There was a compromise made at the last minute, which was to call evolution a 'scientific theory', rather than a fact. LOL! I can't believe that an actual state school board resolution has basically the same wording as when I troll. (Er, I mean, my *friend* trolls.) "Hey guys, now, let's face it, evolution is pretty much just a theory at this point. You know, THEORY? Theory as in... NOT FACT?"
Still, I think it would be an improvement of orders of magnitude if science classes in general focused more on:
"how did we learn this?" (i.e., the scientific method, how observations have to be done to eliminate bias, the formulation of competing theories, how experiments are designed, how hypotheses were ruled out, etc.)
as opposed to:
"here is he official list of truth that you have to memorize and then do cute IQ-test-like problems with".
The latter gives the wrong impression of what science is and why it matters.
Yes, your advice is still far-fatched and unreasonable. You're making the exact same error I pointed out the first time around, which is to tell me to "just" (!) do X, where X itself is difficult, and if I could do X in the first place, I would have already done it!
Wow, you mean if I bring an unattached hot woman, both the men *and* the women will like me? Why didn't I think of that! How about this: become a billionaire! That'll work too, right? Or, maybe I should "just" become a rockstar first? Goddamn, why don't all these idiots on/. just get it? What's so freaking hard about finding women?
Now, before you roll your eyes and write me off as having an attitude that won't get me anywhere, blah blah blah [rationalize why I deserve my condition, deserve being locked out of my computer for having the audacity to follow Ubuntu's install instructions, deserve false allegations of violent sex crimes, deserve not being told about these allegations, deserve having formal complaints about that ignored, deserve not being told my formal complaint was shredded, etc.], let me just say that I'm absolutely doing what I can. I recently joined a political group through meetup.com, and it didn't have much leadership, so the existing leader let me take over. There wasn't much interest, not many people involved much at all, so I started planning some events. Even though only a few people showed up for the first, I made sure to take lots and lots of pictures and make them as exciting as possible, and then upload them with clever captions so as to make people want to join. Then, for our next meeting, I reserved us a meeting room at a coffee place, and lots of people showed up, far more than RSVP'd, and then, the people there got to see me in a leadership role.
Then, at a later meeting, I saw some women knitting and asked if I could join, learned for a few minutes, and then went to a few of their later meetings, where one of the women (who hadn't been there before) helped me connect with her son-in-law who is also a DDR player who wants to design a variant.
As for joining all those groups, yes, again, if that were easy/possible, I would have already done it. But the area I'm in is not very populated (~220,000), and anyone close to my age would be in a group affiliated with the university in the area, to which, again, I don't have that personal recommendation, and which I'd look even more like an outsider to, and which would interfere with my work schedule.
Yeah, I know, "just bail and find a job in another city". What's so hard about that, right?
Furthermore,
It is difficult to be terribly specific without knowing anything about you, but allow me to go on the assumption that you are the type that tends to have fewer, but closer friends (this is me, believe it or not). This is a huge amplifier of V for you,
you'd be wrong again: the unfortunate truth is that I have ZERO close friends. By what definition? Several, all of which are basically equivalent to, "Would I feel comfortable calling him up and telling him about a date I just had?"
So, I appreciate your help, but your advice doesn't work because you simply haven't experienced what the problem is, so you're unable to see what the difficulties are -- what's hard for others is easy to you. (There's an analogy here to the problem of programming a robot to catch a ball.)
To reiterate:
-If I could fool all women into thinking other women found me desirable, the problem would have already been solved. -If there were local groups I could join with people my age, the problem would have already been solved. -If I had people who could vouch for me for all the groups I want to join, the problem would have already been solved. -If I had close friends in the area, the problem would have already been solved. -If someone repeatedly throws invitations at me to social gatherings where people don't automatically reject me, and DON'T consi
I think most arguments for banning it are bullshit.
I think the extension of the interstate commerce clause to ban certain drugs was about as atrocious as anything in jurisprudence can be.
NEVERTHELESS, I would have to concede that there's a pretty fundamental difference between "you may not manipulate your consciousness in *this* specific way" and "you have no right to privacy in any telepresence", and any attempt to put them on the same level trivializes the right to privacy.
1) Group X could prove that anyone sellying Item Y was under contract not to resell it. 2) Ebay could be exposed to liability for facilitating sale of items known to be violating a contract. 3) Group X paid for the right to suspend auctions and would pay a penalty for false positives (items not related to what Group X was objecting to). 4) Group X considers Ys to be sacred and does not like when they are held by the general public, and makes users sign contracts not to do that and to pay a penality if they do.
Then, I could have a good answer to all your questions (X = Church of Scientology, Y = e-meter). No, the free market does not support violation of contracts you have made.
Now, is the CoS paying for this? I don't know. But I can certainly see how this could be reasonable.
What the hell would IQ level or age have do with this?
Sorry, Time magazine, Money.cnn.com, etc. all feel obligated to describe ALL government payments as checks (as if they don't understand the concept otherwise), and they are targeted at older or dumbed-down audiences. I'm not saying you don't understand my *argument* if you're born before '65 or have low IQ; I'm just trying to make my prose more *comfortable* and familiar to you by referencing checks if you are in one of those groups.
Your example is lacking in so many ways too. First, not all tariffs are to prop up inefficient companies.
So what? My argument applies to the ones that are. You're naive if you think that e.g. the recent steel tariffs (that drew the WTO's attention and that Bush supported and then didn't support) weren't a big vote payoff to dinosaur West Virginia steel companies with stupid business models (including unfunded pensions...) and their workers. And that, I claim here, could have been done more pareto-optimally -- but voters would balk.
First, even removing tarrifs is one thing, even though it would cause a loss of jobs in some cases, second, the government can't just pay people. They have to take taxes in to cover their expense. To truly compensate for the effects of tariffs, you would bankrupt the country with pay outs.
I know. Did you read the post carefully? Because the tariff-free world would lack the cascading inefficiencies, a higher tax (or higher debt!) plus transfer would be less painful than all the higher prices for goods that result from the tariffs (not just on steel products, but all the other products affected by capital misallocation -- everything). What is currently done now is a payoff that is very indirect, and victimizes millions on the side. The whole point is that you can get the payoff *without* screwing over all those other people as much. Why not? Because the corruption involved would be more obvious and less pleasing to our "help the workers!" platitudes.
(Btw, the loss in jobs for the workers would be made up by the free money, but again, we don't like free money to people, we like tariffs that screwup capital allocation and give them money indirectly.)
Are you sure about this? I have seen quite a few people who say, "Oh, I don't act like this in real life," and then you meet them and realize they are as big, if not bigger, asshats in person.
You don't have to take my word for it. I made it to the Austin 10-year/. celebration. Go find that list, and go ask the people there who I talked to if I was an asshat. The one I built the most "rapport" with, however, was the wife of the dominant male guy in the blazer who organized the picture (you know who you are). She seemed to enjoy talking to me, maybe we can find her (and no I don't mean what you're thinking).
I just love when people make provably false suppositions about why I deserve being fucked over, seems to happen quite often.
There is a common trend in both situations though. It is "someone else's" fault. Step back and look at what happened again, in both situations. Tell me, whose fault is it really?
Yeah, you know, I have done this. I have thought really long and hard about what I've gone through. And you know what? No matter how hard I try, I simply can't think of a single thing I've done that justifies falsely accusing a virgin of threatening to rape someone. I just can't. I try hard and hard and hard, and I just can't find it.
But let's say you're right. Let's say I was a dick a while ago. Let's say that has led me to having no close male friends. Now what? Like I said, that means no one to recommend me in groups. Does that mean I deserve to be fucked for the rest of my life? What could I even do, now that I'm different?
And then, how would the GGP's advice help? It doesn't. Again, his solution works, only if I've got the problem basically solved already. Now what?
Oh, and to all those who are in the same dilemma but too afraid to say so: you're welcome.
