Well, man, $39.99 and no demo, even *I* would look for a way to try it before I buy it and I generally loathe 'pirated' games both from an ethical as well as a practical standpoint (too many viruses in cracks, and shitty download speeds compared to Steam et al).
Still, it does look cool, so if I ever see it for cheap ($20 or less) I guess I'll pick it up. 'Til then, however, I guess I'll be skipping it since I don't spend that much money blindly nor do I want to contribute to their 'piracy' statistics.
It's not "without any problems whatsoever", but rather "with only negligible problems". Studies have shown that over 90% of the world's software developers are employed in-house and their work isn't ever sold to external entities, so even if a copyright-less society would completely destroy the commercial software industry (an extremely fatalist idea in itself), 9 out of 10 developers wouldn't even care.
The fact that a copyright lenght of approximately 15 years is the ideal to maximize the public good (which depends on both the number of works being created as well as the time it takes them to reach the public domain) is well documented by countless independant scientific studies and in fact I'm surprised you read Slashdot and haven't seen one, we have a new one almost every month. The fact that the RIAA and MPAA are to blame for the fact that in almost every country with a copyright system the lenght is far above that is similarly well documented (Google "Sonny Bono" for an example).
The only debate is whether it's ethically preferable to simply stop giving them money or whether it's better to actively attack their profit channels, but unless there's an independant study proving that the former is superior to the latter, chances are sites like TPB *are* good for society. It is, at least, contrary to what has already been proven harmful.
Note: this post was written making assumptions such as that by "steal" you meant "infringe on others' copyrights" and that by "available on a pirate site" you meant "available by the users of a website commonly associated with copyright infringement", since otherwise much of your post simply does not follow.
No, you have that backwards. It's not your "right" to reproduce someone else's work that's "taken away," it's the rights of the creator of that work to have a say in how and when its reproduced that are being preserved.
Wrong. Without copyright laws, the right to reproduce someone else's work is the default state. Copyright is simply a mechanism through which we, society as a whole, try to entice creators from sharing their work with us and *that* is why there's a specific clause in the US constitution specifying copyright *must* be time limited. Because otherwise we, as society, would never get back something in return and as such could only stand to lose in such an agreement.
And as current copyright laws are, worldwide, tending towards the infinity-minus-one model that the RIAA and MPAA so strongly desire, it is our duty as citizens and free people of the world to protest. And disregarding copyright laws in their entirety is one such possible method of protest.
I'm sorry, other than the odd anime series I don't download stuff from TPB and certainly not RIAA/MPAA-sponsored products, so I'm hardly a so-called "thief" trying to justify himself. But to paraphrase a famous philosopher, I may not agree with your downloading of the Transformers movie, but I'll still defend your right to do so.
Yet thinking in terms of applications instead of functionality prevents you from even *trying*, let alone fairly judging, alternative ways of doing the same thing. Examples abound, starting with Word/LaTeX, where the fact that most people are used to graphical editors with lots of pretty buttons prevents them from seeing that LaTeX's "content first, presentation later" approach *is* the superior one both in terms of time spent as well as the quality of the end results.
The thing I've never understood about these people who claim to have lost $100+ per hour configuring Windows/Linux/Mac/whatever to get it to recognize a specific piece of hardware is, if their time is so valuable, why didn't they just buy a new piece of hardware instead?
When I was 16, I built a test server out of spare parts and random junk off cheap online auctions. Everything worked nicely, except for the network card which I had found in a closet (probably my dad's), which strangely enough only worked in FreeBSD, neither Linux nor Windows acknowledged its existence. Know what I did? paid $8 for a brand new one with a penguin logo on the box, spent all of 10 minutes removing the old one and replacing it with the new card, and lived happily ever after.
Just as I doubt the Microsoft Police will come after someone because they're using an OEM license in place of a retail one, or because the university-going child lets his parents use their computer with the free Windows license he got from his university.
Still, legality is legality and if we're gonna ignore that, we may as well go to ThePirateBay and be done with it.
VB.NET is a stupified version of C# rather than the other way around, and C# has more in common with LISP than it does with the old Visual Basic, that is to say "not a fucking lot". It is, also, a kickass language which you should try before flaming it only to make Apple look better.
