Your post is angry. Your comments indicate the point has gone completely over your head twice. No one is being pedantic. The fact you said, "pedantic", implies it doesn't mean what you think it means. And the only person uptight appears to be you. The point of the OP, is the post to which the OP responds is entirely baseless, trollish, and nonsense. You posts seem to continue with that trend.
Do you have a contribution to make which is even topic or is your entire intent simply to troll?
The point isn't that one is more secure that the other. The point is, his rhetoric is invalid because his own rhetoric not only invalidates itself but actually argues the inverse. As such, his broken line of thinking isn't worth further discussion.
A better question is, despite your hyperbole, why would the US government care. Furthermore, they have no input into the matter so even if they do care, who cares.
Known terrorists have literally been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama was awarded the prize for having done absolutely nothing to earn it. The combination literally means everyone on earth has earned a Nobel prize. Sadly, the prize has become something of a sad joke and isn't respected by anyone with a brain. Worse, in modern times, they've been attempting to use it to shape politics rather than reward high ethics and peaceful politics, making it all the more pathetic.
The Nobel Peace Prize is absolutely meaningless at this point in time.
I know you're just a troll, but for the benefit of anyone who reads this...
No, that statement actually makes YOU a troll. Disagreeing does not make someone a troll. IT simply means you disagree. The fact you believe disagreement makes someone a troll either says you are a troll or ignorant.
I'm just saying that if filesharing has a negative effect, it's so small that it's overshadowed by other factors.
There no evidence to support that conclusion. Inversely, we have hundreds of years of economic theory which almost entirely invalidates that line of thought. Now you can argue new economic theories may be required, and that may be true, but such supportive theories simply not exist today.
Pirating *can* have a positive effect on the income of artists, if the money people save by pirating is spent on goods and services from which the artist receives a larger percentage.
Incorrect logic. In you example, paying x on good y versus z still only makes the artist x. Without piracy, assuming he had the money, he would have paid 2x. Furthermore, by taking y and only paying for z, the artist was harmed by market devaluation of y.
I'm done. Its pretty clear from your other posts you're more interested in parroting ignorance rather than actual facts.
He doesn't understand the difference between a virus and a trojan. Worse, his own logic actually validates open source to be better. The application in question isn't open source. Therefore, using his own logic, he's actually assuring us all that open source is more secure.
That's an extremely tiny minority of developers. And, unless the functionality is core to the distribution's functionality, then its a really dumb idea. Its safe to say, scripts written soley to benefit a distribution represent a tiny minority of scripts/applications written in the world. For the 98% of the rest of us, its a really stupid idea.
It really isn't as insane as you make it out to be
I gave you a real world, non fictional example. It really is all that I made it out to be. And its obviously so. This is, in fact, why python developers are taught to use/usr/bin/env python as their magic line - because its smart, flexible, and most importantly, not broken from day one. That's doesn't mean all python developers do the right thing. Some don't understand the implications. Some blindly follow the herd because they're simply doing what they've been told without knowing any better and lack experience.
And your perl programmers really need a better deployment process.
I agree. My statement wasn't intended to persecute perl developers. My statements targeted them because, by in large, they suffer from the broken mentality which is the origin of our exchanges. My point is, unless you have highly specialized requirements, distribution centric or suid, etc., use of a static magic line is patently dumb. Its needlessly inflexible and almost never what is desired or intended by end users. Its like arguing your favorite applications should be able to be run from/usr/local/bin - or your home directory. Its a pointless inflexibility for the vast majority of applications.
Bluntly, if an application is installed by the distribution, but is not part of the distribution, and they are using static magic lines in their scripts, they are absolutely doing it wrong.
When a user actually does put a broken or newer/older version of python in their path
Think about what you just said. Its nonsensical. The developer downloads and installs a python, places it in their path ahead of the system's installation, and are mad as an application because they didn't finish the installation? Doesn't happen. Your example actually validates my point. Which is, if someone goes through all that, they in fact mean for the application to run under that VM and not the system one. Again, this is a problem because the developer suffers from the, "I'm smarter than God syndrome", which almost universally means they're dumber than dirt.
