I am not buying that. Current copyrights are of course way off balance and are clearly corrupt tools of a few mega-rich groups of people. However, the idea of myself being granted a temporary group of legal protections under the law to ostensibly allow me to make a living off my creative works is not immoral, evil, indication of bad character, incorrect behavior, or outside of the norm.
Only because you judge it so. Despite your ridiculing in the first paragraph, your whole argument isn't about how the concept of morality is inapplicable to that of copyright, but rather than it is but it should be judged as "good". Which is, of course, a matter of personal opinion.
2) Financial -- Huh? It makes perfect financial sense. Without the copyrights there is no incentive to be paid at all for your works unless you are DIRECTLY the one performing them or distributing the media they are contained on. Point of sale or performance only. What would stop a megacorp from just copying your works and using their existing infrastructure and wealth to distribute your creations? Nothing. Nothing at all. Put bluntly, the only way to get paid for your work outside of charitable contributions and direct performances is copyright.
It isn't the only way, it doesn't make *perfect* financial sense when the ability to losslessly copy any creative work for almost nothing is so prevalent, and discussing your "megacorp" argument would be beating down a dead horse. Don't assume it's a settled matter when it's not.
3) Logical. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. The thinking behind copyright is valid and reasonable. It's implementation may be horrifically flawed and may be arguably harmful to society, but that hardly justifies calling it illogical.
This point I'll give you, it is a logical concept (at least on its face), but so is its opposite, that there should be no copyright.
4) Lacking any philosophical sense -- Who the hell are you? No, seriously, not trolling here.. Who the hell ARE YOU?? WOW. You're going to sit there and make absolute statements about philosophy like that? Sorry, you don't get to state absolutes like that.
My guess is that he's referring to the area of Philosophy called Ethics which, yes, deals exactly with things like this. And given that there are very good arguments to make in all three of the most widespread currents in Ethics against copyright, I'd say his comment is well justified. There are, of course, very good arguments to make in *favor* of it as well, but that's why it isn't a settled matter yet, isn't it?
However, although your little ditty may sound good, it was neither reasonable nor valid. If you want to argue that intellectual property is not a good thing for society than make some cogent arguments. Not the trolling that you are doing here. It does not serve copyright reform, nor does it serve to promote your ideas either.
I'd say the same about yours. You could argue that a post so lacking in logical arguments deserved no better, of course, but then again he'd probably be able to claim the same thing with respect to this whole Pirate Bay charade where the biggest argument making any bit of sense that's come from the RIAA has been "we believe this hurts our profits, and we don't like that".
The term "RIAA" is often used as short-hand for "the group of multinational recording companies behind the US RIAA and similar organizations throughout the world", with a similar thing happening for the MPAA.
In fact, most of the RIAA and MPAA members are European, not American, yet being large multinationals they have the money (and therefore, political power) to push their ideas anywhere be it the US, Sweden, or likely Ukraine as well.
(I have a 64-bit Nintendo64, but don't see it as any better than my 32-bit Gamecube or Wii.)
That's because neither your 64-bit Nintendo 64 nor your 32-bit Gamecube and Wii have 4 GBs of RAM or more. Your PC, however, probably does and if not, it soon should. Unfortunately 2 GBs *ain't* enough for anybody, and the 32-bit address space is a bit short for properly managing more than that.
Sure! and if you don't like the government spying on you, all you need to do is stage an armed revolution and declare your independence. Otherwise just go, drop your pants, and take what Big Brother gives you.
You must be my old calculus teacher then:) whenever his wife called, the Imperial March started playing so he'd stop the whole class, hold the phone up so that we'd all listen to it and, after it finished playing, hang up without even answering.
Funny as hell for us students, but how did she abstain herself from shoving his cellphone up my teacher's rectum afterwards I do not know.
True enough, but once upon a time a similar thing was said by the Apple loyalists and the Amiga faithful, dismissing that little upstart Microsoft and their outdated, inelegant OS. And we all know how *that* one ended.