And I'd like to know what part of Visual C++ makes it a "3rd class language" now, in your opinion, because I've seen nothing to support your argument. Yes, VS' language support may be inferior to that of Eclipse, for instance (which has plugins for pretty much anything these days), but it's certainly not as bad as you make it sound and I've yet to see convincing evidence that XCode is any better.
Most people aren't savvy enough to understand how to copy and paste mp3 files to a USB storage device, or how to buy music online without using itunes (or even rip a CD without itunes).
Most people in the US, thankyouverymuch. Here in South America I've yet to see an iPod in the wild, it's all el-cheapo chinese MP3/MP4 players and people seem to have very little trouble using them. And frankly, it's not like you need a PhD in CS to drag & drop some files on Windows Explorer, despite what the Apple marketing machine may want to tell you.
Really the question I have is why would anybody NOT buy a mac? What benefit do Windows or Linux offer (for a user/developer machine!!! (not server))?
For desktops, the ability to build your own since that means you can get a more powerful machine for cheaper, *and* easily replace any component you don't like. For notebooks, Thinkpads > Macbooks though Macbooks > everything else, so if Lenovo ever drops the ball my next laptop will probably be an Apple.
Plus, there's the fact that for Linux OS upgrades are free which encourages you to stay up-to-date. Add the fact that the OS is so well integrated with all kinds of dev tools, which means I can pick one text editor, one graphical toolkit and one programming language at random and they'll almost surely work together with no hassles, and you have the perfect dev machine. Also, I may be alone in this but I *despise* the Mac GUI, it has gotten better since the Classic days, sure, but even Win95 was better than that turd so that ain't saying much.
Granted, there are many reasons to like Macs and specifically OSX, but there are plenty to like both Windows and Linux as well, and plenty to dislike each and every one of them, so this is just to tell you why *I* choose to run Linux and have my Mac happily collecting dust in a corner. YMMV and all that.
Simiarly, do new OS X users sit down at their shiny new Macbook Pro and try to install a bunch of Windows applications?
You'd be surprised. When I got my first (and so far only) Mac so many years ago, looking for recommendations for good text editors and such, there were quite a few forum postings 'round the net asking how to get their.EXE to work;) made me laugh for a bit, then I remembered the Linux n00bs asking the same thing and felt pity for the other forum members.
A sad side effect of people learning to think in terms of applications instead of function, I'm afraid.
Thank you. Yes, I can recognize there's a time for developers to sit back and polish what they already have (Halo, for instance), but overall innovation is what developers should be aiming for, and I know I'm not alone when I say I'd rather pay for a game with a failed innovation over a successful me-too.
For things like this I do the thought experiment I like to call "the nuke". Basically, if either of the conflicting parties would be wiped out by a nuke tomorrow, what would the effect on my business be?
If the RIAA/MPAA were to be nuked tomorrow, the only difference to YouTube would be a decrease in sue-happy lawyers utilizing the DMCA as a hammer in a world of nails, and that's only a good thing.
If the YouTube users who upload potentially-infringing material were to be nuked tomorrow, however, YouTube would cease to exist next month due to 9 out of 10 former users being now glowing corpses, and any ad-related income evaporating along with them.
Therefore, if YouTube is to support any party in this, the choice ought to be pretty much obvious.
Youtube's remixes and such are just as original as Disney's interpretations of Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan et al. It's called "building on top of what came before you" or, if you want, "standing on the shoulders of giants" and it's something actively encouraged by copyright laws. In fact, you could even argue it's the whole point of it.
Has it ever occured to you that maybe Microsoft has a monopoly because users don't want more variants of OS's?
By that, I mean, the market tends to a monopoly because end users don't want confusion.
You know, I always see this sort of argument. "Has it ever occured to you that maybe Microsoft has a monopoly because they $DO_ACTION_X? Linux can therefore only succeed if they $DO_ACTION_X. Defining "DO_ACTION_X" as the poster's pet Linux complain, of course, from VisualStudio integration to having a blue wallpaper by default (and I wish I was kidding with that one).
I'm sorry, but Microsoft's domination of the desktop market isn't something that can be summed up by one or two factors, and *certainly* not for your pet complain only. Further on, even if it *did*, it'd be due to the OEM's desire for a single OS, not the consumers, as I'm sure you'd know if you had been using computers since the time the IBM PC first came to be.
