"What is happening is people are using a generalised term to refer to copyright infringement in order to build an argument."
Partially true. They are using a highly inaccurate term in order to try and build up an argument. That is not very good arguing.
"What then happens is one of the local karma whores will destroy the original intention of the thread by turning it into that discussion again."
You can't blame the karma whore. The real blame lies with those who kick the discussion off topic by mentioning "theft" in a copyright infringement discussion in the first place.
"In your example you cite a case where copyright infringement helped someone. If I have a junk car in my front yard and someone steals it, "
That is a very good example of throwing oranges into a discussion of apples. The analogy you use involves theft/taking (unlike copyright infringement).
"But if this band has all their music 'stolen' the second time around"
I have yet to see anyone really defend, justify, or even discuss the theft of music, except when someone brings it up in an off-topic fashion (just as you have) and others try to steer the conversation back on topic by pointing out how off-topic this was.
"of course they've only been 'infringed', they won't have lost anything, right?"
There is a possibility that they lost something. There are many situations where loss can occur where theft is never involved. You are showing another clear example of appearing to work from a dictionary that only contains 2 or 3 words to refer to all criminal justice or crime matters.
"You can't buy retail marketing with a wholesale price of $15.' He added, 'Full-price games have a cohesive start, middle and end."
I usually wait about 8 months for that $49 game I want to go down to $9.99 at Gamestop. Best Buy, Software Etc, etc... And these are the (formerly) full-price games that have a cohesive start, middle, and end. Even if the end is just like John Dvorak described: when it all comes down to the end of the game, you have to fight a giant bug.
Don't worry yourself too much about such convoluted theories that rely on preposterous assumptions, "evidence" that contradicts all eyewitness accounts, and remarkable leaps of logic or superhuman impossibilities (like the OJ defense team's blaming of Mark Fuhrman, that, if accepted, had the man travelling 800 mph between locations where he was seen/planting evidence/etc). Any big event has this: a sort of surrounding cloud where pained minds create vapors of conspiracy theory. This explains the "Elvis at a Burger King in Kalamazoo" theories and the entirely fictional non-Oswald participants in the JFK assassination. If this was WW2 time, the same nutties would be providing irrefutable proof that no Japanese planes were actually at Pearl Harbor.
White Cloud has all those shiny happy profits, because (sure enough!), you just don't re-use their products. I think Sony is in the wrong business. I know with this news, I'd not consider a Sony console without making sure that there is some sort of reliable backup to keep the media safe from being vandalized in this fashion when it is the console.
Names like "Muhammad" are found on individuals of the black race (think of a famous boxer) and individuals of the Caucasian race (think Arabs). There does not seem to be a racial element here. Out in the real world, there's plenty of bigotry that is not race-related.
"As regards the lisa, I'm not going to argue about whether it was or wasn't in the 'Marketplace' as far as i'm concerned it was a product that was marketed, sold and failed"
I'm a little more generous to Apple than you on the Lisa. As the equivalent of a concept car, it wasn't a failure.
"MacintoshII (1986)... same year as dos4! brought CD-ROM/Multimedia to the marketplace. deal with it"
According to a Mac "Zealot" page, nzmac.com, Apple first shipped a computer with built-in CD Rom in 1992. External CD-Rom drives were available for PC back in 1986, the year you mention. I remember seeing these, the ones with the caddies for the CDs.
Lisa did not bring anything to the marketplace. Why? It wasn't really present in the marketplace. It was a demo of ideas, that was hardly for sale at all. It ended up being the computer world's equivalent of those "concept cars" shown at January auto shows. What brought these ideas to the marketplace? The first Mac, which was the Lisa "brought to market".
"IMac brought usb to marketplace"
I had a PC with from a major maker that came shipped with internal USB in 1997. Unless I'm wrong, didn't the first iMac come out in 1998, one year later?
This has little to do with Apple. GUI's existed and were used even before Apple Lisa. The PC started with USB and CD-ROM at the same time Apple did (and few PC makers made the blunder of getting rid of standard serial ports in favor of USB at a time when few devices used USB: they just shipped standard AND USB at the same time). Multimedia dates back to the late 1970s. Firewire? Yes, Apple was ahead on that one.
