Do you have evidence that everyone accused of file-sharing music is guilty of doing so? So far, the RIAA has not been able to prove that and they have been caught sending notices to people who were very obviously not guilty in the past. Accusation does not equal guilt. However, the threat of a lawsuit from the RIAA against person, whether guilty or not, has the same effect on his or her life. Saying downloaders should take responsibility, given the RIAA's track record of highly imperfect accuracy, is hardly any kind of justification for the RIAA's actions.
Sure, I've heard the horror stories, but fortunately nothing like that has ever happened to me as a seller, so there ya go.
Very likely the victims of those horror stories said the same thing before it happened to them. Duh. Do you drink and drive because you've never killed anyone yet?
I don't know about unethical, but it definitely is anti-competitive. eBay does have a monopoly in the online auction business. That there are other online auction businesses is little different than MS saying they're not a monopoly because of Apple. So, that the move is anti-competitive would have a good chance of standing up in court. If eBay thinks they're so powerful that this needn't concern them, I'd say that's pretty arrogant; Google may be the search giant rather than the online-pay giant, but they're still pretty powerful.
So... people should have to pay in order to NOT have this crap pre-installed on computers they buy, so as not to hurt poor little Asus? A simple request should damn well be enough not to have a ton crap I don't want on the computer I'm already paying for. I shouldn't have to pay extra to get it removed. (This is part of why I always build my own.) You say two wrongs don't make a right, but how the hell is it wrong for a court to rule that the consumer has the right to buy a computer without crap pre-installed on it without paying extra?
Just so that the ignorant make no mistake, Peter Gabriel's biggest hit song was "Sledgehammer". That one was run into the ground so bad I had fantasies about hitting him with a sledgehammer on a daily basis for a few months, i.e., every time I heard that damn song.
I'm high on cold medicine today, but from what I can understand, your post seems to be saying that all this isn't Ballmer's fault. But I know good and well one thing that is: Vista's pricing, the "Vista-ready" lawsuit and the whole problem of having multiple forms of Vista.
It was Ballmer's choice to have so many versions of Vista. It was ultimately Ballmer's choice to slap a "Vista ready" sticker on machines that could just barely run Vista Basic. And it was definitely Ballmer's choice to have the versions of Vista that can actually run Aero cost well over $100. Compare that to when XP came out and Gates was still in control; only -- what? -- three editions of XP (home, pro & corporate pro) and no lawsuit for trying to label low-end machines as XP-ready.
Yes, it does matter. Part of the original aim of the project is to provide them with the tools to make their own computer tech, to be able to Africanize it instead of just getting what a corporation decides they can use.
I rarely use "overrated", but when I do it's when someone's comment was shot up to +3 or higher when it contained false info. I've seen that happen numerous times -- post containing false info is modded up by mods who didn't know better, but it remains modded up after being shown that the info is wrong.
Additionally, if you're currently benefiting from what an artist did ten years ago, for instance by listening to a song he performed, why would it be unfair for him to be compensated for it?
Good idea. I like to paint. I say I start charging people every time they look at my paintings. Why should authors and musical artists be the only ones who get paid for the same work over and over again?
I don't know, but I remember "downgrading" my first PC from ME to 98. Even as crash-prone as 98 was, it was still a damn sight better than ME, which was highly crash-prone and very prone to freezing up.
You were probably trying to be funny, but you could be right in a lot of ways. What if they've studied us a bit and decided they don't want to be around us? More than one species could feel that way. Hell, I feel that way a lot of the time (anti-social nerdy type, you know). We're destroying our environment with the use of our primitive technology -- their ancestors may have considered that unacceptable and held back until their tech was advanced enough not to harm their environment, or at least not do so much damage. Sure, that would've slowed their advancement considerably, but they could be a lot older than us. It may disgust them the way we let greed run amok; after all, it is the factor that powers not only a great deal of the environmental damage but also the atrocities we commit upon each other. They may acknowledge greed but have built their society so that it is not to be accommodated. There are many different reasons why an alien race might want nothing to do with us. I think Star Trek has given too many people a rosy vision of the future; in reality, when we get out there, we'll be the Ferengi, the Klingons and the Dominion. Aliens who studied us would realize that quickly.
