I don't like products that exercise prior restraint, given the expectation that I will steal a product if given the chance. I'd rather live in a world where the honor system works. A world where dvds without drm can be rented and people voluntarily respect the desires of the content producers. Let's win people's hearts and minds. Then we won't need this kind of nonsense.
When I was a kid, the local tobacco store used to just leave pile of newspapers outside the shop in the morning. People would leave a dime on the stack and take a paper. They knew what was expected of them and they complied because they made the right voluntary moral choice. I'd like to live in a world where the same thing happens for movie rental consumers.
Sun is a wheezing old horse that squandered it's first mover advantage. They've woken up and found themselves to be high margin dependent in a commodity market.
Why does Google need to hitch their wagon to this tired old horse? What does Sun bring to the table that Google's legions of new engineering talent can't do themselves?
Ok, good point about associating Star Wars haters with pirates. I agree that there are plenty of Star Wars haters that are not pirates. Let's forget about pirates for now.
I see a world where there are lots of arm chair quarterbacks who love to sit back and sneer about other people's efforts while they themselves have never produced anything of value. Producing something of value, like Star Wars (made $380M), requires skill and taking risks. Both qualities are rare. Being an arm chair quarterback is not rare. It's common and easy.
I have a challenge for all of you guys who love to sneer about how Star Wars sucked and those of you that cheer for the pirates:
Become a content producer yourself. You sure as shit seem to know a lot about it. Your knowledge is so deep that you ought to easily be able to write, finance, direct, and distribute a film that is more popular. Go for it! What's stopping you?
The Chinese Communist governement is fighting a battle that they will eventually lose because they have lost the hearts and minds of their people. The internet today provides the average Chinese citizen with enough information about alternative forms of government that communist propaganda is just one source of information among many. The Chinese communist government cannot finger every hole in the dike forever. They're already knee deep in the leaks. I'm proud to be part of the wider information technology community that is taking communism down.
You are still waiting? Why aren't you acting? Write a programmable gui yourself. If is such a great idea then you should be able to make a great case for other programmers to make a free and voluntary choice to help you.
I hear what you are saying about the self censorship of mainstream media. However, there is still a key difference regarding freedom of expression between China and the United States. In the USA you can start a blog that is critical of the war. You can start this blog without asking permission of anyone and you won't be punished by the government. Can you really say the same about China?
Remember that the great thing about the internet is it's de-centralization. Anybody express themselves to a large audience for a low cost. China is fighting a losing battle trying to hold back this flood. All of their restrictions are temporary. It might take 50 years, but they'll have to allow more personal freedom in the end.
Most environmentalists are really seekers of an elitist social utopia that loathe indvidual free will when it leads to decisions they don't like. For example, they don't like suburbs. They think that everyone should live clustered in work/home high rise laden big cities where they can be controlled by elitists. Cheap energy produced by things like cold fusion would do more to enable people to make lifestyle choices that consume more energy. I can live 20 miles from work and keep a big swimming pool heated to 90 degrees year round if I have a cheap fusion system at home. I'm hoping for cheap and limitless energy production. That would be the great emancipator. I like that future better than pulling everyone back to ghettos.
Wow! Are you saying that you've found a way to eliminate 99% of the financial risk of feature film production? That's a license to print money! Congratulations, I'll be looking for you on the red carpet.
By the way, we're talking about a voluntary choice to watch a movie and you are throwing around analogies like 'rape'. That degree of hyperbole reveals the underlying weakness of your argument's foundations.
Ah ha! I see that you agree that producing a film is a risky and expensive proposition. Perhaps that is why movie ticket prices are so high. I think the movie production and distribution system is working fine in the free market.
Marxist Hacker, there is an alternative that is available to you. You should produce a movie that people want to see and then price the movie tickets within the reach of normal families. You can make the free and voluntary choice to do that. What's stopping you?
What's the purpose of the USF? Why is it so vital that society has coerced people, by force, to pay it?
