What I find in *most* of these sorts of pieces is that they are either cynically or subconsciously pushing for the winozification of Linux. He makes some good points along with the bad.
(1) Package Management This is a good point if the debian people and redhat people could work toward a solution, it could be fixed as both systems have a great deal in common.
(2) Configuration Files Bzzzt. Wrong. The foolish part of this subject is that while the Windows registry provides a standardized access to the data store, it only defines types and not what they are supposed to be. Lunux configuration files under/etc are, IHO, better and can be backed up and diff-ed.
(3) Kernel Application Binary Interfaces I would like to see a stabilized and standardized device interface API for standard devices, something exposing a limited subset of the kernel that would simplify simple devices like block, serial, and network types of devices.
(4)Native File Versioning Bzzt. Its called automatic backup people. This is a relatively new feature in Macs and barely working in Windows. Would be nice, but can't characterize it as something that's broken.
(5)Audio Application Programming Interfaces This I 100% agree with. Choice is nice, but the geometric product of "choice" in system services means that rich multimedia applications are much harder to develop.
(6)Graphical User Interface He sort of has a point about this and it has often been a problem.
(7)Integration Of X11 With Apps Bzzt Wrong. X11 is a HUGELY powerful system and if you encounter a bug that crashes your session, that's a bug. Fortunately I haven't seen one of these in about 6 years.
(8)Commercially Hosted Backup And Restore Bzzt Wrong. This is not "Linux" being broken, it is 3rd party vendors being stupid.
I have no degree and am finding it increasingly difficult to get a job. I'm 45 years old and have been writing computer programs since 1974. I've designed embedded computer systems, and contracted for AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others.
I had "computer science" in high school. My teacher was an old navy computer scientist from the early weather research. I learned the fundamentals from a hard core scientist before "computer science" was its own persuit.
Todays market is tough, if you have the option, get a degree.
How about the vendors learn to code and stop writing shitty drivers!
How about creating a platform that is well documented and designed, so that drivers written for it don't change drastically from revision to revision and have brain dead restrictions!
For all of Microsoft's propaganda about APIs being stable, display and the changing direct access systems WinG, DirectWhatever, the API is a crap shoot.
I can't blame a single vendor for poor support on Windows because it is a horrible and expensive system to support.
It doesn't matter whether it was staged or not, it only matters that it contained code words relevant to what we now know was an active intelligence operation at that time it was taken.
Of course the words are relevant to what we know, we know the information we are allowed to know. This picture is no different.
You are working on the assumption that what you see is an authentic photo of someone actually working.
If you have any professional experience at all, you'd know that pictures are NEVER taken of actual work. The photos are always staged to look good.
Be it a technician posing in front of the product with tools, an engineer posing in front of an oscilloscope with an interesting wave form displayed, another engineer in front of a very neat and orderly (but complex looking) white-board, and so on. Every company in which I've worked, the arrival of a photographer is carefully orchestrated.
All pictures have a perspective and something that the photographer's employer wishes to convey. It is very likely that the picture is a standard professional photo that shows "what it looks like" without showing actual work. The words chosen carefully to spark interest in the subject by those who view it. Like now.
That's just this issue, isn't it? I mean, seriously, all the great theoretical work on sorting algorithms is done. No one is going to come along and give us an order of magnitude better performance in a general purpose algorithm. It just isn't going to happen.
So, it *is* a simple problem for which there are ample tools from which to choose. The challenge is not the *sort* but the scale. This too is pretty pedestrian as well. The cluster "divide and conquer" approach is not new, there are many tools from which to choose, or you could write your own. You are still taking the performance of the sort algorithm and spreading it across 4000 machines.
6 hours doesn't sound astonishing in any way.
It reminds me of an EMC press release a number of years ago where they touted their engineering prowess at doubling their RAID storage capacity. Whoo Hoo! BFD, they started buying a newer Seagate SCSI disk with twice the capacity of the previous model. Did that deserve any credit at all?