There are lots of really stupid things programmers do. Worse, there are lots of really stupid things which are forced on them during the teaching/learning process, which should immediately place someone on the firing line. Thoughtless, static magic lines are one of them.
You can disagree all you like - but you continue to flatly wrong so long as you continue that line of thought.
Copyright, first and foremost, is designed to benefit the author for a period of time. After which, it then is received by the public for the good of all. Without the former, there will almost never be the later. You're argument actually harms the public good by destroying it before it can even be created.
Even the quotes you provide completely validate what I'm saying (as others have pointed out) and invalidates you're own position.
Artists have seen an average increase in revenues because of many factors and trends, none of which have to do with piracy.
Since only roughly 10% of the sales price of a CD goes to the artist, it's possible to earn more money by offering the music for free and getting your fans to buy merchandise and go to concerts instead.
Of course you can - when you have a huge fan base who was willing to fund you up front thusly allowing the luxury of not charging. Then again, unless you're an absolutely idiot, why would anyone want to give up 10%. When you have nothing, 10% can be the difference of surviving or not. When you big, that 10% can be a shit of money - which is, after all, why 10% up front in exchange for lots of hard work, made sense.
Basically you're arguing that artists should not be paid.
If 10% isn't that much to you, then I'm sure I'll be receiving 10% of your pay checks for the rest of your life. After all, its not worth talking about - according you - you hypocrite.
Tolkien wrote his books partly as a distraction from the war, and partly as a distraction from his work as a language professor. Did the possibility that his books would become a world-wide success and enable his inheritors to collect a steady rent over several decades, really motivate him to write more or better?
The rise of capitalism and the fall of communism largely invalidates your point of contention.
Books rarely make any money beyond the initial printing. If your friend accepts a lower up-front payment in the hopes of earning it back later, there's a possibility he's being scammed.
You just informed the world you have absolutely no idea what the hell you are talking about. This is defacto, how the entire world of literary print functions. Period. Unless you are already a big established name, you either work as described, entirely fund your own printing, or are never printed. Period.
For the vast majority of books, copyright doesn't need to last longer than it takes to print the book, because there's never a second printing. If copyright was reduced to, say, three years, most authors wouldn't be affected at all.
Right. Meaning, you just completely invalidated your own position and validated my own. If most books are largely not profitable, this only means the sole hope of reaping a return is longer copyright and lower payouts up front; forcing everyone to benefit, where possible, in the long term.
No it wasn't. Copyright is intended to benefit the public.
Where in the hell did you come to that flatly wrong conclusion? If copyright were only about benefit to the public, there wouldn't be copyright at all. Period. Copyright is there to allow for benefit of its creator, first and foremost. In exchange for societal contributions the works may provide, society then benefits later. Its ONLY because of direct benefit of its creator that society has a hope of benefiting. If you dissolve the benefit to its creators, by extension, you destroy the benefit to society; by lack of creation. You can't have one without the other. Therefore, by definition, it absolutely is a balancing act. Which is to say, its a balance between directly benefiting the creator in the near term for a benefit to society in the long term. As you rightly point out, exactly at what point a "balance" is deemed reasonable can be debated but nonetheless, a balancing act it is.
14 years plus potentially another 14 year renewal term. And that was the early 18th century into the 19th.
And that's why printing capacity was extremely limited and creators frequently still had benefactors. Since both of those have dramatically changed, the only way to still have a functioning system is to dramatically increase the protections afforded by copyright. Otherwise, the economics of creation simply become impossible to sustain. People demand cheap creations. That's all but impossible without extended copyright terms such that it allows for time to reap the benefits.
Furthermore, the exploitive forces in the market have repeatedly proven they are more than willing to wait out copyright terms so as to prevent paying its creators. With this in mind, terms on the basis of life + something, with a minimum of fifty seems extremely reasonable.
There's several different kinds of sci-fi, with different purposes. Blade Runner, for instance, sets itself in a future world not too far in the future, to philosophically explore the ramifications of cloning, genetic engineering, and slavery (i.e., genetically-engineered human clones were created to be used as slaves). It didn't go into the science much, just that the Replicants were genetically engineered to be super-people for use in dangerous environments, and had a limited lifetime, and explored the problems with this. Much similar sci-fi is about exploring the social issues caused by technology.