I think radio waves are so limited that they would be looking for an alternative immediately. After a few centuries, it is likely that they might develop of find one. They may be communicating all around us using signals we can't even detect right now and are completely unaware of. Or maybe they can embed their communications in other natural signals and we haven't guessed that they're doing this and don't how to read. If you go high enough in tech development to overcome certain natural limitations the possibilities are staggering. The real question is, can technology advance enough to overcome the natural limitations of physics, assuming there aren't exceptions and extra rules we don't know about? Of course, if there are laws of physics that allow exceptions to the laws we know, they wouldn't even have to be so incredibly advanced, just have a greater understanding of physics than we have.
Ugh, I hate using circular logic. But the point is, radio waves are what we know. There may well be a lot we don't know that would work much better.
You forgot the one involving Worf's human brother. That planet was dying, along with its sentient population, due to a mysterious atmospheric-dissipation phenomenon. Following the prime directive meant standing by and watching an entire sentient species die.
Any civilization advanced enough to travel those long distances (or through time) would be sufficiently advanced to simulate any information (on computers) they need to inquire about any species or observe them without even entering the atmosphere (deep scanning).
Uh, wouldn't they want to check their results against reality once in a while?
But my theory is that any species sufficiently advanced to travel those long distances would either come for conquering or liberation and enlightenment (depending on how you view it).
Why? Why would we be worth conquering? Why should they want to conquer anyone in the first place? As to bringing us enlightenment... well, the history of world religions should show how well that works. No matter how pure the message, people who aren't ready for enlightenment are going to twist it to suit their purposes. And liberation? Whose fault is it that the people of the world suffer tyrants and murderers ruling them, really? If all the people go together we could overthrow them without too much difficulty. But then, we'd have to overthrow the new tyrants who led the last revolution, and so on.
Seeing we haven't had any aliens showing up on our doorstep saying "We claim this land in the land of Xarboth the 145th, Emperor of the Known Universe. Now worship our true god or face extermination."
It only means either all other species are not interested in colonization, no other races have reached the technological level of space or time travel, or we are alone.
I don't think so. You're forgetting about terraforming -- or whatever the alien race Xarboth rules would call it. Even we have a pretty good idea about how to terraform a lot of planets to suit us, although at current tech level, it would take centuries. A more advanced race might be able to do it in a few years or even months. It might well be better to terraform than to colonize planets with life; no alien bacteria resulting in plagues, no screwing up the native ecology, etc.
Even if humans can never achieve FTL they could still colonize the entire galaxy well under a million years. Thats a drop in the bucket compared to the time that has passed in the universe.
If there are aliens more advanced than us out there, that scenario becomes less likely. We don't like it when others of our species barge into our territory, so how do you think the subjects of Xarboth are going to feel about it? In other words, no matter how little we want to adhere to the respects of another species, we may have to.
One thing I still can't grok however, is why the Bejeweled makers did not consider this as an infringement! The only answer I can come up with is that the story inspires tears in the eyes of sex-depraved geeks at the Bejeweled head-quarters.
Well, that and he only distributed it to his girlfriend. If he started posting it to sites for others to download I'm sure their reaction would've been quite different. But yeah, all too many other companies would be suing already.
I agree with you, but I think there's a flaw in your argument. Sure, life in Darfur is way more important, but it has been the allowing of people like the RIAA run rampant in one area that has set the example for others. If you can, say, screw over everyone because you're a record company, why can't I as something else do the same? Why can't I, as a doctor, screw people over, since I see lawyers getting away with it all the time? I don't know who said "rot from the core spreads outward" but he missed the mark; rot doesn't have to be at the core to spread.
