You are correct. That is why it's not called Data Technology.
However, I think the key is that people want information and computers store only data. "Data Mining" is the science of extracting a small amount of information from a mountain of data. I guess it's a bit of a misnomer.
Gold Miners mine through a mountain of quartz looking for gold.
I don't know what kind of structures silver is in, but its the same deal, Silver miners are seeking silver.
The last thing Data Miners want to find is more Data. They want to extract the Information. After all, when was the last time you saw a Dirt Mine?
Actually, it is fair, if you look at the world the right way.
Well, a particular way that I will claim is right, and then let you decide for yourself.
People talk about being [unfairly] over or underpaid. What determines what the "right" amount of money for your job is?
There are precisely two criteria for what a particular job is worth. Each has its own subtleties and nuances, but on the surface, at least, they are very simple.
1) How much perceived value does the employee create? This is all about how much the person doing the paying feels he is gaining by having the employee. In some cases this is easy to determine. If you hire someone who works from home using all his own equipment, and who earns the company a fixed rate for each hour worked, it is easy to calculate. For instance, suppose you hired a work-at-home graphic designer. Suppose also that all his time was spent working for clients, and that you billed $60/hr for his time. Therefore, the $60/hr is a ceiling for the perceived value. You have to subtract any costs incurred in managing him and whatnot, but the calculation is possible.
If, on the other hand, he works on internal products it is very hard to measure... this is all about how well he works, how well others work, and all sorts of other little incalculables. Thus it is the employer's *perception* of the value that matters.
Since in all capitalistic transactions, both parties feel that they are gaining something from the exchange, we can safely assume that whatever the answer to #1 is, this is an aboslute maximum for what the individual can be paid.
--
2) How many people are willing and able to do the job, or could be trained to do so "in time"?
Like in any capitalistic market, there are buyers and sellers, and the sellers must compete with each other. If there are 500 open positions for widget-makers, and only 90 people in the world currently skilled on the widget-machine, and if it took 4 years to train someone to operate said machine, the 90 people would all find very high-paying jobs (subject to the limitations of #1). The 500 employers would try very hard to woo the 90.
In other cases, there are 500 jobs and 250,000 applicants. In this case, it will be the individual offering the perception of greatest value at lowest cost that will get the job.
Frequently in such saturated markets, an employer will simply say that they are looking to pay $X and want, say, 10 people. They know that the very best candidated could earn $1.5X, say. But they don't want to spend years pouring over resumes. So, they set the pay low hoping that many people will self-select themselves out of the running. They then hope to find a "good enough" candidate from the group remaining. If they can not, they typically raise the offer, in an attempt to woo slightly better candidates.
However, once (in this case 10) people who are good enough agree to accept whatever the rate is, the game is over. That is the value of the work: the lowest price that a sufficient quantity of sufficiently capable individuals are willing to accept.
Question #2 ultimately yields a minimum price for the work -- the lowest price that enough "good enough" people will accept.
The final price is always between #1 and #2. The actual price within these bounds is determined primarily by the negotiation skills of the parties involved, and the urgency each feels. A desperate employer might be willing to spend an extra, say $5000/yr to get the employee to leave his current position and start next week, rather than save the money but spend 2-3 months finding someone.
Similarly and unemployed individual might take $5000/yr less than they feel they could get elsewhere because the offer came today and they can start in 3 days, instead of looking for months to find that better deal.
-- It just so happens that, in the software engineering world, the "nerd" stereotype runs strong. A fair percentage of software engi
Driver's license for illegals program is still only "coming soon".
Every year, a particular member of the state legislature introduces his bill. Most years it passes. Once gov. Gray Davis signed it. He was recalled and the law was defeated via referendum.
This year, once again, the bill was introduced. It currently sits on gov Arnie's desk, where he keeps promising to get to it, but somehow never does.
While the current state legislature is almost unanimously in favor of licenses for illegals, only about 20% of the voters feel this way. The other 80% of us know its stupid and are appalled that its even being considered.
