It's a "should" statement ("I should not have to pay a Microsoft
Tax"), and so I neither agree nor disagree.
Then what were you taking issue with?
BTW, I'm not particularly intent in arguing with you. I suspect you
may think I have more passion or interest or whatever vested in this
discussion than I actually do.
Then why are you investing several hours a week into this thread?
<sigh> Yes, you win. How many times do we have to go through this?
As long as you keep missing the point, deliberately or otherwise.
What if your needs do not include "read the same document formats with
it"?
Then you won't have a problem using Corel's office suite instead of
MSOffice.
My point is, what if your needs *do* include that?
And not one that the abolishment of copyright will solve: Removing
copyright doesn't automatically make Microsoft Word open source; it does
not automatically reverse engineer the file format.
But it does make Microsoft Word readily available at cost, i.e. for
nearly zilch, making its functionality much more accessible.
The original CS can presumably still be had for free; commercial
versions like CS:S are another matter of course, and any commercial
addons and such.
And anyway, two versus thousands and thousands only reinforces my
point that having money involved makes it easier to make commercial
quality games.
No, all it indicates, even if it really were only two, is that when
the system allows people to be nasty and restrictive and make money by
doing so, people will tend to follow the path of least resistance.
Also, one thing making it hard to find more free games of similar
caliber is that free games tend to have virtually no marketing.
Commercial ones are heavily flogged -- especially the bad ones, though
also the best ones. The one to try to prop up flagging sales; the
other to toot their own horn and boost sales of everything with their
brand on it. The good ones sell well enough without marketing so all
marketing effort is really intended to directly or indirectly boost
sales of the unpopular titles!
[snip a bunch of BS]
Interesting. I know of many people who produce information merely to
get a paycheck at the end of the week.
And I bet a lot of it is crap, or unnecessary paperwork, or whatever.
Some of it will be important paperwork. None of them are receiving
copyright royalties.
One of the reasons I get a paycheck
is to produce information too. Especially when we're contracted out to a
client, the primary reason I produce this information for those clients is
for money.
You now reveal the ulterior motive I originally suspected. You do need
to get over the fallacious thinking that no copyright somehow means
it's *impossible* to make money producing information, though. It just
becomes very difficult to make much by directly selling copies (and
even then, not impossible; cf. Redhat).
Well, not always. Some copyrighted information out there costs almost
nothing in terms of enforcements. For example, my blog posts are all
copyrighted to me, and don't spend a single cent on enforcing the
copyright. People occasionally quote from my blog, and I consider that to
be a form of fair use, and everybody's happy.
This is a case where your copyright is useless anyway. You don't use
it; it is just there by default, like most copyrights. You may even
have taken specific action to free the content from some restrictions
if you used a CC license.
You aren't interested in restricting copying or forcing people to pay
a toll to get in, in this instance.
Orphan/Ghost works is problematic with the current copyright rules,
and I've already agreed with you that the current copyright rules are
sub-optimal. As I've repeatedly told you, that's not the part we're in
disagreement about. Where we disagree is that you believe zero copyright
is the optimal solution, and I think reduced-copyright is a better one.
And you still seem to produce no real strong arguments to bolster your
side.
I recall earlier you asked me to ignore the lousy free games, as that
doesn't diminish the quality of the good free games. I would ask you to do
the same for the non-free games.
Fair enough, though I wanted to point out that copyright can create an
incentive to generate cruddy content instead of none in some
situations. You were pointing out that it's supposed to incentivize
content creation; I'm pointing out that what gets produced that
wouldn't have without copyright is typically crap, while lots doesn't
get produced that would without copyright (all sorts of derivative
works, anything that isn't produced because a talented person retires
after their first solid hit, etc.)
Yes, given that "whoever else" is a very broad group of entities, I'm
in agreement.
99+% of such content comes from approximately 3 large corporations.
In practice, you can, actually. Google for "fanfic" and you'll find
plenty of examples.
Not without legal risk, unless you post the stuff anonymously to the
net. And then you can't get credit or, for that matter, money (not
even via business models that aren't based on restricting copying).
I am not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that you actually CAN
translate your favorite book into any language you want. This doesn't
violate copyright law at all.
Really? Then why the various recent headlines about lawsuits for
unauthorized translations of among other things Harry Potter books?
BTW, please define "cultural participation". This is the second time
I've made this request of you.
Everyone being able to produce as well as consume, and to produce
stuff derivative of existing popular works as well as wholly original
stuff, without fear of liability. And a more even distribution and
marketing system if possible -- and the Internet makes it possible.
Just look at YouTube and Creative Commons sometime; people are already
sort of doing it on the 'net in a preliminary way, but running into
trouble when they even briefly connect with any corporate-owned
culture. Look at all the YouTube lawsuits and takedowns, many
involving parody, satire, or other clear fair use, largely original
content where a familiar song or TV show is in the background, and
unauthorized derivative works with substantial original content. Half
of these takedowns are without merit even under current copyright law
but happen anyway, because there are no penalties for being
overzealous with the DMCA, at least not if you're officially part of
Big Entertainment. Their knee-jerk response is to yank anything they
don't like, which is basically anything they don't directly get paid
for, even if it might actually be free advertising rather than
unwelcome competition(!), and to a significant degree because there's
no real downside to doing it. No penalties, and little cost in sending
a takedown notice (versus, say, actual legal proceedings; yet they
sometimes also sue, often YouTube/Google itself despite safe harbor
provisions that make all of these meritless on their face).
Look at all the free games, and see how few of them are worth
recommending to your friend.
I think lots of them are, including many of those you don't consider
to be of "commercial quality".
I honestly believe that people were not investing millions and
millions of dollars in producing entertaining forms of information before
copyright law.
No, the money was probably spent more wisely. Quite likely, there
won't be such large budgets spent on entertainment after it goes away
either; that doesn't mean quality will go down, but rather than
efficiency will go up, and diversity of actors and other talent,
instead of having a few very famous, very rich ones and tons of
obscure and fairly poor ones, and money frittered away inefficiently
in other areas.
I also honestly believe that, statistically speaking, games
which have had millions and millions of dollars invested in them tend to
be better than games which had almost no money invested in them.
And games with intermediate amounts, say up to a few thousand dollars?
[snip more HTML-like cruft]
Because clothing is closely tied to status, especially in the realm of
fashion, every design eventually becomes obsolete (i.e. it goes out of
style) when it loses its ability to confer status on the wearer. When is
something well and truly out of style? When everybody is wearing it, and
that's where the open nature of fashion copying helps drive the fashion
market.
Well, guess what -- most copyrighted stuff also has built-in
obsolescence. Which do you prefer -- a book you've already read or a
new one? A new game or one you've played 50,000 times? Don't you
sometimes want new music in your playlist you've not heard much
before? And so forth.
The main exception is factual information that stands the test of
time, e.g. in textbooks. Even there some stuff becomes updated fairly
rapidly, but a lot of basic stuff remains. Copyrights there are
especially harmful though: they raise the cost of education
tremendously and reduce its accessibility, and inhibit academic
research with artificial scarcity and tollbooths everywhere to make
everyone think twice before deciding whether to consult a given
resource because it'll cost them. Academia and education thrive, and
indeed progress (of science and the useful arts, not to mention
engineering and other things) is helped by freer flows of information
in the factual/pedagogical/research area.
So entertainment has the same forces operating as the fashion
industry. Non-entertainment information divides into "news" and
similar stuff that also has those forces operating (which do you
generally prefer? Today's news or last week's?) and long-term
accumulation of information of more lasting relevance the freedom of
which would accelerate progress rather than retard it.
Anchoring describes the process by which the industry converges on a few
major design themes, or trends, during a fashion season-whether skirts are
fitted or flowing, or cuffs are wide or slim, and so on. Anchoring is also
the mechanism by which the fashion industry signals to consumers that
trends have changed, and it's time to update the wardrobe.
