Yeah, it's really a great plan, but you're quite right, on its best day it'd be long, bloody fight, and odds are, if they implemented it at all, they'd do it as an addition to the IRS, which would be the most perverse thing you could do with the idea. Which, of course, is why they'd do it. Because they're perverse.
Oh, no. They read it, all right. They scanned every word to see if there was a political contribution in there, or a way to eke one out of you. You know, money. Once they were done with that, then they threw it away. I assure you, they read every letter carefully.
When Obama was elected, he had a website, basically "hey citizens, tell us what you want!" The most popular thing on that site, bar none, by huge margins, was the legalization of marijuana. You know what Obama did? He laughed it off. He mentioned it, but specifically said the only reason he was mentioning it was because he wanted us to know it wasn't going to happen.
That's what happens when the public makes its will clearly known.
This is not a democracy. This is a corporatist republic. Once you fully understand that, you'll stop wasting your time writing letters.
However, sunset will never come. Just like last time, they'll shove it into some otherwise irrelevant bill, and it'll be renewed. Forever. Count on it.
Fair Tax has some good features but it glosses over parts that would unfairly tax the poor.
No. It doesn't. The fair tax taxes consumption above the poverty level; the poor aren't taxed at all.
I'm going to lay some numbers down to show you how it works. I'm picking them because they're easy to follow, not because they're specific suggestions. What the actual numbers should be would vary, but if you actually understand the following, your concerns about the poor will be resolved. There are only two numbers: cost of living, and the fair tax percentage.
Lets say that the cost of living for an average person is determined to be $1000 per month. Let us also say that the fairtax, which is a tax only levied on purchase of new materials, is 35%. Those are the numbers. Here's how it goes:
Every person gets a check at the beginning of the month from the government. That check, in the case of 35% fairtax and $1000 cost of living, is exactly $350. So what happens is, as you buy your cost-of-living necessities, and you are charged 35% tax on them, you are paying it out of this $350 check. You have exactly enough to pay the taxes on $1000 worth of purchases: 35% of $1000 is $350. Three important consequences arise:
First, you're paying no taxes on your $1000 of spending -- because that $350 came from outside your income. It's extra. So this means, no question about it, that up to cost of living, your purchases are tax free.
Secondly, because you got the $350 at the beginning of the month, and you have given it back to the government it by the end, then next month, when you get your next $350 check, it's the same money as last month so there is no ongoing expense to maintain this. Just a one-time outlay of $350 per person that gets recycled.
Third, administration costs are almost zero. Everyone gets a check. There are no exceptions, there are no variations. So there are no conditions, no verifications, no nothing. Everyone gets a check, period. This means the government saves huge amounts of money. The IRS can be disbanded; businesses no longer have to collect taxes from employees; accountants, lawyers and other parasites will have to look elsewhere for their hosts. The economic gains are huge.
The poor person who is actually living at the cost of living line is now living tax free, period. The middle class person can also benefit from this, because they don't pay taxes until they start spending on options, upgrades, excesses. The high income person doesn't really give a damn, because that $350 is meaningless in terms of their income.
The fairtax is extremely fair. Proportionally speaking, it benefits the poor much more than the middle class, and the middle class more than the rich. Which is just what you want it to do. And anyone with any extra money at all, not to mention people who work the used market, can save money, tax-free, under the fairtax.
The idea that the fairtax is "unfair to the poor" or "regressive" is propaganda or misunderstanding. No more, no less. Modern income tax implementation is highly regressive, however, and does huge harm to the poor by hiding taxes in the prices of goods and services.
These cartoons may help you understand these concepts:
Have sex offenders so won the battle that a kid isn't safe walking less than 1000 feet from the schoolhouse door to the door of the home that parents are that fearful?
For sex offenders to "win", they'd want easier access, not more difficult. Presuming (and I think it's a false presumption) that there was any significant risk here in the first place. No one benefits from this, it is purest insanity.
