It is the theft of a service. Just because you're copying digital bits instead of stealing a physical disc does not mean the nature of the crime has changed.
Not even. It would be a service if it was something that isn't simply consumed... like cleaning my house, or shoveling my driveway. This is simply creating a copy of some data.
You are taking the property (intellectual or physical) of someone else against their wishes; that is theft.
Nope. Again, it is simply copying some data -- if it were being taken, the person that you were downloading from would no longer have it after you downloaded it. Trying to shoehorn the ideas of theft (of physical property) onto "intellectual property" is ineffectual at best.
The best part about this is that the very things that you emphasized in your post were the very things that were most wrong about your argument -- have you really not seen those points debunked here time and time again, or have I just been baited?:)
Just because something is made law does not mean that the problem of whether it is a "moral" thing to do suddenly disappears.
I mean, just slavery and women's rights are pretty obvious examples (to most) of laws that were morally wrong, but still the law of the land -- it didn't suddenly become wrong when the law was changed, it was always wrong, but the law was a bad law.
As far as comparing this situation to honeypots in the security realm -- that's utterly hilarious. Crackers steal data, deface web pages, etc. What do people that would be interested in a MediaDefender-like solution do? Listen to music and watch movies. Hardly a reprehensible act to begin with, and your escalation of "copyright infringement" to "theft" just makes it more laughable.
Yes, for LedgerSMB... from how you describe it, it sounds kinda like the Ofbiz POS UI. What I'm really looking for is something like TinaPOS that integrates into something besides Openbravo (which is horrifically undocumented). If TinaPOS integrated into LedgerSMB or Ofbiz, that too would be fantastic as well.
The barcode scanners aren't really necessary in every environment, but many of the (uglier) POS systems assume their usage.
Openbravo is a fork of Compiere, so I'm not sure why they would appeal to different market segments. Also, Opentaps is a fork of Ofbiz, which is an Apache Foundation project.
Thanks for the list though, some of those look pretty interesting.
I had the pleasure of seeing The Faint when they opened for No Doubt (when No Doubt came to my university) a few years back. Most of the crowd seemed annoyed, but I thought they were pretty awesome, and ended up tracking down their album.:)
a. Microsoft promises support, Fedora does not. b. Microsoft's product is paid, Fedora is not.
Besides the biggest difference isn't just that they are meant for different markets and all that, but simply that -- while Fedora may not be supported by Redhat (or Fedora) in a while, anyone who knows Linux can support Fedora anyway! To do that with Windows would require access to the source code... which isn't available.
Sounds just like I thought it would be. I've never seen it, but it got a lot of positive hype (kinda like Lost's hype), and I figured that something that universally hyped (I didn't even feel like people really liked it so much as it was something "new" to watch that wasn't as bad as everything else) couldn't be that great.
Still, I wish someone would step up and do another Mr. Show like show.
Mike Gravel is my top pick so far. According to his Wikipedia article, he is:
In favor of the FairTax, which is a traditionally conservative talking point, but one I find very interesting and attractive. A consumption tax is progressive in the sense that it "punishes" those who consume more, not necessarily those who are making the most money. There are obvious problems with this, but it definitely sounds better than the usual spaghetti code our current tax structure is.
Pro nationalized health care. C'mon, the poor deserve to not be sick, too.
In favor of a multilateral approach to foreign affairs, including:
# Support for a Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel # Disavowing a nuclear first-strike policy # Immediate US military withdrawal from Iraq and support for a UN-sponsored regional peace process to arrest the Iraqi Civil War
That Iraq war one should be obvious, but not a lot of people seem to really be in favor of it.
Here are some other nice ones:
He's pro "gay rights" Pro drug (legalized marijuana) Pro choice Anti death penalty
The National Initiative is an interesting idea, one that advocates more citizen voice in government -- allowing citizens to vote on ideas on national legislation -- something only he advocates and supports.
The one thing that is annoying to me about Gravel is his blanket non-support of nuclear energy, which I think is a losing position.
As far as Obama:
Pro universal health care, pro net-neutrality, pro choice, doesn't support the idea of marriage for gays, but is okay with civil unions.
However, he does not promote an immediate pull out of the Iraq war, has not ruled out attacking Iran, seems to be iffy on gun rights, seems mildly pro-religion, and supports Israel's position in the Palestine/Israel conflict.
