"science uses correlation to assume causation all over the place; for example, cigarettes cause cancer."
Science does not say cigarettes cause cancer -- it says that regularly smoking more than a certain number of them over a long period _increases the likelihood_ of some specific types of cancer forming. The many research projects that have been carried out are very well aware of the fact that (a) those cancers existed in societies where tobacco was not a native plant before there were trade routes to the Americas; and (b) plenty of people have smoked regularly for their entire lives without showing signs of any of those cancers. Neither of these would be the case if any actual scientists were claiming that smoking _causes_ cancers.
Of course, there are lots of people and groups who do say that smoking causes cancer, and it's common for them to claim that they're basing their statements on science, but there's a big difference between what non-scientists (and I include most MDs in this category) tell us about scientific studies, and what's actually in those studies.
"The problem is, of course, that Windows and OS X both threw away decades of work and started from scratch"
MS released the first version of Windows in 1986, and previews of NexStep (which is the foundation for OS X) began in 1986 too, so development work on both was pretty much concurrent with the original MIT version of X (1984, with X11 appearing in 1987). It's not therefore correct to say that either threw away decades of work.
"I've used quite a few HP laptops, and frankly, I'd never be caught using another one, if I could help it."
Their business class laptops are actually pretty good, but they tend to cost nearly as much as Apple's offerings for something that's usually bigger and heavier, and lacks some of Apple's attention to detail. HP's domestic laptops on the other hand are rubbish that looks good to those reading paper specifications, but are made from far cheaper components than their business laptops, hence the fact that the latter cost nearly twice as much for what appears to be a similarly specified computer.
"Apple tech. support is WORLDS better than HP in the USA"
If my and other peoples' experiences are anything to go by, it's pretty good outside the US as well.
1. Apple don't sell PowerBooks anymore, and the MacBook Pro 17" costs 2067 Euros + VAT.
2. HP's domestic portables are unmitigated crap that prove there's a lot more to a laptop than paper specifications. Their business machines (the ones that come with Windows Vista Business by default) are much better, but they cost significantly more -- around 1700 Euros + VAT for 17" laptops with a similar spec to the MacBook Pro 17", and you end up a larger, heavier machine that has a significantly smaller hard-disk, a slightly slower CPU, no keyboard illumination or motion sensors, a smaller touch-pad, and a plastic rather than aluminium case (it does however have a higher resolution display than the default Apple one).
The actual difference for hardware of similar quality and roughly equivalent specs from HP (each has advantages over the other in certain areas) is therefore around 350 Euros, which buys a slightly lighter, smaller laptop with motion and light sensors, an illuminated keyboard, a bigger touch pad, a mag-safe PSU connector, and a metal case.
"Ignoring ex cathedra papal infallibility is not very convincing given the history of contradictions between popes and their predecessors. But maybe my (lutheran) mindset is missing the magic involved;)"
What your Lutheran mindset actually misses is the fact that ex-cathedra statements about matters of the Catholic Church's doctrinal and moral teachings (they are limited to this) cannot contradict a prior pope's ex-cathedra pronouncements, but they can contradict prior statements or acts that were not made ex-cathedra.
"Young people are less experienced and therefore often less critical of what they see and hear. Advertisers already know this, which is why so many adverts are targeted for the young."
Advertising tends to be targeted at the young because:
1) They're less likely to have already made decisions about what products they like / don't like, and are therefore more open to trying new things.
2) Although they tend to have less income overall, they also have significantly fewer commitments, so they a spend a greater proportion of what they do have on themselves.
3) Peer pressure is much more prevalent in younger people, so advertising that can convince some of them that a particular item or image is desirable stands a good chance of selling those products to some of their friends and acquaintances.
"This is also supported by research - one one project found that where people under ~30 would often show interest in the adverts in magazines, people over that age tended to simply skip/discard advertising material out of hand without even looking at it"
Perhaps this was due to the fact that most of the ads in said magazines were targeting people who are 30 or under, just like most of the ads everywhere target people who are 30 or under.
"The one exception was the adverts from the local supermarket(s), because they tend to list the prices on daily items."
That's just a reflection of the fact that older people tend to have families and other commitments which means (a) they use much more of what supermarkets sell, and are therefore (b) receptive to offers that can save some of what is a significant, regular expense.
"The morale of the thing is that younger people are interested in things like image"
A lot of older people are interested in image as well, especially women, who will happily spend large sums on plastic surgery, cosmetics, creams, corsetry, hairdressers, and a host of other things that are specifically aimed at middle-aged (and older) women who want to look younger, fitter, and more attractive.
