That person has created a copy of my identity and is using it.
It's clearly not a copy, as actions taken with regard to that identity affect your identity, not some theoretical copy of an identity.
At least you admit that depriving someone of exclusive use of their property (including their identity or intellectual property) against their consent is "taking something", which made your whole argument that copyright infringement isn't "taking anything" completely moot.
Copyright infringement covers copying and broadcast. Not use.
let's take a thesarus for a spin
Thesauri not only list synonyms, but related words as well. You don't seriously think that all those words mean the same thing do you? You don't have a point there.
I'm not the one mincing words. Read the Supreme Court's decision. Unless you are deliberately misreading it, it's clear that they don't think theft and copyright infringement are the same thing (bar one dissenting judge). Just read it, don't go on selective quotes, read the whole thing.
people who actively advocate the use of the term "infringement" as an alternative are attempting to play the propaganda game from the other side
No, they aren't. Copyright infringement is the correct term. There's no term that is more accurate or less misleading. That's simply what it is. That's the offence.
the connotation of infringement implies that one has done little or nothing of consequence.
Hardly. If you steal a CD, the harm is the loss of the value of one CD. If you upload it to the Internet, then the harm could potentially be the value of thousands of CDs. The penalties for copyright infringement are much harsher than for theft.
Conversely, copyright infringement can also be harmless or even beneicial, as in the example already provided of people using it as a purchasing aid.
What does this mean? Is one type of offence better or worse than the other? Of course not. It means they are completely different offences with completely different consequences. That's why it makes sense to call them different things.
Better, perhaps, to simply acknowledge that each side has its own "agenda".
Only if you characterise the side calling copyright infringement "copyright infringement" as attempting to push the viewpoint that copyright infringement is a lesser offence than theft. In reality, it's merely a different offence to theft. That's not an agenda, it's a simple fact.
I don't have the OED handy, but the Concise OED doesn't include the definition you describe. Unless you count abbreviations of "take a copy", I've never heard "take" being used in that manner before either. Do you have another reference?
Whether something is material or immaterial is not relevant to my argument, by the way.
Again, the SC simply explained why the interstate act, 2314, didn't apply in this case, and why they didn't feel comfortable extending it to do so.
And in their ruling, they explained the reason why they didn't feel comfortable in doing so was because it doesn't really make sense to equate copyright infringement with theft. So, when somebody claims "It's theft" when referring to copyright infringement, it's not unreasonable to point out that the Supreme Court disagrees with them.
As to the rest, you can play dueling dictionaries all you want. I'll take the definition I found.
I was referring to the same definition as you. The one that said "take".
The ultimate point, however, is that people are not somehow automatically entitled to whatever it is they think they want, no matter how badly they rationalize it, or what word games they play.
I have never claimed that and never would. You are reading too much into my comments.
Actually, what the Court ruled was that copyright infringement didn't meet the "taking" clause of the National Stolen Property Act. That's a far cry from saying that it isn't theft at all.
See the quote I posted elsewhere in this thread.
I'm not depriving anyone of their identity
I'm not so sure about that. When somebody, say, applies for a credit card, they are using their identity as a means to get that card. If an "identity thief" has assumed your identity and screwed up your credit rating, they have taken your identity from you haven't they? Or damaged it in some way? I'm not entirely convinced, but "identity theft" is justifiable in ways that copyright infringement isn't. The "identity thieves" aren't copying your identity, they are taking yours.
To the person on the street, it means having something that doesn't belong to them and that they have no right to have
You are confusing the words "theft" and "misappropriation". All theft is misappropriation, but not all misappropriation is theft. Copyright is an example of something that is misappropriation but not theft.
You said that "downloading illegally is the most convenient method of hearing the music before they decide whether or not they are going to buy it." I inferred from this that you think that the process should be made legal.
No. I said for many people it's the most convenient method, in the context of trying something out before you buy it. While I don't think it's a particularly heinous crime, I wouldn't go so far as to say it should be legalised, just that it's convenient for people who are intending to buy music. This was in reply to somebody that said there's absolutely no justification for downloading illegally. The justification I was pointing out was that it's a purchasing aid for many people.
But since that makes it possible for people to download the music for free, the labels take 100% of the risk: that is, people can get the music legally for free and it would be mostly out of the goodness of their hearts to actually buy the music
Yes, that's an untenable position because, in practice, it would either force consumers to pay for what they download, thus negating the "try before you buy" aspect, or it would abolish copyright. I think abolishing copyright could well be a good thing, but it's impossible to evaluate the impact on society until we get copyright to a more balanced state than it is at the moment.
