One could point out that there are still a lot of random variables and perhaps god is in those. They could say their god has influence on the mutations in evolutionary processes, or the unknown variables in weather systems, etc. I'm not saying that is the case. I'm just pointing out that just because it rains "due to atmospherics" doesn't rule out that it wasn't "because god is angry".
I realize that the above sounds incredibly like moving goal posts. Then again, I don't think any religious person who claims that god caused it to rain also claimed that it was done in ways incompatible with the physical universe they claim he created. Except for a few of the (loud) fundamentalists, most would claim god caused it to rain and be done. They don't try to explain specifics. Whether their god popped a water balloon over their heads or caused a butterfly to flap its wings is irrelevant to them.
As another example, evolution works by itself. But the god believers could say that at one point god decided to throw in a random mutation that eventually caused multi-cellular organisms. Then after watching that for a few million years, added a mutation that eventually caused mammals to appear. Suppose we knew all possible factors that caused mutations. Suppose we could see every single instance of mutations that occurred. Suppose that none of those observed mutations strayed from explanations. That doesn't rule out that perhaps god just wasn't interested in making mutations during the observations. He made the last mutations 50 million years ago and the next one isn't scheduled for another 50 million years, perhaps.
Again, I'm not saying it is that way or not. I am saying that you would have to be able to observe all things at all times in order to prove that there isn't a "god" that has no effect whatsoever, and therefore does not exist. Of course, you could get by with much less in order to disprove a specific god or claim of god, or even all known claimed gods, but not any god.
And all of that ignores a god who maybe caused the big bang to happen in such a way that it caused everything to happen how it has (including me writing this post and pointing that out). But that gets into the whole no free will thing which I don't want to get into right now.
Reading your other posts I know that you've thought this through. I'm happy for you. You made a decision you're happy with. Good for you. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. However, I have made a choice different than yours based on my preferences.
Valve has said (so I've heard) that they'll unlock all the games if they were to go under. In that case, I'm happy and I'll make backups just like you have said you are doing with your disks. But, let's assume Steam does die, that when it does I will still care about the games I have, and that they don't release an unlock patch. Then, I will pirate the games and I will still be happy. All of those things are possibilities. That is, it is possible Steam will go under in my lifetime. It is possible that I will still want/be able to play the games I have when that happens. It is possible that Valve will go back on their word and not release a patch. All possibilities. None of it definite.
I like the games I have. I want to play them. So I decided that I would use Steam and all its attendant benefits. Namely, for me, that I don't have to worry about backing up disks, I don't have to worry about putting in a disk or even mounting it with Daemon Tools or similar, I don't have to worry about copying disks in such a way to bypass copy protection schemes. I could go to a friends house across the country and download all my games and play them on his computer. Another benefit is I get to play Steam-only games legitimately such as Portal and the Half-Life series without having to use a crappy console version. You have decided you don't want to play those games (at least not an a PC). Fine, maybe they aren't your cup of tea. Maybe it's a sacrifice you're willing to make. But that was your choice and this one is mine. Do I have a problem with it? Nope. Like I said, I'm a happy user. If a problem came up where I was screwed over, I assure you I have a back up plan. It's called thepiratebay.org.
Yup, I am the quintessential Steam user. I smartly decided that for a definite benefit now, I will risk a possible inconvenience later. Playing with disks isn't a monumental burden, however, it does contain the risk of of eventually scratching the disk, especially as I have children in the house. When that happens, I lose a game. That is a much worse burden than my daughter not being able to play Bejeweled while I play Half-Life 5. I could be extra careful with the disks, even locking them up so that my children can't have access, but that just increases the burden of using disks, which increases the benefit of Steam. So thank you for your proper assessment of my smart decision. I'm glad to be counted amongst other smart individuals who have made a smart decision that weighs the known current and future benefits with the slight chance that sometime in the future a problem might possibly maybe happen.
Have fun on the train track. Trains are hard to miss. They're loud, big, and even make the ground tremble. At night they have lights. So go ahead and enjoy standing on the tracks. When one comes along you should be able to easily account for that small risk in your pursuit of enjoyment and take a corrective action so as to continue with your happy train track standing pleasures. This indicates to me that you can also weigh risks and benefits and make decisions that you feel are worthwhile. If you aren't already, you could be a quintessential Steam user, too.
