I don't how see how learning C++ or Unix is any less "Brand Training" than learning VB and NT.
Well, C++ is an ISO standard, while VB and NT are not. Still, I think it's a mistake to become overly
fixated on a given tool (even if it is an ISO standard)
Music is overpriced because the selling price of a cd is disproportionately large compared to the cost of materials and production cost of the recording.
But I see no attempts to substantiate these claims on the part of those who make them. I mean, one could make the same argument about jeans, but I don't see the slashdot herd venting rage about "overpriced" clothing.
Courtney Love had a nice opinion piece in Salon a while back about the continual financial rape that the industry perpetrates on the artist community.
Yep. One can howl at the industry, but the funny
thing is that most of the people who do this are
simply trying to divert attention from the fact
that they really don't care about the artists
any more than the record comapnies.
If you have a better idea for low-overhead more-direct compensation to artists,
I don't, and neither do you -- which makes a point: maybe those services are not quite as useless as the slashdot herd would have us believe.
When there are so many avenues of free access to music on the internet, as well as ways to appease one's conscience [fairtunes.com]
From what I've heard of fairtunes, it's not doing that well. Oddly enough, the freeloading low-life napster crowd don't consider "appeasing their conscience" to be very important, or perhaps their consciences are easily appeased by the half-assed rationalisations they post on slashdot.
On what basis do you claim that music is "overpriced" ? It's a claim that's often made, and rarely if ever substantiated.
Lets look at the specs.
BASEketball DVD
1) 2 hours long
2) High quality video AND audio
3) Sturdy case with brief guide to chapters etc..
4) Movies cost a hell of a lot more to make than albums
You're missing the sales volume, and the box office ticket sales for the movie.
1) 60 minutes long not counting the 5 minute pause between House of 1000 Corpses and the hidden song after it
2) Very breakable case that came from amazon pre-cracked for me.
3) High quality audio NO video
4) Took Rob Zombie all of a few weeks to record in a studio
You're assuming that "Rob Zombie"s studio time makes up most of the cost of producing the CD. That's a bad assumption. The main reason CDs cost a lot is that the audience for a given CD is likely to be smaller than the audience for a given movie. In other words, the production costs are recovered from a smaller set of buyers, therefore each buyer pays a higher proportion of those costs.
The music companies just don't get it! If the music quality was better, maybe people wouldn't mind paying $16USD to $20USD per cd, but the music quality _SUCKS_.
I'm sorry that you always listen to b-grade music like Britney Spears, and I agree that such music "sucks". I suggest you find some music that does not suck, and that you consider to be worth paying for.
If you want to stop the piracy lower the prices to $10 or less!
That's like asking shops to lower their prices to
stop theft. BTW, a lot of CDs are available for $10- or less. If you listened to something besides Britney Spears, you would have noticed (-;
A vanishingly small amount of 3D work requires a fast CPU - it's about shoving large amounts of data around. It doesn't matter how many mhz your bus does - it's still a data bus, and it's inherently unsuited to this type of work.
Look at the Octane's Crossbar. Look at the O2s UMA architecture
You can talk about "UMA architectures" and the like all you like, but it doesn't beat cold hard benchmarks.
From all I've seen on the spec benchmarks, the x86 processors perform respectably, and certainly beat the pants off a 4 year old Octane. See for yourself on spec.org. Or any other benchmark. They are certainly not "toys".
The problem with GUI tools is that they're idiosyncratic and vary from distribution to distribution. That's fine for the home user, but for a sysadmin, developer, or anyone else who needs to deal with multiple platforms, you need to be able to use different systems, and that means understanding the consistent underlying POSIX system, as opposed to pointing and clicking with some GUI tools. I'll admit to using kppp for dialup, but all other system, configuration I do the "old fashioned way",
because I know that the old-fashioned way will work on some other distribution or Solaris.
