No, once they are over 30 something clicks and they become more interested in preserving their own wealth than in idealism, so they become conservatives.
As an over 30 conservative in favour of copyright reform, I don't see a problem with that. I see the effects of copyright on education and business as much more important than the effects on the entertainment industries (referring to the use of written works in business, not the sale of written works as business, eg operating systems, productivity software, accounting software). If you look at the cost to society of paying copyright levies for textbooks that teach material that has been known for hundreds of years (basic mathematics for example) it seems to me that the compulsory purchase via copyright of information that should have long been in the public domain is a dead weight on our economies.
Copyright reform is not a conservative vs radical issue, it's an informed vs uninformed issue.
You would think that the counterculture generation of the 1960s would behave differently now that they are the dominant force in government and business, but look at the reality.
That generation has certainly moved towards conservatism but they did make some fairly big changes. There is a degree to which conservatism is based on experience of reality. If at age >30 you still have the same outlook as you did at 18, you were either an exceptionally wise 18 year old or a very stupid 30 year old. Personally, I've found through experience that some of the ideals I had at 18 were not workable. Discarding/modifying those ideals in favour of proven workable systems (ie becoming more conservative) isn't "selling out", it's growing up.
I don't know that anybody likes to be tickled for very long. My wife hated tickling because of her experience of her father repeatedly tickling her way beyond the point that it was unpleasant and like the GP to the point that she couldn't breathe. She was really apprehensive when I started to tickle our children until she saw them coming back requesting more. Unlike her father, I tickle for a shorter time, giving them the opportunity to get away.
I used to think it was a bit of a strange thing about my wife, until one day I mentioned to her brother something about the kids liking being tickled and his response was shocked disbelief. In their family, what should have been a great bit of fun between parents and kids was distorted to the point of being a form of abuse (I'm not saying that about the GP's mom). I might not have thought it possible if I had not come into contact with my wife's family.
HOW did they explain the whole concept of slavery for the... 10,000 years BEFORE Darwin then?
Perhaps because much of the history of slavery has not been race based. People have been sold as slaves for debt, and slaves have often been a prize of war, those wars often being fought over political boundaries rather than racial differences.
Sorry but not. The very definition stated "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations"
You forgot to include what followed immediately: esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth. Which is to say that capitalism is about private ownership/control as contrasted to state ownership. All the things owned by either the state or private interests are called "property".
And then I also stated that capital is not property (land is not money) and that property is not capital (money is not land).
Capital is not just another word for money, property is not just another word for land. I referred you to the definition of capital which you appear to have either not read or ignored. The 6th definition on the linked page is "any form of wealth employed or capable of being employed in the production of more wealth." So the computer I'm typing this on is capital. The machinery and tools I own are capital. They are my property: "1. that which a person owns; the possession or possessions of a particular owner: They lost all their property in the fire.
2. goods, land, etc., considered as possessions: The corporation is a means for the common ownership of property.
And then my point arises naturally [from your erroneous/incomplete understanding of the words you are using]: given you can exchange money for lands as well as means of production or distribution, money (aka capital) as the very means of wealth exchange *is* the soul of capitalism, not property.
Communist/socialist countries have money, land and means of production too. The key differentiation is who owns and controls those things, in capitalism they are owned by private interests, ie "Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property" as stated by thtrgremlin.
"Using your own pet definition during conversation is inadvisable if the goal is to have an intelligent discussion"
Like saying that capital is not the central issue of Capitalism, despite its very name?
Your confusion on this point arises from the idea that capital = money. Capital includes much more than money, the words are not interchangeable.
Since the very issue was what Marx stated or not, not if he was right or wrong, or if he tried to carry it on or not, well, I'd bet that, yes, it *does* matter.
Well, you've got a reasonable point there, but I'd argue that the "Communism says" comment made by thtrgremlin could be taken to include the observable actions of communist countries, not just the words of Marx. No communist country I'm aware of has dissolved it's dictatorship except to return to a more capitalist system, such as Russia and China. It is said that actions speak louder than words.
Who is the one pushing their own pet definitions now? Socialism is about state control, not Comunism. Unless, of course, you want to challenge the definition from its very creator.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all
instruments of production in the hands of the State" - The Communist Manifesto.
So exactly my point. Property is not capital and capital is not property.
