1. If you want to make a living creating works that exist in a data format (music, books, video) just accept the fact that nobody owes you a dime for your time. If some people choose to drop some money in your hat, that's awesome - but don't count on it.
I would phrase it as "information cannot be owned". "Intellectual property" is a very poor approximation; the model of ownership is fundamentally a bad fit for information. As Bruce Schneier put it: "trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet".
As for "nobody owes you a dime for your time", that is true. Nobody owes you anything regardless of how much time or work you may have put in. That is, unless you arranged beforehand to be paid for your time, which you can do with or without copyright.
2. If your music is so great, tour and make money that way. If you get moderately successful locally, each band member might be able to clear $80 a night! Of course you'll need a huge cash infusion (i.e. debt) to start touring big, but I'm sure the banks will be happy to help you with loans for such a riskless endeavour.
Touring is one way to make money, sure. But heaven forbid musicians be required to work hard or take risks!
3. Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
Costs are an "implementation detail" of the producer, irrelevant to the consumer. Do you think companies that sell physical goods set prices according to their costs? No, they charge whatever the market will bear. If that happens to cover their costs, they make a (possibly very large) profit. If it doesn't, they go out of business, and the world moves on.
Do you have any evidence of collusion among cellular companies? Besides, I didn't say collusions can't happen; I said they are inherently unstable, which they are. They always collapse sooner or later, depending on the number of competitors, which in turn depends on the barriers to entry in the industry. Fortunately, technology has a way of breaking down barriers over time.
It always makes sense for them to collude and fix prices, but it very rarely if ever happens and when it does the government usually picks up on it and shuts that effort down.
It's not even necessary for the government to step in. Collusions are inherently unstable, as each participant has an incentive to "cheat" by undercutting the others. The more participants there are, the faster such a collusion collapses.
Likewise in software, where upgrades are mandatory even though the current software works just fine. "But it's old tech!" the developer shouts at his utterly stupid users. "Why won't you upgrade? I really enjoyed working on this!" I recently asked a question on a support forum about Drupal. I didn't get my question answered, as the developers immediately discussed the fact I was using the "old tech" version (5) and the entire discussion became about when I was going to upgrade to the latest greatest version (7). Why should I? My software works just fine and customers are happy. Security upgrades are more like obscurity upgrades. "Because it's last year's fashion, daaahling"
I hope you're being facetious. Newer versions of software are often far easier for developers to work on, as the code's architecture improves over time. Why should volunteer developers have to maintain multiple branches of code just because you don't want to upgrade?
If you're happy with what you've got, great. But it's unreasonable to demand that the developers of an open-source project spend their limited time supporting older versions of their software. And please don't accuse them of "planned obsolescence" or "fashion" without better support.
Re:Was Not Impressed at All
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 1
So Ben had not yet been at peace with his actions to enter the church. It's all very Catholic at it's core.
Being "at peace with [one's] actions" has nothing to do with Catholicism. The whole ending was a big pseudo-religious mishmash with no clear underlying philosophy.
Now if you were looking for what the island was or were it came from, that, I'm afraid is going to be another story. Or you could use your imagination. That is the idea here. Every person enjoying the story at their own level.
So the answer to the criticism that the show revealed essentially nothing about the island is... we should imagine it for ourselves? Sorry, that's not going to fly. You say "the show wasn't about the island itself", but that's wrong-- it was about both the island and the people on it. Some of us cared at least as much about the former as the latter.
But browsers could be made to download just:visited images, as a security-related exception to the "download as needed" policy. This shouldn't affect performance at all, since sites that actually do this for "legitimate" reasons should be vanishingly rare.
I also hope it wasn't the Libertarians, since it was their lassaiz-faire philosophy of deregulation and strict adherence to the Chicago School of Economics...
Libertarians are generally Austrians, not Chicago schoolers.