"more mature people go for things that have a practical value"
Mature people with plenty of money to spend on themselves tend to be equally easy to sell impractical things to as younger ones. The fact that most mature people aren't in the market for such things is therefore largely a reflection of there not being very many whose commitments don't consume the bulk of their income.
"Now that the technology has improved and the environment is being put in greater focus, we're starting to see more of a push towards greener technology."
The push towards alternate energy sources is actually due to the fact that (a) the price of traditional fossil-fuelled ones has reached a point where they're starting to make economic sense; and (b) far too many of the existing reserves are in the hands of countries we either don't trust now, or are unstable enough to be potentially untrustworthy in the future.
If the primary driving force for developing and using such technologies wasn't political and economic, then we wouldn't have pseudo-green policies such as making ethanol from grain using methods that result in far more CO2 being generated per litre of fuel burned than refined mineral oil products, carbon credit trading, and plans to pump the CO2 from dirty coal-burning power stations (because coal is plentiful domestically) underground in an attempt to pretend that it doesn't exist.
"Yes, the legislation does change something: it makes it illegal for third parties to provide the tools to transcribe it. "
It's clear from the quote of mine you're answering that we're talking about items that have entered the public domain, and I've already stated in every post on this topic that the DMCA doesn't cover things which are out of copyright, so it's clearly not illegal for third parties to distribute tools that transcribe them. The following is a simple sentence that says this in capital letters to aid the mentally challenged. I have nothing further to add, so more trolling on your part will not elicit any more responses.
THE DMCA DOES NOT PROHIBIT WRITING OR DISTRIBUTING TOOLS TO BREAK THE DRM ON THINGS THAT HAVE ENTERED THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Agreed in full. Being found guilty of something in a court does not mean that the person actually did what they were convicted of, just as being found not guilty doesn't mean they're innocent. There have been more than enough cases of people being convicted who were later completely exonerated and guilty people being acquitted for various reasons to indicate that law and justice are at best occasional companions.
"I purchase a copyrighted work that is protected by some copy protection technology."
Fair enough so far.
"A little bit later, the copyright on this work expires. At this point, I technically have a legal right to make a copy, but I still don't have the technical means to do so. Thus the legislation has made it physically impossible for me to exercise a right that it claims that, in some vacuous sense, I have."
The legislation changes absolutely nothing, because there is nothing in existing copyright law stating that the owner of said copyright is obliged in any way to provide others with a means of transcribing it when it passes into the public domain. Stuff was becoming unreadable long before anyone thought of copyrighting because languages became forgotten, and in some cases, have still not been decoded (e.g. Etruscan, which despite being written using Greek letters, has yet to be translated). The onus is therefore on you to decode copy-protected information, just as the onus is on you to find a way of playing music on paper tapes for steam calliopes on merry-go-rounds that no longer exist, the onus is on you to read what's stored on 12" disk platters for obsolete mainframes all of whose drives were broken up long ago, and the onus is on you to read movies stored on fragile and decayed celluloid or 8" floppies suffering from "bit rot".
There never has been any guarantee that future generations will be able to read information that was stored in the past, hence the fact that vast amounts of it have been completely lost, exist only in fragmentary form, or are unreadable because nobody has been able to translate them. This process didn't stop in the 20th century (indeed, it accelerated because the amount of what was being produced rose massively, so much more was also lost), and it will continue into the 21st, irrespective of whether the DMCA does or does not exist.
"Unfortunately, they changed the world in a way that no reasonable, morally upright person would even contemplate"
Defining things in terms of what's reasonable and moral makes it very easy to fall into the same trap that organisations such as Al Quaeda use to justify their actions, because they, their followers, and their supporters see themselves as reasonable, morally upright people who are fighting against what they regard as an evil Western hegemony that's dominated their homelands by force for centuries, and irreparably corrupted many who live there. Morally upright people have always been by far the easiest to sway to dubious causes by those who find ways of appealing to their sense of moral outrage.
"The fact that only horrible extremist tactics seem to work in the modern world (and cause damage to society that is so hard to reverse) further reinforces the perception that any remotely acceptable actions to try to improve things are futile."
Terrorists and some governments generally use the same argument, i.e. that they've tried the peaceful way, and nothing changed, so violence is justified if it eventually leads to a greater good (i.e. the end justifies the means). Organised groups of villains who are evil for the sake of it don't exist outside of fiction: the ones in the real world think of themselves as "the good guy" who has been forced by circumstances into "regrettable" courses of action.
"At best, 9/11 just increased the feeling of hopelessness among the proletariat, increasing the likelihood of riots and other similar violent actions occurring and increasing the level of public apathy towards the political process among non-reactionaries."