No, actually, the exact opposite of your point. thtrgremlin said "Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property" which you disputed but my reference to the dictionary confirmed. Since you didn't notice that I linked to the definition of capitalism and not capital you've mistaken my post as confirmation of your error. A quick read of the definition for capital with particular attention to the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th definitions will reveal to you that capital is indeed a type of property. Non productive property, however, is not capital.
And then, your dictionary definition is terribly lacky: Capitalism is not only an economic system but a social system too and it's from this fact that my definition derives.
1. Every economic system is a social system too.
2. Using your own pet definition during conversation is inadvisable if the goal is to have an intelligent discussion. If, for the sake of clarifying a little understood point, you are going to use a word in a particular way, the onus is on you to define your terms at the beginning. However, because you were disputing definitions, we may reasonably take your point to be disputing the commonly used meaning of the word and not some private meaning that only you know and haven't divulged.
"Heh! To think that millions of people where actually stupid enough to believe that a dictatorship would dismantle itself through the goodwill of the dictator. If it wasn't so horribly, murderously tragic, that would be funny. "
So what? Does that make false that Marx stated what I pointed out?
Doesn't really matter that he said it, since there is no evidence that he had any intention of carrying it out. If anyone wants to be handed complete dictatorial power, it is because they want complete dictatorial power, not because they want to help you towards utopia. Communism is about state control, and people would be better to not forget it.
And then, your dictionary definition is terribly lacky:
I see you lack understandment so I'll follow your comparation
You might want to reconsider taking people on over the correct use of words. I know they're probably just typos and it's possible that English isn't your first language, but just saying.
Capital is not property; property is not capital. Capitalism is about giving almighty power to capital disregarding everything else.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitalism capitalism
-noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
Marx states that only a temporal all powerful all seeing state can crush away the minority of those few greedy individuals that control society by means of capital and use their power to perpetuate such 'statu quo'. Once the goal acomplished, such powerful state machinery would dismantle itself and vanish.
Heh! To think that millions of people where actually stupid enough to believe that a dictatorship would dismantle itself through the goodwill of the dictator. If it wasn't so horribly, murderously tragic, that would be funny.
You getting informative mod for that post is about on a par with a Branch Davidian getting informative for posting that David Koresh is the incarnation of god.
http://www.regional.org.au/au/asa/2003/c/5/meier.htm "Retention of sugarcane leaves and tops on the soil surface after harvesting has almost completely replaced burning of crop residues in the Australian sugar industry. Long term retention of residue is believed to improve soil fertility to the extent that nitrogen (N) fertilizer applications might be reduced by up to 40 kg N/ha/y."
Sounds to me like the agricultural methods used are part of the problem rather than the fact that it is sugar. Growing non-food crops is fine. Timber and clothing being two that spring to mind. Producing tradeable goods is a valid use for land, so long as there is enough food. Even countries that aren't slavery infested, poverty struck feudal states do it. If workers aren't being paid enough to live, the problem is your political, educational and industrial relations systems, and probably the availability of technology, not the type of crop you're growing.
But lost behind it all is the primary problem -- "Thou shalt not steal". Because, if the 10 Commandments were a "living and breathing document", the "Thou shalt not copy content without owner's permission" would've been found in it long ago.
King David must have made his money charging royalties on the psalms, right? The apostle Paul certainly would have done well from selling copies of his portion of the NT. Do you know how vigorously he pursued enforcement? I'd be interested to know what action he took against unauthorised copies.
What happened to Jesus ministry was tragic though. He could have produced so many more loaves and fishes if he wasn't paying royalties to the Bakers guild and the League of Jewish Fishermen.
I would say that a christian perspective would have to be that copying was not theft because of the loaves and fishes, but then Jesus turned water into wine and there is no shortage of christians who think you shouldn't drink. I suppose the difference is if you want to follow Jesus or if you want an excuse to lay another rule on people. Get your religious interpretations off my P2P.
You also have people in my situation. I'm a contractor for an arboriculture company. We have to dispose of tons of woodchip. Usually it goes as mulch, but if I could get decent biofuel recovery, particularly if I could use wood fire to power the process, it could be quite profitable for me.
It doesn't have to be feasible for widespread replacement to be an interesting or profitable development.
So when/if I find such a device on my car it belongs to me doesn't it? And I'm not giving it back. And I'm not paying any bill they send me.
If you find it, go to a truck stop and put it on an inter-state truck, or if you are near the sea, a boat. Or a taxi, mail truck, street sweeper, etc. You could fedex it to a friend across the country, there's no end to the options!