I agree with the tone of the article -- this basically disqualifies me as someone to help newbies. I recently went to a LUG meeting, where some relatively new Linux users demonstrated all the GUI tools you can use on Linux. I didn't even know what "Evolution" was until I went to the meeting.
I suppose the best advice for the newbie is to find some kind of user group and meet people with
common interests and/or struggles with their systems (usually the slightly-less-newbie types as proposed by the article).
And now someone's going to attack me for not supporting the movement and giving up and selling out and being lazy.
Not at all. No one's forcing you to write documentation. One might attack the soundness of your reasoning though -- learning Docbook is not the hardest part of writing documentation. If you don't want to put in the effort required to write documentation, that's your choice.
What's wrong with plain text
Doesn't contain any formatting information
or man pages
Difficult to convert to other formats. No support for many important features such as tables, graphics, etc.
or html?
HTML would be OK if authors would stick to a suitable subset. Perhaps someone should write a html2docbook converter that works on a suitable subset of tags.
An important factor in Linux' cost is its maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance, work doable only by the relatively few high-paid Linux administrators that put themselves - of course willingly - at a great place in the market. Linux seems to be needing maintenance continuously, to keep it from breaking down.
Hogwash. Any operating system needs basic maintenance in the form of security updates. However, it's simply false that Linux "falls apart" all by itself.
According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage.
What do you mean by this ? The current release of ReiserFS is not a.0 release, it ships with production kernels, and IIRC SuSE uses it by default.
This means it is not intended for production use
Nonsense. Read the ReiserFS webpage. It's a mature project, and it's perfectly fit for production use.
Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally.
On what basis do you make this claim ? I admin several Linux boxes, and crashes are rare. Downtime usually consists of kernel upgrades, power outages, and OS upgrades.
I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear.
Given the fact that your reasoning seems to be based upon your conclusion, and not the other way around, I find myself agreeing with this assertion.
Radio & TV airplay is considered "advertising" by music media. They promote and do everything possible to push onto the airwaves in order to sell more records.
No, the radio stations are required to pay royalties. Advertising is when you pay for airtime, not when you get paid for it.
Because if they didn't, they sure as hell wouldn't be selling any records made by those talentless hacks
I disagree. Talentless hacks will be popular, regardless. Most people just aren't that musically inclined.
No. The reason you see so much crap is because that's what the people BUYING ALBUMS like to listen to. It's an important difference.
How so ? Are you saying that people who don't listen to "talentless hacks" are cheap ? I don't agree with this, and IME people who don't listen to mainstream music are more deeply into it, hence more likely to purchase (most jazz fans I know for example, including myself, have several CDs)
Second a movie basically costs the same price as a movie. I hear the music industry whining on how much it costs to produce a CD, but EXCUSE' me how much does
it cost to produce a film?
The film has a higher sales volume than the CD. And films aren't immediately available on VHS. First, they're in the movie theatres, then in the video rental shops, and then for sale. Perhaps the music industry could learn something from this pricing model.
The music industry on the other hand has decided combat anything that is not based on sales of media...
radio and TV airplay is not "based on sales of media".
And the worst part is that the music industry keeps pumping
out CRAP in terms of boy and girl bands.
No, "the music industry" puts out all kinds of music. The reason you see so much crap is because that's what most people like to listen to.
Re:CPU is not problem anymore
on
CPU Wars
·
· Score: 1
Unless you are ripping Divx movies left and right or a Seti@home freak you don't need a faster cpu, It will do nothing for you.
I do a lot of compiling, and write numerical analysis software. Both my athlons get plenty of use. But you make a good point-- most people just don't need it.
Anyone notice that you pretty much have the same Harddrive as you did with your pentium 1 120, the size has increased but if you go IDE it is still 7200rpm and the data transfer rate isn't any faster.
The drive in my Pentium 133 was not 7200 rpm. Also, IDE technology has improved since the Pentium I days. And the new drives are much quieter. For the same noise and cost as an old IDE drive, one could get a SCSI disk at 15k RPM nowadays.