I certainly don't doubt that it might sometime in the future possibly bite me. However, I have no problem with it now. I like that it keeps track of all my games and allows me to install and play without any physical media. As of now, all of my games are Valve games (except for a trial version of Peggle) so offline mode has worked without any hitches (for me, anyway). I realize there are problems, I can also see potential future problems. However, I am happy. I'm not claiming it is perfect, but it's reasonable for the time being.
Also, my daughter is 2, so it's nice to know that Half-Life 3, 4, and 5 with all their attendant episodes will be out in the next 8 years.
It's not the same as stealing (and neither is the same as copyright infringement), but both scenarios lead to the developers being $9,999,950 in the hole. Which is what houstonbofh was pointing out.
While I'm a happy Steam user (because I only buy games after much deliberation and have not yet come across one I've wanted to sell off) I agree with you; that is just stupid. Not only is it stupid, it's especially so since software doesn't degrade like a used toaster would. My copy of Half-Life 2 is just as spiffy as it was the day I bought it, whereas my toaster is not.
That is a thin line until you realize that success or failure don't mean billionaire or hobo. Nor are you taking into account that it isn't boolean logic. Have you succeeded or failed if you only get 75% of your goal? What if the goal was to make a $1,000,000 but only $900,000 was made? I wouldn't exactly call it failure.
Then again, maybe that's why I'm not a billionaire.
The sibling posters have made excellent responses to you already, but I'm going to point out another aspect.
Look at any supply and demand curve and you will see that when supply becomes infinite that price drops to 0 regardless of demand. In the digital age making copies can be done for such trivial cost and by anyone so easily that supply of a recorded song is infinite for all intents and purposes. Economically smart musicians will realize this, and the economically dumb ones should hire economically smart managers that would realize this. You sell the scarcity, not the infinite good. Every artist has some kind of scarcity they can sell. It could be concerts, t-shirts, posters, etc. But it could even just be access to the musician. This has been done by small-time artists (e.g., Corey Smith) as well as big-name artists (e.g., Trent Reznor).
If a musician is finding that it isn't worth creating music because of financial reasons, it could be that their music has no value to anyone(i.e., it sucks) or that people who would value it can't find them. Free music can help to fix the latter. No business model, no amount of copyrights, no amount of DRM, no amount of copy-protection is going to fix the former.
There needs to be a class on Copyright law that people can take. I wish there was something easy for people with such stupid ideas about copyrights. You buy the content. It is your content. There is no license. Copyrights aren't about licenses. Copyrights are nothing more than the government granting the copyright holder the sole ability to make copies for distribution purposes until the copyright runs out. At that point, the copyright no longer exists, and anyone can copy for distribution purposes (i.e., it becomes public domain).
You can do whatever you want with a copyrighted work just the same as you can do whatever you want with a ham sandwich. You can study it, watch it, copy it, sit on it, throw it away, sell it, etc., etc., etc. You just can't make copies for distribution. Why is this so hard for people to understand? There is no license involved unless you specifically licensed the content. There is no assumed license, no implied license. Unless you and the copyright holder sat down and made a license explicitly, then once you buy the disk, or tape, or book, or whatever, you own it. Done deal, end of story.
DRM on the other hand goes beyond copyrights, especially in conjunction with the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. I wish the law stated that copyrights and DRM ought to be as different as patents and business secrets. Just like you can't have a patented business secret as the act of patenting it will make it no longer secret, I think you shouldn't be able to DRM a copyrighted work because putting on DRM is an attempt to keep the work from ever getting to the public domain (length of copyright terms aside).
You do realise that when you look at the species around you, all you see are winners, right?
If there is one species declaring itself a winner, I'm pretty sure evolution is going to mutate another species and inform the "winner" that the game isn't over yet.
1. Yes they did
2. Yes it is, but it was only an example. Agriculture requires cooperation as well, but in less obvious ways.
3. Nobody, that was just a comment about how I'd like to see life. And by that I don't mean that everyone are all the same, but that we are all happy.
4. If you're referring to Thomas Malthus, I hardly think I've made any point that would warrant bringing him up.
libdvdcss can play DRM encumbered media but won't downgrade the output if you don't have the right graphics card and monitor. I don't know if it supports Blu-ray, but if it did/does, I doubt it would.