That's good advice, kind of, but it doesn't really address the problem. Yes, if you're already
more well adapted... socially you can do $PLAN and you'll have lots of fulfilling relationships, including romantic. In other news, I have this AWESOME plan for how to get women to be attracted to you. Oh, but it only works if you're Brad Pitt.
The question is, HOW? This seems easy for you, because you don't *notice* the hard parts, because they already come naturally to you.
You already have tons of friends who know tons of girls, who will be more open to you because they've already "screened" you, and getting dates is merely a matter of inviting one of a trillion invitations and letting the magic happen.
Any advice for the rest of us, who, say, are living in a city where they don't have trillions of friends? No? Okay then. Try again, and this time, don't suggest something where the problem is already solved.
Yes, I'll probably get modded down for this, but I'm willing to bet there are thousands of you in a similar position that don't want to admit it.
And no, it's not a simple matter of joining some organization. Every one that I've tried to join has been extremely suspicious of people who don't already come in with a recommendation from someone in the group. And then, one group that I tried to join was a total disaster. It was going well, and then one girl just suddenly flipped out and got a bunch of them to start giving me the cold treatment, and then invented a bunch of wild accusations to get them to ban me from the (large, great-for-meeting-women) group. Fun, fun.
You think the problem is easy because it's easy for you. What's obvious for you, is not obvious for others. One man's redundant is another man's insightful. Remember that.
(Before one of you says it, no, I don't act IRL like I did on the Ubuntu forums, think of another ad hoc rationalization.)
Well, not only that, the idea of going for a Pareto improvement mathematical proof is flawed. It's an impossible and IMHO unnecessary step. Just show how your process is better, and let people decide if it's worth it. "Mathematical proofs" that people should assist in social changes... well, it's a short road to sophistry.
Simple proof: Imagine there's (what I call) a "misanthrope", a person who is dissatisfied by the satisfaction of others and vice versa. The existence of one such person destroys possibility of Pareto improvement.
Plus, many things that are Pareto improvements in theory, are not in practice. As one of many examples, we could Pareto-improve trade policy: currently, we have tariffs to prop up inefficient domestic industries, functioning as a policy that hurts consumers and benefits workers and corporations making the tariffed goods, but does it very inefficiently because consumers here and abroad are all hurt in the process. A strict improvement would be to look at those same workers and corporations, make simple transfer payments to them[1], and then lift the tariffs and watch domestic capital rearrange to do what's truly efficient. Workers/corporations are better off, consumers are better off (because the gain is less than the payoff because the tariffs caused cascading inefficiencies.) Yet voters would balk at this (far more efficient!) cash payoff. Go fig.
So, in short, don't focus on these mathematical proofs. Isolate what's better, and ask what's really stopping people from switching. In the tariff example, I'd guess it's because voters want to prop up their own cherished beliefs. But who knows?
[1] For those with low IQs or were born before 1965, read this as "The government could cut some fresh checks to workers and corporations, courtesy of the ol' Treasury Department."
Kid, I gave you real arguments. I showed you the flaws in your position. Yes, it was interspersed with a reminder of how stupid Stallman/ESR's meme is, but what I posted is extremely important for you to consider. I don't want, and *YOU* certainly don't want to realize one day how you threw your weight behind a cause out of ignorance. ("Those who don't know their opponents' arguments, don't really understand their own.") That's something you're going to regret, and your refusal to consider the flaws I have outlined reflects poorly on you.
You can ignore what I've said at your own risk to your intellectual integrity.
Wow, finally someone with the balls to put a name on a criticism -- but not a wise move, since it attaches stupidity to *your* name.
Your Ubuntu-related paranoia ('"My own actions" are not the cause of this problem'),
I think what you means there is failure to take responsibility, but whatever. That's a pretty stupid example to pick, since in that case, it's proven that my actions were not the cause of the problem, and that statement was 100% accurate. The error I had when trying to install is well-known and well-defined, and something that I couldn't cause. Go ahead -- ask anyone about Error 25 at State 1.5 in GRUB.
Of course, if you sloppily equivocate "this problem" to mean the problem of being unable to get AROUND Ubuntu's locking me out of my computer, you're still clearly wrong, because the install instructions at no point tell me to take the measures that would have allowed me to fix the problem with what I had available, and so no one would have been able to help me, even if I had been polite about their beloved OS's poor design. What does it do instead? It tells me to *disable* measures I had taken (confining Ubuntu to a non-primary hard drive)!
You're damn right that "my own actions" were not the cause of this problem. Just go ahead and do what the rest of them do -- tell me I was stupid to trust a Linux distro's install instructions, but in a way that obscures the asininity of that criticism. Or listen to this guy.
and your Slashdot-related paranoia ('the people that are stalking me')
First, I didn't characterize it as stalking until this guy called it that (before that I just called it an internet hate machine like in that clueless fox story).
Second, there most certainly ARE people modding me down out of hate for me personally instead of because the posts really deserve being modded down. You be the judge. I went ahead and resubscribed just so I could access a few pages back. (And of course the first time I documented this would have been easily accessible except that my karma was terrible at the time and I had to make the summary post as AC! Nope, no inferences to draw from that...)
global warming paranoia ('The purpose, for most such alarmists, is to shut down activity they don't like')...
Unfortunately for you, my theory fits the data. ANY plan that would significantly reduce net carbon emissions while not confining business and while permitting conspicuous consumption is ig
But seriously, the other neat trick is that even if you cut down the wood and burn it for power, you're only putting back the CO2 which the tree took out - not releasing carbon that has been safely out of the equation for millions of years.
But IMHO a better way to accomplish the same thing is to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as octane, like I suggest here (in a post that was modded down for no reason by the people that are stalking me), and get the energy to do that from nuclear power, like this guy has already worked out the details for. That way, the gasoline you would burn, would only return to the atmosphere, what was taken from it.
Of course, the purpose of the global warming alarmism is NOT, and never has been, to find ways to reduce net carbon emissions and prevent catastrophe. The purpose, for most such alarmists, is to shut down activity they don't like. "Global warming" is a pretense. Anything that stops global warming, but doesn't shut down those activities, will be vehemently opposed.
And btw, whenever someone tells me that woodburning is good for the environment, I always have to ask, *whose* environment? Not the environment of the people who have to breathe the surrounding air!
I've been thinking about getting my hearing range evaluated. I seem to hear not just high sounds (like my CRT TV when the sound is off) but also very low ones, which are really annoying. I get weird looks from people when I claim to hear sounds that they don't. Anecdote: one morning I woke up and heard this far off buzzing, so I got up, left my apartment complex, walked down the street, and found a new compressor running to fill a truck's tires. Go fig.
But I can't use my computer for a test (sound card probably won't permit the range) and I can't use local audiologists because they'll probably BSOD when asked to test someone who has *good* hearing. (Uh, now, what's the problem with your hearing now, can't uh, hear too much, eh? Uh, well, now we only done test people with them thur hearing problems.)
Btw, anyone got some device to take care of thugs blaring subwoofers in traffic? Now *those* should be illegal. I don't object to your musical taste, but please, don't involuntarily subject my walls to it.
LOL! Just found your post by coincidence. (How notorious am I by now?) Well, you got a laugh out of me, which is much appreciated =-)
But don't worry, now that some internet hate machine has modded down my posts en masse, it'll be a while before I can post more than five times per day...
Well, here's my suggestion, which seems much more straightforward:
1) Take CO2 from the air and H2O from any source. 2) Generate energy from nuclear power and store it in octane (gasoline) molecules formed from the above. (Basically, reverse of combusion, though not necessarily through that path, and no, this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics.) 3) Use that gasoline to power cars as usual.
