to prefer Gore to Nader and Nader could still win.
The logic in the article is mostly aimed at systems with straight ranking, so it is difficult to apply the examples directly to approval voting.
As the article points out, all systems are flawed. One of the axioms of a perfect voting scheme is that "if every voter prefers candidate A over candidate B, then the final ranking produced by the tally system should place A above B."
With approval voting, it's easy to create a situation that violates this axiom:
6 million rank Gore first, then Nader, then Bush. 1 million rank Bush first, then Nader, then Gore.
Assume everyone casts approval votes for their top 2 candidates. Nader wins with 7 million votes, even though most people prefer Gore to Nader.
As with the Borda scheme, the system is vulnerable to bloc voting. If the Gore supporters anticipate the above result, they can drop Nader from their ballot, thus ensuring victory for their #1 choice.
Then the EC needs to change or more people need to start doing the same thing so that everything is fair. Don't forget that the EC is the real problem here, not how people vote.
Yeah the EC is a problem, but only in a superficial way. The problem is you have to make a Boolean decision based on fuzzy data. It can be proved mathematically that there is no completely fair way to choose a single winner in a 3 party system.
Even in a two party system, there are fair ways to choose a winner, but there's no real correct one. A flat vote might be slightly better than the EC, but it would still be an arbitrary decision.
Does it really make sense to give such a large amount of power to a guy who won what amounts to a political coin toss? Think about it: Heads we invade Iraq, tails we don't. Heads we pull out of the Kyoto accord, tails we don't. If someone can talk to people around them with similar views and they all agree to vote in a certain way that mutually benefits them all, why is that wrong? Because other people aren't using similar tactics and thus being short-changed by the electoral college?
Yeah, partially. Given that we are flipping a coin, the rules of the game need to be obeyed. No bouncing it off the table when a clean flip was called for.:-)
That man is beating and mugging that lady in the street. Let's stop him - throw him to the ground, put him in a jail cell! No, you say! Harming that man is just as bad as harming that lady. Two wrongs don't make a right!
I don't get it. I put a thing in my sig saying that I won't argue by analogy, and respondents seem to post nothing but. Whatever the case, this is clearly a straw man. I don't consider putting criminals in jail to be wrong anyway. Vote swapping is about as dangerous as crossing your eyes. But if you're so quick to want to censor political speech, I just hope you're as vocal about "campaign contributions."
What I find appauling is the various different things people call "speech" these days. Yeah, I have some problems with campaign contributions, when they come with strings attached. But in general, campaign contributions pay for speech, so they are relevant. Vote swapping is not speech; it's just subverting the system.
The main point of my comment however is that I am planning to write an article for K5 [kuro5hin.org] on this exact subject, and just thought it polite to ask if I could borrow some of your points/examples from your journal (credited of course).
Absolutely you can. Get the word out there, man.
P.S. I have no idea who the AC is who replied before. Some people have an odd way of getting their kicks.
"Not a business idea, mind you, but an ethical ideal that he has rationalized into making business sense." This is merely a conflict of priorities, whether you value ethics over business sense or vice versa. Debating the practical rammifications of either stance are probably beyond the scope of this flame. Either way, you can't tag RMS as a communist for this. Hippie would be a better fit.
Sure I can. Valuing ethics over business is exactly the kind of thing a bleeding-heart communist would do. Oh, and fine...he's a hippie too. Truthfully, I've spent a long time trying to find evidence of that after the post, and it has been in vain so far. I haven't discovered any statistics on software development percentages at all. So until I can come up with some stats, I will shut my fucking mouth on this point.
Someone once sent me a link to a career information site from like 1985 that said a slim majority of programmers do in-house work. "Reducing costs doesn't help a business make money if the competitors get the same advantage. In fact, it hurts them." This only holds true for companies that attain profitability by selling software.
Not at all. Look at companies that sell commodities like oil. When the price of gas goes up, the oil companies make more money. The reason is that manufacturers determine profit margins as a percentage of costs, not as a fixed dollar amount per item. Having unrestricted access to source code means start-ups will have it easier, and established businesses will have more contracting options and greater flexibility.
No, startups won't have it easier. When startups get given a lot of money in funding, they are expected to use that money to develop valuable assets. (Of course there were a few years there where that logic went out the window.) With open source, you don't develop assets so it's going to be difficult to get seed capital. Furthermore, I don't believe it is in the public's best interest for corporations to best their competition at all costs.
