> "Society didnt show mercy to carriage industry when automobiles came out."
Can I make a suggestion that we stop using the horse and carriage versus the car analogy? It doesn't make sense. As long as you want books to read, you need people to write them. This involves work. The comparison to the "horse and buggy" is flawed because when people buy cars, they stopped needing horses and buggys, which puts them out of business. The creation of books for you to read still requires the labor of authors to write those books, which means you're essentially arguing that you've found a way to not pay the authors but you still want authors to come around and do the work.
Sorry, both jobs involve work. The analogy is reasonable. As a software developer, I'm in the same boat as authors. If I can't get paid for my work, then I should go do something else - even if that "something else" involves mowing lawns. Whether or not my skills as a software developer are more useful to the world than my skills mowing lawns is secondary to the question of whether I can afford to make a living doing those jobs.
It's not clear that the US "dun goofed". There have been a lot of indications over a number of years that Pakistani troops are either directly involved in attacking US troops or turning a blind eye to Taliban troops even when they're launching attacks against Afghani/NATO/US troops. You're essentially apologizing for beating up the guy who tried to jump you in a dark alley.
Frontline Pakistani troops aid and abet lethal insurgent attacks on American forces across the Afghan border, according to the day-to-day commander of the NATO war effort. It’s a big reason why rocket and mortar attacks have quadrupled since 2010. “You’ll see what just appears to us to be a collaboration or was a collaboration or, at a minimum, looking the other way when insurgents conducted rocket or mortar fire in what we believe to be visual sight of one of their posts,” Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti told Pentagon reporters on Thursday morning. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/pakistan-rockets-us-troops/
WikiLeaks presents a new depth of detail about how the U.S. military has seen, for six years, the depths of ISI facilitation of the Afghan insurgency. For instance: a three-star Pakistani general active during the ’80s-era U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi sponsorship of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Hamid Gul, allegedly met with insurgent leaders in South Waziristan in January 2009 to plot vengeance for the drone-inflicted death of an al-Qaeda operative. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/wikileaks-drops-90000-secret-war-docs-fingers-pakistan-as-insurgent-ally/
Of course, even if the Pakistani troops are directly involved in attacks, it still might be a good strategic move to apologize, even though you're essentially apologizing for killing people who were attempting to kill you.
This indicates that in Afghanistan, after almost ten years of occupation (longer than the Soviets stayed) most of the country is considered too dangerous for the occupiers to move freely in.
Actually, the summary says they're using it "at an undisclosed base". How exactly you jumped from "at an undisclosed base" to "most of the country is considered too dangerous", I'm not sure. All you can tell from the summary and the article is that it's dangerous at some bases and on the front lines.
Also, you mention the problem with "The US yahoos who blew up a bunch of Pakistani troops has cost the NATO forces that safe border convoy route". Funny you didn't mention that first, because then you might conclude that helicopters are being used not because "most of the country is considered too dangerous", but rather because there's one less "safe border convoy route". Although that would be a lot less dramatic, wouldn't it?
Don't assume Al-Queda is the model for all groups around the world. There are different varieties of groups trying to cause chaos, and there will be different groups in the future. Aum Shinryko released Sarin Gas in a Tokyo Subway in an attempt to hasten the apocalyse fifteen years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway). Some groups to consider: doomsday cults, ecoterrorists trying to decrease human population and the environmental degradation our population causes, groups looking for deterrents (these could be nuclear or biological deterrents - i.e. if you do thing X that we disagree with, then we will release a virus and absolve ourselves of the responsibility of releasing it), accidental releases by any of the previous groups (e.g. "we were using the virus as a deterrent without the intention to use it, but accidentally released it"). And we shouldn't assume this is an exhaustive list, or that new groups won't arise in the future that we never even thought of.
It's also worth pointing out that people like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara both recommended that the Soviets launch a nuclear strike against the US during the Cuban missile crisis with the full knowledge that Cuba would be utterly devastated in the nuclear counterstrike from the US. Sometimes people's emotions get so in the way of their thinking that they're willing to destroy their entire country to get at the US. The Soviets were cool-headed enough to ignore the suggestions of Castro and Guevara.
This is the reason why modern armies do not use gas for instance. The Germans tried it during the first world war and it proved to be rather unpredictable making it in effect useless.