Forces like this exist elsewhere, too. You want a new newspaper when
the calendar flips over. You want new music when you hear stuff you
like on the radio that you don't already have. You want to see the new
blockbusters in the theatre on Memorial Day weekend. You keep an avid
eye open for that sequel or game expansion pack whose predecessor you
enjoyed so much.
The two phenomena identified above are at the very least peculiar to
markets involving "positional goods," and may well be peculiar to the
fashion industry in particular. The models developed in the paper aren't
really that generalizable to other IP regimes, and the authors acknowledge
as much.
I just did generalize them successfully to most IP, leaving only
academic-type IP which has its own reasons why freeing it will
accelerate progress in its area rather than hinder it.
Software code itself provides an example of such. Basic algorithms and
design patterns stand the tests of time, and the core libraries for
common tasks that use them, and full-blown operating systems and
applications built on these in turn. Where do we see very rapid
progress lately? Open source, of course.
In other words, what works for the fashion industry doesn't work well
for games, books, movies, etc.
Wrong. See above.
And I believe this is highly undesirable. See my comments on
fragmentation of games to Bent Dalager.
Wrong again. I rebutted that there, but here I'll remark on the
observed tendency of open source projects to fork very rarely, and for
forks to differentiate themselves. Games fork more often and the forks
really differentiate themselves one from another quite rapidly.
Actually, there's a lot more reuse of assets than you might otherwise
think.
Mainly internal to a given company, as a general rule.
Actually, most games companies don't license most of their assets from
other game companies. The example I gave to Dalager was that Ubisoft
didn't pay royalties to license the Solid Snake character in their
Splinter Cell games, specifically because they don't really have any
interest in incorporating the Solid Snake character into their game.
You've totally missed the point. There are three options:
License content for $$$
Develop original content, costing $$$
Reuse free content and adapt it cheaply
Option three is largely precluded by copyright law, other than reusing
your own content from previous projects. It's also the only one that
doesn't cost big bux.
[snip a bunch of unimportant blather and a vile insult]
Stop that.
Well, I think you've already admitted that we should have limitations
on what we can do with our own physical goods: limitations which mainly
center around the consent of the involved parties. The difference is that
you seem to think that when someone licenses informational-content to you,
that someone is for some reason not an "involved party", whereas I do.
No, I think that the involved parties are those who actually conduct a
transaction. If I give my copy of some book to you, then you and I are
involved but the book's original manuscript's author is not. He's
probably on the other side of the planet for Chrissake. And nothing
we're doing is at his expense; he need perform no labor nor spend
money nor is he deprived of any of his existing assets by our actions.
He's as uninvolved as it's possible for him to get. He has no way of
even knowing that the transaction took place unless he goes to the
bother of spying on us!
And yet, just a few paragraphs earlier, you were talking about how
much money you'd save in the production of games by never hiring artists
again and just reusing artwork from previous games.
No, just how this could be substantially reduced given a more
efficient marketplace in information, one without any artificial
scarcity.
I disagree. I think it's obvious, for example, that a 1 second
copyright term gives a lot more freedom than a 1 millenium copyright term.
If something's currently under copyright, you can't do some things
with it legally because of that, regardless of how long the term is.
I've also argued earlier that zero copyright is suboptimal.
You still haven't proved this assertion.
So all that
remains is to discover the optimal level of copyright. Some might argue 4
years is optimal, for example. I personally haven't done extensive
modelling, so I don't have a specific number to suggest, but I feel it's
less whatever the current is (something like life + 50 years?) but more
than zero.
Don't dismiss zero out of hand. If you think some kind of modeling
should be done, then by all means do it, and if the answer it produces
is zero, accept that.
I believe that you do own these two physical items under the current
copyright rules.
Really? Then under copyright rules I can do as I see fit with it, e.g.
disassemble and modify the copy of Windows on it, and the like?
I didn't think so. So much for my completely owning my machine and all
of the data stored on it and being able to do with them as I please.
Apparently I'm sort of just "renting" the copy of Windows, in
particular.
Well, even without copyright, there are things you can't do with them.
For example, throw them through a store window (you'd be charge with
vandalism, perhaps among other things). It's the "consenting parties"
issue again.
IN PRIVATE. In my own home, say, and with nobody present and nobody's
physical property present that doesn't consent.
It should be "no harm, no foul", but it's not. Copyright infringement
is just one of many onerous victimless crimes on the books.
Earlier, you wrote that IP justifies DRM. Now you write that nothing
justifies DRM.
You totally misunderstand me, and probably deliberately.
Firstly, if IP *did* justify DRM, it would only be the case that DRM
was justified when IP was justified; since IP isn't justified that
breaks the chain and DRM isn't justified either.
Secondly, I never said IP justified DRM. I said that those who use IP
law find that its benefits to them (greedy pricks) justifies their use
of DRM. It's IP and the sense of entitlement that goes with it that
*motivates* the use of DRM. It's also an IP law, the DMCA, that stops
people legally working around or removing DRM to get fair value from
their goods.
I don't think being "physically present" should be the criteria for
considering whether or not someone is involved. Libel, for example, can
occur without the victim being physically present.
Libel harms the person in a measurable way. Something they have (their
reputation) may be damaged. Even so I'm not sure libel laws are all
that enforceable or useful these days; it's very easy to anonymously
libel someone on the internet and get away with it. Just ask Joe
Attacki.
Copyright infringement does not harm anyone. It just potentially
creates competition that someone might not like. Competition is not,
however, wronging that someone. Nothing they already have is damaged
or taken away; they just may have a harder time making additional
money in the future.
If copyright infringement is morally wrong and harmful to an author,
then opening up my own coffee shop across the street from the local
Starbucks without their permission and without paying them is morally
wrong and harmful to Starbucks. It's worth noting that of the two,
only the former is illegal. And I think you'll agree that in fact
competing with Starbucks is *not* morally wrong. Starbucks would
surely love to have a monopoly on coffee the way Microsoft has a
monopoly on Windows, but there's no moral or legal recognition of its
having any entitlement to such; it is permitted to try to dominate the
market, and others are equally permitted to try to compete with them
in that market. So should it be with everything. Instead, IP laws
create some arbitrary categories of products that are subjected to
state-enforced monopoly privileges. And all kinds of nasty side
effects, including that sense of entitlement to controlling all
secondary markets and downstream uses to the detriment of everyone
else and, in the long run, everyone period (the sinking tide that runs
all boats aground on sand bars).
I think that it's naive to believe that nobody will disobey the
constitution, especially given the current state of the US.
Have you got a better suggestion? Constitutions aren't perfect but
they do create a strong barrier of resistance to certain forms of
oppression and tyranny developing. They may not prevent it ever
happening but they may delay it a long time. Is that not worth
something?
In practise, the Internet already renders copyright effectively
unenforceable against noncommercial copiers, and against noncommercial
derivers that don't seek recognition for their derivative works.
Before long, cheap fabbing technologies may do the same to patent.
A constitutional ban on reenacting either type of law, combined with
their being effectively unenforceable if they were reenacted, would
make them especially unlikely to be.
[some mildly insulting blather snipped]
You originally wrote that you felt all available hosting sites are
"evil". That's what I find convenient for you.
You misunderstand me yet again. Deliberately, methinks, again.
I didn't say that I *felt* that they were evil. I said that they
*were* evil. They use artificial scarcity (this time of bandwidth) to
enforce ad-watching and, often, divulging of personal information.
Generally you can't download decently from them (i.e. click a link,
download starts with no mess and no fuss) or upload without divulging
information (an email address for them to spam or sell to spammers,
for starters).