It's still too little. While thousands switch to Mac, there are hundreds switching from Mac, and thousands of new computer users who choose PC instead of Mac, which pretty much wipes out gains. It's pretty easy to see why, at least from the "availability" point of view. Around here, there are several big-box stores that only sell PCs. There's a cool Mac store, but it keeps limited bankers hours, so it ends up if you get that "new computer" itch at 7:00 pm, you'll find several big-box chains to sell you PCs at a time the Mac store has been closed for at least an hour.
"How should copyright owners be able to assert that right of distribution"
Maybe if they did a good job of distributing in the first place! Selling useless crippled DRM-wrecked files does not cut it, nor does refusing to sell the material in the first place (as is the case with "out of print" music offered for free on p2p, but you cannot buy it "legitimately" except from a used record store that does NOT send a cut to the artist).
To put your completely erronenous conflation of "copyright infringement" and "theft" into perspective, here is an example of what you just said, but I have substituted two entirely different crimes than the one you mentioned:
"I put "murder" in quotes in my post for a reason. Christ, the way you fuckers insist it be called "retail fraud" or "shoplifting" stinks of PC in the vein of "illegal criminals" to high heavens."
"Whatever euphemism you want to use to justify..."
I'm not trying to justify anything. I'm just pointing out the fact that whatever it is, it is nothing even remotely like theft. What AllofMP3 is doing sure isn't rape either, and by also pointing out this fact I am not justifying it.
By making the tax cuts permanent, this gets rid of any future tax increases. All the government has to do is cut waste spending, and there IS a lot of it. Money coming in from taxes is really not the problem: the IRS is now taking in more than it ever has before.
"gutless republicans will probably not have to take the responsibility of actually raising those taxes"
If they DID increase them, that would be extremely irresponsible. There's more money coming in than ever before. Asking for even more of it is nothing but irresponsible greed.
"his father is the bush-man"
That's a pretty good example to bring up. Big Shrub said "Read my lips: no new taxes". A wise thing. He broke his promise, raised taxes without any good reason to, and caused a recession. Not a wise thing.
"They are spending enormous amounts of money. Amounts that are not sustainable in any way whatsoever"
That is the REAL problem that you have identified. That is a bad thing. Tax cuts? A good thing.
"industrialists and the like (i.e. the Republican base) were tremendous supporters of the european fascists. It was only the American left (when we had one) that supported going to war against them"
The American left, pre WW-2, supported Stalin. In fact, large numbers of them joined Stalin's own political party (much more than numbers of Americans who joined the Nazi Party) Can you find a difference between the two that really matters? One that makes one a fascist and the other an anti-fascist? You can't, other than the most superficial difference of all: one type of fascist quotes Marx and the other does not. The American left threw their lot in with one fascist. This made them against one fascist, but not anti-fascist.
"Well, in the first place, it's not socialism, it's fascism."
Socialism is actually the most common form of fascism. The differences between the form of fascism known as socialism and the non-socialist forms are rather minor. Even the most famous non-socialist fascist (Mussolini) drew a lot of his inspiration from Lenin and Stalin (who were socialist fascists). The most famous of all fascists, Hitler, led a powerful Socialist party until his death.
Fascists of the socialist stripe tend to demand that the government have more power over the people "for their own good". They can be sincere (like the ones who want complete government control of health care) or they can merely be cynically using populist speech in order to get more personal power for themselves (like Fidel Castro has). Either way, the end result is an abusively strong central government at the expense of civil and personal liberties.
Everything you said is a supportable opinion, but your comment runs aground on one matter of math: that Democrats want lower taxes. I've compared the tax plans and the ones where Democrats want lower taxes than Republicans are rather rare. It is almost always the other way aroud: Dems wanting higher taxes (even if, from your apparently libertarian point of view, the difference is relatively small). A good, and rather stereotypical example, of this is found in New Jersey right now. You have three factions: the governor, the Democratic majority, and the Republican minority. The two Democratic factions are fighting likes snakes on a plane over which of two massive tax hikes to put in place. The Republicans (despite their "good old, Soviet-style, socialism and cronyism") are asking for a 0% tax hike.
Slashdot Mirror
"What is happening is people are using a generalised term to refer to copyright infringement in order to build an argument."
Partially true. They are using a highly inaccurate term in order to try and build up an argument. That is not very good arguing.
"What then happens is one of the local karma whores will destroy the original intention of the thread by turning it into that discussion again."
You can't blame the karma whore. The real blame lies with those who kick the discussion off topic by mentioning "theft" in a copyright infringement discussion in the first place.