Teachers don't go into teaching because it is easy or it pays well. The overwhelming majority of freshly minted teachers are extremely idealist when they first start. They are excited to help children learn. However, they quickly realize that their function is just a babysitter paid for by the state.
Most of the teachers I personally know seem dedicated to teaching but I do think our school structure is fundamentally counter-productive to learning. One person teaching so many kids? If many of them have difficulty, there is hardly any time to be able to help them. There are always disruptive kids who take up that time too, something that will never change as long as you take a group of kids, especially boys, and tell them to sit still, don't talk and pay attention for 6 hours in a day. It is very much the system.
However, as for parents, yes it is their responsibility. Developing curiosity and desire to learn is done by family and community, not the state.
When you buy software from Microsoft in Europe it comes from MIOL (Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited). Ireland is a gigantic tax evasion scam for American software companies which drain European markets including government customers without contributions to our social welfare states.
As one Hungarian said to Ballmer: Give us our money back!
I deal with this type of attitude with my children. Sometimes when they are sharing toys in exchange, they want to keep the other child's toy and have their own one back also. Of course, we step in to either make them adhere to their sharing arrangement or stop using with the other's toys if they don't want to share their own. The offending child is sometimes cries and whines at this.
Why, after exchanging your money for a product, do you expect the seller of that product to spend the money on you? If you wanted that money to be available for your welfare, why did you spend it? I don't want to give MS money, so I use linux. What's your excuse?
You definitely re-opened my opinion on grade school learning.
http://johntaylorgatto.com/
For your continued realisation of what schools real purpose is. Some people have diverted this thread into right vs left, but both the communists and the fascists used school to consolidate political power. Groups such as Hamas place running schools and day-care centres high on their priority list.
You seem to be missing something here. The graphics card companies (and realistically, any other hardware company) sell the "high price, low volume" cards to begin with for at least one very good reason.
That's true...
New manufacturing processes take time to perfect. Very few fabrication plants will be able to pump out the massive quantity needed of the 'new' card instantly.
... but that's not the reason. The only reason they sell them at that price is because there are people willing to pay that price. There are other reasons they might want to sell at a high price, but they only do it because people pay that price. If less people become willing to pay the high price, the pressure becomes to lower the price faster and reduce costs in other ways.
Last years' CPU on last years' mobo costs 100 dollars for the pair. HDD upgrades for sale at 60 dollars - who isn't happy with this? Your average computer lasts about 4 years, by buying 1 year late you get 3/4 the performance life at 1/4 the cost while staying within the range of the target platform for most of the latest games.
Why is this even a question?
I've been buying like that for years too. If enough people do it that way it changes the market. If the hardware companies have been releasing new hardware at premium prices for a few months, then at a lower price a year later, that model requires a significant amount of people willing to pay the premium to get it early. The greater percentage of people who purchase as you and I do, the less incentive for the companies to release at a higher price. Then they get to move volume to people like us instead of lower volume at higher price.
Also, by doing this they will probably be able to have less different cards available at one time, simplifying production and reducing costs. A quick look at a local computer store website shows me 7 AMD AGP cards available new at $55, $69, $79, $89, $115, $128, $195 (AUD). I haven't been following video card advancement, maybe they are all very different, but nothing I can discern from the product names except the amount of RAM (128, 256, 512). If starting at a lower price point enabled them to obsolete the older cards quicker because they serve that market with a newer card, they could make significant reduction in production costs. At some point that would outweigh the additional profit of the higher priced cards.
Which countries? In every country that I know of, copyright is handled by different laws than theft. Usually, most personal copyright infringement is a civil matter but even the smallest theft of physical property is a criminal matter.
Could you please provide an example of any country that prosecutes an individual downloading a song under the same law they use to prosecute someone who steals a CD from a shop?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=capitalism capitalism
-noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
The discussion about copyright is not about capitalism vs socialism. That argument would involve discussing whether the copyright should be owned privately or by the state. This discussion is more about whether copying data should be governed by property laws at all, or possibly how any rights of a copyright holder are to be weighed against the rights of people who own copying machines (ie: nearly everybody).
In free market capitalism copyright, being a state imposed restriction on supply, would be considered an intervention in the market. Whether it's a good idea or not, it is not inherently capitalistic. Uber-capitalism would involve a complete rejection of copyright. Since I tend to favor capitalism but am not religious about it, I am open to the idea that continuing copyright in some form may be a good idea.
