Instead of calling it piracy, call it counterfeiting. They are making copies that are not the real thing, even if the results are exactly like the originals.
As far as I know, counterfeiting is still illegal.
Sometimes the difference between profiling and the facts are in the reader's mind.
The person making the comment (Langley) may be telling the truth and nothing but the truth, because people DO change their names if they break the law. I've read some 'wanted' posters that have several aliases on them. It is a smart way to avoid getting caught. And it is not limited to any one ethnic group.
The person making the comment may also be completely correct in observing that a large percentage of the vendors are Hispanic, at least in the case they are talking about. If the market is in an area with a lot of Hispanics, then it would be demographically expected for a lot of the vendors to be Hispanic.
It gets kind of tricky when you are reporting facts AND dealing with ethnic-social groups. The quote about the percentage of vendors being Hispanic can easily be considered profiling as it stands. But if the quote were attached to an article about how people could get away with repeated offenses, especially if the offenders are predominantly Hispanic, then it is less profiling and more factual.
Note that the same 'profiling' versus 'fact' problem can be applied to any ethnic-social group.
1. The math adds up quite nicely if you assume that the retail value is used, rather than what the people were actually charging. That would represent the money that the retailers are losing because of the counterfeit operation.
B: When it comes to lost sales, any counterfeit is 'worth' the retail value as far as the retailers and others are concerned.
If I'm reading the article correctly, the raid was based on tips that the Beaverton Police acted upon. While the RIAA came in to verify that certain items were counterfeit, they were NOT directly in control of the raid in this instance.
The issue gets confused by the links to raids where the RIAA actually seemed to be directing the raid while using rent-a-cops. That isn't the instance in this case.
Now I wouldn't be surprized if the RIAA were responsible for the tips. Of course, there is always the chance that a disgruntled customer turned them in, especially if the product they received was substandard.
In the Beaverton case, the police were doing the right thing, shutting down people that were profiting from other people's work.
While we don't have the tech in place to make the trip now, we do have ideas of what could be done. We just need to get some cheap Earth to Orbit launch facilities in place so we can start research and development of the tech needed. (Rutan's SpaceShipX ships. Space elevators. Catapult launch from high altitude sites.)
Once we have a lot of people and equipment in space, we could do such things as build generation ships and take the slow route. Whether powered by Sol base lasers, atomic bombs (Orion), ion propulsion, solar sails or other related tech, we can launch something at choice targets without a lot of extra tech. (It would be more of an engineering problem than a science problem.) It will take a long time to get there and the odds of sending people back will be low if it is attempted.
Now with space based research we might be able to come up with variations on the classic FTL drive, making it possible to do such a trip and make it back in a reasonable amount of time. This would require some basic breakthroughs in science, followed by engineering to make the science usable.
At this time those breakthroughs are mostly pipedreams. But in centuries past, things like steam engines, airplanes and spaceships were the same way. While they may seem simple to us, in years gone by they were future technology that needed a lot of research to make it possible.
Read the article and learn a bit about cybernetic theory.
It doesn't really say that they are sinking into some kind of radiated black hole.
The concept of a sink is akin to certain desert lakes that don't have outlets. Water goes in but doesn't leave the way it usually does in wetter climates.
In this context, the area may be absorbing more animals and birds than it produces. They may be entering the area from safe zones but are not reproducing fast enough to sustain the populations once they get to the Cherynobyl area. So a constant resupply is needed.
If you read Genesis, you'll find a very abstract version of the Big Bang theory of creation. So the Bible supports the Big Bang Theory
In the same general area you'll find a very abstract version of the Theory of Evolution, with its history of life forms evolving over time. So the Bible supports Evolution.
Note that these are VERY abstract versions of those theories. But also note that the target audience had a lot less knowledge of the universe than we have now.
Creationists tend to ignore these similarities with their assumption that a 'day' is twenty-four Earth hours long. They seem to adopt a human-centric viewpoint in order to simplify things, despite evidence to the contrary.
They also adopt a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, ignoring the creation stories of other religions.
What if I whistle it off tune, in a different key, and mix it up with other music?