Benefits:
1) All vehicle carbon emissions are only returning to the atmosphere, what was taken from it to produce their fuel, so vehicles would be carbon-neutral. 2) No need to import oil. 3) Can be completely safe, since you can locate the plant arbitrarily far from populated areas. 4) No infrastructure or automobile changes except for different distribution route.
And, I recently found out that someone else has already thought of this and worked out the details, though it would only be able to produce the gasoline at $4.60/gallon. Still, it proves that all of Europe already "feels" the maximum externality cost on the demand side.
approach to defeating the menace of playbills. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before FDR passed a new law.)
( ) Bill posters can easily use it to harvest better locations ( ) Billboards and other legitimate posters would be affected (X) No one will be able to find the knave or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop playbills for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of large surfaces will not put up with it ( ) Sears will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from playbill posters ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many postboard users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Playbill posters don't care about unusable surfaces in their plans ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's job or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for flat surfaces in public view (X) Undocumented aliens who post the playbills ( ) Ease of searching tiny set of all flat surfaces in the area ( ) Men of ill repute (X) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of fanciful new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept fanciful money not backed by gold ( ) Huge existing capital investment in buildings ( ) Susceptibility of buildings without flat surfaces to collapse ( ) Willingness of users to read playbills whilst passing by (X) Legions of unattended buildings ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all mointoring approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of playbill posting (X) Forgery of others' names ( ) Politicians ill-informed of new-fangled devices ( ) Extreme foolishness on the part of people who buy from playbill advertisements ( ) Dishonesty on the part of playbill posters themselves ( ) Labor costs that are unaffected by careful monitoring ( ) Tacks and glue
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown workable ( ) Any scheme based on requirement to leave the program is intolerable ( ) Legislation of bold message headings is not Constitutionally authorized ( ) Blacklists are humbug ( ) Whitelists are humbug ( ) We should be able to talk about alcohol without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or check fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public areas ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Posting messages should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your file warehouses? (X) Jolly-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time postal addresses are cumbersome ( ) Killing them that way is not tortuous enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry friend, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a confounded idea, and you're a confounded person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, knave! I shall find out where you live and burn your rental down forthright!
I'm at a friend's house, and since he did not have Firefox, but instead the one that was motived by a copyright-company, and clicking "Back" loses everything you write in a form (even in IE 7!), so I am unable to post my long reply:-(
Oh, puh-leeze. As if Firefox isn't riddled with severe annoyances, a few of which I listed here.
(Which the majority does, as a counter-claim to yours above about "people parting with their money")
They spent their own money on computers pre-loaded with Windows instead of another kind of OS that nobody ever bothered to tell them about and make easy for them.
A. IP lumps together copyrights and trademark laws. I am very much in favor of trademark law, but against copyrights. So please do not misrepresent my position as anti-IP. This is a discussion about copyrights, not IP.
Whine, whine. You're hooked on the "omg don't say IP" meme. People can be "anti-capitalist" if they oppose significant parts of capitalism but not all of it, people can be anti-religious even if they don't oppose everything associated with religion, people can anti-McDonald's even if they are fine with some things that McDonald's does. You absolutely do oppose a huge part of IP, and, in the absence of knowing your full nuanced (!) position, and given the need for brevity, the "anti-IP" referring term was richly justified. (I'm guessing you oppose patents as well -- fine, but don't call Marx "not anti-capitalist" because he supported some kinds of property.)
The opposition to the term "IP" is ridiculous. IP is a useful superset term for the numerous times when distinction between the types is unnecessary. It's no different from "significant other" (OMG j00 R totally trivializing the difference between a wife and a girlfriend), "spider" (OMG j00 R totally trivializing the difference bewteen a tarantula and a black widow), or "security" (OMG j00 R totally trivializing the difference between debt and equity).
B. Copyrights were created, as said so by its creators themselves, as a necessary evil. My argument is that they are no longer (if ever were) necessary, and now are just evil.
The creators (for the US) never used that kind of terminology. Even if they did, so what? I don't care what the creators said. I care what's *true*. Stop referencing them. And I've refuted you're case that they're not necessary. Your *entire* argument is something IP advocates (OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I'm a terrorist, I should have said "copyright and patent and likeness rights advocates" because that is SOOOOOOO much more conducive to discussion) *already accept* as part of their case. Yes, "fun" and all that other crap suffices to produce certain intellectual works. I'm aware of that. That's why I'm writing this post. But would those be enough to lead to the production of the Lord of the Rings movies, something that real, breathing human beings spent their own, hard-earned money to see?
You've made a helluva case that in the absence of copyrights, people would do the stuff that doesn't require much capital investment, and perhaps a handful that do and can marshall the donors. Now what about the rest? "uh..."
You agree that copyrights discourage people from creating free works, but do not agree to the logical conclusion:
Don't mischaracterize what I said. My point there was that your argument at best would prove that, not that it actually does.
That copyrights deprive society of free works, which are much more worthy to society than a copyrighted work
Like I said the first time, this is based on an incomplete analysis of what changes copyright brings. Yes, *given* the production of a copyrighted work, a lot of people will be better of if you unilaterally revoke it. (And a lot of people will be better off if you unilaterally revoke ownership of a certain oil well...) But in the absence of copyright, most of t
No, modding him down is exactly the right thing to do. Do you *really* want the MPAA to hear about that? How'd you like to wake up one day and learn that your bionic eyes didn't get the decryption key for today's light because you have unauthorized files?
Look at the recent postings of losses by GM. The outrageous fees they have to pay for retirements and other union perks, is killing them.
Well, as much as I hate unions, the facts are:
1) Management was pretty stupid to agree to that too. 2) The concessions they won when those contracts were negotiated way-back-when, were *supposed* to be used to build an investment portfolio sufficient to pay the costs later on, *not* be paid off as dividends and bonuses, as they actually were. It's exactly as if I took out a business loan, buried the money in a swiss bank account, and griped about the "legacy interest costs keeping me down". 3) However stupid a contract was, they did agree to it, and, since it's compensation for labor, it should be senior to ALL debts (except taxes on profits if there are any left), and yes bondholders, that means you too -- shame on you for making loans on the assumption that pensioners would be screwed over to pay you back. 4) Extending on point 3, imagine if I took out a loan from GMAC (financing branch of GM, don't know if it was sold off) to buy myself a GM car. Hey hey! Now I have legacy obligations (in the form of a car loan) to GM! How do you think GM would react if said, well, gee, that car loan is really keeping me down, can we just forget about it?
Now, regardless of whose fault it is, GM cannot compete if it has huge unproductive costs that its competitors don't. The only way to avoid bankruptcy and honor legacy obligations is to:
1) Issue enough bonds to buy annuities and health plans from *third parties* for all pensioners. GM has proven inability to plan for these things, so they can eat the cost for someone else to do it. Preferably, do something similar for warranties. 2) If they can't get enough money to cover that, do a secondary GM stock issue, and milk as much as possible off that, watering down the stock severely. 3) If that's not enough, yep, start liquidating business units -- but keep the debts to yourself.
Try to understand what position you're responding to before you post your wisdom. I wasn't saying that when I click on the address bar to type in a URL, it should immediately load. I was saying, when I click on it, and I get the drop-down list of previous URLs I've typed in, and then click on one of those, it should load immediately. (btw, that's perfectly clear from the original post, and it's not "clicking in order to edit", genius) That is MUCH MUCH MUCH more convenient for me, and IE (including later versions) does it.
Yes, sometimes I'll want to merely copy that from the drop-down and DEFINITELY NOT WANT it to load (never remember being in that circumstance, but whatever), but 99.99% of the time I just want to click on it to load, but instead I have to move my hand back to the keyboard.
And why would this be such an atrocity that I can't even turn on such an option, buried deep somewhere in the "help"?
As for "text entry fields shouldn't do anything when you click on them in order to edit"? As if Firefox follows that? LiarSucks seems to have no problem popping up its little "suggestions" about what it thinks I want to enter into the field when I click on it. (And choosing those options is *so* easy from the keyboard, right?)