This sorting thing doesn't sound astounding, it could very well be (and probably is) something pretty pedestrian on 4000 of the latest and greatest machines with quad CPUs, 10,000 RPM disks, and a gigabit switch backplane.
I'd say the government is committing the fraud by convincing people that some piece of paper has value beyond that of the paper and ink itself.
Oh please "currency" is the basis of society. Do you want a barter system? It's pretty hard to carry around live chickens and cows when you want to pay your electric bill.
Wouldn't surprise me if the WalMart starts refusing US Currency and takes only gold soon.
You are arguing apples and oranges. "Money" is not a copy of a song. Money, in and of itself, represents a value external to the physical bill you hold in your hand.
When one attempts to pass copied currency it is fraud because you are asserting it represents a value above and beyond the mere image you are passing. Further more, you are using the fraudulently projected value of the fake currency to convert value.
When people share copied music, there is no implied value. It doesn't require any deception. There is no conversion.
A more accurate analogy would be to sell your copies for cash, and no one is doing that.
So I guess we should just legalise printing counterfeit money, then?
The difference is that the product you create is basically just a picture. You can't use it outside the privacy of your own home, to use it, you have to go in public and defraud someone into accepting it as real cash.
Any business model that depends on preventing what people can do easily in the privacy of their own home is (1) impossible to maintain and (2) detrimental to freedom as it requires an oppressive legal infrastructure and a brutal enforcement mentality.
You do have to merge them all back together at the end...
Technically speaking, that's not true. In fact, you wouldn't want too.
Assuming some sort of search paradigm, you'd keep the records on their 4000 separate servers, each server doing its on search functionality, and *only* merge the results of the searches as needed and cache them in the web layer.
The tone of the parent post is one of those FUD pieces meant to sound reasonable but which use a broad bush to paint a bad picture while offering little or no substance.
Free as in no cost and makes no money, not free as in whatever meaning you choose to assign to it today. A bogus attempt cloud any rational discussion.
I can not think of a single free project that is 'better' to the majority of people than its commercial counterpart.
Without any sort of background how can you even make this claim. At best it is subjective.
Free/OSS Projects, IMHO, *ARE* better than commercial counterparts:
Linux (Kubuntu) vs Windows I use Linux every day. It is my desktop of choice and it is, given any rational metric, "better" then Windows. The 3rd party Windows applications that may not run on Linux don't affect me.
Apache+PHP vs IIS. Php has greater flexibility and extensibility.
PostgreSQL vs MSSQL. PostgreSQL has more features, better SQL support, better performance, is more extensible, and runs on more platforms,
OpenOffice vs MSOffice OpenOffice supports more features that I use, like PDF export.
I could go on, but at least I parameterize my arguments.
Free software tends to follow along the lines of what the developers want it to do, not what the majority of users want it to do.
yea, and Microsoft Dogs and "clippy" were exactly what users wanted.
At least when developers set out to solve a problem, it is a problem that needs to be solved.
Free software developers have very little incentive for the software to align with other users.
Again, restating a falsehood hoping to make it stick.
The current way companies are treating free software is a fad, it won't last for the exact reason you state, eventually people need to eat.
This is a re-phrase of the debunked "you can't make money with free software" Only a very small segment of software developed is directly acquired by the consumer. Most comes in the form of cell phones, embedded devices, etc.
not us geeks who run linux for the fun of it
LOL, I run Linux because I want my computer to work and be reliable, not because it is "fun." I work on my computer, I want my data safe. Fun has NOTHING to do with why I use Linux.
is well refined and works in a way they expect,
Hyperbole, and not even honest at that. Find me one, just one, Windows program that doesn't have a bug. That doesn't have some unexpected behavior.
I absolutely *hate* when applications stop working correctly in Windows for seemingly no reason, and then suddenly work again after a reboot. Even on Vista and XP!! There is no excuse for this.
I could go on and on with the post but it is propaganda at best.