If you ever find any sites that provide straight up no-frills but no-
gratuitous-bumps-in-the-road-either file hosting then by all means let
me know!
[snip repetitious bullshit]
Which part do you think does not follow from the previous part? If I
know what you're missing, I can elaborate on that.
I'm not missing anything. I definitely never said anything from which
it follows that ALL commercial-quality games other than ET are
commercial.
And that misses another point, namely that commercial games can work
on business models that don't involve restricting downstream copying
and derivation.
So *you* claim that it's very easy for people to get together and make
a free game which rivals the top quality commercial ones
I claim that it's possible, and has happened repeatedly, and will
continue happening. I never said that it's "easy" to make a high
quality game, free or otherwise. Attacking that is attacking a straw
man.
[deleted a gratuitous and repetitive insult]
The challenge wasn't to list free software projects. The challenge was
to develop a commercial quality free game. You claimed it was easy, I
claimed it was difficult. If you think it's easy, then do it.
Wrong. The discussion at that point was about free software projects
in general. Wrong x2: I never claimed it was easy, only that it was
possible and that it does in fact happen *despite* the current
system's present incentives to lock up everything good you make behind
a paywall. How much more often would it happen without that incentive?
They also seem to be the only two you've personally know about,
despite the great evidence you would have in being able to name others.
I just can't be arsed to search for them, but it's *you* who made the
bold and unsubstantiated assertion that there were none; *you* prove
*your* claim!
You and SCO are alike in that you both make assertions, and when
people ask you for evidence of your assertion, you tell those people to go
find the evidence themselves.
Not true. *YOU* made a strong assertion (namely that there are hardly
any good-quality free games) and now insist that *I* should find
evidence to disprove it, rather than that you should find evidence to
prove it. Your extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence; go
find some or shut the hell up already!
Nothing. If you can find screenshots dated from 2003, we'll use those.
Otherwise, we'll use the screenshots of today, and compare those to the
games of today.
Clever but fallacious; if as you claim the visuals haven't improved
any since 2003, comparing the current screenshots with 2003 commercial
games is fair comparison. So with your own argument, one of these two
assertions of yours must fall:
* Either your claim that Nehahra is suckier than commercial games of
its vintage, or
* Your claim that Nehahra is behind the times in looks.
So, you'll need to pick one of these to defend and give up the other
one now.
The Quake 1 engine is played today, yes, but it is not developped
today.
Engines based heavily on it *are* developed today. Fitzquake stays
fairly close to the original but works far better on modern hardware
than GLQuake, while including all the goodies and more. Tenebrae adds
DX9 features such as stencil shadows, glossmaps, and bumpmaps. Most of
the problems with Tenebrae screenshots are due to Tenebrae's engine
having limited material to work with in the original, dated Q1 texture
set; given a more modern texture set it should look on a par with Doom
3 and Quake 4. DarkPlaces is a third, and is the engine used in
Nehahra among other things, as well as being usable for the original
Quake 1 game. It is basically at the Quake 3 level of engine
functionality, including six-image skies and volumetric fog (not sure
about bezier surfaces though). There are others.
No, you've misunderstood again (I hope, for your sake, intentionally),
so I must take upon the dreary task of explaining things to you again.
Stop being an insulting asshole.
[snip pedantry with false premises and loads of unproven assertions
and questionable assumptions]
Eventually, you'll find that good the commercial games are all better
than the best free games. You'll discover that there exists something
about commercial games which allow them more flexibility, and achieve
greater things which free games can achieve. Think about it a bit more,
and you'll soon discover that the fact that the games are commercial means
they can have a bigger budget, with which they can have higher salaries,
with which they can attract more talented people than free games can.
Thanks for proving my points in favor of getting rid of copyright law.
I trust we can put this discussion to rest now?
In case you don't see how you just handed me victory on a silver
platter, here's the simple-language detailed reasoning at a K-12
level:
Copyright law creates an imbalance where games that will be sold for
per-copy fees are made using a large initial investment, which is used
to suck talent up. Talent being somewhat scarce, this deprives games
that will not be sold for per-copy fees of talent.
Get rid of it, and all games are in the latter group, those that will
not be sold for per-copy fees (they may be truly "free", or have other
business models backing them, just not business models dependent on
copy restriction). There is no big differential in the power of some
games to attract scarce game-making talent. Heck, even if there is,
that talent still produces games that have no per-copy fees!
Note that repealing copyright only for video games has a rather
different effect: much of that talent may go work on art or storyline
or other areas of talent outside video games because non-video-game
industries that still have copyrights can suck up talent by dangling
big bucks in front of their noses. Drop all copyright and no hirers of
artistic talent will be especially able to hoover up the talent. The
various entertainment industries would remain on an even footing in
that regard, and those whose preference is to work on game content
would remain in the game-making field.
Decrease the budget of games, and you'll decrease the incentives these
talented people will have for working on games. As you've stated earlier,
if the incentives eventually become so low (as you argue that they will,
when copyright gets abolished) that these talented people choose to flip
burgers instead of making games, we're going to lose out on gaming
masterpieces. And I think that's a bad thing.
Doubtful. The incentives for the most talented will never get so low
that minimum wage at McDonald's minus the malus for the boredom and
stress there would look more attractive. Talent will always be scarce
and be able to find a way to get paid. It just won't produce content
that mostly gets locked up behind paywalls. Right now it does, but
only because those who lock stuff up have the ability to outbid others
for those talents.
And the products of that talent mostly getting locked up out of reach
of a lot of people is a crying shame.
(or the current year, if the engine is still under development), but you
seem to prefer the year when the engine first started development. Fine,
but you have to explicitly say this is the comparison rule you're making.
No, the year when the first mature version became available.
[snip some nonsense]
Do you now see why it's silly to compare engines based on the year
when they started development? This is why I recommend comparing based on
the year in which they are released and development stopped.
Why do you feel such a need to compare things and decide some are
worse anyway? Is Nehahra pretty, and adequate? Don't you think it's of
good quality? Forget comparing it to other games; just consider it on
its own merits. Surely you don't think it's ugly?
[snip a lot more endless repetitious drivel]
Stop carping on and on. This is getting ridiculous. Obviously you will
never be willing to believe or be convinced that anything that isn't
sold for money can ever be of decent quality. If it's available for
free you automatically view it through shit-tinted glasses; you see
what you expect to see and because of your dismal, pessimistic outlook
on life you expect to see shit unless it's way expensive. So be it. I
can't convince you of anything; I don't know why you bother trying to
convince me of anything either, and especially why you insist on
outright attacking me for holding a different opinion than you. So you
won't listen, and won't shut up either? Well **** ya then.
It sounds like you didn't understand the point, then.
I can't understand what isn't there. Next time you want me to
understand a point, you'll need to have a point handy.
(1) I asked you to find a commercial quality free game.
(2) You cited Nehahra.
(3) I pointed out how it not good enough to be commercial quality.
You hold an unassailable *opinion* that it is not good enough. It's
quite clear that no amount of evidence or reason will shake you out of
this delusion. Well, fine; go **** yourself then.
You seem to have failed to consider the possibility that we disagree
about what is true (or the possibility that you are knowingly posting
things which are false).
Oh, so now I'm a liar, is that it? The problem is -- you are simply
wrong. Hell, it should be obvious that you're wrong simply because the
conclusion that you are reaching favors restricting freedoms
gratuitously and maintaining victimless crimes on the law books purely
to enable particular profit-minded business models that are not
workable in a natural, competitive market!
[various insults and other random BS snipped away; all of them untrue]
I showed you that your estimate is off by more than an order of
magnitude.
Wrong again. I demonstrated that it is dead-on accurate, if not
lowball. See below.