And that's why nobody's tried to use poison gas to kill people since World War I. Especially not doomsday cults trying to jump-start the end of the world - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway
Really? Because people still pirated the "pay what you want" Humble Indie bundle. From what I heard, pirating the Humble Indie bundle divided a lot of pirates. Some were like "they're doing what we want them to do: offering a good price, letting us pay what we want, no DRM" and they were speaking directly to the pirates who didn't give a crap and pirated it anyway.
No, the attitude I see more often is "This thing is so good and so reasonably priced -- I *paid* for it."
Depends on the person. I know people who will look at you like you lost your mind if you pay for anything digital. A few years back, I told a friend of mine that Amazon was having a sale - they were selling the top 50 albums of last year for $5 each. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me. She looked unimpressed and said, "I can get all of them free on the internet [meaning pirating them]". It annoyed me because sometimes it never seems good enough for some pirates; paying anything more than $0 is stupid in their book.
how many people do you know use their work networks to download pirated content
None, actually. That's a really stupid thing to do... The only thing worse than being slapped with a 100k fine for downloading some music is also getting fired over it.
That's a pretty questionable claim you're making there. At one company I worked at years ago, there was a guy who not only downloaded porn while at work, but he printed some pictures out on the company printer. Conclusion: People do stupid things at work.
I don't think I've ever heard of a game company taking down videos of their game. The reason they don't (and I don't know if it's a copyright violation) is because the game company is selling the interactivity of the game, not the video of the game. Videos of the game can generate interest and sales, so I don't know why a game company would want to take down a video, unless they were either brainless about enforcing their copyrights in a self-destructive way or they were trying to suppress a negative review of their game.
Yes, bubbles form and they burst, but they don't have anything to do with the economy at large. They only cause problems for the economy and not just for the private investors involved if there is a government with an easy money policy backing the deals.
I have to disagree with this idea. If other people lose money it affects everyone. We are very interconnected. People who argue for free markets also agree with this idea of people being interconnected. If a bunch of people in an economy waste a bunch of money, then they have less wealth to spend and invest. This makes it difficult for other people trying to sell stuff. If I'm running a business in Detroit or Flint Michigan and suddenly the auto industry leaves, then people have less money and that makes my living as a business-owner much harder. My living as a business-owner depends on what money other people have.
To put this argument in a more modern context: if a bunch of people get over their heads in their mortgage and then default, it causes problems for the economy. That situation can happen whether or not the government provides "easy money". It's easy to imagine real-estate bubbles happening in any economy where home prices are rising quickly, causing people to buy-up expensive homes because they think they can resell them in 5 years for 50% more money - therefore, you should by the most expensive home you can since a larger loan equals a larger return when you sell it again. In that situation, a feeding-frenzy happens and it does not depend on whether the US government is loaning money at 0% interest or 4% interest - in both cases, the value of the real estate is outpacing any 4% interest rate that the US government is offering.
So, I'd take your original statement, "Yes, bubbles form and they burst, but... They only cause problems for the economy and not just for the private investors involved if there is a government with an easy money policy backing the deals." and rewrite it as "Yes, bubbles form and they burst... and that creates problems for the economy at large". Whether those bubbles affect the whole economy is not dependent on whether or not "there is a government with an easy money policy backing the deals", though I could understand the argument that government intervention could cause additional problems.
Oh please. I've seen experiments in classrooms involving pretend stocks and pretend money and bubbles still form. Once a stock starts to go up, people jump on it hoping to make a buck. And there was *no* control or fluctuation of the money supply in these experiments. So why do bubbles form? Two simple reasons:
(1) People want to earn money.
(2) People are based their predictions of the future on past experience. This means if a stock went up in the past, they expect it to do well in the future. While not everyone falls prey to this all the time, it happens often enough in a market to cause the population, in general, to make very bad decisions, and drive the economy into bubbles.
not the US Fed obviously, but the same idea exactly - people threw everything into tulip growing and flooded the market
No that's not "the same idea exactly" because it happens without government intervention, it happened in the free market, and THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT.
Ha, you sound like such a "always blame the government" libertarian. Stocks form a bubble because people are betting on their future value. Stop the nonsense about how the fed creates all the problems in the economy. We had plenty of bubbles long before the fed go involved in anything. Or did the US Fed cause the Tulip Bulb bubble in 1637, too?