That's exactly right. Good sci-fi uses technology as a setting, not a plot. In Blade Runner, the the setting was a world of clones and GE whereas the plot was slavery, rebellion, and right to life.
Star Trek has always been about a farther-ahead future with pretty fantastic technologies used as plot devices, but the real purpose has been to explore philosophical and social issues,
This is arguably one of the reasons why so many dislike the newer ST; especially the episodes created after Roddenberry died. All too often, technology becomes the plot rather than the setting. All too often, the philosophical and social issues became a far second concern whereas technology became both the climax and the hero. By most traditional accounts, its certifiably bad writing. But the stories created while Roddenberry was alive, yes, you're largely correct - it was really about social and philosophical issues.
But ST:TNG still looks like a plausible view of the future
Actually, their time lines are horribly pathetic. They all too often off by at least a millennium. According to their time line, we more or less have warp technology within our reach. According to theoretical physicists, at the very best, we have centuries to go before such technology can even be envisioned. And you need to keep in mind, "warp technology" actually covers a whole gambit of other technologies; including discovery and control of gravitons, clean, limitless power sources, discovery of subspace and the ability to use it as a communication medium, force fields (for particles), and deflector arrays (for radiation and particles). And that's completely ignoring technology such as teleporters.
Do you plan on staying in education? Do you have something to offer which really adds to your friend? If the answer is no, then no.
The other benefit is meeting prospective employers and peers. If you're good with meet and greets and have "in demand skills", then this may be a good foot in in the door. Otherwise, you're wasting time and money.
Please remember, most people in academia are completely disconnected from the "real world." For most of these people, "publish or perish" becomes ingrained. Outside of academia, its all too often a waste of time.
There's a reason why no one has every such such counter arguments. Such arguments don't exist.
Hell, most people are too stupid to realize that the entire point of the GPL was to allow developers to earn a living through associated services while empowering everyone with quality software - but people bitch about that too. For what ever reason, many dopes here believe everyone who creates must be piss poor and live in a gutter and must never and I mean absolutely never, benefit from their hard work. Its hypocrisy and its disgusting.
I understand that the man is (unfortunately) deceased and has been for some time. Thanks to the legal fiction of his "estate" plus nearly perpetual copyright the rest of his family gets to sit on their asses and make money from his corpse since 1971. If that were how I obtained my livelihood I think I'd be a bit more meek about it.
No, I don't think you do understand. Are you willing to pay $100 per book, or more, for what currently costs $5? Didn't think so. Its likely that what you're bitching about is what allowed his works to be printed in the first place. Basically you're ignorantly arguing that his works should have never been published.
I definitely wouldn't be making legal threats over a button that happens to mention the author's name.
Extremely unlikely that statement is true. If you hold a patent, you are required to defend it else you lose the patent.
The reality is, authors rarely make shit on their books. A book has to be really, really, really popular to make big dollars. Those which do make serious green are able to do so for themselves and their families almost always because of the IP laws afford to them; which would very likely, have prevented their works in the first place had they not existed.
I'm so tired of people bitching about the super cheap works they have available to them to then turn around bitching about how the author (or his family) finally made a buck in exchange for not immediately earning it.
I have a friend who is an author of several books. He'll be lucky to clear $30,000 over the next TWENTY YEARS on a book which took him over a year to write. Get it through your heads, authors, like almost all who depend on copyright, accept much, much lowers fees up front so as to allow them to hopefully make something on the back end, which in turn allows for an accessible price point for the masses.
Which brings us full circle. Unless you're willing to pay rediculas pricing for your copyrighted works today, you're talking out your ass.
Its extremely bad practice. If someone wants to execute a script under an alternate VM, requiring script changes is dumb. Furthermore, it breaks compatibility with tools like virtenv. Besides, if someone has changed their path such that a different VM is found, chances are far, far more likely, that's exactly what they want. Lastly, if you require a specific VM, then you should specify via VM version preference (python2.6 vs python vs python3 version python3.2.
