This is insane. I get the humour of all this, but if such a service actually exists, that suggests there are people who really do need this. How can such people exist?
I like Python for a whole lot of other reasons too. I am a programming language snob. I used to write device drivers in C, I respected the power of the language and how unforgiving it was. My first reaction to Python was "layout is part of the language? Ha!". But credit to me, I tried it out properly, and fuck me, it's fun! I needed to carry out some very repetitive operations on a web-interace and naturally I didn't want to spend hours clicking buttons on a website. I thought to myself, I wonder how hard it is to manage cookies in Python. About forty minutes later I had a flexible and working Python script which was carrying out all my actions for me. And the forty minutes was mostly writing supporting code to compute the appropriate actions to send to the URL.
Python, is quite simply, great. You only have to read from say, the Python Cookbook, to get a feel for how much thought has gone into the design of the language. I'm still a programming language snob, it's just that I found Python was well worth being proud of using.:D
(Mind you, there online documentation could be better - PHP's site for example, is so much friendlier).
On the contrary. Good people remaining in the service of a bad organisation only adds to that organisation's strength. Walking away takes from the strength of that organisation. These people tried to redeem the organisation - they protested, they appealed and they went public. The organisation did not reverse its actions. To remain is to continue to lend support to its actions, to walk away is to diminish its authority. Whilst it could in theory help if they set up an alternate standards agency, these are merely people from a national group. Unless they started organising with other protestors from around the World, they can't set up anything to rival ISO. But they don't actually need to. Standards emerge and get organised without the aid of ISO. In fact, ISO often merely turns up and codifies such standards. Weaken ISO and where there is a need, other parties will start to fill in the gap in authority. I don't think you can ask more of these people than they have already given up. I assume there's a paycheck they have renounced somewhere in this, as well a privileged position.
If every individual is selfishly working to make themselves better off, everybody as a whole ends up better off.
Situation: There are three people. If they all work together, they can each get £50.00. If one person acts alone, she can claim £75.00 for herself. Operating on the principle of greed, one person will choose to be richer than they would otherwise. Acting more selflessly, everyone gets their £50.00. THis is an abstract example of a common principle in society. As you can see, society is worse off in such instances, contradicting your absolute and unqualified statement above.
Well I don't know, you could be right. But I was told my version by my history teacher and he sounded pretty confident, and he was really, really old. you kind of got the feeling he was there.
There's no common usage of "2nd World." You have the Old World (Europe and a few bits and pieces they thought of as Europe), the New World (that thing discovered by Vikings and later by Columbus) and then, as you were up to two by this point, the 3rd World, typically Africa. Called the 3rd World because "Even Newer World" sounds really stupid. The meaning has begun to shift however, in that 3rd World because of long term association with the poverty of many African nations, has come to mean a very poor country with little infrastructure.
Mexicans would be entitled to be a bit offended by their country being called "3rd World" as it certainly isn't in the historical sense and despite horrible wealth disparities, isn't in the modern sense, either.
I don't care much for the "business method" argument myself -- how "outdated" one's business plan is should have no bearing on its legality.
We agree on that, then. Those trying to justify piracy do themselves no favours depending on this easily falsified argument. As to your next point:
However, it is the pro-copyright group that is claiming that specific actions, which they cannot demonstrate to have caused any direct harm, ought to be illegal.
You've kindly offered me a positive to prove, which I can. I know lots of people that download movies and music and even scanned books as a substitute to buying them. I find it highly unlikely that I am living in some statisitical anomaly of crime and moral rectitude.;) Now you may argue that piracy actually has a beneficial gain in stimulating music and movie sales which balances it. That's pretty dubious, but it can be at least argued. It can also be argued that countermeasures brought in by the film and music industries such as Blu-Ray DRM and demanding personal details from ISPs are either self-destructive or illegal, and that's a much more supportable argument, as is arguing that penalties for piracy are far too harsh (which we've actually just seen a US judge agree with). But these aren't what I was arguing with in this case. The OP was boldly stating that if you reduce / eliminate copyright, piracy will reduce to be no longer a concern. Except in the sense of your semantic argument ("We will eliminate cake from the planet, by using a different name for it - then we can say there is no cake,"), this is deeply wrong.