'If a Facebook guy buys a house and wants to remodel it, maybe the contractor will buy another car,' says Buff Giurlani. 'Maybe the realtor will put a car in. There's a trickle-down effect.'"
Could someone explain to me how this has a net positive effect on the economy when the reason that the facebook employee made money was because he sold some of his shares to an investor, meaning the investor moved money *into* the stock (which suggests that the investor moved money out of the economy* and into the stock)? Now I suppose the investor has a finite amount of investment money, so he probably shifted money out of other stocks (rather than the economy*) which suggests that other stocks would take a small hit in stock price (since there's a relatively less demand for them), which affects other investors. It just sounds like the whole process would result in a net neutral effect on the economy - i.e. a Facebook employee might buy a new car which helps the economy, but another investor somewhere bought that facebook stock which takes the same amount of money out of the economy (at a different geographical location).
* By "the economy" I mean spending it on consumption.
I'm sure Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will now be even determined to make sure your console only works with a network connection. At least they'll still be able to ban users from their network for jailbreaking consoles.
(I'm one of the few Slashdotters who's anti-piracy because I think stopping piracy increases the incentive for developers to invest time and money creating software for the platform. No wonder all the huge growth in game-sales over the past ten years has been in consoles, while PC sales have actually declined.)
I see armies of cocaine huffing, hooker bashing, Harvard educated RIAA trust-fund babies who've never wanted for anything in their life but a full head of hair, going on about how Limewire costs them the GDP of the entire world [oddballdaily.com] ($75,000,000,000,000 dollars) in lost revenue and also, simultaneously, claiming to have had one of their most profitable years ever [azoz.com]. How do you even rationalize that kind of blatant, intrinsic wrongness?
Here's the thing: the statistics you posted are from 2002. Also, it's a myth that the music industry is doing well. )I can imagine why pirates would have an interest in perpetuating this myth,) Here's the real numbers - all the way up to 2010. The music industry sales are in serious decline. They're roughly 30% of what they were 10 years ago - that's a 70% decline. In fact, you can find the peak year for music sales: 1999. Also, Napster was released in the middle of 1999, which I think it suggestive. There's also data showing that the top-selling albums can never get anywhere close to the sales numbers they were getting ten years ago. Top selling albums in 2010 are getting something like 1/3rd the sales that top selling albums were getting 10 years ago. Here's a chart showing the huge decline in music sales: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000/music-industry.jpg and here's related article: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-18/tech/30052663_1_riaa-music-industry-cd-era
I've run similar numbers for the movie industry, and while it hasn't been hit as hard, it's also seeing declines both in box-office revenue and DVD/BlueRay sales. (Box Office revenue peaked around 2001/2002.)
Hell if someone made a torrent on The Pirate Bay of my work I'd probably just feel proud that I'd made a book people really want to read.
When you heave neither fame nor money, it's easy to accept the idea of getting fame and no money. I think this is particularly pervasive among college students and recent college students because getting fame alone would be a step up from obscurity and poverty. However, I absolutely back the "getting paid" part of the equation because it sustains the industry - otherwise, you're going to lose people (like so many of my college graduate friends who studied history or psychology and are now doing other jobs - because they can't get paid for it). I wish that "I'll work for your approval but you don't have to pay me" worked for people in other spheres of life -- the company that mows my building's lawn wouldn't ask for money, they'd just do it for my approval. I think that's really devaluing their work and effort.
Okay, but look at how he setup the paragraph - he says if you've *EVER* pirated then you can never complain:
It just strikes me as entirely retarded, especially if they're not in full compliance with every piece of software, hardware, music and movies they've ever seen or owned. I'm sure their $2,000 copy of Adobe Photoshop is fully legitimate now and was when they were 14, and I'm sure they've never downloaded an MP3 in their life.
I've never understood musicians, writers and artists who get all messed up about digital piracy. It just strikes me as entirely retarded, especially if they're not in full compliance with every piece of software, hardware, music and movies they've ever seen or owned. I'm sure their $2,000 copy of Adobe Photoshop is fully legitimate now and was when they were 14, and I'm sure they've never downloaded an MP3 in their life.
I once shoplifted from a store. Out of curiosity, are you going to tell me that I'm not allowed to say "stealing is bad" or if I ever become a store owner, am I now morally obligated to look the other way when people come and try to shoplift from my store?