What scrutiny? My point is simple - you can't disprove moral relativism without proving some kind of moral absolutism first, and you haven't done it.
Sure I have. I cited the basic principle that morality should be consistent. Inconsistencies in morality are universally frowned upon.
Art is not an occupation or a career, it is a way of life which may allow one to make a living.
Again, one could make the same assertion about programming, medicine, law, politics, etc.
As far as your claim that land issues are irrelevant, you are dead wrong.
No, I'm not. I'm discussing copyright, and you launch into a divserionary rant about colonialism. Colonialism has nothing to do with copyright.
The rulers of our governments and corporations are the direct beneficiaries of the wrongs of the past, done not just to a few natives, but to the great majority of people.
They steal the land from the common people and then charge them interest or rent to live upon it. But when the common people decide to copy a few things the corporations have with file sharing programs, they are theives, pirates and criminals.
The problem is that "the corporations" is not a single entity. The corporations that distribute music did not participate in genocide.
Moreover, your attack on the corporations may have some merit, but it does not justify screwing the producers of creative works. IOW, I am not attempting to defend corporations. I am simply saying that producers of creative works should be compensated.
And irrelevant to what? Copyright as a moral absolute?
You're still missing my point. My point is simply that the moral relativism dogma doesn't hold up to scrutiny. For example, I consider it to be a moral absolute that hypocrisy is not a good thing. I consider it a verifiable truth that when so-called "ethics" are full of contradictions, the primary source of contradiction is the need to invent a post-hoc rationalisation for ones own behaviour.
I'm not trying to say that copyright is a moral absolute. But I'm hard pressed to see how people who pretend to be in favour of capitalism start spouting neo-Marxist dogma when the topic of copyright comes up.
It's good to get money and fame from service to one's muse, but should one expect it?
One could ask the same question of any occupation that's moderately enjoyable. If artists should do it for the love of art, why not computer programmers, academics, CEOs, politicians, etc ?
The answer is that you're drawing a false dichotomy between working for money, and working for fun. If I have an enjoyable occupation, I'll obviously want compensation, because I need to feed myself and pay bills.
As far as land goes, my point is that we all live on stolen land and arguments about intellectual property pale next to the ones people could make about real estate...
True, but irrelevant. That I care about small injustices does not mean that I don't care about large injustices. And I disagree with your claim that todays Americans and Australians are the moral equivalent of thieves on account of the colonisation of those countries.
Eckel is happy with Python, and hence isn't that interested in using the languages that are pythons "competitors" (eg perl which he doesn't think much of either, and, ruby). Python doesn't have to be obsolete for Ruby to be useful. Competition is not a bad thing -- or are you one of those people that believe one of KDE and GNOME should roll over and die so Linux can have one "standard" desktop ?
If you can do any programming at all, I implore you just to do the little tutorial in the help files.
... or if you've got "learning python", just skip the first few chapters of text and jump right into the exercises. I got through the first three chapters of exercises without reading the book.
BTW, the python documentation is a godsend. Haven't seen the tutorial, but the reference, C API and embedded guide are very nice.
Or perhaps less than money. I mean, if they believe creative people play a valuable role in society, it's hard to defend a position that they should not be compensated.
Basically anyone is willing to pay for a doctor at some time, nobody is going to argue that their services don't have intrinsic value.
Arguments about whether or not a service has intrinsic value have little meaning. A service has intrinsic value if and only if someone is willing to pay for it.
Academics could generally make a lot more in the private sector, so they usually are doing it because they like it
I'm in the academic sector, and I'm not going to contest that point (-; You're right -- however, the fact remains that they are still compensated, right ?
As a programmer, I do 'do it for love'. The fact that I am paid for the work is just an excellent bonus. If I didn't get paid, I would still program, I'd just have to find some other way of making money.
I understand your point of view. I'm paid because I write free software, not the other way around (IOW I contributed some before I had a job)
However, the fact I'm paid is definitely useful, because I can spend more time programming that way.