I am *profoundly* glad I grew up in the 1950's-1960's. I am quite certain there were just as high a percentage of pedophiles and ephibophiles around then, as now (based on population), but no one ever forced me into anything I didn't want to do, or even attempted to. Nor did I hear about anything like that happening to anyone else. I wandered all over multiple towns, rode my bike from town to town (about 20 miles in various directions), I floated and boated the Delaware river, sometimes for days at a time, I camped out by myself and with friends, I took trips to dark sky locations and fiddled with telescopes, I wandered around town late at night both as a kid and as a teenager - that's right, no curfew - I had a great time, learned a lot, was physically very active (although not sports, per se: I swam, I went caving, I rowed, I just walked and biked a lot of places, I climbed trees (I built a tree house, well, a platform, about 50 feet off the ground in our back yard... long climb, but what a view... used to eat a bag lunch my mom would make for me up there. She'd wave from the porch.) I built dams in the creek, rafted in the rapids above Port Jervis... that's how a kid should grow up. Not locked in the house, stuck in front of the babble box, forbidden to circle the block or cross the street.
To re-imagine my youth in the vein of modern parental hysteria... that's truly a nightmare. I pity this generation, really anyone who experienced their childhood and teenage years in this environment of political and social insanity.
JFC what a load of utter blather. Science is method leading to metaphor that attempts to describe reality; theory is metaphor; successful metaphor (in the sense of transferring a concept intact) requires intellectual common ground; when common ground is lacking, understanding fails. This can occur at the boundaries of language, of pre-requisite knowledge, or at the limits of comprehension. However, in no case does the reality that the metaphor refers to change.
For the record, I just ordered a Mattias Tactile Pro 3 keyboard because the Apple "chiclet" keyboard on my Mac pro is so appallingly bad - no physical or audible feedback, mushy feel, unreliable rollover / missed keys / extra keys. This is for my desktop; I suffer with the awfulness on my Macbook pro.
The TTP3 has Alps mechanical switches, basically unlimited rollover, and key legends that won't wear off, at least according to them (laser etched.) It's my xmas present to myself.
The idea that a touch screen could take over -- and mind you, I'm really into my iPad -- is no less than ridiculous. The "keyboard" on an iPad is meant to cover you in very rare instances. It's not usable long term or in a serious manner. People who type for a living, or simply a lot... they can't be moved to a touch screen. Not even remotely viable.
And I'd wager that in a day or two there's be a 10.5.9 that adds it to Leopard.
Above each app, it says "You must have 10.6.6 to download this app" or some similar verbiage. So it looks, at least at the moment, as if pushing snow leopard is the intent. I can see why with only 30% (or so) adoption.
[shrug] It's their own fault. They broke too many apps and drivers with 10.6. I'm not going to put it on my machine and destroy the usefulness of software I paid good money for. Even apps and drivers that have upgrades -- like Parallels -- are going to cost to upgrade, and in the end, not only do I have a lot of busted stuff, I have all this additional expense.
You do realize that there are far better places on the net to archive your images, given that you can't be bothered to do it yourself?
Also, that when you get caught peeing on a bush, drunk, or "interface" with a girl an hour the wrong way over an arbitrary age line, or just get too many spam emails with Unsavory Images in them, and consequently receive your highly coveted "sexual offender" listing, facebook will toss you out and your pictures in the trash, right?
Oh... and there's always that whole feature when "facebook goes away" due to hardware failure, natural cat-ass-trophy, EMP, solar flare, etc... that your photos will also be the first to not get restored, because they weren't, and aren't, important to facebook in any way, shape or form? Another reason to use a photo-centric site which *depends* upon keeping your photos.
Identifier "(Satire)" already declared near line 3. Baling...
Hay, you can't bale, you already forked at line 2. Wire you trying to confuze me? You should fodder the guidelines, or I swear, it's the last straw, you hear me? Damned un-stable applications...
I agree. I just call them junk sites, myself, and try to avoid them. There's nothing like waiting for a whole bunch of shittily interpreted code to tie your own CPU to the railroad tracks.
OmniOutliner Pro - my favorite, most powerful application for day to day use on the Mac. My whole life is inside OmniOutliner - I've got a timeline in there from the day I was born right to today, just as one example of how pervasive the thing becomes. What a great product. And no, not connected to them, except as a very happy customer.
Hell, if you had to stay at OS X 10.6.5 (the current version) for the rest of your machine's useful life, would that be too hard?
Actually, my Mac Pro (8 core, 3 GHz, 8 GB, Intel - my daily driver machine) is at 10.5[.8] (like about 70% of other Mac users IIRC) and I expect it to stay there; 10.6 just broke way too much stuff, and, at least so far, hasn't offered me any significant reason to discard those apps.