We've gone 90 years without it getting those 5 mutations. Also, medical technology is advancing whether or not we have access to this particular virus. I'd bet money that we'd have a cure for these kinds of viruses within a few decades even if we don't recreate this particular virus.
I'd rather we operate under the assumption that bad people do not have weapons of various kinds. It's a more pleasant thought for sure, but it also means that when someone tells me "your money or your life", I just ignore him - after all, the assumption is that he has no weapons. And that's likely to either get me hurt or killed.
And let's shine some light on your assumption: you assume that they already have the information, so you're going to give it to them. If you're wrong in your assumption, then you've just armed the robbers. Also, nobody's come up to you and said "your money or your life" (the fact that someone would say that would give you at least a little confidence that they might be able to back it up). What you're doing is the equivalent of going to a convict's house and dropping off an arsenal on his front door - based on the assumption that "he already has guns anyway".
Yes, if we don't make assumptions that include rather unfortunate views, the world seems a lot nicer, but then again - a bear and her cubs also do look awfully cute together, and I assume mama bear doesn't mind if I go play with her cub.
And, it would be better if people like you would stop assuming the worst, which can put you in a very bad position, too. If we assume the worst about every situation, then we'll assume that somebody's going to try to kill you if you ever leave your house (I guess you'll have to never leave home), you'll assume that every girl or friend is just after your money (don't ever make friends or girlfriends), you'll assume that business partners and coworkers are out to get you (don't ever talk to them). It reminds me of how one businessman (I think it was Howard Hughes) had some really good business opportunities ruined because he was paranoid about his business partners swindling him out of money. He ended up with the worst of all results because he was fearful of the worst possible outcome.
The important information from this work as far as I can deduce from the limited information being released is that now we know what kind of changes can make the virus more aggressive. This can be used to monitor the virus in the wild and catch potential pandemics before the virus has jumped on humans.
We already know what caused the 1918 flu and are quite capable of monitoring flu viruses. I saw articles years ago that talked about the genetic gap between the current flu and the 1918 flu.
All this makes it imperative that it gets published.
No it doesn't. You're working from false premises.
The longer we can delay having the virus in the wild, the more capable humanity will be at dealing with it because medical technology is constantly progressing.
I think you're doing a pretty good job of convincing me that humanity is screwed in the long run though - we'll ultimately destroy ourselves because some reckless and irresponsible people will claim that all information must be readily accessible to everybody and they'll inadvertently help some nutjob who can act on that information.
It's a huge assumption that the "black hats" have it. There are plenty of bad people who don't have the information they want. Besides, if your logic was consistent, you might as well say that we should release all the information we have about making nuclear weapons - because the "bad guys" already have it and we need to focus on creating a "cure" for nuclear blasts, right?! Face the facts: the bad guys don't know everything, and it's not in the best interest of humanity to release all information so everybody knows everything.
Slashdot Mirror
> "Society didnt show mercy to carriage industry when automobiles came out."
Can I make a suggestion that we stop using the horse and carriage versus the car analogy? It doesn't make sense. As long as you want books to read, you need people to write them. This involves work. The comparison to the "horse and buggy" is flawed because when people buy cars, they stopped needing horses and buggys, which puts them out of business. The creation of books for you to read still requires the labor of authors to write those books, which means you're essentially arguing that you've found a way to not pay the authors but you still want authors to come around and do the work.
Sorry, both jobs involve work. The analogy is reasonable. As a software developer, I'm in the same boat as authors. If I can't get paid for my work, then I should go do something else - even if that "something else" involves mowing lawns. Whether or not my skills as a software developer are more useful to the world than my skills mowing lawns is secondary to the question of whether I can afford to make a living doing those jobs.
It's not clear that the US "dun goofed". There have been a lot of indications over a number of years that Pakistani troops are either directly involved in attacking US troops or turning a blind eye to Taliban troops even when they're launching attacks against Afghani/NATO/US troops. You're essentially apologizing for beating up the guy who tried to jump you in a dark alley.
Of course, even if the Pakistani troops are directly involved in attacks, it still might be a good strategic move to apologize, even though you're essentially apologizing for killing people who were attempting to kill you.
Actually, the summary says they're using it "at an undisclosed base". How exactly you jumped from "at an undisclosed base" to "most of the country is considered too dangerous", I'm not sure. All you can tell from the summary and the article is that it's dangerous at some bases and on the front lines.