I am certainly not saying that a person shouldn't be able to make money doing something they love, but if you are doing something strictly because you can make a lot of money at it,.....
I objected to your other assertion, but the above
is something I more or less agree with. I'm not defending "whiners", but I don't see why producers
of creative works shouldn't be compensated.
Ok, we'll go with moral absolutes then - look at the Bible, the Koran, Buddhist texts, Hindu holy books, the Tao Te Ching, Nordic myths, Greek philosophy, various myths, etc. etc. etc. What do they say about the right or wrong of copyright?
You miss my point. The proposition that morality is relative is a contentious one. The fact that copyright has not been proposed in an old document as a moral absolute is irrelevant.
Oh, I've got it - it's because you agree with a political/economic viewpoint that thinks so, although others disagree with that viewpoint.
I don't pretend that capitalism is a moral absolute.
Chances are, the land you live on was stolen from someone of another race or culture. What kind of rent have you been paying them?
A "race or culture" is not a person. And I don't own land. To the extent that the ancestors of indigenous Australians (that's where I'm from) are
disadvantaged by past injustices, I support due compensation.
I reject this loaded use of "information." Art is not "information". Here's a definition (of information)
1.
a. something told; knowledge.
b. (usu. foll. by "on", "about") items of knowledge; news ("the latest
information on the crisis").
2. [Law] (usu. foll. by "against") a charge or complaint lodged with a
court or magistrate.
3.
a. the act of informing or telling.
b. an instance of this.
There's a difference between "data" and "information". Art can be represented as "data".
*Furthermore*, no one else is harmed in any way by someone acquiring music which they would never go out and
buy.
The problem with permitting freeloading is that it provides a disincentive to buy music.
Unless, of course, it's intended effect was not to create inspiring music, but
simply to sell crap to the masses and make money.
Their you go with a false dichotomy and a flimsy rationalisation. That the artist wants to eat does not mean that they don't enjoy their work. Do you enjoy your job, and do you expect to be paid ? Or if you're a student (or if you hate your job), do you wish to pursue a career in interesting work, and do you believe that you should be paid for that work ?
And in *that* particular case, I really don't give a f*ck about
the *so-called* artist's income.
That's a common piece of sophistry. But the fact is that you don't care about the artists income anyway, do you ? I mean, if the artist expects to be compensated, you don't care about their income because they are "greedy", and if they don't expect to be compensated, you don't care about their income, because you're doing them a favor by listening to their music, right ? Of course, anything goes, so long as the desired conclusion -- that you're entitled to something for nothing -- is obtained.
No. The real issue is "how should the owners of creative works be compensated?"
That's the issue the RIAA are concerned about, but it's also an issue I consider to be of peripheral importance. To clarify, I disagree that music should be "work for hire", and I think record companies probably have too much negotiating power, because they're negotiating invidual agreements, which tends to favor the "employer".
Actually, I think the real issue is, should the authors of creative works be compensated at all? The concensus appears to be 'no'.
at least among the slashdot monkeys, this is the consensus. Shows how much these people really value creativity, doesn't it ?
So either you will create art because
you love it, or you won't create art at all.
One could make the same argument for any occupation that's enjoyable. Why should we pay academics, computer programmers and doctors ? If these people aren't doing it for love, perhaps they shouldn't be doing it. Perhaps we should only pay people who do unpleasent work, such as garbage collectors.
The proposition that people in occupations where someone who is genuinely interested in their job is more likely to succeed or occupations that are considered "fun" should not be rewarded is not only ludicrous, it is in complete opposition to the principles our economic systems are founded upon.
What makes you so sure? Maybe there is no workable replacement business model.
People have a vested interest in offering financial compensation for the producers of creative works. Basically, there are enough people who believe that there is a legitimate and useful role in society for professional artists, musicians, writers that there is a desire to sustain some form of business model. Obviously, there is not much interest in sustaining a blatantly unfair business model, but there is interest in sustaining something.