If we suppose one more CD-ROM costs 5 cents to stamp out, that a given
piece of software comes on one CD-ROM, that packaging costs an
additional 5 cents, and that shipping and handling is $4.90, including
retail margins if applicable, then we get $5 of the $60 for a typical
game going to real costs or competitive rents (e.g. retail margins)
and $55 pure profit for the software company. In that case, the profit
margin is 11x.
11 is a lot less than 3000, so [snip insulting BS]
Read on, wiseass.
[snip a bunch of additional insults and belabored ones at that]
**** you.
I needn't remind you how you claim that companies are currently making
3000x profit, instead of companies may be makiing 3000x profit if only
they switched to your brilliant distribution ideas.
Excuse me?
This doesn't even make sense.
Consider two alternatives:
You provide a bucket of information as cheaply and efficiently as
possible; this costs you all of two pennies.
But you want to charge money for every copy. So you charge $60. That's
3000% of the cost of providing the information as efficiently as
possible; i.e. it's 3000% the marginal cost of reproduction and
delivery of the information.
That enforcing your enormous profit regimes requires using a less
efficient distribution model that's more amenable to controlling
downstream use is immaterial here. You are still charging $60 for
something you could provide at a cost of pennies.
Remember, the customer does not care about whatever costs you have
relating to enforcing your business model; the customer only cares
about getting the goods, and about the price tag.
Suppose you provided encrypted versions via BT and charged $60 for a
copy of the decryption key, made available via a web site. The site's
load is minimal since the decryption key is not enormous, unlike the
ciphertext. Then your distribution costs really are down to pennies
while you're still charging $60 a copy, in effect.
Also, consider things that are priced far higher. If the marginal cost
of delivering a copy on CD is $5 as postulated above, and you charge
$150 for it, the markup is again 3000%.
The markup can be as much as three thousand *times* cost for some
products. I've heard of software being sold for as much as $15000,
mainly to niche markets that are easy for vendors to gouge. Copies of
movies are sold to theatres for sums that large, too, and again
probably don't cost more than a few bucks to make and ship per unit.
There was a time when video tapes of movies cost as much as $250,
probably on the order of 30x or 3000% of costs, though not 3000x
costs.
Yes, exactly. I'm glad you finally understand.
You say this like you have won some sort of point here, which of
course is complete and utter hogwash. If someone's talents incline
them to game design stuff, then they'll do that, given that a closely
related use (such as writing novels or screenplays, or painting, or
whatever) isn't vastly more lucrative. Selectively abolishing
copyright for games only would create such a problem; uniformly
abolishing it does nothing of the sort and leaves the various possible
uses of artistic talents on equal footing again, including game
development.
"Thank you" is a polite way of expressing gratitude. It was not meant
as an insult or anything like that. I was thanking you for directly
answering my question, something which you have rarely done in this
thread.
Usually your questions have the same quality of "Have you stopped
beating your wife yet?" in that any answer at all is in some manner
incriminating. If your question is phrased so as to contain an
inherent assumption of something untrue (e.g. that I'd ever started
beating my wife) then it isn't deserving of anything but a [snip].
There's a difference between "may (currently) be indispensible" and
"is indispensible". If you change your claim, I'll change my evaluation of
the truthfulness of that claim.
I don't think so. Windows is indispensible; this is true because it is
indispensible to a substantial subset of the planet's population.
Electricity is also indispensible these days, although again there are
large chunks of the world's population that do without. Even they
mostly indirectly obtain benefits produced in ways that require
electricity, even if they don't use electricity directly themselves.
And again, so it is with Windows.
I'm not happy with your definition because I find the clause "with
whatever requirements" to be overly vague.
Well, it's hardly *my* fault that reality is vague, in that people are
diverse and have diverse needs.
[snip some irrelevant asides, including a return to patronizing-
arsehole mode]
Let me phrase it this way: If you want me to answer a question, ask me
the question whose answer you desire. It's that simple.
Your response does not address anything I wrote in the paragraph of
mine that you quoted directly above it. Nothing you said has anything
to do with Microsoft's price tags or the social good.
Please hang up, and try your logic again...
I never claimed to see nothing wrong with that.
Then why do you continue to not support copyright abolition?! It's
abolition, or at-minimum-tacit support for the continuing occurrences
of abusive situations like that which currently exists regarding
Microsoft. You must pick one. Either you see nothing wrong with that,
or you don't support copyright, because supporting copyright, even
with reduced terms, means supporting all of its demonstrably
unavoidable consequences, including this example.
I have no objection to "buying stuff or doing without", so long as I
have the option to buy it at commodity prices (i.e. not much above the
marginal cost of providing the "stuff" to me). It's the denial of that
option sometimes that I find unjustifiable.
Okay, fine. And you plan to fix this by abolishing copyright? Perhaps
you imagine that once copyright is gone, we can all freely pirate copies
of Windows XP? Well, guess what: By the same logic, if we instead follow
my plan of limint copyright to 4 years, then we can also freely pirate
copies of Windows XP, since Windows XP is more than 4 years old. We might
not be able to freely pirate copies of Vista for a while, but that
shouldn't bug you, since [Vista sucks]
That still denies me an option: to have something, which does exist,
and is mass-manufactured, at its marginal cost, RIGHT NOW. Justify
denying me this choice (given that I CAN pay the marginal cost of
producing and delivering to me 1 additional copy RIGHT NOW and it's
being manufactured RIGHT NOW) or concede this point.
[snip insults and other bullshit]
Factually true. Unless you don't believe that Bill Gates made his
money from Microsoft, or don't believe that Microsoft made its money
from copyright-restriction-enabled monopoly.
Supporting A does not necessarily imply supporting B, even if A may
lead to B.
If A demonstrably leads inevitably to B, on the other hand, then if
you find B distasteful you must find A distasteful.
You are arguing something analogous to "I don't want to KILL people, I
just want to be allowed to SHOOT them." -- it's pretty clear how
ridiculous that is, given what tends to happen to people that get shot
(and especially given that they are harmed grievously even when they
survive their wounds).
If you support legalizing shooting people at random you support
murder, whether you want to admit it or not. Likewise if you support
copyright law (even with reduced terms -- that's like supporting
legalizing shooting people but only with .22s and smaller calibers!)
then you support all kinds of evil and unavoidable consequences
including abusive monopolies and people being considered legally
entitled to more royalty money despite already being stinking rich
from same, just because the term hasn't expired yet.
I'm sorry, but you cannot weasel your way out of this one.
[insulting implication posted by an asshole snipped]
IP does not imply "life + 70 years". It may be "4
years, even if the former owner is still alive when the copyright
expires", for example.
And even then it's going to have nasty consequences. Why should I have
to wait before getting a cheaper copy of something? Why should anyone
have a fucking monopoly? Why should authors, but not coffee chains?
Why be so arbitrary? Why are free markets good for coffee chains but
bad for authors? I say what's good for the goose is good for the
gander. And even four year terms may well mean that costs are recouped
in the opening weekend at the box-office, a tidy extra sum of
reasonable profit made the following week, and then nearly four years
of free, unearned money flowing in, at society's expense; and
meanwhile everyone has to wait four years to a) get a cheap copy, b)
make an unauthorized derivative work or whatever, c) get such a work
at any price, ...
All without any justification, either in basic economic theory or
based on empirical observation.
Well, I disagree.
Then you are an ostrich with its head in the sand, more afraid of
change and of enlightenment than of getting grit up your nose every
time you inhale (i.e. the existing nasty consequences of copyright,
which shorter terms would at best partly mitigate and could never
wholly eliminate).
The statement is misleading. It's comparable to saying "I like people
whose name starts with 'T'". It's true in the sense that I may be friends
with someone named Tom, but it's false in that there also exists people
whose name starts with 'T' whom I don't like.
Stop accusing me of dishonesty, asshole!
