The person you responded to was correct. People like you claim that evolution it's proven, but it's not proven. We have some great ideas, we have some models that kind of work given enough bogus data to tweak them. Your analogy was simply wrong since we don't know very much about gravity either. We know it's there, we can see it's action. We have some rough measurements that tend not to work on scale, but we have some data.
Creation vs. Evolution is not as nice of a boolean issue as you want it to be. This is because Theology works on the theory of a creator, where you have a theory that there is no creator. Both are theories, and neither can prove the other wrong.
What I find interesting is that most atheists are just like religious extremists. Their belief is right and no amount of facts will change their mind. Their way should be the only way taught to people. A primary difference is that atheists use science theory as their bible, but what ever fad theory is hot today is the bible. Atheists name call anyone that does not believe as they do just like the religious people, and use ad hominem attacks instead of facts to back their theory. Just like devout religious people, atheists use every rhetorical fallacy possible to justify their beliefs. Perhaps in a way atheists may be worse than religious people because most religious people will admits to having a belief, where an atheist will claim that their belief is factual.
With that out of the way, and to the meat of the article, I don't disagree with teaching evolution. If the education is structured so that we don't claim "why" it happens, and we teach that it's a "theory" everyone should be happy. The obvious problem is that everyone wants to teach the "why", and of course their belief is the only way we can operate. A secondary problem is that many atheists want to treat evolution as fact, when very little of the theory has actually been proven.
You should have qualified the question better. Did you intend to ask "Do most US programmers understand English?".
If that was your question, I would say "to some degree" but with the large number of immigrants and visa holders working in the US there would be a percentage that does not.
When you leave the US, it should make little difference. RFCs, APIs, Specs, Docs, etc.. are all translated to the native language. Larger companies spend healthy sums of money to make their products available in other languages. How do you sell a Chinese company software that only works with an English keyboard? Well, you probably don't.
In poorer countries, I'm sure you would have them using more native English products due to cost. It's easier for let's say Kenya to use English Linux and have to read English to be able to perform well with the software. Kenya was not a literal example, I don't know much about Kenya. Just a convenient country name commonly associated with being a poorer country.
Oh come now, either you are a government shill or ignorant (perhaps intentionally, but I have my doubts). Have you read the Patriot Act? Have you read the 2011 NDAA? Do you understand the purpose of the TSA? Why is TSA patrolling sporting events, train stations, and concerts in Detroit? All of those can be validated with Google. Have you read and understood the intent and purpose of the new NSA center opening this summer?
A police state is a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the population.
Do you understand how escalation works? Do you know that by definition we are already in a Police State?
Currently you are put on watch lists by exercising your first amendment rights, which is repression. Government agencies have colluded with large businesses and media to slander and libel people exercising their first amendment rights which is very obvious repression.
What you could say is that most people are not jailed for speaking out. There are reports that people active in OWS were arrested (and not the druggies the police were getting high either) for speaking out.
Everything I mentioned has information available on Google, nothing is hidden but you have to go look. Fox and CNN sure won't tell you about them.
I actually did not rant here. A rant is much more than a single statement. But if you are asking to get involved why not try actually talking to people and teaching them some things. I lecture regularly on Philosophy and Rhetoric, focusing mainly on the Socratic method and Plato's republic.. I also write, vote, petition, email, and study. Political science requires lots of that you know, as does current events for talking points.
Not everyone sits and does nothing, but not everyone is on the street yelling either. I "try" to wake up 1 new person a day. It does not always work, but I do try. When I wake someone, I spend more time with them and ask them to wake up 1 person a day.
And you are awake and making false accusation, or sleeping and making false accusations? I'm going to guess the later. Socrates warned us in The Allegory of the Cave that there are people like you. Happy to stay in their chains and yell at the people trying to show them how to get out. Grats on being an enthusiastic slave!
Go read something AC, like US History. The Republic was founded as a Union of States. States are only bound to the US Government by Constitutional Law (The laws that make up the Constitution and Bill of Rights). That is the function of the Constitution. It is up to States to write and enforce Laws that are not in the Constitution. The US Government is not entitled Police forces inside of a State under the Constitution. This was done by EO illegally and is still allowed, primarily because people like you are ignorant. We excuse the CIA and FBI because there is some validity to them, however there should have been amendments to the Constitution defining their purpose and scope.
