That phrase is reserved for costs you just can't avoid. A single person acting like a jackass, breaking the rules and ruining the experience for everybody else, has no right ethically or legally for a refund. She got what she deserved, a booting with no refund.
Imagine if you paid on your way out of the theater, rather than on the way in - and on management escorting someone out they expected them to stop at the cash-desk and pay for the movie they were being escorted out of. It would be both insane and unenforceable. This is exactly the same principle, it's just that people have paid up-front.
As a matter of practicality, it would be difficult to get the money from such a patron and not worth their time. I wouldn't say it would be unenforceable, though, if they really wanted to force the issue.
She killed McCain's run, simply due to the fear that if anything happened to him, she'd end up in the hot seat.
I'll just chime in here with the Anonymous Coward. McCain was a dead man walking until he threw the Palin Hail Mary pass. He knew it, and that's why he did it. Sure, in the end it didn't pan out, but it actually sparked some interest in his campaign.
Who cares if she got a refund? She cost them money by making the experience worse for other patrons. It's the same thing if some jackass has to be thrown out of a ballgame. They don't give you refunds when they have to throw you out. Just show some common courtesy and follow the rules.
Americans joke about French demonstrators because they are typically just a bunch of angry youths rioting. In contrast, look at the "Arab Spring" demonstrations. For the most part, they were peaceful and not burning down cars and shops.
Anything used as currency can be manipulated in a fractional reserve manner. Why the fuck do you think we have bubbles and crashes?
Bubbles and crashes and fractional reserve banking are separable concepts.
My understanding of Bitcoin is that fractional reserve is inherently not part of the system because bitcoins are consumed in a trustworthy, peer-to-peer manner. There is no bank that can just loan out somebody else's money, thereby creating money.
Now if a bank were to create its own currency that they said was backed by bitcoins, and people accepted it, then you'd have fractional reserve banking all over again. However, if people only accept bitcoins, then there is no fractional reserve.
Bubbles and crashes can be caused by all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with fractional reserve banking, and bitcoin isn't immune to it.
This is why I hate the idea of investing. Hand somebody a pile of cash, and watch them use it for their own gain. Just a bunch of foxes in charge of the chicken coop.
Instead of going after the actual spammers why not fine the companies that hire them. If a Bank (Orchard Bank leaps to mind) hires an advertising company to push credit cards, fine the bank if their agent uses SPAM as a marketing tool.
You were close to the point in the article, but you're after the wrong target (the merchants). Oddly, you picked a bank as a merchant, but it's the banks that are handling the merchant transactions. This is why the US targeted financial institutions in their online poker crackdown.
From the article: "All told, they saw 13 banks handling 95% of the 76 orders for which they received transaction information. [..] This points to a fruitful avenue to reduce spam: go after the banks."
AND, more of them UNPATCHED on Linux in its KERNEL ALONE
Again, you are fixating only on the number, and ignoring the steady stream of bugs, and the fact that you can't fix a patch if the vendor won't. You are arguing a strawman -- I never said open source had fewer bugs, only that closed source still has a steady stream of bugs. You have not refuted that; quite the opposite, you have demonstrated it.
Internet Explorer 9 stats I put up from a reputable source for unpatched security bugs data... hint: ZERO bugs unpatched & ZERO BUGS
Yeah, that's great, except I addressed that but you ignored it. To repeat myself: "You linked to the 1 month old version 9, but version 8 had advisories nearly every month."
ou seem to forget that I use Linux myself, & probably LONGER THAN YOU HAVE... for starters. AND, I never called YOU a name
Name calling is name calling. The objects of debate are closed source and open source, and you chose to use childish name calling in your arguments. Whether it was personal or not is besides the point.
Hooking the OS, or building a "filtering driver" (only ways I KNOW OF to 'circumvent' CLOSED SOURCE in essence)??
Get real. Companies don't do this because it is too expensive and time consuming. You also can't fork the project and distribute your changes to others, because it is closed source and copyright law forbids it.
HISTORY SHOWN US ALL ALREADY WHY UNIX DIDN'T "WIN" & WHY WE ALL DON'T RUN SOME VARIANT OF IT
No need to shout and act so emotional, bolding and capitalizing every other sentence. It's really a drag to read your posts.
To your point, Unix did win, just not the monopoly version from AT&T. We ended up with a thriving ecosystem of variants, from the wide use on the server end, to free alternatives on the desktop, to usage in devices like routers, to an Apple derivative of BSD that forms the basis of OS X (even if Apple is closed source, it benefited from open source).