Does Windows (and MS products) have some poor interface? Absolutely. Is Firefox better? No. And neither is Mac, which has its own ridiculous decisions. Check "UbuntuMacDupe" on youtube, and then commence denial of the claims.
I absolutely hate how people laud Mac's user interface decisions. Let's count:
1) Unnecessarily complicated process to save frames from videos. 2) Unnavigable iPhoto. 3) No discoverable way to black out parts of pictures I want to email to people in iPhoto, no discoverable image editing program to do so. (Thanks for the privacy help there, Mac!) 4) Mail Rules filter for Mac-related emails that is so big is spills onto the doc, and can't be closed until you figure out how to remove the dock, something a lay user should NEVER need to do. 5) De-emphasis of right-clicking, to cull all the disabled losers. 6) Tabbing between fields in web browser turned off by default. 7) Unnecessarily complicated process for uploading pictures to websites.
Oooh, I'm *excited* about the latest Firefox. Maybe this one will have GREAT features, like "not deleting my bookmarks and javascript whitelist when I update*. Or maybe "immediately load urls I click on them from the address bar, instead of waiting for me to hit return, like it did 3 updates ago, before they torched all evidence of that feature having been present, while IE still has it".
Please stop repeating this. I understand your arguments just fine; they're simply not very good, and I have stated and I will state why that is.
My right to property is a protection from the government - that physical things that have passed a certain process and are therefore declared "mine" cannot be deprived from me. The right to property is not used as an incentive
Okay, so you're joining the list of people who have tried (and imho failed) to distinguish physical from intellectual property on a moral level. The difference you're giving here is (as best as I can discern -- you are a little vague) that one is used as an incentive, while the other is not. This is false. The reason property rights exist *today* is not one, but many. For various reasons, people continue to support physical property rights enough for them to exist. Some on deontological grounds; some on utilitarian; still others on religious grounds; still others on intuition. Usually, people support them for a combination of these. There is no one "real" reason why they are protected; you can only speak for yourself.
So, if OTOH you are trying to construct an argument why *you* can, while being consistent, justify one and not the other, let's see if you accomplish that:
The right to property is not used as an incentive - but as a protection meant to make people's lives better.
It's not a forest -- it's just a bunch of tress in close proximity.
Adding a protection with the intent that those protections will lead to improved lives *means* giving a set of incentives designed to accomplish that. Once you enter (rule-) utilitarian justification, you can no longer disavow the "incentive" component of your policies.
Free Software shows that this incentive is not necessary... precious creative work of the Linux kernel... Software has various incentives...
All that Free Software shows was that the incentive effect was not necessary *for those works*. But no IP supporter that I have ever heard about, has ever denied that some works (like this post), and even good works (like this post;-) ) are produced with no intent to gain from them through IP law, meaning IP was not the cause of them. But that doesn't stop you strawman-avoiders from ingeniously refuting that non-existent argument.
Yes, good works like the ones you listed, were created. Great! Now, what about all the other intellectual works, over which copyright *was* asserted? Is it just "no big deal" that they wouldn't exist? Even though real, breathing human beings parted with actual money they earned to use those things, in preference to the free alternatives, revealing a tremendous utility gain over what it would be like without them?
Do those people just not matter?
Remember, free ("Free") content can exist whether or not we have IP laws. The existence of the "rich culture" proves precisely nothing, yet people bring it up as if it's some ingenious point.
The fact that you missed its meaning (that the extra incentive is not required) does not mean its not there.
And there you go -- you can see I understood the meaning (the extra incentive is not required) and simply saw it as an irrelevant point (it merely proves certain works didn't need the incentive, which was never in dispute -- my original point!).
So, you could give me a teensy weensy bit more credit, especially given that I used to hunt down any argument I could press into the anti-IP cause. (Oh, wait, I forgot, can't ever say "intellectual property" because, uh, superset terms are evil... or something.)
The argument that Copyrights do not prevent free software from being created is simply false....
Well gee, now, that's not fair, is it? I made an important point, and instead of refuting the reasoning behind it, all you bothered to do was point me to a webpage. I don't even get a summary, that you made using the mind God gave you[1], that proves that you actually understand and can defend what you linked, and that can tell me whether it's actually responsive. So that means I get to wade through (by my estimate) 1500 words, when I don't have any assurance that you're not sending me on a wild goose chase in which I have to painstakingly search for the responsive part of the article, in essence, putting together an argument for you, which you should be able to do yourself with the faculties God gave you[1].
Nevertheless, since you appear to be new at this, I'll do it anyway, and yep, as best I can tell, it torches a strawman. So, it claims, people are using Windows because they never actually see the cost or make a conscious decision to pay for it; it's just "slipped in", very silently. This was responsive to... what claim of mine again? Did you check? Does it matter to you?
My point was that bringing these superior products to the end user, *however* that is accomplished, is very non-trivial. So, Windows does it by negotiating with thousands of distributors, making it so that when someone wants a computer, Windows is right there, bringing itself into the buyer's life? Great! They're actually taking steps to make sure that the everyday mouthbreather, with no time to evaluate the merits of all these different operating systems, is actually exposed to it. He doesn't have to take the initiative to go out and search for it himself, as he would for, well, everything you were promoting here -- *others* take the initiative to make him aware of the software's existence.
Now, how does it refute my claim to point me to a majestic essay showing that "Windows is [in a relevant sense] free"? It doesn't. What matters is not that Windows is "free", but that Windows *gets to the end user*.
So, let's say we were in your fantasy world, where only this Free software exists. Now, how does it enhance productivity? Who informs the mouthbreathers about this product? Oh, dear, now we need a marketing budget! But how could we fund such a campaign? Well, first we would need to make sure that it's not easy for people to simply copy our stuff and thus avoid paying for it...
And if those are all "the best", why don't more people actually, you know, use them?
Don't scoff at the answer -- getting something *to* the end user, is itself an arduous, important step. The fact that all these Free programs can't do that, and *why* they can't do that, should be an important lesson to Free Software promoters, but they ignore it and fail to learn from it.
Well, Anonymous Brave Guy already said a lot of what I was going to say, but I'll still add on:
You seem to try and imply that copyright, or more specifically, the collection of royalty payment for each copy, is the primary driver for the creation of content
I wish people would stop putting this in such black-and-white terms. Yes, people create free content. People create kinds of content for which they don't expect or intend to assert IP right. They also give away free muffins and babysitting. Does that mean property rights in physical goods or civil liberties are irrelevant? No.
The question is, how do you get those precious creative works that do require a huge investment that no one will charitably fund in advance?
"Uh..."?
Remember, free ("Free") content can exist whether or not we have IP laws. The existence of the "rich culture" proves precisely nothing, yet people bring it up as if it's some ingenious point.
If indeed copyright drives quality content (which I believe it does not), is it really worth the extra laws that have to imposed on all citizens? Is it worth the trouble of policing information?
I don't know, chasing down a criminal who stabbed me will cost more than my medical bill, is it worth the cost?
The same argument can apply to any rights violation. Ideally, a system of justice will shift the enforcement costs to the violators. Arguing about the "costs of policing" is a red herring.
Usual disclaimer: I always come off as a big pro-IP booster. I can assure you I'm not. I'm really torn on the issue, and I've found every treatment unsatisfying. On/., that will usually mean I'm in the position of refuting unimpresive anti-IP arguments.
Because it ignores that it's equally easy to "poison" the internet with "children" who want to meet, but turn out to be Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC.
"Why don't you take a seat, right there? Now, what are you doing here? What did you come here for? Hey, what's in that bag? Now why would you need those if you're just meeting a 13-year-old boy? And this? Isn't he too young to drink that? What's the meaning of all this? GET ON THE GROUND! POLICE!"
(Btw, a big THANK YOU to all the moderators that have reversed my clearly unwarranted vendetta mods and restored my karma to "Bad".)