Seriously, it begs the question, why would someone take the time to install an alternate VM, place it in their path first, and not want it to be the preferred VM. Its extremely unlikely the hard coded and poorly conceived notion of one VM to rule them all is ever correct. Its like arguing when someone changes their path, they didn't really mean to change their path.
Besides, I can't tell you how many times I've worked with perl coders who dimly use hard coded path. It was funny watching them change fifty scripts via sudo to force the proper VM when all I had to do was change the path - and no special privileges were required. Ultimately, the perl guys wound up creating yet another script which existed simply to change the other scripts.
Simply put, assuming everyone in the world is stupid and that a static line, which frequently requires elevated privileges to change is a better option is extremely poorly convinced. Even worse, to work around such idiocy, all too often people resort to making a copy of the script in question, plus a path change, so as to allow them to change that one line which now means you've doubled the support headache and primed the "update didn't actually fix the bug" syndrome, much to your surprise.
Bluntly, there is almost nothing sane in forcing a hard coded path. And the only exception I can perceive is if the script requires running as root - and then its maybe.
Cherry picking would be dumb because many applications would simply not function or would be completely unsustainable for the developer. And that's completely ignoring the massive support headache it would create for the developers, not to mention the massive increase in the testing matrix.
Such a statement is nothing but stupidity. That seems to go hand in hand with your constant trolling.
If posts and moderation are an indicator, then he's right. The place need not be a mono culture to censor (actively attempt to hide from general view and squash credible debate via moderation) the debate. That's generally what happens. Anything which isn't pro-pirating is generally negatively moderated. Occasionally anti-pirating comments are either left alone or moderated up, but that's fairly rare. It likely has more do with moderation point availability rather than a desire to openly debate the merits. Worse, many pro-pirates then troll moderate those who offered an alternate view in other, unrelated discussions.
still has plenty of dissenting views
"Plenty" does not change it from an extremely minority view.
When it comes to piracy, debate is absolutely hated. Those who question the pro-pirate position are targeted. That alone says they know full well their position is extremely weak and typically without any merit what-so-ever. Hell, all too often, simply stating the copyright law is frequently enough to bring about karma damage.
When it comes to piracy, the community appears anything but diverse, or fair, or reasonable, or open to discussion/debate.
If huge fake chests are what you're interested in, perhaps you should check out the Internet. There might be a least one site which will satisfy your interest. And I'm sure, non-requires "man-rasslin".
they don't want their lofty ideas to be constrained by the weights of "Science".
Part of the problem is the old cliche about science and its indistinguishably with magic. The greater the distance the more magical the perception. Writers know this. This combined with the fact that sci-fi about what is currently within reach of science is all too often, boring. And then, course, there are those who approach it from the other side of the coin, creating fantasy-science. As such, you wind up with a blend of sci-fantasy to create a more imaginative world which is more likely to capture an audience.
Recently heard something funny. To paraphrase, "Wrestling is the gayist thing straight men will watch." Nope, nothing gay about muscled, oil men, rolling around on the floor, while pretending to wrestle, while trying to present bad drama. Normally that roll is reserved for drama queens.
The point that legitimate applications may have such requirements; rather the issue is, if you accept such permissions, you do so at your own risk. You can't blame Android for the user accepting such risk.
Personally, any application which requires access to contacts and has internet access is extremely unlikely to be installed on my devices. There is rarely such a legitimate need. Furthermore, Android has enough flexibility which allows for additional features to be added as plugins which all too often means the need for applications which require massive privileges are truly few and far between.
As for your second part...I can't tell you how man completely obvious and yet supposedly unique and wonderful application ideas I've had pitched to me. All too often, they are already on my wish list, impossible, not practical, require a million dollar budget (to which the pitcher wants to seed none and receive 60% of gross), or is just a plain 'old bad idea; or some combination.
Its pretty easy to understand why movie producers get pitches all the time and why they are almost always completely useless; much to the surprise of the person pitching.
Slashdot Mirror
Troll much? Either that, or WHOOOSH!
Unclench dude, you'll live longer.
Dripping with irony.
Your post is angry. Your comments indicate the point has gone completely over your head twice. No one is being pedantic. The fact you said, "pedantic", implies it doesn't mean what you think it means. And the only person uptight appears to be you. The point of the OP, is the post to which the OP responds is entirely baseless, trollish, and nonsense. You posts seem to continue with that trend.