I'm happy to have lots of great, free, open source software to choose from on Linux, even if it's not the "year of the Linux desktop". If there are people who don't find value in open source, then that's their choice and opinion, but their is value.
So if you want to know why there are "zealots" that make a distinction between Chrome and Chromium, I have done my best to answer it. I'm not claiming that closed source is without value, or absolutely better or worse than open source.
Good debate... I am enjoying this one, immensely!
I'm not, and this is my last reply. I'm repeating myself way too much.
Again, you are fixating on the number of bugs, and ignoring the larger point that there is still a steady stream of bugs. So if you are using closed source because it is harder to find bugs, it's rather pointless. Both Microsoft and Linux are good about patching their most severe security bugs. However, if Microsoft doesn't patch a bug (and they haven't patched some), then you are at their mercy.
I never attacked YOU, yet you are me (resorting to "adhominem" illogic are we?)
I was making a point about your childish and intellectually dishonest use of "open sores", while claiming no offense and appealing to humor. I could have used Microsoft Window$ as an alternative. Either way it's childish name calling, which have you continued to engage in during this entire conversation.
Whereas I took your "steady stream of bugs" in closed source you stated & utterly DELUGED it with contrary data.
You actually showed my statement to be a fact. There is a steady stream of bugs in Windows 7, and even more crucially products like Internet Explorer. You linked to the 1 month old version 9, but version 8 had advisories nearly every month. You have also backed up my fact that if a closed source vendor doesn't supply a patch, you are out of luck by showing that there are indeed unpatched bugs.
And mind you, these are only security bugs that you have fixated on. Other bugs or missing features exist, and you have no recourse for somebody else to either supply a fix or fork the project.
It IS is the REASON WHY WE ARE NOT ALL RUNNING SOME *NIX (UNIX specifically) variant today... too many "cooks in the kitchen" between BSD variants, AT&T Bell Labs variants, & SCO, SOLARIS, etc.
Of that, I'm grateful. I'd much rather have an ecosystem of software to choose from than whatever Microsoft or Apple decide. I think it's awesome that I can run Debian, which provides the backbone for Ubuntu, and not be stuck with a would-be monolith like Red Hat.
There are many definitions of culture (for example: "the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>". You cherry picked one, and even that one can apply to many films that aren't on the level of "Jackass". Try watching other movies that don't appeal to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of them out there, many of them commercially successful.
I'm not a fan of opera, and some of the singers on American Idol are very good. I don't even watch or like the show, but I can admit quality when I see it. As soon as you start thinking that everything that is either commercial or popular is trash, you have blinded and prejudiced yourself to potential quality.
It certainly is dodging if he never addressed the issue. At least you made an attempt to do so.
People will pay - even those who pirate something. Piracy has existed fro decades now, and people still pay.
The big point you are missing is that it is illegal to infringe on copyright, and illegally copying stuff for free still has a stigma attached to it that encourage many people to pay. When copying anything for free is legal and becomes the norm, it is a completely different environment.
Downloading legally free content - copyrighted or not - has always been legal, and yet those projects that seek donations still get some, it is not ALL OR NOTHING like you seem to believe.
I recently looked at Mozilla Firefox Addon projects to see if there was any worthwhile money in developing them. The short is no, there isn't. This is an environment where it's completely the norm to download for free, and PayPal donations are encouraged and made easy. Yet successful projects with thousands of downloads have made enough money to buy something like a couple of dinners.
Citation available on request. I'd have to dig up the forum thread again.
Well, since it seems you are, & you took offense to what I stated (when no offense was intended)?
You're a dumb fuck. Hee hee, no offense intended. Just a little bit of humor.
Here we go then, facts time (rather than mere zealous statements):
Nothing I stated wasn't a fact.
Seems that "steady stream" of vulnerabilities you stated are WORSE in a OPEN SORES software ecosystem, than in a closed source one... argue with the numbers above, NOT myself!
You're fixated on the number of security bugs while ignoring all the other arguments. First of all, I never claimed that Linux had fewer security bugs. Your links show that Microsoft still has a steady stream of security bugs associated with it, which fits with exactly what I said.
Second, your link also show unpatched security bugs for Microsoft Windows, and if that bug is important to a particular consumer, they are shit out of luck for getting a patch for it unless Microsoft decides they will write a patch for it.