Right now, there's hardly any contemporary music in the public domain, so we can't tell whether the music industry can coexist with plentiful public domain music. Moving copyright back to more reasonable terms (e.g. ~15 years) would help determine whether or not abolishing copyright would be beneficial or not.
So I apologize if I put words in your mouth, but I at least hope this clears up why I said what I did. I may well be wrong, but I mean well.
No need to apologise, it makes a nice change to have somebody re-examine and explain their reply instead of mindlessly calling people thieves.
Legacy browsers introduced tooltips into HTML by showing them on links and using the value of the alt attribute as a tooltip's content. The latest W3C HTML specification finally standardized tooltips, and uses the value of the new title attribute rather than the deprecated alt attribute. Mozilla will only show a tooltip for the title tag, per the specification.
This is wrong. Firstly, the alt attribute is not deprecated. In fact, it was optional in HTML 3.2 and required for all <img> elements in HTML 4 and newer.
Also, the title attribute isn't "for" tooltips, and the specification doesn't say that they should be displayed as such. The title attribute is for supplementary information, which can be displayed in the most appropriate manner for the circumstances. It just so happens that in most cases this is best accomplished with a tooltip, but that's merely incidental and not required behaviour.
Finally: it's the title attribute. The <title> tag is a completely different thing and does not work the way they describe.
The Javascript object detection versus browser detection bit was decent enough though. It's just a shame they used invalid code in the examples they gave. People will be copying these examples, so they only cause more invalid code to be written.
As far as using onload is concerned, you need to keep in mind that it only fires once all the parts of a page have been loaded - so, for example, if you have ads and the ad server is a bit slow, your onload element might fire thirty seconds after you think it should. This is a big deal when you are manipulating the page content - imagine typing something into an input control, only to have the onload set the focus to the control - in many browsers this will automatically select the text, which means you'll be typing away and suddenly the second half of what you are typing overwrites the first half.
Where such timing is a problem, you have no choice but to insert <script> elements directly after that part of the document you are manipulating. This won't change until browsers implement more load type events.
Last thing: the author should learn what a tag is and isn't. 98% of the time he says "tag", he means "element", 1% of the time he means "attribute", and 1% of the time he means "element type". I only skimmed the article, but I think I only saw once instance where he actually meant "tag".
To back up, "Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud." So, to quote your own case, there are property interests and it's not just "run-of-the-mill theft".
You are misreading that. It does not say that copyright infringement is more than "run-of-the-mill theft". It says that copyright infringement is not "run-of-the-mill theft". I notice you didn't quote the more relevant sentence that preceded your quote:
Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use.
Now, from dictionary.com: Theft: "a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent."
Property OR services. Check. Without consent. Check.
Take: no check there.
I notice you conveniently ignored the part of my comment and the dictionary definition that pointed out that you have to take something in order to steal.
Yes, when you post stuff that is factually correct and pertinent to the topic at hand, you generally get modded up. Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here.
Like I pointed out elsewhere, the iTMS samples are only available in some countries. iTMS itself is only available in some countries.
it seems unfair to defend illegally-downloading music, since it is VERY unfair to the music labels (since they have no way of distinguishing between "I was just trying it out" and "I decided that I'd rather not pay you for it").
Not at all. Whether it's fair or not is not dependent upon whether or not the music labels can tell whether you are trying before you buy or not.
I'm not saying that the compromise is completely fair to you, but it does seem that asking them to shoulder 100% of the risk is even more unfair to them.
Where did I say they should shoulder 100% of the risk? I think you are reading too much into my comment. People always do that when somebody posts anything other than "OMFG!! ITZ STEELING!" when talking about copyright infringement.
Those of us who revel in colorful use of the English language may indeed be called idiots or trolls (to use your words) by the Slashdot crowd, but that's okay
There's a difference between using nice language and being downright wrong about something. I might think it's novel to call downloaders "murderers", but that doesn't mean it makes sense to do so. Not only is it wrong though, it's also wrong in an attempt to push a negative agenda; that sharing is always as bad as theft.
It's not the fact that they get the words wrong that makes them idiots or trolls. It's the fact that it's brought up here on a regular basis, so anybody posting here should know that "it's theft" is not only wrong but also likely to start a flamewar. Again, an indication that the poster is interested in promoting a negative agenda rather than actually discussing anything.
Re:I think KDE needs a new default icon set
on
Preview of KDE 3.5
·
· Score: 1
My current pet peeve is the default icon set is really ugly.