For example, if I mix the "Imperial Theme" from Star Wars with "A spoon full of sugar" from Mary Poppins? And then I drop some of the notes when whistling.
It would be interesting if someone went through ALL the music that has been published and extracted fragments that can be found in multiple areas and then shifted those fragments so they are in different keys. There would likely be a lot of current music that would be violating older copyrights.
I seem to recall a Robert Heinlein story that touched on the topic of copyrights, creativity and what could happen if copyrights were extended for absurb amounts of time.
Since the classic 'Happy Birthday' in still under copyright, I use a version that has "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" as the tune. Since this dates back to sixteenth century England, it should be in the public domain.
The lyrics that I use go as follows:
"We wish you a happy birthday. We wish you a happy birthday. We wish you a happy birthday, and many, many more."
Note that any attempt at trying to copyright these lyrics will have to contend with the fact that they are posted in a public forum.
If they are sharing the list with DA offices, then a false positive can adversely affect two people.
One of those people is the actual sex offender. They may be clean when it comes to parole violations but having a false positive could send them back to jail.
The other person is the one who has their site taken down. I can see a situation where a DA office uses the MySpace data to update current addresses for those people that are missing from their own databases. This, in turn, could result in the innocent person being arrested. (Hopefully people aren't dumb enough to do this. But there are enough idiots that have 'brilliant' ideas that are simple, obvious and wrong.)
I loved the article and marvel at the number of people who apparently didn't read it all the way through. While it is basic, it also covers things that not all experienced programers do on a regular basis.
Does Slashdot have a section for developers in training? If so, then the article should be there. If not, then having it here is useful for the newbies.
Heck, having it available as a reminder for the experienced developers makes it worth having here. People can get sloppy over time.
Of course, there are developers that are not well trained in certain areas. They may be able to crank out highly functional code ten times as fast as everybody else, but the maintenance cost of that code may be sky high. That is where these articles can come in handy IF the person is willing to learn.
Do you know any 'super programmer' whose code requires another 'super programmer' to understand, much less maintain? They may be the one that needs to see this article. (And they may also be the one least likely to view it.)
These points should be drilled into everybody who is learning how to program with an eye to doing it professinally. While the effort to do things right may seem like a waste of time now, it will prove invaluable later. (They may also want to improve their command of the English language so that the documentation is understandable, at least in those places where English is the language of choice.)
My biggest complaint about programming and software development classes is that they tend to focus on what I call 'clean sheet' programming. You start with nothing and end up with a series of programs that meet the needs of the class. The documentation you put in the programs meets the requirements of the teacher as specified in the class requirements. Then you put the programs aside and never revisit them again.
Unfortunately, the real world isn't like this. There are legions of SUPPORT programmers that will eventually have to maintain 'clean sheet' programs.
With this in mind, I would challenge any educational organization to have classes on how to do SUPPORT programming, especially for poor code. The students would NOT be permitted to rewrite things unless they can guarantee that EVERYTHING would still work after it is rewritten. And the results would need to have better documentation than the original.
Would be programmers might learn to do things right after experiencing what happens when they are done wrong. Or they might decide that accounting or truck driving is a better profession.
Structured coding would be for the more advanced programmers, especially in organizations that use it.
Some organizations don't have the support needed for structured coding and related practices. They often have legacy code that works and just needs tweaked to handle new conditions. Applying structured code would often require rewriting large parts of applications that may have been running for decades.
Of course, structured code could be brought in for the handful of 'clean sheet' projects that sometimes appear. And it could come into play IF the IT staff can convince the bean counters that a critical application needs to be rewritten to be more efficient and provide enhanced abilities.
It may be a dead horse to good coders but it is essential that the accounting staff know such things. Such articles can be used to educate them. The articles can also be used to train the newbies they hire.
Unfortunately, there are organizations where the bean counters and CEOs want results NOW and don't want the staff to 'waste' their time on documentation and good coding practices. If you can get your quick and dirty code completed for that 'one time' application up and running really fast, they will love you for it and the effect it has on the bottom line. If you insist that documentation and special good coding refinements are needed and it will take half a day longer, they'll tell you not to waste your time.
Then, a month or a quarter or a year later, they will ask you to take that 'one time' application and modify it for slightly different parameters. And because you did it before, they will expect it to be done in a fraction of the time.