The TSA, DHS, ATF, DEA are all created by EO and are illegal under the Constitution. If your ignorance makes you ignore them.. well I can't help you being ignorant. There is a long standing quote of particular importance. "Those that fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it." The US is not magically immune to tyranny. The Germans never thought Hitler would be a problem and look how that turned out for them. (Historical evidence as to how easy it is to dupe the public and vote yourself into tyranny.)
There is absolutely nothing irrational with concerns about tyranny. Go read a history book and realize that the fear is very rational. Hell, go read Plato's Republic and see that fear nor tyranny are new.
Let me clue you in:
Study Hegalian dialectic. Create dialogue -> Present dilemma -> Provide solution. This method has been effective in stripping you of your constitutional rights. It has also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the last century alone. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and the US Government have all used this method. If you have doubts about the US Government, Fast and Furious has been well documented for the public to see. If you prove one, there are probably a lot more hiding in the bushes.
Labels are attempts to avoid dialogue on subjects based on how they are labelled. I'm not saying you are attempting to avoid the subject, but rather pointing out that you did not have any impact, positive or negative, on my statements throwing out labels. If you are not educated enough to realize what you did, shame on you for being ignorant. If you are educated enough to realize what you did, shame on you for avoiding dialogue and jumping on a fallacy wagon.
As for punishment, you are actually pointing out what I pointed out. Microsoft got no punishment. It didn't matter *how* they got no punishment, but they got to continue being a monopoly, which was my point. And now, while the monopoly is still technically in full force, it is full of holes.
It took a revolution to accomplish this. You may not like the term, but that's exactly why Open Source came about and became so strong. It was and is a soft revolution.
In the end, I don't think the government did anything that wouldn't have happened on its own anyway. And perhaps it would have pulled down MS faster if it wasn't involved to begin with. Perhaps, as you actually pointed out, the government actually made the problem worse by making the government want to use MS products for 5 years because they were free.
Horrible statement. The Government is supposed to protect the people from threats both foreign and domestic. See Standard Oil or AT&T punishments for illegal monopolization and see the impact it had on society and technology. It was a boom. What did we see with the lack of action against MS? The same thing we see with any revolution. A very slow change where people have given their lives to make things better for society (most not literally, but time is part of ones life).
A City of a State is subjective to the State. If they State law states that Drones are okay, then the City must allow them. The Cities are supposed to be represented in the State just as the States are subjective to the US Government.
I agree that people should vocally be opposing all drones at all levels. Power however has diminished the voice of the People to near mute in the last decade.
The Government can ignore this just like they ignore a sovereign States authority (See DIA raids in CA on marijuana shops and farms). In fairness, the town must abide by State law which may invalidate the City law.
Until more people wake up and shake off the cobwebs, the police state will continue to grow. I hope like hell we catch it in time, but looking at media and education I have strong doubts.
Dang, I hate simple English mistakes. "So you deny categorically that Conspiracies do not exist?" should be "So you categorically deny that conspiracies exist?".
So you deny categorically that Conspiracies do not exist? This is what you are claiming when you state that conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism.
Let me shed a bit of light on the truth for you. Conspiracies do exist, and are more wide spread than you probably want to acknowledge. You may not be from the US so this may not be relevant to your life but I'm sure that you have similar events in your Government. One word search "COINTELPRO".
This paper is about the thought processes, not about the actual truth. Actually there are no guarantees that you can not arrive to a right conclusion using flawed reasoning (however, I don't recall conspiracy theory nutjobs speculating about the LIBOR fixing).
You have a whole lot of fallacy in a very short post. You assume "flawed" reasoning when there is often very good reasoning behind conspiracy theories. Because you don't understand the logic being used does not mean it's flawed, it means that you don't understand the logic. Critical thinking is not openly taught in the US very often. Most people are taught to trust authorities and told that they are smart when they do (an appeal to emotion fallacy which works on a large percentage of people).
You may also wish to investigate why you associate people investigating conspiracies with nutjobs. Ad hominem is also a logical fallacy which invalidates your statement. Because you don't recall someone publicly investigating LIBOR fixing does not mean that nobody was. Obviously someone was investigating or you would still not know about it. Do you think it was a rogue police force that just said "fuck it, we should find something to do and investigate"? I think the more likely answer is that they were tipped off by.. OMG, a "Conspiracy Theorist" and given enough information to begin a proper investigation.