Perhaps instead of coercion, you people who advocate the USF should win the hearts and minds of enough people who would be willing to contribute on a voluntary basis. In that scenario, the altruistic goals of the USF are met without the corrosive effects of coercion.
If you don't like the idea that some entertainment producers practice DRM, then why don't you become a producer who releases entertainment that is free of DRM. It should be easy. Create a show that everyone wants to see and then you can freely and voluntarily choose to release it without DRM.
Once your show becomes popular enough, the producers who use DRM may voluntarily decide to change their past DRM decisions and release without DRM.
I'd like to see this fought out in the arena of voluntary decisions.
Does this mean that Sun will get serious about supporting a good 64 bit java for these systems? Java systems application design could change radically if somebody can provide a 64 bit JVM that can process efficient garbage collection across very large java heap spaces.
Is he OK with a government adopting GPL licensed open source if that same government allows laws that respect software patents or applications of DRM? That does not seem to fit his social agenda as defined by his upcoming rewrite of the GPL.
I asked you to define 'hatred' in general, not the subset of racial hatred. The original post talked about banning expressions of hatred. Do you want to change that to limit the ban to 'racial hatred'?
Referring to GPL as a standard for ultimate freedom does not work any more. As we speak, Stallman is working on a new version of the GPL that is quite draconian. It seems that the little revolution that Stallman wants is not going fast enough so, like most impatient Utopianists, he is turning into a tyrant.
You say cars are wasteful. Please answer this question: Is it OK with you if I make the free and voluntary choice on a Saturday morning to put my kids in the car and drive 40 miles to the zoo?
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I don't like products that exercise prior restraint, given the expectation that I will steal a product if given the chance. I'd rather live in a world where the honor system works. A world where dvds without drm can be rented and people voluntarily respect the desires of the content producers. Let's win people's hearts and minds. Then we won't need this kind of nonsense.
When I was a kid, the local tobacco store used to just leave pile of newspapers outside the shop in the morning. People would leave a dime on the stack and take a paper. They knew what was expected of them and they complied because they made the right voluntary moral choice. I'd like to live in a world where the same thing happens for movie rental consumers.
If StarOffice is so great, then I must assume that you already use it. Right?
Why do you think it has failed to catch on in a serious way? What is Google going to offer to help that?
Sun is a wheezing old horse that squandered it's first mover advantage. They've woken up and found themselves to be high margin dependent in a commodity market.
Why does Google need to hitch their wagon to this tired old horse? What does Sun bring to the table that Google's legions of new engineering talent can't do themselves?
Ok, good point about associating Star Wars haters with pirates. I agree that there are plenty of Star Wars haters that are not pirates. Let's forget about pirates for now.
I see a world where there are lots of arm chair quarterbacks who love to sit back and sneer about other people's efforts while they themselves have never produced anything of value. Producing something of value, like Star Wars (made $380M), requires skill and taking risks. Both qualities are rare. Being an arm chair quarterback is not rare. It's common and easy.
I have a challenge for all of you guys who love to sneer about how Star Wars sucked and those of you that cheer for the pirates:
Become a content producer yourself. You sure as shit seem to know a lot about it. Your knowledge is so deep that you ought to easily be able to write, finance, direct, and distribute a film that is more popular. Go for it! What's stopping you?
The Chinese Communist governement is fighting a battle that they will eventually lose because they have lost the hearts and minds of their people. The internet today provides the average Chinese citizen with enough information about alternative forms of government that communist propaganda is just one source of information among many. The Chinese communist government cannot finger every hole in the dike forever. They're already knee deep in the leaks. I'm proud to be part of the wider information technology community that is taking communism down.
You are still waiting? Why aren't you acting? Write a programmable gui yourself. If is such a great idea then you should be able to make a great case for other programmers to make a free and voluntary choice to help you.
Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin said the same thing.