It is an endless treadmill with some organizations. While doing the right thing usually costs less in the long run, getting the results NOW often overrules doing the right thing.
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to everybody. And the author admits that in the last two paragraphs.
Note that 'everybody' may know it but not everybody may practice it. Also note that not all organizations train people the same way. There are still those people who come up through the ranks and are not formally trained.
The second to the last paragraph of the article touches on the fact that it is obvious. And that paragraph expressed the hope that people were thinking that when they were reading the article.
The last paragraph mentioned that methods of writing maintainable code that may be obvious to you may not be obvious to everybody.
People get into programming through many routes and encounter many programming standards (or lack of them). They also, over time, change how they do things, especially when encountering unreasonable deadlines and corporate standards. Having occasional reminders of good programming practices helps.
Note that the 'References' section of the article has links to other tips on writing maintainable code.
Of course, this is the same Don Knuth who proposed that programming classes should be taught without computers, and you expel any student who writes a compiler for the language you're teaching in. He wanted to get students to be good at paper debugging. So maybe the inventor of TeX is just a luddite.
Learning programming without computers would require that you know how to do things using various concepts like loops, If-Then branching, parameter sharing/passing, feedback, normalized database design and other things that are universal. Once you know how to 'program' that way, it is relatively simple to apply the knowledge to ANY computer language that uses those concepts.
The languages are just dialects that translate concepts into something the computer can use. Each dialect has its strengths and weaknesses.
If your 'paper' program works, then it would be relatively simple to write a converter that translates into a variety of computer languages. Of course, you would need to debug that 'paper' program first, which is where experience at paper debugging is essential.
In a sense, 'paper' programming and debugging is where the relatively recent technology of 'Design Patterns' stem from. (Of course 'Design Patterns' use a concept from architecture and Christopher Alexander's 'Pattern Language' book of the late 1970s.)
With that in mind, I wouldn't consider Knuth to be a Luddite. I would consider him to be someone who realized early on that the specs/logic, not the actual code, determines whether a program works or fails.
Given Knuth's stature in the computer science community, having an email address that is publically known would be an invitation to be 'spammed' by anybody taking computer classes or doing computer research. I wouldn't be surprized to learn that he was receiving hundreds of emails a day in 1990.
By not having a public email address, those who want to make contact need to use other methods like snail mail, personal contact or email to a 'gatekeeper' like a publisher. It is more expensive in terms of effort, so you have to REALLY want to make contact to justify that effort.
Communications Control of that type isn't necessarily a sign of antisocial behavior. It can often be a filtering method designed to keep your workload down so you can focus on new stuff as opposed to answering 'CompSci 101' questions from the whole world.
It is similar to having an unlisted telephone number. Those who you wish to have easy contact have your number. Others have to go out of their way to use the phone as their contact method.
So, how can the movie industry charge 1/5 to 1/10 what they charge in the US, and still profit, while Microsoft refuses to do so?
Movies don't usually require user support. But when you purchase Windows, you expect it and need it for update support. That would explain part of the difference.
As far as the cinema is concerned, I suspect that the costs of providing the building, air conditioning, seating, and other amenities may be lower in other countries. I also suspect that the number of people attending them may be proportionally higher than the US. These two factors could combine to make it possible to charge less.
There are instances where people pirate things because they do not want to pay for product. After all, if it is 'free' via the Internet or friends or vendors, then why 'waste' your money paying for it. In those instances a pirated copy IS a lost sale.
You comment about 'a pirated copy is not a lost sale' doesn't always apply. Not being able to afford something can often be a euphemism for not wanting to pay.
It would be interesting to track cost of living versus income versus computer purchases in those countries that have a lot of piracy. Are the people buying computers and pirating the software evenly distributed through the income spectrum? Or is there a chance that the majority of the 'pirates' are better off than the majority of the population in their countries and could afford to buy if they weren't tempted by it being 'free'?
In a local case, an fireman and a young woman had consensual sex in a private yet kinky location, with him taking digital pictures of her. The initial contact was over the Internet, where she claimed to be eighteen.