There was no insincerity in my post. If part was proven a conspiracy you should not automatically discount a larger global conspiracy. We don't know the full scale and should not assume to know. Many conspiracies that have been proven, only prove parts. Those parts obviously show trends to much larger things. Sometimes, but not often the full scale is opened but we are talking decades after the fact.
The definition of a conspiracy includes the term "secret" intentionally. I'm not being a smart-ass, I'm pointing out fact. If the nature is secret what you see revealed is probably not the "whole" secret. If some of the conspiracies have parts validated only a fool discounts the whole.
People that don't understand that last statement may wish to investigate brain washing. Brain washing is commonly accomplished with mass media.
Your MS example is perfect. Look at the damage done to the entire IT industry by their monopolization.
Since I'm sure some shills will cry foul or claim slippery slope lets look at a few facts.
Word processors prior to MS abusing their monopoly to give away MS word: Prices were roughly 60.00US for WordPerfect, WordPro, and MS Word. A year after their monopoly diminished WordPerfect to ruin MS word prices doubled and everyone who had Word was forced to pay up.
Excel received the same treatment. Excel prices tripled when there was no competing products.
Various vendors of DOS sold for $30.00, including IBM PC-Dos, DR DOS, etc.. When Win95 came out there was no competition. Win95 retailed for 209.95.
Compare those things to Games which have had a healthy market. There has been no price doubling or tripling ever. Games have done what the market would expect, and had a steady rise over time. A good game in 1995 would retail for 40.00, and today would run 60-70. Average games have not changed at all in price.
Your facts are also wrong with MS and why there was no impact after being found guilty. It has been well publicized that they lobbied to ensure there was no punishment. In fact much of the punishment they received entrenched their monopoly further, like "supply US Government offices with MS products for 5 years with no cost.". Of course when 5 years is up, they have to buy the products to continue programs and read documents they created on a closed proprietary standard.
In addition to what "hedwards" pointed out you also are ignoring what the original intent and purpose of the Patent, Copyright, and Trademark system was. It was not primarily to prevent a great invention from being poached. It was a mechanism to ensure that inventions were not hoarded, and to prevent monopolization.
Actually do the work! Go read "The Wealth of Nations", not the summary someone want's you to see. There are other books as well, but why not start at the source?
While I agree that the person you responded too exaggerated, holly $%^& you should really borrow a dictionary before you post. Your second paragraph is completely contrary to fact.
to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement (accused of conspiring to overthrow the government).
Wrong, it's not one or the other since sometimes there are very real conspiracies. Read a few history books, and see how much of history is entrenched with conspiracies.
Are some conspiracies far fetched? Sure, I'll give you that one. At the same time, many are found to be real conspiracies. Such as Fast and Furious or COINTELPRO.
Do you think you are any different than the people yelling "Our government would never collaborate to discredit MLK and other leaders promoting equality." as people investigated COINTELPRO? Not a chance in hell, but I'm sure you think you are special. If it was not investigated, would you know about it today? Nope, the documents are still mostly classified "TOP SECRET" illegally.
There is no parsimony involved in the majority of conspiracy theories.
There were not a lot of people shouting in the desert that "LIBOR are fixing interest rates for their own gain!", nor a lot of people saying "Nixon is using illegal means to keep track of his political opponents. Guaranteed!". Conspiracy theorists tend to miss the real conspiracies, it seems.
Conspiracy theorists were telling people it was happening long before the proof came out in public view. You can go read materials that people had, and see old videos where things were being hinted at by politicians, media people (generally independent), and scholars.
I think the first thing to be brought out into the open is that conspiracies do happen. There is, and has been, an ongoing campaign to associate "conspiracy" with insanity. The media does it all the time, labeling people and cutting clips to make people look crazy where they have valid concerns regarding a conspiracy. Long ago, the media actually had investigative journalists that worked with "conspiracy theorists" to dig out the truth. Like Watergate, LIBOR, REX84, Operation mocking bird, COINTELPRO, etc.. etc... (Yes, this could be an exhaustive list of "known" and "proven" conspiracies).
About 10 years ago, most major news agencies canned every investigative journalist on the payroll. Now all your news comes from the AP and it's well scripted to be entertainment and not news. Fox even won a supreme court ruling that stated their "News" is not news. It is entertainment. They don't have to tell you the truth, and can put anything they want on their "News" programs.