I really wish Gravel wins the nomination, but I suppose I could make do with Obama... almost anything would be better than the last eight years, imo.
Ron Paul might be an option if he gets the Republican nomination, but I'm really not a fan of a libertarian economic ideal.
It only works if you are a capitalist, of course. Of course, a lot of the world's poor might rightly not be capitalists, simply because regardless of it's intellectual or pragmatic merits (if there are any), they are getting the worst part of the deal.
It's just like terrorism and war -- when countries commit terrorism, they are "acts of war", and are spun either way by the media, and government propaganda. When those who are powerless, or do not have the power of a government behind them, the actions are characterized as terrorism.
I've always found it odd that many of my peers in school had no problem with pirating music or software, but stealing their cars would likely give them a fit.
Most people seem to be just fine with some "theft", as long as it is in their best interest.
What happens in most of these OS/system debates sadly devolves into an argument about application availability. This is obviously quite a logical thing to look at, but in the computer market (unlike say, the video game console market), there is a pseudo-monopoly of sorts, and very little competition in the OS sector.
With companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, the differences in platform are a lot more interesting, as the software that comes out for those platforms use the various technologies offered by the platforms in different ways. For example, look at the Wii and how it eschews mega-cool graphics for motion sensitive gameplay, or the PS3's ability to play Blu-Ray discs and 1080p graphics.
What ends up happening is that we don't actually argue the merits of the OSes (like features like zeroconf or AppleTalk vs. Windows File Sharing, or AppleScript vs. Visual Basic Scripting), but on "can I get application (or game) X for Y platform". The deck is stacked in Microsoft's favor; as the platform gets bigger, the "pseudo monopoly" grows even stronger (note the prevalence of the DOC file format), making platform comparisons a lot less about comparing the relative merits of the OS, but more about "do i want to risk not having the OS that everyone else has".
Which sucks for anyone who is really interested in choosing the best, rather than having to stick with "what's good enough" because all the apps are on it.
Pretty sure all you really need to do is restart X (control alt backspace), but I'm guessing Ubuntu asks you to restart simply because killing X effectively kills all windowed applications... it's probably simply a usability concern.
You could have solved the only specific problem that you encountered by simply installing a 32bit version of Linux. I don't think any Windows PC comes with a 64bit version of Windows, so it's not as if you aren't comparing them on the same level.
Oh, and I personally find Ubuntu to be nicer for installing hardware support for certain proprietary drivers.
Ubuntu (or perhaps GNOME) includes a nice frontend to CUPS -- I recently installed Edgy on a friend's PC, and his HP inkjet printer took about a minute to setup, which is actually faster than my own experience installing HP drivers on many Windows PCs over the years.
I see this kind of post on here a lot, so I'll just step in and correct/clarify the "Mac OS X is BSD" thing.
Mac OS X is not a BSD. It has a BSD userland, which means that many of the console applications that BSD uses is also available on Mac OS X.
Mac OS X doesn't use a BSD kernel either, it uses XNU. The drivers for BSD are also not portable to a Mac OS X system.
The rest of your post is fairly accurate; Mac OS X supports a lot of hardware, but as a whole, I'd say Linux supports a hell of a lot more -- but Mac OS X generally has a leg up on newer hardware like video cards.
Oh, and if you want a nice Blue theme for Ubuntu, check out Blubuntu. It's a collection of small themes (GTK, icon, window manager) that make Ubuntu blue. It looks really nice and takes less than a minute to "install".:)
I actually prefer the GNOME UI to KDE. I think Ubuntu has done a pretty decent job with it's GNOME integration, and installing restricted drivers, and enabling desktop effects (compiz -- basically, aero/os x like windowing). Plus, KDE is generally kinda ugly, and as far as I can tell, is a bit more RAM heavy, and is slower to draw things in the UI. As a side note, Xfce is also quite good, but a lot more minimalistic than something like GNOME or KDE, and is quite a bit faster. Xfce is part of the Xubuntu package.
As far as I can tell, the only way to access the tool is to be a member of the site (which starts at $300 annually for individuals). Thanks, but no thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
In the US, phone companies charge for incoming and outgoing calls.
Look ma, no buttons!
HDDVD and Blu-ray require a lot more processing power than DVDs.
Not that you aren't correct about backups in general, but Leopard's "Time Machine" allows you to use an external drive for backups as well.