I don't either, but then again I don't in doing many things "at all costs". However, healthy competition is the basis of our capitalist economic system. Open source is more likely to create unhealthy competition. "The communist revolution wasn't about that stuff either." The communist revolution was absolutely about centralizing government power and control of resources. If you don't agree with this, you are wrong
Thanks for taking my comments out of context. I was talking about "the power grabs, genocide, and spying on civilians." The Revolution was started for some very good reasons, "Taxation without Representation" and "The Boston Massacre" being the two most prominent in my mind.
Go read a historical (i.e. not full of American propoganda) version of these events. The Boston Massacre started when an armed and unruly mob attacked a group of British soldiers (the story was later spun to make the mob sound innocent). The taxes were in place to pay the salaries of the soldiers (who were there to defend the colony from attack). The propogandists whined about the taxes, so the British revoked all but one of them. Then the propogandists whined about the potential for more taxes in the future. Have you considered the logistics of parliamentary representation in an age when even the mail could take months?
P.S. Who is the senior senator from Puerto Rico? You are begging the question here. You cannot prove my position to be extreme by assuming that your position isn't. The reason why I concluded that you were extreme was because we seem to be at opposite political poles. Therefore, if I'm extreme, you're extreme.
I'm not trying to prove your position is extreme. I called you an extremist because I noticed that in every discussion you immediately try to polarize every issue. E.g.
1. You think we are at opposite political poles. 2. You introduced the strawman argument of the runners shooting each other during the race. 3. "If you view this as extreme, I must conclude that you believe that government should be maximized and freedom minimized, and want to make good friends with Big Brother."
(In fact, I don't believe that governments or freedoms need to be minimized or maximized. I believe in the middle way.)
I notice you appear to have given up on your indefensible argument about it being too difficult for the RIAA to distinguish between illegal P2P and legal web downloads (the original topic of this thread).
In a nutshell, RMS believes that it is ethically wrong to treat a fundamentally conceptual entity, software in this instance, as a physical product; the service of software development is still plenty viable.
I'm aware of what RMS believes, but that doesn't prevent me from thinking he's a loony. I object to him being an asshole who wants the entire software industry to stake it's future on an idea he had. Not a business idea, mind you, but an ethical ideal that he has rationalized into making business sense. Are you aware that 95% of all software never reaches store shelves? Most people who write code for a living are writing custom applications to be used in a corporate environment;
I've heard that stat cited a billion times without justification and without a definition of how software is quantified. Personally, I think ESR just made it up. I don't see how placing such code under a Free license can be anything but helpful.
Reducing costs doesn't help a business make money if the competitors get the same advantage. In fact, it hurts them. A quick visit to stallman.org further confirms that RMS is, in fact, not a communist. Communists seek centralized governmental power and control of the collective mind share of the people. RMS gains absolutely no power through his activities; at most, he diminishes the power of others. Additionally, communists don't oppose legislation which legalizes spying on civilains.
Whatever. The communist revolution wasn't about that stuff either. The power grabs, genocide, and spying on civilians came later, after Stalin came to power And I'd like to know how many communists have a proclivity for qouting Frederick Douglas.
At least one. (Actually, I don't know why you find this strange, since Communism was very much in line with abolitionism.) "Libertarianism is an extremist philosophy, just as any other." A corollary of your statement is that all philosophies are extreme, which I don't think was your intended meaning.
Libertarianism is an extremist philosophy, just as any other extremist philosophy.
But allow me to point out that the concept of suffrage was extreme in its time, as was equality of all skin colors, as was the idea that 13 small British colonies are entitled to independence.
Suffrage and racial equality aren't really extremist ideas. They were just novel ideas in their time. The American Revolution, on the other hand, was started by a bunch of extremists. Having recently researched the subject, I discovered that most of the popular folklore is bullshit. The colonists had no good reason to revolt, but a small group of extremists incited a rebellion with rhetoric and lies. The underlying concept that drives Libertarianism is that the government should be minimized and freedom maximized, which is right in-line with the principles on which our Country was founded. If you view this as extreme, I must conclude that you believe that government should be maximized and freedom minimized, and want to make good friends with Big Brother.