Personally, I think that Linux may be grown up enough to take over at that point.
Linux's problem isn't - and has never been - that it isn't "grown up" enough. It's a superb OS, and the day it allows turning off its greedy filesystem cache behavior, it'll be a nearly perfect OS. I could port to it fairly easily if I were willing to pony up for a GUI, careful to avoid GPL entanglement, and willing to try to deliver and support across the fragmented series of platforms that is Linux today. I'm not, BTW.
The problem is that the Linux world is massively unfriendly to the vast majority of commercial development models, and with the very occasional exception of a visionary/lunatic, most commercial developers simply won't go there. That unfriendliness covers multiple bases; outside of X (which sucks) no standard GUI graphics (and pay models for what unencumbered GUI libraries there are additionally put off small developers); the GPL is about as anti-commercial as it can be, it is literally dangerous to most commercial development models; and OS fragmentation - the zillion linux variants - makes it about impossible to say "works under linux." Software may want to be free, but developers want to make house payments, and guess which one takes priority in most developer's minds?
All that really would take is to have Adobe (who appears to have no love for Apple anyway) to port the Creative Suite to Linux.
Well, yes. And do you actually think this is a likely outcome? I can't see it happening. Not as long as linux is... well, linux.
Hell, you could keep your own hardware, dual boot and run Parallels if you like. Many, many options.
I already do this - if I want to work in linux, well, there it is, cooking away in Parallels. And I have projects that require linux. Likewise XP. So if something comes up I need to use on a particular OS, I just... use it. No need for anyone to port in any particular direction. The only trick to this is keeping XP off the net so it can't screw itself into the ground with adware and the like, but that's no problem at all, really, with two other OSs that are significantly safer out on the net right at hand. All on hardware that at the moment, is pretty powerful as compared to the general level of hardware out there, powerful enough to not make me wait, which is my primary criteria these days.
If there existed a professional quality image editing suite fully feature equivalent with Photoshop but half or a quarter the price, don't you think professionals who do this sort of thing 8 hours a day, 200+ days a year for a living might have heard about it and already be using it?
No. Photoshop, while a superb program, has close competitors in many areas and has had for years. Some of them are better than it is, or were, in many areas. The reason they didn't rise to the level Photoshop did is marketing and consequent user perception. Examples: PSP had (may still have) a much better brush engine. WinImages had (may still have) a much more powerful layering engine. Corel had (may still have) much better painterly effects. I'm only pointing at single features because they managed to stick in my mind; that's not to say there aren't others. But what these apps don't have behind them is marketing at anywhere near the level Adobe does. Consequently, the assumption you make is false: There are professional quality tools out there that attempt to compete with Photoshop, and no, most professionals aren't even slightly aware of them -- they don't go hunting for such things, and the manufacturers really haven't managed to get them right in front of them. And it isn't just a matter of being an all-in-one knife, either - most pros will use other tools when they find them worthy. But if they don't know about them or remain unconvinced because of the marketing of other companies... well, that's the end of that. And why? primarily because marketing is both an art an a very expensive undertaking. And because of luck. Never underestimate the power of luck.
Right. What you're stealing is empowerment from the photoshop developers: They created something that they agree to share for a particular return, which in turn you may use to empower yourself.
If you take without recompense, you have chosen to take that empowerment without providing the return.
If every user did this, all the effort of the developers would be taken with no return, and the developers would lose the entire income stream that is pendant upon selling that empowerment. If half the users did this, the developers lose only half the income stream, but they still lose. If only a few users do this, then the developers lose still less - but they still lose. If no user does it, then there is no loss.
That's why piracy is theft. Not because "copying isn't stealing a unique object." But because you take someone's work product without paying. That work product - which cost real money, I'd like to remind you - only has repayment value to the developers in the transaction from them, to the user. If the value is taken out of that transaction without the agreement of the developer, that's theft.
If you want to be a game-changer you HAVE to be able to sell to the entire world.
No, you really don't. You can change the game for the 300 or so million people right here, and to the extent that you are concerned about it, the game will have indeed changed. I'm afraid reality has different parameters than "all societies must be treated equally." That may not be comfortable for you, but it is a fact.
If they're DRMed, you're only renting them. I won't buy any digital data I can't back up.