A reality is that our Government has become so large and entrenched with bribery (sorry folks, campaign donations and "gifts" to politicians is bribery) that we can't possibly investigate or know every possible conspiracy. Very few investigative journalists exist when we compare today to 40 years ago (think percentages, not raw numbers. 1 in 10,000 is a much lower percentage than 2 in 100,000). Since media has been monopolized in the US, I believe it's valid to investigate a conspiracy to hide the truth from people.
Conspiracy theorists are not a bad thing. They play an important role in exposing wrong doing. The most popular conspiracy theorists may not be yelling "LIBOR" any more, they are on to other conspiracies. "LIBOR" has been exposed, so they did what they set out to do. What you see portrayed in media is not often the full story, but a cut and edited version to sway emotion and hide truths. The media often ignores known conspiracies to further their own agenda(see note below). Most Americans don't know anything about Fast and Furious because the media ignored the stories. Most American's don't know that Obama's attorneys have appealed the courts ruling twice trying to support indefinite detention of Americans without trial which was buried in the NDAA. They may find it important if they knew, but instead they are inundated with Sports and Celebrities which works to divert attention from real "News".
Note on my use of "agenda" above. The agenda is not intentionally well defined. This could range from "revenue" to a "conspiracy". You can do the research and come to your own conclusions.
I believe the more relevant piece of Napster versus the rest of the Internet is that there was no way to control anything on Napster where the DCMA allowed for some level of control on the Internet.
If you host a Warez site and receive a take down notice, you can ignore it and be prosecuted or remove the material. Yeah yeah, they have to hunt you down and all that.. but it happen(s/ed). Napster's biggest problem was that it was not possible to control what got shared.
A couple of questions since I have never used the software. Do they honor DCMA requests and remove copyrighted materials when the owner makes the request? Do they have a mechanism for bypassing or removing copyright protection?
The first question is how the Internet generally works. If there is no way of honoring a copyright owners request, the dilemma should be obvious.
The second question requires a look at how e-books are distributed and some logic. The common platforms of Kindle and Nook, and software like Google and Apple's book software, have built in mechanisms for protecting owners materials. The fact that these can be broken does not imply that it should be broken or is intended to not function. If this software author used the same specifications agreed too by copyright owners, then there are no issues. People are breaking the copyrights on their own.
If the software ignores the copyright headers, there is a different and obvious legal issue.
I'm not against you breaking in to your device and making back up copies for your use. I am however against you breaking in to your device and giving away someone's work. The first thing mentioned is the most common argument against protection on media. I would agree to the statement that "what we currently have does not facilitate common sense when dealing with the people that purchase products". The second thing mentioned is not even close to the same thing as the first.
As an example, I recently purchased a book for my iPhone which I have in hard copy in my library. The book is good enough to have in both locations, so in my opinion the author deserves the income. If it was a crap book, I'd probably not want both copies. I believe that many people look at all copyrighted materials as the.99c songs. What we should consider more is the larger money items like books, and how that impacts an author's livelihood.
With copyrights under the DCMA there are no strict liability issues. A site must honor a take down notice under the law, at least in the USA. Most other countries comply with US law or have similar laws of their own (Often coerced by the US.). This means that a one time sharer is not punished unless they ignore the notices. The multiple strike policy similarly effects people that repeatedly share copyrighted materials, not one time offenders.
Trust me, I don't mean to imply the system we have is perfect, or even good. I also don't mean to imply that the RIAA, MPAA,and politicians don't want strict liability. I'm just pointing out that there is no strict liability with data sharing presently.
What you point out is not the same thing I was mentioning. The Occam's razor I was pointing out is that the legality and law related to data sharing is often questioned by the public. Many people don't see the laws as justified and/or moral laws, therefor the laws are often loudly ignored.
What you point out is possibly a second blade on the razor. Multiple edges are common when discussing parsimony. I don't claim to know the authors intent with the software. I understand plausible deniability enough to question public statements if they are given.
The legal definition falls to mans rea in my opinion. If I upgraded a pirate ship to make them faster than the King's ships, my intent was aiding. Similar to piracy today, many people justify it morally. Yes, I can get paid to upgrade ships. If I can upgrade a pirate's ship and make them more effective, well from one serf to another guess which I choose? My intent is clear however, I'm not doing it to just be a great engineer and make shipping better.