No matter what icon set they use as default, there will always be people who say this. The default icon set currently in use seems fairly clear and inoffensive to me - it does the job it is supposed to do. Is it really so bad as to be unsuitable for most people, or is it just your personal preference?
Unlike GNOME, the KDE developers understand that the tiny usability improvement of having the buttons in a different order is vastly outweighed by the massive usability mistake of surprising users by switching around the order of the buttons to the exact opposite of what it was before.
Sure, it might be nice to have Close on one side instead of Save, but it sure is annoying when you've been clicking in the same place for years to save, and end up closing instead.
I find KDE has a lot of bloat (KDE 4 should have less to my understanding). K3B is still the most useful burning app but really, who needs an icky looking Mr. Potatoe Head game as an included part of a desktop environment.
I don't burn CDs very often, so I think I'll call KDE bloated so long as it has K3B. On the other hand, my little brother uses the "icky" game all the time.
Maybe we shouldn't rush to call something bloated just because it has a feature we don't use often. Plenty of other people use them all the time. The "icky" game isn't costing you anything but a miniscule amount of hard disk space, so why worry about it?
Bloat is when you've got lots of truly unnecessary features that actually take up memory or CPU in the normal course of operation. What you call bloat isn't.
How is downloading music to "test-drive" it any different?
Copyright isn't property and downloading it doesn't take it away from anybody.
If you are going to download illegal music files, at least call it what it really is.... theft
Copyright infringement isn't theft, and anybody who persists in saying that it is is either an idiot or a troll. Dowling vs US, 1985, even the Supreme Court says that it isn't theft. Or try looking in a dictionary, they generally say something along the lines of "the object must be moved, however slightly, from it's original position", or a definition involving taking something, which does not occur in copyright infringement.
These arguments have come up many, many times, and nobody has ever put across a convincing argument as to why I should believe some random stranger on Slashdot about what is and isn't theft above and beyond the dictionary and the Supreme Court.
Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?
Do you have a magical way of knowing whether you'll like music before you hear it? No? So I guess you'll have to hear the music before you buy it. For many people, downloading illegally is the most convenient method of hearing the music before they decide whether or not they are going to buy it.
And you only think managing a shopping cart with thumbnails would suck because you're a technophile. My grandmother would dig it.
Classic usability mistake of assuming graphics makes things easier. This is only true some of the time, and replacing an actual product name with a little picture would be a disaster for grandmothers. I'm a technophile, I can figure out from going back and forth between the pages what's in my cart. Grannies would be stuck squinting at little icons trying to figure out the few pixel difference between different types of cardigan or whatever.
It's thinking like yours that has produced some of the biggest usability disasters of the web, things like "mystery meat navigation" etc. Bells and whistles are usually counterproductive to usability, they certainly are in the examples you gave.
Miss a tag in XML, sorry, no rendering today. The result? No-one writes XML by hand
Actually, it works the other way around. Because syntax errors are immediately obvious when writing XML, it's a lot easier to write by hand, because when you make a mistake, you notice it straight away.
The reason why so many people use libraries with XML is because it's a standard format with libraries for practically every language. Using a library often saves time compared with writing stuff by hand.
that means your average Perl, Python, PHP coder will actually have to read some docs or a specification to remember how to output this stuff so they just won't bother.
Rubbish. They'll do exactly what they did to learn how to generate HTML - look at a few examples and make their own that looks like the example. <?php echo('<foo>My XML Document</foo>'); ?> is no harder than <?php echo('<h1>My HTML Document</h1>'); ?>
Bosworth says that's why RSS 2.0 beats the pants off RSS 1.0, anyone can create these files and the freely available libraries that handle this stuff are really really fault tolerant.
Both RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 use XML syntax and have freely available libraries anybody can use. But didn't you just say that nobody will bother using XML formats because people won't read the documentation that tells them how to use such libraries?
Slashdot Mirror
I believe what intended to say is that "alt" is no longer a valid attribute for the "a" element in newer HTML standards.
It never was. The alt attribute is an alternative textual representation for images. It makes no sense to use it with <a> elements.
Yet, I believe everyone would call these acts "theft."
All of the examples you give involve somebody taking something from somebody else. That's not the same as copying something.
it does not make much more sense from a moral perspective.
I am not arguing that one is more moral than the other, merely that they are different.
That person has created a copy of my identity and is using it.
It's clearly not a copy, as actions taken with regard to that identity affect your identity, not some theoretical copy of an identity.