There are unpatched security bugs for Linux too, but if it is important enough a patch can supplied by anybody. Also, the most sever unpatched bug in the Linux kernel was rated "Less critical", while the most severe for Windows 7 was rated "Highly critical".
Third, you ignored the argument that closed source makes it harder to inspect what the software is doing. China, in fact, used their sway to force Microsoft to show them the source for Windows. The average company or user does not have that sway.
And last, being able to fork a project is a very powerful and useful ability. If the main organization in charge of the software is not meeting some needs, the project can be forked. Microsoft Windows has enjoyed a near-monopoly on the desktop for quite some time now, whereas there are many distributions of Linux to choose from.
You're still dodging the issue. There is no "USD1,000,000" if nobody is paying for the movie. When it is not illegal to download for free, and doing so becomes the norm, hardly anybody is going to be paying for movies.
Disassembling & tracing a CLOSED SOURCE APP searching for security issues, or even FUZZING, is a LOT tougher than using sourcecode
And yet the security bugs still appear in closed source products at a steady rate, and you are at the mercy of the vendor to fix them. Not having the source code means you can't fork the product. Not having the source code makes it hard to verify there aren't backdoors or other nefarious behavior.
I thought BOTH were "Open SORES" (again, don't take the sores thing personally, it's just humor
It's not humor, it's a childish insult used as an intellectually dishonest debate/propaganda tactic.
For something to be open source, it means the binary has to be released with source code to recreate that binary. Chrome does not release all the source code for their binaries. Chromium does.
I don't drink and drive and I also don't enjoy being hit by asshole drunk drivers.
I don't want to be hit by asshole drunk drivers either, but I value my 4th Amendment rights more than a little bit more safety enforced by a police state.
Cops patrolling and looking for erratic drivers is the answer, not a police state searching innocent civilians with no cause.
So Google had built-in tracking to Chrome and did not release the source code for it, hence Chrome was not an open source browser. The "FOSS zealots" and "tinhat types" had enough sway for Google to modify their behavior, at least somewhat. Considering that Google has a very long history of tracking user data, it would seem naive is the term for people who think Google wasn't tracking them.
If open source is not important, then Google never needed to tout the browser as open source. And yet a large number of people realize the benefits of open source, and the downsides of proprietary, closed-source binaries. Chromium is the open source browser. Chrome is not.
Your comment lacks sufficient rigor. Something the law is supposed to provide when ruling over issues.
Courts routinely have to make subjective judgments on legal issues. There is no ideal fantasy world where they don't. Human issues are messy.
I found the grandparent's comment quite reasonable and rigorous enough for a general court theory, and it's inline with the original Napster ruling and other similar rulings. You'll find similar guidelines with pre-existing copyright case law when deciding copyright infringement (such as commercial gain being a deciding factor).
Commercial TV and movies is entertainment, not culture... seriously.
Lots of culture is about filling up idle hours with entertainment. What do you think music, dancing, plays, and the like are all about?
And when people then reference that entertainment in their conversations, which stand in as symbols and shared experiences, that's culture. Your snooty disdain for commercial entertainment doesn't make it not so.
You haven't addressed the "If everyone downloads the movie for free, then the studio goes broke and doesn't make any more movies."
Even your low-budget movies depend on enough people actually paying for them. If downloading for free is not illegal and the accepted norm, then hardly anybody is going to pay for it.
If the situation is as dire as he makes it out to be, then why is his behavoir inconsistent with his conclusions? The only conclusion is that he doesn't really believe what he says so why should I waste my time trying to verify his premises.
No, that's NOT the only conclusion. You only think that because you aren't listening to counter-arguments. If Friedman believes his own argument and is a resource hog, that makes the man a hypocrite and selfish, but that doesn't mean his argument is invalid.
It's really just tragedy of the commons, where every individual knows that their actions, if taken by everybody, will lead to a bad outcome, yet they act in their own self-interest anyways. A common example is overfishing.
In Slashdot's case, a legacy of building the site on what was considered top of the line in the 1990s has left them with a lot of things that can go wrong.
It's just a bunch of homebrew Perl scripts. And it isn't that hard to get Unicode working.
Slashdot Mirror
That's called a cost of doing business.
That phrase is reserved for costs you just can't avoid. A single person acting like a jackass, breaking the rules and ruining the experience for everybody else, has no right ethically or legally for a refund. She got what she deserved, a booting with no refund.