...which infected and drove the Republican deregulation push of the last 20 years that in turn was directly responsible for the unregulated behavior that resulted in the current crash, and would have sent us directly into a second Great Depression had Bush/Obama/Brown not acted as they did.
Like most people who make this claim, you provide no arguments or evidence to support it. So the proper response is "nuh-uh".
Terrorism has been proven a threat, and so has excessive government control over peoples' lives. I'd say they're much closer in peril-level than the sting/gunshot example above
How many American lives has terrorism claimed over the last decade? And how many American lives has "our" government ruined in that time? (Including being thrown in jail for consuming a certain kind of plant, or facing crippling fines for sharing music.) Not to mention the insane amounts of time and money wasted by the security theater at our airports, illegal wiretaps, no-fly lists...
The whole point of a bank (at least originally) was to keep money safe by making it difficult to access.
If that were true, the best bank would have been a locked chest at the bottom of the ocean. Surely the point was to make it difficult for other people to access your money?
This delves into the concept of positive and negative rights -- that you either don't have any rights whatsoever until a government grants them to you, versus that you have the full rights entitled to your naturally-born freedom until they are taken away.
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but that is not what negative and positive rights mean. Negative rights are about not having something done to you (murder, theft). Positive rights are about being provided with something (food, health care).
I simply disagree that dynamic languages require "lot more debugging". We're not likely to come to an agreement on this based on logic alone, which is why I specifically asked for evidence-- I was trying to avoid pointlessly retreading well-known arguments, not to "win" the discussion.
By the way, I haven't heard your reason for claiming that functional programming is also bad for maintainability. And in this case I am interested in arguments, since this is the first time I've heard such a claim.
The more options are left open for runtime bugs, the more bugs will be in the final product.
Maybe if all else were equal, but it's not. I could argue that the time you save with a dynamic language leaves more time for debugging, and that the kinds of errors a type system helps with are generally the kind that show up early and are easy to fix.
Anyway, there's a reason I asked for evidence and not arguments. I've heard plenty of the latter already.
The more options there are for converting one value to another, the more bugs there will be in the final product. There is a lot of things that can go wrong during conversion.
I'm not sure how this is relevant to dynamic typing. Are you referring to weak typing?
I've heard this claim about dynamic typing before, but never with any evidence. Can you offer any? And why would functional programming be bad for maintainability?
Java will never have dynamic typing.
Did I say I wanted those features added to Java? I was simply expressing what I don't like about the language. Java can stay exactly as it is until the end of time, for all I care.
It's not that it is hard to implement (e.g. look at bsh an interpreter that is still, basically Java), it's that it has way to many drawbacks.
You know you can have both static and dynamic typing in the same language, right? See Objective-C, for example.
If you want to have that, use a scripting language (and don't use it for large programs).
So you think all dynamic languages are "scripting languages"? Enjoy being left behind over the next few years.
*My* point was that "pierced programmers" who can't get excited about new and diverse ways of doing things (in ANY language, regardless of age) are missing out on the best part of their job.
So tell me: what is "new and diverse" about Java?
No it doesn't. I'm a software guy, through and through. Languages are play to me. As I alluded in my original post, I don't live in the ironic, sarcastic Hipsterverse. You have no idea what tools I've used in the course of my Real Work.
Are you asserting that "I know it's trendy to play with Ruby and Python" doesn't strongly imply these are toy languages?
It seems I hit a nerve! Piercings are painful at first, aren't they.
I don't even use Python or Ruby. Nice try, though.
I don't believe I said that. Here, have a read.
You certainly implied it, by pointing out those qualities of Java as if they were an answer to the criticism that Java isn't fun or exciting to use.
Functional programming and dynamic typing. There's also the general ugliness and verbosity of Java's syntax, and the over-engineering that so many of its libraries suffer from.
Seriously though. Android applications. Eclipse. Adsense, GMail, Wave - in fact, just about every big Google web application (yes, even the client side stuff is written in Java and translated to Javascript). Openfire XMPP. Tomcat. Geronimo. ActiveMQ. Azureus.