And by "perfectly suitable" you mean "roughly on the same level of usefulness as NetBSD, except without the portability"? as far as I know no propietary ISV (like Oracle), and very few F/OSS developers offer pre-compiled Darwin binaries, and if I'm gonna be stuck with only the F/OSS apps I can get to compile I may as well go for a more robust OS like FreeBSD.
You haven't looked very hard. Most Mac communities are accepting folks who would rather generate content than tinker with their machines, but otherwise don't particularly sneer at anyone or act exclusively that I've seen.
Care to point at one? All the people I've met that would rather generate content than tinker with their machines generally tend towards creative communities (photography, painting, etc), rather than ones focused around a particular brand of computer. And those that do tend toward the latter, in my experience, do so in order to precisely sneer at people who choose a different brand, as the GP mentioned.
Windows? you compare Apple's products to Windows!? if there's a constant for Slashdot throughout the ages its been its complete devotion to UNIX. Which is why the Apple love was at its zenith two or three years ago, when Apple had an *usable* UNIX as an OS (rather than the bloated piece of shit that was 10.0) but hadn't started their current game of "let's cripple our own products for fun and profit". Or, at least it wasn't in full force yet.
But yeah, while before the criticisms were mainly about what Apple *couldn't* do, these days it's about Apple *doesn't allow you* to do. It's switched from technical to legal, as a result of Apple keeping a walled garden by means of NIH syndrome to an army of well-paid lawyers writing draconian EULAs and pursuing frivolous lawsuits.
The monopoly issue is a deal-breaker, but disabling their own hardware isn't. They're intentionally crippling the user's experience when using non-NVidia hardware regardless of *how* they're doing it.
It's similar (though not exactly alike) to what Microsoft did with the 'hidden' Windows APIs for Office years ago, something that did get them into legal trouble at the time.
but they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet
RIAA members may disagree.
or jail you
Adobe may disagree.
or draft you to die in Arghanistan
Yet.
Only government can do that, and therefore government is the greater evil.
No, only people with bigger armament than you do can do that. It just so happens that the government controls the police forces and the military, and *they* fit the bill.
But if corporations control the government then they are ultimately the greater evil, with the government being merely the middle man between them and the armed forces. And there's a pretty good argument to be made for that being the case in modern USA.
Either you forgot to include the strings, or you've been *extremely* careful with those guitars these past 15 years;)
But the nice thing of initial investments is that you just pay them once. If you live for another 10 years with the same three guitars you'd be at ~$13.67/month, and if you decide to quit you can always eBay them without fearing any legal consequences from it (well, except for the one on loan of course).
You can't swim without a pool, and a pool has no other function other than swimming.
However, many houses above a certain threshold already come with a pool, and many apartment complex provide one free of charge for those living in it. A non-trivial segment of the population doesn't have to pay for the construction of one, so yes, exactly like computers. The popcorn I'll give you that it doesn't affect the rate much, but it's still an unfair add-on (unless you want to count pizzas or such for WoW).
You claim your personal experience says I'm wrong. I claim mine shows you to be wrong. So, are you going to claim that you know more than me?
Well, last time I checked 5 > 2 so yeah, I am. And those five include a member of a national orchestra, one in a professional band and another in an amateur one, and *none* spend even nearly $500 per month on it. Music simply isn't such an expensive hobby unless you make it so.
Re:Do we need the anti-smoking jab
on
A Geek Funeral
·
· Score: 0, Troll
The majority of smokers I've known are always careful to ask before they light up. If you haven't found that to be the case, maybe your real problem is hanging around with assholes?
I'm sure your mother's basement is quite comfortable for you and your friends, but some of us like to go outside, to places called "streets" where people, *GASP*, may end up near you without you "hanging around" with them. Yes, the horrors.
But I do appreciate the sentiment of letting everyone mind their own business. Just as I'll respect your right to smoke wherever you damn please, I hope you'll understand my right to break some of your ribs when/if I feel like it. Which coincidentally may be a few seconds after you and your cigar come within 5 meters of me, but hey, that's life for you.