They can not possibly gain ANYTHING from people like me,
Indeed, but the question is whether all the other unlicensed downloaders are similarly just replacing nicked / scratched / broken by loud guitar playing (who are you? Hot Black?) CDs, or whether they are downloading things that they would have bought new. I find it very hard to believe those posters claiming people don't do this.
In the part you quoted, no one talks about lack of choice in business models. He was saying that changes in business have led to changes in copyright. Like many here, my opinion is that those changes do not reflect the spirit of the law, or the caution with which it was introduced.
You are correct in saying that the laws have been extended in the interests of businesses, and I do not dispute that (it is true), but this isn't what the OP was saying. The OP post was trying to claim that the legal system was supporting failing business models. Quite obviously, as other business models are available (including those same ones that would be available if copyright law were curtailed), trying to declare the removal of these laws necessary on the grounds that business models are failing is false. Were the business models failing, the other options are available right now for any business that wishes to adopt them.
The tendency of some people here to both claim that the music and film industries are making obscene amounts of money and that they're business models are failing, sometimes even in the same post, is indicative to me of reasoning to support a previously chosen belief (i.e. one that justifies piracy).
You are making a supportable argument which I'm neither agreeing with or disagreeing with in this post - because it's a separate argument to the one the OP was making, which had serious flaws in its logic.
Yes thats exactly what he is, and the evidence backs his claim up,
Okay then. The poster claimed that piracy doesn't cost anyone anything because people wouldn't buy it instead, if they couldn't get it for free. That seems extremely unlikely to me, based as it is on universal honesty and a refusal on anyone's part to take things without paying. But you say you have evidence that shows this. The floor is yours, falcon5768. I look forward to seeing this evidence.
I think the main agenda/. editors have is to stir up lots of angry arguments to drive the post count up. I'm not exactly what the interest is, though a high post count might tie into their advertising earnings either directly through more usage meaning more click-throughs, or bu making themselves look more appealing to advertisers. Or maybe editors are simply under pressure to generate more activity in some way. But I see more and more articles that are obvious trolls and flamebait, right down to an unsubtle question at the end of the summary to start it off.
Fanatical people don't think of themselves as fanatical. Only the people that label them fanatical do..
And people that considered clearing your browser cookies a sign of fanatacism have seriously low standards of effort or caring. It takes seconds. Good grief - what would they think of someone brushing their teeth each night? "He spends minutes everyday doing this activity? FANATIC!"
I am really tired of this kind of math. The premise is bogus, copyright infringement does not cost anyone anything. It is a loss of potential gain.
I just want to be absolutely crystal clear on this. You're saying piracy has no cost because people wouldn't use it in place of purchasing the product if they had to. Is that what you're saying? Really? You're sure about that?
Our copyright and patent system is broken. It's been abused, and stretched to the point of breaking by greedy big media trying to prop up flagging business models rather than innovate and change with progress.
And yet anyone, absolutely anyone, is completely free to sell their work under any system they like. If it's a flagging business model then there's nothing stopping people from using a different one. But you appear to be advocating eliminating one particular business model so that a different one has to be used. Therefore answer this question: In what way does reducing the number of possible business models people can choose from increase our options?
Where is your evidence that reducing copyright will reduce piracy? I require some evidence for your point of view because the reasoning seems at fault: That piracy wont be much of a problem when costs are reduced. Isn't it just as plausible that people who think nothing of taking a £10 album without paying will consider it even less of a crime to take a £5 album without paying? Where is your evidence that your belief is founded?
The people I know that pirate music or movies do so as a means of avoiding buying them.
What if you do admit being wrong after having people telling you that you're wrong...