The term "terrorism" comes from the fact that its goal is to undermine the society or societies it's aimed at by using fear to change the way that people in those societies live. Every new law a government passes, every new department that it forms, and every new power given to law enforcement to deal with those terrorists is doing precisely what the terrorists want, i.e. increasing the internal pressure in ways that will result in ever more people being pushed to the point where they feel forced to do something. It doesn't matter if the something isn't violent initially, or whether those doing it have any sympathies with the terrorists, because all organised dissent has the potential to make governments react by tightening the screws, which in its turn leads to more dissent, a vicious circle that eventually leads to a situation where dissenters are in the majority due to the fact that the laws have become so broad it's nearly impossible for even members of the government not to be arrested as dissenters if somebody feels like doing so.
"has it shrunk? Really? You sure it's not just the increase in high street console game sales that make you think that."
It's shrinking as proportion of total gaming revenue, which isn't the same as actually shrinking in the numbers of units shifted. There are still plenty of games being released for PCs, which wouldn't be the case if there wasn't a market big enough to justify developing or porting them (porting can still cost a lot of money, especially to PCs, which have a lot more hardware variations to test against than consoles).
And while it's true that the PC section of many retailers is shrinking, that's largely a reflection of the fact that there are more console platforms competing for space nowadays than was the case a few years ago (Wii, DS, PS3, PS2, PSP, XBox360), so they consequently require more shelf space, and it has to come from somewhere.
I thought it was Nintendo too. Perhaps there was an article somewhere that got the name wrong which we both read (or we're both hopelessly mentally addled, which in my case at least is demonstrably true!).
Everquest was developed by Sony. The client runs on Windows PCs.
"Nintendo and Microsoft do the same."
Nintendo have released Pokemon and Warioware for Windows PCs (these are ones I know about -- there are probably more), and were one of the companies demonstrating an iPhone game.
"Give me a break. They killed a bunch of people, tore down some buildings with high symbolic value...and that's pretty much it."
Which had huge, world-changing consequences such as a recession that followed it, all sorts of military actions that are still being played out at vast cost to all of those involved in them, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
"Yeah, they shocked the world, but if it hadn't been for the mass sensationalism and rabid irrational fear that followed we wouldn't find ourselves in the situation we're in right now."
What precisely is there about mass sensationalism and rabid irrational fear leading to new laws that place new restrictions on the rights of every individual in many countries, make life for travellers far more miserable than was the case beforehand, and causes wars that have cost many thousands of lives which fails to meet your definition of a huge world-changing event that was precipitated by a handful of people (i.e. 19 of them)?
"Everything that followed was not caused by them, they were merely a convenient excuse."
Read the quote I was replying to, because it didn't mention causes. The phrase used was "something completely unexpected happening to show that a handful of individuals can make a huge difference in a world-changing way." The attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were unexpected by at least the vast majority of people; they were perpetrated by 19 individuals; and they did make a huge difference in a world-changing way, because the world post-911 is vastly different from the one that existed before it in many ways.
"Mac OS X has tons of proprietary API to re-implement as well."
There isn't really very much that most graphics-oriented games would gain from using those proprietary APIs with the notable exception of the Mac's audio systems. The bulk of a decent modern game wouldn't require anything beyond OpenGL and standard POSIX APIs, all of which are present in most UNIX-based and UNIX-like systems that people who want to run graphics-intense games on that type of computer are likely to be using.
Porting many games would however be less challenging than other types of apps because they tend not to use many features of Cocoa that aren't in AppKit, and the GNUStep version is pretty similar to the Cocoa one -- they're also far less reliant on IB NIB files and the growing collection of OS X UI widgets.
IMO the biggest problem with GNUStep portability wise is that it doesn't directly support Windows (you have to use MINGW or similar), so it's at best a way of helping to write stuff for UNIX and UNIX-like systems.
"Alot of game developers and studios are moving towards OpenGL these days not just because of the popularity of the Mac as a platform and because more college aged people are getting Macs but because they are disatisfied with Windows and DirectX."
It's actually more likely that they're developing for OpenGL because they can target the PlayStation 3, Wii, Symbian, iPhone, and in the future, Android with it. Macs are definitely icing on the cake that provide an added attraction, but they aren't the primary motivation, especially when many DirectX games can be fairly easily ported to (Intel) Macs with Cider.
"It is legal to produce and distribute tools for circumventing a copy protection technology, so long as there exists somewhere at least one public domain work that is protected by that technology?"
That's not what I wrote or implied. The situation is as follows:
The DMCA protects _copyrighted_ works, hence the fact that it's called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If there are no existing copyrights on something, then _that thing_ (and that thing alone) isn't subject to the DMCA.