The implication that people buy "WoW computers" and that cost should be attributed to WoW is insane. That's like saying gardening costs $400,000 because you have to buy a house.
So, kinda like putting the cost of a pool for swimming, or popcorn for movie-viewing?
The two people I know that are music hobyists spend more on music than most people spend on car payments, let alone WoW. One is constantly buying mixers, laptops for nothing other than music capture, DJ equipment even thought he doesn't DJ. And the other buys one instrument a week at $500 per month or more in cost. I'm not saying you can't do it cheap. I'm saying I don't know anyone that does it cheap.
Then they're in the minority. Most musicians I know specialize on two or three instruments max, and while for instance a set of good strings for a violin is far from cheap (IIRC, my ex's cost her around $60 and they weren't the best ones available), they last long enough to make it an almost trivial expense in the long term.
As somebody who played through the entirety of Far Cry 2 without having the DLC, I don't see how the GP's analogy fails at any point.
Pretty much the only DLC that effectively "crippled" the main game was that of Fallout 3, the one that allowed you to live through the final mission and extended the level cap up to 30. Though it could be considered a short expansion due to the amount of content in it, so even then it's debatable if it's the concept of DLCs' fault.
Be ready for nickel and diming across the board. I see strategic war games on Steam selling sprite packs for $2.50.
Which is how DLC should be done. Giving developers an opportunity to get extra money from loyal customers without giving them any advantage over those who don't pay.
Same thing Killing Floor did: release a "skin pack" for $3, then a couple weeks later give everyone AKs and katanas. If you care about aesthetics, you pay, and if you don't care, you don't. Simple, nice, and fair for all those involved.
Finding cheaper hobbies is really easy, though. I'll name a few: Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament 3, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4, Sins of a Solar Empire, Red Orchestra, Demigod, Empire: Total War, Eve: Online, Guild Wars.
Though outside of games there's also photography: large initial investment (though not moreso than your WoW computer) and afterwards all you need is electricity and a new HDD every year, drawing: no initial investment other than the nearly trivial ongoing costs, music: large initial investment (unless you go for a flute or guitar), but small/trivial ongoing costs. And those are just the ones I practice, I'm sure there's others out there as well.
Though only here on Slashdot I've ever seen the word "gimp" being used to refer to anything else other than the popular image editor, and Google seems to agree with me as there was only one non-GIMP gimp in the first seven pages of a Google search for the term (a Wiktionary entry on page 3).
I currently make a living writing software, as millions of others do, and I'd like to continue making a living for the foreseeable future. Developers need to eat, too. The normal reply to a comment like this is that customers will pay for the support, rather than the software itself.
No, the normal reply is that approximately 95% of developers' work is never used outside of the company they wrote it for, and so even if the business of selling software were to be outlawed tomorrow the software industry by and large wouldn't give a shit.
The RMS Open Source business model doesn't lead to applications that have good intuitive interface or easy installation or configuration. Because they expect to make money in supporting and consulting their products.
By that logic, the closed-source business model doesn't lead to applications that have decent security or features, since they expect to make money selling you newer versions.
Translation: Ribbons always take up too much space. Also: in the largest, most complex applications to adopt it, it takes less space.
Because the largest, most complex application to adopt it previously had an interface designed by a complete idiot. Wanna take a look at how a large, complex and *polished* application looks like? use VisualStudio or Eclipse. Easily as complex as Word, yet their interfaces are a lot cleaner, with toolbars and menus that actually make sense instead of giving everything and the kitchen sink its own little button.
So no, that Office's Ribbon kinda sorta works compared to what they had before doesn't mean it's a good design for GUIs in general, or Firefox in specific.
There is resistance to the change because of 'menus are the way we are used to doing things' not necessarily the way things should be done.
No, there is resistance because the solution proposed is inferior. Yes, the Ribbon is more intuitive, but it also takes up significantly more space(1) which diminishes long-term usability compared to a good menu system.