Also, you mention the problem with "The US yahoos who blew up a bunch of Pakistani troops has cost the NATO forces that safe border convoy route". Funny you didn't mention that first, because then you might conclude that helicopters are being used not because "most of the country is considered too dangerous", but rather because there's one less "safe border convoy route". Although that would be a lot less dramatic, wouldn't it?
Don't assume Al-Queda is the model for all groups around the world. There are different varieties of groups trying to cause chaos, and there will be different groups in the future. Aum Shinryko released Sarin Gas in a Tokyo Subway in an attempt to hasten the apocalyse fifteen years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway). Some groups to consider: doomsday cults, ecoterrorists trying to decrease human population and the environmental degradation our population causes, groups looking for deterrents (these could be nuclear or biological deterrents - i.e. if you do thing X that we disagree with, then we will release a virus and absolve ourselves of the responsibility of releasing it), accidental releases by any of the previous groups (e.g. "we were using the virus as a deterrent without the intention to use it, but accidentally released it"). And we shouldn't assume this is an exhaustive list, or that new groups won't arise in the future that we never even thought of.
It's also worth pointing out that people like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara both recommended that the Soviets launch a nuclear strike against the US during the Cuban missile crisis with the full knowledge that Cuba would be utterly devastated in the nuclear counterstrike from the US. Sometimes people's emotions get so in the way of their thinking that they're willing to destroy their entire country to get at the US. The Soviets were cool-headed enough to ignore the suggestions of Castro and Guevara.
Or to use an a real-world example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway
This is the reason why modern armies do not use gas for instance. The Germans tried it during the first world war and it proved to be rather unpredictable making it in effect useless.
And that's why nobody's tried to use poison gas to kill people since World War I. Especially not doomsday cults trying to jump-start the end of the world - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_force ?
Really? Because people still pirated the "pay what you want" Humble Indie bundle. From what I heard, pirating the Humble Indie bundle divided a lot of pirates. Some were like "they're doing what we want them to do: offering a good price, letting us pay what we want, no DRM" and they were speaking directly to the pirates who didn't give a crap and pirated it anyway.
Depends on the person. I know people who will look at you like you lost your mind if you pay for anything digital. A few years back, I told a friend of mine that Amazon was having a sale - they were selling the top 50 albums of last year for $5 each. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me. She looked unimpressed and said, "I can get all of them free on the internet [meaning pirating them]". It annoyed me because sometimes it never seems good enough for some pirates; paying anything more than $0 is stupid in their book.
That's a pretty questionable claim you're making there. At one company I worked at years ago, there was a guy who not only downloaded porn while at work, but he printed some pictures out on the company printer. Conclusion: People do stupid things at work.
I don't think I've ever heard of a game company taking down videos of their game. The reason they don't (and I don't know if it's a copyright violation) is because the game company is selling the interactivity of the game, not the video of the game. Videos of the game can generate interest and sales, so I don't know why a game company would want to take down a video, unless they were either brainless about enforcing their copyrights in a self-destructive way or they were trying to suppress a negative review of their game.
Yes, bubbles form and they burst, but they don't have anything to do with the economy at large. They only cause problems for the economy and not just for the private investors involved if there is a government with an easy money policy backing the deals.
... They only cause problems for the economy and not just for the private investors involved if there is a government with an easy money policy backing the deals." and rewrite it as "Yes, bubbles form and they burst ... and that creates problems for the economy at large". Whether those bubbles affect the whole economy is not dependent on whether or not "there is a government with an easy money policy backing the deals", though I could understand the argument that government intervention could cause additional problems.
I have to disagree with this idea. If other people lose money it affects everyone. We are very interconnected. People who argue for free markets also agree with this idea of people being interconnected. If a bunch of people in an economy waste a bunch of money, then they have less wealth to spend and invest. This makes it difficult for other people trying to sell stuff. If I'm running a business in Detroit or Flint Michigan and suddenly the auto industry leaves, then people have less money and that makes my living as a business-owner much harder. My living as a business-owner depends on what money other people have.