Do you have a contribution to make which is even topic or is your entire intent simply to troll?
Whoosh.
The point isn't that one is more secure that the other. The point is, his rhetoric is invalid because his own rhetoric not only invalidates itself but actually argues the inverse. As such, his broken line of thinking isn't worth further discussion.
A better question is, despite your hyperbole, why would the US government care. Furthermore, they have no input into the matter so even if they do care, who cares.
Known terrorists have literally been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama was awarded the prize for having done absolutely nothing to earn it. The combination literally means everyone on earth has earned a Nobel prize. Sadly, the prize has become something of a sad joke and isn't respected by anyone with a brain. Worse, in modern times, they've been attempting to use it to shape politics rather than reward high ethics and peaceful politics, making it all the more pathetic.
The Nobel Peace Prize is absolutely meaningless at this point in time.
Ahhh - thanks for explaining things which were both well known and obvious, and added nothing to the exchange?!
I know you're just a troll, but for the benefit of anyone who reads this...
No, that statement actually makes YOU a troll. Disagreeing does not make someone a troll. IT simply means you disagree. The fact you believe disagreement makes someone a troll either says you are a troll or ignorant.
I'm just saying that if filesharing has a negative effect, it's so small that it's overshadowed by other factors.
There no evidence to support that conclusion. Inversely, we have hundreds of years of economic theory which almost entirely invalidates that line of thought. Now you can argue new economic theories may be required, and that may be true, but such supportive theories simply not exist today.
Pirating *can* have a positive effect on the income of artists, if the money people save by pirating is spent on goods and services from which the artist receives a larger percentage.
Incorrect logic. In you example, paying x on good y versus z still only makes the artist x. Without piracy, assuming he had the money, he would have paid 2x. Furthermore, by taking y and only paying for z, the artist was harmed by market devaluation of y.
I'm done. Its pretty clear from your other posts you're more interested in parroting ignorance rather than actual facts.
We have a winner.
He doesn't understand the difference between a virus and a trojan. Worse, his own logic actually validates open source to be better. The application in question isn't open source. Therefore, using his own logic, he's actually assuring us all that open source is more secure.
list isn't always as clear and obvious to the less tech-savvy people among us
That might be true, but it does say, "can cost you money." Which makes it pretty clear the significance of accepting the application's privileges.
When you're packaging for a distro
That's an extremely tiny minority of developers. And, unless the functionality is core to the distribution's functionality, then its a really dumb idea. Its safe to say, scripts written soley to benefit a distribution represent a tiny minority of scripts/applications written in the world. For the 98% of the rest of us, its a really stupid idea.
It really isn't as insane as you make it out to be
I gave you a real world, non fictional example. It really is all that I made it out to be. And its obviously so. This is, in fact, why python developers are taught to use /usr/bin/env python as their magic line - because its smart, flexible, and most importantly, not broken from day one. That's doesn't mean all python developers do the right thing. Some don't understand the implications. Some blindly follow the herd because they're simply doing what they've been told without knowing any better and lack experience.
And your perl programmers really need a better deployment process.
I agree. My statement wasn't intended to persecute perl developers. My statements targeted them because, by in large, they suffer from the broken mentality which is the origin of our exchanges. My point is, unless you have highly specialized requirements, distribution centric or suid, etc., use of a static magic line is patently dumb. Its needlessly inflexible and almost never what is desired or intended by end users. Its like arguing your favorite applications should be able to be run from /usr/local/bin - or your home directory. Its a pointless inflexibility for the vast majority of applications.
Bluntly, if an application is installed by the distribution, but is not part of the distribution, and they are using static magic lines in their scripts, they are absolutely doing it wrong.
When a user actually does put a broken or newer/older version of python in their path
Think about what you just said. Its nonsensical. The developer downloads and installs a python, places it in their path ahead of the system's installation, and are mad as an application because they didn't finish the installation? Doesn't happen. Your example actually validates my point. Which is, if someone goes through all that, they in fact mean for the application to run under that VM and not the system one. Again, this is a problem because the developer suffers from the, "I'm smarter than God syndrome", which almost universally means they're dumber than dirt.