I'm not the original poster, but I assume he has his standards and he won't recommend an OS that goes against those. If Apple started killing poor people on altars for Steve Jobs health, I doubt a lot of people would be recommending OS X. If Linus Torvalds thought it'd be fun to fling poo out of his car window at homeless people, I'm pretty sure there would be a movement in the OSS world to distance themselves from him. Not that I'm equating DRM to those activities. I'm just using some extreme examples of how the parent might have objections to how MS puts DRM into Windows and thus he won't recommend them on that basis.
Perhaps, and it'd certainly require cooperation to bring down a mammoth. But 100 people cooperating to do so still doesn't provide for the nutritional needs of everyone. Either some people will not be nourished, or everyone will not be fully nourished. In the case of the former, that's competition, in the case of the latter, it will lead to competition. So even if we had no wants, if the resources that satisfy those needs aren't plentiful enough, you'll still end up with competition.
Even so, many people will only cooperate with those who they feel aren't a competitive threat, whether it's for needs or wants. Don't get me wrong, I still think that if we could all cooperate and that it would a blissful utopia, but the realities are that we have limited resources and that enough humans are not cooperative enough of the time that we cannot expect cooperation alone to get us by.
In general this is true, until you only have one coke bottle. Only so many people can have water front property in Hawaii, and while I recognize that not everyone wants it, enough people do that there is no way to satisfy everyone. Someone is going to get it, someone else is not, and thus cooperation is no longer desirable. Now it's just competition.
In many cases, cooperation is good. Many times, competition is better. I think it would be great if the whole of humanity could get together and work hard for the good of everyone, making sure that we innovated everywhere possible. The reality of it is, competition is a very motivating force, and sometimes competition motivates us to cooperate. For example, I will cooperate with my coworkers to make my company better so that I can get paid more so I can buy waterfront property from that other guy. I cooperate with some, to compete with others for scarce resources.
There are limited resources, and we are in competition for them whether we like it or not. Until we have unlimited resources then we will have competition. Cooperation is great with small groups of people trying to kill a mammoth. It starts to fall apart when you have more people than you can satisfy on mammoth meat. Somebody is going to go with less than they want. Even if you had 100% (rounding up is not allowed) of the group's population agreeing how to divide up the limited resources, you'd still have some people going with out something they want. Again, there is only one coke bottle, there is only so much waterfront property, the mammoth only has so much meat.
I'd love to see everyone be open and honest and helpful and cooperative. But it's going to take some serious changes in humanity before that becomes viable.
For a site that tries to serve the interest of nerds, who are notorious for getting details correct, it's amazing the number of people who have pointed out, like you, that alligators are not endangered while replying to a comment that mentions that American Crocodiles are.
It's not like we're talking about two different species of Crocodiles. This isn't like talking about the Northern Spotted Owl (endangered) and the California Spotted Owl (not endangered), this is like talking about rats and kangaroo mice. Sure they might look alike at first glance, but they're not the same, and their names don't even look similar. Your post is especially egregious as the GP even listed the scientific name, and then you link a paper that also has a completely different scientific name listed right at the top in bold, large-font letters.
Again, we're not talking the difference between Strix occidentalis caurina and Strix occidentalis occidentalis.
We're talking the difference between Crocodylus acutus and Alligator mississippiensis.
In the case of the Spotted owls, the scientific names look similar, but the words "alligator" and "crocodile" look nothing alike and their scientific names look even more dissimilar.
I think it would be pretty difficult for Australian Senator Stephen Conroy to end up being any of those things seeing as you added the whole "US Congressional members" requirement. I suppose he could move to the US and be qualified within 7 years for the HoR or 9 years for the Senate.
Re:Parents choose their baby's name
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What would it be like to be able to see an extra color?
As a color blind person, I think it would make me see like 90% of the population.
Slashdot Mirror
One could point out that there are still a lot of random variables and perhaps god is in those. They could say their god has influence on the mutations in evolutionary processes, or the unknown variables in weather systems, etc. I'm not saying that is the case. I'm just pointing out that just because it rains "due to atmospherics" doesn't rule out that it wasn't "because god is angry".