Open Source / Free Software is an amazing resource. In some ways it may make some software business models obsolete, but these models were artificial in nature, selling a product that costs nothing to reproduce is not viable without a threatening legal environment to enforce it.
Before the BillG software model, there was providing service to actual customers. The vast majority of ISV shops never left.
The whole notion of a software "industry" is a new and novel idea whose time is more or less come and gone.
Speaking as a long-time software developer, I find it hard to believe that software has been considered a "product." It is so amorphous and ever changing, it is hard to say that a "purchase" has any durable value what so ever.
Prior to the "write it once and get rich" mentality that ISVs dream of was the software as a service mentality which is seeing a resurgence.
Also note, most software written does not run on personal computers, in runs in microwaves, embedded devices, phones, routers, TVs, etc. Only a few companies really make money selling "software." Most P.C. based "software" companies make money selling a service around their software.
For instance, "QuickBooks" is a software product and has a lot of competition, but it is the service that keeps it afloat. TurboTax is the same way, they work all year to have the next years revision ready.
The "write once" software industry has only existed for a short time and for a very fortunate limited few. For people like myself, who have been developing software since the late 70s/early 80s, I don't see any major problem because I don't really see any real effect on the vast majority of the market.
I agree with you that a lot of bad stuff started with Reagan.
As a 40-something, I voted against Reagan both times.
The sad part of it all seems to be the short sight and the short memory of America. You say something bad will happen in 20 years, they can't grasp it. You say what's happening now started 20 years ago, they call you a fool.
This whole fighting over copies of performances is only because of a temporary blip on the technological timescape. Harry Houdini saw it as a way to perform once and make money in perpetuity. This is the model that RIAA/MPIAA have. The problem with it is that it is built on the scarcity of resources with which to manufacture the recordings. However, when the recordings cost NOTHING to copy, the business model falls apart without draconian laws to prop it up.
Human beings have an innate sense of value. Most all people would never steal. The idea of depriving someone of something that is rightfully theirs is repugnant. It is arguable that it is a genetic trait that has allowed humans to survive. This, along with the charitable instinct, created beneficial society in the first place.
When you have to explain to good people why something is wrong, maybe it isn't so wrong.
The problem with the Netflix prize, and I myself am working on it:-) is that it is pretty darn near impossible to do better than what they have.
It is based on user ratings and how close you can come to actual user ratings. For instance, their record set has a frozen point in time, you job is to create a system that will accurately predict what another person will rate a movie in the future.
It doesn't take much psychology to understand that these are very subjective values. If you watch a movie on a "good" date, you'll rate it higher than if you watch the same movie with a "bad" date. Then there's the level of drunkenness under which you watch the movie. The day you had at work. How much money you lost in the stock market, etc.
In aggregate, you can come close, but the percentage of variability in the data suggests that Netflix chose their numbers well enough to never have to pay the prize.
Also, the "data" is nothing more than movie titles and obfuscated user ratings. Any sort of contextual or meta data about the movies you have to go find yourself.
It is a fun project on which to work, but I'm dubious of the end prize. I'll keep working on it because its fun, but I have my doubts as to the winability of the contest based on the criteria for success.
And what would you call a campaign of fear? I mean, other than terrorism, that is.
Go to Israel or Baghdad and live there for 6 months. Then tell me that companies that prosecute bit-torrent users are 'terrorists'.
That's like saying: "You think domestic violence is hurts people? Look at all the murders! That's violence!" Violence is violence and the degree doesn't matter.
RIAA and MPIAA use fear, the same as the terrorists, Sure, they don't use bombs, but they use the courts.
It would be crazy for me to come here to persuade.
I find that in this day and age, persuasion is impossible. Somehow, somewhere, the mind and the conscience of the U.S. populous has become inflexible and dedicated to dogma unreachable by rational argument.
I begun to realize this in the 80s under Reagan. I think that's where this It would be crazy for me to come here to persuade. all began. If you believed in Reagan, that's all you needed. Iran/Contra, not an issue -- it was treason damn it! Didn't matter. Taking the U.S. from the #1 creditor nation to the #1 debtor nation, didn't matter.
