My argument is that some people must be dealt with harshly because they have not be raised in a civilization that values what we do. It's not a matter of race, it's a matter of being born and raised in a civilization that respects decency.
That has to be the most hypocritical thing I have ever heard.
So, which of the following apply to you? [] 14 and under [] Sociopath [] Troll
Just in case you really, truly, believe what you said: You do realize that 9/11 (and all evangelical extremism) was predicated by the attitude of "wipe out those who do not value what we do", right? So, to be fair with your logic, it's perfectly OK for them to wipe out America. It's just a question of who gets to who first.
Cry me a river, i've put myself through far worse than any of that intentionally.
Umm, K. So how about I put you in an uncomfortable situation. Say, make you stand barfood on the edge of a 2x4. For about 16 hours.
Or more. Because you don't know when I'll stop. If ever.
Or if I'll let that dog go ahead and rip your genitals to shreds. After all, I've put you in a lot of pain and beat you and you're all alone in a hole surrounded by the enemy. You could die horribly and no-one would ever know.
Yeah, I'm sure you've put yourself through much worse.
If you truly beleive this, then how do you explain the fact that there are any poor people left in the world? Homo Sapiens has been around for about 300,000 years. The greatest advances in productivity have been made in the last 10 generations. If the voluntary actions of humans actually led to all of those with more to give some of what they have to those with less, everybody would surely be equal ground by now!
The existance of wealth disparity today (and especially the fact that the disparity has only grown over time) disproves your hypothesis. It is therefore quite apparent that if any attempt to disperse wealth throughout the population is to be made, it must be obligatory.
I use alt-tab in conjunction with drag-n-drop all the time. It's faster than cutting a doc, using alt-tab, and pasting it. Maybe I just don't know how to organize my files and folders correctly in the first place, but I do use that feature all the time.
Yeah, because there are so many people out there who haven't bought the game yet, but decided to drop $40 and a good amount of time to enable a little cartoon porn, when free pictures and movies of real pussy are faster and cheaper to get.
You honestly think this stunt was meant to be a cash cow? Heh.
Hawking currently favors the idea of "brane"s. His analogy is that our universe may be like a bubble in boiling water. Other bubbles/universes are out there in the 'water', whatever that may be. I got to hear him give a presentation a couple years ago and it sounded as if he thought universes may interact in some way (collisions, etc.).
Your use of the word "just" reflects an unwarranted value judgement.
As does your noticing and pointing out of the fact that he used the word "just". To say nothing of your next sentence.
In fact, his wording to me suggests that he meant "simply", as in "there is no mystical component to humans; we are made only of common elements and physical processes". Not, as you suggest, "merely", implying that there is nothing amazing about the way in which biological processes work.
Umm, what he said was But if your commander tells you to jump on a live grenade....
If you did it on your own, you're a hero. If your commander orders you to, then he's not much of a man, and you're an idiot to let his genes continue to exist.
1) electric fences shock down the length of the body (from wire to wire, or wire to ground), not across the heart.
2) they are made for cows, not intentional use on people.
3) hooking up something that is designed to hurt a large animal to shock somebody across their heart is stupid.
Thus, the complete moron that ignored the most basic tenant of "never allow electricity to flow across your heart" is not only an ignorant fool, but actively dangerous to those around him. A serious reprimand of some sort is definitely in order.
This is only a small step from the soldier who insisted to his buddy, against all his objections, that Kevlar armor protects against knife stabs. The idiot insisted on trying to prove himselft correct; the buddy ended up dead and the idiot ended up in jail. Darwin awards are only given to those who remove their *own* DNA from the gene pool. I have no sufferance for idiots who do stupid things that might remove others.
With all of the other complexities people are mentioning, it seems to me that more attention should be paid to running the computers directly off of the battery.
You can probably find a 12V -> 5V and 3.3V conditioning circuit on the web and build up circuits attached to mobo cables for a few bucks, right?
Inertial location tracking has errors that add up quickly. They constantly need re-zeroed with something like GPS.
That particular system advertises 0.01G body acceleration detection. That's 3.86"/s/s (or 9.8cm/s/s). So, if you're not accelerating at at least 4" or 10cm per second it won't even register. Depending on the behavior of the driver, the system won't even know you're moving. Even in the best case, the system is limited to velocity intervals of +/- 4" or 10cm/s. So, for every X seconds of acceleration and deceleration you have 4X inches/s uncertainty in your speed, and for every second that you travel at that speed you have 4X inches uncertainty in your position.