The important thing to remember here though is that this doesn't mean everything which includes portions of a public domain work is itself in the public domain. A specific published version of the Collected Works Of Shakespeare that included extra explanatory and pictorial material for example would still be covered by copyrights even though the actual text by Shakespeare himself is in the public domain, so that work would also be covered by the DMCA, just as each movie or radio version of Shakespear's works carries its own copyrights, and therefore its own DMCA protections.
"If you call environmentally-responsible cars, quality furniture and non-McDonalds restaurants overpriced, then our definition of overpriced is different."
Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Rolls Royces, Lotuses, and Range Rovers aren't bought by environmentally responsible people; there's plenty of quality furniture that costs a tiny fraction of what some of the European designer houses charge (7,000 Euros for a desk lamp!); and one can have significantly better food than McDonald's without paying 400 Euros per course, and 1800 Euros for a bottle of wine. All of these are aimed at snobs, just like Harrods is aimed at snobs, and Gucci, Armani, Chanel, Luis Vitton, Cartier, and many other European brands target snobs.
"It's not nearly as bad as in the USA, where you can't even find alternative players in stores."
I suggest you peruse the web sites of some US-based retailers before saying things like this, because they all seem to stock a variety of portable music players from manufacturers other than Apple. Best Buy have players from Sony, Philips, and Insignia; Walmart carry Creative, Sony, Sandisk, Archos, RCA, Samsung, and XOVision; Sears sell Sony, RCA, IceTech, Sandisk, and others. I would thus appreciate you giving some concrete examples to back up your assertion that US store's don't offer alternatives to iPods and Zunes.
"So you're happy to be controlled by the mafiaa, virtually losing ownership of your own device,"
1) How does using iTunes to manage music equate to being controlled by the recording industry (I'd like some actual information here rather than more examples of your empty rhetoric and stupid cliches like "mafiaa" which do nothing for any appearance of objectivity on your part).
2) "Shit software" is an opinion, not an objective statement.
3) "Defective By Design" is yet another cliche that makes your posts look like the results of prejudice rather than having rejected iTunes based on its flaws (of which there are many).
4) I do not own an iPod or for that matter any other MP3 player, and have no plans to, so your silly statements about what I am willing to put up with are, like everything else you've said, entirely lacking in any factual foundation whatsoever.
"Quite obviously this is because in times of war, the Chinese could find themselves locked out of either the US or EU systems."
There are reasons the Chinese might want to do this other than for war purposes, i.e. that their prior experiences with Western powers have resulted in a situation where they don't trust us to keep our word to them about anything, just like we don't trust them to keep their word.
Try putting the boot on the other foot for a moment and consider a situation where the Chinese had the first GPS satellite system, and everyone else depended on it for all sorts of stuff. Would the US and Europe (a) trust them not to cut one or both of us off, or use the threat of doing so to put political pressure on us; or (b) spend large sums on our own independent system to prevent such a situation from ever occurring?
"It makes it illegal to have, distribute, or even discuss means of circumventing copy protection."
It actually makes it illegal to do these things with works protected by the DMCA, i.e. works that are protected by copyrights. The wording of the act is very specific about this, so there would be nothing illegal about circumventing copy protection mechanisms on works that the copyrights have expired on, or which that have entered the public domain in some other way.
"The the effective copyright extends beyond the actual copyright, and actually extends forever."
I know this is a common assertion on Slashdot and elsewhere, but (like so much of what appears here) that doesn't mean it's true. The DMCA is, as its name suggests, concerned with protecting copyrighted stuff, and the act makes it very clear about its scope using phrases such as "works protected by this act" throughout the section which deals with circumventing copy protection systems.
The real concerns about the DMCA are:
1) its effects on fair use provisions of US copyright laws, which it claims not to change, but effectively renders moot by prohibiting the bypassing technological protection measures even if it's the only way for people to exercise those fair use provisions.
2) Legitimate research into various types of encryption is stifled if they happen to be used in some copy protection system or device.
3) Competition in certain markets is also made much more difficult.
4) The legal weight of DMCA takedown notices means that many web-sites will remove content whenever they receive one without verifying that it was issued by the legitimate copyright holder or somebody they've authorised to act on their behalf. It goes without saying that this can easily result in situations where an individual or group's rights of free speech can be removed by anyone who doesn't like what they're saying (it can also be used to remove parodies etc. that are permissible according to the fair use provisions of copyright law).
Slashdot Mirror
"science uses correlation to assume causation all over the place; for example, cigarettes cause cancer."