IP laws *are* corporate welfare. This is simple, demonstrable fact.
It's not happenstance that a big corporation or two benefit massively
from IP laws by effectively being able to rake in free money for zero
effort. It is an inevitable and major feature of the system, and it's
fairly clearly intentional, regardless of the highfalutin' language
used in all official attempts at justifying IP laws being on the
books. The VAST MAJORITY of money generated via IP from pricing things
far above cost without fear of being undercut by a competitor, by far
the VAST MAJORITY, goes to corporations; very little trickles down to
indivuduals. Most people at such corporations get a regular paycheque,
and no more. The individuals that do benefit substantially are
superstars and CEOs. Both categories are of people rich enough that it
is not sensible to consider them to be owed any more "incentive" for
anything by society at large. If they want more money let them work an
honest job for it or make it on investments like all good capitalists
should, rather than simply waiting for their next welfare^Wroyalty
cheque to roll in.
The main financial beneficiaries of IP laws are corporations. The main
financial beneficiaries after that are people that are already rich.
Another demonstrable fact that you cannot escape.
If you prefer, I could say "Even with your most reasonable business
model," etc.
That would certainly be better, since that phrasing avoids making one
of the dishonest implications contained in your original version. Even
so it suggests that *many* of my business model suggestions were bad
and shouldn't have been made. That's an insult.
You're right. I should have used the figures "1 and 100" for yours,
and "100 and 1000" for mine. Is it clear now?
But the numbers now bear even less relationship to reality, and they
bore little to begin with.
Unless, perhaps, you value a few top-notch games (priced out of reach
of a lot of people!) as being worth everyone giving up lots of basic
freedoms and property rights in your stuff and so forth? Even then,
who are you to make such a decision on behalf of everyone, without
consulting them?
I think we would have less problems if we actually keep trademark
laws.
Just an opinion, yet one from which you try to "prove" a nasty insult:
I.e. your solution is suboptimal, mine is better.
Sorry; your holding some opinion does not prove some insulting thing
about me, however much you may wish it to. My solution is not
suboptimal. Your simply holding some opinions does not change that
fact.
Or maybe, once again, my intent isn't to convince you (nor anybody
else) of anything, since I generally regard you to be unconvinceable
anyway?
Then quit arguing about it and shut up already! Sheesh.
I believe you've even admited that as soon as you consider someone
"hostile" (and I think you consider me to be hostile)
I'm actually not sure. You have been rude and condescending, and
sometimes implied nasty things about my honesty, intelligence, and
competence, but I have not seen unequivocal evidence that you seek to
destroy my reputation or otherwise to cause me harm as a primary goal,
unlike the situation with, say, Joe Attacki, whose awful purpose is
quite clear from the nature of the vast majority of his posts to cljp.
[insults, plus a suggestion that he can "prove" no-IP is bad]
If you really can prove it then prove it. If you can't then shut up
already.
And so are you, apparently [something insulting]. You claimed that
I keep changing my
position, and now I've demonstrated that I haven't. I'm glad that's
settled.
No, it is not settled -- certainly not in any way that implies that I
am [something insulting] and, worse, than I actually *agreed* I was
[something insulting], when nothing could be further from the truth!
Well, what was this "[something insulting]"? Maybe we can discuss it
further.
I'm sorry, but it's false and insulting and so it certainly doesn't
bear repeating in a public forum! Once was once too many as it is!
[a bunch of insulting poppycock in the guise of a patient explanation
to a backward student snipped; what a patronizing asshole!]
I've already explained to you what happened here, and you claimed to
have understood, but I guess you haven't. You claimed IIS cannot compete
with Apache, and I showed you that the fact that Microsoft is buying
advertisement for IIS shows is a form of competition. You then said you
didn't really mean "can't compete", but actually meant something like
"nobody who matters prefers IIS over Apache", and then I showed you a
Netcraft report showing that IIS is gaining marketshare.
Bullshit. What I said was that IIS is of shoddy quality and Apache
beats it hands down on technical merits. Microsoft is unable to
produce quality products, so it produces crappy ones and uses heavy
marketing and all sorts of outright-sleazy methods to gain marketshare
instead of gaining marketshare by making a quality product.
Outright-sleazy methods including all kinds of bundling and stuff
leveraging their vertical monopoly, plus questionable arrangements
with OEMs. So that the default computer someone gets is a Windoze
computer with IE and the like, and of course everything within the
system points to products like MSOffice and IIS instead of OpenOffice
and Apache, and so forth.
Back when Windows was a fancy DOS shell they gratuitously made Windows
work with MS-DOS but not with DR-DOS and PC-DOS to boost sales of MS-
DOS over sales of its competitors. How's that for sleaze?
And of course it's well known that their products are generally crap.
Not only shoddy reliability and some instances of user-unfriendliness,
some of these intentional (WPA, WGA, any other DRM-like stuff that is
there for ulterior reasons rather than to add value for the consumer;
gratuitous format changes and incompatibilities intended to drive
revenue-generating upgrade treadmills; &c) but world-renowned for
terrible security. Most Microsoft products are, as near as any expert
has ever been able to determine, Swiss cheese, great fucking chunks of
it the size of mountains with holes big enough to drive trucks
through, with roughly half of them taped over with flimsy patches at
any given time. Patches whose delivery mechanism is suborned for
nefarious purposes such as distributing DRM updates that do not
improve and may be intended to reduce the value of the product to the
customer. ("WGA notifications" in particular has been repeatedly
pushed as a "critical" update, as if it were a necessary security
patch to prevent your computer being hacked; in fact it is more like a
hack attack than a patch to prevent one, as it's been widely reported
to produce false positives and cause WinXP to insist on reactivation!)
I don't think it's possible, given how you're insulted by almost
everything you read.
Everything that is critical of me, perhaps. That's a simple thing to
fix: Do not criticize me. Even if it were true that I found "almost
everything" insulting, you could still readily avoid insulting me by
shutting the **** up.
[snip some bullshit with no basis in fact]
Drag and drop operations are supposed to put the dropped object at the
closest valid point to the mouse location at time of drop. In a list
or grid of items, this means the slot containing the mouse pointer's
"hot spot" at the time (typically the tip of an arrow), moving the
item already there and later items if need be. This is the expected
behavior. This is also how it actually behaves 99% of the time. Its
behavior is sometimes inconsistent. Since it's not supposed to behave
randomly (unlike, say, elements of some games) the minority behavior
is ipso facto wrong behavior, and its occurrence proves the existence
of a bug. Case closed.
(An item dropped into white space past the end is, with auto arrange,
supposed to be put at the end; this is a separate matter from an item
dropped at a position where it can be inserted without leaving any
gaps. Explorer is 100% consistent in its behavior here, by the way.
Just not in its behavior when items are dropped amid the existing
items.)
In other words, there is no bug. Instead, you have a feature request.
Wrong again. Wanting Explorer drag-and-drop to behave consistently
instead of showing POM-dependence is not a feature request, because
the presence of POM-dependence constitutes a bug in just about every
software application except Nethack.
It depends on your metric for "good".
"Looks and works much like Explorer, and won't trip you up if you're
familiar with working with Explorer, but without the memory leaks and
UI inconsistencies; minority behaviors with e.g. dropped objects are
gone and the majority behavior under Explorer is the sole behavior
under the suggested alternative, and it won't bloat up to 300+ megs of
process size just from working with image file reorganization over a
few days without any net increase in the number of open windows or in
the number of files directly contained in open windows."
How's that?
The one where the soda can would display an EULA before letting you
drink it. This is why I ask you not to snip too much. You'll forget what
you were talking about.