(1) Microsoft Office being the exception, since its menus and toolbars were cluttered as hell to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not buying that. Current copyrights are of course way off balance and are clearly corrupt tools of a few mega-rich groups of people. However, the idea of myself being granted a temporary group of legal protections under the law to ostensibly allow me to make a living off my creative works is not immoral, evil, indication of bad character, incorrect behavior, or outside of the norm.
Only because you judge it so. Despite your ridiculing in the first paragraph, your whole argument isn't about how the concept of morality is inapplicable to that of copyright, but rather than it is but it should be judged as "good". Which is, of course, a matter of personal opinion.
2) Financial -- Huh? It makes perfect financial sense. Without the copyrights there is no incentive to be paid at all for your works unless you are DIRECTLY the one performing them or distributing the media they are contained on. Point of sale or performance only. What would stop a megacorp from just copying your works and using their existing infrastructure and wealth to distribute your creations? Nothing. Nothing at all. Put bluntly, the only way to get paid for your work outside of charitable contributions and direct performances is copyright.
It isn't the only way, it doesn't make *perfect* financial sense when the ability to losslessly copy any creative work for almost nothing is so prevalent, and discussing your "megacorp" argument would be beating down a dead horse. Don't assume it's a settled matter when it's not.
3) Logical. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. The thinking behind copyright is valid and reasonable. It's implementation may be horrifically flawed and may be arguably harmful to society, but that hardly justifies calling it illogical.
This point I'll give you, it is a logical concept (at least on its face), but so is its opposite, that there should be no copyright.
4) Lacking any philosophical sense -- Who the hell are you? No, seriously, not trolling here.. Who the hell ARE YOU?? WOW. You're going to sit there and make absolute statements about philosophy like that? Sorry, you don't get to state absolutes like that.
My guess is that he's referring to the area of Philosophy called Ethics which, yes, deals exactly with things like this. And given that there are very good arguments to make in all three of the most widespread currents in Ethics against copyright, I'd say his comment is well justified. There are, of course, very good arguments to make in *favor* of it as well, but that's why it isn't a settled matter yet, isn't it?
However, although your little ditty may sound good, it was neither reasonable nor valid. If you want to argue that intellectual property is not a good thing for society than make some cogent arguments. Not the trolling that you are doing here. It does not serve copyright reform, nor does it serve to promote your ideas either.
I'd say the same about yours. You could argue that a post so lacking in logical arguments deserved no better, of course, but then again he'd probably be able to claim the same thing with respect to this whole Pirate Bay charade where the biggest argument making any bit of sense that's come from the RIAA has been "we believe this hurts our profits, and we don't like that".
The term "RIAA" is often used as short-hand for "the group of multinational recording companies behind the US RIAA and similar organizations throughout the world", with a similar thing happening for the MPAA.
In fact, most of the RIAA and MPAA members are European, not American, yet being large multinationals they have the money (and therefore, political power) to push their ideas anywhere be it the US, Sweden, or likely Ukraine as well.
(I have a 64-bit Nintendo64, but don't see it as any better than my 32-bit Gamecube or Wii.)
That's because neither your 64-bit Nintendo 64 nor your 32-bit Gamecube and Wii have 4 GBs of RAM or more. Your PC, however, probably does and if not, it soon should. Unfortunately 2 GBs *ain't* enough for anybody, and the 32-bit address space is a bit short for properly managing more than that.
What has always amazed me is that even security-conscious, Microsoft-hating geeks sing praises to Outlook after using Lotus Notes.
Can it be really *that* bad? I hope I never find out.
Sure! and if you don't like the government spying on you, all you need to do is stage an armed revolution and declare your independence. Otherwise just go, drop your pants, and take what Big Brother gives you.
You must be my old calculus teacher then :) whenever his wife called, the Imperial March started playing so he'd stop the whole class, hold the phone up so that we'd all listen to it and, after it finished playing, hang up without even answering.
Funny as hell for us students, but how did she abstain herself from shoving his cellphone up my teacher's rectum afterwards I do not know.
True enough, but once upon a time a similar thing was said by the Apple loyalists and the Amiga faithful, dismissing that little upstart Microsoft and their outdated, inelegant OS. And we all know how *that* one ended.