Science does not say cigarettes cause cancer -- it says that regularly smoking more than a certain number of them over a long period _increases the likelihood_ of some specific types of cancer forming. The many research projects that have been carried out are very well aware of the fact that (a) those cancers existed in societies where tobacco was not a native plant before there were trade routes to the Americas; and (b) plenty of people have smoked regularly for their entire lives without showing signs of any of those cancers. Neither of these would be the case if any actual scientists were claiming that smoking _causes_ cancers.
Of course, there are lots of people and groups who do say that smoking causes cancer, and it's common for them to claim that they're basing their statements on science, but there's a big difference between what non-scientists (and I include most MDs in this category) tell us about scientific studies, and what's actually in those studies.
"Which is evidence that Julius Caesar could NOT walk on water."
It's actually evidence that brass busts have no legs, so they cannot walk on anything.
"The problem is, of course, that Windows and OS X both threw away decades of work and started from scratch"
MS released the first version of Windows in 1986, and previews of NexStep (which is the foundation for OS X) began in 1986 too, so development work on both was pretty much concurrent with the original MIT version of X (1984, with X11 appearing in 1987). It's not therefore correct to say that either threw away decades of work.
"I've used quite a few HP laptops, and frankly, I'd never be caught using another one, if I could help it."
Their business class laptops are actually pretty good, but they tend to cost nearly as much as Apple's offerings for something that's usually bigger and heavier, and lacks some of Apple's attention to detail. HP's domestic laptops on the other hand are rubbish that looks good to those reading paper specifications, but are made from far cheaper components than their business laptops, hence the fact that the latter cost nearly twice as much for what appears to be a similarly specified computer.
"Apple tech. support is WORLDS better than HP in the USA"
If my and other peoples' experiences are anything to go by, it's pretty good outside the US as well.
"17" silent-ish HP laptop : Eur 1000
17" PowerBook : Eur 2800"
1. Apple don't sell PowerBooks anymore, and the MacBook Pro 17" costs 2067 Euros + VAT.
2. HP's domestic portables are unmitigated crap that prove there's a lot more to a laptop than paper specifications. Their business machines (the ones that come with Windows Vista Business by default) are much better, but they cost significantly more -- around 1700 Euros + VAT for 17" laptops with a similar spec to the MacBook Pro 17", and you end up a larger, heavier machine that has a significantly smaller hard-disk, a slightly slower CPU, no keyboard illumination or motion sensors, a smaller touch-pad, and a plastic rather than aluminium case (it does however have a higher resolution display than the default Apple one).
The actual difference for hardware of similar quality and roughly equivalent specs from HP (each has advantages over the other in certain areas) is therefore around 350 Euros, which buys a slightly lighter, smaller laptop with motion and light sensors, an illuminated keyboard, a bigger touch pad, a mag-safe PSU connector, and a metal case.
"Ignoring ex cathedra papal infallibility is not very convincing given the history of contradictions between popes and their predecessors. But maybe my (lutheran) mindset is missing the magic involved ;)"
What your Lutheran mindset actually misses is the fact that ex-cathedra statements about matters of the Catholic Church's doctrinal and moral teachings (they are limited to this) cannot contradict a prior pope's ex-cathedra pronouncements, but they can contradict prior statements or acts that were not made ex-cathedra.
Papal infallibility is also limited to the the doctrines and morals taught by the Catholic Church itself.
"Young people are less experienced and therefore often less critical of what they see and hear. Advertisers already know this, which is why so many adverts are targeted for the young."
Advertising tends to be targeted at the young because:
1) They're less likely to have already made decisions about what products they like / don't like, and are therefore more open to trying new things.
2) Although they tend to have less income overall, they also have significantly fewer commitments, so they a spend a greater proportion of what they do have on themselves.
3) Peer pressure is much more prevalent in younger people, so advertising that can convince some of them that a particular item or image is desirable stands a good chance of selling those products to some of their friends and acquaintances.
"This is also supported by research - one one project found that where people under ~30 would often show interest in the adverts in magazines, people over that age tended to simply skip/discard advertising material out of hand without even looking at it"
Perhaps this was due to the fact that most of the ads in said magazines were targeting people who are 30 or under, just like most of the ads everywhere target people who are 30 or under.
"The one exception was the adverts from the local supermarket(s), because they tend to list the prices on daily items."
That's just a reflection of the fact that older people tend to have families and other commitments which means (a) they use much more of what supermarkets sell, and are therefore (b) receptive to offers that can save some of what is a significant, regular expense.
"The morale of the thing is that younger people are interested in things like image"
A lot of older people are interested in image as well, especially women, who will happily spend large sums on plastic surgery, cosmetics, creams, corsetry, hairdressers, and a host of other things that are specifically aimed at middle-aged (and older) women who want to look younger, fitter, and more attractive.