We're even doing things like signing petitions to amend the (state) constitution to prevent this.
The way things are, at least here in CA, you are treated like a king if you are Mexican. Especially if you can prove your illegal status.
Already illegal immigrants from Mexico can get free tuition to California public universities, we're working on giving them free driver's licenses, we're working on giving them free health insurance (we already provide free school (up through High School), free medical care (provided you go to the E.R.), free food, free crappy housing or subsidized decent housing,... and the cops are not allowed to check if you are legal or not, even if you are convicted of a felony.)
I've opened about 20 flat-panel monitors to date -- several different brands (mostly Dell, Apple, Samsung, Sony), the oldest about 18 months ago, the newest 30 days.
One of them had a single dead pixel (green component always on 100% bright) right out of the box. Incidentally it was a 17" Sony. Neither sony nor the store would take it back. (Actually the store would -- they'd just charge me $45 "restocking fee").
So far, not a single one of the other displays has developed even one dead pixel -- they are all perfect. A good thing too, things of this sort tend to shorten both my life and the lives of various customer service reps through increased blood pressure.
You are an EVE-Online pirate. I am an EVE-Online player who does not like pirates.
You want to be a pirate, that's fine. However, it seems that you are whining about how terrible it is that the cops kill pirates when they catch them.
You have every right to be a pirate, sitting at gates and blowing everybody up who passes.
I don't understand why you find this fun. In addition, I have discovered that most people who act like this in-game are true asshats in real life.
That said, I don't know you, haven't talked to you in-game or out, so I won't assume that you are an asshat too -- that would be unfair.
However, consider this: choosing *not* to be a PvP-only player means that I will never be as capable of PvP as the PvP-only pirate who has never spent even 5 seconds doing anything other than being a pirate. I have to go train all the skills related to building things, and to flying the industry-related ships... you, on the other hand can train nothing but gun skills and electronic warfare skills.
Additionally, you have the advantage that you can buy a single cheap item (stasis webifier) and guarantee that 100% of all people who fly through are stuck. There is no defense whatsoever. Escape becomes impossible. Since you can sit there all day, we have no chance.
Thus you are a successful pirate.
However, the rest of us don't want to fight you every second of every day, so we invent laws that place consequences for your actions.
If you choose to kill many players, and then to do nothing that provides any value to the community, your security status falls -- you have proven to the community that your character is evil.
Therefore the community bands together and you are destroyed if you enter the parts of space that are patrolled to keep new players safe.
Allow me to remind you that you are whining here. You are complaining at how unfair it if you do nothing but blow other players up all day long, it eventually becomes harder to play because you have to fly the long way around if you want to go to another part of space.
You could always stop killing people for a few days, and kill a few non-player ships instead (just for a few days) and then you could go wherever you want, until you started being a pirate again.
It's not that I can't win all the time. You are whining that you can't win all the time, that the 97% of the community that thinks pirates are asshats have decided that there should be a small, miniscule inconvenience for players that choose to spend the overwhelming majority of their time killing other players.
EVE lets you be a pirate. It just doesn't let you be a pirate with absolutely no consequences.
1) You are correct, there is a difference between being a PK/PvPer and being a griefer
2) Allow me to paraphrase what you said:
"I am a PvPer but not a griefer. I like to kill new players over and over and over again because its easy. I like to taunt other players before killing them, after killing them the first time, and after killing them the 500th time. I like to pick targets and follow them, killing them every few minutes to guarantee that they do not have any fun. I especially like to stand over spawn points so that I can kill the same person 100s of times per hour."
You are right, there is a difference. However, you are definitely a griefer, as your fun is based purely on the misery you create.
If you want to claim moral superiority, don't compare yourself to professional atheletes... they are very near the bottom of the morality scale. If you compare yourself with them, you are admitting that at best you are no better than them. Just read the news -- most of them are pretty pathetic people too.