Slashdot Mirror
Still, I think it would be an improvement of orders of magnitude if science classes in general focused more on:
"how did we learn this?" (i.e., the scientific method, how observations have to be done to eliminate bias, the formulation of competing theories, how experiments are designed, how hypotheses were ruled out, etc.)
as opposed to:
"here is he official list of truth that you have to memorize and then do cute IQ-test-like problems with".
The latter gives the wrong impression of what science is and why it matters.
Wow, you mean if I bring an unattached hot woman, both the men *and* the women will like me? Why didn't I think of that! How about this: become a billionaire! That'll work too, right? Or, maybe I should "just" become a rockstar first? Goddamn, why don't all these idiots on
Now, before you roll your eyes and write me off as having an attitude that won't get me anywhere, blah blah blah [rationalize why I deserve my condition, deserve being locked out of my computer for having the audacity to follow Ubuntu's install instructions, deserve false allegations of violent sex crimes, deserve not being told about these allegations, deserve having formal complaints about that ignored, deserve not being told my formal complaint was shredded, etc.], let me just say that I'm absolutely doing what I can. I recently joined a political group through meetup.com, and it didn't have much leadership, so the existing leader let me take over. There wasn't much interest, not many people involved much at all, so I started planning some events. Even though only a few people showed up for the first, I made sure to take lots and lots of pictures and make them as exciting as possible, and then upload them with clever captions so as to make people want to join. Then, for our next meeting, I reserved us a meeting room at a coffee place, and lots of people showed up, far more than RSVP'd, and then, the people there got to see me in a leadership role.
Then, at a later meeting, I saw some women knitting and asked if I could join, learned for a few minutes, and then went to a few of their later meetings, where one of the women (who hadn't been there before) helped me connect with her son-in-law who is also a DDR player who wants to design a variant.
As for joining all those groups, yes, again, if that were easy/possible, I would have already done it. But the area I'm in is not very populated (~220,000), and anyone close to my age would be in a group affiliated with the university in the area, to which, again, I don't have that personal recommendation, and which I'd look even more like an outsider to, and which would interfere with my work schedule.
Yeah, I know, "just bail and find a job in another city". What's so hard about that, right?
Furthermore,
It is difficult to be terribly specific without knowing anything about you, but allow me to go on the assumption that you are the type that tends to have fewer, but closer friends (this is me, believe it or not). This is a huge amplifier of V for you,
you'd be wrong again: the unfortunate truth is that I have ZERO close friends. By what definition? Several, all of which are basically equivalent to, "Would I feel comfortable calling him up and telling him about a date I just had?"
So, I appreciate your help, but your advice doesn't work because you simply haven't experienced what the problem is, so you're unable to see what the difficulties are -- what's hard for others is easy to you. (There's an analogy here to the problem of programming a robot to catch a ball.)
To reiterate:
-If I could fool all women into thinking other women found me desirable, the problem would have already been solved.
-If there were local groups I could join with people my age, the problem would have already been solved.
-If I had people who could vouch for me for all the groups I want to join, the problem would have already been solved.
-If I had close friends in the area, the problem would have already been solved.
-If someone repeatedly throws invitations at me to social gatherings where people don't automatically reject me, and DON'T consi
I support legalization of marijuana.
I think most arguments for banning it are bullshit.
I think the extension of the interstate commerce clause to ban certain drugs was about as atrocious as anything in jurisprudence can be.
NEVERTHELESS, I would have to concede that there's a pretty fundamental difference between "you may not manipulate your consciousness in *this* specific way" and "you have no right to privacy in any telepresence", and any attempt to put them on the same level trivializes the right to privacy.
I could certainly understand if:
1) Group X could prove that anyone sellying Item Y was under contract not to resell it.
2) Ebay could be exposed to liability for facilitating sale of items known to be violating a contract.
3) Group X paid for the right to suspend auctions and would pay a penalty for false positives (items not related to what Group X was objecting to).
4) Group X considers Ys to be sacred and does not like when they are held by the general public, and makes users sign contracts not to do that and to pay a penality if they do.
Then, I could have a good answer to all your questions (X = Church of Scientology, Y = e-meter). No, the free market does not support violation of contracts you have made.
Now, is the CoS paying for this? I don't know. But I can certainly see how this could be reasonable.
What the hell would IQ level or age have do with this?
Sorry, Time magazine, Money.cnn.com, etc. all feel obligated to describe ALL government payments as checks (as if they don't understand the concept otherwise), and they are targeted at older or dumbed-down audiences. I'm not saying you don't understand my *argument* if you're born before '65 or have low IQ; I'm just trying to make my prose more *comfortable* and familiar to you by referencing checks if you are in one of those groups.
Your example is lacking in so many ways too. First, not all tariffs are to prop up inefficient companies.
So what? My argument applies to the ones that are. You're naive if you think that e.g. the recent steel tariffs (that drew the WTO's attention and that Bush supported and then didn't support) weren't a big vote payoff to dinosaur West Virginia steel companies with stupid business models (including unfunded pensions...) and their workers. And that, I claim here, could have been done more pareto-optimally -- but voters would balk.
First, even removing tarrifs is one thing, even though it would cause a loss of jobs in some cases, second, the government can't just pay people. They have to take taxes in to cover their expense. To truly compensate for the effects of tariffs, you would bankrupt the country with pay outs.
I know. Did you read the post carefully? Because the tariff-free world would lack the cascading inefficiencies, a higher tax (or higher debt!) plus transfer would be less painful than all the higher prices for goods that result from the tariffs (not just on steel products, but all the other products affected by capital misallocation -- everything). What is currently done now is a payoff that is very indirect, and victimizes millions on the side. The whole point is that you can get the payoff *without* screwing over all those other people as much. Why not? Because the corruption involved would be more obvious and less pleasing to our "help the workers!" platitudes.
(Btw, the loss in jobs for the workers would be made up by the free money, but again, we don't like free money to people, we like tariffs that screwup capital allocation and give them money indirectly.)
Are you sure about this? I have seen quite a few people who say, "Oh, I don't act like this in real life," and then you meet them and realize they are as big, if not bigger, asshats in person.
/. celebration. Go find that list, and go ask the people there who I talked to if I was an asshat. The one I built the most "rapport" with, however, was the wife of the dominant male guy in the blazer who organized the picture (you know who you are). She seemed to enjoy talking to me, maybe we can find her (and no I don't mean what you're thinking).
You don't have to take my word for it. I made it to the Austin 10-year
I just love when people make provably false suppositions about why I deserve being fucked over, seems to happen quite often.
There is a common trend in both situations though. It is "someone else's" fault. Step back and look at what happened again, in both situations. Tell me, whose fault is it really?
Yeah, you know, I have done this. I have thought really long and hard about what I've gone through. And you know what? No matter how hard I try, I simply can't think of a single thing I've done that justifies falsely accusing a virgin of threatening to rape someone. I just can't. I try hard and hard and hard, and I just can't find it.
But let's say you're right. Let's say I was a dick a while ago. Let's say that has led me to having no close male friends. Now what? Like I said, that means no one to recommend me in groups. Does that mean I deserve to be fucked for the rest of my life? What could I even do, now that I'm different?
And then, how would the GGP's advice help? It doesn't. Again, his solution works, only if I've got the problem basically solved already. Now what?
Oh, and to all those who are in the same dilemma but too afraid to say so: you're welcome.
The question is, HOW? This seems easy for you, because you don't *notice* the hard parts, because they already come naturally to you.
You already have tons of friends who know tons of girls, who will be more open to you because they've already "screened" you, and getting dates is merely a matter of inviting one of a trillion invitations and letting the magic happen.
Any advice for the rest of us, who, say, are living in a city where they don't have trillions of friends? No? Okay then. Try again, and this time, don't suggest something where the problem is already solved.