"more mature people go for things that have a practical value"
Mature people with plenty of money to spend on themselves tend to be equally easy to sell impractical things to as younger ones. The fact that most mature people aren't in the market for such things is therefore largely a reflection of there not being very many whose commitments don't consume the bulk of their income.
"Now that the technology has improved and the environment is being put in greater focus, we're starting to see more of a push towards greener technology."
The push towards alternate energy sources is actually due to the fact that (a) the price of traditional fossil-fuelled ones has reached a point where they're starting to make economic sense; and (b) far too many of the existing reserves are in the hands of countries we either don't trust now, or are unstable enough to be potentially untrustworthy in the future.
If the primary driving force for developing and using such technologies wasn't political and economic, then we wouldn't have pseudo-green policies such as making ethanol from grain using methods that result in far more CO2 being generated per litre of fuel burned than refined mineral oil products, carbon credit trading, and plans to pump the CO2 from dirty coal-burning power stations (because coal is plentiful domestically) underground in an attempt to pretend that it doesn't exist.
"Yes, the legislation does change something: it makes it illegal for third parties to provide the tools to transcribe it. "
It's clear from the quote of mine you're answering that we're talking about items that have entered the public domain, and I've already stated in every post on this topic that the DMCA doesn't cover things which are out of copyright, so it's clearly not illegal for third parties to distribute tools that transcribe them. The following is a simple sentence that says this in capital letters to aid the mentally challenged. I have nothing further to add, so more trolling on your part will not elicit any more responses.
THE DMCA DOES NOT PROHIBIT WRITING OR DISTRIBUTING TOOLS TO BREAK THE DRM ON THINGS THAT HAVE ENTERED THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Agreed in full. Being found guilty of something in a court does not mean that the person actually did what they were convicted of, just as being found not guilty doesn't mean they're innocent. There have been more than enough cases of people being convicted who were later completely exonerated and guilty people being acquitted for various reasons to indicate that law and justice are at best occasional companions.
"OK, tell me what I'm misunderstanding here."
OK.
"I purchase a copyrighted work that is protected by some copy protection technology."
Fair enough so far.
"A little bit later, the copyright on this work expires. At this point, I technically have a legal right to make a copy, but I still don't have the technical means to do so. Thus the legislation has made it physically impossible for me to exercise a right that it claims that, in some vacuous sense, I have."
The legislation changes absolutely nothing, because there is nothing in existing copyright law stating that the owner of said copyright is obliged in any way to provide others with a means of transcribing it when it passes into the public domain. Stuff was becoming unreadable long before anyone thought of copyrighting because languages became forgotten, and in some cases, have still not been decoded (e.g. Etruscan, which despite being written using Greek letters, has yet to be translated). The onus is therefore on you to decode copy-protected information, just as the onus is on you to find a way of playing music on paper tapes for steam calliopes on merry-go-rounds that no longer exist, the onus is on you to read what's stored on 12" disk platters for obsolete mainframes all of whose drives were broken up long ago, and the onus is on you to read movies stored on fragile and decayed celluloid or 8" floppies suffering from "bit rot".
There never has been any guarantee that future generations will be able to read information that was stored in the past, hence the fact that vast amounts of it have been completely lost, exist only in fragmentary form, or are unreadable because nobody has been able to translate them. This process didn't stop in the 20th century (indeed, it accelerated because the amount of what was being produced rose massively, so much more was also lost), and it will continue into the 21st, irrespective of whether the DMCA does or does not exist.
"Unfortunately, they changed the world in a way that no reasonable, morally upright person would even contemplate"
Defining things in terms of what's reasonable and moral makes it very easy to fall into the same trap that organisations such as Al Quaeda use to justify their actions, because they, their followers, and their supporters see themselves as reasonable, morally upright people who are fighting against what they regard as an evil Western hegemony that's dominated their homelands by force for centuries, and irreparably corrupted many who live there. Morally upright people have always been by far the easiest to sway to dubious causes by those who find ways of appealing to their sense of moral outrage.
"The fact that only horrible extremist tactics seem to work in the modern world (and cause damage to society that is so hard to reverse) further reinforces the perception that any remotely acceptable actions to try to improve things are futile."
Terrorists and some governments generally use the same argument, i.e. that they've tried the peaceful way, and nothing changed, so violence is justified if it eventually leads to a greater good (i.e. the end justifies the means). Organised groups of villains who are evil for the sake of it don't exist outside of fiction: the ones in the real world think of themselves as "the good guy" who has been forced by circumstances into "regrettable" courses of action.
"At best, 9/11 just increased the feeling of hopelessness among the proletariat, increasing the likelihood of riots and other similar violent actions occurring and increasing the level of public apathy towards the political process among non-reactionaries."