Yeah, although I'm not pleased they're DRM'ed, I don't actually care enough to try to get around it. It's not a big deal to me. They're only temporarily my possessions even if they're physically glued to my skull and protected by AP devices, because within a few decades I'm going to die, and that'll be the complete and utter end of my "ownership" anyway. It's just not worth getting upset over, from my POV. As for books and other visual media, I could go blind in my other eye (I can only read with one, now) and then where is the value in "ownership" other than simple (and very low, generally) resale value? Same thing with DVDs and Blurays. Perhaps you won't own them because they're CP'd, as you say; Me, I'd rather just enjoy the art and support the artists. Not that you aren't welcome to your POV, you certainly are, but it isn't mine, that's all. Waiting until everything is DRM free is going to mainly deprive me - not them. So fuck that.
the radio doesn't cost a dime.
Wrong. It costs a lot (especially given the way the FCC has it set up in the US.) You pay with ads that play *instead* of music (typical commercial stuff), or taxes (NPR.) And you pay with incredibly biased network newscasts. And you pay with limited choice. And you pay with the lack of any ability to interact in any serious manner with other citizens. But you definitely pay.
I own literally dozens of Isaac Asimov books, and have read hundreds (he wrote over 500 tomes). Were it not for the library, I would never have read a single one of his books, let alone bought any.
I own them all. Including the vast majority of his pulp output, and all the various collections he edited, not to mention a lot of collections his short works are in. Also basically all the works of Blish, Perry, Harrison, Hogan, Clancy, Pohl, Laumer, Clavell, and quite a few other authors whose works I enjoy. None of whom in any way required me to visit a library to discover - but whose works now reside in my library anyway. The SF magazines and various literary reviews served quite well to keep me supplied with ideas of who to explore next. I never have caught up to all the things I would have liked to read, and I read considerably more than anyone else I know. Lately, it's ebooks rather than paper, but again, I'm adding more almost every day, and enjoying the heck out of it. Doesn't seriously bug me that they are DRM'd. Typos, now that bothers me. Shitty writing, too. (I read "Behold, an Ashen Horse" recently, it was like watching someone try to fingerpaint tiny, delicate flowers using only their elbows. holy crap what am incredibly lousy, badly written, preachy and perhaps insane book. But I digress.)
You're not going to buy music if you've never heard the band, you're not going to buy a book if you've never read the author.
Quite true. And we pay, as I said, to hear the band. We pay in time, we pay in devices, we pay in media. The artists are paid for the radio time that they get. By the advertisers, who in turn took it from the audience. TANSTAFL, my man. What I try not to do is ever make the artist pay for me to listen, view, read, etc. That's where I part company with the kids.
Any artist whining anout(sic) piracy is either being disingenuous or stupid -- study after study shows that piracy, rather than decreasing sales, increases sales.
You're entitled to your opinion. Just not your own facts. Piracy has different effects on different things in different markets and with different pirates. There is no "one size fits all" answer, although again, the answer I am most comfortable with is simply "don't pirate", so that's where I sit.
Well, it would mean that if these were different people all the time. They're not.
Even if we go with "1%", that's pretty much my original point: 1% = "almost nobody" is using the library. 99% of the population isn't. And as I said, it's worse -- these aren't 50-100 different people. It's more like ten. And the librarian... and the cat, which is primarily why I'm always going there.
No, you clearly don't get it, and I don't worship money. I recognize the power it has (WRT the issue at hand) to let artists work. I am not a fool that thinks money is inherently a bad thing on some idiot philosophical level. It does what you send it off to do, so the onus is on you to do the right thing, that's all. I do good things, as best I know how; that makes my money a positive force.
and equate "free" with "worthless"
Again, no. Not even close. I equate free with free. Which is why I don't support the GPL, but instead, release my free stuff with no restrictions. If someone wants to give me something, I accept, and I'm grateful. I might just give them something back anyway, though. You think about that for a while, maybe you'll get it. As long as you think it's about money, you're blindly running down the wrong trail. It's about mutual support and recognition of value, where value, in this society, can be recognized with feeelthy lucre.
Knowledge isn't a zero sum game; if I give you knowledge, it doesn't take mine away at all and may in fact enhance mine. Knowledge should NEVER be hoarded; hoarding knowledge is just plain wrong.