And when somebody robs your house, how about the cops throw *you* in jail for the rest of your life because you cost us all money by making a 911 (support) call
The key thing that differentiates annoying losses due to unwanted PvPing and truly awful consider-leaving-the-game losses due to griefers is more in the griefers attitude and desires.
Consider, for a moment:
I play EVE Online. I occasionally venture into "0.0 space" -- that part of space where all things of moderate or high value are to be found, and where nearly any tactic is considered legal.
I frequently get blown up when I do this. You know why? Because there are whole groups of people, frequently flying around in gangs of 6 or more that just sit at a stargate for 6-12 hours waiting for people to come through so that they can taunt them and blow them up.
They pick the stargate so that they can target you the second you appear -- before you have the opportunity to do anything... The moment you appear, they use ship items that make it so that you can not move, you can not shoot, you can only sit and watch. Because there are so many of them, there is literally no single ship that they can not kill 100% of the time, with absolutely 0 risk of any loss whatsoever.
In most cases, they don't get any benefit out of it -- your ship is destroyed, you had nothing of value in your cargo (most of which was destroyed), and they don't even get any money out of it. In fact, its a money-losing venture, since they waste loads of ammunition.
And I can't imagine its that much fun, sitting at a gate for hours... literally sometimes I'll log off (because I new about them, and they were in my way) at, say noon. When I sign back on at midnight to finally move my stuff, they're *still there*
The crazier part is that, given the remoteness of the location, they probably only saw and killed 5 or 6 people the whole day!
The EVE developers are taking a very interesting tactic, however. They keep loosening up the rules, making it easier and more legal to do these things...
For example... in "secure" space, you are not allowed to attack people. That does not stop the griefer from stealing ore that you are in the middle of mining -- however, doing anything to the individual who steals from you gets you blown up.
The devs have made it clear that they are taking the side of the griefers...
I think they figure that they can let everybody *else* quit, and get all the griefers from all the other games to join, and have a paradise where nobody actually builds anything -- they just stand randomly at different gates waiting for each other to fly through so they can blow them up.
And because they keep increasing the supply of NPC-generated items, and keep reducing the prices of those items, soon there will be absolutely no benefit to building anything anyway... The ideal place for the morally bankrupt... Infinite supply of weapons, and rules that give the griefer nearly unresistable superiority.
Since the image on monopoly money is copyright Parker Bros. or, possibly Hasbro now (I forget), it is illegal to duplicate and distribute Monopoly money in the US. If you duplicated so much of it that its actual value was $1000 or more, you could even go to jail for it.
This being/. I'll pull some numbers out of my ass and say that, on average, 1 illegal copy results in a loss of about 0.10 - 0.15 sales.
So, if I have a $50,000 piece of software, and you illegally distribute 100 copies, you've cost me between $500,000 and $750,000.
Neither the $5,000,000 that the ??IA like to pretend, nor the $0 that the parent post likeds to think.
I know a few people who never buy any movies anymore, because they can get a free DivX. I also know a few people that have 500 DivX movies in their binders that they will probably never watch, because they have a piracy addiction, and download everything they can find because the actual accumulation of illegal movies excites them. They would never have bought all 500... they might have bought a few dozen or so... in some cases, they actually do by the few dozen they really like, in some cases, not.
That is the KEY distinction. When someone steals from you, they have done two bad things.
Thing #1 is that they have unfairly acquired something of value. Copyright infringers do this as well.
When you do thing #1, you have the potential for great personal gain. The only potential for loss that you have caused is that you have decreased the potential for how much of the stuff you might have bought from someone -- since you already have it now.
Thing #2: You have deprived the rightful owner of whatever possessions it is that you have gained.
Copyright infringers do not do this.
Therefore Copyright Infringement is not stealing, and is less bad than stealing. Even if you considered Things #1 and #2 as being of equal badness weight.
That is not to say that copyright infringement is OK. Just that it is less bad than actual theft, because it has less of a damaging effect on its victim.
1) This has been true for as long as the concept of money has existed. Possibly longer. The only reason its any different now is because
2) The rich get richer. Now a few have so much wealth, so much money, that they can talk louder than anyone has ever been able to in the past.