When her boyfriend found out about this, he reported the fireman for having sex with a minor. The police investigated, found the camera, and deleted the images so that he wouldn't be on trial for possessing child porn. Their reasoning was that they didn't want to risk the pictures ending up on the Internet. I also get the feeling that they had evidence that the young woman had lied about her age, which turned marginally legal pictures into illegal child porn.
That created a major public outburst with a lot of people wanting the heads of the police and the fireman.
The fireman lost his job because of inappropriate use of government facilities. (He used firehouse computers to access porn sites while on duty, among other things.) But there is little if any mention of the fact that the young woman lied about her age.
This is one of those situations where the label 'sex offender' should either be avoided competely or applied to both participants. And various laws need to be written to handle situations where a lie by a consenting party toggles an activity from 'misbehaving' to 'major felony.'
It is worse than that. You're talking about four point two million man hours per hour of the day. Of course some of the hours of the day will be very slow so you could fast forward through them.
Now the surveilance is useful for keeping mostly honest people honest, especially if they see themselves. It also reduces the areas where crimes can be committed without witnesses. Both could be considered 'positive' effects that require little interaction.
Things will reach the Orwellian stage when software is developed to quickly match surveilance images with databases containing people to be watched and people who can be ignored. The people who are to be watched get special attention from the cameras. So do the people who are not recognized as existing in the database. These 'shadow citizens' would be people who you would want to watch because they shouldn't exist.
Now if you wanted to spoof the surveilance system, one technique you could use is to disguise yourself as another person so that they could take the blame if you do something illegal. Or you could join several hundred other people and use the same disguise at the same time, making it hard to track who is doing what.
All encompassing clothing can also help you spoof the surveilance system. If you and thousands of others wore an outfit that covered the entire body and face, with the same colors and fabric, the only ways of telling people apart might be height, weight and body language. With padding and practice, all three of those could be disguised.
I can see, as a protest, people starting to wear outfits that disguise physical attributes while they are in public places. I can also see people intentionally acting in ways that disguise their mannerisms, thus eliminating additional data points. Then there is the simple method of cutting the data feed so that nothing is collected.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of calling it piracy, call it counterfeiting. They are making copies that are not the real thing, even if the results are exactly like the originals.
As far as I know, counterfeiting is still illegal.
Note that some people also copy CDs and such for their friends. They aren't charging for them, but it does disobey the spirit and letter of the law.
Now if friendship had a monetary value, the RIAA and others might have a solid case against them.
Sometimes the difference between profiling and the facts are in the reader's mind.
The person making the comment (Langley) may be telling the truth and nothing but the truth, because people DO change their names if they break the law. I've read some 'wanted' posters that have several aliases on them. It is a smart way to avoid getting caught. And it is not limited to any one ethnic group.
The person making the comment may also be completely correct in observing that a large percentage of the vendors are Hispanic, at least in the case they are talking about. If the market is in an area with a lot of Hispanics, then it would be demographically expected for a lot of the vendors to be Hispanic.
It gets kind of tricky when you are reporting facts AND dealing with ethnic-social groups. The quote about the percentage of vendors being Hispanic can easily be considered profiling as it stands. But if the quote were attached to an article about how people could get away with repeated offenses, especially if the offenders are predominantly Hispanic, then it is less profiling and more factual.
Note that the same 'profiling' versus 'fact' problem can be applied to any ethnic-social group.
1. The math adds up quite nicely if you assume that the retail value is used, rather than what the people were actually charging. That would represent the money that the retailers are losing because of the counterfeit operation.
B: When it comes to lost sales, any counterfeit is 'worth' the retail value as far as the retailers and others are concerned.
If I'm reading the article correctly, the raid was based on tips that the Beaverton Police acted upon. While the RIAA came in to verify that certain items were counterfeit, they were NOT directly in control of the raid in this instance.
The issue gets confused by the links to raids where the RIAA actually seemed to be directing the raid while using rent-a-cops. That isn't the instance in this case.
Now I wouldn't be surprized if the RIAA were responsible for the tips. Of course, there is always the chance that a disgruntled customer turned them in, especially if the product they received was substandard.
In the Beaverton case, the police were doing the right thing, shutting down people that were profiting from other people's work.
