Don't they? Anyone willing to put reason in a back seat in order to sustain their belief in the teachings of the Giant Spaghetti Monster, Tooth Fairy, Christ, Mohammed, etc is IMHO not trustworthy to exercise better judgment in any other capacity. As another person pointed out, each of these groups of adults willing to displace observable reality in favor of children's stories are fundamentally capable only of "Lord of the Flies" style existence. We're fortunate here in the West only insofar as we keep them politically handcuffed.
The valid point in the previous posts is that education must be about applicability. In the apprenticeship model, the work accomplished has actual, not theoretical, value. The greatest weakness of my bachelor's work was that I accomplished very little that has real value (I'm not in the business of selling 'Hello World' apps). If we're to 'fix' post-secondary education, it has to be about delivering real-world skills. The first step there may be in reducing the impact of permanent faculty in lieu of practicing professionals for courses beyond the basics (calculus, physics, etc) for bachelor's-level work. As far as that goes, a course need not be driven by only one instructor; it might be divided into segments calling on the skills of several practicing professionals with some transitional material lead by the professor or TA (ignoring obvious logistics challenges). Just $.02.
Where's Ayn Rand in Bill's book collection? Capitalism only works because it incentivizes competence. Lack of competence will always be met, over the long term, with financial ruin. Instead of condemning capitalism, we ought to be encouraging more nations to adopt a stricter version of it, including the US. After all, how many trillions in charity and other aid have gone to African nations over the past couple decades and in what state are they? Charity is wonderful but should never be put before sound business.
You're mostly on the mark about the market following market principles (in this case, data dissemination over IP networks). To extend the point back to the originating question, any claim by an intellectual property owner that a new media (or distribution) technology will disrupt the owner's ability to derive revenue means that the owner's revenue model is obsolete in the current market. In the case of the RIAA/MPAA complaints, any instance of piracy indicates that they aren't providing customers a service in a way customers can derive value from the service. Napster stood up and provided the service that customers wanted and was hugely successful (that it was later determined to be illegal is irrelevant). iTunes and the like later stood up and continue to be successful because they are providing, more closely, a service that provides value to their customers.
In the end, DRM is poor (some say "evil", but I don't know that any of this is a moral issue) because it doesn't provide value to the customer. Only when service or product providers are able to align their offerings with customer demands should those providers generate revenue. The concern that piracy is killing business and DRM is necessary is completely untrue. What's true is that those complaining rely on revenue models that the free flow of data has made obsolete.
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Don't they? Anyone willing to put reason in a back seat in order to sustain their belief in the teachings of the Giant Spaghetti Monster, Tooth Fairy, Christ, Mohammed, etc is IMHO not trustworthy to exercise better judgment in any other capacity. As another person pointed out, each of these groups of adults willing to displace observable reality in favor of children's stories are fundamentally capable only of "Lord of the Flies" style existence. We're fortunate here in the West only insofar as we keep them politically handcuffed.
The valid point in the previous posts is that education must be about applicability. In the apprenticeship model, the work accomplished has actual, not theoretical, value. The greatest weakness of my bachelor's work was that I accomplished very little that has real value (I'm not in the business of selling 'Hello World' apps). If we're to 'fix' post-secondary education, it has to be about delivering real-world skills. The first step there may be in reducing the impact of permanent faculty in lieu of practicing professionals for courses beyond the basics (calculus, physics, etc) for bachelor's-level work. As far as that goes, a course need not be driven by only one instructor; it might be divided into segments calling on the skills of several practicing professionals with some transitional material lead by the professor or TA (ignoring obvious logistics challenges). Just $.02.
Where's Ayn Rand in Bill's book collection? Capitalism only works because it incentivizes competence. Lack of competence will always be met, over the long term, with financial ruin. Instead of condemning capitalism, we ought to be encouraging more nations to adopt a stricter version of it, including the US. After all, how many trillions in charity and other aid have gone to African nations over the past couple decades and in what state are they? Charity is wonderful but should never be put before sound business.
You're mostly on the mark about the market following market principles (in this case, data dissemination over IP networks). To extend the point back to the originating question, any claim by an intellectual property owner that a new media (or distribution) technology will disrupt the owner's ability to derive revenue means that the owner's revenue model is obsolete in the current market. In the case of the RIAA/MPAA complaints, any instance of piracy indicates that they aren't providing customers a service in a way customers can derive value from the service. Napster stood up and provided the service that customers wanted and was hugely successful (that it was later determined to be illegal is irrelevant). iTunes and the like later stood up and continue to be successful because they are providing, more closely, a service that provides value to their customers.
In the end, DRM is poor (some say "evil", but I don't know that any of this is a moral issue) because it doesn't provide value to the customer. Only when service or product providers are able to align their offerings with customer demands should those providers generate revenue. The concern that piracy is killing business and DRM is necessary is completely untrue. What's true is that those complaining rely on revenue models that the free flow of data has made obsolete.