If you give me knowledge, you spent time and energy doing it. Even if you did it by writing something up and paying nothing for a web page to distribute it, you STILL had to put it together, and presumably, assuming I learned anything, you did it well. This is the value. Not the knowledge; it is in the learning for most, and in the case of teachers (of which I am one), it is also often in the teaching, which in NO way means that I don't appreciate it if a student provides some form of indication that they've been taught well. A complement, dinner, paying their fees on time, all count just the right way, and a complement from a poor fellow can be worth just as much as a lobster dinner from Dr. Peeaitch D. Student.
Money is only the root of all evil if you're evil, or evil is being done to you, with it. Otherwise, it can be a facilitator of great good. You're really, really off base to try to separate value from money. What it means is that you don't understand money.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it's really a great plan, but you're quite right, on its best day it'd be long, bloody fight, and odds are, if they implemented it at all, they'd do it as an addition to the IRS, which would be the most perverse thing you could do with the idea. Which, of course, is why they'd do it. Because they're perverse.
Oh, no. They read it, all right. They scanned every word to see if there was a political contribution in there, or a way to eke one out of you. You know, money. Once they were done with that, then they threw it away. I assure you, they read every letter carefully.
When Obama was elected, he had a website, basically "hey citizens, tell us what you want!" The most popular thing on that site, bar none, by huge margins, was the legalization of marijuana. You know what Obama did? He laughed it off. He mentioned it, but specifically said the only reason he was mentioning it was because he wanted us to know it wasn't going to happen.
That's what happens when the public makes its will clearly known.
This is not a democracy. This is a corporatist republic. Once you fully understand that, you'll stop wasting your time writing letters.
However, sunset will never come. Just like last time, they'll shove it into some otherwise irrelevant bill, and it'll be renewed. Forever. Count on it.
No. It doesn't. The fair tax taxes consumption above the poverty level; the poor aren't taxed at all.
I'm going to lay some numbers down to show you how it works. I'm picking them because they're easy to follow, not because they're specific suggestions. What the actual numbers should be would vary, but if you actually understand the following, your concerns about the poor will be resolved. There are only two numbers: cost of living, and the fair tax percentage.
Lets say that the cost of living for an average person is determined to be $1000 per month. Let us also say that the fairtax, which is a tax only levied on purchase of new materials, is 35%. Those are the numbers. Here's how it goes:
Every person gets a check at the beginning of the month from the government. That check, in the case of 35% fairtax and $1000 cost of living, is exactly $350. So what happens is, as you buy your cost-of-living necessities, and you are charged 35% tax on them, you are paying it out of this $350 check. You have exactly enough to pay the taxes on $1000 worth of purchases: 35% of $1000 is $350. Three important consequences arise:
First, you're paying no taxes on your $1000 of spending -- because that $350 came from outside your income. It's extra. So this means, no question about it, that up to cost of living, your purchases are tax free.
Secondly, because you got the $350 at the beginning of the month, and you have given it back to the government it by the end, then next month, when you get your next $350 check, it's the same money as last month so there is no ongoing expense to maintain this. Just a one-time outlay of $350 per person that gets recycled.
Third, administration costs are almost zero. Everyone gets a check. There are no exceptions, there are no variations. So there are no conditions, no verifications, no nothing. Everyone gets a check, period. This means the government saves huge amounts of money. The IRS can be disbanded; businesses no longer have to collect taxes from employees; accountants, lawyers and other parasites will have to look elsewhere for their hosts. The economic gains are huge.
The poor person who is actually living at the cost of living line is now living tax free, period. The middle class person can also benefit from this, because they don't pay taxes until they start spending on options, upgrades, excesses. The high income person doesn't really give a damn, because that $350 is meaningless in terms of their income.
The fairtax is extremely fair. Proportionally speaking, it benefits the poor much more than the middle class, and the middle class more than the rich. Which is just what you want it to do. And anyone with any extra money at all, not to mention people who work the used market, can save money, tax-free, under the fairtax.
The idea that the fairtax is "unfair to the poor" or "regressive" is propaganda or misunderstanding. No more, no less. Modern income tax implementation is highly regressive, however, and does huge harm to the poor by hiding taxes in the prices of goods and services.
These cartoons may help you understand these concepts:
For sex offenders to "win", they'd want easier access, not more difficult. Presuming (and I think it's a false presumption) that there was any significant risk here in the first place. No one benefits from this, it is purest insanity.