When you're in something travelling 400 mph (569fps), an uncertainty of 20 fps may not be that bad (assuming ~60s acceleration to get up to speed; I have no idea how accurate that is). When you're in a forklift going 3-5mph, misjudge your speed by 1 fps (3s acceleration), and travel around a warehouse for one minute, you're off by 60 feet.
I work at a place that deals with highly accurate accelerometers (accurate measurement of micro-Gs), and our resident expert has decided that an inertial tracking system for firefighters is not feasable because the errors are just too much.
I think we're both rooting for the same thing. I'm just trying to look at things from a practical perspective that keeps food on everyone's table. Chief among my views is that any exclusivity granted to "IP" must be for a limited and reasonable time, and that compensation must be fair. Fair compensation is not one that gives the creator 100+ times more wealth than the average person.
That is patently untrue. If it is a mere convenience, I would be entitled to any new media format the performance came on due to progress of technology for a minimal fee of media+shipping.
Exactly, you'd be able to do just that. Don't mistake me for an apologist for people's greed. I'm not being blinded by any industry's lines of, "Think of the powdered cheese product thou art taking from the mounth of the poor artist!" What I seek is a compromise between the ideal and the practical; something more than a pipe dream. The only reason that I think that my view is any more practical than the true ideal is because we used to have a reasonable system, before Disney, et. all, came along. I think that getting the system back to reasonable is a much more worthy fight than telling everyone that "software must be free, so dismantle all software companies and hope that some hobbiest turns out something you want". That is not going to fly whatsoever; not to mention how we'd be cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Perhaps I'm remiss in assuming that "rights" somehow include an inherant "fairness". But, I honestly think that the "information is free" argument is missing a legitimate part of the equation, and that is that people deserve (have the right) to be compensated for their work. By simply using software or listening to music, one admits to finding utility in that product. You *know* that it took time (i.e., had to eat, had to have a house, etc.) and effort to create the product you're using, but you feel no compulsion to re-imburse those costs? What's happening is that you're asking somebody to give their resources to you for nothing in return. You want something for nothing, and I recognize no such right. It's not "revenue depravation" I'm so concerned about, it's "remuneration". I don't care that you remember a song, or listen to a CD with a friend. What I care about is fairness. What infinitesimal reproduction costs should result in are very inexpensive software and music, but not outright free software and music. Not, that is, until we have matter replicators and the true cost of living is zero. To believe otherwise is to ignore the realities of the universe, which is simply asinine.
It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game though. A reasonable agreement that gives content producers exclusive distribution for ~5 years after their work is created still gets works into the public domain in a reasonable time frame, benefiting mankind as a whole. But, it does so without undermining the production base.
I need to read Right to Read again, but I don't see that the point of the story is strictly "IP is bad". First, IIRC, its main topic is DRM. Also, in that world, copyright is extended forever. If not explicitly stated, it still must be true. Else, why would a person pay rediculous license fees for a textbook that has no more content than one that just recently came out of its 5 year protection period? Sure, if the textbook had some new, worthy, content, you might decide to pay. But, there would be no way to force people to buy the new version (excluding laws and deals that have nothing to do with IP proper, but instead mandate that users can only choose from a subset of available works for no technically sound reason).
BTW, almost any time I use the word "you" I indend the generic "a person" definition. If I ever mean "you, the person I'm replying to", it should be blatantly obvious. Also, I wish I could think of a better phrase than IP.
There is an addendum that I-can't-remember-who added, but it has to do with how a programmer often does most of the important optimizations automatically, anyway. Basic "duh" stuff about reducing nested loops, which data structure to use in which circumstances, etc. Things that experience, if not common sense, illuminate in such a way that making the "optimization" is quick, easy, and so natural that you probably didn't notice you were doing it.
Sure, you might be wrong, or a hidden gotcha might show up, but you only spend time worrying about those issues when they actually come up.
the whole idea of "property" is based on scarcity of physical goods and our animalistic instincts to "posses things".