While we don't have the tech in place to make the trip now, we do have ideas of what could be done. We just need to get some cheap Earth to Orbit launch facilities in place so we can start research and development of the tech needed. (Rutan's SpaceShipX ships. Space elevators. Catapult launch from high altitude sites.)
Once we have a lot of people and equipment in space, we could do such things as build generation ships and take the slow route. Whether powered by Sol base lasers, atomic bombs (Orion), ion propulsion, solar sails or other related tech, we can launch something at choice targets without a lot of extra tech. (It would be more of an engineering problem than a science problem.) It will take a long time to get there and the odds of sending people back will be low if it is attempted.
Now with space based research we might be able to come up with variations on the classic FTL drive, making it possible to do such a trip and make it back in a reasonable amount of time. This would require some basic breakthroughs in science, followed by engineering to make the science usable.
At this time those breakthroughs are mostly pipedreams. But in centuries past, things like steam engines, airplanes and spaceships were the same way. While they may seem simple to us, in years gone by they were future technology that needed a lot of research to make it possible.
Read the article and learn a bit about cybernetic theory.
It doesn't really say that they are sinking into some kind of radiated black hole.
The concept of a sink is akin to certain desert lakes that don't have outlets. Water goes in but doesn't leave the way it usually does in wetter climates.
In this context, the area may be absorbing more animals and birds than it produces. They may be entering the area from safe zones but are not reproducing fast enough to sustain the populations once they get to the Cherynobyl area. So a constant resupply is needed.
If you read Genesis, you'll find a very abstract version of the Big Bang theory of creation. So the Bible supports the Big Bang Theory
In the same general area you'll find a very abstract version of the Theory of Evolution, with its history of life forms evolving over time. So the Bible supports Evolution.
Note that these are VERY abstract versions of those theories. But also note that the target audience had a lot less knowledge of the universe than we have now.
Creationists tend to ignore these similarities with their assumption that a 'day' is twenty-four Earth hours long. They seem to adopt a human-centric viewpoint in order to simplify things, despite evidence to the contrary.
They also adopt a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, ignoring the creation stories of other religions.
What if I whistle it off tune, in a different key, and mix it up with other music?
For example, if I mix the "Imperial Theme" from Star Wars with "A spoon full of sugar" from Mary Poppins? And then I drop some of the notes when whistling.
It would be interesting if someone went through ALL the music that has been published and extracted fragments that can be found in multiple areas and then shifted those fragments so they are in different keys. There would likely be a lot of current music that would be violating older copyrights.
I seem to recall a Robert Heinlein story that touched on the topic of copyrights, creativity and what could happen if copyrights were extended for absurb amounts of time.
Since the classic 'Happy Birthday' in still under copyright, I use a version that has "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" as the tune. Since this dates back to sixteenth century England, it should be in the public domain.
The lyrics that I use go as follows:
"We wish you a happy birthday. We wish you a happy birthday. We wish you a happy birthday, and many, many more."
Note that any attempt at trying to copyright these lyrics will have to contend with the fact that they are posted in a public forum.
Since Chris Hansen apparently wasn't involved in this instance, you're bearing false witness.
For that matter, MySpace is doing the same thing with their 'fuzzy' selection methods.
If they are sharing the list with DA offices, then a false positive can adversely affect two people.
One of those people is the actual sex offender. They may be clean when it comes to parole violations but having a false positive could send them back to jail.
The other person is the one who has their site taken down. I can see a situation where a DA office uses the MySpace data to update current addresses for those people that are missing from their own databases. This, in turn, could result in the innocent person being arrested. (Hopefully people aren't dumb enough to do this. But there are enough idiots that have 'brilliant' ideas that are simple, obvious and wrong.)
I loved the article and marvel at the number of people who apparently didn't read it all the way through. While it is basic, it also covers things that not all experienced programers do on a regular basis.
Does Slashdot have a section for developers in training? If so, then the article should be there. If not, then having it here is useful for the newbies.
Heck, having it available as a reminder for the experienced developers makes it worth having here. People can get sloppy over time.