But everybody wants to use the product that has them all "just in case".
Then why is the photography industry moving by and large away from Photoshop towards simpler, more focused tools like Aperture, Lightzone or even Adobe's own Lightroom?
Sorry but no, bloated all-in-one applications are going the way of the dodo because there's a limit as to how usable you can make an interface when you have to organize thousands of little, "useless for 99.99% of our users" features, specially when you can't "cheat" like Linux and put most of the nearly useless ones out of the GUI as command line switches. See also: Office's Ribbon.
You make so many terrible points I won't even bother replying to them all, so I'll just make a quick suggestion: first, go and take a look at Eclipse and all its available plugins, you'll be surprised at the amount of things its integrated with. And second, please, *please* go and read the definition of the word "propietary".
In any event, why allow someone to patent an application-specific integrated circuit that performs new function X but not a FGPA configured via a HDL that performs new function X?
None, of course. Which is why neither should be allowed, as the FPGA is merely an implementation of a mathematical algorithm designed to perform function X, and mathematics itself cannot be patented.
Wish we could convince a judge of *that* one, however, it'd get rid of an awful lot of stupid patents and make the IT world a much nicer place to work in.
So before modding me a troll, or flamebait, or calling me an MS fanboi or shill, please post some technical arguments as to why Linux is better.
According to my own experience Linux is far more secure, easier to install, has more quality products available at no charge, and behaves smoother than Windows. I have installed and used every major Windows version since 3.1 (except for Vista but including 7 beta), so I am speaking from experience. Happy now?;)
To be completely fair cost is also a factor, replicating the software I have on my laptop with only closed-source software would set me back a couple grand at least (Matlab for Octave/Maxima, Illustrator for Inkscape/Xara, etc), but it's also much more integrated. All installed within a single menu, all updated with a single click, and I can download any multi-language editor or IDE, the requisite compiler, and be working with the language of my choice right away, no need to specify routes to compilers, libraries or such.
Of course, your or Joseph Average Idiot's mileage may and probably will vary, Joe A. Idiot has little need for an Ada compiler and even less for something like Maxima, but of course I can only speak for my own experience. And my own experience is, despite the improvements in 7 Beta, Windows still has a *lot* of catching up to do if it hopes to regain me as a desktop user.
Where, then, do moral absolutes derive? (Be careful what you say, because "Following one's conscience" is Moral Relativism.)
Following one's own rules then. It's not universality we demand, but self consistency. If you claim to follow the rule of "respect other nations to govern themselves", then follow it when it suits you, and follow it when it does not.
There is, however, stupidity. If monsters are such because they treat others as monsters would, then by punishing him likewise makes you, in turn, a monster deserving to be punished in the same way.
And thus is why the phrase "cycle of hatred" exists.
There's also the warm, fuzzy feelings you get from supporting artists you care about. However, the latest business tactics employed by Apple, Amazon and *specially* the RIAA have gone a long way to remove that as well.
You people make me sick. The world's finest minds have tried to define what exactly constitutes being a 'good man', from Aristotle to Kant, without reaching consensus yet you throw around the word simply to justify the murder of your fellow men? FUCK YOU.
Don't ever call your enemy "bad people" until you can do what Aristotle couldn't and define the terms in a clear, precise and universally-accepted way. Until then, it's just pointless rhethoric aimed to gain points from the intellectually incompetent, nothing more.
No? Then why are we all in pieces over the girl in legal trouble (of her own making)?
Given the "evidence" came from MediaSentry, how can you be so sure?
Further, it's not that she's being punished at all but the huge imbalance between the damage done, and the payment claimed. If MediaSentry's employees were to be put to death most Slashdotters would rightfully complain, just as we probably wouldn't if the girl had to pay only a $100 bill if she lost her case fair and square.
The thing with OOo in particular is that most of the devs are Sun employees because the codebase is an extremely huge and confusing mess, so buying Sun out and firing all OOo devs would *seriously* hurt it as a project, perhaps not long-term but certainly short- and mid-term.
Java and Solaris not so much, Java is far too important to IBM to be affected, and I guess there'll always be geeky hackers willing to adopt and maintain any abandoned version of UNIX, moreso with Solaris' reputation. But a MS purchase of Sun would be very bad for OOo, that's for certain.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, man, $39.99 and no demo, even *I* would look for a way to try it before I buy it and I generally loathe 'pirated' games both from an ethical as well as a practical standpoint (too many viruses in cracks, and shitty download speeds compared to Steam et al).