If an artist wants everyone to pay £X for listening to their song or using their program, why in the hell shouldn't they be allowed, and backed by law, to do so?
Because that requires restrictions on the use of personally owned technology that many find onerous and draconian measures to enforce. For someone to prevent stealing from their shop, they can observe the shop, put scanners at the exits, even have security cameras. All on their property, I can choose to be subject to none of that by not going. Enforcing that no-one can listen to a song without paying means they have to monitor the entire internet, including my personally owned computer. Even they try to control my access to my own hardware, remember Sony's rootkit? That's why it is unacceptable. They should make copyright terms suitable to what most people are willing to voluntarily be restricted by, not introduce a surveillance society and police state to impose their business model on us.
You've misunderstood the post you're replying to. He mentions 2 sets of people, the people who deserve to get paid for their work, and the people who can choose not to buy it if the price is too high. It is regarding the second lot that he says "Instead they rely on someone, somewhere having bought it and then giving it away fro free" with the direct implication that they shouldn't. He did not "talk out of both sides of your[his] mouth" as you assert.
The CGI effects in the movies on TPB are produced on what kind of software?
I don't know about CGI or other specific effects, but I do know that many animated films have used linux in production and cinepaint is supposedly used in the film industry.
If the players of games are unwilling to develop them or fund the development, why is that a reason for the rest of us to distort our legal system in order to make sure that things are produced that people evidently don't want badly enough. Why don't you find a way of entertaining yourself that doesn't require that the whole of society has to be restricted in their use of technology?
As for the file sharing community, this whole idea that changes in technology makes laws obsolete needs to go.
Not when the law in question is based on a particular level of technology and it's impact, ie: the printing press. Copyright laws ought to be very much influenced by the available copying technology. It greatly affects the cost/benefit to society of those laws.
Slashdot Mirror
No, once they are over 30 something clicks and they become more interested in preserving their own wealth than in idealism, so they become conservatives.
As an over 30 conservative in favour of copyright reform, I don't see a problem with that. I see the effects of copyright on education and business as much more important than the effects on the entertainment industries (referring to the use of written works in business, not the sale of written works as business, eg operating systems, productivity software, accounting software). If you look at the cost to society of paying copyright levies for textbooks that teach material that has been known for hundreds of years (basic mathematics for example) it seems to me that the compulsory purchase via copyright of information that should have long been in the public domain is a dead weight on our economies.
Copyright reform is not a conservative vs radical issue, it's an informed vs uninformed issue.
You would think that the counterculture generation of the 1960s would behave differently now that they are the dominant force in government and business, but look at the reality.
That generation has certainly moved towards conservatism but they did make some fairly big changes. There is a degree to which conservatism is based on experience of reality. If at age >30 you still have the same outlook as you did at 18, you were either an exceptionally wise 18 year old or a very stupid 30 year old. Personally, I've found through experience that some of the ideals I had at 18 were not workable. Discarding/modifying those ideals in favour of proven workable systems (ie becoming more conservative) isn't "selling out", it's growing up.
Ya, blame your lack of amusement on your mom.
I don't know that anybody likes to be tickled for very long. My wife hated tickling because of her experience of her father repeatedly tickling her way beyond the point that it was unpleasant and like the GP to the point that she couldn't breathe. She was really apprehensive when I started to tickle our children until she saw them coming back requesting more. Unlike her father, I tickle for a shorter time, giving them the opportunity to get away.
I used to think it was a bit of a strange thing about my wife, until one day I mentioned to her brother something about the kids liking being tickled and his response was shocked disbelief. In their family, what should have been a great bit of fun between parents and kids was distorted to the point of being a form of abuse (I'm not saying that about the GP's mom). I might not have thought it possible if I had not come into contact with my wife's family.
HOW did they explain the whole concept of slavery for the... 10,000 years BEFORE Darwin then?
Perhaps because much of the history of slavery has not been race based. People have been sold as slaves for debt, and slaves have often been a prize of war, those wars often being fought over political boundaries rather than racial differences.
Sorry but not. The very definition stated "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations"
You forgot to include what followed immediately: esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth. Which is to say that capitalism is about private ownership/control as contrasted to state ownership. All the things owned by either the state or private interests are called "property".
And then I also stated that capital is not property (land is not money) and that property is not capital (money is not land).