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The person you responded to was correct. People like you claim that evolution it's proven, but it's not proven. We have some great ideas, we have some models that kind of work given enough bogus data to tweak them. Your analogy was simply wrong since we don't know very much about gravity either. We know it's there, we can see it's action. We have some rough measurements that tend not to work on scale, but we have some data.
Creation vs. Evolution is not as nice of a boolean issue as you want it to be. This is because Theology works on the theory of a creator, where you have a theory that there is no creator. Both are theories, and neither can prove the other wrong.
What I find interesting is that most atheists are just like religious extremists. Their belief is right and no amount of facts will change their mind. Their way should be the only way taught to people. A primary difference is that atheists use science theory as their bible, but what ever fad theory is hot today is the bible. Atheists name call anyone that does not believe as they do just like the religious people, and use ad hominem attacks instead of facts to back their theory. Just like devout religious people, atheists use every rhetorical fallacy possible to justify their beliefs. Perhaps in a way atheists may be worse than religious people because most religious people will admits to having a belief, where an atheist will claim that their belief is factual.
With that out of the way, and to the meat of the article, I don't disagree with teaching evolution. If the education is structured so that we don't claim "why" it happens, and we teach that it's a "theory" everyone should be happy. The obvious problem is that everyone wants to teach the "why", and of course their belief is the only way we can operate. A secondary problem is that many atheists want to treat evolution as fact, when very little of the theory has actually been proven.
You should have qualified the question better. Did you intend to ask "Do most US programmers understand English?".
If that was your question, I would say "to some degree" but with the large number of immigrants and visa holders working in the US there would be a percentage that does not.
When you leave the US, it should make little difference. RFCs, APIs, Specs, Docs, etc.. are all translated to the native language. Larger companies spend healthy sums of money to make their products available in other languages. How do you sell a Chinese company software that only works with an English keyboard? Well, you probably don't.
In poorer countries, I'm sure you would have them using more native English products due to cost. It's easier for let's say Kenya to use English Linux and have to read English to be able to perform well with the software. Kenya was not a literal example, I don't know much about Kenya. Just a convenient country name commonly associated with being a poorer country.
Oh come now, either you are a government shill or ignorant (perhaps intentionally, but I have my doubts). Have you read the Patriot Act? Have you read the 2011 NDAA? Do you understand the purpose of the TSA? Why is TSA patrolling sporting events, train stations, and concerts in Detroit? All of those can be validated with Google. Have you read and understood the intent and purpose of the new NSA center opening this summer?
A police state is a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the population.
Do you understand how escalation works? Do you know that by definition we are already in a Police State?
Currently you are put on watch lists by exercising your first amendment rights, which is repression. Government agencies have colluded with large businesses and media to slander and libel people exercising their first amendment rights which is very obvious repression.
What you could say is that most people are not jailed for speaking out. There are reports that people active in OWS were arrested (and not the druggies the police were getting high either) for speaking out.
Everything I mentioned has information available on Google, nothing is hidden but you have to go look. Fox and CNN sure won't tell you about them.
I actually did not rant here. A rant is much more than a single statement. But if you are asking to get involved why not try actually talking to people and teaching them some things. I lecture regularly on Philosophy and Rhetoric, focusing mainly on the Socratic method and Plato's republic.. I also write, vote, petition, email, and study. Political science requires lots of that you know, as does current events for talking points.
Not everyone sits and does nothing, but not everyone is on the street yelling either. I "try" to wake up 1 new person a day. It does not always work, but I do try. When I wake someone, I spend more time with them and ask them to wake up 1 person a day.
And you are awake and making false accusation, or sleeping and making false accusations? I'm going to guess the later. Socrates warned us in The Allegory of the Cave that there are people like you. Happy to stay in their chains and yell at the people trying to show them how to get out. Grats on being an enthusiastic slave!
Go read something AC, like US History. The Republic was founded as a Union of States. States are only bound to the US Government by Constitutional Law (The laws that make up the Constitution and Bill of Rights). That is the function of the Constitution. It is up to States to write and enforce Laws that are not in the Constitution. The US Government is not entitled Police forces inside of a State under the Constitution. This was done by EO illegally and is still allowed, primarily because people like you are ignorant. We excuse the CIA and FBI because there is some validity to them, however there should have been amendments to the Constitution defining their purpose and scope.