That's a natural conclusion for you to make, since you are an extremist. I, on the other hand, am not an extremist, so I don't believe that not believing in one extreme means that you have to embrace the other. There's nothing wrong with disliking Libertarianism, but it is no more extreme than the Republican and Democratic parties, so please don't be absurd/hypocritcal.
No way. The Republican party has a lot of extremists, but I wouldn't say that about the Democrats. They are pretty centrist. "What I can't figure out is why Janis thinks this endangers her ability to allow free downloads from her website." P2P filingsharing systems use http protocols to transfer data. This means that it requires a certain not-insignificant degree of scrutiny to determine if an mp3 being downloaded is really from the web or from a P2P network.
Bullshit. HTTP packets have IP address and ports. Either of those can tell you whether you are downloading from a website or doing P2P. If that sounds like a "not-insignificant" degree of scrutiny to you, I can only conclude that you have never written any network software.
Since the lawsuit effectively gives the RIAA the right to sue anyone suspected of downloading infringing songs, they can wield this power to eliminate online music distribution, legal or illegal.
If they try to prevent legal music distribution, what makes you think the case won't simply be thrown out of court?
RMS is pretty much a communist. If he had is way, the only ones left paying significant money for software development would be governments.
Anyone who supports a political theory of extremism probably hasn't thought abouth the issue hard enough. Libertarianism is an extremist philosophy, just as any other.
I'm aware that the RIAA filed suit against Verizon regarding P2P. Thanks for paying attention. What I can't figure out is why Janis thinks this endangers her ability to allow free downloads from her website. I'm sure she wouldn't be putting songs up there that she doesn't have the rights to.
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Whoever modded this up as anything but funny is an idiot. Of course distinguishing the correct answer from random text is part and parcel of cracking the code.
I bet when this guy takes a multiple choice exam, he just fills in *all* the boxes, and then claims that he got every answer right.
-a
Okay, you're right. I'm going to evade the question, as I see no point in continuing this charade any further. As far as I can determine, you are the most belligerent, condescending prick I have ever argued with on /.. A lot of /. debates start out with violent confrontation, but a rapport develops after a couple of messages. That's clearly not happening here. Anyway, if you want to feel like you've won, feel free.
P.S. I deliberately inserted 3 spelling/grammar mistakes into the above paragraph in order to give you something to look for.
-a
Wrong.
No matter how big open source gets these allegations have to be proven in a court of law.
Interesting how the "chilling effect" of record companies suing users who are "merely suspected" of copyright violations is a big issue in the P2P discussions, but it's not so important when the shoe is on the other foot.
Internal consistency not required.
-a
Yeah... lucky that *you* happen to know what's good for everyone. Hey Microsoft, you'll support the GPL if you know what's good for you. Hey RIAA, don't you know P2P is good for business? Hey Billy, eat your broccoli.
-a
I didn't know about that site electionmethods.org. The link I sent you before was just something that I found through google. I didn't realize that the problems with IRV were that significant. I thought they only happened in contrived cases. In that case, I guess the system they propose (Condorcet) is better, even if it can theoretically end in a tie.
The reason I don't agree with Approval voting is that I don't think your support for a candidate can be boiled down to a yes/no decision. If I strongly support one candidate and think another is merely tolerable then I should still be able to express my preference.
-a
You didn't pleasantly surprise me. Perhaps the reason why my messages are shorter than yours and thus 'lacking substance' is that I don't spend most of the message belittling you.
/. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a nice little maxim that is usually right, but I'm not going to defend it to the death. I thought your counter-example was kind of dumb because 2WDMAW is the precise reason why we have a court system that tries to give every defendant a fair trial instead of relying on vigilante justice.
Analogies are not always a form of argument, but they are often used that way on
Vote swapping is wrong because it corrupts the system. Voting is not a commodity market. You have the right to vote if you want to, but you can't buy and sell votes or assign them to a proxy and you shouldn't be able to trade them either.
If you want a more precise definition of "human thought works by rationalization", let me say that "humans don't generally make decisions based on logic, but they justify them using rationalization". Of course humans use logic, but they are not good at fuzzy logic; when there are arguments for both courses of action, the final decision is generally made based on intuition even though the subject can usually rationalize it afterwards. And after making a really tough decision, humans become more convinced, not less convinced that they are right. Furthermore, once a person has formed an opinion, they normally stick with it, even in the face of opposing evidence. The rationalization process allows them to always interpret new data in a favourable light.