Of course, there are developers that are not well trained in certain areas. They may be able to crank out highly functional code ten times as fast as everybody else, but the maintenance cost of that code may be sky high. That is where these articles can come in handy IF the person is willing to learn.
Do you know any 'super programmer' whose code requires another 'super programmer' to understand, much less maintain? They may be the one that needs to see this article. (And they may also be the one least likely to view it.)
These points should be drilled into everybody who is learning how to program with an eye to doing it professinally. While the effort to do things right may seem like a waste of time now, it will prove invaluable later. (They may also want to improve their command of the English language so that the documentation is understandable, at least in those places where English is the language of choice.)
My biggest complaint about programming and software development classes is that they tend to focus on what I call 'clean sheet' programming. You start with nothing and end up with a series of programs that meet the needs of the class. The documentation you put in the programs meets the requirements of the teacher as specified in the class requirements. Then you put the programs aside and never revisit them again.
Unfortunately, the real world isn't like this. There are legions of SUPPORT programmers that will eventually have to maintain 'clean sheet' programs.
With this in mind, I would challenge any educational organization to have classes on how to do SUPPORT programming, especially for poor code. The students would NOT be permitted to rewrite things unless they can guarantee that EVERYTHING would still work after it is rewritten. And the results would need to have better documentation than the original.
Would be programmers might learn to do things right after experiencing what happens when they are done wrong. Or they might decide that accounting or truck driving is a better profession.
Structured coding would be for the more advanced programmers, especially in organizations that use it.
Some organizations don't have the support needed for structured coding and related practices. They often have legacy code that works and just needs tweaked to handle new conditions. Applying structured code would often require rewriting large parts of applications that may have been running for decades.
Of course, structured code could be brought in for the handful of 'clean sheet' projects that sometimes appear. And it could come into play IF the IT staff can convince the bean counters that a critical application needs to be rewritten to be more efficient and provide enhanced abilities.
It may be a dead horse to good coders but it is essential that the accounting staff know such things. Such articles can be used to educate them. The articles can also be used to train the newbies they hire.
Unfortunately, there are organizations where the bean counters and CEOs want results NOW and don't want the staff to 'waste' their time on documentation and good coding practices. If you can get your quick and dirty code completed for that 'one time' application up and running really fast, they will love you for it and the effect it has on the bottom line. If you insist that documentation and special good coding refinements are needed and it will take half a day longer, they'll tell you not to waste your time.
Then, a month or a quarter or a year later, they will ask you to take that 'one time' application and modify it for slightly different parameters. And because you did it before, they will expect it to be done in a fraction of the time.
It is an endless treadmill with some organizations. While doing the right thing usually costs less in the long run, getting the results NOW often overrules doing the right thing.
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to everybody. And the author admits that in the last two paragraphs.
Note that 'everybody' may know it but not everybody may practice it. Also note that not all organizations train people the same way. There are still those people who come up through the ranks and are not formally trained.
The second to the last paragraph of the article touches on the fact that it is obvious. And that paragraph expressed the hope that people were thinking that when they were reading the article.
The last paragraph mentioned that methods of writing maintainable code that may be obvious to you may not be obvious to everybody.
People get into programming through many routes and encounter many programming standards (or lack of them). They also, over time, change how they do things, especially when encountering unreasonable deadlines and corporate standards. Having occasional reminders of good programming practices helps.
Note that the 'References' section of the article has links to other tips on writing maintainable code.
Learning programming without computers would require that you know how to do things using various concepts like loops, If-Then branching, parameter sharing/passing, feedback, normalized database design and other things that are universal. Once you know how to 'program' that way, it is relatively simple to apply the knowledge to ANY computer language that uses those concepts.
The languages are just dialects that translate concepts into something the computer can use. Each dialect has its strengths and weaknesses.
If your 'paper' program works, then it would be relatively simple to write a converter that translates into a variety of computer languages. Of course, you would need to debug that 'paper' program first, which is where experience at paper debugging is essential.
In a sense, 'paper' programming and debugging is where the relatively recent technology of 'Design Patterns' stem from. (Of course 'Design Patterns' use a concept from architecture and Christopher Alexander's 'Pattern Language' book of the late 1970s.)