Yes, with the most basic essential property being the necessities for life. And, as our technology evolves, we put more and more emphasis and value on recreational activities. Here's the problem with the physical goods argument: No, you're not directly taking a copy out of my hands which will deprive me from selling it to someone else. And, even though you had an interest in copying my work, maybe you personally wouldn't have bought it. But, SOME of the people would have. Since we don't live in Rudy Rucker's world of Freeware with magical make-anything-you-want-at-your-fingertips allas, I still have to make money so that I can eat. So, the people who copied my work instead of paying me for it *are* taking food (or a car repair, or a vacation, or a critical operation) from me. It most certainly *does* deprive the creator of revenue, which directly relates to physical goods.
Again a fallacy, you made an assumption (very popular one) that "the artist" has a "right" to renumeration for his work.
No, I made the assumption that ALL of us have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". I think that's an opinion that has become accepted as fact today, given the general state of the world. Granted, I did almost explore the basic assumption of *anyone* having a right to work, and thus live, but skipped it favor of time and brevity. I completely agree with your paragraph (except for the "fallacy" part, unless we're going to get pedantic).
What you are stating is this: "Since you exposed these con-men for what they are, now you are responsible for feeding them while making sure they can continue to practice their 'profession' undisturbed".
I don't see why an artist is a con man? An artist that plays you a song for a dollar, and delivers as promised, has not conned anyone. If he charges $100 per song, he may be greedy, but, by definition, that's the song's worth if somebody actually ponies up the cash. And if he charges $5 for a recording so that you can re-live the moment any time you want, so what?
What I was really trying to say is that, in your world, only physical laborers exist. Sure, Beethoven might write music, but only in his spare time at night after he spends the majority of his waking hours producing widgits.
Bad news here: the "music industry", "film industry", "software industry" and similiar cons are simply not viable economicaly in non police-state societies.
I know I'm being idealist, but you hit the nail on the head. They won't work in a state where a "Please don't share this with anyone, because I'd like to sell 100K of these nationwide and make $50K to live on" agreement won't work. (Don't go there with the numbers, the numbers are be irrelevant; in the end it's the people putting up the cash who decide if the charge is too much or not) Since people aren't that honest, you have to force that honesty upon them. With physical goods, that honesty is enforced by the conspicuousness of a missing object and an evidence trail. Frankly, it could be argued that the greed of normal everyday people is the real problem here. In the same way that people have no *right* to work, you have no *right* to any software I write or song recording I produce. If I make a deal with Joe to record a song and give him a copy, that deal in no way translates to you. Just because it's easy, or just because you have interest, or just because you think I charge too much to perform, doesn't mean it's right. That's a deal between him and me, and the rest is nunya.
This is what it boils down to. The people "working" in these have two morally consistent choices:
"Working"? Yes, they train, think, and spend lots of time producing something. Most of them do it because they want to eat. I'd call that work.
find some other work and forget about any of this... or
These are strategic and/or tactical and/or resource management games (with varying degrees of skill required), and have absolutely nothing to do with any kind of role playing at all.
No way! You must be playing them wrong.
"OK, I'm just a little country-bumpkin peon pawn, I think I'll just shuffle forward a bit". "Out of my way, peasants! No? Fine! I shall leap over your slothy heads and protect you from the corrupt Bishop! (umm, you got my back, right, dude?)"
Umm, why don't all users have a right mouse button? Because they ship a mouse with only 1 button. When's the last time you saw a non-Mac mouse for sale with only 1 button?
Anyway, 1) all features using the RMB should be available through menus, the RMB just saves a lot of time; and 2) Apple agrees with being able to quickly perform common operations without browsing the menu lists, but without a RMB you have you to memorize tons of control keys (not a problem for an expert, but for newbs and casual users, it's more of a pain to remember all that crap than to just use the menus).
Further, Apple provides the same type of functionality, but you have to use a control key. So what they're actually saying is "yes, it's a good idea to be able to quickly access a menu of common features, but we think it's better to have to use 2 hands instead of 2 fingers"
I've read this post and more down the chain, and I still have the feeling I always get; that people on both sides are missing the point of the other, as if there was a nice black or white answer.
It's not very clean, but here's a few random (devil's advocate?) thoughts on the subject:
Why is it, exactly, that certain people think that protecting your physical property is OK, but protecting a story you thought up is not? Frankly, I really think it boils down to the fact that a story is easier to steal. I think people put a mental value on things based on how hard it is to acquire or have taken. You typically have to do something grusome in order to take land from people, like kill them en masse. To steal a story, you just have to hear/read/copy it and then pass it off as your own. If you think that "information wants to be free", then I'd like to hear why "land doesn't want to be free". It's not as if anyone has any *right* to land, other than at one point somebody forced somebody else off of it with violence.