Capital is not just another word for money, property is not just another word for land. I referred you to the definition of capital which you appear to have either not read or ignored. The 6th definition on the linked page is "any form of wealth employed or capable of being employed in the production of more wealth." So the computer I'm typing this on is capital. The machinery and tools I own are capital. They are my property:
"1. that which a person owns; the possession or possessions of a particular owner: They lost all their property in the fire.
2. goods, land, etc., considered as possessions: The corporation is a means for the common ownership of property.
And then my point arises naturally [from your erroneous/incomplete understanding of the words you are using]: given you can exchange money for lands as well as means of production or distribution, money (aka capital) as the very means of wealth exchange *is* the soul of capitalism, not property.
Communist/socialist countries have money, land and means of production too. The key differentiation is who owns and controls those things, in capitalism they are owned by private interests, ie "Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property" as stated by thtrgremlin.
"Using your own pet definition during conversation is inadvisable if the goal is to have an intelligent discussion"
Like saying that capital is not the central issue of Capitalism, despite its very name?
Your confusion on this point arises from the idea that capital = money. Capital includes much more than money, the words are not interchangeable.
Since the very issue was what Marx stated or not, not if he was right or wrong, or if he tried to carry it on or not, well, I'd bet that, yes, it *does* matter.
Well, you've got a reasonable point there, but I'd argue that the "Communism says" comment made by thtrgremlin could be taken to include the observable actions of communist countries, not just the words of Marx. No communist country I'm aware of has dissolved it's dictatorship except to return to a more capitalist system, such as Russia and China. It is said that actions speak louder than words.
Who is the one pushing their own pet definitions now? Socialism is about state control, not Comunism. Unless, of course, you want to challenge the definition from its very creator.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State" - The Communist Manifesto.
So exactly my point. Property is not capital and capital is not property.
No, actually, the exact opposite of your point. thtrgremlin said "Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property" which you disputed but my reference to the dictionary confirmed. Since you didn't notice that I linked to the definition of capitalism and not capital you've mistaken my post as confirmation of your error. A quick read of the definition for capital with particular attention to the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th definitions will reveal to you that capital is indeed a type of property. Non productive property, however, is not capital.
And then, your dictionary definition is terribly lacky: Capitalism is not only an economic system but a social system too and it's from this fact that my definition derives.
1. Every economic system is a social system too.
2. Using your own pet definition during conversation is inadvisable if the goal is to have an intelligent discussion. If, for the sake of clarifying a little understood point, you are going to use a word in a particular way, the onus is on you to define your terms at the beginning. However, because you were disputing definitions, we may reasonably take your point to be disputing the commonly used meaning of the word and not some private meaning that only you know and haven't divulged.
"Heh! To think that millions of people where actually stupid enough to believe that a dictatorship would dismantle itself through the goodwill of the dictator. If it wasn't so horribly, murderously tragic, that would be funny. "
So what? Does that make false that Marx stated what I pointed out?
Doesn't really matter that he said it, since there is no evidence that he had any intention of carrying it out. If anyone wants to be handed complete dictatorial power, it is because they want complete dictatorial power, not because they want to help you towards utopia. Communism is about state control, and people would be better to not forget it.
And then, your dictionary definition is terribly lacky:
I see you lack understandment so I'll follow your comparation
You might want to reconsider taking people on over the correct use of words. I know they're probably just typos and it's possible that English isn't your first language, but just saying.
Capital is not property; property is not capital. Capitalism is about giving almighty power to capital disregarding everything else.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitalism
capitalism
-noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
Marx states that only a temporal all powerful all seeing state can crush away the minority of those few greedy individuals that control society by means of capital and use their power to perpetuate such 'statu quo'. Once the goal acomplished, such powerful state machinery would dismantle itself and vanish.
Heh! To think that millions of people where actually stupid enough to believe that a dictatorship would dismantle itself through the goodwill of the dictator. If it wasn't so horribly, murderously tragic, that would be funny.
You getting informative mod for that post is about on a par with a Branch Davidian getting informative for posting that David Koresh is the incarnation of god.
http://www.regional.org.au/au/asa/2003/c/5/meier.htm
"Retention of sugarcane leaves and tops on the soil surface after harvesting has almost completely replaced burning of crop residues in the Australian sugar industry. Long term retention of residue is believed to improve soil fertility to the extent that nitrogen (N) fertilizer applications might be reduced by up to 40 kg N/ha/y."