The notion that reality didn't matter and math didn't matter arose under Reagan.
Why was the economy so good under Reagan? Well, when you take a nation from a creditor nation to a debtor nation, there is lots of money that suddenly available, and we've been on a 25 year binge and the credit card bill is coming due.
What does this have to do with this conversation? Well, it is the mentality of it all. I honestly believe that the Reagan administration and the Reagan worship of the conservatives have enacted a corporate culture of greed and short sighted avarice that enables organizations like RIAA to exist.
Since WWII and Prior to Reagan, it would have been impossible for a U.S. corporation to abuse U.S. citizens in this fashion. The problem is that it wasn't just government to blame, the hypnotized Reagan dogmatists (republican and democrat alike) who believe trickle down economics and the almost theological truth of open market and the myth of self regulation, let it get this bad.
just say NO (and don't buy their stuff). There are enough good Indy production studios who are not so rabid. Let's encourage them, and ignore the RIAA/MPAA/IPFI extortion cartel.
That is, in fact, what is mostly happening, but the RIAA wants to squash the distribution methodologies that indies use in the name of their holy copyright crusade, which is just a terrorism campaign against the innocent.
Slashdot Mirror
What I find in *most* of these sorts of pieces is that they are either cynically or subconsciously pushing for the winozification of Linux. He makes some good points along with the bad.
(1) Package Management
This is a good point if the debian people and redhat people could work toward a solution, it could be fixed as both systems have a great deal in common.
(2) Configuration Files /etc are, IHO, better and can be backed up and diff-ed.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The foolish part of this subject is that while the Windows registry provides a standardized access to the data store, it only defines types and not what they are supposed to be. Lunux configuration files under
(3) Kernel Application Binary Interfaces
I would like to see a stabilized and standardized device interface API for standard devices, something exposing a limited subset of the kernel that would simplify simple devices like block, serial, and network types of devices.
(4)Native File Versioning
Bzzt. Its called automatic backup people. This is a relatively new feature in Macs and barely working in Windows. Would be nice, but can't characterize it as something that's broken.
(5)Audio Application Programming Interfaces
This I 100% agree with. Choice is nice, but the geometric product of "choice" in system services means that rich multimedia applications are much harder to develop.
(6)Graphical User Interface
He sort of has a point about this and it has often been a problem.
(7)Integration Of X11 With Apps
Bzzt Wrong. X11 is a HUGELY powerful system and if you encounter a bug that crashes your session, that's a bug. Fortunately I haven't seen one of these in about 6 years.
(8)Commercially Hosted Backup And Restore
Bzzt Wrong. This is not "Linux" being broken, it is 3rd party vendors being stupid.
I have no degree and am finding it increasingly difficult to get a job. I'm 45 years old and have been writing computer programs since 1974. I've designed embedded computer systems, and contracted for AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others.
I had "computer science" in high school. My teacher was an old navy computer scientist from the early weather research. I learned the fundamentals from a hard core scientist before "computer science" was its own persuit.
Todays market is tough, if you have the option, get a degree.
How about the vendors learn to code and stop writing shitty drivers!
How about creating a platform that is well documented and designed, so that drivers written for it don't change drastically from revision to revision and have brain dead restrictions!
For all of Microsoft's propaganda about APIs being stable, display and the changing direct access systems WinG, DirectWhatever, the API is a crap shoot.
I can't blame a single vendor for poor support on Windows because it is a horrible and expensive system to support.
It doesn't matter whether it was staged or not, it only matters that it contained code words relevant to what we now know was an active intelligence operation at that time it was taken.
Of course the words are relevant to what we know, we know the information we are allowed to know. This picture is no different.
You are working on the assumption that what you see is an authentic photo of someone actually working.
If you have any professional experience at all, you'd know that pictures are NEVER taken of actual work. The photos are always staged to look good.