The term "terrorism" comes from the fact that its goal is to undermine the society or societies it's aimed at by using fear to change the way that people in those societies live. Every new law a government passes, every new department that it forms, and every new power given to law enforcement to deal with those terrorists is doing precisely what the terrorists want, i.e. increasing the internal pressure in ways that will result in ever more people being pushed to the point where they feel forced to do something. It doesn't matter if the something isn't violent initially, or whether those doing it have any sympathies with the terrorists, because all organised dissent has the potential to make governments react by tightening the screws, which in its turn leads to more dissent, a vicious circle that eventually leads to a situation where dissenters are in the majority due to the fact that the laws have become so broad it's nearly impossible for even members of the government not to be arrested as dissenters if somebody feels like doing so.
"has it shrunk? Really? You sure it's not just the increase in high street console game sales that make you think that."
It's shrinking as proportion of total gaming revenue, which isn't the same as actually shrinking in the numbers of units shifted. There are still plenty of games being released for PCs, which wouldn't be the case if there wasn't a market big enough to justify developing or porting them (porting can still cost a lot of money, especially to PCs, which have a lot more hardware variations to test against than consoles).
And while it's true that the PC section of many retailers is shrinking, that's largely a reflection of the fact that there are more console platforms competing for space nowadays than was the case a few years ago (Wii, DS, PS3, PS2, PSP, XBox360), so they consequently require more shelf space, and it has to come from somewhere.
I thought it was Nintendo too. Perhaps there was an article somewhere that got the name wrong which we both read (or we're both hopelessly mentally addled, which in my case at least is demonstrably true!).
"Sony only develops for their own hardware."
Everquest was developed by Sony. The client runs on Windows PCs.
"Nintendo and Microsoft do the same."
Nintendo have released Pokemon and Warioware for Windows PCs (these are ones I know about -- there are probably more), and were one of the companies demonstrating an iPhone game.
As for MS, well, they're MS. Nuff said!
"Give me a break. They killed a bunch of people, tore down some buildings with high symbolic value...and that's pretty much it."
Which had huge, world-changing consequences such as a recession that followed it, all sorts of military actions that are still being played out at vast cost to all of those involved in them, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
"Yeah, they shocked the world, but if it hadn't been for the mass sensationalism and rabid irrational fear that followed we wouldn't find ourselves in the situation we're in right now."
What precisely is there about mass sensationalism and rabid irrational fear leading to new laws that place new restrictions on the rights of every individual in many countries, make life for travellers far more miserable than was the case beforehand, and causes wars that have cost many thousands of lives which fails to meet your definition of a huge world-changing event that was precipitated by a handful of people (i.e. 19 of them)?
"Everything that followed was not caused by them, they were merely a convenient excuse."
Read the quote I was replying to, because it didn't mention causes. The phrase used was "something completely unexpected happening to show that a handful of individuals can make a huge difference in a world-changing way." The attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were unexpected by at least the vast majority of people; they were perpetrated by 19 individuals; and they did make a huge difference in a world-changing way, because the world post-911 is vastly different from the one that existed before it in many ways.
"Mac OS X has tons of proprietary API to re-implement as well."
There isn't really very much that most graphics-oriented games would gain from using those proprietary APIs with the notable exception of the Mac's audio systems. The bulk of a decent modern game wouldn't require anything beyond OpenGL and standard POSIX APIs, all of which are present in most UNIX-based and UNIX-like systems that people who want to run graphics-intense games on that type of computer are likely to be using.
Porting many games would however be less challenging than other types of apps because they tend not to use many features of Cocoa that aren't in AppKit, and the GNUStep version is pretty similar to the Cocoa one -- they're also far less reliant on IB NIB files and the growing collection of OS X UI widgets.
IMO the biggest problem with GNUStep portability wise is that it doesn't directly support Windows (you have to use MINGW or similar), so it's at best a way of helping to write stuff for UNIX and UNIX-like systems.
"Alot of game developers and studios are moving towards OpenGL these days not just because of the popularity of the Mac as a platform and because more college aged people are getting Macs but because they are disatisfied with Windows and DirectX."
It's actually more likely that they're developing for OpenGL because they can target the PlayStation 3, Wii, Symbian, iPhone, and in the future, Android with it. Macs are definitely icing on the cake that provide an added attraction, but they aren't the primary motivation, especially when many DirectX games can be fairly easily ported to (Intel) Macs with Cider.
"B. something completely unexpected happening to show that a handful of individuals can make a huge difference in a world-changing way."
Two words: Al Queda.
"It is legal to produce and distribute tools for circumventing a copy protection technology, so long as there exists somewhere at least one public domain work that is protected by that technology?"