There are lots of really stupid things programmers do. Worse, there are lots of really stupid things which are forced on them during the teaching/learning process, which should immediately place someone on the firing line. Thoughtless, static magic lines are one of them.
You can disagree all you like - but you continue to flatly wrong so long as you continue that line of thought.
Copyright, first and foremost, is designed to benefit the author for a period of time. After which, it then is received by the public for the good of all. Without the former, there will almost never be the later. You're argument actually harms the public good by destroying it before it can even be created.
Even the quotes you provide completely validate what I'm saying (as others have pointed out) and invalidates you're own position.
Classic ignorance of conflation.
Artists have seen an average increase in revenues because of many factors and trends, none of which have to do with piracy.
Since only roughly 10% of the sales price of a CD goes to the artist, it's possible to earn more money by offering the music for free and getting your fans to buy merchandise and go to concerts instead.
Of course you can - when you have a huge fan base who was willing to fund you up front thusly allowing the luxury of not charging. Then again, unless you're an absolutely idiot, why would anyone want to give up 10%. When you have nothing, 10% can be the difference of surviving or not. When you big, that 10% can be a shit of money - which is, after all, why 10% up front in exchange for lots of hard work, made sense.
Basically you're arguing that artists should not be paid.
If 10% isn't that much to you, then I'm sure I'll be receiving 10% of your pay checks for the rest of your life. After all, its not worth talking about - according you - you hypocrite.
Tolkien wrote his books partly as a distraction from the war, and partly as a distraction from his work as a language professor. Did the possibility that his books would become a world-wide success and enable his inheritors to collect a steady rent over several decades, really motivate him to write more or better?
The rise of capitalism and the fall of communism largely invalidates your point of contention.
Books rarely make any money beyond the initial printing. If your friend accepts a lower up-front payment in the hopes of earning it back later, there's a possibility he's being scammed.
You just informed the world you have absolutely no idea what the hell you are talking about. This is defacto, how the entire world of literary print functions. Period. Unless you are already a big established name, you either work as described, entirely fund your own printing, or are never printed. Period.
For the vast majority of books, copyright doesn't need to last longer than it takes to print the book, because there's never a second printing. If copyright was reduced to, say, three years, most authors wouldn't be affected at all.
Right. Meaning, you just completely invalidated your own position and validated my own. If most books are largely not profitable, this only means the sole hope of reaping a return is longer copyright and lower payouts up front; forcing everyone to benefit, where possible, in the long term.
No it wasn't. Copyright is intended to benefit the public.
Where in the hell did you come to that flatly wrong conclusion? If copyright were only about benefit to the public, there wouldn't be copyright at all. Period. Copyright is there to allow for benefit of its creator, first and foremost. In exchange for societal contributions the works may provide, society then benefits later. Its ONLY because of direct benefit of its creator that society has a hope of benefiting. If you dissolve the benefit to its creators, by extension, you destroy the benefit to society; by lack of creation. You can't have one without the other. Therefore, by definition, it absolutely is a balancing act. Which is to say, its a balance between directly benefiting the creator in the near term for a benefit to society in the long term. As you rightly point out, exactly at what point a "balance" is deemed reasonable can be debated but nonetheless, a balancing act it is.
14 years plus potentially another 14 year renewal term. And that was the early 18th century into the 19th.
And that's why printing capacity was extremely limited and creators frequently still had benefactors. Since both of those have dramatically changed, the only way to still have a functioning system is to dramatically increase the protections afforded by copyright. Otherwise, the economics of creation simply become impossible to sustain. People demand cheap creations. That's all but impossible without extended copyright terms such that it allows for time to reap the benefits.
Furthermore, the exploitive forces in the market have repeatedly proven they are more than willing to wait out copyright terms so as to prevent paying its creators. With this in mind, terms on the basis of life + something, with a minimum of fifty seems extremely reasonable.