To put this argument in a more modern context: if a bunch of people get over their heads in their mortgage and then default, it causes problems for the economy. That situation can happen whether or not the government provides "easy money". It's easy to imagine real-estate bubbles happening in any economy where home prices are rising quickly, causing people to buy-up expensive homes because they think they can resell them in 5 years for 50% more money - therefore, you should by the most expensive home you can since a larger loan equals a larger return when you sell it again. In that situation, a feeding-frenzy happens and it does not depend on whether the US government is loaning money at 0% interest or 4% interest - in both cases, the value of the real estate is outpacing any 4% interest rate that the US government is offering.
So, I'd take your original statement, "Yes, bubbles form and they burst, but
Oh please. I've seen experiments in classrooms involving pretend stocks and pretend money and bubbles still form. Once a stock starts to go up, people jump on it hoping to make a buck. And there was *no* control or fluctuation of the money supply in these experiments. So why do bubbles form? Two simple reasons:
(1) People want to earn money.
(2) People are based their predictions of the future on past experience. This means if a stock went up in the past, they expect it to do well in the future. While not everyone falls prey to this all the time, it happens often enough in a market to cause the population, in general, to make very bad decisions, and drive the economy into bubbles.
not the US Fed obviously, but the same idea exactly - people threw everything into tulip growing and flooded the market
No that's not "the same idea exactly" because it happens without government intervention, it happened in the free market, and THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT.
Ha, you sound like such a "always blame the government" libertarian. Stocks form a bubble because people are betting on their future value. Stop the nonsense about how the fed creates all the problems in the economy. We had plenty of bubbles long before the fed go involved in anything. Or did the US Fed cause the Tulip Bulb bubble in 1637, too?
Could someone explain to me how this has a net positive effect on the economy when the reason that the facebook employee made money was because he sold some of his shares to an investor, meaning the investor moved money *into* the stock (which suggests that the investor moved money out of the economy* and into the stock)? Now I suppose the investor has a finite amount of investment money, so he probably shifted money out of other stocks (rather than the economy*) which suggests that other stocks would take a small hit in stock price (since there's a relatively less demand for them), which affects other investors. It just sounds like the whole process would result in a net neutral effect on the economy - i.e. a Facebook employee might buy a new car which helps the economy, but another investor somewhere bought that facebook stock which takes the same amount of money out of the economy (at a different geographical location).
* By "the economy" I mean spending it on consumption.
I'm sure Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will now be even determined to make sure your console only works with a network connection. At least they'll still be able to ban users from their network for jailbreaking consoles.
(I'm one of the few Slashdotters who's anti-piracy because I think stopping piracy increases the incentive for developers to invest time and money creating software for the platform. No wonder all the huge growth in game-sales over the past ten years has been in consoles, while PC sales have actually declined.)
I see armies of cocaine huffing, hooker bashing, Harvard educated RIAA trust-fund babies who've never wanted for anything in their life but a full head of hair, going on about how Limewire costs them the GDP of the entire world [oddballdaily.com] ($75,000,000,000,000 dollars) in lost revenue and also, simultaneously, claiming to have had one of their most profitable years ever [azoz.com]. How do you even rationalize that kind of blatant, intrinsic wrongness?
Here's the thing: the statistics you posted are from 2002. Also, it's a myth that the music industry is doing well. )I can imagine why pirates would have an interest in perpetuating this myth,) Here's the real numbers - all the way up to 2010. The music industry sales are in serious decline. They're roughly 30% of what they were 10 years ago - that's a 70% decline. In fact, you can find the peak year for music sales: 1999. Also, Napster was released in the middle of 1999, which I think it suggestive. There's also data showing that the top-selling albums can never get anywhere close to the sales numbers they were getting ten years ago. Top selling albums in 2010 are getting something like 1/3rd the sales that top selling albums were getting 10 years ago. Here's a chart showing the huge decline in music sales: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000/music-industry.jpg and here's related article: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-18/tech/30052663_1_riaa-music-industry-cd-era
I've run similar numbers for the movie industry, and while it hasn't been hit as hard, it's also seeing declines both in box-office revenue and DVD/BlueRay sales. (Box Office revenue peaked around 2001/2002.)
Hell if someone made a torrent on The Pirate Bay of my work I'd probably just feel proud that I'd made a book people really want to read.