I am *profoundly* glad I grew up in the 1950's-1960's. I am quite certain there were just as high a percentage of pedophiles and ephibophiles around then, as now (based on population), but no one ever forced me into anything I didn't want to do, or even attempted to. Nor did I hear about anything like that happening to anyone else. I wandered all over multiple towns, rode my bike from town to town (about 20 miles in various directions), I floated and boated the Delaware river, sometimes for days at a time, I camped out by myself and with friends, I took trips to dark sky locations and fiddled with telescopes, I wandered around town late at night both as a kid and as a teenager - that's right, no curfew - I had a great time, learned a lot, was physically very active (although not sports, per se: I swam, I went caving, I rowed, I just walked and biked a lot of places, I climbed trees (I built a tree house, well, a platform, about 50 feet off the ground in our back yard... long climb, but what a view... used to eat a bag lunch my mom would make for me up there. She'd wave from the porch.) I built dams in the creek, rafted in the rapids above Port Jervis... that's how a kid should grow up. Not locked in the house, stuck in front of the babble box, forbidden to circle the block or cross the street.
To re-imagine my youth in the vein of modern parental hysteria... that's truly a nightmare. I pity this generation, really anyone who experienced their childhood and teenage years in this environment of political and social insanity.
JFC what a load of utter blather. Science is method leading to metaphor that attempts to describe reality; theory is metaphor; successful metaphor (in the sense of transferring a concept intact) requires intellectual common ground; when common ground is lacking, understanding fails. This can occur at the boundaries of language, of pre-requisite knowledge, or at the limits of comprehension. However, in no case does the reality that the metaphor refers to change.
No. Now just hang on a second while I delete your user account and all your data, you presumptuous bitch.
Any. And you'd be the first.
For the record, I just ordered a Mattias Tactile Pro 3 keyboard because the Apple "chiclet" keyboard on my Mac pro is so appallingly bad - no physical or audible feedback, mushy feel, unreliable rollover / missed keys / extra keys. This is for my desktop; I suffer with the awfulness on my Macbook pro.
The TTP3 has Alps mechanical switches, basically unlimited rollover, and key legends that won't wear off, at least according to them (laser etched.) It's my xmas present to myself.
The idea that a touch screen could take over -- and mind you, I'm really into my iPad -- is no less than ridiculous. The "keyboard" on an iPad is meant to cover you in very rare instances. It's not usable long term or in a serious manner. People who type for a living, or simply a lot... they can't be moved to a touch screen. Not even remotely viable.
We've still got two PPC minis -- no problems, other than they're slow compared to the rest of our machines. They still have their uses.
Above each app, it says "You must have 10.6.6 to download this app" or some similar verbiage. So it looks, at least at the moment, as if pushing snow leopard is the intent. I can see why with only 30% (or so) adoption.
[shrug] It's their own fault. They broke too many apps and drivers with 10.6. I'm not going to put it on my machine and destroy the usefulness of software I paid good money for. Even apps and drivers that have upgrades -- like Parallels -- are going to cost to upgrade, and in the end, not only do I have a lot of busted stuff, I have all this additional expense.
You do realize that there are far better places on the net to archive your images, given that you can't be bothered to do it yourself?
Also, that when you get caught peeing on a bush, drunk, or "interface" with a girl an hour the wrong way over an arbitrary age line, or just get too many spam emails with Unsavory Images in them, and consequently receive your highly coveted "sexual offender" listing, facebook will toss you out and your pictures in the trash, right?
Oh... and there's always that whole feature when "facebook goes away" due to hardware failure, natural cat-ass-trophy, EMP, solar flare, etc... that your photos will also be the first to not get restored, because they weren't, and aren't, important to facebook in any way, shape or form? Another reason to use a photo-centric site which *depends* upon keeping your photos.
Hay, you can't bale, you already forked at line 2. Wire you trying to confuze me? You should fodder the guidelines, or I swear, it's the last straw, you hear me? Damned un-stable applications...
Yes! And a short one! I mean, uh, shortly, that is, I mean, soon!
I agree. I just call them junk sites, myself, and try to avoid them. There's nothing like waiting for a whole bunch of shittily interpreted code to tie your own CPU to the railroad tracks.