I'm going to stop you right there. You don't admit you were wrong just because someone tells you that you are. You admit that you were wrong when either through your own observations or others, you realise that you actually are wrong. If you don't believe you are wrong after having analysed your reasons for your belief, then don't change your mind. Develop your ability to do that honest analysis of your reasons so that you can do this.
As to your user interface example, well then it's an issue of finding a suitable solution that pleases both parties, or else deciding that one party has a better argument and going with theirs.
I'm not advocating pretending you are wrong when you are right. I'm advocating being honest enough to admit you are wrong as a means to being right.
That's a very nice summation of a serious problem. This issue is why I always teach (and try to practice) that it is important to admit when you are wrong. The nice thing about doing so, is that you have to do it less often as time goes on. Well, a bit - but it becomes easier to do. One should never allow the value you have invested in believing something to be a factor in whether you believe it or not.
I think that was the whole point. Microsoft poisoned the well so they can sell bottled water.
A valid point, but once the well has been poisoned, it's folly to keep drinking it. And the analogy breaks down in an important aspect - the Well let itself be poisoned in return for cash. This should be a lesson to other wells everywhere.
They'd all be legal, purchased, and viewed within reasonable means, but because I run Linux, no dice.
Oh it's possible to get Blu-Ray running on Linux. It only took me about a day and a half of digging obscure information out of forums, recompiling mplayer with beta codecs, installing new kernel modules (for UDF), etc. Still can't get subtitles out of the fucker, but it works.
Of course you may not enjoy despair, frustration and mental torture, however, so this might not be for you.
The current state of patents in the US, at least in software which is the area I am familiar with, is that they are like nuclear weapons in their destructive power. It doesn't matter as much that the big companies have a vast arsenal, they can still be hit hard by a rogue company with the right patent at the right time. Whilst the US patent system does create a strong barrier to entry that protects the big players against the up and coming to some extent, I think they are coming to the conclusion that they would rather fight on their own merits (they are after all quite capable of doing so) or purchasing such tidbits as arise independently (again, they're quite capable of this), than leaving themselves open to a damaging patent strike from an outsider. Badly written or silly patents are a danger to everyone, much like nukes. A process of disarmament doesn't harm the big players so long as it's on all sides. And I think they may be coming to realise this. That the EU has twice fought off US-style patent law has to my mind had a significant effect in bringing about this change in mind. After all, in a global economy, having a large player that isn't hamstrung by the system encourages others to reconsider their own plight. Not that everything is rosy here in Europe, but I think the above has a fair bit of truth to it.
Not liked the look of GoDaddy (and it hardly sounds professional). Use your own domain and a dedicated email package such as that sold by Fasthosts. It's one that I use and they've been very good for me and answer the phone's pretty sharpish when I want them. But there are probably a horde of decent email account sellers around. You're right that having hotmail on your businesscard doesn't look very professional, but did you really need to ask Slashdot this?
No. 5th Element is a good movie, and is one of THE BEST looking Blu-Ray movies out there.
Hey - watched this on Blu-Ray last Friday. It looked great. Note that there are two versions floating around, an older Blu-Ray release that was widely slated for being a bad transfer, and a newer one that is super-green in quality. I assume we both have the latter.
An excellent place to check out the quality of a HD movie before you buy it is High Def Digest which is the place that warned me to watch out for the older version (as I always buy discs second hand). So much of the final quality depends on the processing that the studio does that it's not a good idea to simply assume because it's Blu-Ray tha quality will be top-notch, so I always check things out first.
The quality of high-def is undoubtedly better than standard and noticeably so. But those of us who consider the benefits to be worth the additional money are a minority, I think. I'm quite a film-buff and have reasonable disposable income, but even I only buy very special films on HD. For example, the recent Blu-Ray of Baron Munchausen is incredible in quality and well worth it. Lesser movies will do fine on standard. They have to bring the prices down.