At least you admit that depriving someone of exclusive use of their property (including their identity or intellectual property) against their consent is "taking something", which made your whole argument that copyright infringement isn't "taking anything" completely moot.
Copyright infringement covers copying and broadcast. Not use.
let's take a thesarus for a spin
Thesauri not only list synonyms, but related words as well. You don't seriously think that all those words mean the same thing do you? You don't have a point there.
I'm not the one mincing words. Read the Supreme Court's decision. Unless you are deliberately misreading it, it's clear that they don't think theft and copyright infringement are the same thing (bar one dissenting judge). Just read it, don't go on selective quotes, read the whole thing.
people who actively advocate the use of the term "infringement" as an alternative are attempting to play the propaganda game from the other side
No, they aren't. Copyright infringement is the correct term. There's no term that is more accurate or less misleading. That's simply what it is. That's the offence.
the connotation of infringement implies that one has done little or nothing of consequence.
Hardly. If you steal a CD, the harm is the loss of the value of one CD. If you upload it to the Internet, then the harm could potentially be the value of thousands of CDs. The penalties for copyright infringement are much harsher than for theft.
Conversely, copyright infringement can also be harmless or even beneicial, as in the example already provided of people using it as a purchasing aid.
What does this mean? Is one type of offence better or worse than the other? Of course not. It means they are completely different offences with completely different consequences. That's why it makes sense to call them different things.
Better, perhaps, to simply acknowledge that each side has its own "agenda".
Only if you characterise the side calling copyright infringement "copyright infringement" as attempting to push the viewpoint that copyright infringement is a lesser offence than theft. In reality, it's merely a different offence to theft. That's not an agenda, it's a simple fact.
If you want to defend your beliefs that music sharing is morally right, go for it, but don't try to hide behind past court rulings
If you want to respond to my postings with ludicrous attacks on straw men, go for it. But it's got nothing to do with what I was saying.
I don't have the OED handy, but the Concise OED doesn't include the definition you describe. Unless you count abbreviations of "take a copy", I've never heard "take" being used in that manner before either. Do you have another reference?
Whether something is material or immaterial is not relevant to my argument, by the way.
Again, the SC simply explained why the interstate act, 2314, didn't apply in this case, and why they didn't feel comfortable extending it to do so.
And in their ruling, they explained the reason why they didn't feel comfortable in doing so was because it doesn't really make sense to equate copyright infringement with theft. So, when somebody claims "It's theft" when referring to copyright infringement, it's not unreasonable to point out that the Supreme Court disagrees with them.
As to the rest, you can play dueling dictionaries all you want. I'll take the definition I found.
I was referring to the same definition as you. The one that said "take".
The ultimate point, however, is that people are not somehow automatically entitled to whatever it is they think they want, no matter how badly they rationalize it, or what word games they play.
I have never claimed that and never would. You are reading too much into my comments.
Actually, what the Court ruled was that copyright infringement didn't meet the "taking" clause of the National Stolen Property Act. That's a far cry from saying that it isn't theft at all.
See the quote I posted elsewhere in this thread.
I'm not depriving anyone of their identity
I'm not so sure about that. When somebody, say, applies for a credit card, they are using their identity as a means to get that card. If an "identity thief" has assumed your identity and screwed up your credit rating, they have taken your identity from you haven't they? Or damaged it in some way? I'm not entirely convinced, but "identity theft" is justifiable in ways that copyright infringement isn't. The "identity thieves" aren't copying your identity, they are taking yours.
To the person on the street, it means having something that doesn't belong to them and that they have no right to have
You are confusing the words "theft" and "misappropriation". All theft is misappropriation, but not all misappropriation is theft. Copyright is an example of something that is misappropriation but not theft.
You said that "downloading illegally is the most convenient method of hearing the music before they decide whether or not they are going to buy it." I inferred from this that you think that the process should be made legal.
No. I said for many people it's the most convenient method, in the context of trying something out before you buy it. While I don't think it's a particularly heinous crime, I wouldn't go so far as to say it should be legalised, just that it's convenient for people who are intending to buy music. This was in reply to somebody that said there's absolutely no justification for downloading illegally. The justification I was pointing out was that it's a purchasing aid for many people.
But since that makes it possible for people to download the music for free, the labels take 100% of the risk: that is, people can get the music legally for free and it would be mostly out of the goodness of their hearts to actually buy the music
Yes, that's an untenable position because, in practice, it would either force consumers to pay for what they download, thus negating the "try before you buy" aspect, or it would abolish copyright. I think abolishing copyright could well be a good thing, but it's impossible to evaluate the impact on society until we get copyright to a more balanced state than it is at the moment.