I realize that the above sounds incredibly like moving goal posts. Then again, I don't think any religious person who claims that god caused it to rain also claimed that it was done in ways incompatible with the physical universe they claim he created. Except for a few of the (loud) fundamentalists, most would claim god caused it to rain and be done. They don't try to explain specifics. Whether their god popped a water balloon over their heads or caused a butterfly to flap its wings is irrelevant to them.
As another example, evolution works by itself. But the god believers could say that at one point god decided to throw in a random mutation that eventually caused multi-cellular organisms. Then after watching that for a few million years, added a mutation that eventually caused mammals to appear. Suppose we knew all possible factors that caused mutations. Suppose we could see every single instance of mutations that occurred. Suppose that none of those observed mutations strayed from explanations. That doesn't rule out that perhaps god just wasn't interested in making mutations during the observations. He made the last mutations 50 million years ago and the next one isn't scheduled for another 50 million years, perhaps.
Again, I'm not saying it is that way or not. I am saying that you would have to be able to observe all things at all times in order to prove that there isn't a "god" that has no effect whatsoever, and therefore does not exist. Of course, you could get by with much less in order to disprove a specific god or claim of god, or even all known claimed gods, but not any god.
And all of that ignores a god who maybe caused the big bang to happen in such a way that it caused everything to happen how it has (including me writing this post and pointing that out). But that gets into the whole no free will thing which I don't want to get into right now.
Reading your other posts I know that you've thought this through. I'm happy for you. You made a decision you're happy with. Good for you. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. However, I have made a choice different than yours based on my preferences.
Valve has said (so I've heard) that they'll unlock all the games if they were to go under. In that case, I'm happy and I'll make backups just like you have said you are doing with your disks. But, let's assume Steam does die, that when it does I will still care about the games I have, and that they don't release an unlock patch. Then, I will pirate the games and I will still be happy. All of those things are possibilities. That is, it is possible Steam will go under in my lifetime. It is possible that I will still want/be able to play the games I have when that happens. It is possible that Valve will go back on their word and not release a patch. All possibilities. None of it definite.
I like the games I have. I want to play them. So I decided that I would use Steam and all its attendant benefits. Namely, for me, that I don't have to worry about backing up disks, I don't have to worry about putting in a disk or even mounting it with Daemon Tools or similar, I don't have to worry about copying disks in such a way to bypass copy protection schemes. I could go to a friends house across the country and download all my games and play them on his computer. Another benefit is I get to play Steam-only games legitimately such as Portal and the Half-Life series without having to use a crappy console version. You have decided you don't want to play those games (at least not an a PC). Fine, maybe they aren't your cup of tea. Maybe it's a sacrifice you're willing to make. But that was your choice and this one is mine. Do I have a problem with it? Nope. Like I said, I'm a happy user. If a problem came up where I was screwed over, I assure you I have a back up plan. It's called thepiratebay.org.
Yup, I am the quintessential Steam user. I smartly decided that for a definite benefit now, I will risk a possible inconvenience later. Playing with disks isn't a monumental burden, however, it does contain the risk of of eventually scratching the disk, especially as I have children in the house. When that happens, I lose a game. That is a much worse burden than my daughter not being able to play Bejeweled while I play Half-Life 5. I could be extra careful with the disks, even locking them up so that my children can't have access, but that just increases the burden of using disks, which increases the benefit of Steam. So thank you for your proper assessment of my smart decision. I'm glad to be counted amongst other smart individuals who have made a smart decision that weighs the known current and future benefits with the slight chance that sometime in the future a problem might possibly maybe happen.
Have fun on the train track. Trains are hard to miss. They're loud, big, and even make the ground tremble. At night they have lights. So go ahead and enjoy standing on the tracks. When one comes along you should be able to easily account for that small risk in your pursuit of enjoyment and take a corrective action so as to continue with your happy train track standing pleasures. This indicates to me that you can also weigh risks and benefits and make decisions that you feel are worthwhile. If you aren't already, you could be a quintessential Steam user, too.