Seconded - the only reason I have bought any Blu-Ray or HD-DVD discs is because I can get them very cheap second hand off Amazon. DRM is an adoption killer for a lot of people whose primary viewing device is a computer. (And especially for us Linux users - you don't want to know how much effort, research and time it took to get Blu-Ray working on my setup), but for the majority of Blu-Ray's potential customers, it is the cost. It's too high for what people get and the cost of upgrading to a HD/Blu-Ray player is too high. And if you're a Windows user, the player software for Blu-Ray is piss poor. At some point, you'll end up buying AnyDVD as the only means of getting out of the tremendous hassles that go with most of the other players. Excellent software but it adds yet another cost.
DRM isn't helping and needs to be scrapped. But that alone wont help much, except in boosting PR amongst those who are likely to advise people whether or not to buy a technology: important, but not enough. Prices have to come down and come down now, before the technology dies.
Slashdot Mirror
This is insane. I get the humour of all this, but if such a service actually exists, that suggests there are people who really do need this. How can such people exist?
I like Python for a whole lot of other reasons too. I am a programming language snob. I used to write device drivers in C, I respected the power of the language and how unforgiving it was. My first reaction to Python was "layout is part of the language? Ha!". But credit to me, I tried it out properly, and fuck me, it's fun! I needed to carry out some very repetitive operations on a web-interace and naturally I didn't want to spend hours clicking buttons on a website. I thought to myself, I wonder how hard it is to manage cookies in Python. About forty minutes later I had a flexible and working Python script which was carrying out all my actions for me. And the forty minutes was mostly writing supporting code to compute the appropriate actions to send to the URL.
Python, is quite simply, great. You only have to read from say, the Python Cookbook, to get a feel for how much thought has gone into the design of the language. I'm still a programming language snob, it's just that I found Python was well worth being proud of using.
(Mind you, there online documentation could be better - PHP's site for example, is so much friendlier).
On the contrary. Good people remaining in the service of a bad organisation only adds to that organisation's strength. Walking away takes from the strength of that organisation. These people tried to redeem the organisation - they protested, they appealed and they went public. The organisation did not reverse its actions. To remain is to continue to lend support to its actions, to walk away is to diminish its authority. Whilst it could in theory help if they set up an alternate standards agency, these are merely people from a national group. Unless they started organising with other protestors from around the World, they can't set up anything to rival ISO. But they don't actually need to. Standards emerge and get organised without the aid of ISO. In fact, ISO often merely turns up and codifies such standards. Weaken ISO and where there is a need, other parties will start to fill in the gap in authority. I don't think you can ask more of these people than they have already given up. I assume there's a paycheck they have renounced somewhere in this, as well a privileged position.
I have full respect for their actions.
Situation: There are three people. If they all work together, they can each get £50.00. If one person acts alone, she can claim £75.00 for herself. Operating on the principle of greed, one person will choose to be richer than they would otherwise. Acting more selflessly, everyone gets their £50.00. THis is an abstract example of a common principle in society. As you can see, society is worse off in such instances, contradicting your absolute and unqualified statement above.
A large disparity in wealth is bad for a country.
Bah! The chances of anything living on Mars, are a million to one.
Well I don't know, you could be right. But I was told my version by my history teacher and he sounded pretty confident, and he was really, really old. you kind of got the feeling he was there.
There's no common usage of "2nd World." You have the Old World (Europe and a few bits and pieces they thought of as Europe), the New World (that thing discovered by Vikings and later by Columbus) and then, as you were up to two by this point, the 3rd World, typically Africa. Called the 3rd World because "Even Newer World" sounds really stupid. The meaning has begun to shift however, in that 3rd World because of long term association with the poverty of many African nations, has come to mean a very poor country with little infrastructure.
Mexicans would be entitled to be a bit offended by their country being called "3rd World" as it certainly isn't in the historical sense and despite horrible wealth disparities, isn't in the modern sense, either.