You're missing the point. Nobody denies that Java is used everywhere; the point is that it is no longer (if it ever was) a cutting-edge language, the kind that "pierced programmers" get excited about.
I know it's trendy to play with Ruby and Python, and that's fine.
Using the word "play" shows that you have no idea just how much real work is being done in these languages. And they're growing in popularity precisely because they are exciting to use. After all, if the kinds of "practical" concerns you mentioned (ubiquity, performance, libraries) were the only things that mattered then we'd all still be using FORTRAN, COBOL, or C.
The proper response to this nonsense is to get rid of all religious exceptions, and if the resulting law is unacceptable, get rid of the law. Both helmet laws and discrimination laws would fall into the latter category.
If you think "good" C++ code avoids all use of pointers, new and delete then you have obviously never worked on a project of any meaningful size or scope.
He didn't proscribe "new" specifically, so I'm guessing he meant no manual memory deallocation. That also explains the "no pointers" thing, assuming he was referring to raw pointers.
"Man, we keep on creating these machines of mass subjugation, but somehow the bad guys always end up controlling them! Obviously, the bad guys must be the problem."
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It doesn't matter what kind of government you create, or what kind of people you create it with-- the sheer amount of power involved will ensure that sooner or later, (a) only the most unscrupulous villains will be able to make it into office, and (b) those few honest souls who do make it in by fluke are quickly corrupted or destroyed by the system.
I'll certainly agree that governments are "sterile", though-- in the sense that they cannot create anything new, only steal and destroy.
Slashdot Mirror
1. If you want to make a living creating works that exist in a data format (music, books, video) just accept the fact that nobody owes you a dime for your time. If some people choose to drop some money in your hat, that's awesome - but don't count on it.
I would phrase it as "information cannot be owned". "Intellectual property" is a very poor approximation; the model of ownership is fundamentally a bad fit for information. As Bruce Schneier put it: "trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet".
As for "nobody owes you a dime for your time", that is true. Nobody owes you anything regardless of how much time or work you may have put in. That is, unless you arranged beforehand to be paid for your time, which you can do with or without copyright.
2. If your music is so great, tour and make money that way. If you get moderately successful locally, each band member might be able to clear $80 a night! Of course you'll need a huge cash infusion (i.e. debt) to start touring big, but I'm sure the banks will be happy to help you with loans for such a riskless endeavour.
Touring is one way to make money, sure. But heaven forbid musicians be required to work hard or take risks!
3. Always remember - costs like studio time, special effects, actors, musicians, props, sets, insurance, essentially every cost involved in the production of your work magically disconnect from the work itself at the moment it is finalized. A ripped copy of that work has absolutely no moral, legal, or implied connection to any of those costs.
Costs are an "implementation detail" of the producer, irrelevant to the consumer. Do you think companies that sell physical goods set prices according to their costs? No, they charge whatever the market will bear. If that happens to cover their costs, they make a (possibly very large) profit. If it doesn't, they go out of business, and the world moves on.
Do you have any evidence of collusion among cellular companies? Besides, I didn't say collusions can't happen; I said they are inherently unstable, which they are. They always collapse sooner or later, depending on the number of competitors, which in turn depends on the barriers to entry in the industry. Fortunately, technology has a way of breaking down barriers over time.
It always makes sense for them to collude and fix prices, but it very rarely if ever happens and when it does the government usually picks up on it and shuts that effort down.
It's not even necessary for the government to step in. Collusions are inherently unstable, as each participant has an incentive to "cheat" by undercutting the others. The more participants there are, the faster such a collusion collapses.