I certainly don't doubt that it might sometime in the future possibly bite me. However, I have no problem with it now. I like that it keeps track of all my games and allows me to install and play without any physical media. As of now, all of my games are Valve games (except for a trial version of Peggle) so offline mode has worked without any hitches (for me, anyway). I realize there are problems, I can also see potential future problems. However, I am happy. I'm not claiming it is perfect, but it's reasonable for the time being.
Also, my daughter is 2, so it's nice to know that Half-Life 3, 4, and 5 with all their attendant episodes will be out in the next 8 years.
It's not the same as stealing (and neither is the same as copyright infringement), but both scenarios lead to the developers being $9,999,950 in the hole. Which is what houstonbofh was pointing out.
While I'm a happy Steam user (because I only buy games after much deliberation and have not yet come across one I've wanted to sell off) I agree with you; that is just stupid. Not only is it stupid, it's especially so since software doesn't degrade like a used toaster would. My copy of Half-Life 2 is just as spiffy as it was the day I bought it, whereas my toaster is not.
That is a thin line until you realize that success or failure don't mean billionaire or hobo. Nor are you taking into account that it isn't boolean logic. Have you succeeded or failed if you only get 75% of your goal? What if the goal was to make a $1,000,000 but only $900,000 was made? I wouldn't exactly call it failure.
Then again, maybe that's why I'm not a billionaire.
I'm just surprised no one has mentioned the Scopes trial here. It seems to be rather fitting.
The sibling posters have made excellent responses to you already, but I'm going to point out another aspect.
Look at any supply and demand curve and you will see that when supply becomes infinite that price drops to 0 regardless of demand. In the digital age making copies can be done for such trivial cost and by anyone so easily that supply of a recorded song is infinite for all intents and purposes. Economically smart musicians will realize this, and the economically dumb ones should hire economically smart managers that would realize this. You sell the scarcity, not the infinite good. Every artist has some kind of scarcity they can sell. It could be concerts, t-shirts, posters, etc. But it could even just be access to the musician. This has been done by small-time artists (e.g., Corey Smith) as well as big-name artists (e.g., Trent Reznor).
If a musician is finding that it isn't worth creating music because of financial reasons, it could be that their music has no value to anyone(i.e., it sucks) or that people who would value it can't find them. Free music can help to fix the latter. No business model, no amount of copyrights, no amount of DRM, no amount of copy-protection is going to fix the former.
It only uses flash memory because the GP accidentally the entire hard drive.
There needs to be a class on Copyright law that people can take. I wish there was something easy for people with such stupid ideas about copyrights. You buy the content. It is your content. There is no license. Copyrights aren't about licenses. Copyrights are nothing more than the government granting the copyright holder the sole ability to make copies for distribution purposes until the copyright runs out. At that point, the copyright no longer exists, and anyone can copy for distribution purposes (i.e., it becomes public domain).
You can do whatever you want with a copyrighted work just the same as you can do whatever you want with a ham sandwich. You can study it, watch it, copy it, sit on it, throw it away, sell it, etc., etc., etc. You just can't make copies for distribution. Why is this so hard for people to understand? There is no license involved unless you specifically licensed the content. There is no assumed license, no implied license. Unless you and the copyright holder sat down and made a license explicitly, then once you buy the disk, or tape, or book, or whatever, you own it. Done deal, end of story.
DRM on the other hand goes beyond copyrights, especially in conjunction with the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. I wish the law stated that copyrights and DRM ought to be as different as patents and business secrets. Just like you can't have a patented business secret as the act of patenting it will make it no longer secret, I think you shouldn't be able to DRM a copyrighted work because putting on DRM is an attempt to keep the work from ever getting to the public domain (length of copyright terms aside).
Or maybe it's more like "Do whatever you want as long as you're not going to take away my job while I'm looking for another one."
Who's looking out for the survival of the chytrid fungus?
If there is one species declaring itself a winner, I'm pretty sure evolution is going to mutate another species and inform the "winner" that the game isn't over yet.
1. Yes they did
2. Yes it is, but it was only an example. Agriculture requires cooperation as well, but in less obvious ways.
3. Nobody, that was just a comment about how I'd like to see life. And by that I don't mean that everyone are all the same, but that we are all happy.
4. If you're referring to Thomas Malthus, I hardly think I've made any point that would warrant bringing him up.
You don't need wine. You need a web browser.