OmniOutliner Pro - my favorite, most powerful application for day to day use on the Mac. My whole life is inside OmniOutliner - I've got a timeline in there from the day I was born right to today, just as one example of how pervasive the thing becomes. What a great product. And no, not connected to them, except as a very happy customer.
Actually, my Mac Pro (8 core, 3 GHz, 8 GB, Intel - my daily driver machine) is at 10.5[.8] (like about 70% of other Mac users IIRC) and I expect it to stay there; 10.6 just broke way too much stuff, and, at least so far, hasn't offered me any significant reason to discard those apps.
Linux's problem isn't - and has never been - that it isn't "grown up" enough. It's a superb OS, and the day it allows turning off its greedy filesystem cache behavior, it'll be a nearly perfect OS. I could port to it fairly easily if I were willing to pony up for a GUI, careful to avoid GPL entanglement, and willing to try to deliver and support across the fragmented series of platforms that is Linux today. I'm not, BTW.
The problem is that the Linux world is massively unfriendly to the vast majority of commercial development models, and with the very occasional exception of a visionary/lunatic, most commercial developers simply won't go there. That unfriendliness covers multiple bases; outside of X (which sucks) no standard GUI graphics (and pay models for what unencumbered GUI libraries there are additionally put off small developers); the GPL is about as anti-commercial as it can be, it is literally dangerous to most commercial development models; and OS fragmentation - the zillion linux variants - makes it about impossible to say "works under linux." Software may want to be free, but developers want to make house payments, and guess which one takes priority in most developer's minds?
Well, yes. And do you actually think this is a likely outcome? I can't see it happening. Not as long as linux is... well, linux.
I already do this - if I want to work in linux, well, there it is, cooking away in Parallels. And I have projects that require linux. Likewise XP. So if something comes up I need to use on a particular OS, I just... use it. No need for anyone to port in any particular direction. The only trick to this is keeping XP off the net so it can't screw itself into the ground with adware and the like, but that's no problem at all, really, with two other OSs that are significantly safer out on the net right at hand. All on hardware that at the moment, is pretty powerful as compared to the general level of hardware out there, powerful enough to not make me wait, which is my primary criteria these days.
There, fixed that for ya. My pleasure. :)
No. Photoshop, while a superb program, has close competitors in many areas and has had for years. Some of them are better than it is, or were, in many areas. The reason they didn't rise to the level Photoshop did is marketing and consequent user perception. Examples: PSP had (may still have) a much better brush engine. WinImages had (may still have) a much more powerful layering engine. Corel had (may still have) much better painterly effects. I'm only pointing at single features because they managed to stick in my mind; that's not to say there aren't others. But what these apps don't have behind them is marketing at anywhere near the level Adobe does. Consequently, the assumption you make is false: There are professional quality tools out there that attempt to compete with Photoshop, and no, most professionals aren't even slightly aware of them -- they don't go hunting for such things, and the manufacturers really haven't managed to get them right in front of them. And it isn't just a matter of being an all-in-one knife, either - most pros will use other tools when they find them worthy. But if they don't know about them or remain unconvinced because of the marketing of other companies... well, that's the end of that. And why? primarily because marketing is both an art an a very expensive undertaking. And because of luck. Never underestimate the power of luck.
Right. What you're stealing is empowerment from the photoshop developers: They created something that they agree to share for a particular return, which in turn you may use to empower yourself.
If you take without recompense, you have chosen to take that empowerment without providing the return.
If every user did this, all the effort of the developers would be taken with no return, and the developers would lose the entire income stream that is pendant upon selling that empowerment. If half the users did this, the developers lose only half the income stream, but they still lose. If only a few users do this, then the developers lose still less - but they still lose. If no user does it, then there is no loss.
That's why piracy is theft. Not because "copying isn't stealing a unique object." But because you take someone's work product without paying. That work product - which cost real money, I'd like to remind you - only has repayment value to the developers in the transaction from them, to the user. If the value is taken out of that transaction without the agreement of the developer, that's theft.
No, you really don't. You can change the game for the 300 or so million people right here, and to the extent that you are concerned about it, the game will have indeed changed. I'm afraid reality has different parameters than "all societies must be treated equally." That may not be comfortable for you, but it is a fact.