Why should music be a business?
Why not ? If one person is willing to play and another is willing to pay, well, why not ?
Why should your occupation be one that commands a salary but not that of someone who produces creative works ? Shouldn't everyone's job be a "labor of love" ? Or perhaps we should only compensate people who do unpleasent jobs, while people who do interesting and challenging jobs should just do it for fun.
It wasn't a business for the last couple of millenia, only the last century or so.
Nonsense. Professional musicians and artists are not new, and neither is the notion that they should
be compensated for their labor. In fact what's very new is the widespread freeloading that wasn't possible until recently.
Morality and law alike are determined by the weight of the people. If enough people think that file sharing is a moral thing to do, then it will become so.
This is essentially the moral relativists manifesto. Suffice it to say that the above is a contentious claim, and I'll leave the debate to the philosophers. A problem with the claim, btw, is that it ignores the fact that something that may be seen as "morally correct" for a short amount of time may well be condemned for years to follow, IOW, you're ignoring the weight of history.
The current entertainment buissness model will collapse.
If this is the case, it will be replaced by a different business model. And any viable business model involves money, in particular, it involves paying people who work. Shortsighted attempts to cheat authors out of compensation are not a "business model".
There is no "fooling yourself" in matters or morality - it's a purely personal decision.
Sure there is. If someones morality is inconsistent, it's ill-formed, in some sense. A hypocrite is not the moral equal of a non-hypocrite.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, C++ is an ISO standard, while VB and NT are not. Still, I think it's a mistake to become overly fixated on a given tool (even if it is an ISO standard)
But I see no attempts to substantiate these claims on the part of those who make them. I mean, one could make the same argument about jeans, but I don't see the slashdot herd venting rage about "overpriced" clothing.
Courtney Love had a nice opinion piece in Salon a while back about the continual financial rape that the industry perpetrates on the artist community.
Yep. One can howl at the industry, but the funny thing is that most of the people who do this are simply trying to divert attention from the fact that they really don't care about the artists any more than the record comapnies.
If you have a better idea for low-overhead more-direct compensation to artists,
I don't, and neither do you -- which makes a point: maybe those services are not quite as useless as the slashdot herd would have us believe.
Not true at all. Touring also has expenses, and even well known pop musicians can have trouble breaking even, let alone making money.
which is why you get raped again for 100$ just to see a band play some songs you already bought for 20$
Exactly -- costs need to be recovered, both for the tour and for the CD. If you don't want to pay for the concert, don't go.
From what I've heard of fairtunes, it's not doing that well. Oddly enough, the freeloading low-life napster crowd don't consider "appeasing their conscience" to be very important, or perhaps their consciences are easily appeased by the half-assed rationalisations they post on slashdot. On what basis do you claim that music is "overpriced" ? It's a claim that's often made, and rarely if ever substantiated.
You're missing the sales volume, and the box office ticket sales for the movie.
1) 60 minutes long not counting the 5 minute pause between House of 1000 Corpses and the hidden song after it 2) Very breakable case that came from amazon pre-cracked for me. 3) High quality audio NO video 4) Took Rob Zombie all of a few weeks to record in a studio
You're assuming that "Rob Zombie"s studio time makes up most of the cost of producing the CD. That's a bad assumption. The main reason CDs cost a lot is that the audience for a given CD is likely to be smaller than the audience for a given movie. In other words, the production costs are recovered from a smaller set of buyers, therefore each buyer pays a higher proportion of those costs.
I'm sorry that you always listen to b-grade music like Britney Spears, and I agree that such music "sucks". I suggest you find some music that does not suck, and that you consider to be worth paying for.
If you want to stop the piracy lower the prices to $10 or less!
That's like asking shops to lower their prices to stop theft. BTW, a lot of CDs are available for $10- or less. If you listened to something besides Britney Spears, you would have noticed (-;
You can talk about "UMA architectures" and the like all you like, but it doesn't beat cold hard benchmarks. From all I've seen on the spec benchmarks, the x86 processors perform respectably, and certainly beat the pants off a 4 year old Octane. See for yourself on spec.org. Or any other benchmark. They are certainly not "toys".