And what does the $100 comment have anything to do with what the GP said?
libdvdcss can play DRM encumbered media but won't downgrade the output if you don't have the right graphics card and monitor. I don't know if it supports Blu-ray, but if it did/does, I doubt it would.
I'm not the original poster, but I assume he has his standards and he won't recommend an OS that goes against those. If Apple started killing poor people on altars for Steve Jobs health, I doubt a lot of people would be recommending OS X. If Linus Torvalds thought it'd be fun to fling poo out of his car window at homeless people, I'm pretty sure there would be a movement in the OSS world to distance themselves from him. Not that I'm equating DRM to those activities. I'm just using some extreme examples of how the parent might have objections to how MS puts DRM into Windows and thus he won't recommend them on that basis.
Perhaps, and it'd certainly require cooperation to bring down a mammoth. But 100 people cooperating to do so still doesn't provide for the nutritional needs of everyone. Either some people will not be nourished, or everyone will not be fully nourished. In the case of the former, that's competition, in the case of the latter, it will lead to competition. So even if we had no wants, if the resources that satisfy those needs aren't plentiful enough, you'll still end up with competition.
Even so, many people will only cooperate with those who they feel aren't a competitive threat, whether it's for needs or wants. Don't get me wrong, I still think that if we could all cooperate and that it would a blissful utopia, but the realities are that we have limited resources and that enough humans are not cooperative enough of the time that we cannot expect cooperation alone to get us by.
In general this is true, until you only have one coke bottle. Only so many people can have water front property in Hawaii, and while I recognize that not everyone wants it, enough people do that there is no way to satisfy everyone. Someone is going to get it, someone else is not, and thus cooperation is no longer desirable. Now it's just competition.
In many cases, cooperation is good. Many times, competition is better. I think it would be great if the whole of humanity could get together and work hard for the good of everyone, making sure that we innovated everywhere possible. The reality of it is, competition is a very motivating force, and sometimes competition motivates us to cooperate. For example, I will cooperate with my coworkers to make my company better so that I can get paid more so I can buy waterfront property from that other guy. I cooperate with some, to compete with others for scarce resources.
There are limited resources, and we are in competition for them whether we like it or not. Until we have unlimited resources then we will have competition. Cooperation is great with small groups of people trying to kill a mammoth. It starts to fall apart when you have more people than you can satisfy on mammoth meat. Somebody is going to go with less than they want. Even if you had 100% (rounding up is not allowed) of the group's population agreeing how to divide up the limited resources, you'd still have some people going with out something they want. Again, there is only one coke bottle, there is only so much waterfront property, the mammoth only has so much meat.
I'd love to see everyone be open and honest and helpful and cooperative. But it's going to take some serious changes in humanity before that becomes viable.
Sure there is, just assign the copyright over to "RIAA-alikes" and you won't be compensated or have any control of your works ever again.
For a site that tries to serve the interest of nerds, who are notorious for getting details correct, it's amazing the number of people who have pointed out, like you, that alligators are not endangered while replying to a comment that mentions that American Crocodiles are.
It's not like we're talking about two different species of Crocodiles. This isn't like talking about the Northern Spotted Owl (endangered) and the California Spotted Owl (not endangered), this is like talking about rats and kangaroo mice. Sure they might look alike at first glance, but they're not the same, and their names don't even look similar. Your post is especially egregious as the GP even listed the scientific name, and then you link a paper that also has a completely different scientific name listed right at the top in bold, large-font letters.
Again, we're not talking the difference between
Strix occidentalis caurina and
Strix occidentalis occidentalis.
We're talking the difference between
Crocodylus acutus and
Alligator mississippiensis.
In the case of the Spotted owls, the scientific names look similar, but the words "alligator" and "crocodile" look nothing alike and their scientific names look even more dissimilar.
I think it would be pretty difficult for Australian Senator Stephen Conroy to end up being any of those things seeing as you added the whole "US Congressional members" requirement. I suppose he could move to the US and be qualified within 7 years for the HoR or 9 years for the Senate.
What would it be like to be able to see an extra color?
As a color blind person, I think it would make me see like 90% of the population.
I don't think they are inventing an issue here....It is simply unfortunate that he has little to work with here.
The first sign of inventing an issue is not having a lot to work with.