3) Uh. Ok.
4) The poor do not get poorer. Neither in dollars (replace with favorite currency) or in real wealth. Sure, some have, you could fill many screens with personal anecdotes, but on the whole the poor have gotten richer. Not nearly as fast as the rich have gotten richer, however.
People frequently point out that the "gap" between the rich and the poor is growing. It is, pretty slowly, believe it or not, but it is growing.
However, its growing only because the average wealthy individual is gaining faster than the average poor individual is gaining.
You see, the total amount of value in the world is not fixed. It is possible to have an exchange in which one person buys something from another, and both become wealthier (in terms of value -- sometimes even marketable value) than before. This is because people can create things of value from parts of lesser value.
In many (not all) cases, as the rich become richer, they drag everybody else up with them.
Part of the EULA inside that box is a disclaimer of all warranties.
Therefore if you agree to the terms, they are not responsible for seeing to it that the software works as advertised, and you have agreed that this is ok.
Slashdot Mirror
please forgive the obvious here:
You are correct. That is why it's not called Data Technology.
However, I think the key is that people want information and computers store only data. "Data Mining" is the science of extracting a small amount of information from a mountain of data. I guess it's a bit of a misnomer.
Gold Miners mine through a mountain of quartz looking for gold.
I don't know what kind of structures silver is in, but its the same deal, Silver miners are seeking silver.
The last thing Data Miners want to find is more Data. They want to extract the Information. After all, when was the last time you saw a Dirt Mine?
Forgive me if I am stating the obvious, but...
haven't you just pretty much summarized google's business plans for the next decade-or-so?
To be the thing you use to get at all the info you want, regardless of what it is, who created it, or where it lives
Actually, it is fair, if you look at the world the right way.
Well, a particular way that I will claim is right, and then let you decide for yourself.
People talk about being [unfairly] over or underpaid. What determines what the "right" amount of money for your job is?
There are precisely two criteria for what a particular job is worth. Each has its own subtleties and nuances, but on the surface, at least, they are very simple.
1) How much perceived value does the employee create? This is all about how much the person doing the paying feels he is gaining by having the employee. In some cases this is easy to determine. If you hire someone who works from home using all his own equipment, and who earns the company a fixed rate for each hour worked, it is easy to calculate. For instance, suppose you hired a work-at-home graphic designer. Suppose also that all his time was spent working for clients, and that you billed $60/hr for his time. Therefore, the $60/hr is a ceiling for the perceived value. You have to subtract any costs incurred in managing him and whatnot, but the calculation is possible.
If, on the other hand, he works on internal products it is very hard to measure... this is all about how well he works, how well others work, and all sorts of other little incalculables. Thus it is the employer's *perception* of the value that matters.
Since in all capitalistic transactions, both parties feel that they are gaining something from the exchange, we can safely assume that whatever the answer to #1 is, this is an aboslute maximum for what the individual can be paid.
--
2) How many people are willing and able to do the job, or could be trained to do so "in time"?
Like in any capitalistic market, there are buyers and sellers, and the sellers must compete with each other. If there are 500 open positions for widget-makers, and only 90 people in the world currently skilled on the widget-machine, and if it took 4 years to train someone to operate said machine, the 90 people would all find very high-paying jobs (subject to the limitations of #1). The 500 employers would try very hard to woo the 90.
In other cases, there are 500 jobs and 250,000 applicants. In this case, it will be the individual offering the perception of greatest value at lowest cost that will get the job.
Frequently in such saturated markets, an employer will simply say that they are looking to pay $X and want, say, 10 people. They know that the very best candidated could earn $1.5X, say. But they don't want to spend years pouring over resumes. So, they set the pay low hoping that many people will self-select themselves out of the running. They then hope to find a "good enough" candidate from the group remaining. If they can not, they typically raise the offer, in an attempt to woo slightly better candidates.