"In your example you cite a case where copyright infringement helped someone. If I have a junk car in my front yard and someone steals it, "
That is a very good example of throwing oranges into a discussion of apples. The analogy you use involves theft/taking (unlike copyright infringement).
"But if this band has all their music 'stolen' the second time around"
I have yet to see anyone really defend, justify, or even discuss the theft of music, except when someone brings it up in an off-topic fashion (just as you have) and others try to steer the conversation back on topic by pointing out how off-topic this was.
"of course they've only been 'infringed', they won't have lost anything, right?"
There is a possibility that they lost something. There are many situations where loss can occur where theft is never involved. You are showing another clear example of appearing to work from a dictionary that only contains 2 or 3 words to refer to all criminal justice or crime matters.
Don't knock the Australian rabbit plague. Got rid of all that damned Trix cereal, yes it did.
"You can't buy retail marketing with a wholesale price of $15.' He added, 'Full-price games have a cohesive start, middle and end."
I usually wait about 8 months for that $49 game I want to go down to $9.99 at Gamestop. Best Buy, Software Etc, etc... And these are the (formerly) full-price games that have a cohesive start, middle, and end. Even if the end is just like John Dvorak described: when it all comes down to the end of the game, you have to fight a giant bug.
Don't worry yourself too much about such convoluted theories that rely on preposterous assumptions, "evidence" that contradicts all eyewitness accounts, and remarkable leaps of logic or superhuman impossibilities (like the OJ defense team's blaming of Mark Fuhrman, that, if accepted, had the man travelling 800 mph between locations where he was seen/planting evidence/etc). Any big event has this: a sort of surrounding cloud where pained minds create vapors of conspiracy theory. This explains the "Elvis at a Burger King in Kalamazoo" theories and the entirely fictional non-Oswald participants in the JFK assassination. If this was WW2 time, the same nutties would be providing irrefutable proof that no Japanese planes were actually at Pearl Harbor.
White Cloud has all those shiny happy profits, because (sure enough!), you just don't re-use their products. I think Sony is in the wrong business. I know with this news, I'd not consider a Sony console without making sure that there is some sort of reliable backup to keep the media safe from being vandalized in this fashion when it is the console.
Names like "Muhammad" are found on individuals of the black race (think of a famous boxer) and individuals of the Caucasian race (think Arabs). There does not seem to be a racial element here. Out in the real world, there's plenty of bigotry that is not race-related.
It's hard to think of any good reason for it.
"As regards the lisa, I'm not going to argue about whether it was or wasn't in the 'Marketplace' as far as i'm concerned it was a product that was marketed, sold and failed"
I'm a little more generous to Apple than you on the Lisa. As the equivalent of a concept car, it wasn't a failure.
From the looks of it, porn spam news items on Slashdot are a lot more successful than medical spam news items.
"MacintoshII (1986)... same year as dos4! brought CD-ROM/Multimedia to the marketplace. deal with it"
According to a Mac "Zealot" page, nzmac.com, Apple first shipped a computer with built-in CD Rom in 1992. External CD-Rom drives were available for PC back in 1986, the year you mention. I remember seeing these, the ones with the caddies for the CDs.
"Lisa brought GUI to the marketplace"
Lisa did not bring anything to the marketplace. Why? It wasn't really present in the marketplace. It was a demo of ideas, that was hardly for sale at all. It ended up being the computer world's equivalent of those "concept cars" shown at January auto shows. What brought these ideas to the marketplace? The first Mac, which was the Lisa "brought to market".
"IMac brought usb to marketplace"
I had a PC with from a major maker that came shipped with internal USB in 1997. Unless I'm wrong, didn't the first iMac come out in 1998, one year later?
Do you have some evidence that a minority of the savvy tech types use Windows PC's? In my experience, hardly any of these have Mac's, either.
This has little to do with Apple. GUI's existed and were used even before Apple Lisa. The PC started with USB and CD-ROM at the same time Apple did (and few PC makers made the blunder of getting rid of standard serial ports in favor of USB at a time when few devices used USB: they just shipped standard AND USB at the same time). Multimedia dates back to the late 1970s. Firewire? Yes, Apple was ahead on that one.
"Unfortunately, most users associate Carbon with all those ported ("carbonized") OS 9 C++ applications written on top of Metrowerks' PowerPlant"
Or they think of the Han Solo-shaped hatrack leaning against the wall in Jabba's palace.
"I'm waiting for the release called "Pete Puma"!"
Looking forward to "Ornery Ocelot" OS in 2008, followed by "Citified Cerval" in 2011.