Not even. It would be a service if it was something that isn't simply consumed... like cleaning my house, or shoveling my driveway. This is simply creating a copy of some data.
Nope. Again, it is simply copying some data -- if it were being taken, the person that you were downloading from would no longer have it after you downloaded it. Trying to shoehorn the ideas of theft (of physical property) onto "intellectual property" is ineffectual at best.
The best part about this is that the very things that you emphasized in your post were the very things that were most wrong about your argument -- have you really not seen those points debunked here time and time again, or have I just been baited? :)
Just because something is made law does not mean that the problem of whether it is a "moral" thing to do suddenly disappears.
I mean, just slavery and women's rights are pretty obvious examples (to most) of laws that were morally wrong, but still the law of the land -- it didn't suddenly become wrong when the law was changed, it was always wrong, but the law was a bad law.
As far as comparing this situation to honeypots in the security realm -- that's utterly hilarious. Crackers steal data, deface web pages, etc. What do people that would be interested in a MediaDefender-like solution do? Listen to music and watch movies. Hardly a reprehensible act to begin with, and your escalation of "copyright infringement" to "theft" just makes it more laughable.
Yes, for LedgerSMB... from how you describe it, it sounds kinda like the Ofbiz POS UI. What I'm really looking for is something like TinaPOS that integrates into something besides Openbravo (which is horrifically undocumented). If TinaPOS integrated into LedgerSMB or Ofbiz, that too would be fantastic as well.
The barcode scanners aren't really necessary in every environment, but many of the (uglier) POS systems assume their usage.
I can't seem to find any screenshots for the POS UI... do you have any available that you can link to?
Openbravo is a fork of Compiere, so I'm not sure why they would appeal to different market segments. Also, Opentaps is a fork of Ofbiz, which is an Apache Foundation project. Thanks for the list though, some of those look pretty interesting.
I had the pleasure of seeing The Faint when they opened for No Doubt (when No Doubt came to my university) a few years back. Most of the crowd seemed annoyed, but I thought they were pretty awesome, and ended up tracking down their album. :)
Ooh, someone who is against freedom of speech! I wouldn't be surprised if you were litigious, too!
Hilariously enough, I'd say your post was about as inflammatory as the post you responded to... maybe look to yourself before judging others?
Oh, one last thing -- this is "real life"; the correspondence theory of truth virtually guarantees it!
Hate to feed what seems like a troll, but...
a. Microsoft promises support, Fedora does not.
b. Microsoft's product is paid, Fedora is not.
Besides the biggest difference isn't just that they are meant for different markets and all that, but simply that -- while Fedora may not be supported by Redhat (or Fedora) in a while, anyone who knows Linux can support Fedora anyway! To do that with Windows would require access to the source code... which isn't available.
Sounds just like I thought it would be. I've never seen it, but it got a lot of positive hype (kinda like Lost's hype), and I figured that something that universally hyped (I didn't even feel like people really liked it so much as it was something "new" to watch that wasn't as bad as everything else) couldn't be that great.
Still, I wish someone would step up and do another Mr. Show like show.
Mike Gravel is my top pick so far. According to his Wikipedia article, he is:
In favor of the FairTax, which is a traditionally conservative talking point, but one I find very interesting and attractive. A consumption tax is progressive in the sense that it "punishes" those who consume more, not necessarily those who are making the most money. There are obvious problems with this, but it definitely sounds better than the usual spaghetti code our current tax structure is.
Pro nationalized health care. C'mon, the poor deserve to not be sick, too.
In favor of a multilateral approach to foreign affairs, including:
# Support for a Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel
# Disavowing a nuclear first-strike policy
# Immediate US military withdrawal from Iraq and support for a UN-sponsored regional peace process to arrest the Iraqi Civil War
That Iraq war one should be obvious, but not a lot of people seem to really be in favor of it.
Here are some other nice ones:
He's pro "gay rights"
Pro drug (legalized marijuana)
Pro choice
Anti death penalty
The National Initiative is an interesting idea, one that advocates more citizen voice in government -- allowing citizens to vote on ideas on national legislation -- something only he advocates and supports.
The one thing that is annoying to me about Gravel is his blanket non-support of nuclear energy, which I think is a losing position.
As far as Obama:
Pro universal health care, pro net-neutrality, pro choice, doesn't support the idea of marriage for gays, but is okay with civil unions.