We agree on that, then. Those trying to justify piracy do themselves no favours depending on this easily falsified argument. As to your next point:
You've kindly offered me a positive to prove, which I can. I know lots of people that download movies and music and even scanned books as a substitute to buying them. I find it highly unlikely that I am living in some statisitical anomaly of crime and moral rectitude. ;) Now you may argue that piracy actually has a beneficial gain in stimulating music and movie sales which balances it. That's pretty dubious, but it can be at least argued. It can also be argued that countermeasures brought in by the film and music industries such as Blu-Ray DRM and demanding personal details from ISPs are either self-destructive or illegal, and that's a much more supportable argument, as is arguing that penalties for piracy are far too harsh (which we've actually just seen a US judge agree with). But these aren't what I was arguing with in this case. The OP was boldly stating that if you reduce / eliminate copyright, piracy will reduce to be no longer a concern. Except in the sense of your semantic argument ("We will eliminate cake from the planet, by using a different name for it - then we can say there is no cake,"), this is deeply wrong.
Indeed, but the question is whether all the other unlicensed downloaders are similarly just replacing nicked / scratched / broken by loud guitar playing (who are you? Hot Black?) CDs, or whether they are downloading things that they would have bought new. I find it very hard to believe those posters claiming people don't do this.
;) :)
Also, back up your collection.
Regards,
-H.
You are correct in saying that the laws have been extended in the interests of businesses, and I do not dispute that (it is true), but this isn't what the OP was saying. The OP post was trying to claim that the legal system was supporting failing business models. Quite obviously, as other business models are available (including those same ones that would be available if copyright law were curtailed), trying to declare the removal of these laws necessary on the grounds that business models are failing is false. Were the business models failing, the other options are available right now for any business that wishes to adopt them.
The tendency of some people here to both claim that the music and film industries are making obscene amounts of money and that they're business models are failing, sometimes even in the same post, is indicative to me of reasoning to support a previously chosen belief (i.e. one that justifies piracy).
You are making a supportable argument which I'm neither agreeing with or disagreeing with in this post - because it's a separate argument to the one the OP was making, which had serious flaws in its logic.
Okay then. The poster claimed that piracy doesn't cost anyone anything because people wouldn't buy it instead, if they couldn't get it for free. That seems extremely unlikely to me, based as it is on universal honesty and a refusal on anyone's part to take things without paying. But you say you have evidence that shows this. The floor is yours, falcon5768. I look forward to seeing this evidence.
I think the main agenda
And people that considered clearing your browser cookies a sign of fanatacism have seriously low standards of effort or caring. It takes seconds. Good grief - what would they think of someone brushing their teeth each night? "He spends minutes everyday doing this activity? FANATIC!"
I just want to be absolutely crystal clear on this. You're saying piracy has no cost because people wouldn't use it in place of purchasing the product if they had to. Is that what you're saying? Really? You're sure about that?
And yet anyone, absolutely anyone, is completely free to sell their work under any system they like. If it's a flagging business model then there's nothing stopping people from using a different one. But you appear to be advocating eliminating one particular business model so that a different one has to be used. Therefore answer this question: In what way does reducing the number of possible business models people can choose from increase our options?
Where is your evidence that reducing copyright will reduce piracy? I require some evidence for your point of view because the reasoning seems at fault: That piracy wont be much of a problem when costs are reduced. Isn't it just as plausible that people who think nothing of taking a £10 album without paying will consider it even less of a crime to take a £5 album without paying? Where is your evidence that your belief is founded?
The people I know that pirate music or movies do so as a means of avoiding buying them.
I'm going to stop you right there. You don't admit you were wrong just because someone tells you that you are. You admit that you were wrong when either through your own observations or others, you realise that you actually are wrong. If you don't believe you are wrong after having analysed your reasons for your belief, then don't change your mind. Develop your ability to do that honest analysis of your reasons so that you can do this.
As to your user interface example, well then it's an issue of finding a suitable solution that pleases both parties, or else deciding that one party has a better argument and going with theirs.
I'm not advocating pretending you are wrong when you are right. I'm advocating being honest enough to admit you are wrong as a means to being right.
That's a very nice summation of a serious problem. This issue is why I always teach (and try to practice) that it is important to admit when you are wrong. The nice thing about doing so, is that you have to do it less often as time goes on. Well, a bit - but it becomes easier to do. One should never allow the value you have invested in believing something to be a factor in whether you believe it or not.