"Microsoft released their Leper OS years ago"
Who can forget the ad blitz that started on St. Patrick's Day, 2002, featuring an Irish midget dressed in green, saying "Leper cahn do many things!"
If superior OS automatically translated into huge market share gains, we'd have been in a BeOS world for many years now.
It's still too little. While thousands switch to Mac, there are hundreds switching from Mac, and thousands of new computer users who choose PC instead of Mac, which pretty much wipes out gains. It's pretty easy to see why, at least from the "availability" point of view. Around here, there are several big-box stores that only sell PCs. There's a cool Mac store, but it keeps limited bankers hours, so it ends up if you get that "new computer" itch at 7:00 pm, you'll find several big-box chains to sell you PCs at a time the Mac store has been closed for at least an hour.
"How should copyright owners be able to assert that right of distribution"
Maybe if they did a good job of distributing in the first place! Selling useless crippled DRM-wrecked files does not cut it, nor does refusing to sell the material in the first place (as is the case with "out of print" music offered for free on p2p, but you cannot buy it "legitimately" except from a used record store that does NOT send a cut to the artist).
To put your completely erronenous conflation of "copyright infringement" and "theft" into perspective, here is an example of what you just said, but I have substituted two entirely different crimes than the one you mentioned:
"I put "murder" in quotes in my post for a reason. Christ, the way you fuckers insist it be called "retail fraud" or "shoplifting" stinks of PC in the vein of "illegal criminals" to high heavens."
"Whatever euphemism you want to use to justify..."
I'm not trying to justify anything. I'm just pointing out the fact that whatever it is, it is nothing even remotely like theft. What AllofMP3 is doing sure isn't rape either, and by also pointing out this fact I am not justifying it.
By making the tax cuts permanent, this gets rid of any future tax increases. All the government has to do is cut waste spending, and there IS a lot of it. Money coming in from taxes is really not the problem: the IRS is now taking in more than it ever has before.
"gutless republicans will probably not have to take the responsibility of actually raising those taxes"
If they DID increase them, that would be extremely irresponsible. There's more money coming in than ever before. Asking for even more of it is nothing but irresponsible greed.
"his father is the bush-man"
That's a pretty good example to bring up. Big Shrub said "Read my lips: no new taxes". A wise thing. He broke his promise, raised taxes without any good reason to, and caused a recession. Not a wise thing.
"They are spending enormous amounts of money. Amounts that are not sustainable in any way whatsoever"
That is the REAL problem that you have identified. That is a bad thing. Tax cuts? A good thing.
"industrialists and the like (i.e. the Republican base) were tremendous supporters of the european fascists. It was only the American left (when we had one) that supported going to war against them"
The American left, pre WW-2, supported Stalin. In fact, large numbers of them joined Stalin's own political party (much more than numbers of Americans who joined the Nazi Party) Can you find a difference between the two that really matters? One that makes one a fascist and the other an anti-fascist? You can't, other than the most superficial difference of all: one type of fascist quotes Marx and the other does not. The American left threw their lot in with one fascist. This made them against one fascist, but not anti-fascist.
"Well, in the first place, it's not socialism, it's fascism."
Socialism is actually the most common form of fascism. The differences between the form of fascism known as socialism and the non-socialist forms are rather minor. Even the most famous non-socialist fascist (Mussolini) drew a lot of his inspiration from Lenin and Stalin (who were socialist fascists). The most famous of all fascists, Hitler, led a powerful Socialist party until his death.
Fascists of the socialist stripe tend to demand that the government have more power over the people "for their own good". They can be sincere (like the ones who want complete government control of health care) or they can merely be cynically using populist speech in order to get more personal power for themselves (like Fidel Castro has). Either way, the end result is an abusively strong central government at the expense of civil and personal liberties.
Everything you said is a supportable opinion, but your comment runs aground on one matter of math: that Democrats want lower taxes. I've compared the tax plans and the ones where Democrats want lower taxes than Republicans are rather rare. It is almost always the other way aroud: Dems wanting higher taxes (even if, from your apparently libertarian point of view, the difference is relatively small). A good, and rather stereotypical example, of this is found in New Jersey right now. You have three factions: the governor, the Democratic majority, and the Republican minority. The two Democratic factions are fighting likes snakes on a plane over which of two massive tax hikes to put in place. The Republicans (despite their "good old, Soviet-style, socialism and cronyism") are asking for a 0% tax hike.