Still, it does look cool, so if I ever see it for cheap ($20 or less) I guess I'll pick it up. 'Til then, however, I guess I'll be skipping it since I don't spend that much money blindly nor do I want to contribute to their 'piracy' statistics.
It's not "without any problems whatsoever", but rather "with only negligible problems". Studies have shown that over 90% of the world's software developers are employed in-house and their work isn't ever sold to external entities, so even if a copyright-less society would completely destroy the commercial software industry (an extremely fatalist idea in itself), 9 out of 10 developers wouldn't even care.
The fact that a copyright lenght of approximately 15 years is the ideal to maximize the public good (which depends on both the number of works being created as well as the time it takes them to reach the public domain) is well documented by countless independant scientific studies and in fact I'm surprised you read Slashdot and haven't seen one, we have a new one almost every month. The fact that the RIAA and MPAA are to blame for the fact that in almost every country with a copyright system the lenght is far above that is similarly well documented (Google "Sonny Bono" for an example).
The only debate is whether it's ethically preferable to simply stop giving them money or whether it's better to actively attack their profit channels, but unless there's an independant study proving that the former is superior to the latter, chances are sites like TPB *are* good for society. It is, at least, contrary to what has already been proven harmful.
Note: this post was written making assumptions such as that by "steal" you meant "infringe on others' copyrights" and that by "available on a pirate site" you meant "available by the users of a website commonly associated with copyright infringement", since otherwise much of your post simply does not follow.
No, you have that backwards. It's not your "right" to reproduce someone else's work that's "taken away," it's the rights of the creator of that work to have a say in how and when its reproduced that are being preserved.
Wrong. Without copyright laws, the right to reproduce someone else's work is the default state. Copyright is simply a mechanism through which we, society as a whole, try to entice creators from sharing their work with us and *that* is why there's a specific clause in the US constitution specifying copyright *must* be time limited. Because otherwise we, as society, would never get back something in return and as such could only stand to lose in such an agreement.
And as current copyright laws are, worldwide, tending towards the infinity-minus-one model that the RIAA and MPAA so strongly desire, it is our duty as citizens and free people of the world to protest. And disregarding copyright laws in their entirety is one such possible method of protest.
I'm sorry, other than the odd anime series I don't download stuff from TPB and certainly not RIAA/MPAA-sponsored products, so I'm hardly a so-called "thief" trying to justify himself. But to paraphrase a famous philosopher, I may not agree with your downloading of the Transformers movie, but I'll still defend your right to do so.
Yet thinking in terms of applications instead of functionality prevents you from even *trying*, let alone fairly judging, alternative ways of doing the same thing. Examples abound, starting with Word/LaTeX, where the fact that most people are used to graphical editors with lots of pretty buttons prevents them from seeing that LaTeX's "content first, presentation later" approach *is* the superior one both in terms of time spent as well as the quality of the end results.
The thing I've never understood about these people who claim to have lost $100+ per hour configuring Windows/Linux/Mac/whatever to get it to recognize a specific piece of hardware is, if their time is so valuable, why didn't they just buy a new piece of hardware instead?
When I was 16, I built a test server out of spare parts and random junk off cheap online auctions. Everything worked nicely, except for the network card which I had found in a closet (probably my dad's), which strangely enough only worked in FreeBSD, neither Linux nor Windows acknowledged its existence. Know what I did? paid $8 for a brand new one with a penguin logo on the box, spent all of 10 minutes removing the old one and replacing it with the new card, and lived happily ever after.
Just as I doubt the Microsoft Police will come after someone because they're using an OEM license in place of a retail one, or because the university-going child lets his parents use their computer with the free Windows license he got from his university.
Still, legality is legality and if we're gonna ignore that, we may as well go to ThePirateBay and be done with it.
VB.NET is a stupified version of C# rather than the other way around, and C# has more in common with LISP than it does with the old Visual Basic, that is to say "not a fucking lot". It is, also, a kickass language which you should try before flaming it only to make Apple look better.