Right now, there's hardly any contemporary music in the public domain, so we can't tell whether the music industry can coexist with plentiful public domain music. Moving copyright back to more reasonable terms (e.g. ~15 years) would help determine whether or not abolishing copyright would be beneficial or not.
So I apologize if I put words in your mouth, but I at least hope this clears up why I said what I did. I may well be wrong, but I mean well.
No need to apologise, it makes a nice change to have somebody re-examine and explain their reply instead of mindlessly calling people thieves.
Legacy browsers introduced tooltips into HTML by showing them on links and using the value of the alt attribute as a tooltip's content. The latest W3C HTML specification finally standardized tooltips, and uses the value of the new title attribute rather than the deprecated alt attribute. Mozilla will only show a tooltip for the title tag, per the specification.
This is wrong. Firstly, the alt attribute is not deprecated. In fact, it was optional in HTML 3.2 and required for all <img> elements in HTML 4 and newer.
Also, the title attribute isn't "for" tooltips, and the specification doesn't say that they should be displayed as such. The title attribute is for supplementary information, which can be displayed in the most appropriate manner for the circumstances. It just so happens that in most cases this is best accomplished with a tooltip, but that's merely incidental and not required behaviour.
Finally: it's the title attribute. The <title> tag is a completely different thing and does not work the way they describe.
The Javascript object detection versus browser detection bit was decent enough though. It's just a shame they used invalid code in the examples they gave. People will be copying these examples, so they only cause more invalid code to be written.
As far as using onload is concerned, you need to keep in mind that it only fires once all the parts of a page have been loaded - so, for example, if you have ads and the ad server is a bit slow, your onload element might fire thirty seconds after you think it should. This is a big deal when you are manipulating the page content - imagine typing something into an input control, only to have the onload set the focus to the control - in many browsers this will automatically select the text, which means you'll be typing away and suddenly the second half of what you are typing overwrites the first half.
Where such timing is a problem, you have no choice but to insert <script> elements directly after that part of the document you are manipulating. This won't change until browsers implement more load type events.
Last thing: the author should learn what a tag is and isn't. 98% of the time he says "tag", he means "element", 1% of the time he means "attribute", and 1% of the time he means "element type". I only skimmed the article, but I think I only saw once instance where he actually meant "tag".
To back up, "Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud." So, to quote your own case, there are property interests and it's not just "run-of-the-mill theft".
You are misreading that. It does not say that copyright infringement is more than "run-of-the-mill theft". It says that copyright infringement is not "run-of-the-mill theft". I notice you didn't quote the more relevant sentence that preceded your quote:
Now, from dictionary.com: Theft: "a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent."
Property OR services. Check. Without consent. Check.
Take: no check there.
I notice you conveniently ignored the part of my comment and the dictionary definition that pointed out that you have to take something in order to steal.
Yes, when you post stuff that is factually correct and pertinent to the topic at hand, you generally get modded up. Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here.
What do you think the editors are? Some kind of mythical elf-like beings with the magical ability to "read" and "write"?
Like I pointed out elsewhere, the iTMS samples are only available in some countries. iTMS itself is only available in some countries.
it seems unfair to defend illegally-downloading music, since it is VERY unfair to the music labels (since they have no way of distinguishing between "I was just trying it out" and "I decided that I'd rather not pay you for it").
Not at all. Whether it's fair or not is not dependent upon whether or not the music labels can tell whether you are trying before you buy or not.
I'm not saying that the compromise is completely fair to you, but it does seem that asking them to shoulder 100% of the risk is even more unfair to them.
Where did I say they should shoulder 100% of the risk? I think you are reading too much into my comment. People always do that when somebody posts anything other than "OMFG!! ITZ STEELING!" when talking about copyright infringement.
On iTunes you can, of course, preview songs before you purchase them.
That depends on what country you are in. I've never seen that option in the UK.
Those of us who revel in colorful use of the English language may indeed be called idiots or trolls (to use your words) by the Slashdot crowd, but that's okay
There's a difference between using nice language and being downright wrong about something. I might think it's novel to call downloaders "murderers", but that doesn't mean it makes sense to do so. Not only is it wrong though, it's also wrong in an attempt to push a negative agenda; that sharing is always as bad as theft.