Likewise in software, where upgrades are mandatory even though the current software works just fine. "But it's old tech!" the developer shouts at his utterly stupid users. "Why won't you upgrade? I really enjoyed working on this!" I recently asked a question on a support forum about Drupal. I didn't get my question answered, as the developers immediately discussed the fact I was using the "old tech" version (5) and the entire discussion became about when I was going to upgrade to the latest greatest version (7). Why should I? My software works just fine and customers are happy. Security upgrades are more like obscurity upgrades. "Because it's last year's fashion, daaahling"
I hope you're being facetious. Newer versions of software are often far easier for developers to work on, as the code's architecture improves over time. Why should volunteer developers have to maintain multiple branches of code just because you don't want to upgrade?
If you're happy with what you've got, great. But it's unreasonable to demand that the developers of an open-source project spend their limited time supporting older versions of their software. And please don't accuse them of "planned obsolescence" or "fashion" without better support.
So Ben had not yet been at peace with his actions to enter the church. It's all very Catholic at it's core.
Being "at peace with [one's] actions" has nothing to do with Catholicism. The whole ending was a big pseudo-religious mishmash with no clear underlying philosophy.
Now if you were looking for what the island was or were it came from, that, I'm afraid is going to be another story. Or you could use your imagination. That is the idea here. Every person enjoying the story at their own level.
So the answer to the criticism that the show revealed essentially nothing about the island is... we should imagine it for ourselves? Sorry, that's not going to fly. You say "the show wasn't about the island itself", but that's wrong-- it was about both the island and the people on it. Some of us cared at least as much about the former as the latter.
But browsers could be made to download just :visited images, as a security-related exception to the "download as needed" policy. This shouldn't affect performance at all, since sites that actually do this for "legitimate" reasons should be vanishingly rare.
You've listed some vague and common-sense goals, but not the means to achieve them. You might as well just have said "be excellent to each other".
I also hope it wasn't the Libertarians, since it was their lassaiz-faire philosophy of deregulation and strict adherence to the Chicago School of Economics...
Libertarians are generally Austrians, not Chicago schoolers.
...which infected and drove the Republican deregulation push of the last 20 years that in turn was directly responsible for the unregulated behavior that resulted in the current crash, and would have sent us directly into a second Great Depression had Bush/Obama/Brown not acted as they did.
Like most people who make this claim, you provide no arguments or evidence to support it. So the proper response is "nuh-uh".
print "$_\n" for 1 .. 10;
Terrorism has been proven a threat, and so has excessive government control over peoples' lives. I'd say they're much closer in peril-level than the sting/gunshot example above
How many American lives has terrorism claimed over the last decade? And how many American lives has "our" government ruined in that time? (Including being thrown in jail for consuming a certain kind of plant, or facing crippling fines for sharing music.) Not to mention the insane amounts of time and money wasted by the security theater at our airports, illegal wiretaps, no-fly lists...
The threat levels aren't even close.
You wouldn't download a pitchfork...
The whole point of a bank (at least originally) was to keep money safe by making it difficult to access.
If that were true, the best bank would have been a locked chest at the bottom of the ocean. Surely the point was to make it difficult for other people to access your money?
Hey, what did I ever do to them?
So your primary problem with mandatory content filtering is... it would be difficult for Linux distros to implement?
This delves into the concept of positive and negative rights -- that you either don't have any rights whatsoever until a government grants them to you, versus that you have the full rights entitled to your naturally-born freedom until they are taken away.
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but that is not what negative and positive rights mean. Negative rights are about not having something done to you (murder, theft). Positive rights are about being provided with something (food, health care).
What you are talking about is natural law vs. positive law.
I simply disagree that dynamic languages require "lot more debugging". We're not likely to come to an agreement on this based on logic alone, which is why I specifically asked for evidence-- I was trying to avoid pointlessly retreading well-known arguments, not to "win" the discussion.
By the way, I haven't heard your reason for claiming that functional programming is also bad for maintainability. And in this case I am interested in arguments, since this is the first time I've heard such a claim.
The more options are left open for runtime bugs, the more bugs will be in the final product.