Be it a technician posing in front of the product with tools, an engineer posing in front of an oscilloscope with an interesting wave form displayed, another engineer in front of a very neat and orderly (but complex looking) white-board, and so on. Every company in which I've worked, the arrival of a photographer is carefully orchestrated.
All pictures have a perspective and something that the photographer's employer wishes to convey. It is very likely that the picture is a standard professional photo that shows "what it looks like" without showing actual work. The words chosen carefully to spark interest in the subject by those who view it. Like now.
Visicalc? Lotus 123?
I say go for it. Incorporate with limited liability, and good luck!
you consistently oversimplifying
That's just this issue, isn't it? I mean, seriously, all the great theoretical work on sorting algorithms is done. No one is going to come along and give us an order of magnitude better performance in a general purpose algorithm. It just isn't going to happen.
So, it *is* a simple problem for which there are ample tools from which to choose. The challenge is not the *sort* but the scale. This too is pretty pedestrian as well. The cluster "divide and conquer" approach is not new, there are many tools from which to choose, or you could write your own. You are still taking the performance of the sort algorithm and spreading it across 4000 machines.
6 hours doesn't sound astonishing in any way.
It reminds me of an EMC press release a number of years ago where they touted their engineering prowess at doubling their RAID storage capacity. Whoo Hoo! BFD, they started buying a newer Seagate SCSI disk with twice the capacity of the previous model. Did that deserve any credit at all?
This sorting thing doesn't sound astounding, it could very well be (and probably is) something pretty pedestrian on 4000 of the latest and greatest machines with quad CPUs, 10,000 RPM disks, and a gigabit switch backplane.
I'd say the government is committing the fraud by convincing people that some piece of paper has value beyond that of the paper and ink itself.
Oh please "currency" is the basis of society. Do you want a barter system? It's pretty hard to carry around live chickens and cows when you want to pay your electric bill.
Wouldn't surprise me if the WalMart starts refusing US Currency and takes only gold soon.
You do know that this would be illegal, right?
How did someone see this as flamebait?
I have working on a lot of those systems. 30 years ago, if you couldn't recite the boot loader for the pdp 8/e you were just noob.
You are arguing apples and oranges. "Money" is not a copy of a song. Money, in and of itself, represents a value external to the physical bill you hold in your hand.
When one attempts to pass copied currency it is fraud because you are asserting it represents a value above and beyond the mere image you are passing. Further more, you are using the fraudulently projected value of the fake currency to convert value.
When people share copied music, there is no implied value. It doesn't require any deception. There is no conversion.
A more accurate analogy would be to sell your copies for cash, and no one is doing that.
So I guess we should just legalise printing counterfeit money, then?
The difference is that the product you create is basically just a picture. You can't use it outside the privacy of your own home, to use it, you have to go in public and defraud someone into accepting it as real cash.
Any business model that depends on preventing what people can do easily in the privacy of their own home is (1) impossible to maintain and (2) detrimental to freedom as it requires an oppressive legal infrastructure and a brutal enforcement mentality.
right, so it's 250gb sorted in 6 hours... now where does the sorting and integration of the 4000 250gb blocks of sorted data come in?
You wouldn't merge it in to one set, you'd keep it all on their own servers and only merge the results as needed.
You do have to merge them all back together at the end...
Technically speaking, that's not true. In fact, you wouldn't want too.
Assuming some sort of search paradigm, you'd keep the records on their 4000 separate servers, each server doing its on search functionality, and *only* merge the results of the searches as needed and cache them in the web layer.
10 trillion records across 4,000 computers comes to 2.5 billion records per computer.
It took 6 hours for a computer to sort 2.5 billion records? 250G?
Yawn.
The tone of the parent post is one of those FUD pieces meant to sound reasonable but which use a broad bush to paint a bad picture while offering little or no substance.
Free as in no cost and makes no money, not free as in whatever meaning you choose to assign to it today.