It's not the fact that they get the words wrong that makes them idiots or trolls. It's the fact that it's brought up here on a regular basis, so anybody posting here should know that "it's theft" is not only wrong but also likely to start a flamewar. Again, an indication that the poster is interested in promoting a negative agenda rather than actually discussing anything.
My current pet peeve is the default icon set is really ugly.
No matter what icon set they use as default, there will always be people who say this. The default icon set currently in use seems fairly clear and inoffensive to me - it does the job it is supposed to do. Is it really so bad as to be unsuitable for most people, or is it just your personal preference?
Unlike GNOME, the KDE developers understand that the tiny usability improvement of having the buttons in a different order is vastly outweighed by the massive usability mistake of surprising users by switching around the order of the buttons to the exact opposite of what it was before.
Sure, it might be nice to have Close on one side instead of Save, but it sure is annoying when you've been clicking in the same place for years to save, and end up closing instead.
I find KDE has a lot of bloat (KDE 4 should have less to my understanding). K3B is still the most useful burning app but really, who needs an icky looking Mr. Potatoe Head game as an included part of a desktop environment.
I don't burn CDs very often, so I think I'll call KDE bloated so long as it has K3B. On the other hand, my little brother uses the "icky" game all the time.
Maybe we shouldn't rush to call something bloated just because it has a feature we don't use often. Plenty of other people use them all the time. The "icky" game isn't costing you anything but a miniscule amount of hard disk space, so why worry about it?
Bloat is when you've got lots of truly unnecessary features that actually take up memory or CPU in the normal course of operation. What you call bloat isn't.
How is downloading music to "test-drive" it any different?
Copyright isn't property and downloading it doesn't take it away from anybody.
If you are going to download illegal music files, at least call it what it really is.... theft
Copyright infringement isn't theft, and anybody who persists in saying that it is is either an idiot or a troll. Dowling vs US, 1985, even the Supreme Court says that it isn't theft. Or try looking in a dictionary, they generally say something along the lines of "the object must be moved, however slightly, from it's original position", or a definition involving taking something, which does not occur in copyright infringement.
These arguments have come up many, many times, and nobody has ever put across a convincing argument as to why I should believe some random stranger on Slashdot about what is and isn't theft above and beyond the dictionary and the Supreme Court.
Right-click on the panel, select "Configure Panel...", change the size from normal to small or tiny, and click OK.
Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?
Do you have a magical way of knowing whether you'll like music before you hear it? No? So I guess you'll have to hear the music before you buy it. For many people, downloading illegally is the most convenient method of hearing the music before they decide whether or not they are going to buy it.
Imagine that - something is overpriced, so they get it from illegitimate channels instead. Is there any market where this isn't true?
Nobody pirates newspapers, magazines and books.
Does anybody think newspapers, magazines and books are overpriced?
Piracy only starts to spring up when people are dissatisfied with the leggitimate option
And one form of dissatisfaction is considering something to be overpriced.
And you only think managing a shopping cart with thumbnails would suck because you're a technophile. My grandmother would dig it.
Classic usability mistake of assuming graphics makes things easier. This is only true some of the time, and replacing an actual product name with a little picture would be a disaster for grandmothers. I'm a technophile, I can figure out from going back and forth between the pages what's in my cart. Grannies would be stuck squinting at little icons trying to figure out the few pixel difference between different types of cardigan or whatever.
It's thinking like yours that has produced some of the biggest usability disasters of the web, things like "mystery meat navigation" etc. Bells and whistles are usually counterproductive to usability, they certainly are in the examples you gave.
Miss a tag in XML, sorry, no rendering today. The result? No-one writes XML by hand
Actually, it works the other way around. Because syntax errors are immediately obvious when writing XML, it's a lot easier to write by hand, because when you make a mistake, you notice it straight away.
The reason why so many people use libraries with XML is because it's a standard format with libraries for practically every language. Using a library often saves time compared with writing stuff by hand.
that means your average Perl, Python, PHP coder will actually have to read some docs or a specification to remember how to output this stuff so they just won't bother.
Rubbish. They'll do exactly what they did to learn how to generate HTML - look at a few examples and make their own that looks like the example. <?php echo('<foo>My XML Document</foo>'); ?> is no harder than <?php echo('<h1>My HTML Document</h1>'); ?>
Bosworth says that's why RSS 2.0 beats the pants off RSS 1.0, anyone can create these files and the freely available libraries that handle this stuff are really really fault tolerant.
Both RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 use XML syntax and have freely available libraries anybody can use. But didn't you just say that nobody will bother using XML formats because people won't read the documentation that tells them how to use such libraries?