I agree with the tone of the article -- this basically disqualifies me as someone to help newbies. I recently went to a LUG meeting, where some relatively new Linux users demonstrated all the GUI tools you can use on Linux. I didn't even know what "Evolution" was until I went to the meeting.
I suppose the best advice for the newbie is to find some kind of user group and meet people with common interests and/or struggles with their systems (usually the slightly-less-newbie types as proposed by the article).
Not at all. No one's forcing you to write documentation. One might attack the soundness of your reasoning though -- learning Docbook is not the hardest part of writing documentation. If you don't want to put in the effort required to write documentation, that's your choice.
What's wrong with plain text
Doesn't contain any formatting information
or man pages
Difficult to convert to other formats. No support for many important features such as tables, graphics, etc.
or html?
HTML would be OK if authors would stick to a suitable subset. Perhaps someone should write a html2docbook converter that works on a suitable subset of tags.
That's not what I said at all. Read my post again, and go beat yourself with a cluestick.
Hogwash. Any operating system needs basic maintenance in the form of security updates. However, it's simply false that Linux "falls apart" all by itself.
According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage.
What do you mean by this ? The current release of ReiserFS is not a .0 release, it ships with production kernels, and IIRC SuSE uses it by default.
This means it is not intended for production use
Nonsense. Read the ReiserFS webpage. It's a mature project, and it's perfectly fit for production use.
Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally.
On what basis do you make this claim ? I admin several Linux boxes, and crashes are rare. Downtime usually consists of kernel upgrades, power outages, and OS upgrades.
I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear.
Given the fact that your reasoning seems to be based upon your conclusion, and not the other way around, I find myself agreeing with this assertion.
No, the radio stations are required to pay royalties. Advertising is when you pay for airtime, not when you get paid for it.
Because if they didn't, they sure as hell wouldn't be selling any records made by those talentless hacks
I disagree. Talentless hacks will be popular, regardless. Most people just aren't that musically inclined.
No. The reason you see so much crap is because that's what the people BUYING ALBUMS like to listen to. It's an important difference.
How so ? Are you saying that people who don't listen to "talentless hacks" are cheap ? I don't agree with this, and IME people who don't listen to mainstream music are more deeply into it, hence more likely to purchase (most jazz fans I know for example, including myself, have several CDs)
The film has a higher sales volume than the CD. And films aren't immediately available on VHS. First, they're in the movie theatres, then in the video rental shops, and then for sale. Perhaps the music industry could learn something from this pricing model.
The music industry on the other hand has decided combat anything that is not based on sales of media...
radio and TV airplay is not "based on sales of media".
And the worst part is that the music industry keeps pumping out CRAP in terms of boy and girl bands.
No, "the music industry" puts out all kinds of music. The reason you see so much crap is because that's what most people like to listen to.
I do a lot of compiling, and write numerical analysis software. Both my athlons get plenty of use. But you make a good point-- most people just don't need it.
Anyone notice that you pretty much have the same Harddrive as you did with your pentium 1 120, the size has increased but if you go IDE it is still 7200rpm and the data transfer rate isn't any faster.
The drive in my Pentium 133 was not 7200 rpm. Also, IDE technology has improved since the Pentium I days. And the new drives are much quieter. For the same noise and cost as an old IDE drive, one could get a SCSI disk at 15k RPM nowadays.
Sure I have. I cited the basic principle that morality should be consistent. Inconsistencies in morality are universally frowned upon.
Art is not an occupation or a career, it is a way of life which may allow one to make a living.
Again, one could make the same assertion about programming, medicine, law, politics, etc.
As far as your claim that land issues are irrelevant, you are dead wrong.
No, I'm not. I'm discussing copyright, and you launch into a divserionary rant about colonialism. Colonialism has nothing to do with copyright.