A bogus attempt cloud any rational discussion.
I can not think of a single free project that is 'better' to the majority of people than its commercial counterpart.
Without any sort of background how can you even make this claim. At best it is subjective.
Free/OSS Projects, IMHO, *ARE* better than commercial counterparts:
Linux (Kubuntu) vs Windows
I use Linux every day. It is my desktop of choice and it is, given any rational metric, "better" then Windows. The 3rd party Windows applications that may not run on Linux don't affect me.
Apache+PHP vs IIS.
Php has greater flexibility and extensibility.
PostgreSQL vs MSSQL.
PostgreSQL has more features, better SQL support, better performance, is more extensible, and runs on more platforms,
OpenOffice vs MSOffice
OpenOffice supports more features that I use, like PDF export.
I could go on, but at least I parameterize my arguments.
Free software tends to follow along the lines of what the developers want it to do, not what the majority of users want it to do.
yea, and Microsoft Dogs and "clippy" were exactly what users wanted.
At least when developers set out to solve a problem, it is a problem that needs to be solved.
Free software developers have very little incentive for the software to align with other users.
Again, restating a falsehood hoping to make it stick.
The current way companies are treating free software is a fad, it won't last for the exact reason you state, eventually people need to eat.
This is a re-phrase of the debunked "you can't make money with free software" Only a very small segment of software developed is directly acquired by the consumer. Most comes in the form of cell phones, embedded devices, etc.
not us geeks who run linux for the fun of it
LOL, I run Linux because I want my computer to work and be reliable, not because it is "fun." I work on my computer, I want my data safe. Fun has NOTHING to do with why I use Linux.
is well refined and works in a way they expect,
Hyperbole, and not even honest at that. Find me one, just one, Windows program that doesn't have a bug. That doesn't have some unexpected behavior.
I absolutely *hate* when applications stop working correctly in Windows for seemingly no reason, and then suddenly work again after a reboot. Even on Vista and XP!! There is no excuse for this.
I could go on and on with the post but it is propaganda at best.
Open Source / Free Software is an amazing resource. In some ways it may make some software business models obsolete, but these models were artificial in nature, selling a product that costs nothing to reproduce is not viable without a threatening legal environment to enforce it.
Before the BillG software model, there was providing service to actual customers. The vast majority of ISV shops never left.
One quadrillion bytes, or 1 million gigabytes.
How big are the fields being sorted. Is it an exchange sort or a reference sort?
It is probably very impressive, but without a LOT of details, it is hard to know.
The whole notion of a software "industry" is a new and novel idea whose time is more or less come and gone.
Speaking as a long-time software developer, I find it hard to believe that software has been considered a "product." It is so amorphous and ever changing, it is hard to say that a "purchase" has any durable value what so ever.
Prior to the "write it once and get rich" mentality that ISVs dream of was the software as a service mentality which is seeing a resurgence.
Also note, most software written does not run on personal computers, in runs in microwaves, embedded devices, phones, routers, TVs, etc. Only a few companies really make money selling "software." Most P.C. based "software" companies make money selling a service around their software.
For instance, "QuickBooks" is a software product and has a lot of competition, but it is the service that keeps it afloat. TurboTax is the same way, they work all year to have the next years revision ready.
The "write once" software industry has only existed for a short time and for a very fortunate limited few. For people like myself, who have been developing software since the late 70s/early 80s, I don't see any major problem because I don't really see any real effect on the vast majority of the market.
I agree with you that a lot of bad stuff started with Reagan.
As a 40-something, I voted against Reagan both times.
The sad part of it all seems to be the short sight and the short memory of America. You say something bad will happen in 20 years, they can't grasp it. You say what's happening now started 20 years ago, they call you a fool.
This whole fighting over copies of performances is only because of a temporary blip on the technological timescape. Harry Houdini saw it as a way to perform once and make money in perpetuity. This is the model that RIAA/MPIAA have. The problem with it is that it is built on the scarcity of resources with which to manufacture the recordings. However, when the recordings cost NOTHING to copy, the business model falls apart without draconian laws to prop it up.