That wasn't a hypothetical world. I was asking if such a thing would
be considered either reasonable or legally binding if it happened in
this world. Suppose someone made a can tomorrow that required you to
read and click "agree" to some batch of legalese before the can would
open in the usual way; nevermind how this might technically be
engineered, just suppose they did it somehow. Now suppose they stocked
a vending machine with these cans. Someone pops in four quarters, a
can clunks into the tray, they take the can and go to open it, and
they get a nasty surprise.
Does it make sense that they should be bound by the "agreement"?
Legally, morally, or in any other way?
They already purchased the drink. That gives them, by law, the right
to use it as they see fit, other than say conking some bystander over
the head with it. Certainly they are legally entitled to drink the
fizzy contents as soon as they put in their four quarters, by law;
doing so harms no-one, involves no-one else than the can's owner, and
Coca-Cola is not a controlled substance or anything.
So what happens? If they a) punch a hole in the side of the can to get
at the contents without "agreeing"; and b) if they do "agree", but
there's no signature or documentation or any such evidence that they
"agreed" to anything at all. In each case are they i) legally bound?
ii) morally bound? Also, is punching a hole to circumvent the attempt
to coerce "agreement" i) legal? ii) moral?
In *this* area, the discussion was what I would do if an EULA popped
up when I tried to drink from a soda can.
And do you think such a thing, given that you already purchased the
can and its contents, would be at all a) reasonable, b) legally
enforceable, or c) morally wrong to disregard?
I guess you're assuming that I'm trying to post HTML content. I'm not.
I'm not assuming anything; if it's not HTML then it's some XML schema
or similar but there's nothing to specify what schema. In fact, it's
not legal HTML if it's not inside <html><body> and it's not valid XML
without a schema; it's not valid either without a DTD though you can
generally get away with omitting the DTD line with HTML and typical
Web browsers and other HTML-rendering software, such as HTML-aware
newsreaders.
Regardless of your exact intent, the crud your news software is
outputting from time to time is not valid SGML at all, and certainly
not valid HTML or XML. It's not anything any news reader could be
expected to render as anything but horribly, either by simply showing
the source code complete with markup tags or by having lots of effects
missing and perhaps lots of text missing.
Please stick to posting plain text on Usenet, like most of us. Save
code of any kind for code snippets that illustrate a problem or a
technique or something. Avoid rich text markup of any kind. If you
want emphasis, use asterisks or capitals. If you want an indented
block quote, put in a blank line, start each line of quoted text with
a tab or a bunch of spaces, and end with another blank line. It will
be much more readable to everyone using a standard news agent, to
everyone at Google Groups, and probably to everyone else except maybe
you with your particular choice of apparently-rather-peculiar
software.
So a witness isn't necessary. I'm glad we got that cleared up.
My original point stands: a software EULA does not produce any sort of
signed document or other paper trail or evidence that anything was
ever "agreed" to, neverminding the little problem of there being no
"meeting of the minds" to negotiate a valid contract, and the other
little problem of there being no consideration for one of the two
parties to the so-called contract -- nothing that party is granted
permission to do that they didn't already have permission to do under
existing laws governing the transactions that had occurred, including
copyright law and particularly 17 USC section 117(a)(1).
Well, what was this "something" which happened? It might be easier for
me to explain to you my side of the story if you were less vague about
what you were referring to.
It is immaterial. The salient facts are:
* I posited a theory to explain a phenomenon, and noted that it was
the only obvious one that didn't involve million-to-one odds
* You stated flatly that my theory was false
* You provided no disproof of my theory -- an observation or
experiment whose result disagrees with the theory's predictions
* You also provided no alternative to my theory that is either more
parsimonious or has more predictive power
This behavior is clearly not rational. Your assertion that my theory
is wrong is unsupported by any evidence and you have no superior
alternative to suggest. Yet you made that assertion anyway, and have
gone on to defend it and repeat it, still without actually furnishing
evidence or suggesting an alternative.
It does not matter what the phenomenon is or what the theory is. Those
are details. The simple fact is that your behavior is rude, not to
mention unscientific. And that since you have not given anyone any
good reasons to reject my theory, your strongly asserting that it is
somehow nonetheless to be rejected is arrogant, stupid, and illogical
behavior!
Now either concede my point, furnish evidence that refutes my theory,
provide a theory of your own that explains the event in question and
makes additional predictions, some tested and found to be accurate,
where my theory remains agnostic, or provide a theory of your own that
explains the event in question and is simpler, with fewer assumptions.
(One that requires a chain of unlikely coincidences makes more
assumptions; each required coincidence counts as an assumption, and
the less likely the coincidence, the more heavily it's weighted as
such.)
Well, let me know what the "something" that happened was, let me know
what your theory was, and ask me if I think it's incorrect, and if so why,
and you'll probably get what you want.
You've had plenty of chances to do that. Now you can't apparently even
remember what the "something" was or what the theory was. If you can't
be arsed to either remember that or fucking google it, then ... well.
Why should *I* bother?
Fact is, you already previously made it plain that you thought my
theory was incorrect but you never provided any reasoning to support
your claim. You were asked repeatedly to do so and your failure to do
so on every single occasion is tantamount to an explicit *refusal* to
do so. I take that as evidence that your belief in its falsehood
stemmed from a gut feeling and very little else, and that therefore my
theory stands unchallenged.
Most likely it was not even a gut feeling so much as wishful thinking
or some similar form of irrationality. Hunches are, compared to those,
actually almost reliable, but still worth nothing without evidence to
back them up. This also includes your hunch that zero copyright terms
would be worse than short, nonzero terms. You have provided me no
reason to consider it anything more than just a guess on your part.
Even should it actually turn out to be correct, it would merely be
correct by accident.
Question is based on false premise, the false premise being that I am
trying to attack and insult you.
Incorrect. I did not assume that you were trying to do anything of the
sort. You may very well have done it without effort, or even done it
unintentionally.
If I asked "Why go running up and down the stairs and sometimes fall
flat on your face while doing so" it would not be based on any premise
of your intentionally tripping from time to time on the stairs;
perhaps you were but quite likely you were tripping by accident.
Okay, so let me rephrase that to "if you're trying to debunk
bogosities about overclocking ,then you should at the very least read a
technical primer to overclocking."
But I'm trying to debunk bogosities about *copyright law*, in case you
hadn't noticed.
[I threaten Oliver with reciprocal incivility if he doesn't stop being
rude and patronizing]
[Oliver threatens me with reputation damage in retaliation]
Oh boy, this is not good. He's escalating the threat instead of seeing
reason.
Just back down and behave will you? You have nothing to gain by being
condescending and by implying I'm an idiot, a liar, or an incompetent
with every third paragraph, and everything to lose. So don't bother
continuing that behavior.
The former, which is the only practical way to test chips.
No it isn't. All you have to do is put the chips into systems
configured at each of the speeds in turn, increasing, until the system
no longer works properly and the CPU can be identified as the culprit,
but its temperature has been kept down to a reasonable level.
Then test it again at the next lower speed.
If it works again, then that is the maximum speed of the set of speeds
being sold that that particular chip is good for. Run it for a while
as part of your infant mortality weedout QA. Then market it as rated
for the speed in question.
If it still doesn't work, though it had worked at that speed before,
then the chip is a case of infant mortality. Throw it in the reject
bin and move on to the next one.
This is a simple chip testing algorithm that works for any given
discrete spectrum of speeds, using a set of computers configured
(aside from the missing CPU) exactly like the sorts of machines the
chips will be used in by customers. Pop the CPU being tested in, run a
torture test program on that system designed to test and exercise the
CPU, then move it to the next faster-configured system, and so on.
It will find whichever speed is the maximum each chip is good at.
The only significant assumption is that the lowest speed in the
spectrum that causes errors will not also, given that the chip
temperature is kept within its operating range, actually damage the
chip. This might be a problem if the spectrum is too coarse-grained.