The TSA, DHS, ATF, DEA are all created by EO and are illegal under the Constitution. If your ignorance makes you ignore them.. well I can't help you being ignorant. There is a long standing quote of particular importance. "Those that fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it." The US is not magically immune to tyranny. The Germans never thought Hitler would be a problem and look how that turned out for them. (Historical evidence as to how easy it is to dupe the public and vote yourself into tyranny.)
There is absolutely nothing irrational with concerns about tyranny. Go read a history book and realize that the fear is very rational. Hell, go read Plato's Republic and see that fear nor tyranny are new.
Let me clue you in:
Study Hegalian dialectic. Create dialogue -> Present dilemma -> Provide solution. This method has been effective in stripping you of your constitutional rights. It has also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the last century alone. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and the US Government have all used this method. If you have doubts about the US Government, Fast and Furious has been well documented for the public to see. If you prove one, there are probably a lot more hiding in the bushes.
Labels are attempts to avoid dialogue on subjects based on how they are labelled. I'm not saying you are attempting to avoid the subject, but rather pointing out that you did not have any impact, positive or negative, on my statements throwing out labels. If you are not educated enough to realize what you did, shame on you for being ignorant. If you are educated enough to realize what you did, shame on you for avoiding dialogue and jumping on a fallacy wagon.
As for punishment, you are actually pointing out what I pointed out. Microsoft got no punishment. It didn't matter *how* they got no punishment, but they got to continue being a monopoly, which was my point. And now, while the monopoly is still technically in full force, it is full of holes.
It took a revolution to accomplish this. You may not like the term, but that's exactly why Open Source came about and became so strong. It was and is a soft revolution.
In the end, I don't think the government did anything that wouldn't have happened on its own anyway. And perhaps it would have pulled down MS faster if it wasn't involved to begin with. Perhaps, as you actually pointed out, the government actually made the problem worse by making the government want to use MS products for 5 years because they were free.
Horrible statement. The Government is supposed to protect the people from threats both foreign and domestic. See Standard Oil or AT&T punishments for illegal monopolization and see the impact it had on society and technology. It was a boom. What did we see with the lack of action against MS? The same thing we see with any revolution. A very slow change where people have given their lives to make things better for society (most not literally, but time is part of ones life).
A City of a State is subjective to the State. If they State law states that Drones are okay, then the City must allow them. The Cities are supposed to be represented in the State just as the States are subjective to the US Government.
I agree that people should vocally be opposing all drones at all levels. Power however has diminished the voice of the People to near mute in the last decade.
The Government can ignore this just like they ignore a sovereign States authority (See DIA raids in CA on marijuana shops and farms). In fairness, the town must abide by State law which may invalidate the City law.
Until more people wake up and shake off the cobwebs, the police state will continue to grow. I hope like hell we catch it in time, but looking at media and education I have strong doubts.
Dang, I hate simple English mistakes. "So you deny categorically that Conspiracies do not exist?" should be "So you categorically deny that conspiracies exist?".
So you deny categorically that Conspiracies do not exist? This is what you are claiming when you state that conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism.
Let me shed a bit of light on the truth for you. Conspiracies do exist, and are more wide spread than you probably want to acknowledge. You may not be from the US so this may not be relevant to your life but I'm sure that you have similar events in your Government. One word search "COINTELPRO".
This paper is about the thought processes, not about the actual truth. Actually there are no guarantees that you can not arrive to a right conclusion using flawed reasoning (however, I don't recall conspiracy theory nutjobs speculating about the LIBOR fixing).
You have a whole lot of fallacy in a very short post. You assume "flawed" reasoning when there is often very good reasoning behind conspiracy theories. Because you don't understand the logic being used does not mean it's flawed, it means that you don't understand the logic. Critical thinking is not openly taught in the US very often. Most people are taught to trust authorities and told that they are smart when they do (an appeal to emotion fallacy which works on a large percentage of people).
You may also wish to investigate why you associate people investigating conspiracies with nutjobs. Ad hominem is also a logical fallacy which invalidates your statement. Because you don't recall someone publicly investigating LIBOR fixing does not mean that nobody was. Obviously someone was investigating or you would still not know about it. Do you think it was a rogue police force that just said "fuck it, we should find something to do and investigate"? I think the more likely answer is that they were tipped off by.. OMG, a "Conspiracy Theorist" and given enough information to begin a proper investigation.