Human beings have an innate sense of value. Most all people would never steal. The idea of depriving someone of something that is rightfully theirs is repugnant. It is arguable that it is a genetic trait that has allowed humans to survive. This, along with the charitable instinct, created beneficial society in the first place.
When you have to explain to good people why something is wrong, maybe it isn't so wrong.
The problem with the Netflix prize, and I myself am working on it :-) is that it is pretty darn near impossible to do better than what they have.
It is based on user ratings and how close you can come to actual user ratings. For instance, their record set has a frozen point in time, you job is to create a system that will accurately predict what another person will rate a movie in the future.
It doesn't take much psychology to understand that these are very subjective values. If you watch a movie on a "good" date, you'll rate it higher than if you watch the same movie with a "bad" date. Then there's the level of drunkenness under which you watch the movie. The day you had at work. How much money you lost in the stock market, etc.
In aggregate, you can come close, but the percentage of variability in the data suggests that Netflix chose their numbers well enough to never have to pay the prize.
Also, the "data" is nothing more than movie titles and obfuscated user ratings. Any sort of contextual or meta data about the movies you have to go find yourself.
It is a fun project on which to work, but I'm dubious of the end prize. I'll keep working on it because its fun, but I have my doubts as to the winability of the contest based on the criteria for success.
you think the RIAA are 'terrorists'?
And what would you call a campaign of fear? I mean, other than terrorism, that is.
Go to Israel or Baghdad and live there for 6 months. Then tell me that companies that prosecute bit-torrent users are 'terrorists'.
That's like saying: "You think domestic violence is hurts people? Look at all the murders! That's violence!" Violence is violence and the degree doesn't matter.
RIAA and MPIAA use fear, the same as the terrorists, Sure, they don't use bombs, but they use the courts.
It would be crazy for me to come here to persuade.
I find that in this day and age, persuasion is impossible. Somehow, somewhere, the mind and the conscience of the U.S. populous has become inflexible and dedicated to dogma unreachable by rational argument.
I begun to realize this in the 80s under Reagan. I think that's where this It would be crazy for me to come here to persuade. all began. If you believed in Reagan, that's all you needed. Iran/Contra, not an issue -- it was treason damn it! Didn't matter. Taking the U.S. from the #1 creditor nation to the #1 debtor nation, didn't matter.
The notion that reality didn't matter and math didn't matter arose under Reagan.
Why was the economy so good under Reagan? Well, when you take a nation from a creditor nation to a debtor nation, there is lots of money that suddenly available, and we've been on a 25 year binge and the credit card bill is coming due.
What does this have to do with this conversation? Well, it is the mentality of it all. I honestly believe that the Reagan administration and the Reagan worship of the conservatives have enacted a corporate culture of greed and short sighted avarice that enables organizations like RIAA to exist.
Since WWII and Prior to Reagan, it would have been impossible for a U.S. corporation to abuse U.S. citizens in this fashion. The problem is that it wasn't just government to blame, the hypnotized Reagan dogmatists (republican and democrat alike) who believe trickle down economics and the almost theological truth of open market and the myth of self regulation, let it get this bad.
It doesn't work because you're using slashdot as the soapbox,
Good point, and I don't see any problem with that.
compared to say NYCL to whom slashdot is but part of his soapbox.
Make no mistake, I respect *anyone* who stands up to powerful and unconscionable corporations.
Besides, everyone knows that you can't just skip to step #4
Step #4 is a destructive last resort which is why I stop short of calling for it.
just say NO (and don't buy their stuff). There are enough good Indy production studios who are not so rabid. Let's encourage them, and ignore the RIAA/MPAA/IPFI extortion cartel.
That is, in fact, what is mostly happening, but the RIAA wants to squash the distribution methodologies that indies use in the name of their holy copyright crusade, which is just a terrorism campaign against the innocent.