The rulers of our governments and corporations are the direct beneficiaries of the wrongs of the past, done not just to a few natives, but to the great majority of people. They steal the land from the common people and then charge them interest or rent to live upon it. But when the common people decide to copy a few things the corporations have with file sharing programs, they are theives, pirates and criminals.
The problem is that "the corporations" is not a single entity. The corporations that distribute music did not participate in genocide.
Moreover, your attack on the corporations may have some merit, but it does not justify screwing the producers of creative works. IOW, I am not attempting to defend corporations. I am simply saying that producers of creative works should be compensated.
You're still missing my point. My point is simply that the moral relativism dogma doesn't hold up to scrutiny. For example, I consider it to be a moral absolute that hypocrisy is not a good thing. I consider it a verifiable truth that when so-called "ethics" are full of contradictions, the primary source of contradiction is the need to invent a post-hoc rationalisation for ones own behaviour.
I'm not trying to say that copyright is a moral absolute. But I'm hard pressed to see how people who pretend to be in favour of capitalism start spouting neo-Marxist dogma when the topic of copyright comes up.
It's good to get money and fame from service to one's muse, but should one expect it?
One could ask the same question of any occupation that's moderately enjoyable. If artists should do it for the love of art, why not computer programmers, academics, CEOs, politicians, etc ?
The answer is that you're drawing a false dichotomy between working for money, and working for fun. If I have an enjoyable occupation, I'll obviously want compensation, because I need to feed myself and pay bills.
As far as land goes, my point is that we all live on stolen land and arguments about intellectual property pale next to the ones people could make about real estate ...
True, but irrelevant. That I care about small injustices does not mean that I don't care about large injustices. And I disagree with your claim that todays Americans and Australians are the moral equivalent of thieves on account of the colonisation of those countries.
Eckel is happy with Python, and hence isn't that interested in using the languages that are pythons "competitors" (eg perl which he doesn't think much of either, and, ruby). Python doesn't have to be obsolete for Ruby to be useful. Competition is not a bad thing -- or are you one of those people that believe one of KDE and GNOME should roll over and die so Linux can have one "standard" desktop ?
BTW, the python documentation is a godsend. Haven't seen the tutorial, but the reference, C API and embedded guide are very nice.
Or perhaps less than money. I mean, if they believe creative people play a valuable role in society, it's hard to defend a position that they should not be compensated.
Basically anyone is willing to pay for a doctor at some time, nobody is going to argue that their services don't have intrinsic value.
Arguments about whether or not a service has intrinsic value have little meaning. A service has intrinsic value if and only if someone is willing to pay for it.
Academics could generally make a lot more in the private sector, so they usually are doing it because they like it
I'm in the academic sector, and I'm not going to contest that point (-; You're right -- however, the fact remains that they are still compensated, right ?
As a programmer, I do 'do it for love'. The fact that I am paid for the work is just an excellent bonus. If I didn't get paid, I would still program, I'd just have to find some other way of making money.
I understand your point of view. I'm paid because I write free software, not the other way around (IOW I contributed some before I had a job) However, the fact I'm paid is definitely useful, because I can spend more time programming that way.
I am certainly not saying that a person shouldn't be able to make money doing something they love, but if you are doing something strictly because you can make a lot of money at it, .....
I objected to your other assertion, but the above is something I more or less agree with. I'm not defending "whiners", but I don't see why producers of creative works shouldn't be compensated.
You miss my point. The proposition that morality is relative is a contentious one. The fact that copyright has not been proposed in an old document as a moral absolute is irrelevant.
Oh, I've got it - it's because you agree with a political/economic viewpoint that thinks so, although others disagree with that viewpoint.
I don't pretend that capitalism is a moral absolute.
Chances are, the land you live on was stolen from someone of another race or culture. What kind of rent have you been paying them?
A "race or culture" is not a person. And I don't own land. To the extent that the ancestors of indigenous Australians (that's where I'm from) are disadvantaged by past injustices, I support due compensation.