And I'd like to know what part of Visual C++ makes it a "3rd class language" now, in your opinion, because I've seen nothing to support your argument. Yes, VS' language support may be inferior to that of Eclipse, for instance (which has plugins for pretty much anything these days), but it's certainly not as bad as you make it sound and I've yet to see convincing evidence that XCode is any better.
Most people aren't savvy enough to understand how to copy and paste mp3 files to a USB storage device, or how to buy music online without using itunes (or even rip a CD without itunes).
Most people in the US, thankyouverymuch. Here in South America I've yet to see an iPod in the wild, it's all el-cheapo chinese MP3/MP4 players and people seem to have very little trouble using them. And frankly, it's not like you need a PhD in CS to drag & drop some files on Windows Explorer, despite what the Apple marketing machine may want to tell you.
Really the question I have is why would anybody NOT buy a mac? What benefit do Windows or Linux offer (for a user/developer machine!!! (not server))?
For desktops, the ability to build your own since that means you can get a more powerful machine for cheaper, *and* easily replace any component you don't like. For notebooks, Thinkpads > Macbooks though Macbooks > everything else, so if Lenovo ever drops the ball my next laptop will probably be an Apple.
Plus, there's the fact that for Linux OS upgrades are free which encourages you to stay up-to-date. Add the fact that the OS is so well integrated with all kinds of dev tools, which means I can pick one text editor, one graphical toolkit and one programming language at random and they'll almost surely work together with no hassles, and you have the perfect dev machine. Also, I may be alone in this but I *despise* the Mac GUI, it has gotten better since the Classic days, sure, but even Win95 was better than that turd so that ain't saying much.
Granted, there are many reasons to like Macs and specifically OSX, but there are plenty to like both Windows and Linux as well, and plenty to dislike each and every one of them, so this is just to tell you why *I* choose to run Linux and have my Mac happily collecting dust in a corner. YMMV and all that.
Simiarly, do new OS X users sit down at their shiny new Macbook Pro and try to install a bunch of Windows applications?
You'd be surprised. When I got my first (and so far only) Mac so many years ago, looking for recommendations for good text editors and such, there were quite a few forum postings 'round the net asking how to get their .EXE to work ;) made me laugh for a bit, then I remembered the Linux n00bs asking the same thing and felt pity for the other forum members.
A sad side effect of people learning to think in terms of applications instead of function, I'm afraid.
Thank you. Yes, I can recognize there's a time for developers to sit back and polish what they already have (Halo, for instance), but overall innovation is what developers should be aiming for, and I know I'm not alone when I say I'd rather pay for a game with a failed innovation over a successful me-too.
More World of Goo, less CoD: World at War please!
For things like this I do the thought experiment I like to call "the nuke". Basically, if either of the conflicting parties would be wiped out by a nuke tomorrow, what would the effect on my business be?
If the RIAA/MPAA were to be nuked tomorrow, the only difference to YouTube would be a decrease in sue-happy lawyers utilizing the DMCA as a hammer in a world of nails, and that's only a good thing.
If the YouTube users who upload potentially-infringing material were to be nuked tomorrow, however, YouTube would cease to exist next month due to 9 out of 10 former users being now glowing corpses, and any ad-related income evaporating along with them.
Therefore, if YouTube is to support any party in this, the choice ought to be pretty much obvious.
Youtube's remixes and such are just as original as Disney's interpretations of Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan et al. It's called "building on top of what came before you" or, if you want, "standing on the shoulders of giants" and it's something actively encouraged by copyright laws. In fact, you could even argue it's the whole point of it.
Has it ever occured to you that maybe Microsoft has a monopoly because users don't want more variants of OS's?
By that, I mean, the market tends to a monopoly because end users don't want confusion.
You know, I always see this sort of argument. "Has it ever occured to you that maybe Microsoft has a monopoly because they $DO_ACTION_X? Linux can therefore only succeed if they $DO_ACTION_X. Defining "DO_ACTION_X" as the poster's pet Linux complain, of course, from VisualStudio integration to having a blue wallpaper by default (and I wish I was kidding with that one).
I'm sorry, but Microsoft's domination of the desktop market isn't something that can be summed up by one or two factors, and *certainly* not for your pet complain only. Further on, even if it *did*, it'd be due to the OEM's desire for a single OS, not the consumers, as I'm sure you'd know if you had been using computers since the time the IBM PC first came to be.