Yeah, although I'm not pleased they're DRM'ed, I don't actually care enough to try to get around it. It's not a big deal to me. They're only temporarily my possessions even if they're physically glued to my skull and protected by AP devices, because within a few decades I'm going to die, and that'll be the complete and utter end of my "ownership" anyway. It's just not worth getting upset over, from my POV. As for books and other visual media, I could go blind in my other eye (I can only read with one, now) and then where is the value in "ownership" other than simple (and very low, generally) resale value? Same thing with DVDs and Blurays. Perhaps you won't own them because they're CP'd, as you say; Me, I'd rather just enjoy the art and support the artists. Not that you aren't welcome to your POV, you certainly are, but it isn't mine, that's all. Waiting until everything is DRM free is going to mainly deprive me - not them. So fuck that.
Wrong. It costs a lot (especially given the way the FCC has it set up in the US.) You pay with ads that play *instead* of music (typical commercial stuff), or taxes (NPR.) And you pay with incredibly biased network newscasts. And you pay with limited choice. And you pay with the lack of any ability to interact in any serious manner with other citizens. But you definitely pay.
I own them all. Including the vast majority of his pulp output, and all the various collections he edited, not to mention a lot of collections his short works are in. Also basically all the works of Blish, Perry, Harrison, Hogan, Clancy, Pohl, Laumer, Clavell, and quite a few other authors whose works I enjoy. None of whom in any way required me to visit a library to discover - but whose works now reside in my library anyway. The SF magazines and various literary reviews served quite well to keep me supplied with ideas of who to explore next. I never have caught up to all the things I would have liked to read, and I read considerably more than anyone else I know. Lately, it's ebooks rather than paper, but again, I'm adding more almost every day, and enjoying the heck out of it. Doesn't seriously bug me that they are DRM'd. Typos, now that bothers me. Shitty writing, too. (I read "Behold, an Ashen Horse" recently, it was like watching someone try to fingerpaint tiny, delicate flowers using only their elbows. holy crap what am incredibly lousy, badly written, preachy and perhaps insane book. But I digress.)
Quite true. And we pay, as I said, to hear the band. We pay in time, we pay in devices, we pay in media. The artists are paid for the radio time that they get. By the advertisers, who in turn took it from the audience. TANSTAFL, my man. What I try not to do is ever make the artist pay for me to listen, view, read, etc. That's where I part company with the kids.
You're entitled to your opinion. Just not your own facts. Piracy has different effects on different things in different markets and with different pirates. There is no "one size fits all" answer, although again, the answer I am most comfortable with is simply "don't pirate", so that's where I sit.
Well, it would mean that if these were different people all the time. They're not.
Even if we go with "1%", that's pretty much my original point: 1% = "almost nobody" is using the library. 99% of the population isn't. And as I said, it's worse -- these aren't 50-100 different people. It's more like ten. And the librarian... and the cat, which is primarily why I'm always going there.
No, you clearly don't get it, and I don't worship money. I recognize the power it has (WRT the issue at hand) to let artists work. I am not a fool that thinks money is inherently a bad thing on some idiot philosophical level. It does what you send it off to do, so the onus is on you to do the right thing, that's all. I do good things, as best I know how; that makes my money a positive force.
Again, no. Not even close. I equate free with free. Which is why I don't support the GPL, but instead, release my free stuff with no restrictions. If someone wants to give me something, I accept, and I'm grateful. I might just give them something back anyway, though. You think about that for a while, maybe you'll get it. As long as you think it's about money, you're blindly running down the wrong trail. It's about mutual support and recognition of value, where value, in this society, can be recognized with feeelthy lucre.
If you give me knowledge, you spent time and energy doing it. Even if you did it by writing something up and paying nothing for a web page to distribute it, you STILL had to put it together, and presumably, assuming I learned anything, you did it well. This is the value. Not the knowledge; it is in the learning for most, and in the case of teachers (of which I am one), it is also often in the teaching, which in NO way means that I don't appreciate it if a student provides some form of indication that they've been taught well. A complement, dinner, paying their fees on time, all count just the right way, and a complement from a poor fellow can be worth just as much as a lobster dinner from Dr. Peeaitch D. Student.
Money is only the root of all evil if you're evil, or evil is being done to you, with it. Otherwise, it can be a facilitator of great good. You're really, really off base to try to separate value from money. What it means is that you don't understand money.