Sounds to me like the agricultural methods used are part of the problem rather than the fact that it is sugar. Growing non-food crops is fine. Timber and clothing being two that spring to mind. Producing tradeable goods is a valid use for land, so long as there is enough food. Even countries that aren't slavery infested, poverty struck feudal states do it. If workers aren't being paid enough to live, the problem is your political, educational and industrial relations systems, and probably the availability of technology, not the type of crop you're growing.
But lost behind it all is the primary problem -- "Thou shalt not steal". Because, if the 10 Commandments were a "living and breathing document", the "Thou shalt not copy content without owner's permission" would've been found in it long ago.
King David must have made his money charging royalties on the psalms, right? The apostle Paul certainly would have done well from selling copies of his portion of the NT. Do you know how vigorously he pursued enforcement? I'd be interested to know what action he took against unauthorised copies.
What happened to Jesus ministry was tragic though. He could have produced so many more loaves and fishes if he wasn't paying royalties to the Bakers guild and the League of Jewish Fishermen.
I would say that a christian perspective would have to be that copying was not theft because of the loaves and fishes, but then Jesus turned water into wine and there is no shortage of christians who think you shouldn't drink. I suppose the difference is if you want to follow Jesus or if you want an excuse to lay another rule on people. Get your religious interpretations off my P2P.
And you get modded insightful... What's going on today
Yes, clearly that comment should have been modded informative.
You also have people in my situation. I'm a contractor for an arboriculture company. We have to dispose of tons of woodchip. Usually it goes as mulch, but if I could get decent biofuel recovery, particularly if I could use wood fire to power the process, it could be quite profitable for me.
It doesn't have to be feasible for widespread replacement to be an interesting or profitable development.
So when/if I find such a device on my car it belongs to me doesn't it? And I'm not giving it back. And I'm not paying any bill they send me.
If you find it, go to a truck stop and put it on an inter-state truck, or if you are near the sea, a boat. Or a taxi, mail truck, street sweeper, etc. You could fedex it to a friend across the country, there's no end to the options!
Teachers don't go into teaching because it is easy or it pays well. The overwhelming majority of freshly minted teachers are extremely idealist when they first start. They are excited to help children learn. However, they quickly realize that their function is just a babysitter paid for by the state.
Most of the teachers I personally know seem dedicated to teaching but I do think our school structure is fundamentally counter-productive to learning. One person teaching so many kids? If many of them have difficulty, there is hardly any time to be able to help them. There are always disruptive kids who take up that time too, something that will never change as long as you take a group of kids, especially boys, and tell them to sit still, don't talk and pay attention for 6 hours in a day. It is very much the system.
However, as for parents, yes it is their responsibility. Developing curiosity and desire to learn is done by family and community, not the state.
When you buy software from Microsoft in Europe it comes from MIOL (Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited). Ireland is a gigantic tax evasion scam for American software companies which drain European markets including government customers without contributions to our social welfare states.
As one Hungarian said to Ballmer: Give us our money back!
I deal with this type of attitude with my children. Sometimes when they are sharing toys in exchange, they want to keep the other child's toy and have their own one back also. Of course, we step in to either make them adhere to their sharing arrangement or stop using with the other's toys if they don't want to share their own. The offending child is sometimes cries and whines at this.
Why, after exchanging your money for a product, do you expect the seller of that product to spend the money on you? If you wanted that money to be available for your welfare, why did you spend it? I don't want to give MS money, so I use linux. What's your excuse?
You definitely re-opened my opinion on grade school learning.
http://johntaylorgatto.com/
For your continued realisation of what schools real purpose is. Some people have diverted this thread into right vs left, but both the communists and the fascists used school to consolidate political power. Groups such as Hamas place running schools and day-care centres high on their priority list.
You seem to be missing something here. The graphics card companies (and realistically, any other hardware company) sell the "high price, low volume" cards to begin with for at least one very good reason.
That's true ...
New manufacturing processes take time to perfect. Very few fabrication plants will be able to pump out the massive quantity needed of the 'new' card instantly.
... but that's not the reason. The only reason they sell them at that price is because there are people willing to pay that price. There are other reasons they might want to sell at a high price, but they only do it because people pay that price. If less people become willing to pay the high price, the pressure becomes to lower the price faster and reduce costs in other ways.
Metric fuckloads of evidence are measured.
Imperial fuckloads of evidence are imposed by edict.
It's an altogether different concept, but once an edict is proclaimed, the imperial fuckloads of evidence could be measured in metric units.