There was no insincerity in my post. If part was proven a conspiracy you should not automatically discount a larger global conspiracy. We don't know the full scale and should not assume to know. Many conspiracies that have been proven, only prove parts. Those parts obviously show trends to much larger things. Sometimes, but not often the full scale is opened but we are talking decades after the fact.
The definition of a conspiracy includes the term "secret" intentionally. I'm not being a smart-ass, I'm pointing out fact. If the nature is secret what you see revealed is probably not the "whole" secret. If some of the conspiracies have parts validated only a fool discounts the whole.
People that don't understand that last statement may wish to investigate brain washing. Brain washing is commonly accomplished with mass media.
Your MS example is perfect. Look at the damage done to the entire IT industry by their monopolization.
Since I'm sure some shills will cry foul or claim slippery slope lets look at a few facts.
Word processors prior to MS abusing their monopoly to give away MS word: Prices were roughly 60.00US for WordPerfect, WordPro, and MS Word. A year after their monopoly diminished WordPerfect to ruin MS word prices doubled and everyone who had Word was forced to pay up.
Excel received the same treatment. Excel prices tripled when there was no competing products.
Various vendors of DOS sold for $30.00, including IBM PC-Dos, DR DOS, etc.. When Win95 came out there was no competition. Win95 retailed for 209.95.
Compare those things to Games which have had a healthy market. There has been no price doubling or tripling ever. Games have done what the market would expect, and had a steady rise over time. A good game in 1995 would retail for 40.00, and today would run 60-70. Average games have not changed at all in price.
Your facts are also wrong with MS and why there was no impact after being found guilty. It has been well publicized that they lobbied to ensure there was no punishment. In fact much of the punishment they received entrenched their monopoly further, like "supply US Government offices with MS products for 5 years with no cost.". Of course when 5 years is up, they have to buy the products to continue programs and read documents they created on a closed proprietary standard.
In addition to what "hedwards" pointed out you also are ignoring what the original intent and purpose of the Patent, Copyright, and Trademark system was. It was not primarily to prevent a great invention from being poached. It was a mechanism to ensure that inventions were not hoarded, and to prevent monopolization.
Actually do the work! Go read "The Wealth of Nations", not the summary someone want's you to see. There are other books as well, but why not start at the source?
While I agree that the person you responded too exaggerated, holly $%^& you should really borrow a dictionary before you post. Your second paragraph is completely contrary to fact.
to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement (accused of conspiring to overthrow the government).
LIBOR was exactly a conspiracy.
Wrong, it's not one or the other since sometimes there are very real conspiracies. Read a few history books, and see how much of history is entrenched with conspiracies.
Are some conspiracies far fetched? Sure, I'll give you that one. At the same time, many are found to be real conspiracies. Such as Fast and Furious or COINTELPRO.
Do you think you are any different than the people yelling "Our government would never collaborate to discredit MLK and other leaders promoting equality." as people investigated COINTELPRO? Not a chance in hell, but I'm sure you think you are special. If it was not investigated, would you know about it today? Nope, the documents are still mostly classified "TOP SECRET" illegally.
There is no parsimony involved in the majority of conspiracy theories.
There were not a lot of people shouting in the desert that "LIBOR are fixing interest rates for their own gain!", nor a lot of people saying "Nixon is using illegal means to keep track of his political opponents. Guaranteed!". Conspiracy theorists tend to miss the real conspiracies, it seems.
Conspiracy theorists were telling people it was happening long before the proof came out in public view. You can go read materials that people had, and see old videos where things were being hinted at by politicians, media people (generally independent), and scholars.
I think the first thing to be brought out into the open is that conspiracies do happen. There is, and has been, an ongoing campaign to associate "conspiracy" with insanity. The media does it all the time, labeling people and cutting clips to make people look crazy where they have valid concerns regarding a conspiracy. Long ago, the media actually had investigative journalists that worked with "conspiracy theorists" to dig out the truth. Like Watergate, LIBOR, REX84, Operation mocking bird, COINTELPRO, etc.. etc... (Yes, this could be an exhaustive list of "known" and "proven" conspiracies).
About 10 years ago, most major news agencies canned every investigative journalist on the payroll. Now all your news comes from the AP and it's well scripted to be entertainment and not news. Fox even won a supreme court ruling that stated their "News" is not news. It is entertainment. They don't have to tell you the truth, and can put anything they want on their "News" programs.