Or maybe this only makes sense with a lot of beer.
Decipher script would be a lot more useful if they treated it more like actual cryptography. That means being able to turn it around to make your own codes, with your skill in code-writing being counted as hard it is to crack.
I am replying to this to undo the accidental bad moderation I gave you. My apologies, my cat was distracting me at the moment. But you're very right; phishing was around before the desktop computer. I well remember the junk mail my parents got when I was a kid that ran from somewhat to nearly the same as the phishing scams seen today. I'm guessing that a lot of./ers are just too young to remember that.
Wildflowers probably will develop stronger scents. I doubt that cultivated flowers will though, unless there is a radical change of attitude among breeders. I like gardening, and I especially like gardening with fragrant flowers. I can tell you that planting for scent is a lot harder than it was when I gardened with my grandmother as a kid; the vast majority of breeders just don't care about fragrance. Many, many types of tea roses have had no scent at all or just a very faint scent for decades. They breed for bigger blooms and longer blooming times. Scent isn't even on the list of priorities for them. This is partly to accommodate florists, but most breeds of tea roses bred for and sold to the public are like this too nowadays. Unfortunately, this attitude has spread to the breeding of other types of flowering plants that are normally quite fragrant, such as lilacs and wisteria.
There are exceptions, of course. English roses have the forms and fragrance of old-fashioned roses but are fairly difficult to find; most gardening supply places have only a few of them, if any at all. If you want to garden for scent you will have to do some diligent searching. Also be prepared to change things after a couple of years, because some of your fragrant flowers that die off will be impossible to replace with equally fragrant specimens of the same species.
Yeah, but Asimov didn't envision hackers much in his novels. We know better nowadays; program a robot with the three laws and one would be hacked within a month just to prove it could be done.
Sure, it's easy to SAY that smart people ought to have more children.
Why? Other than the arrogance of nerds who pride themselves on having an above average intelligence, what makes us think that a superior intelligence is so important to breeding? Once you reach the threshold of making the species more innovative and clever than other species around them, then there's really no point to a higher intelligence in the evolution of the species. On the other hand, the ability to socialize in a large society is clearly very important. Monkeys are great socializers, but they don't pollute the environment much and certainly never made nuclear weapons, so one could very well say that the exploitation of our higher intelligence has become a danger to our species....
GIMP is fine for cropping files. The interface is just different.
That was the OP's point exactly, I think. Why is it different? Croppping works the same on every image editor I've tried except the Gimp. Why reinvent the wheel and turn it into a hexagon?
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Do you have evidence that everyone accused of file-sharing music is guilty of doing so? So far, the RIAA has not been able to prove that and they have been caught sending notices to people who were very obviously not guilty in the past. Accusation does not equal guilt. However, the threat of a lawsuit from the RIAA against person, whether guilty or not, has the same effect on his or her life. Saying downloaders should take responsibility, given the RIAA's track record of highly imperfect accuracy, is hardly any kind of justification for the RIAA's actions.
I don't know about unethical, but it definitely is anti-competitive. eBay does have a monopoly in the online auction business. That there are other online auction businesses is little different than MS saying they're not a monopoly because of Apple. So, that the move is anti-competitive would have a good chance of standing up in court. If eBay thinks they're so powerful that this needn't concern them, I'd say that's pretty arrogant; Google may be the search giant rather than the online-pay giant, but they're still pretty powerful.
So... people should have to pay in order to NOT have this crap pre-installed on computers they buy, so as not to hurt poor little Asus? A simple request should damn well be enough not to have a ton crap I don't want on the computer I'm already paying for. I shouldn't have to pay extra to get it removed. (This is part of why I always build my own.) You say two wrongs don't make a right, but how the hell is it wrong for a court to rule that the consumer has the right to buy a computer without crap pre-installed on it without paying extra?