Of course the corner-case is that the chip tests OK at the highest
speed in the spectrum; there's no higher speed for it to error out on
(or work at!); in this case market it as that high speed (if it
survives the early bit of the bathtub curve) or actually add a new
speed on that spectrum at the top end and shoot for eventually having
chips that work when run that fast.
Error-free for how long? After a million years of testing? After 1
years of testing? After 1 second of testing?
This doesn't make much sense. Chips have no moving parts and suffer no
wear and tear. If it works for a few hours with full path coverage,
then it works. If it ever fails it's either abuse, heat-related, or
age degrading the physical materials (independent of usage).
Anyway they have to test it for some amount of time and pick a
particular amount of time when doing QA. There may be some sort of
tradeoff with any particular choice.
Let's say the chip is completely free of errors after 1 second of
testing at 20Ghz. So Intel sells it. And the lifetime of the chip is about
30 seconds, after which it melts. It passes you test, but would generally
be found to be inacceptable to the general population.
This is highly improbable unless the chip is inadequately cooled,
which is a flaw in its mounting rather than in the chip proper; unless
the chip's casing is so misdesigned that it cannot convey heat from
the tiny circuitry chip to the outer surface of the casing quickly
enough. Given the circuitry has a large surface-area-to-volume ratio
getting it that badly wrong would take some doing!
In any event, none of this is relevant to determining the chip's
highest speed. There is an existing test for determining whether the
chip is suitable for use at X GHz. The only thing I'm suggesting is
that they should run this test at every X used in practise with this
make and model of chip up to the first such X at which the test fails.
The exact details of the test, such as how long it runs and how the
ensure path coverage and the like, is immaterial here; only the set of
speeds they choose to test at. Testing it at 2GHz and not at 3 when it
worked at 2GHz and might work at 3, and 2 and 3 are both speeds this
model is used at in customers' systems, is simply wrong, and creates
the incomplete-information situation that causes suboptimal pricing
and market allocation of resources. Indeed, since gratuitously
omitting to test (some) chips at the commonly used higher speed denies
useful information to the market for it to use in allocating
resources, such behavior is anti-competitive and anti-capitalist, if
only subtly so. It may be profit motivated, but that doesn't make it
not anti-capitalist if it is going to undermine efficient market
allocation.
You say that as if "full value" were an objective measure. Some people
are willing to tolerate a shorter chip lifespan in exchange for higher
performance (the whole reason why people overclock in the first place).
This applies to amateur overclocking, which often goes hand in hand
with questionable cooling (often barely adequate for the lower speed).
If the chip worked at the higher speed and was clocked at that speed
to begin with, one assumes it was shipped as part of a system that
also had adequate cooling for the chip running at that speed. And if
it wasn't, then that's the PC maker's defect and a warranty claim.
(I've seen PCs shipped with inadequate cooling and needing CPU and
cooling-stack replacement within weeks of arrival as a consequence.
The CPU itself was fine to begin with; just the cooling was
inadequate.)
Some people will actually underclock in order to lengthen the lifespan of
a chip. Different people have different metrics.
Underclocking the chip should only lengthen its lifespan if it was
installed with inadequate cooling. Better cooling would likewise
lengthen its lifespan without any speed reduction. The tradeoff is
between the lower speed or the expense of better cooling yet again, or
it's a three-way tradeoff among lower speed, shorter life, or more
expensive cooling.
Haha: amusing. You've honestly never disagree with a friend of yours?
Not and called them fools for not agreeing with me, especially not in
public.
My friends and I are typically "on the same team", but we may not always
agree on the strategy to achieve our goals.
Do you insult the ones who don't agree with you regarding strategy? Do
you flatly call their strategy "wrong" or even imply it's bone-headed,
and even do so when you have no real evidence or argument in favor of
yours? Do you do these things *in a public forum*?
I doubt it.
If you do, you're lucky to have any friends at all, and the ones you
do have must be damned peculiar.
[snip prying, irrelevant personal questions]
I was about to explain to you about syncing to the clock cycle is a
very common thing in video game development, but you seemed to have
already know that, thereby showing you that the software is not
necessarily buggy at all.
It's a special case: typical game consoles don't have a real-time
clock, and do have a known and predictable CPU speed or video
framerate or both.
PC software that is not designed to behave correctly despite the high
degree of variability in PC speeds (CPU, video hardware, and suchlike)
is misdesigned; it has a bug.
Since we were discussing substituting a faster CPU presumably in a PC
or another genre of computing hardware where speeds are variable,
software meant for those systems that is not designed to cope with
that variability and that misbehaves as a result ipso facto has a bug.
The only situation where anything like what you suggested could
*possibly* apply would be a game console maker ordering CPUs also used
in making PCs or similarly, and getting a mixture of speeds. And then
since they're building the consoles anyway, they can always build them
so that the chips are downclocked to a uniform speed, and probably
don't have to expend any particular effort in doing so since all the
DIP switches or similar on the motherboards will be set identically in
their mass-produced units, and the BIOSes or similar flashed
identically, and so forth. After all, the actual CPU speed ends up
determined by the configuration of the rest of the system, or so you
say; consequently, if these systems are all cookie-cutter identical
save for the CPUs, and the CPUs are compatible but of varying speeds,
all of them will actually end up running at a uniform speed. Problems
only arise if some of the CPUs only work at slower speeds than this
one, but presumably they are purchased with the requirement that they
are all rated to run at at least that speed.
Even if the systems did somehow end up actually expressing different
CPU speeds, the software writers would quickly discover this in
testing and tie the game simulation tick rate to something else, such
as a multiple of the video refresh rate. Make it a factor of 50
domestically and change it to 60 for the PAL version shipped to Europe
and the game even runs at a consistent speed on both sides of the pond
(300 simulation ticks a second). (Any pair of multipliers that have
the same proportion of 5:6 can be substituted and get equal speeds.)
Of course the particular hardware instances that had faster CPUs might
be able to have more stuff happening onscreen at once before things
slow down or glitch; if the game is written not to reach that level in
any important and likely situations at the minimum speed of the CPU,
then the game should work fine. Players might just find that if they
do pathological things like lure enemies one by one into an area until
it is packed with 300 of them, the game slows down noticeably sooner
on their console than on their friend's, or things like that.
I guess you assume that there does not exist any dedicated gaming
machine (console, arcade cabinet etc.) which uses Intel processors.
I assumed nothing of the sort. Even if the console used Intel
processors you'd still use an emulator to run it on an actual PC. The
native OS, input hardware, and likely the video system are after all
still not what the game code is expecting or designed to be compatible
with.
And even if the chips were variable in speed, if they were put into
identically-configured machines (including all applicable dip
switches, BIOS settings, or similarly) they would all end up clocked
the same in the shipped machines.
If a given sort of chip can run at either 2 or 3GHz depending on
settings of the motherboard it's plugged into, and you put a bunch of
them into motherboards set so they'll run at 2GHz, they'll run at
2GHz. Even if some of the chips are 3GHz-capable. So the 3GHz-capable
chip is a perfectly good substitute for the 2GHz-only not-good-enough-
for-3 one here; it will behave identically in this particular context.
processors from Intel to construct gaming machines, and occasionally they
will require their processors to be a specific clock speed.
See above. The actual clock speed is determined by settings of the
motherboard and BIOS, or equivalent, and if they make their hardware
uniformly configured a certain way, the theoretical maximum speed of
each individual chip won't matter, so long as they're all high enough.
The software works in a specific on one chip, but doesn't work that way on
the other chip. Therefore the two chips are not "perfectly good
substitute". Unless you have a different definition of "perfectly good
substitute" than I do.
The problem isn't the chip, it's the software, and even then there's a
workaround. I wonder how many times I need to repeat this before you
get the fucking point Oliver!