Yes, I'll probably get modded down for this, but I'm willing to bet there are thousands of you in a similar position that don't want to admit it.
And no, it's not a simple matter of joining some organization. Every one that I've tried to join has been extremely suspicious of people who don't already come in with a recommendation from someone in the group. And then, one group that I tried to join was a total disaster. It was going well, and then one girl just suddenly flipped out and got a bunch of them to start giving me the cold treatment, and then invented a bunch of wild accusations to get them to ban me from the (large, great-for-meeting-women) group. Fun, fun.
You think the problem is easy because it's easy for you. What's obvious for you, is not obvious for others. One man's redundant is another man's insightful. Remember that.
(Before one of you says it, no, I don't act IRL like I did on the Ubuntu forums, think of another ad hoc rationalization.)
Well, not only that, the idea of going for a Pareto improvement mathematical proof is flawed. It's an impossible and IMHO unnecessary step. Just show how your process is better, and let people decide if it's worth it. "Mathematical proofs" that people should assist in social changes ... well, it's a short road to sophistry.
Simple proof: Imagine there's (what I call) a "misanthrope", a person who is dissatisfied by the satisfaction of others and vice versa. The existence of one such person destroys possibility of Pareto improvement.
Plus, many things that are Pareto improvements in theory, are not in practice. As one of many examples, we could Pareto-improve trade policy: currently, we have tariffs to prop up inefficient domestic industries, functioning as a policy that hurts consumers and benefits workers and corporations making the tariffed goods, but does it very inefficiently because consumers here and abroad are all hurt in the process. A strict improvement would be to look at those same workers and corporations, make simple transfer payments to them[1], and then lift the tariffs and watch domestic capital rearrange to do what's truly efficient. Workers/corporations are better off, consumers are better off (because the gain is less than the payoff because the tariffs caused cascading inefficiencies.) Yet voters would balk at this (far more efficient!) cash payoff. Go fig.
So, in short, don't focus on these mathematical proofs. Isolate what's better, and ask what's really stopping people from switching. In the tariff example, I'd guess it's because voters want to prop up their own cherished beliefs. But who knows?
[1] For those with low IQs or were born before 1965, read this as "The government could cut some fresh checks to workers and corporations, courtesy of the ol' Treasury Department."
Kid, I gave you real arguments. I showed you the flaws in your position. Yes, it was interspersed with a reminder of how stupid Stallman/ESR's meme is, but what I posted is extremely important for you to consider. I don't want, and *YOU* certainly don't want to realize one day how you threw your weight behind a cause out of ignorance. ("Those who don't know their opponents' arguments, don't really understand their own.") That's something you're going to regret, and your refusal to consider the flaws I have outlined reflects poorly on you.
You can ignore what I've said at your own risk to your intellectual integrity.
Wow, finally someone with the balls to put a name on a criticism -- but not a wise move, since it attaches stupidity to *your* name.
...)
Your Ubuntu-related paranoia ('"My own actions" are not the cause of this problem'),
I think what you means there is failure to take responsibility, but whatever. That's a pretty stupid example to pick, since in that case, it's proven that my actions were not the cause of the problem, and that statement was 100% accurate. The error I had when trying to install is well-known and well-defined, and something that I couldn't cause. Go ahead -- ask anyone about Error 25 at State 1.5 in GRUB.
Of course, if you sloppily equivocate "this problem" to mean the problem of being unable to get AROUND Ubuntu's locking me out of my computer, you're still clearly wrong, because the install instructions at no point tell me to take the measures that would have allowed me to fix the problem with what I had available, and so no one would have been able to help me, even if I had been polite about their beloved OS's poor design. What does it do instead? It tells me to *disable* measures I had taken (confining Ubuntu to a non-primary hard drive)!
You're damn right that "my own actions" were not the cause of this problem. Just go ahead and do what the rest of them do -- tell me I was stupid to trust a Linux distro's install instructions, but in a way that obscures the asininity of that criticism. Or listen to this guy.
and your Slashdot-related paranoia ('the people that are stalking me')
First, I didn't characterize it as stalking until this guy called it that (before that I just called it an internet hate machine like in that clueless fox story).
Second, there most certainly ARE people modding me down out of hate for me personally instead of because the posts really deserve being modded down. You be the judge. I went ahead and resubscribed just so I could access a few pages back. (And of course the first time I documented this would have been easily accessible except that my karma was terrible at the time and I had to make the summary post as AC! Nope, no inferences to draw from that
Tell me why this chain of downmods, within a short span of time, is fully justified and/or coincidental:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=430222&cid=22182538
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=430222&cid=22185098
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=430222&cid=22185130
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=430222&cid=22189424 (those four all on thread where I criticize anti-IP arguments)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=435108&cid=22242924 (detailed post where I grudgingly reveal medical history to make a point)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=435108&cid=22249146 (criticism of poor anti-IP argument)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=430026&cid=22181566
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=434764&cid=22227472
I could do a lot more -- that's just a sampling.
global warming paranoia ('The purpose, for most such alarmists, is to shut down activity they don't like')...
Unfortunately for you, my theory fits the data. ANY plan that would significantly reduce net carbon emissions while not confining business and while permitting conspicuous consumption is ig
But seriously, the other neat trick is that even if you cut down the wood and burn it for power, you're only putting back the CO2 which the tree took out - not releasing carbon that has been safely out of the equation for millions of years.
But IMHO a better way to accomplish the same thing is to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as octane, like I suggest here (in a post that was modded down for no reason by the people that are stalking me), and get the energy to do that from nuclear power, like this guy has already worked out the details for. That way, the gasoline you would burn, would only return to the atmosphere, what was taken from it.
Of course, the purpose of the global warming alarmism is NOT, and never has been, to find ways to reduce net carbon emissions and prevent catastrophe. The purpose, for most such alarmists, is to shut down activity they don't like. "Global warming" is a pretense. Anything that stops global warming, but doesn't shut down those activities, will be vehemently opposed.
And btw, whenever someone tells me that woodburning is good for the environment, I always have to ask, *whose* environment? Not the environment of the people who have to breathe the surrounding air!
I've been thinking about getting my hearing range evaluated. I seem to hear not just high sounds (like my CRT TV when the sound is off) but also very low ones, which are really annoying. I get weird looks from people when I claim to hear sounds that they don't. Anecdote: one morning I woke up and heard this far off buzzing, so I got up, left my apartment complex, walked down the street, and found a new compressor running to fill a truck's tires. Go fig.
But I can't use my computer for a test (sound card probably won't permit the range) and I can't use local audiologists because they'll probably BSOD when asked to test someone who has *good* hearing. (Uh, now, what's the problem with your hearing now, can't uh, hear too much, eh? Uh, well, now we only done test people with them thur hearing problems.)
Btw, anyone got some device to take care of thugs blaring subwoofers in traffic? Now *those* should be illegal. I don't object to your musical taste, but please, don't involuntarily subject my walls to it.
LOL! Just found your post by coincidence. (How notorious am I by now?) Well, you got a laugh out of me, which is much appreciated =-)
But don't worry, now that some internet hate machine has modded down my posts en masse, it'll be a while before I can post more than five times per day...
Well, here's my suggestion, which seems much more straightforward:
1) Take CO2 from the air and H2O from any source.
2) Generate energy from nuclear power and store it in octane (gasoline) molecules formed from the above. (Basically, reverse of combusion, though not necessarily through that path, and no, this doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics.)
3) Use that gasoline to power cars as usual.
Benefits:
1) All vehicle carbon emissions are only returning to the atmosphere, what was taken from it to produce their fuel, so vehicles would be carbon-neutral.
2) No need to import oil.
3) Can be completely safe, since you can locate the plant arbitrarily far from populated areas.
4) No infrastructure or automobile changes except for different distribution route.