Money. You need it in order to have a realistic go at a happy life. The question is, just HOW MUCH do you need? It's easy to be on either side of the "it's all mine" / "damn greedy scum" argument, but the truth is in the middle. Let's say that Joe spends a year selling hand-made gizmos and Fred spends a year writing a story. Why aren't they both just giving away their work to whoever walks by? Because they want to be able to eat, and maybe buy some of that ever-precious land, and maybe even have health insurance. So, they HAVE to sell what they produce. Unless you're 1) In the same financial position as an artist; and 2) Giving away all of your productivity for nothing; and 3) not dead in a month from starvation; then you have no right to say that information should be free. Just because some people work in mediums other than wood and stone does not mean that they are not entitled to fair compensation for their work. To posit that "ancient" ideas of property and stealing are somehow still applicable today (even though those laws were written for their particular circumstances; hmm, I must be getting old... am I talking about the Bible or IP here?) without putting forward a workable solution that keeps everyone fed, is a hollow exercise.
Further, why is it that it's other people's ideas of property that need to change? What I see (if you take away the "evil" heavy-handed way in which things are implemented) is one group of people trying to use today's technology and still feed the producer, and one group of people that want something for nothing. I happen to like a good 7-10 year no-compete law for intellectual works. Just because I despise purpetual copyright extentions, it doesn't mean I think somebody should get the shaft when they produce something that lots of people find useful but also find easy to copy.
p.s. Sorry, this post is very disjointed; but I don't have any more time to think about it and clean it up, right now.
Some of the sound w/o picture is space-to-ground communications with the astronauts.
But, of course, you might not know this because they do a crap job of ever explaining what's going on. And, when there *is* a description of what you just saw or are about to see, it is usually up for about 1 second.
Slashdot Mirror
My argument is that some people must be dealt with harshly because they have not be raised in a civilization that values what we do. It's not a matter of race, it's a matter of being born and raised in a civilization that respects decency.
That has to be the most hypocritical thing I have ever heard.
So, which of the following apply to you?
[] 14 and under
[] Sociopath
[] Troll
Just in case you really, truly, believe what you said: You do realize that 9/11 (and all evangelical extremism) was predicated by the attitude of "wipe out those who do not value what we do", right? So, to be fair with your logic, it's perfectly OK for them to wipe out America. It's just a question of who gets to who first.
Cry me a river, i've put myself through far worse than any of that intentionally.
Umm, K. So how about I put you in an uncomfortable situation. Say, make you stand barfood on the edge of a 2x4. For about 16 hours.
Or more. Because you don't know when I'll stop. If ever.
Or if I'll let that dog go ahead and rip your genitals to shreds. After all, I've put you in a lot of pain and beat you and you're all alone in a hole surrounded by the enemy. You could die horribly and no-one would ever know.
Yeah, I'm sure you've put yourself through much worse.
If you truly beleive this, then how do you explain the fact that there are any poor people left in the world? Homo Sapiens has been around for about 300,000 years. The greatest advances in productivity have been made in the last 10 generations. If the voluntary actions of humans actually led to all of those with more to give some of what they have to those with less, everybody would surely be equal ground by now!
The existance of wealth disparity today (and especially the fact that the disparity has only grown over time) disproves your hypothesis. It is therefore quite apparent that if any attempt to disperse wealth throughout the population is to be made, it must be obligatory.
Once. Then Tokyo went dark.
I use alt-tab in conjunction with drag-n-drop all the time. It's faster than cutting a doc, using alt-tab, and pasting it. Maybe I just don't know how to organize my files and folders correctly in the first place, but I do use that feature all the time.
Yeah, because there are so many people out there who haven't bought the game yet, but decided to drop $40 and a good amount of time to enable a little cartoon porn, when free pictures and movies of real pussy are faster and cheaper to get.
You honestly think this stunt was meant to be a cash cow? Heh.
Hawking currently favors the idea of "brane"s. His analogy is that our universe may be like a bubble in boiling water. Other bubbles/universes are out there in the 'water', whatever that may be. I got to hear him give a presentation a couple years ago and it sounded as if he thought universes may interact in some way (collisions, etc.).
Actually, thowing it behind you would increase your speed relative to earth and thus increase the height of your orbit.