The most poignant error message I ever recieved was on a HP-UNIX platform which gave me the sad, childhood-crushing line:
"There is no magic."
So sad...
I cheated - I got the girl at the next desk to do it.
A valid point, but once the well has been poisoned, it's folly to keep drinking it. And the analogy breaks down in an important aspect - the Well let itself be poisoned in return for cash. This should be a lesson to other wells everywhere.
But I don't disagree with what you say.
Oh it's possible to get Blu-Ray running on Linux. It only took me about a day and a half of digging obscure information out of forums, recompiling mplayer with beta codecs, installing new kernel modules (for UDF), etc. Still can't get subtitles out of the fucker, but it works.
Of course you may not enjoy despair, frustration and mental torture, however, so this might not be for you.
The current state of patents in the US, at least in software which is the area I am familiar with, is that they are like nuclear weapons in their destructive power. It doesn't matter as much that the big companies have a vast arsenal, they can still be hit hard by a rogue company with the right patent at the right time. Whilst the US patent system does create a strong barrier to entry that protects the big players against the up and coming to some extent, I think they are coming to the conclusion that they would rather fight on their own merits (they are after all quite capable of doing so) or purchasing such tidbits as arise independently (again, they're quite capable of this), than leaving themselves open to a damaging patent strike from an outsider. Badly written or silly patents are a danger to everyone, much like nukes. A process of disarmament doesn't harm the big players so long as it's on all sides. And I think they may be coming to realise this. That the EU has twice fought off US-style patent law has to my mind had a significant effect in bringing about this change in mind. After all, in a global economy, having a large player that isn't hamstrung by the system encourages others to reconsider their own plight. Not that everything is rosy here in Europe, but I think the above has a fair bit of truth to it.
Not liked the look of GoDaddy (and it hardly sounds professional). Use your own domain and a dedicated email package such as that sold by Fasthosts. It's one that I use and they've been very good for me and answer the phone's pretty sharpish when I want them. But there are probably a horde of decent email account sellers around. You're right that having hotmail on your businesscard doesn't look very professional, but did you really need to ask Slashdot this?
Hey - watched this on Blu-Ray last Friday. It looked great. Note that there are two versions floating around, an older Blu-Ray release that was widely slated for being a bad transfer, and a newer one that is super-green in quality. I assume we both have the latter.
An excellent place to check out the quality of a HD movie before you buy it is High Def Digest which is the place that warned me to watch out for the older version (as I always buy discs second hand). So much of the final quality depends on the processing that the studio does that it's not a good idea to simply assume because it's Blu-Ray tha quality will be top-notch, so I always check things out first.
The quality of high-def is undoubtedly better than standard and noticeably so. But those of us who consider the benefits to be worth the additional money are a minority, I think. I'm quite a film-buff and have reasonable disposable income, but even I only buy very special films on HD. For example, the recent Blu-Ray of Baron Munchausen is incredible in quality and well worth it. Lesser movies will do fine on standard. They have to bring the prices down.
Seconded - the only reason I have bought any Blu-Ray or HD-DVD discs is because I can get them very cheap second hand off Amazon. DRM is an adoption killer for a lot of people whose primary viewing device is a computer. (And especially for us Linux users - you don't want to know how much effort, research and time it took to get Blu-Ray working on my setup), but for the majority of Blu-Ray's potential customers, it is the cost. It's too high for what people get and the cost of upgrading to a HD/Blu-Ray player is too high. And if you're a Windows user, the player software for Blu-Ray is piss poor. At some point, you'll end up buying AnyDVD as the only means of getting out of the tremendous hassles that go with most of the other players. Excellent software but it adds yet another cost.
DRM isn't helping and needs to be scrapped. But that alone wont help much, except in boosting PR amongst those who are likely to advise people whether or not to buy a technology: important, but not enough. Prices have to come down and come down now, before the technology dies.