With that in mind, I wouldn't consider Knuth to be a Luddite. I would consider him to be someone who realized early on that the specs/logic, not the actual code, determines whether a program works or fails.
Given Knuth's stature in the computer science community, having an email address that is publically known would be an invitation to be 'spammed' by anybody taking computer classes or doing computer research. I wouldn't be surprized to learn that he was receiving hundreds of emails a day in 1990.
By not having a public email address, those who want to make contact need to use other methods like snail mail, personal contact or email to a 'gatekeeper' like a publisher. It is more expensive in terms of effort, so you have to REALLY want to make contact to justify that effort.
Communications Control of that type isn't necessarily a sign of antisocial behavior. It can often be a filtering method designed to keep your workload down so you can focus on new stuff as opposed to answering 'CompSci 101' questions from the whole world.
It is similar to having an unlisted telephone number. Those who you wish to have easy contact have your number. Others have to go out of their way to use the phone as their contact method.
Movies don't usually require user support. But when you purchase Windows, you expect it and need it for update support. That would explain part of the difference.
As far as the cinema is concerned, I suspect that the costs of providing the building, air conditioning, seating, and other amenities may be lower in other countries. I also suspect that the number of people attending them may be proportionally higher than the US. These two factors could combine to make it possible to charge less.
There are instances where people pirate things because they do not want to pay for product. After all, if it is 'free' via the Internet or friends or vendors, then why 'waste' your money paying for it. In those instances a pirated copy IS a lost sale.
You comment about 'a pirated copy is not a lost sale' doesn't always apply. Not being able to afford something can often be a euphemism for not wanting to pay.
It would be interesting to track cost of living versus income versus computer purchases in those countries that have a lot of piracy. Are the people buying computers and pirating the software evenly distributed through the income spectrum? Or is there a chance that the majority of the 'pirates' are better off than the majority of the population in their countries and could afford to buy if they weren't tempted by it being 'free'?
In a local case, an fireman and a young woman had consensual sex in a private yet kinky location, with him taking digital pictures of her. The initial contact was over the Internet, where she claimed to be eighteen.
When her boyfriend found out about this, he reported the fireman for having sex with a minor. The police investigated, found the camera, and deleted the images so that he wouldn't be on trial for possessing child porn. Their reasoning was that they didn't want to risk the pictures ending up on the Internet. I also get the feeling that they had evidence that the young woman had lied about her age, which turned marginally legal pictures into illegal child porn.
That created a major public outburst with a lot of people wanting the heads of the police and the fireman.
The fireman lost his job because of inappropriate use of government facilities. (He used firehouse computers to access porn sites while on duty, among other things.) But there is little if any mention of the fact that the young woman lied about her age.
This is one of those situations where the label 'sex offender' should either be avoided competely or applied to both participants. And various laws need to be written to handle situations where a lie by a consenting party toggles an activity from 'misbehaving' to 'major felony.'
It is worse than that. You're talking about four point two million man hours per hour of the day. Of course some of the hours of the day will be very slow so you could fast forward through them.
Now the surveilance is useful for keeping mostly honest people honest, especially if they see themselves. It also reduces the areas where crimes can be committed without witnesses. Both could be considered 'positive' effects that require little interaction.
Things will reach the Orwellian stage when software is developed to quickly match surveilance images with databases containing people to be watched and people who can be ignored. The people who are to be watched get special attention from the cameras. So do the people who are not recognized as existing in the database. These 'shadow citizens' would be people who you would want to watch because they shouldn't exist.
Now if you wanted to spoof the surveilance system, one technique you could use is to disguise yourself as another person so that they could take the blame if you do something illegal. Or you could join several hundred other people and use the same disguise at the same time, making it hard to track who is doing what.
All encompassing clothing can also help you spoof the surveilance system. If you and thousands of others wore an outfit that covered the entire body and face, with the same colors and fabric, the only ways of telling people apart might be height, weight and body language. With padding and practice, all three of those could be disguised.
I can see, as a protest, people starting to wear outfits that disguise physical attributes while they are in public places. I can also see people intentionally acting in ways that disguise their mannerisms, thus eliminating additional data points. Then there is the simple method of cutting the data feed so that nothing is collected.
We're in for some interesting times.