There's several different kinds of sci-fi, with different purposes. Blade Runner, for instance, sets itself in a future world not too far in the future, to philosophically explore the ramifications of cloning, genetic engineering, and slavery (i.e., genetically-engineered human clones were created to be used as slaves). It didn't go into the science much, just that the Replicants were genetically engineered to be super-people for use in dangerous environments, and had a limited lifetime, and explored the problems with this. Much similar sci-fi is about exploring the social issues caused by technology.
That's exactly right. Good sci-fi uses technology as a setting, not a plot. In Blade Runner, the the setting was a world of clones and GE whereas the plot was slavery, rebellion, and right to life.
Star Trek has always been about a farther-ahead future with pretty fantastic technologies used as plot devices, but the real purpose has been to explore philosophical and social issues,
This is arguably one of the reasons why so many dislike the newer ST; especially the episodes created after Roddenberry died. All too often, technology becomes the plot rather than the setting. All too often, the philosophical and social issues became a far second concern whereas technology became both the climax and the hero. By most traditional accounts, its certifiably bad writing. But the stories created while Roddenberry was alive, yes, you're largely correct - it was really about social and philosophical issues.
But ST:TNG still looks like a plausible view of the future
Actually, their time lines are horribly pathetic. They all too often off by at least a millennium. According to their time line, we more or less have warp technology within our reach. According to theoretical physicists, at the very best, we have centuries to go before such technology can even be envisioned. And you need to keep in mind, "warp technology" actually covers a whole gambit of other technologies; including discovery and control of gravitons, clean, limitless power sources, discovery of subspace and the ability to use it as a communication medium, force fields (for particles), and deflector arrays (for radiation and particles). And that's completely ignoring technology such as teleporters.
Do you plan on staying in education? Do you have something to offer which really adds to your friend? If the answer is no, then no.
The other benefit is meeting prospective employers and peers. If you're good with meet and greets and have "in demand skills", then this may be a good foot in in the door. Otherwise, you're wasting time and money.
Please remember, most people in academia are completely disconnected from the "real world." For most of these people, "publish or perish" becomes ingrained. Outside of academia, its all too often a waste of time.
There's a reason why no one has every such such counter arguments. Such arguments don't exist.
Hell, most people are too stupid to realize that the entire point of the GPL was to allow developers to earn a living through associated services while empowering everyone with quality software - but people bitch about that too. For what ever reason, many dopes here believe everyone who creates must be piss poor and live in a gutter and must never and I mean absolutely never, benefit from their hard work. Its hypocrisy and its disgusting.
I understand that the man is (unfortunately) deceased and has been for some time. Thanks to the legal fiction of his "estate" plus nearly perpetual copyright the rest of his family gets to sit on their asses and make money from his corpse since 1971. If that were how I obtained my livelihood I think I'd be a bit more meek about it.
No, I don't think you do understand. Are you willing to pay $100 per book, or more, for what currently costs $5? Didn't think so. Its likely that what you're bitching about is what allowed his works to be printed in the first place. Basically you're ignorantly arguing that his works should have never been published.
I definitely wouldn't be making legal threats over a button that happens to mention the author's name.
Extremely unlikely that statement is true. If you hold a patent, you are required to defend it else you lose the patent.
The reality is, authors rarely make shit on their books. A book has to be really, really, really popular to make big dollars. Those which do make serious green are able to do so for themselves and their families almost always because of the IP laws afford to them; which would very likely, have prevented their works in the first place had they not existed.
I'm so tired of people bitching about the super cheap works they have available to them to then turn around bitching about how the author (or his family) finally made a buck in exchange for not immediately earning it.
I have a friend who is an author of several books. He'll be lucky to clear $30,000 over the next TWENTY YEARS on a book which took him over a year to write. Get it through your heads, authors, like almost all who depend on copyright, accept much, much lowers fees up front so as to allow them to hopefully make something on the back end, which in turn allows for an accessible price point for the masses.
Which brings us full circle. Unless you're willing to pay rediculas pricing for your copyrighted works today, you're talking out your ass.
Its extremely bad practice. If someone wants to execute a script under an alternate VM, requiring script changes is dumb. Furthermore, it breaks compatibility with tools like virtenv. Besides, if someone has changed their path such that a different VM is found, chances are far, far more likely, that's exactly what they want. Lastly, if you require a specific VM, then you should specify via VM version preference (python2.6 vs python vs python3 version python3.2.