Last years' CPU on last years' mobo costs 100 dollars for the pair. HDD upgrades for sale at 60 dollars - who isn't happy with this? Your average computer lasts about 4 years, by buying 1 year late you get 3/4 the performance life at 1/4 the cost while staying within the range of the target platform for most of the latest games.
Why is this even a question?
I've been buying like that for years too. If enough people do it that way it changes the market. If the hardware companies have been releasing new hardware at premium prices for a few months, then at a lower price a year later, that model requires a significant amount of people willing to pay the premium to get it early. The greater percentage of people who purchase as you and I do, the less incentive for the companies to release at a higher price. Then they get to move volume to people like us instead of lower volume at higher price.
Also, by doing this they will probably be able to have less different cards available at one time, simplifying production and reducing costs. A quick look at a local computer store website shows me 7 AMD AGP cards available new at $55, $69, $79, $89, $115, $128, $195 (AUD). I haven't been following video card advancement, maybe they are all very different, but nothing I can discern from the product names except the amount of RAM (128, 256, 512). If starting at a lower price point enabled them to obsolete the older cards quicker because they serve that market with a newer card, they could make significant reduction in production costs. At some point that would outweigh the additional profit of the higher priced cards.
Question: how long do I have to be here before I can be said to no longer be new here? In Soviet Russia I would probably be considered old here.
In Korea, only old people make "In Soviet Russia" jokes.
Copying is not theft. Copyright is not property.
Says you. The laws of most countries disagree.
Which countries? In every country that I know of, copyright is handled by different laws than theft. Usually, most personal copyright infringement is a civil matter but even the smallest theft of physical property is a criminal matter.
Could you please provide an example of any country that prosecutes an individual downloading a song under the same law they use to prosecute someone who steals a CD from a shop?
you're stuck in uber-capitalist mode.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=capitalism
capitalism
-noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
The discussion about copyright is not about capitalism vs socialism. That argument would involve discussing whether the copyright should be owned privately or by the state. This discussion is more about whether copying data should be governed by property laws at all, or possibly how any rights of a copyright holder are to be weighed against the rights of people who own copying machines (ie: nearly everybody).
In free market capitalism copyright, being a state imposed restriction on supply, would be considered an intervention in the market. Whether it's a good idea or not, it is not inherently capitalistic. Uber-capitalism would involve a complete rejection of copyright. Since I tend to favor capitalism but am not religious about it, I am open to the idea that continuing copyright in some form may be a good idea.
If an artist wants everyone to pay £X for listening to their song or using their program, why in the hell shouldn't they be allowed, and backed by law, to do so?
Because that requires restrictions on the use of personally owned technology that many find onerous and draconian measures to enforce. For someone to prevent stealing from their shop, they can observe the shop, put scanners at the exits, even have security cameras. All on their property, I can choose to be subject to none of that by not going. Enforcing that no-one can listen to a song without paying means they have to monitor the entire internet, including my personally owned computer. Even they try to control my access to my own hardware, remember Sony's rootkit? That's why it is unacceptable. They should make copyright terms suitable to what most people are willing to voluntarily be restricted by, not introduce a surveillance society and police state to impose their business model on us.
You've misunderstood the post you're replying to. He mentions 2 sets of people, the people who deserve to get paid for their work, and the people who can choose not to buy it if the price is too high. It is regarding the second lot that he says "Instead they rely on someone, somewhere having bought it and then giving it away fro free" with the direct implication that they shouldn't. He did not "talk out of both sides of your[his] mouth" as you assert.
And the servers are running on what kind of software?
Since you seem to think the answer is "Not Open Source software", you might be surprised by the answers here: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
The CGI effects in the movies on TPB are produced on what kind of software?
I don't know about CGI or other specific effects, but I do know that many animated films have used linux in production and cinepaint is supposedly used in the film industry.
If the players of games are unwilling to develop them or fund the development, why is that a reason for the rest of us to distort our legal system in order to make sure that things are produced that people evidently don't want badly enough. Why don't you find a way of entertaining yourself that doesn't require that the whole of society has to be restricted in their use of technology?
As for the file sharing community, this whole idea that changes in technology makes laws obsolete needs to go.
Not when the law in question is based on a particular level of technology and it's impact, ie: the printing press. Copyright laws ought to be very much influenced by the available copying technology. It greatly affects the cost/benefit to society of those laws.