-a
Let me get something straight. The curtness of my previous post is not due to "the questions getting tough" or your "calling a spade a spade". I just don't like your attitude; your tone is brash and conceited. I have in depth conversations with lots of other people. Check my posting history.
The line between an analogy and a straw man can be subjective. I find your analogy to be a straw man with deliberately provocative wording.
I don't dislike analogies; in fact, I have to resist the temptation to use them. But I recognize that they are not a valid form of argument.
Human beings are great at rationalization. I still remember that from psych 101. Evolution didn't provide us with an innate sense of logic. Logic is a learned skill, and a lot of people aren't very good at it. Psychologists have shown that people treat new evidence differently when they have already formed an opinion on an issue. I invite you to research cognitive dissonance.
-a
Or do with what the telcos do. If a users spends every waking hour making local calls to friends and family, the telcos.... do nothing. They eat it and build a business model that reflects the full range of use.
Well, let me tell you that the telcos that sold "unlimited" flat-rate long distance plans have capped those.
Anyway, I love your logic... The telcos have no business sense, so therefore the ISPs should copy them. Brilliant!
-a
Sigh... remember when a good idea used to be worth $40 million?
-a
Oops. I noticed that it doesn't literally violate the axiom, but it is possible for 99% of the voters to prefer Gore to Nader and Nader could still win.
The logic in the article is mostly aimed at systems with straight ranking, so it is difficult to apply the examples directly to approval voting.
-a
As the article points out, all systems are flawed.
One of the axioms of a perfect voting scheme is that "if every voter prefers candidate A over candidate B, then the final ranking produced by the tally system should place A above B."
With approval voting, it's easy to create a situation that violates this axiom:
6 million rank Gore first, then Nader, then Bush.
1 million rank Bush first, then Nader, then Gore.
Assume everyone casts approval votes for their top 2 candidates. Nader wins with 7 million votes, even though most people prefer Gore to Nader.
As with the Borda scheme, the system is vulnerable to bloc voting. If the Gore supporters anticipate the above result, they can drop Nader from their ballot, thus ensuring victory for their #1 choice.
-a
Communism doesn't suck. I just don't know any country that ever had real communism or socialism.
I didn't realize it was possible to both get the point and completely miss the point simultaneously.
-a
Yeah, I've heard of approval voting. It is one of the many multiparty systems that are flawed.
For a description of why they are flawed, see: http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_00.html
Of course, just because all the systems are flawed doesn't mean we don't have to pick one. I would prefer to see us use instant runoff.
-a
I don't really buy the argument about the swapping being voluntary. If the act is illegal, then conspiracy to commit the act should also be illegal.
I agree that a straight vote would be preferable, but while the system remains as it is, it's unfair for some people to have their vote count extra.
If they want to drum up support for a 3rd party candidate, they're free to lie about who they plan to vote for during the polls.
-a
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/argumen ts.html#straw
Human thought works by rationalization. Justification of those thoughts often works by analogy.
I would like to see a campaign system in which all donations had to be made anonymously. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work.
After reading your previous message, you don't strike me as capable of carrying on a civilized argument.
-a
Then the EC needs to change or more people need to start doing the same thing so that everything is fair. Don't forget that the EC is the real problem here, not how people vote.
Yeah the EC is a problem, but only in a superficial way. The problem is you have to make a Boolean decision based on fuzzy data. It can be proved mathematically that there is no completely fair way to choose a single winner in a 3 party system.
Even in a two party system, there are fair ways to choose a winner, but there's no real correct one. A flat vote might be slightly better than the EC, but it would still be an arbitrary decision.
Does it really make sense to give such a large amount of power to a guy who won what amounts to a political coin toss? Think about it: Heads we invade Iraq, tails we don't. Heads we pull out of the Kyoto accord, tails we don't.
If someone can talk to people around them with similar views and they all agree to vote in a certain way that mutually benefits them all, why is that wrong? Because other people aren't using similar tactics and thus being short-changed by the electoral college?
Yeah, partially. Given that we are flipping a coin, the rules of the game need to be obeyed. No bouncing it off the table when a clean flip was called for.
-a
That man is beating and mugging that lady in the street. Let's stop him - throw him to the ground, put him in a jail cell! No, you say! Harming that man is just as bad as harming that lady. Two wrongs don't make a right!