But everybody wants to use the product that has them all "just in case".
Then why is the photography industry moving by and large away from Photoshop towards simpler, more focused tools like Aperture, Lightzone or even Adobe's own Lightroom?
Sorry but no, bloated all-in-one applications are going the way of the dodo because there's a limit as to how usable you can make an interface when you have to organize thousands of little, "useless for 99.99% of our users" features, specially when you can't "cheat" like Linux and put most of the nearly useless ones out of the GUI as command line switches. See also: Office's Ribbon.
You make so many terrible points I won't even bother replying to them all, so I'll just make a quick suggestion: first, go and take a look at Eclipse and all its available plugins, you'll be surprised at the amount of things its integrated with. And second, please, *please* go and read the definition of the word "propietary".
In any event, why allow someone to patent an application-specific integrated circuit that performs new function X but not a FGPA configured via a HDL that performs new function X?
None, of course. Which is why neither should be allowed, as the FPGA is merely an implementation of a mathematical algorithm designed to perform function X, and mathematics itself cannot be patented.
Wish we could convince a judge of *that* one, however, it'd get rid of an awful lot of stupid patents and make the IT world a much nicer place to work in.
So before modding me a troll, or flamebait, or calling me an MS fanboi or shill, please post some technical arguments as to why Linux is better.
According to my own experience Linux is far more secure, easier to install, has more quality products available at no charge, and behaves smoother than Windows. I have installed and used every major Windows version since 3.1 (except for Vista but including 7 beta), so I am speaking from experience. Happy now? ;)
To be completely fair cost is also a factor, replicating the software I have on my laptop with only closed-source software would set me back a couple grand at least (Matlab for Octave/Maxima, Illustrator for Inkscape/Xara, etc), but it's also much more integrated. All installed within a single menu, all updated with a single click, and I can download any multi-language editor or IDE, the requisite compiler, and be working with the language of my choice right away, no need to specify routes to compilers, libraries or such.
Of course, your or Joseph Average Idiot's mileage may and probably will vary, Joe A. Idiot has little need for an Ada compiler and even less for something like Maxima, but of course I can only speak for my own experience. And my own experience is, despite the improvements in 7 Beta, Windows still has a *lot* of catching up to do if it hopes to regain me as a desktop user.
Where, then, do moral absolutes derive? (Be careful what you say, because "Following one's conscience" is Moral Relativism.)
Following one's own rules then. It's not universality we demand, but self consistency. If you claim to follow the rule of "respect other nations to govern themselves", then follow it when it suits you, and follow it when it does not.
There is, however, stupidity. If monsters are such because they treat others as monsters would, then by punishing him likewise makes you, in turn, a monster deserving to be punished in the same way.
And thus is why the phrase "cycle of hatred" exists.
There's also the warm, fuzzy feelings you get from supporting artists you care about. However, the latest business tactics employed by Apple, Amazon and *specially* the RIAA have gone a long way to remove that as well.
You people make me sick. The world's finest minds have tried to define what exactly constitutes being a 'good man', from Aristotle to Kant, without reaching consensus yet you throw around the word simply to justify the murder of your fellow men? FUCK YOU.
Don't ever call your enemy "bad people" until you can do what Aristotle couldn't and define the terms in a clear, precise and universally-accepted way. Until then, it's just pointless rhethoric aimed to gain points from the intellectually incompetent, nothing more.
No? Then why are we all in pieces over the girl in legal trouble (of her own making)?
Given the "evidence" came from MediaSentry, how can you be so sure?
Further, it's not that she's being punished at all but the huge imbalance between the damage done, and the payment claimed. If MediaSentry's employees were to be put to death most Slashdotters would rightfully complain, just as we probably wouldn't if the girl had to pay only a $100 bill if she lost her case fair and square.
The thing with OOo in particular is that most of the devs are Sun employees because the codebase is an extremely huge and confusing mess, so buying Sun out and firing all OOo devs would *seriously* hurt it as a project, perhaps not long-term but certainly short- and mid-term.
Java and Solaris not so much, Java is far too important to IBM to be affected, and I guess there'll always be geeky hackers willing to adopt and maintain any abandoned version of UNIX, moreso with Solaris' reputation. But a MS purchase of Sun would be very bad for OOo, that's for certain.