Imagine if you paid on your way out of the theater, rather than on the way in - and on management escorting someone out they expected them to stop at the cash-desk and pay for the movie they were being escorted out of. It would be both insane and unenforceable. This is exactly the same principle, it's just that people have paid up-front.
As a matter of practicality, it would be difficult to get the money from such a patron and not worth their time. I wouldn't say it would be unenforceable, though, if they really wanted to force the issue.
She killed McCain's run, simply due to the fear that if anything happened to him, she'd end up in the hot seat.
I'll just chime in here with the Anonymous Coward. McCain was a dead man walking until he threw the Palin Hail Mary pass. He knew it, and that's why he did it. Sure, in the end it didn't pan out, but it actually sparked some interest in his campaign.
Who cares if she got a refund? She cost them money by making the experience worse for other patrons. It's the same thing if some jackass has to be thrown out of a ballgame. They don't give you refunds when they have to throw you out. Just show some common courtesy and follow the rules.
Americans joke about French demonstrators because they are typically just a bunch of angry youths rioting. In contrast, look at the "Arab Spring" demonstrations. For the most part, they were peaceful and not burning down cars and shops.
Anything used as currency can be manipulated in a fractional reserve manner. Why the fuck do you think we have bubbles and crashes?
Bubbles and crashes and fractional reserve banking are separable concepts.
My understanding of Bitcoin is that fractional reserve is inherently not part of the system because bitcoins are consumed in a trustworthy, peer-to-peer manner. There is no bank that can just loan out somebody else's money, thereby creating money.
Now if a bank were to create its own currency that they said was backed by bitcoins, and people accepted it, then you'd have fractional reserve banking all over again. However, if people only accept bitcoins, then there is no fractional reserve.
Bubbles and crashes can be caused by all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with fractional reserve banking, and bitcoin isn't immune to it.
But... they've already walked off with... 930 million... in cash.
http://allthingsd.com/20110602/where-did-groupons-billion-dollars-go/
This is why I hate the idea of investing. Hand somebody a pile of cash, and watch them use it for their own gain. Just a bunch of foxes in charge of the chicken coop.
JS seems to be the biggest consumer of memory.
Good to know. Less memory usage, yet another benefit of running NoScript.
Mom's calling. Dinner is ready.
Instead of going after the actual spammers why not fine the companies that hire them. If a Bank (Orchard Bank leaps to mind) hires an advertising company to push credit cards, fine the bank if their agent uses SPAM as a marketing tool.
You were close to the point in the article, but you're after the wrong target (the merchants). Oddly, you picked a bank as a merchant, but it's the banks that are handling the merchant transactions. This is why the US targeted financial institutions in their online poker crackdown.
From the article: "All told, they saw 13 banks handling 95% of the 76 orders for which they received transaction information. [..] This points to a fruitful avenue to reduce spam: go after the banks."
what if you draw stick figure porn, then say that one of the participants is 17 years old ?
Protected free speech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition
However, if you want to discuss the science behind it, I'll be more than happy.
I'm wondering why you just didn't attach the sensors to a live bat. I wouldn't think it would be too heavy.
Also, why can't you just use cameras from different angles and get a 3D view of bats without flying into them?
AND, more of them UNPATCHED on Linux in its KERNEL ALONE
Again, you are fixating only on the number, and ignoring the steady stream of bugs, and the fact that you can't fix a patch if the vendor won't. You are arguing a strawman -- I never said open source had fewer bugs, only that closed source still has a steady stream of bugs. You have not refuted that; quite the opposite, you have demonstrated it.
Internet Explorer 9 stats I put up from a reputable source for unpatched security bugs data... hint: ZERO bugs unpatched & ZERO BUGS
Yeah, that's great, except I addressed that but you ignored it. To repeat myself: "You linked to the 1 month old version 9, but version 8 had advisories nearly every month."
ou seem to forget that I use Linux myself, & probably LONGER THAN YOU HAVE... for starters. AND, I never called YOU a name
Name calling is name calling. The objects of debate are closed source and open source, and you chose to use childish name calling in your arguments. Whether it was personal or not is besides the point.
Hooking the OS, or building a "filtering driver" (only ways I KNOW OF to 'circumvent' CLOSED SOURCE in essence)??
Get real. Companies don't do this because it is too expensive and time consuming. You also can't fork the project and distribute your changes to others, because it is closed source and copyright law forbids it.
HISTORY SHOWN US ALL ALREADY WHY UNIX DIDN'T "WIN" & WHY WE ALL DON'T RUN SOME VARIANT OF IT
No need to shout and act so emotional, bolding and capitalizing every other sentence. It's really a drag to read your posts.