When you heave neither fame nor money, it's easy to accept the idea of getting fame and no money. I think this is particularly pervasive among college students and recent college students because getting fame alone would be a step up from obscurity and poverty. However, I absolutely back the "getting paid" part of the equation because it sustains the industry - otherwise, you're going to lose people (like so many of my college graduate friends who studied history or psychology and are now doing other jobs - because they can't get paid for it). I wish that "I'll work for your approval but you don't have to pay me" worked for people in other spheres of life -- the company that mows my building's lawn wouldn't ask for money, they'd just do it for my approval. I think that's really devaluing their work and effort.
Okay, but look at how he setup the paragraph - he says if you've *EVER* pirated then you can never complain:
It just strikes me as entirely retarded, especially if they're not in full compliance with every piece of software, hardware, music and movies they've ever seen or owned. I'm sure their $2,000 copy of Adobe Photoshop is fully legitimate now and was when they were 14, and I'm sure they've never downloaded an MP3 in their life.
I've never understood musicians, writers and artists who get all messed up about digital piracy. It just strikes me as entirely retarded, especially if they're not in full compliance with every piece of software, hardware, music and movies they've ever seen or owned. I'm sure their $2,000 copy of Adobe Photoshop is fully legitimate now and was when they were 14, and I'm sure they've never downloaded an MP3 in their life.
I once shoplifted from a store. Out of curiosity, are you going to tell me that I'm not allowed to say "stealing is bad" or if I ever become a store owner, am I now morally obligated to look the other way when people come and try to shoplift from my store?
We can come up with a cure for anything. I'm working on a cure for nuclear blasts right now!
We've gone 90 years without it getting those 5 mutations. Also, medical technology is advancing whether or not we have access to this particular virus. I'd bet money that we'd have a cure for these kinds of viruses within a few decades even if we don't recreate this particular virus.
I'd rather we operate under the assumption that bad people do not have weapons of various kinds. It's a more pleasant thought for sure, but it also means that when someone tells me "your money or your life", I just ignore him - after all, the assumption is that he has no weapons. And that's likely to either get me hurt or killed.
And let's shine some light on your assumption: you assume that they already have the information, so you're going to give it to them. If you're wrong in your assumption, then you've just armed the robbers. Also, nobody's come up to you and said "your money or your life" (the fact that someone would say that would give you at least a little confidence that they might be able to back it up). What you're doing is the equivalent of going to a convict's house and dropping off an arsenal on his front door - based on the assumption that "he already has guns anyway".
Yes, if we don't make assumptions that include rather unfortunate views, the world seems a lot nicer, but then again - a bear and her cubs also do look awfully cute together, and I assume mama bear doesn't mind if I go play with her cub.
And, it would be better if people like you would stop assuming the worst, which can put you in a very bad position, too. If we assume the worst about every situation, then we'll assume that somebody's going to try to kill you if you ever leave your house (I guess you'll have to never leave home), you'll assume that every girl or friend is just after your money (don't ever make friends or girlfriends), you'll assume that business partners and coworkers are out to get you (don't ever talk to them). It reminds me of how one businessman (I think it was Howard Hughes) had some really good business opportunities ruined because he was paranoid about his business partners swindling him out of money. He ended up with the worst of all results because he was fearful of the worst possible outcome.
The important information from this work as far as I can deduce from the limited information being released is that now we know what kind of changes can make the virus more aggressive. This can be used to monitor the virus in the wild and catch potential pandemics before the virus has jumped on humans.
We already know what caused the 1918 flu and are quite capable of monitoring flu viruses. I saw articles years ago that talked about the genetic gap between the current flu and the 1918 flu.
All this makes it imperative that it gets published.
No it doesn't. You're working from false premises.
The longer we can delay having the virus in the wild, the more capable humanity will be at dealing with it because medical technology is constantly progressing.
I think you're doing a pretty good job of convincing me that humanity is screwed in the long run though - we'll ultimately destroy ourselves because some reckless and irresponsible people will claim that all information must be readily accessible to everybody and they'll inadvertently help some nutjob who can act on that information.
It's a huge assumption that the "black hats" have it. There are plenty of bad people who don't have the information they want. Besides, if your logic was consistent, you might as well say that we should release all the information we have about making nuclear weapons - because the "bad guys" already have it and we need to focus on creating a "cure" for nuclear blasts, right?! Face the facts: the bad guys don't know everything, and it's not in the best interest of humanity to release all information so everybody knows everything.