This does not surprise me. She's an elitist who wants to be a benevolent dictator for all the little people that she holds in pure contempt.
I hear what you are saying about the self censorship of mainstream media. However, there is still a key difference regarding freedom of expression between China and the United States. In the USA you can start a blog that is critical of the war. You can start this blog without asking permission of anyone and you won't be punished by the government. Can you really say the same about China?
Remember that the great thing about the internet is it's de-centralization. Anybody express themselves to a large audience for a low cost. China is fighting a losing battle trying to hold back this flood. All of their restrictions are temporary. It might take 50 years, but they'll have to allow more personal freedom in the end.
Most environmentalists are really seekers of an elitist social utopia that loathe indvidual free will when it leads to decisions they don't like. For example, they don't like suburbs. They think that everyone should live clustered in work/home high rise laden big cities where they can be controlled by elitists. Cheap energy produced by things like cold fusion would do more to enable people to make lifestyle choices that consume more energy. I can live 20 miles from work and keep a big swimming pool heated to 90 degrees year round if I have a cheap fusion system at home. I'm hoping for cheap and limitless energy production. That would be the great emancipator. I like that future better than pulling everyone back to ghettos.
If you made a $30,000 film today, what do you think is the likelyhood that you could recover that $30,000 from your audience?
Wow! Are you saying that you've found a way to eliminate 99% of the financial risk of feature film production? That's a license to print money! Congratulations, I'll be looking for you on the red carpet.
By the way, we're talking about a voluntary choice to watch a movie and you are throwing around analogies like 'rape'. That degree of hyperbole reveals the underlying weakness of your argument's foundations.
Ah ha! I see that you agree that producing a film is a risky and expensive proposition. Perhaps that is why movie ticket prices are so high. I think the movie production and distribution system is working fine in the free market.
Marxist Hacker, there is an alternative that is available to you. You should produce a movie that people want to see and then price the movie tickets within the reach of normal families. You can make the free and voluntary choice to do that. What's stopping you?
What's the purpose of the USF? Why is it so vital that society has coerced people, by force, to pay it?
Perhaps instead of coercion, you people who advocate the USF should win the hearts and minds of enough people who would be willing to contribute on a voluntary basis. In that scenario, the altruistic goals of the USF are met without the corrosive effects of coercion.
If you don't like the idea that some entertainment producers practice DRM, then why don't you become a producer who releases entertainment that is free of DRM. It should be easy. Create a show that everyone wants to see and then you can freely and voluntarily choose to release it without DRM.
Once your show becomes popular enough, the producers who use DRM may voluntarily decide to change their past DRM decisions and release without DRM.
I'd like to see this fought out in the arena of voluntary decisions.
Does this mean that Sun will get serious about supporting a good 64 bit java for these systems? Java systems application design could change radically if somebody can provide a 64 bit JVM that can process efficient garbage collection across very large java heap spaces.
Is anyone surprised that a government that crushes their children's heads with tanks is uncomfortable with the private exchange of ideas amongst it's citizens?
Is he OK with a government adopting GPL licensed open source if that same government allows laws that respect software patents or applications of DRM? That does not seem to fit his social agenda as defined by his upcoming rewrite of the GPL.
I asked you to define 'hatred' in general, not the subset of racial hatred. The original post talked about banning expressions of hatred. Do you want to change that to limit the ban to 'racial hatred'?
And who defines hatred? Do you care to try? Please reply and define hatred.
Referring to GPL as a standard for ultimate freedom does not work any more. As we speak, Stallman is working on a new version of the GPL that is quite draconian. It seems that the little revolution that Stallman wants is not going fast enough so, like most impatient Utopianists, he is turning into a tyrant.
What if I do not wish to for a variety of reasons? Am I free to choose, for my own reasons, my private car instead of public transportation?
You say cars are wasteful. Please answer this question: Is it OK with you if I make the free and voluntary choice on a Saturday morning to put my kids in the car and drive 40 miles to the zoo?