Just so that the ignorant make no mistake, Peter Gabriel's biggest hit song was "Sledgehammer". That one was run into the ground so bad I had fantasies about hitting him with a sledgehammer on a daily basis for a few months, i.e., every time I heard that damn song.
I'm high on cold medicine today, but from what I can understand, your post seems to be saying that all this isn't Ballmer's fault. But I know good and well one thing that is: Vista's pricing, the "Vista-ready" lawsuit and the whole problem of having multiple forms of Vista.
It was Ballmer's choice to have so many versions of Vista. It was ultimately Ballmer's choice to slap a "Vista ready" sticker on machines that could just barely run Vista Basic. And it was definitely Ballmer's choice to have the versions of Vista that can actually run Aero cost well over $100. Compare that to when XP came out and Gates was still in control; only -- what? -- three editions of XP (home, pro & corporate pro) and no lawsuit for trying to label low-end machines as XP-ready.
Yes, it does matter. Part of the original aim of the project is to provide them with the tools to make their own computer tech, to be able to Africanize it instead of just getting what a corporation decides they can use.
I rarely use "overrated", but when I do it's when someone's comment was shot up to +3 or higher when it contained false info. I've seen that happen numerous times -- post containing false info is modded up by mods who didn't know better, but it remains modded up after being shown that the info is wrong.
Good idea. I like to paint. I say I start charging people every time they look at my paintings. Why should authors and musical artists be the only ones who get paid for the same work over and over again?
I don't know, but I remember "downgrading" my first PC from ME to 98. Even as crash-prone as 98 was, it was still a damn sight better than ME, which was highly crash-prone and very prone to freezing up.
One of the things I'm wondering about is whether a freshly-installed XP can be activated after the cut-off date.
What's with this "2000 years" stuff you guys are talking about? We have written records from Egypt and Babylonia from over 4000 years ago. Look it up!
Because merely stating that you have been visited by an alien automatically gets you labeled a crank and a weirdo.
You were probably trying to be funny, but you could be right in a lot of ways. What if they've studied us a bit and decided they don't want to be around us? More than one species could feel that way. Hell, I feel that way a lot of the time (anti-social nerdy type, you know). We're destroying our environment with the use of our primitive technology -- their ancestors may have considered that unacceptable and held back until their tech was advanced enough not to harm their environment, or at least not do so much damage. Sure, that would've slowed their advancement considerably, but they could be a lot older than us. It may disgust them the way we let greed run amok; after all, it is the factor that powers not only a great deal of the environmental damage but also the atrocities we commit upon each other. They may acknowledge greed but have built their society so that it is not to be accommodated. There are many different reasons why an alien race might want nothing to do with us. I think Star Trek has given too many people a rosy vision of the future; in reality, when we get out there, we'll be the Ferengi, the Klingons and the Dominion. Aliens who studied us would realize that quickly.
I think radio waves are so limited that they would be looking for an alternative immediately. After a few centuries, it is likely that they might develop of find one. They may be communicating all around us using signals we can't even detect right now and are completely unaware of. Or maybe they can embed their communications in other natural signals and we haven't guessed that they're doing this and don't how to read. If you go high enough in tech development to overcome certain natural limitations the possibilities are staggering. The real question is, can technology advance enough to overcome the natural limitations of physics, assuming there aren't exceptions and extra rules we don't know about? Of course, if there are laws of physics that allow exceptions to the laws we know, they wouldn't even have to be so incredibly advanced, just have a greater understanding of physics than we have.
Ugh, I hate using circular logic. But the point is, radio waves are what we know. There may well be a lot we don't know that would work much better.
You forgot the one involving Worf's human brother. That planet was dying, along with its sentient population, due to a mysterious atmospheric-dissipation phenomenon. Following the prime directive meant standing by and watching an entire sentient species die.
Uh, wouldn't they want to check their results against reality once in a while?