Your use of the word "just" reflects an unwarranted value judgement.
As does your noticing and pointing out of the fact that he used the word "just". To say nothing of your next sentence.
In fact, his wording to me suggests that he meant "simply", as in "there is no mystical component to humans; we are made only of common elements and physical processes". Not, as you suggest, "merely", implying that there is nothing amazing about the way in which biological processes work.
You, sir, are very insightful. I wish to give you money for more of your sagely advice!
Umm, what he said was But if your commander tells you to jump on a live grenade....
If you did it on your own, you're a hero. If your commander orders you to, then he's not much of a man, and you're an idiot to let his genes continue to exist.
1) electric fences shock down the length of the body (from wire to wire, or wire to ground), not across the heart.
2) they are made for cows, not intentional use on people.
3) hooking up something that is designed to hurt a large animal to shock somebody across their heart is stupid.
Thus, the complete moron that ignored the most basic tenant of "never allow electricity to flow across your heart" is not only an ignorant fool, but actively dangerous to those around him. A serious reprimand of some sort is definitely in order.
This is only a small step from the soldier who insisted to his buddy, against all his objections, that Kevlar armor protects against knife stabs. The idiot insisted on trying to prove himselft correct; the buddy ended up dead and the idiot ended up in jail. Darwin awards are only given to those who remove their *own* DNA from the gene pool. I have no sufferance for idiots who do stupid things that might remove others.
With all of the other complexities people are mentioning, it seems to me that more attention should be paid to running the computers directly off of the battery.
You can probably find a 12V -> 5V and 3.3V conditioning circuit on the web and build up circuits attached to mobo cables for a few bucks, right?
Heck, we're gonna need a whole new cache in order keep the stuff around that we didn't know we needed yet!
Inertial location tracking has errors that add up quickly. They constantly need re-zeroed with something like GPS.
/s. So, for every X seconds of acceleration and deceleration you have 4X inches /s uncertainty in your speed, and for every second that you travel at that speed you have 4X inches uncertainty in your position.
That particular system advertises 0.01G body acceleration detection. That's 3.86"/s/s (or 9.8cm/s/s). So, if you're not accelerating at at least 4" or 10cm per second it won't even register. Depending on the behavior of the driver, the system won't even know you're moving. Even in the best case, the system is limited to velocity intervals of +/- 4" or 10cm
When you're in something travelling 400 mph (569fps), an uncertainty of 20 fps may not be that bad (assuming ~60s acceleration to get up to speed; I have no idea how accurate that is). When you're in a forklift going 3-5mph, misjudge your speed by 1 fps (3s acceleration), and travel around a warehouse for one minute, you're off by 60 feet.
I work at a place that deals with highly accurate accelerometers (accurate measurement of micro-Gs), and our resident expert has decided that an inertial tracking system for firefighters is not feasable because the errors are just too much.
Well, the Amazing Stories series was on TV way before that came out.
I think we're both rooting for the same thing. I'm just trying to look at things from a practical perspective that keeps food on everyone's table. Chief among my views is that any exclusivity granted to "IP" must be for a limited and reasonable time, and that compensation must be fair. Fair compensation is not one that gives the creator 100+ times more wealth than the average person.
/. :)
That is patently untrue. If it is a mere convenience, I would be entitled to any new media format the performance came on due to progress of technology for a minimal fee of media+shipping.
Exactly, you'd be able to do just that. Don't mistake me for an apologist for people's greed. I'm not being blinded by any industry's lines of, "Think of the powdered cheese product thou art taking from the mounth of the poor artist!" What I seek is a compromise between the ideal and the practical; something more than a pipe dream. The only reason that I think that my view is any more practical than the true ideal is because we used to have a reasonable system, before Disney, et. all, came along. I think that getting the system back to reasonable is a much more worthy fight than telling everyone that "software must be free, so dismantle all software companies and hope that some hobbiest turns out something you want". That is not going to fly whatsoever; not to mention how we'd be cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Perhaps I'm remiss in assuming that "rights" somehow include an inherant "fairness". But, I honestly think that the "information is free" argument is missing a legitimate part of the equation, and that is that people deserve (have the right) to be compensated for their work. By simply using software or listening to music, one admits to finding utility in that product. You *know* that it took time (i.e., had to eat, had to have a house, etc.) and effort to create the product you're using, but you feel no compulsion to re-imburse those costs? What's happening is that you're asking somebody to give their resources to you for nothing in return. You want something for nothing, and I recognize no such right. It's not "revenue depravation" I'm so concerned about, it's "remuneration". I don't care that you remember a song, or listen to a CD with a friend. What I care about is fairness. What infinitesimal reproduction costs should result in are very inexpensive software and music, but not outright free software and music. Not, that is, until we have matter replicators and the true cost of living is zero. To believe otherwise is to ignore the realities of the universe, which is simply asinine.