However, once (in this case 10) people who are good enough agree to accept whatever the rate is, the game is over. That is the value of the work: the lowest price that a sufficient quantity of sufficiently capable individuals are willing to accept.
Question #2 ultimately yields a minimum price for the work -- the lowest price that enough "good enough" people will accept.
The final price is always between #1 and #2. The actual price within these bounds is determined primarily by the negotiation skills of the parties involved, and the urgency each feels. A desperate employer might be willing to spend an extra, say $5000/yr to get the employee to leave his current position and start next week, rather than save the money but spend 2-3 months finding someone.
Similarly and unemployed individual might take $5000/yr less than they feel they could get elsewhere because the offer came today and they can start in 3 days, instead of looking for months to find that better deal.
--
It just so happens that, in the software engineering world, the "nerd" stereotype runs strong. A fair percentage of software engi
Driver's license for illegals program is still only "coming soon".
Every year, a particular member of the state legislature introduces his bill. Most years it passes. Once gov. Gray Davis signed it. He was recalled and the law was defeated via referendum.
This year, once again, the bill was introduced. It currently sits on gov Arnie's desk, where he keeps promising to get to it, but somehow never does.
While the current state legislature is almost unanimously in favor of licenses for illegals, only about 20% of the voters feel this way. The other 80% of us know its stupid and are appalled that its even being considered.
We're even doing things like signing petitions to amend the (state) constitution to prevent this.
I'm dead serious. Illegal immigrants (BUT NOT LEGAL ONES) automatically qualify for the in-state resident tuition discount.
This discount amounts to about 10 grand per year, should they attend a UC school.
right... sorry. I knew that, but I screwed it up.
You say "again" as if any significant politician has done anything that protected privacy, civil rights, or individual liberties in the last 15 years.
Could be longer, but I don't remember understanding politics longer ago than that.
that's surprising, actually.
... and the cops are not allowed to check if you are legal or not, even if you are convicted of a felony.)
The way things are, at least here in CA, you are treated like a king if you are Mexican. Especially if you can prove your illegal status.
Already illegal immigrants from Mexico can get free tuition to California public universities, we're working on giving them free driver's licenses, we're working on giving them free health insurance (we already provide free school (up through High School), free medical care (provided you go to the E.R.), free food, free crappy housing or subsidized decent housing,
I'd fix it, but I already commented on this one...
damn... sorry...
of course not.
Because we're all only going to whine to each other in a forum filled only with others who will also do nothing.
actually, given the current state of affairs, I would prefer a less-enlightened place...
I dunno about that...
I've opened about 20 flat-panel monitors to date -- several different brands (mostly Dell, Apple, Samsung, Sony), the oldest about 18 months ago, the newest 30 days.
One of them had a single dead pixel (green component always on 100% bright) right out of the box. Incidentally it was a 17" Sony. Neither sony nor the store would take it back. (Actually the store would -- they'd just charge me $45 "restocking fee").
So far, not a single one of the other displays has developed even one dead pixel -- they are all perfect. A good thing too, things of this sort tend to shorten both my life and the lives of various customer service reps through increased blood pressure.
You are an EVE-Online pirate. I am an EVE-Online player who does not like pirates.
You want to be a pirate, that's fine. However, it seems that you are whining about how terrible it is that the cops kill pirates when they catch them.
You have every right to be a pirate, sitting at gates and blowing everybody up who passes.
I don't understand why you find this fun. In addition, I have discovered that most people who act like this in-game are true asshats in real life.
That said, I don't know you, haven't talked to you in-game or out, so I won't assume that you are an asshat too -- that would be unfair.
However, consider this: choosing *not* to be a PvP-only player means that I will never be as capable of PvP as the PvP-only pirate who has never spent even 5 seconds doing anything other than being a pirate. I have to go train all the skills related to building things, and to flying the industry-related ships... you, on the other hand can train nothing but gun skills and electronic warfare skills.
Additionally, you have the advantage that you can buy a single cheap item (stasis webifier) and guarantee that 100% of all people who fly through are stuck. There is no defense whatsoever. Escape becomes impossible. Since you can sit there all day, we have no chance.