Why? Why would we be worth conquering? Why should they want to conquer anyone in the first place? As to bringing us enlightenment... well, the history of world religions should show how well that works. No matter how pure the message, people who aren't ready for enlightenment are going to twist it to suit their purposes. And liberation? Whose fault is it that the people of the world suffer tyrants and murderers ruling them, really? If all the people go together we could overthrow them without too much difficulty. But then, we'd have to overthrow the new tyrants who led the last revolution, and so on.
I don't think so. You're forgetting about terraforming -- or whatever the alien race Xarboth rules would call it. Even we have a pretty good idea about how to terraform a lot of planets to suit us, although at current tech level, it would take centuries. A more advanced race might be able to do it in a few years or even months. It might well be better to terraform than to colonize planets with life; no alien bacteria resulting in plagues, no screwing up the native ecology, etc.
If there are aliens more advanced than us out there, that scenario becomes less likely. We don't like it when others of our species barge into our territory, so how do you think the subjects of Xarboth are going to feel about it? In other words, no matter how little we want to adhere to the respects of another species, we may have to.
Well, that and he only distributed it to his girlfriend. If he started posting it to sites for others to download I'm sure their reaction would've been quite different. But yeah, all too many other companies would be suing already.
I agree with you, but I think there's a flaw in your argument. Sure, life in Darfur is way more important, but it has been the allowing of people like the RIAA run rampant in one area that has set the example for others. If you can, say, screw over everyone because you're a record company, why can't I as something else do the same? Why can't I, as a doctor, screw people over, since I see lawyers getting away with it all the time? I don't know who said "rot from the core spreads outward" but he missed the mark; rot doesn't have to be at the core to spread.
Or maybe this only makes sense with a lot of beer.
Decipher script would be a lot more useful if they treated it more like actual cryptography. That means being able to turn it around to make your own codes, with your skill in code-writing being counted as hard it is to crack.
I am replying to this to undo the accidental bad moderation I gave you. My apologies, my cat was distracting me at the moment. But you're very right; phishing was around before the desktop computer. I well remember the junk mail my parents got when I was a kid that ran from somewhat to nearly the same as the phishing scams seen today. I'm guessing that a lot of ./ers are just too young to remember that.
Wildflowers probably will develop stronger scents. I doubt that cultivated flowers will though, unless there is a radical change of attitude among breeders. I like gardening, and I especially like gardening with fragrant flowers. I can tell you that planting for scent is a lot harder than it was when I gardened with my grandmother as a kid; the vast majority of breeders just don't care about fragrance. Many, many types of tea roses have had no scent at all or just a very faint scent for decades. They breed for bigger blooms and longer blooming times. Scent isn't even on the list of priorities for them. This is partly to accommodate florists, but most breeds of tea roses bred for and sold to the public are like this too nowadays. Unfortunately, this attitude has spread to the breeding of other types of flowering plants that are normally quite fragrant, such as lilacs and wisteria.
There are exceptions, of course. English roses have the forms and fragrance of old-fashioned roses but are fairly difficult to find; most gardening supply places have only a few of them, if any at all. If you want to garden for scent you will have to do some diligent searching. Also be prepared to change things after a couple of years, because some of your fragrant flowers that die off will be impossible to replace with equally fragrant specimens of the same species.
Yeah, but Asimov didn't envision hackers much in his novels. We know better nowadays; program a robot with the three laws and one would be hacked within a month just to prove it could be done.
Why? Other than the arrogance of nerds who pride themselves on having an above average intelligence, what makes us think that a superior intelligence is so important to breeding? Once you reach the threshold of making the species more innovative and clever than other species around them, then there's really no point to a higher intelligence in the evolution of the species. On the other hand, the ability to socialize in a large society is clearly very important. Monkeys are great socializers, but they don't pollute the environment much and certainly never made nuclear weapons, so one could very well say that the exploitation of our higher intelligence has become a danger to our species....
That was the OP's point exactly, I think. Why is it different? Croppping works the same on every image editor I've tried except the Gimp. Why reinvent the wheel and turn it into a hexagon?