I don't get it. I put a thing in my sig saying that I won't argue by analogy, and respondents seem to post nothing but. Whatever the case, this is clearly a straw man. I don't consider putting criminals in jail to be wrong anyway.
Vote swapping is about as dangerous as crossing your eyes. But if you're so quick to want to censor political speech, I just hope you're as vocal about "campaign contributions."
What I find appauling is the various different things people call "speech" these days. Yeah, I have some problems with campaign contributions, when they come with strings attached. But in general, campaign contributions pay for speech, so they are relevant. Vote swapping is not speech; it's just subverting the system.
-a
The electoral college system is dumb. Legalized vote swapping is dumber. Two wrongs don't make a right.
-a
The main point of my comment however is that I am planning to write an article for K5 [kuro5hin.org] on this exact subject, and just thought it polite to ask if I could borrow some of your points/examples from your journal (credited of course).
Absolutely you can. Get the word out there, man.
P.S. I have no idea who the AC is who replied before. Some people have an odd way of getting their kicks.
-a
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Speaking of extremism...
-a
According to this the licensing terms of Plan 9 are unacceptable to the GNU Foundation.
Yeah, but according to the article the GNU foundation is unacceptable to Dennis Ritchie.
-a
"Not a business idea, mind you, but an ethical ideal that he has rationalized into making business sense."
This is merely a conflict of priorities, whether you value ethics over business sense or vice versa. Debating the practical rammifications of either stance are probably beyond the scope of this flame. Either way, you can't tag RMS as a communist for this. Hippie would be a better fit.
Sure I can. Valuing ethics over business is exactly the kind of thing a bleeding-heart communist would do. Oh, and fine...he's a hippie too.
Truthfully, I've spent a long time trying to find evidence of that after the post, and it has been in vain so far. I haven't discovered any statistics on software development percentages at all. So until I can come up with some stats, I will shut my fucking mouth on this point.
Someone once sent me a link to a career information site from like 1985 that said a slim majority of programmers do in-house work.
"Reducing costs doesn't help a business make money if the competitors get the same advantage. In fact, it hurts them."
This only holds true for companies that attain profitability by selling software.
Not at all. Look at companies that sell commodities like oil. When the price of gas goes up, the oil companies make more money. The reason is that manufacturers determine profit margins as a percentage of costs, not as a fixed dollar amount per item.
Having unrestricted access to source code means start-ups will have it easier, and established businesses will have more contracting options and greater flexibility.
No, startups won't have it easier. When startups get given a lot of money in funding, they are expected to use that money to develop valuable assets. (Of course there were a few years there where that logic went out the window.) With open source, you don't develop assets so it's going to be difficult to get seed capital.
Furthermore, I don't believe it is in the public's best interest for corporations to best their competition at all costs.
I don't either, but then again I don't in doing many things "at all costs". However, healthy competition is the basis of our capitalist economic system. Open source is more likely to create unhealthy competition.
"The communist revolution wasn't about that stuff either."
The communist revolution was absolutely about centralizing government power and control of resources. If you don't agree with this, you are wrong
Thanks for taking my comments out of context. I was talking about "the power grabs, genocide, and spying on civilians."
The Revolution was started for some very good reasons, "Taxation without Representation" and "The Boston Massacre" being the two most prominent in my mind.
Go read a historical (i.e. not full of American propoganda) version of these events. The Boston Massacre started when an armed and unruly mob attacked a group of British soldiers (the story was later spun to make the mob sound innocent). The taxes were in place to pay the salaries of the soldiers (who were there to defend the colony from attack). The propogandists whined about the taxes, so the British revoked all but one of them. Then the propogandists whined about the potential for more taxes in the future. Have you considered the logistics of parliamentary representation in an age when even the mail could take months?
P.S. Who is the senior senator from Puerto Rico?
You are begging the question here. You cannot prove my position to be extreme by assuming that your position isn't. The reason why I concluded that you were extreme was because we seem to be at opposite political poles. Therefore, if I'm extreme, you're extreme.
I'm not trying to prove your position is extreme. I called you an extremist because I noticed that in every discussion you immediately try to polarize every issue. E.g.
1. You think we are at opposite political poles.
2. You introduced the strawman argument of the runners shooting each other during the race.
3. "If you view this as extreme, I must conclude that you believe that government should be maximized and freedom minimized, and want to make good friends with Big Brother."
(In fact, I don't believe that governments or freedoms need to be minimized or maximized. I believe in the middle way.)