Seriously, it begs the question, why would someone take the time to install an alternate VM, place it in their path first, and not want it to be the preferred VM. Its extremely unlikely the hard coded and poorly conceived notion of one VM to rule them all is ever correct. Its like arguing when someone changes their path, they didn't really mean to change their path.
Besides, I can't tell you how many times I've worked with perl coders who dimly use hard coded path. It was funny watching them change fifty scripts via sudo to force the proper VM when all I had to do was change the path - and no special privileges were required. Ultimately, the perl guys wound up creating yet another script which existed simply to change the other scripts.
Simply put, assuming everyone in the world is stupid and that a static line, which frequently requires elevated privileges to change is a better option is extremely poorly convinced. Even worse, to work around such idiocy, all too often people resort to making a copy of the script in question, plus a path change, so as to allow them to change that one line which now means you've doubled the support headache and primed the "update didn't actually fix the bug" syndrome, much to your surprise.
Bluntly, there is almost nothing sane in forcing a hard coded path. And the only exception I can perceive is if the script requires running as root - and then its maybe.
Cherry picking would be dumb because many applications would simply not function or would be completely unsustainable for the developer. And that's completely ignoring the massive support headache it would create for the developers, not to mention the massive increase in the testing matrix.
Such a statement is nothing but stupidity. That seems to go hand in hand with your constant trolling.
If posts and moderation are an indicator, then he's right. The place need not be a mono culture to censor (actively attempt to hide from general view and squash credible debate via moderation) the debate. That's generally what happens. Anything which isn't pro-pirating is generally negatively moderated. Occasionally anti-pirating comments are either left alone or moderated up, but that's fairly rare. It likely has more do with moderation point availability rather than a desire to openly debate the merits. Worse, many pro-pirates then troll moderate those who offered an alternate view in other, unrelated discussions.
still has plenty of dissenting views
"Plenty" does not change it from an extremely minority view.
When it comes to piracy, debate is absolutely hated. Those who question the pro-pirate position are targeted. That alone says they know full well their position is extremely weak and typically without any merit what-so-ever. Hell, all too often, simply stating the copyright law is frequently enough to bring about karma damage.
When it comes to piracy, the community appears anything but diverse, or fair, or reasonable, or open to discussion/debate.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
This is slashdot. The masses are too busy creating malice with their stupidity.
Um. None?
If huge fake chests are what you're interested in, perhaps you should check out the Internet. There might be a least one site which will satisfy your interest. And I'm sure, non-requires "man-rasslin".
they don't want their lofty ideas to be constrained by the weights of "Science".
Part of the problem is the old cliche about science and its indistinguishably with magic. The greater the distance the more magical the perception. Writers know this. This combined with the fact that sci-fi about what is currently within reach of science is all too often, boring. And then, course, there are those who approach it from the other side of the coin, creating fantasy-science. As such, you wind up with a blend of sci-fantasy to create a more imaginative world which is more likely to capture an audience.
they can keep wrestling
Recently heard something funny. To paraphrase, "Wrestling is the gayist thing straight men will watch." Nope, nothing gay about muscled, oil men, rolling around on the floor, while pretending to wrestle, while trying to present bad drama. Normally that roll is reserved for drama queens.
The point that legitimate applications may have such requirements; rather the issue is, if you accept such permissions, you do so at your own risk. You can't blame Android for the user accepting such risk.
Personally, any application which requires access to contacts and has internet access is extremely unlikely to be installed on my devices. There is rarely such a legitimate need. Furthermore, Android has enough flexibility which allows for additional features to be added as plugins which all too often means the need for applications which require massive privileges are truly few and far between.
As for your second part...I can't tell you how man completely obvious and yet supposedly unique and wonderful application ideas I've had pitched to me. All too often, they are already on my wish list, impossible, not practical, require a million dollar budget (to which the pitcher wants to seed none and receive 60% of gross), or is just a plain 'old bad idea; or some combination.
Its pretty easy to understand why movie producers get pitches all the time and why they are almost always completely useless; much to the surprise of the person pitching.