It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game though. A reasonable agreement that gives content producers exclusive distribution for ~5 years after their work is created still gets works into the public domain in a reasonable time frame, benefiting mankind as a whole. But, it does so without undermining the production base.
I need to read Right to Read again, but I don't see that the point of the story is strictly "IP is bad". First, IIRC, its main topic is DRM. Also, in that world, copyright is extended forever. If not explicitly stated, it still must be true. Else, why would a person pay rediculous license fees for a textbook that has no more content than one that just recently came out of its 5 year protection period? Sure, if the textbook had some new, worthy, content, you might decide to pay. But, there would be no way to force people to buy the new version (excluding laws and deals that have nothing to do with IP proper, but instead mandate that users can only choose from a subset of available works for no technically sound reason).
BTW, almost any time I use the word "you" I indend the generic "a person" definition. If I ever mean "you, the person I'm replying to", it should be blatantly obvious. Also, I wish I could think of a better phrase than IP.
It's nice to find an actual debate here on
I absolutely agree.
There is an addendum that I-can't-remember-who added, but it has to do with how a programmer often does most of the important optimizations automatically, anyway. Basic "duh" stuff about reducing nested loops, which data structure to use in which circumstances, etc. Things that experience, if not common sense, illuminate in such a way that making the "optimization" is quick, easy, and so natural that you probably didn't notice you were doing it.
Sure, you might be wrong, or a hidden gotcha might show up, but you only spend time worrying about those issues when they actually come up.
the whole idea of "property" is based on scarcity of physical goods and our animalistic instincts to "posses things".
... or
Yes, with the most basic essential property being the necessities for life. And, as our technology evolves, we put more and more emphasis and value on recreational activities. Here's the problem with the physical goods argument: No, you're not directly taking a copy out of my hands which will deprive me from selling it to someone else. And, even though you had an interest in copying my work, maybe you personally wouldn't have bought it. But, SOME of the people would have. Since we don't live in Rudy Rucker's world of Freeware with magical make-anything-you-want-at-your-fingertips allas, I still have to make money so that I can eat. So, the people who copied my work instead of paying me for it *are* taking food (or a car repair, or a vacation, or a critical operation) from me. It most certainly *does* deprive the creator of revenue, which directly relates to physical goods.
Again a fallacy, you made an assumption (very popular one) that "the artist" has a "right" to renumeration for his work.
No, I made the assumption that ALL of us have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". I think that's an opinion that has become accepted as fact today, given the general state of the world. Granted, I did almost explore the basic assumption of *anyone* having a right to work, and thus live, but skipped it favor of time and brevity. I completely agree with your paragraph (except for the "fallacy" part, unless we're going to get pedantic).
What you are stating is this: "Since you exposed these con-men for what they are, now you are responsible for feeding them while making sure they can continue to practice their 'profession' undisturbed".
I don't see why an artist is a con man? An artist that plays you a song for a dollar, and delivers as promised, has not conned anyone. If he charges $100 per song, he may be greedy, but, by definition, that's the song's worth if somebody actually ponies up the cash. And if he charges $5 for a recording so that you can re-live the moment any time you want, so what?
What I was really trying to say is that, in your world, only physical laborers exist. Sure, Beethoven might write music, but only in his spare time at night after he spends the majority of his waking hours producing widgits.
Bad news here: the "music industry", "film industry", "software industry" and similiar cons are simply not viable economicaly in non police-state societies.
I know I'm being idealist, but you hit the nail on the head. They won't work in a state where a "Please don't share this with anyone, because I'd like to sell 100K of these nationwide and make $50K to live on" agreement won't work. (Don't go there with the numbers, the numbers are be irrelevant; in the end it's the people putting up the cash who decide if the charge is too much or not) Since people aren't that honest, you have to force that honesty upon them. With physical goods, that honesty is enforced by the conspicuousness of a missing object and an evidence trail. Frankly, it could be argued that the greed of normal everyday people is the real problem here. In the same way that people have no *right* to work, you have no *right* to any software I write or song recording I produce. If I make a deal with Joe to record a song and give him a copy, that deal in no way translates to you. Just because it's easy, or just because you have interest, or just because you think I charge too much to perform, doesn't mean it's right. That's a deal between him and me, and the rest is nunya.