To your point, Unix did win, just not the monopoly version from AT&T. We ended up with a thriving ecosystem of variants, from the wide use on the server end, to free alternatives on the desktop, to usage in devices like routers, to an Apple derivative of BSD that forms the basis of OS X (even if Apple is closed source, it benefited from open source).
I'm happy to have lots of great, free, open source software to choose from on Linux, even if it's not the "year of the Linux desktop". If there are people who don't find value in open source, then that's their choice and opinion, but their is value.
So if you want to know why there are "zealots" that make a distinction between Chrome and Chromium, I have done my best to answer it. I'm not claiming that closed source is without value, or absolutely better or worse than open source.
Good debate... I am enjoying this one, immensely!
I'm not, and this is my last reply. I'm repeating myself way too much.
Again, you are fixating on the number of bugs, and ignoring the larger point that there is still a steady stream of bugs. So if you are using closed source because it is harder to find bugs, it's rather pointless. Both Microsoft and Linux are good about patching their most severe security bugs. However, if Microsoft doesn't patch a bug (and they haven't patched some), then you are at their mercy.
I never attacked YOU, yet you are me (resorting to "adhominem" illogic are we?)
I was making a point about your childish and intellectually dishonest use of "open sores", while claiming no offense and appealing to humor. I could have used Microsoft Window$ as an alternative. Either way it's childish name calling, which have you continued to engage in during this entire conversation.
Whereas I took your "steady stream of bugs" in closed source you stated & utterly DELUGED it with contrary data.
You actually showed my statement to be a fact. There is a steady stream of bugs in Windows 7, and even more crucially products like Internet Explorer. You linked to the 1 month old version 9, but version 8 had advisories nearly every month. You have also backed up my fact that if a closed source vendor doesn't supply a patch, you are out of luck by showing that there are indeed unpatched bugs.
And mind you, these are only security bugs that you have fixated on. Other bugs or missing features exist, and you have no recourse for somebody else to either supply a fix or fork the project.
It IS is the REASON WHY WE ARE NOT ALL RUNNING SOME *NIX (UNIX specifically) variant today... too many "cooks in the kitchen" between BSD variants, AT&T Bell Labs variants, & SCO, SOLARIS, etc.
Of that, I'm grateful. I'd much rather have an ecosystem of software to choose from than whatever Microsoft or Apple decide. I think it's awesome that I can run Debian, which provides the backbone for Ubuntu, and not be stuck with a would-be monolith like Red Hat.
There are many definitions of culture (for example: "the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>". You cherry picked one, and even that one can apply to many films that aren't on the level of "Jackass". Try watching other movies that don't appeal to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of them out there, many of them commercially successful.
I'm not a fan of opera, and some of the singers on American Idol are very good. I don't even watch or like the show, but I can admit quality when I see it. As soon as you start thinking that everything that is either commercial or popular is trash, you have blinded and prejudiced yourself to potential quality.
That isn't dodging
It certainly is dodging if he never addressed the issue. At least you made an attempt to do so.
People will pay - even those who pirate something. Piracy has existed fro decades now, and people still pay.
The big point you are missing is that it is illegal to infringe on copyright, and illegally copying stuff for free still has a stigma attached to it that encourage many people to pay. When copying anything for free is legal and becomes the norm, it is a completely different environment.
Downloading legally free content - copyrighted or not - has always been legal, and yet those projects that seek donations still get some, it is not ALL OR NOTHING like you seem to believe.
I recently looked at Mozilla Firefox Addon projects to see if there was any worthwhile money in developing them. The short is no, there isn't. This is an environment where it's completely the norm to download for free, and PayPal donations are encouraged and made easy. Yet successful projects with thousands of downloads have made enough money to buy something like a couple of dinners.
Citation available on request. I'd have to dig up the forum thread again.
Well, since it seems you are, & you took offense to what I stated (when no offense was intended)?
You're a dumb fuck. Hee hee, no offense intended. Just a little bit of humor.
Here we go then, facts time (rather than mere zealous statements):
Nothing I stated wasn't a fact.
Seems that "steady stream" of vulnerabilities you stated are WORSE in a OPEN SORES software ecosystem, than in a closed source one... argue with the numbers above, NOT myself!