That's not what I wrote or implied. The situation is as follows:
The DMCA protects _copyrighted_ works, hence the fact that it's called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If there are no existing copyrights on something, then _that thing_ (and that thing alone) isn't subject to the DMCA.
The important thing to remember here though is that this doesn't mean everything which includes portions of a public domain work is itself in the public domain. A specific published version of the Collected Works Of Shakespeare that included extra explanatory and pictorial material for example would still be covered by copyrights even though the actual text by Shakespeare himself is in the public domain, so that work would also be covered by the DMCA, just as each movie or radio version of Shakespear's works carries its own copyrights, and therefore its own DMCA protections.
"If you call environmentally-responsible cars, quality furniture and non-McDonalds restaurants overpriced, then our definition of overpriced is different."
Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Rolls Royces, Lotuses, and Range Rovers aren't bought by environmentally responsible people; there's plenty of quality furniture that costs a tiny fraction of what some of the European designer houses charge (7,000 Euros for a desk lamp!); and one can have significantly better food than McDonald's without paying 400 Euros per course, and 1800 Euros for a bottle of wine. All of these are aimed at snobs, just like Harrods is aimed at snobs, and Gucci, Armani, Chanel, Luis Vitton, Cartier, and many other European brands target snobs.
"It's not nearly as bad as in the USA, where you can't even find alternative players in stores."
I suggest you peruse the web sites of some US-based retailers before saying things like this, because they all seem to stock a variety of portable music players from manufacturers other than Apple. Best Buy have players from Sony, Philips, and Insignia; Walmart carry Creative, Sony, Sandisk, Archos, RCA, Samsung, and XOVision; Sears sell Sony, RCA, IceTech, Sandisk, and others. I would thus appreciate you giving some concrete examples to back up your assertion that US store's don't offer alternatives to iPods and Zunes.
"So you're happy to be controlled by the mafiaa, virtually losing ownership of your own device,"
1) How does using iTunes to manage music equate to being controlled by the recording industry (I'd like some actual information here rather than more examples of your empty rhetoric and stupid cliches like "mafiaa" which do nothing for any appearance of objectivity on your part).
2) "Shit software" is an opinion, not an objective statement.
3) "Defective By Design" is yet another cliche that makes your posts look like the results of prejudice rather than having rejected iTunes based on its flaws (of which there are many).
4) I do not own an iPod or for that matter any other MP3 player, and have no plans to, so your silly statements about what I am willing to put up with are, like everything else you've said, entirely lacking in any factual foundation whatsoever.
"Quite obviously this is because in times of war, the Chinese could find themselves locked out of either the US or EU systems."
There are reasons the Chinese might want to do this other than for war purposes, i.e. that their prior experiences with Western powers have resulted in a situation where they don't trust us to keep our word to them about anything, just like we don't trust them to keep their word.
Try putting the boot on the other foot for a moment and consider a situation where the Chinese had the first GPS satellite system, and everyone else depended on it for all sorts of stuff. Would the US and Europe (a) trust them not to cut one or both of us off, or use the threat of doing so to put political pressure on us; or (b) spend large sums on our own independent system to prevent such a situation from ever occurring?
"It makes it illegal to have, distribute, or even discuss means of circumventing copy protection."
It actually makes it illegal to do these things with works protected by the DMCA, i.e. works that are protected by copyrights. The wording of the act is very specific about this, so there would be nothing illegal about circumventing copy protection mechanisms on works that the copyrights have expired on, or which that have entered the public domain in some other way.
"The the effective copyright extends beyond the actual copyright, and actually extends forever."
I know this is a common assertion on Slashdot and elsewhere, but (like so much of what appears here) that doesn't mean it's true. The DMCA is, as its name suggests, concerned with protecting copyrighted stuff, and the act makes it very clear about its scope using phrases such as "works protected by this act" throughout the section which deals with circumventing copy protection systems.
The real concerns about the DMCA are:
1) its effects on fair use provisions of US copyright laws, which it claims not to change, but effectively renders moot by prohibiting the bypassing technological protection measures even if it's the only way for people to exercise those fair use provisions.
2) Legitimate research into various types of encryption is stifled if they happen to be used in some copy protection system or device.
3) Competition in certain markets is also made much more difficult.
4) The legal weight of DMCA takedown notices means that many web-sites will remove content whenever they receive one without verifying that it was issued by the legitimate copyright holder or somebody they've authorised to act on their behalf. It goes without saying that this can easily result in situations where an individual or group's rights of free speech can be removed by anyone who doesn't like what they're saying (it can also be used to remove parodies etc. that are permissible according to the fair use provisions of copyright law).