I reject this loaded use of "information." Art is not "information". Here's a definition (of information) 1. a. something told; knowledge. b. (usu. foll. by "on", "about") items of knowledge; news ("the latest information on the crisis").
2. [Law] (usu. foll. by "against") a charge or complaint lodged with a court or magistrate.
3.
a. the act of informing or telling.
b. an instance of this.
There's a difference between "data" and "information". Art can be represented as "data".
*Furthermore*, no one else is harmed in any way by someone acquiring music which they would never go out and buy.
The problem with permitting freeloading is that it provides a disincentive to buy music.
Unless, of course, it's intended effect was not to create inspiring music, but simply to sell crap to the masses and make money.
Their you go with a false dichotomy and a flimsy rationalisation. That the artist wants to eat does not mean that they don't enjoy their work. Do you enjoy your job, and do you expect to be paid ? Or if you're a student (or if you hate your job), do you wish to pursue a career in interesting work, and do you believe that you should be paid for that work ?
And in *that* particular case, I really don't give a f*ck about the *so-called* artist's income.
That's a common piece of sophistry. But the fact is that you don't care about the artists income anyway, do you ? I mean, if the artist expects to be compensated, you don't care about their income because they are "greedy", and if they don't expect to be compensated, you don't care about their income, because you're doing them a favor by listening to their music, right ? Of course, anything goes, so long as the desired conclusion -- that you're entitled to something for nothing -- is obtained.
That's the issue the RIAA are concerned about, but it's also an issue I consider to be of peripheral importance. To clarify, I disagree that music should be "work for hire", and I think record companies probably have too much negotiating power, because they're negotiating invidual agreements, which tends to favor the "employer".
at least among the slashdot monkeys, this is the consensus. Shows how much these people really value creativity, doesn't it ?
So either you will create art because you love it, or you won't create art at all.
One could make the same argument for any occupation that's enjoyable. Why should we pay academics, computer programmers and doctors ? If these people aren't doing it for love, perhaps they shouldn't be doing it. Perhaps we should only pay people who do unpleasent work, such as garbage collectors.
The proposition that people in occupations where someone who is genuinely interested in their job is more likely to succeed or occupations that are considered "fun" should not be rewarded is not only ludicrous, it is in complete opposition to the principles our economic systems are founded upon.
People have a vested interest in offering financial compensation for the producers of creative works. Basically, there are enough people who believe that there is a legitimate and useful role in society for professional artists, musicians, writers that there is a desire to sustain some form of business model. Obviously, there is not much interest in sustaining a blatantly unfair business model, but there is interest in sustaining something.
Why should music be a business?
Why not ? If one person is willing to play and another is willing to pay, well, why not ? Why should your occupation be one that commands a salary but not that of someone who produces creative works ? Shouldn't everyone's job be a "labor of love" ? Or perhaps we should only compensate people who do unpleasent jobs, while people who do interesting and challenging jobs should just do it for fun.
It wasn't a business for the last couple of millenia, only the last century or so.
Nonsense. Professional musicians and artists are not new, and neither is the notion that they should be compensated for their labor. In fact what's very new is the widespread freeloading that wasn't possible until recently.
This is essentially the moral relativists manifesto. Suffice it to say that the above is a contentious claim, and I'll leave the debate to the philosophers. A problem with the claim, btw, is that it ignores the fact that something that may be seen as "morally correct" for a short amount of time may well be condemned for years to follow, IOW, you're ignoring the weight of history.
The current entertainment buissness model will collapse.
If this is the case, it will be replaced by a different business model. And any viable business model involves money, in particular, it involves paying people who work. Shortsighted attempts to cheat authors out of compensation are not a "business model".
There is no "fooling yourself" in matters or morality - it's a purely personal decision.
Sure there is. If someones morality is inconsistent, it's ill-formed, in some sense. A hypocrite is not the moral equal of a non-hypocrite.