A reality is that our Government has become so large and entrenched with bribery (sorry folks, campaign donations and "gifts" to politicians is bribery) that we can't possibly investigate or know every possible conspiracy. Very few investigative journalists exist when we compare today to 40 years ago (think percentages, not raw numbers. 1 in 10,000 is a much lower percentage than 2 in 100,000). Since media has been monopolized in the US, I believe it's valid to investigate a conspiracy to hide the truth from people.
Conspiracy theorists are not a bad thing. They play an important role in exposing wrong doing. The most popular conspiracy theorists may not be yelling "LIBOR" any more, they are on to other conspiracies. "LIBOR" has been exposed, so they did what they set out to do. What you see portrayed in media is not often the full story, but a cut and edited version to sway emotion and hide truths. The media often ignores known conspiracies to further their own agenda(see note below). Most Americans don't know anything about Fast and Furious because the media ignored the stories. Most American's don't know that Obama's attorneys have appealed the courts ruling twice trying to support indefinite detention of Americans without trial which was buried in the NDAA. They may find it important if they knew, but instead they are inundated with Sports and Celebrities which works to divert attention from real "News".
Note on my use of "agenda" above. The agenda is not intentionally well defined. This could range from "revenue" to a "conspiracy". You can do the research and come to your own conclusions.
I believe the more relevant piece of Napster versus the rest of the Internet is that there was no way to control anything on Napster where the DCMA allowed for some level of control on the Internet.
If you host a Warez site and receive a take down notice, you can ignore it and be prosecuted or remove the material. Yeah yeah, they have to hunt you down and all that.. but it happen(s/ed). Napster's biggest problem was that it was not possible to control what got shared.
A couple of questions since I have never used the software. Do they honor DCMA requests and remove copyrighted materials when the owner makes the request? Do they have a mechanism for bypassing or removing copyright protection?
The first question is how the Internet generally works. If there is no way of honoring a copyright owners request, the dilemma should be obvious.
The second question requires a look at how e-books are distributed and some logic. The common platforms of Kindle and Nook, and software like Google and Apple's book software, have built in mechanisms for protecting owners materials. The fact that these can be broken does not imply that it should be broken or is intended to not function. If this software author used the same specifications agreed too by copyright owners, then there are no issues. People are breaking the copyrights on their own.
If the software ignores the copyright headers, there is a different and obvious legal issue.
I'm not against you breaking in to your device and making back up copies for your use. I am however against you breaking in to your device and giving away someone's work. The first thing mentioned is the most common argument against protection on media. I would agree to the statement that "what we currently have does not facilitate common sense when dealing with the people that purchase products". The second thing mentioned is not even close to the same thing as the first.
As an example, I recently purchased a book for my iPhone which I have in hard copy in my library. The book is good enough to have in both locations, so in my opinion the author deserves the income. If it was a crap book, I'd probably not want both copies. I believe that many people look at all copyrighted materials as the .99c songs. What we should consider more is the larger money items like books, and how that impacts an author's livelihood.
With copyrights under the DCMA there are no strict liability issues. A site must honor a take down notice under the law, at least in the USA. Most other countries comply with US law or have similar laws of their own (Often coerced by the US.). This means that a one time sharer is not punished unless they ignore the notices. The multiple strike policy similarly effects people that repeatedly share copyrighted materials, not one time offenders.
Trust me, I don't mean to imply the system we have is perfect, or even good. I also don't mean to imply that the RIAA, MPAA,and politicians don't want strict liability. I'm just pointing out that there is no strict liability with data sharing presently.
What you point out is not the same thing I was mentioning. The Occam's razor I was pointing out is that the legality and law related to data sharing is often questioned by the public. Many people don't see the laws as justified and/or moral laws, therefor the laws are often loudly ignored.
What you point out is possibly a second blade on the razor. Multiple edges are common when discussing parsimony. I don't claim to know the authors intent with the software. I understand plausible deniability enough to question public statements if they are given.
Correction: The term in the first sentence should be "mens rea". Gah...
The legal definition falls to mans rea in my opinion. If I upgraded a pirate ship to make them faster than the King's ships, my intent was aiding. Similar to piracy today, many people justify it morally. Yes, I can get paid to upgrade ships. If I can upgrade a pirate's ship and make them more effective, well from one serf to another guess which I choose? My intent is clear however, I'm not doing it to just be a great engineer and make shipping better.