And, I recently found out that someone else has already thought of this and worked out the details, though it would only be able to produce the gasoline at $4.60/gallon. Still, it proves that all of Europe already "feels" the maximum externality cost on the demand side.
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to defeating the menace of playbills. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before FDR passed a new law.)
( ) Bill posters can easily use it to harvest better locations
( ) Billboards and other legitimate posters would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the knave or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop playbills for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of large surfaces will not put up with it
( ) Sears will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from playbill posters
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many postboard users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Playbill posters don't care about unusable surfaces in their plans
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's job or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for flat surfaces in public view
(X) Undocumented aliens who post the playbills
( ) Ease of searching tiny set of all flat surfaces in the area
( ) Men of ill repute
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of fanciful new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept fanciful money not backed by gold
( ) Huge existing capital investment in buildings
( ) Susceptibility of buildings without flat surfaces to collapse
( ) Willingness of users to read playbills whilst passing by
(X) Legions of unattended buildings
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all mointoring approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of playbill posting
(X) Forgery of others' names
( ) Politicians ill-informed of new-fangled devices
( ) Extreme foolishness on the part of people who buy from playbill advertisements
( ) Dishonesty on the part of playbill posters themselves
( ) Labor costs that are unaffected by careful monitoring
( ) Tacks and glue
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown workable
( ) Any scheme based on requirement to leave the program is intolerable
( ) Legislation of bold message headings is not Constitutionally authorized
( ) Blacklists are humbug
( ) Whitelists are humbug
( ) We should be able to talk about alcohol without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or check fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public areas
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Posting messages should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your file warehouses?
(X) Jolly-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time postal addresses are cumbersome
( ) Killing them that way is not tortuous enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry friend, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a confounded idea, and you're a confounded person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, knave! I shall find out where you live and burn your rental down forthright!
I'm at a friend's house, and since he did not have Firefox, but instead the one that was motived by a copyright-company, and clicking "Back" loses everything you write in a form (even in IE 7!), so I am unable to post my long reply :-(
Oh, puh-leeze. As if Firefox isn't riddled with severe annoyances, a few of which I listed here.
(Which the majority does, as a counter-claim to yours above about "people parting with their money")
They spent their own money on computers pre-loaded with Windows instead of another kind of OS that nobody ever bothered to tell them about and make easy for them.
A. IP lumps together copyrights and trademark laws. I am very much in favor of trademark law, but against copyrights. So please do not misrepresent my position as anti-IP. This is a discussion about copyrights, not IP.
Whine, whine. You're hooked on the "omg don't say IP" meme. People can be "anti-capitalist" if they oppose significant parts of capitalism but not all of it, people can be anti-religious even if they don't oppose everything associated with religion, people can anti-McDonald's even if they are fine with some things that McDonald's does. You absolutely do oppose a huge part of IP, and, in the absence of knowing your full nuanced (!) position, and given the need for brevity, the "anti-IP" referring term was richly justified. (I'm guessing you oppose patents as well -- fine, but don't call Marx "not anti-capitalist" because he supported some kinds of property.)
The opposition to the term "IP" is ridiculous. IP is a useful superset term for the numerous times when distinction between the types is unnecessary. It's no different from "significant other" (OMG j00 R totally trivializing the difference between a wife and a girlfriend), "spider" (OMG j00 R totally trivializing the difference bewteen a tarantula and a black widow), or "security" (OMG j00 R totally trivializing the difference between debt and equity).
B. Copyrights were created, as said so by its creators themselves, as a necessary evil. My argument is that they are no longer (if ever were) necessary, and now are just evil.
The creators (for the US) never used that kind of terminology. Even if they did, so what? I don't care what the creators said. I care what's *true*. Stop referencing them. And I've refuted you're case that they're not necessary. Your *entire* argument is something IP advocates (OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I'm a terrorist, I should have said "copyright and patent and likeness rights advocates" because that is SOOOOOOO much more conducive to discussion) *already accept* as part of their case. Yes, "fun" and all that other crap suffices to produce certain intellectual works. I'm aware of that. That's why I'm writing this post. But would those be enough to lead to the production of the Lord of the Rings movies, something that real, breathing human beings spent their own, hard-earned money to see?
You've made a helluva case that in the absence of copyrights, people would do the stuff that doesn't require much capital investment, and perhaps a handful that do and can marshall the donors. Now what about the rest? "uh..."
You agree that copyrights discourage people from creating free works, but do not agree to the logical conclusion:
Don't mischaracterize what I said. My point there was that your argument at best would prove that, not that it actually does.
That copyrights deprive society of free works, which are much more worthy to society than a copyrighted work
Like I said the first time, this is based on an incomplete analysis of what changes copyright brings. Yes, *given* the production of a copyrighted work, a lot of people will be better of if you unilaterally revoke it. (And a lot of people will be better off if you unilaterally revoke ownership of a certain oil well...) But in the absence of copyright, most of t
No, modding him down is exactly the right thing to do. Do you *really* want the MPAA to hear about that? How'd you like to wake up one day and learn that your bionic eyes didn't get the decryption key for today's light because you have unauthorized files?
Look at the recent postings of losses by GM. The outrageous fees they have to pay for retirements and other union perks, is killing them.
Well, as much as I hate unions, the facts are:
1) Management was pretty stupid to agree to that too.
2) The concessions they won when those contracts were negotiated way-back-when, were *supposed* to be used to build an investment portfolio sufficient to pay the costs later on, *not* be paid off as dividends and bonuses, as they actually were. It's exactly as if I took out a business loan, buried the money in a swiss bank account, and griped about the "legacy interest costs keeping me down".
3) However stupid a contract was, they did agree to it, and, since it's compensation for labor, it should be senior to ALL debts (except taxes on profits if there are any left), and yes bondholders, that means you too -- shame on you for making loans on the assumption that pensioners would be screwed over to pay you back.
4) Extending on point 3, imagine if I took out a loan from GMAC (financing branch of GM, don't know if it was sold off) to buy myself a GM car. Hey hey! Now I have legacy obligations (in the form of a car loan) to GM! How do you think GM would react if said, well, gee, that car loan is really keeping me down, can we just forget about it?
Now, regardless of whose fault it is, GM cannot compete if it has huge unproductive costs that its competitors don't. The only way to avoid bankruptcy and honor legacy obligations is to:
1) Issue enough bonds to buy annuities and health plans from *third parties* for all pensioners. GM has proven inability to plan for these things, so they can eat the cost for someone else to do it. Preferably, do something similar for warranties.
2) If they can't get enough money to cover that, do a secondary GM stock issue, and milk as much as possible off that, watering down the stock severely.
3) If that's not enough, yep, start liquidating business units -- but keep the debts to yourself.
Try to understand what position you're responding to before you post your wisdom. I wasn't saying that when I click on the address bar to type in a URL, it should immediately load. I was saying, when I click on it, and I get the drop-down list of previous URLs I've typed in, and then click on one of those, it should load immediately. (btw, that's perfectly clear from the original post, and it's not "clicking in order to edit", genius) That is MUCH MUCH MUCH more convenient for me, and IE (including later versions) does it.
Yes, sometimes I'll want to merely copy that from the drop-down and DEFINITELY NOT WANT it to load (never remember being in that circumstance, but whatever), but 99.99% of the time I just want to click on it to load, but instead I have to move my hand back to the keyboard.
And why would this be such an atrocity that I can't even turn on such an option, buried deep somewhere in the "help"?
As for "text entry fields shouldn't do anything when you click on them in order to edit"? As if Firefox follows that? LiarSucks seems to have no problem popping up its little "suggestions" about what it thinks I want to enter into the field when I click on it. (And choosing those options is *so* easy from the keyboard, right?)
Does Windows (and MS products) have some poor interface? Absolutely. Is Firefox better? No. And neither is Mac, which has its own ridiculous decisions. Check "UbuntuMacDupe" on youtube, and then commence denial of the claims.