And by "perfectly suitable" you mean "roughly on the same level of usefulness as NetBSD, except without the portability"? as far as I know no propietary ISV (like Oracle), and very few F/OSS developers offer pre-compiled Darwin binaries, and if I'm gonna be stuck with only the F/OSS apps I can get to compile I may as well go for a more robust OS like FreeBSD.
You haven't looked very hard. Most Mac communities are accepting folks who would rather generate content than tinker with their machines, but otherwise don't particularly sneer at anyone or act exclusively that I've seen.
Care to point at one? All the people I've met that would rather generate content than tinker with their machines generally tend towards creative communities (photography, painting, etc), rather than ones focused around a particular brand of computer. And those that do tend toward the latter, in my experience, do so in order to precisely sneer at people who choose a different brand, as the GP mentioned.
Windows? you compare Apple's products to Windows!? if there's a constant for Slashdot throughout the ages its been its complete devotion to UNIX. Which is why the Apple love was at its zenith two or three years ago, when Apple had an *usable* UNIX as an OS (rather than the bloated piece of shit that was 10.0) but hadn't started their current game of "let's cripple our own products for fun and profit". Or, at least it wasn't in full force yet.
But yeah, while before the criticisms were mainly about what Apple *couldn't* do, these days it's about Apple *doesn't allow you* to do. It's switched from technical to legal, as a result of Apple keeping a walled garden by means of NIH syndrome to an army of well-paid lawyers writing draconian EULAs and pursuing frivolous lawsuits.
The monopoly issue is a deal-breaker, but disabling their own hardware isn't. They're intentionally crippling the user's experience when using non-NVidia hardware regardless of *how* they're doing it.
It's similar (though not exactly alike) to what Microsoft did with the 'hidden' Windows APIs for Office years ago, something that did get them into legal trouble at the time.
but they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet
RIAA members may disagree.
or jail you
Adobe may disagree.
or draft you to die in Arghanistan
Yet.
Only government can do that, and therefore government is the greater evil.
No, only people with bigger armament than you do can do that. It just so happens that the government controls the police forces and the military, and *they* fit the bill.
But if corporations control the government then they are ultimately the greater evil, with the government being merely the middle man between them and the armed forces. And there's a pretty good argument to be made for that being the case in modern USA.
Either you forgot to include the strings, or you've been *extremely* careful with those guitars these past 15 years ;)
But the nice thing of initial investments is that you just pay them once. If you live for another 10 years with the same three guitars you'd be at ~$13.67/month, and if you decide to quit you can always eBay them without fearing any legal consequences from it (well, except for the one on loan of course).
You can't swim without a pool, and a pool has no other function other than swimming.
However, many houses above a certain threshold already come with a pool, and many apartment complex provide one free of charge for those living in it. A non-trivial segment of the population doesn't have to pay for the construction of one, so yes, exactly like computers. The popcorn I'll give you that it doesn't affect the rate much, but it's still an unfair add-on (unless you want to count pizzas or such for WoW).
You claim your personal experience says I'm wrong. I claim mine shows you to be wrong. So, are you going to claim that you know more than me?
Well, last time I checked 5 > 2 so yeah, I am. And those five include a member of a national orchestra, one in a professional band and another in an amateur one, and *none* spend even nearly $500 per month on it. Music simply isn't such an expensive hobby unless you make it so.
The majority of smokers I've known are always careful to ask before they light up. If you haven't found that to be the case, maybe your real problem is hanging around with assholes?
I'm sure your mother's basement is quite comfortable for you and your friends, but some of us like to go outside, to places called "streets" where people, *GASP*, may end up near you without you "hanging around" with them. Yes, the horrors.
But I do appreciate the sentiment of letting everyone mind their own business. Just as I'll respect your right to smoke wherever you damn please, I hope you'll understand my right to break some of your ribs when/if I feel like it. Which coincidentally may be a few seconds after you and your cigar come within 5 meters of me, but hey, that's life for you.