Maybe if all else were equal, but it's not. I could argue that the time you save with a dynamic language leaves more time for debugging, and that the kinds of errors a type system helps with are generally the kind that show up early and are easy to fix.
Anyway, there's a reason I asked for evidence and not arguments. I've heard plenty of the latter already.
The more options there are for converting one value to another, the more bugs there will be in the final product. There is a lot of things that can go wrong during conversion.
I'm not sure how this is relevant to dynamic typing. Are you referring to weak typing?
Both are a problem for code maintainability.
I've heard this claim about dynamic typing before, but never with any evidence. Can you offer any? And why would functional programming be bad for maintainability?
Java will never have dynamic typing.
Did I say I wanted those features added to Java? I was simply expressing what I don't like about the language. Java can stay exactly as it is until the end of time, for all I care.
It's not that it is hard to implement (e.g. look at bsh an interpreter that is still, basically Java), it's that it has way to many drawbacks.
You know you can have both static and dynamic typing in the same language, right? See Objective-C, for example.
If you want to have that, use a scripting language (and don't use it for large programs).
So you think all dynamic languages are "scripting languages"? Enjoy being left behind over the next few years.
*My* point was that "pierced programmers" who can't get excited about new and diverse ways of doing things (in ANY language, regardless of age) are missing out on the best part of their job.
So tell me: what is "new and diverse" about Java?
No it doesn't. I'm a software guy, through and through. Languages are play to me. As I alluded in my original post, I don't live in the ironic, sarcastic Hipsterverse. You have no idea what tools I've used in the course of my Real Work.
Are you asserting that "I know it's trendy to play with Ruby and Python" doesn't strongly imply these are toy languages?
It seems I hit a nerve! Piercings are painful at first, aren't they.
I don't even use Python or Ruby. Nice try, though.
I don't believe I said that. Here, have a read.
You certainly implied it, by pointing out those qualities of Java as if they were an answer to the criticism that Java isn't fun or exciting to use.
Functional programming and dynamic typing. There's also the general ugliness and verbosity of Java's syntax, and the over-engineering that so many of its libraries suffer from.
Seriously though. Android applications. Eclipse. Adsense, GMail, Wave - in fact, just about every big Google web application (yes, even the client side stuff is written in Java and translated to Javascript). Openfire XMPP. Tomcat. Geronimo. ActiveMQ. Azureus.
You're missing the point. Nobody denies that Java is used everywhere; the point is that it is no longer (if it ever was) a cutting-edge language, the kind that "pierced programmers" get excited about.
I know it's trendy to play with Ruby and Python, and that's fine.
Using the word "play" shows that you have no idea just how much real work is being done in these languages. And they're growing in popularity precisely because they are exciting to use. After all, if the kinds of "practical" concerns you mentioned (ubiquity, performance, libraries) were the only things that mattered then we'd all still be using FORTRAN, COBOL, or C.
The proper response to this nonsense is to get rid of all religious exceptions, and if the resulting law is unacceptable, get rid of the law. Both helmet laws and discrimination laws would fall into the latter category.
The ability to drop a buzzword is insignificant next to the power of the Geek.
If you think "good" C++ code avoids all use of pointers, new and delete then you have obviously never worked on a project of any meaningful size or scope.
He didn't proscribe "new" specifically, so I'm guessing he meant no manual memory deallocation. That also explains the "no pointers" thing, assuming he was referring to raw pointers.
"Man, we keep on creating these machines of mass subjugation, but somehow the bad guys always end up controlling them! Obviously, the bad guys must be the problem."
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It doesn't matter what kind of government you create, or what kind of people you create it with-- the sheer amount of power involved will ensure that sooner or later, (a) only the most unscrupulous villains will be able to make it into office, and (b) those few honest souls who do make it in by fluke are quickly corrupted or destroyed by the system.
I'll certainly agree that governments are "sterile", though-- in the sense that they cannot create anything new, only steal and destroy.