I absolutely hate how people laud Mac's user interface decisions. Let's count:
1) Unnecessarily complicated process to save frames from videos.
2) Unnavigable iPhoto.
3) No discoverable way to black out parts of pictures I want to email to people in iPhoto, no discoverable image editing program to do so. (Thanks for the privacy help there, Mac!)
4) Mail Rules filter for Mac-related emails that is so big is spills onto the doc, and can't be closed until you figure out how to remove the dock, something a lay user should NEVER need to do.
5) De-emphasis of right-clicking, to cull all the disabled losers.
6) Tabbing between fields in web browser turned off by default.
7) Unnecessarily complicated process for uploading pictures to websites.
I could go on and on.
Oooh, I'm *excited* about the latest Firefox. Maybe this one will have GREAT features, like "not deleting my bookmarks and javascript whitelist when I update*. Or maybe "immediately load urls I click on them from the address bar, instead of waiting for me to hit return, like it did 3 updates ago, before they torched all evidence of that feature having been present, while IE still has it".
You misunderstand completely
Please stop repeating this. I understand your arguments just fine; they're simply not very good, and I have stated and I will state why that is.
My right to property is a protection from the government - that physical things that have passed a certain process and are therefore declared "mine" cannot be deprived from me. The right to property is not used as an incentive
Okay, so you're joining the list of people who have tried (and imho failed) to distinguish physical from intellectual property on a moral level. The difference you're giving here is (as best as I can discern -- you are a little vague) that one is used as an incentive, while the other is not. This is false. The reason property rights exist *today* is not one, but many. For various reasons, people continue to support physical property rights enough for them to exist. Some on deontological grounds; some on utilitarian; still others on religious grounds; still others on intuition. Usually, people support them for a combination of these. There is no one "real" reason why they are protected; you can only speak for yourself.
So, if OTOH you are trying to construct an argument why *you* can, while being consistent, justify one and not the other, let's see if you accomplish that:
The right to property is not used as an incentive - but as a protection meant to make people's lives better.
It's not a forest -- it's just a bunch of tress in close proximity.
Adding a protection with the intent that those protections will lead to improved lives *means* giving a set of incentives designed to accomplish that. Once you enter (rule-) utilitarian justification, you can no longer disavow the "incentive" component of your policies.
Free Software shows that this incentive is not necessary ... precious creative work of the Linux kernel ... Software has various incentives ...
All that Free Software shows was that the incentive effect was not necessary *for those works*. But no IP supporter that I have ever heard about, has ever denied that some works (like this post), and even good works (like this post ;-) ) are produced with no intent to gain from them through IP law, meaning IP was not the cause of them. But that doesn't stop you strawman-avoiders from ingeniously refuting that non-existent argument.
Yes, good works like the ones you listed, were created. Great! Now, what about all the other intellectual works, over which copyright *was* asserted? Is it just "no big deal" that they wouldn't exist? Even though real, breathing human beings parted with actual money they earned to use those things, in preference to the free alternatives, revealing a tremendous utility gain over what it would be like without them?
Do those people just not matter?
Remember, free ("Free") content can exist whether or not we have IP laws. The existence of the "rich culture" proves precisely nothing, yet people bring it up as if it's some ingenious point.
The fact that you missed its meaning (that the extra incentive is not required) does not mean its not there.
And there you go -- you can see I understood the meaning (the extra incentive is not required) and simply saw it as an irrelevant point (it merely proves certain works didn't need the incentive, which was never in dispute -- my original point!).
... or something.)
So, you could give me a teensy weensy bit more credit, especially given that I used to hunt down any argument I could press into the anti-IP cause. (Oh, wait, I forgot, can't ever say "intellectual property" because, uh, superset terms are evil
The argument that Copyrights do not prevent free software from being created is simply false. ...
Your following points only s
Well gee, now, that's not fair, is it? I made an important point, and instead of refuting the reasoning behind it, all you bothered to do was point me to a webpage. I don't even get a summary, that you made using the mind God gave you[1], that proves that you actually understand and can defend what you linked, and that can tell me whether it's actually responsive. So that means I get to wade through (by my estimate) 1500 words, when I don't have any assurance that you're not sending me on a wild goose chase in which I have to painstakingly search for the responsive part of the article, in essence, putting together an argument for you, which you should be able to do yourself with the faculties God gave you[1].
... what claim of mine again? Did you check? Does it matter to you?
Nevertheless, since you appear to be new at this, I'll do it anyway, and yep, as best I can tell, it torches a strawman. So, it claims, people are using Windows because they never actually see the cost or make a conscious decision to pay for it; it's just "slipped in", very silently. This was responsive to
My point was that bringing these superior products to the end user, *however* that is accomplished, is very non-trivial. So, Windows does it by negotiating with thousands of distributors, making it so that when someone wants a computer, Windows is right there, bringing itself into the buyer's life? Great! They're actually taking steps to make sure that the everyday mouthbreather, with no time to evaluate the merits of all these different operating systems, is actually exposed to it. He doesn't have to take the initiative to go out and search for it himself, as he would for, well, everything you were promoting here -- *others* take the initiative to make him aware of the software's existence.
Now, how does it refute my claim to point me to a majestic essay showing that "Windows is [in a relevant sense] free"? It doesn't. What matters is not that Windows is "free", but that Windows *gets to the end user*.
So, let's say we were in your fantasy world, where only this Free software exists. Now, how does it enhance productivity? Who informs the mouthbreathers about this product? Oh, dear, now we need a marketing budget! But how could we fund such a campaign? Well, first we would need to make sure that it's not easy for people to simply copy our stuff and thus avoid paying for it...
Do I hear some gears turning now?
[1] I mean "God" in the secular sense.
And if those are all "the best", why don't more people actually, you know, use them?
Don't scoff at the answer -- getting something *to* the end user, is itself an arduous, important step. The fact that all these Free programs can't do that, and *why* they can't do that, should be an important lesson to Free Software promoters, but they ignore it and fail to learn from it.
Well, Anonymous Brave Guy already said a lot of what I was going to say, but I'll still add on:
/., that will usually mean I'm in the position of refuting unimpresive anti-IP arguments.
You seem to try and imply that copyright, or more specifically, the collection of royalty payment for each copy, is the primary driver for the creation of content
I wish people would stop putting this in such black-and-white terms. Yes, people create free content. People create kinds of content for which they don't expect or intend to assert IP right. They also give away free muffins and babysitting. Does that mean property rights in physical goods or civil liberties are irrelevant? No.
The question is, how do you get those precious creative works that do require a huge investment that no one will charitably fund in advance?
"Uh..."?
Remember, free ("Free") content can exist whether or not we have IP laws. The existence of the "rich culture" proves precisely nothing, yet people bring it up as if it's some ingenious point.
If indeed copyright drives quality content (which I believe it does not), is it really worth the extra laws that have to imposed on all citizens? Is it worth the trouble of policing information?
I don't know, chasing down a criminal who stabbed me will cost more than my medical bill, is it worth the cost?
The same argument can apply to any rights violation. Ideally, a system of justice will shift the enforcement costs to the violators. Arguing about the "costs of policing" is a red herring.
Usual disclaimer: I always come off as a big pro-IP booster. I can assure you I'm not. I'm really torn on the issue, and I've found every treatment unsatisfying. On
What is so hard to believe about that?
Because it ignores that it's equally easy to "poison" the internet with "children" who want to meet, but turn out to be Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC.
"Why don't you take a seat, right there? Now, what are you doing here? What did you come here for? Hey, what's in that bag? Now why would you need those if you're just meeting a 13-year-old boy? And this? Isn't he too young to drink that? What's the meaning of all this? GET ON THE GROUND! POLICE!"
(Btw, a big THANK YOU to all the moderators that have reversed my clearly unwarranted vendetta mods and restored my karma to "Bad".)