The implication that people buy "WoW computers" and that cost should be attributed to WoW is insane. That's like saying gardening costs $400,000 because you have to buy a house.
So, kinda like putting the cost of a pool for swimming, or popcorn for movie-viewing?
The two people I know that are music hobyists spend more on music than most people spend on car payments, let alone WoW. One is constantly buying mixers, laptops for nothing other than music capture, DJ equipment even thought he doesn't DJ. And the other buys one instrument a week at $500 per month or more in cost. I'm not saying you can't do it cheap. I'm saying I don't know anyone that does it cheap.
Then they're in the minority. Most musicians I know specialize on two or three instruments max, and while for instance a set of good strings for a violin is far from cheap (IIRC, my ex's cost her around $60 and they weren't the best ones available), they last long enough to make it an almost trivial expense in the long term.
As somebody who played through the entirety of Far Cry 2 without having the DLC, I don't see how the GP's analogy fails at any point.
Pretty much the only DLC that effectively "crippled" the main game was that of Fallout 3, the one that allowed you to live through the final mission and extended the level cap up to 30. Though it could be considered a short expansion due to the amount of content in it, so even then it's debatable if it's the concept of DLCs' fault.
Be ready for nickel and diming across the board. I see strategic war games on Steam selling sprite packs for $2.50.
Which is how DLC should be done. Giving developers an opportunity to get extra money from loyal customers without giving them any advantage over those who don't pay.
Same thing Killing Floor did: release a "skin pack" for $3, then a couple weeks later give everyone AKs and katanas. If you care about aesthetics, you pay, and if you don't care, you don't. Simple, nice, and fair for all those involved.
Finding cheaper hobbies is really easy, though. I'll name a few: Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament 3, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4, Sins of a Solar Empire, Red Orchestra, Demigod, Empire: Total War, Eve: Online, Guild Wars.
Though outside of games there's also photography: large initial investment (though not moreso than your WoW computer) and afterwards all you need is electricity and a new HDD every year, drawing: no initial investment other than the nearly trivial ongoing costs, music: large initial investment (unless you go for a flute or guitar), but small/trivial ongoing costs. And those are just the ones I practice, I'm sure there's others out there as well.
Should've gone with Paint.NET then.
Though only here on Slashdot I've ever seen the word "gimp" being used to refer to anything else other than the popular image editor, and Google seems to agree with me as there was only one non-GIMP gimp in the first seven pages of a Google search for the term (a Wiktionary entry on page 3).
I currently make a living writing software, as millions of others do, and I'd like to continue making a living for the foreseeable future. Developers need to eat, too. The normal reply to a comment like this is that customers will pay for the support, rather than the software itself.
No, the normal reply is that approximately 95% of developers' work is never used outside of the company they wrote it for, and so even if the business of selling software were to be outlawed tomorrow the software industry by and large wouldn't give a shit.
The RMS Open Source business model doesn't lead to applications that have good intuitive interface or easy installation or configuration. Because they expect to make money in supporting and consulting their products.
By that logic, the closed-source business model doesn't lead to applications that have decent security or features, since they expect to make money selling you newer versions.
Translation: Ribbons always take up too much space. Also: in the largest, most complex applications to adopt it, it takes less space.
Because the largest, most complex application to adopt it previously had an interface designed by a complete idiot. Wanna take a look at how a large, complex and *polished* application looks like? use VisualStudio or Eclipse. Easily as complex as Word, yet their interfaces are a lot cleaner, with toolbars and menus that actually make sense instead of giving everything and the kitchen sink its own little button.
So no, that Office's Ribbon kinda sorta works compared to what they had before doesn't mean it's a good design for GUIs in general, or Firefox in specific.
For devs like PopCap or Ace Team? hell yeah.
There is resistance to the change because of 'menus are the way we are used to doing things' not necessarily the way things should be done.
No, there is resistance because the solution proposed is inferior. Yes, the Ribbon is more intuitive, but it also takes up significantly more space(1) which diminishes long-term usability compared to a good menu system.
(1) Microsoft Office being the exception, since its menus and toolbars were cluttered as hell to begin with.