I notice you appear to have given up on your indefensible argument about it being too difficult for the RIAA to distinguish between illegal P2P and legal web downloads (the original topic of this thread).
-a
Wow, +5 drivel!! Does this guy 0wn an account with moderator points or something?
For god's sake, people. This message is just random phrases strung together. I can't believe you are actually composing serious replies.
-a
In a nutshell, RMS believes that it is ethically wrong to treat a fundamentally conceptual entity, software in this instance, as a physical product; the service of software development is still plenty viable.
I'm aware of what RMS believes, but that doesn't prevent me from thinking he's a loony. I object to him being an asshole who wants the entire software industry to stake it's future on an idea he had. Not a business idea, mind you, but an ethical ideal that he has rationalized into making business sense.
Are you aware that 95% of all software never reaches store shelves? Most people who write code for a living are writing custom applications to be used in a corporate environment;
I've heard that stat cited a billion times without justification and without a definition of how software is quantified. Personally, I think ESR just made it up.
I don't see how placing such code under a Free license can be anything but helpful.
Reducing costs doesn't help a business make money if the competitors get the same advantage. In fact, it hurts them.
A quick visit to stallman.org further confirms that RMS is, in fact, not a communist. Communists seek centralized governmental power and control of the collective mind share of the people. RMS gains absolutely no power through his activities; at most, he diminishes the power of others. Additionally, communists don't oppose legislation which legalizes spying on civilains.
Whatever. The communist revolution wasn't about that stuff either. The power grabs, genocide, and spying on civilians came later, after Stalin came to power
And I'd like to know how many communists have a proclivity for qouting Frederick Douglas.
At least one. (Actually, I don't know why you find this strange, since Communism was very much in line with abolitionism.)
"Libertarianism is an extremist philosophy, just as any other."
A corollary of your statement is that all philosophies are extreme, which I don't think was your intended meaning.
Libertarianism is an extremist philosophy, just as any other extremist philosophy.
But allow me to point out that the concept of suffrage was extreme in its time, as was equality of all skin colors, as was the idea that 13 small British colonies are entitled to independence.
Suffrage and racial equality aren't really extremist ideas. They were just novel ideas in their time. The American Revolution, on the other hand, was started by a bunch of extremists. Having recently researched the subject, I discovered that most of the popular folklore is bullshit. The colonists had no good reason to revolt, but a small group of extremists incited a rebellion with rhetoric and lies.
The underlying concept that drives Libertarianism is that the government should be minimized and freedom maximized, which is right in-line with the principles on which our Country was founded. If you view this as extreme, I must conclude that you believe that government should be maximized and freedom minimized, and want to make good friends with Big Brother.
That's a natural conclusion for you to make, since you are an extremist. I, on the other hand, am not an extremist, so I don't believe that not believing in one extreme means that you have to embrace the other.
There's nothing wrong with disliking Libertarianism, but it is no more extreme than the Republican and Democratic parties, so please don't be absurd/hypocritcal.
No way. The Republican party has a lot of extremists, but I wouldn't say that about the Democrats. They are pretty centrist.
"What I can't figure out is why Janis thinks this endangers her ability to allow free downloads from her website."
P2P filingsharing systems use http protocols to transfer data. This means that it requires a certain not-insignificant degree of scrutiny to determine if an mp3 being downloaded is really from the web or from a P2P network.
Bullshit. HTTP packets have IP address and ports. Either of those can tell you whether you are downloading from a website or doing P2P. If that sounds like a "not-insignificant" degree of scrutiny to you, I can only conclude that you have never written any network software.
Since the lawsuit effectively gives the RIAA the right to sue anyone suspected of downloading infringing songs, they can wield this power to eliminate online music distribution, legal or illegal.
If they try to prevent legal music distribution, what makes you think the case won't simply be thrown out of court?
-a
RMS is pretty much a communist. If he had is way, the only ones left paying significant money for software development would be governments.
Anyone who supports a political theory of extremism probably hasn't thought abouth the issue hard enough. Libertarianism is an extremist philosophy, just as any other.
I'm aware that the RIAA filed suit against Verizon regarding P2P. Thanks for paying attention. What I can't figure out is why Janis thinks this endangers her ability to allow free downloads from her website. I'm sure she wouldn't be putting songs up there that she doesn't have the rights to.
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