You're fixated on the number of security bugs while ignoring all the other arguments. First of all, I never claimed that Linux had fewer security bugs. Your links show that Microsoft still has a steady stream of security bugs associated with it, which fits with exactly what I said.
Second, your link also show unpatched security bugs for Microsoft Windows, and if that bug is important to a particular consumer, they are shit out of luck for getting a patch for it unless Microsoft decides they will write a patch for it.
There are unpatched security bugs for Linux too, but if it is important enough a patch can supplied by anybody. Also, the most sever unpatched bug in the Linux kernel was rated "Less critical", while the most severe for Windows 7 was rated "Highly critical".
Third, you ignored the argument that closed source makes it harder to inspect what the software is doing. China, in fact, used their sway to force Microsoft to show them the source for Windows. The average company or user does not have that sway.
And last, being able to fork a project is a very powerful and useful ability. If the main organization in charge of the software is not meeting some needs, the project can be forked. Microsoft Windows has enjoyed a near-monopoly on the desktop for quite some time now, whereas there are many distributions of Linux to choose from.
You're still dodging the issue. There is no "USD1,000,000" if nobody is paying for the movie. When it is not illegal to download for free, and doing so becomes the norm, hardly anybody is going to be paying for movies.
Disassembling & tracing a CLOSED SOURCE APP searching for security issues, or even FUZZING, is a LOT tougher than using sourcecode
And yet the security bugs still appear in closed source products at a steady rate, and you are at the mercy of the vendor to fix them. Not having the source code means you can't fork the product. Not having the source code makes it hard to verify there aren't backdoors or other nefarious behavior.
I thought BOTH were "Open SORES" (again, don't take the sores thing personally, it's just humor
It's not humor, it's a childish insult used as an intellectually dishonest debate/propaganda tactic.
For something to be open source, it means the binary has to be released with source code to recreate that binary. Chrome does not release all the source code for their binaries. Chromium does.
I don't drink and drive and I also don't enjoy being hit by asshole drunk drivers.
I don't want to be hit by asshole drunk drivers either, but I value my 4th Amendment rights more than a little bit more safety enforced by a police state.
Cops patrolling and looking for erratic drivers is the answer, not a police state searching innocent civilians with no cause.
So Google had built-in tracking to Chrome and did not release the source code for it, hence Chrome was not an open source browser. The "FOSS zealots" and "tinhat types" had enough sway for Google to modify their behavior, at least somewhat. Considering that Google has a very long history of tracking user data, it would seem naive is the term for people who think Google wasn't tracking them.
If open source is not important, then Google never needed to tout the browser as open source. And yet a large number of people realize the benefits of open source, and the downsides of proprietary, closed-source binaries. Chromium is the open source browser. Chrome is not.
Your comment lacks sufficient rigor. Something the law is supposed to provide when ruling over issues.
Courts routinely have to make subjective judgments on legal issues. There is no ideal fantasy world where they don't. Human issues are messy.
I found the grandparent's comment quite reasonable and rigorous enough for a general court theory, and it's inline with the original Napster ruling and other similar rulings. You'll find similar guidelines with pre-existing copyright case law when deciding copyright infringement (such as commercial gain being a deciding factor).
Commercial TV and movies is entertainment, not culture... seriously.
Lots of culture is about filling up idle hours with entertainment. What do you think music, dancing, plays, and the like are all about?
And when people then reference that entertainment in their conversations, which stand in as symbols and shared experiences, that's culture. Your snooty disdain for commercial entertainment doesn't make it not so.
You haven't addressed the "If everyone downloads the movie for free, then the studio goes broke and doesn't make any more movies."
Even your low-budget movies depend on enough people actually paying for them. If downloading for free is not illegal and the accepted norm, then hardly anybody is going to pay for it.
If the situation is as dire as he makes it out to be, then why is his behavoir inconsistent with his conclusions? The only conclusion is that he doesn't really believe what he says so why should I waste my time trying to verify his premises.
No, that's NOT the only conclusion. You only think that because you aren't listening to counter-arguments. If Friedman believes his own argument and is a resource hog, that makes the man a hypocrite and selfish, but that doesn't mean his argument is invalid.
It's really just tragedy of the commons, where every individual knows that their actions, if taken by everybody, will lead to a bad outcome, yet they act in their own self-interest anyways. A common example is overfishing.
In Slashdot's case, a legacy of building the site on what was considered top of the line in the 1990s has left them with a lot of things that can go wrong.
It's just a bunch of homebrew Perl scripts. And it isn't that hard to get Unicode working.