Thus you are a successful pirate.
However, the rest of us don't want to fight you every second of every day, so we invent laws that place consequences for your actions.
If you choose to kill many players, and then to do nothing that provides any value to the community, your security status falls -- you have proven to the community that your character is evil.
Therefore the community bands together and you are destroyed if you enter the parts of space that are patrolled to keep new players safe.
Allow me to remind you that you are whining here. You are complaining at how unfair it if you do nothing but blow other players up all day long, it eventually becomes harder to play because you have to fly the long way around if you want to go to another part of space.
You could always stop killing people for a few days, and kill a few non-player ships instead (just for a few days) and then you could go wherever you want, until you started being a pirate again.
It's not that I can't win all the time. You are whining that you can't win all the time, that the 97% of the community that thinks pirates are asshats have decided that there should be a small, miniscule inconvenience for players that choose to spend the overwhelming majority of their time killing other players.
EVE lets you be a pirate. It just doesn't let you be a pirate with absolutely no consequences.
Stop whining.
Two things.
1) You are correct, there is a difference between being a PK/PvPer and being a griefer
2) Allow me to paraphrase what you said:
"I am a PvPer but not a griefer. I like to kill new players over and over and over again because its easy. I like to taunt other players before killing them, after killing them the first time, and after killing them the 500th time. I like to pick targets and follow them, killing them every few minutes to guarantee that they do not have any fun. I especially like to stand over spawn points so that I can kill the same person 100s of times per hour."
You are right, there is a difference. However, you are definitely a griefer, as your fun is based purely on the misery you create.
If you want to claim moral superiority, don't compare yourself to professional atheletes... they are very near the bottom of the morality scale. If you compare yourself with them, you are admitting that at best you are no better than them. Just read the news -- most of them are pretty pathetic people too.
And when somebody robs your house, how about the cops throw *you* in jail for the rest of your life because you cost us all money by making a 911 (support) call
I have a great idea for you.
Don't play any of these MMORPGs then.
This way the 97% of us who aren't complete moral sinkholes will be able to enjoy ourselves.
As for you? Go play [insert FPS sequel name here]. That way you can kill and butcher everything in sight.
Precisely,
The key thing that differentiates annoying losses due to unwanted PvPing and truly awful consider-leaving-the-game losses due to griefers is more in the griefers attitude and desires.
Consider, for a moment:
I play EVE Online. I occasionally venture into "0.0 space" -- that part of space where all things of moderate or high value are to be found, and where nearly any tactic is considered legal.
I frequently get blown up when I do this. You know why? Because there are whole groups of people, frequently flying around in gangs of 6 or more that just sit at a stargate for 6-12 hours waiting for people to come through so that they can taunt them and blow them up.
They pick the stargate so that they can target you the second you appear -- before you have the opportunity to do anything... The moment you appear, they use ship items that make it so that you can not move, you can not shoot, you can only sit and watch. Because there are so many of them, there is literally no single ship that they can not kill 100% of the time, with absolutely 0 risk of any loss whatsoever.
In most cases, they don't get any benefit out of it -- your ship is destroyed, you had nothing of value in your cargo (most of which was destroyed), and they don't even get any money out of it. In fact, its a money-losing venture, since they waste loads of ammunition.
And I can't imagine its that much fun, sitting at a gate for hours... literally sometimes I'll log off (because I new about them, and they were in my way) at, say noon. When I sign back on at midnight to finally move my stuff, they're *still there*
The crazier part is that, given the remoteness of the location, they probably only saw and killed 5 or 6 people the whole day!
The EVE developers are taking a very interesting tactic, however. They keep loosening up the rules, making it easier and more legal to do these things...
For example... in "secure" space, you are not allowed to attack people. That does not stop the griefer from stealing ore that you are in the middle of mining -- however, doing anything to the individual who steals from you gets you blown up.
The devs have made it clear that they are taking the side of the griefers...