This is what it boils down to. The people "working" in these have two morally consistent choices:
"Working"? Yes, they train, think, and spend lots of time producing something. Most of them do it because they want to eat. I'd call that work.
find some other work and forget about any of this
These are strategic and/or tactical and/or resource management games (with varying degrees of skill required), and have absolutely nothing to do with any kind of role playing at all.
;)
No way! You must be playing them wrong.
"OK, I'm just a little country-bumpkin peon pawn, I think I'll just shuffle forward a bit". "Out of my way, peasants! No? Fine! I shall leap over your slothy heads and protect you from the corrupt Bishop! (umm, you got my back, right, dude?)"
See?
Umm, why don't all users have a right mouse button? Because they ship a mouse with only 1 button. When's the last time you saw a non-Mac mouse for sale with only 1 button?
Anyway, 1) all features using the RMB should be available through menus, the RMB just saves a lot of time; and 2) Apple agrees with being able to quickly perform common operations without browsing the menu lists, but without a RMB you have you to memorize tons of control keys (not a problem for an expert, but for newbs and casual users, it's more of a pain to remember all that crap than to just use the menus).
Further, Apple provides the same type of functionality, but you have to use a control key. So what they're actually saying is "yes, it's a good idea to be able to quickly access a menu of common features, but we think it's better to have to use 2 hands instead of 2 fingers"
I've read this post and more down the chain, and I still have the feeling I always get; that people on both sides are missing the point of the other, as if there was a nice black or white answer.
It's not very clean, but here's a few random (devil's advocate?) thoughts on the subject:
Why is it, exactly, that certain people think that protecting your physical property is OK, but protecting a story you thought up is not? Frankly, I really think it boils down to the fact that a story is easier to steal. I think people put a mental value on things based on how hard it is to acquire or have taken. You typically have to do something grusome in order to take land from people, like kill them en masse. To steal a story, you just have to hear/read/copy it and then pass it off as your own. If you think that "information wants to be free", then I'd like to hear why "land doesn't want to be free". It's not as if anyone has any *right* to land, other than at one point somebody forced somebody else off of it with violence.
Money. You need it in order to have a realistic go at a happy life. The question is, just HOW MUCH do you need? It's easy to be on either side of the "it's all mine" / "damn greedy scum" argument, but the truth is in the middle. Let's say that Joe spends a year selling hand-made gizmos and Fred spends a year writing a story. Why aren't they both just giving away their work to whoever walks by? Because they want to be able to eat, and maybe buy some of that ever-precious land, and maybe even have health insurance. So, they HAVE to sell what they produce. Unless you're 1) In the same financial position as an artist; and 2) Giving away all of your productivity for nothing; and 3) not dead in a month from starvation; then you have no right to say that information should be free. Just because some people work in mediums other than wood and stone does not mean that they are not entitled to fair compensation for their work. To posit that "ancient" ideas of property and stealing are somehow still applicable today (even though those laws were written for their particular circumstances; hmm, I must be getting old... am I talking about the Bible or IP here?) without putting forward a workable solution that keeps everyone fed, is a hollow exercise.
Further, why is it that it's other people's ideas of property that need to change? What I see (if you take away the "evil" heavy-handed way in which things are implemented) is one group of people trying to use today's technology and still feed the producer, and one group of people that want something for nothing. I happen to like a good 7-10 year no-compete law for intellectual works. Just because I despise purpetual copyright extentions, it doesn't mean I think somebody should get the shaft when they produce something that lots of people find useful but also find easy to copy.
p.s. Sorry, this post is very disjointed; but I don't have any more time to think about it and clean it up, right now.
just make the damn linux drivers, or build the windows drivers so that they're easy to interact with for use in other os'ses as well..
Umm, yeah, that's what their asking for. The API to talk to the driver.
Some of the sound w/o picture is space-to-ground communications with the astronauts.
But, of course, you might not know this because they do a crap job of ever explaining what's going on. And, when there *is* a description of what you just saw or are about to see, it is usually up for about 1 second.