However, he does not promote an immediate pull out of the Iraq war, has not ruled out attacking Iran, seems to be iffy on gun rights, seems mildly pro-religion, and supports Israel's position in the Palestine/Israel conflict.
I really wish Gravel wins the nomination, but I suppose I could make do with Obama... almost anything would be better than the last eight years, imo.
Ron Paul might be an option if he gets the Republican nomination, but I'm really not a fan of a libertarian economic ideal.
It only works if you are a capitalist, of course. Of course, a lot of the world's poor might rightly not be capitalists, simply because regardless of it's intellectual or pragmatic merits (if there are any), they are getting the worst part of the deal.
It's just like terrorism and war -- when countries commit terrorism, they are "acts of war", and are spun either way by the media, and government propaganda. When those who are powerless, or do not have the power of a government behind them, the actions are characterized as terrorism.
I've always found it odd that many of my peers in school had no problem with pirating music or software, but stealing their cars would likely give them a fit.
Most people seem to be just fine with some "theft", as long as it is in their best interest.
What happens in most of these OS/system debates sadly devolves into an argument about application availability. This is obviously quite a logical thing to look at, but in the computer market (unlike say, the video game console market), there is a pseudo-monopoly of sorts, and very little competition in the OS sector.
With companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, the differences in platform are a lot more interesting, as the software that comes out for those platforms use the various technologies offered by the platforms in different ways. For example, look at the Wii and how it eschews mega-cool graphics for motion sensitive gameplay, or the PS3's ability to play Blu-Ray discs and 1080p graphics.
What ends up happening is that we don't actually argue the merits of the OSes (like features like zeroconf or AppleTalk vs. Windows File Sharing, or AppleScript vs. Visual Basic Scripting), but on "can I get application (or game) X for Y platform". The deck is stacked in Microsoft's favor; as the platform gets bigger, the "pseudo monopoly" grows even stronger (note the prevalence of the DOC file format), making platform comparisons a lot less about comparing the relative merits of the OS, but more about "do i want to risk not having the OS that everyone else has".
Which sucks for anyone who is really interested in choosing the best, rather than having to stick with "what's good enough" because all the apps are on it.
Pretty sure all you really need to do is restart X (control alt backspace), but I'm guessing Ubuntu asks you to restart simply because killing X effectively kills all windowed applications... it's probably simply a usability concern.
You could have solved the only specific problem that you encountered by simply installing a 32bit version of Linux. I don't think any Windows PC comes with a 64bit version of Windows, so it's not as if you aren't comparing them on the same level.
Oh, and I personally find Ubuntu to be nicer for installing hardware support for certain proprietary drivers.
Ubuntu (or perhaps GNOME) includes a nice frontend to CUPS -- I recently installed Edgy on a friend's PC, and his HP inkjet printer took about a minute to setup, which is actually faster than my own experience installing HP drivers on many Windows PCs over the years.
I see this kind of post on here a lot, so I'll just step in and correct/clarify the "Mac OS X is BSD" thing.
Mac OS X is not a BSD. It has a BSD userland, which means that many of the console applications that BSD uses is also available on Mac OS X.
Mac OS X doesn't use a BSD kernel either, it uses XNU. The drivers for BSD are also not portable to a Mac OS X system.
The rest of your post is fairly accurate; Mac OS X supports a lot of hardware, but as a whole, I'd say Linux supports a hell of a lot more -- but Mac OS X generally has a leg up on newer hardware like video cards.
Oh, and if you want a nice Blue theme for Ubuntu, check out Blubuntu. It's a collection of small themes (GTK, icon, window manager) that make Ubuntu blue. It looks really nice and takes less than a minute to "install". :)
I actually prefer the GNOME UI to KDE. I think Ubuntu has done a pretty decent job with it's GNOME integration, and installing restricted drivers, and enabling desktop effects (compiz -- basically, aero/os x like windowing). Plus, KDE is generally kinda ugly, and as far as I can tell, is a bit more RAM heavy, and is slower to draw things in the UI. As a side note, Xfce is also quite good, but a lot more minimalistic than something like GNOME or KDE, and is quite a bit faster. Xfce is part of the Xubuntu package.
Thanks! A friend of mine used this, and I remember being impressed. I've been meaning to track it down, but this post was a nice pointer. :)
Do It for the reference.
As far as I can tell, the only way to access the tool is to be a member of the site (which starts at $300 annually for individuals). Thanks, but no thanks.