I think they figure that they can let everybody *else* quit, and get all the griefers from all the other games to join, and have a paradise where nobody actually builds anything -- they just stand randomly at different gates waiting for each other to fly through so they can blow them up.
And because they keep increasing the supply of NPC-generated items, and keep reducing the prices of those items, soon there will be absolutely no benefit to building anything anyway... The ideal place for the morally bankrupt... Infinite supply of weapons, and rules that give the griefer nearly unresistable superiority.
Troll!?!
I'm a troll now?
erm... just because you disagree, doesn't mean I'm not actually contributing to the debate.
ISPs are only protected because they have "common carrier" status.
that basically means that they are a standard distribution mechanism, and are therefore not responsable for requests made of them.
This is not true for TOR
just for fun:
Since the image on monopoly money is copyright Parker Bros. or, possibly Hasbro now (I forget), it is illegal to duplicate and distribute Monopoly money in the US. If you duplicated so much of it that its actual value was $1000 or more, you could even go to jail for it.
You are quite right.
/. I'll pull some numbers out of my ass and say that, on average, 1 illegal copy results in a loss of about 0.10 - 0.15 sales.
This being
So, if I have a $50,000 piece of software, and you illegally distribute 100 copies, you've cost me between $500,000 and $750,000.
Neither the $5,000,000 that the ??IA like to pretend, nor the $0 that the parent post likeds to think.
I know a few people who never buy any movies anymore, because they can get a free DivX. I also know a few people that have 500 DivX movies in their binders that they will probably never watch, because they have a piracy addiction, and download everything they can find because the actual accumulation of illegal movies excites them. They would never have bought all 500... they might have bought a few dozen or so... in some cases, they actually do by the few dozen they really like, in some cases, not.
You are correct, sir.
That is the KEY distinction. When someone steals from you, they have done two bad things.
Thing #1 is that they have unfairly acquired something of value. Copyright infringers do this as well.
When you do thing #1, you have the potential for great personal gain. The only potential for loss that you have caused is that you have decreased the potential for how much of the stuff you might have bought from someone -- since you already have it now.
Thing #2: You have deprived the rightful owner of whatever possessions it is that you have gained.
Copyright infringers do not do this.
Therefore Copyright Infringement is not stealing, and is less bad than stealing. Even if you considered Things #1 and #2 as being of equal badness weight.
That is not to say that copyright infringement is OK. Just that it is less bad than actual theft, because it has less of a damaging effect on its victim.
OK... I'll bite.
1) This has been true for as long as the concept of money has existed. Possibly longer. The only reason its any different now is because
2) The rich get richer. Now a few have so much wealth, so much money, that they can talk louder than anyone has ever been able to in the past.
3) Uh. Ok.
4) The poor do not get poorer. Neither in dollars (replace with favorite currency) or in real wealth. Sure, some have, you could fill many screens with personal anecdotes, but on the whole the poor have gotten richer. Not nearly as fast as the rich have gotten richer, however.
People frequently point out that the "gap" between the rich and the poor is growing. It is, pretty slowly, believe it or not, but it is growing.
However, its growing only because the average wealthy individual is gaining faster than the average poor individual is gaining.
You see, the total amount of value in the world is not fixed. It is possible to have an exchange in which one person buys something from another, and both become wealthier (in terms of value -- sometimes even marketable value) than before. This is because people can create things of value from parts of lesser value.
In many (not all) cases, as the rich become richer, they drag everybody else up with them.
5) Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
That is a very interesting parallel... to me anyway, as I have read and re-read these books obsessively myself.
Its true though... in that case it was deliberate, but I bet we will do worse by accident...
Imagine, for instance... some medicines for your stomach/digestive tract can cause things like diarrhea.
Could you imaging what a bout "mental diarrhea" might be like?
Part of the EULA inside that box is a disclaimer of all warranties.
Therefore if you agree to the terms, they are not responsible for seeing to it that the software works as advertised, and you have agreed that this is ok.