No. I won't be happy until you stop attacking me and disagreeing with
me in public. Rephrasing your disagreeable disagreement does not make
me happy; deleting it or deciding against hitting "send" would make me
happy.
Or pure aggravation, depending on your needs (and we've both given
examples of such cases).
Jesus, this is getting ridiculous. And repetitive.
The chips don't even HAVE a fixed speed anyway. They have some speed
faster than which they won't work properly, and this is what they'd be
sold/marketed based on.
The system (particularly the motherboard and stuff attached directly
onto it) is configured in a way that determines the CPU's actual
speed.
If the software runs into problems, it does so not because the CPU's
maximum speed is too high, but because the motherboard and the non-CPU
stuff attached to it varies from the configuration the software was
designed for.
This is not a problem with the CPU. It is not a problem with the CPU's
speed. Testing a CPU at 3GHz and discovering that it works at that
speed and marking it as such will not cause the software to magically
not work where it would have worked if the exact same physical CPU had
been used, but had only been tested at 2GHz and had been marked as
only known good up to 2GHz.
The CPU with the higher max speed is a perfect substitute for the CPU
that actually only works at 2GHz, and the CPU *known* to work at up to
3GHz is a perfect substitute for the CPU *not known* to work at speeds
higher than 2, given that the actual system as configured will result
in all of the CPUs in question running at a 2GHz clock rate anyway.
And one final thing: even if it were somehow true that the higher-max-
speed CPUs would pose a problem if used with some software, the *fix*
for that is thorough testing and documentation! Intel can test all the
CPUs of a certain type at both 2 and 3GHz, throw the ones that don't
work at 3GHz into a "2GHz" bin, and the ones that do into a "3GHz"
bin. (Any that don't work at even 2GHz go elsewhere, perhaps even a
reject bin.) When someone wants a load of 2GHz chips for game consoles
Intel takes their money and hands over a fistful of chips drawn from
the "2GHz" bin. None of them will run at 3GHz -- guaranteed. Intel
will obviously do this because it can sell the chips from the 3GHz bin
for more money to someone who wants and needs the extra speed, and
using any of the 3GHz chips as substitutes for 2GHz chips will lower
its profits.
The only exception is if they're out of 2GHz chips, maybe because
their process produces an overwhelming majority of chips capable of
the higher speed with only a few that won't work above 2.
In that case, they might include some 3GHz-capable chips in the
customer's shipment, and still they'll work perfectly in their speed-
sensitive use because the customer is configuring the systems'
motherboards and BIOSes to make them all run with a clock rate of
2GHz.
Having the extra manufacturing step of downclocking all of your chips
before placing it in your product is an ill effect.
Overclocking (and thus downclocking) is done by changing BIOS/
motherboard settings, as you yourself have said recently. So having
the chips all run at a uniform speed is simply a matter of configuring
these other bits of hardware uniformly. With e.g. game consoles that
can be taken as a given; it should be a natural outcome of the
manufacturing process not requiring any extra effort. Only if a
mixture of chips that run at different speeds with a given fixed rest-
of-system configuration were used would there be a problem, and that
was never what was proposed. Such chips would obviously have been
manufactured in distinct ways and marketed as distinct makes and
models by the chipmaker.
I never suggested, then, that say a Pentium 2 would be a perfect
substitute for a Pentium 1; it will probably run at a different speed
in an otherwise-identically-configured system. But two Pentium 2s from
the same batch surely won't, even if one of them tests as suitable for
use at a higher speed and the other one doesn't.
[more rude and condescending stuff snipped from around this gem:]
You were trying to deter me: You asked why I continued to argue with you,
after you've told me I'm wrong. And I answered "Perhaps because your
claiming I'm wrong is not a particularly strong deterrent?".
What about my *proving* you're wrong? Why do you continue to argue
even then?
I actually didn't lose data nor time. The Vista was preinstalled on a
new system.
You claimed you got a copy for free. Unless you got a whole computer
for free, you've just contradicted that. The price tag of your copy
would have been embedded in the new system's price tag and not broken
out as a separate line item but trust me, it's there all the same. If
you paid for that system, therefore, you paid for that copy of Vista.
Okay, so I'm glad we agree that FSF is not a great source for an
unbiased review of Microsoft products.
No, we don't. They have no reason to bias reviews of Microsoft
products because they have nothing to gain by doing so. They have far
more to gain, including in connection with their opposition to
Microsoft's business model, by being fair and honest. If they made
money off competing products then they would have a motive to bias
their reviews of the Microsoft products that competed with theirs. And
Microsoft does have exactly such a motive to bias reviews of free
software that competes with Microsoft products, and to bias reviews of
their own products in their favor.
Do not put words in my mouth like that ever again, by the way.
Except you contradict yourself by providing a counter example of a
useful Vista feature just a few paragraphs later.
No, I don't, liar.
You seem to be confused about the meaning of the terms "rational",
"utilitarian" and "metric". A given metric cannot be said to be rational
or irrational
Wrong again. A rational utilitarian seeking to get the most out of
their computer in a particular technical sense has a choice of metrics
to use, but will select one relevant to that particular technical
sense. If e.g. they are concerned that the system do common tasks fast
and reliably they will choose a metric that favors XP over Vista if
they are at all rational. If they choose a different metric, such as
eye candy, Vista might come out ahead, but that choice of metric isn't
very rational in light of their purpose for the computer system in
question. Particularly if that purpose is, say, "headless server". In
fact, for that, almost any flavor of Unix beats XP *and* Vista hands-
down.
You seem to think on only one level. Your arguments against copyright
abolition seem to include repeated failures to see more than one move
ahead in projecting outcomes; and here you assume a set of goals,
metrics, and the like chosen essentially at random for a rational
utilitarian to follow, rather than considering that there will be a
hierarchy of such. In some game the rational utilitarian seeks to
maximize a particular metric. In the meta-game they seek to maximize
some other metric, and this actually involves choosing a particular
metric for the first game. And there are levels above that. The top
level of course uses metrics imposed biologically and psychologically:
what feels good by biological nature (e.g. sex) and what feels good
due to associations and other sorts of conditioning.
You say that as if what is or isn't an important quality is objective
BECAUSE IT BLOODY WELL IS, MORON! Which is an important quality in a
hammer -- how well it hits nails, or how pretty it is? Is a fluffy
pink hammer with a rather bumpy and awkward striking surface (due to
the fluff) a better or a worse hammer than a "normal" hammer? Keep in
mind that the majority of hammer users use them to actually hit nails,
a lot of them as part of their paid job, and very few use them
decoratively.
A computer is likewise a tool, although a more versatile one, and
likewise has objectively measurable fitness for purpose, as with most
computer software (certainly all non-entertainment software).
Perhaps a better analogy is a Swiss army knife. One with half the
usual tools missing and the edges on the rest dull and unsharpenable
sucks. If it looks cute or really fancy or something, or one of the
tools pops out in a particularly neat-looking way, it still sucks. Get
the picture?
I suspect that most consumers of operating systems are not particular
concerned about "the underlying kernel layer, APIs, and other such stuff",
and may in fact not even know what these terms mean.
I suspect that most consumers of operating systems are not
particularly concerned about anything except "why doesn't this bloody
thing always work properly?" and "why is this bloody thing so slow?"
and "how did this bloody virus get here?" and "why do all PCs seem to
come with the same thing -- Windows -- which is bloody expensive;
shouldn't there be more consumer choice here?!"
It's not even like there's a lot of choice between XP and Vista. If
you get a new computer now it probably ships with Vista. Want XP? Pay
extra for a copy and install it. People mostly go with whatever comes
with the machine.
In fact, there actually is enough demand for XP for companies that
planned to be shipping machines with only Vista pre-installed by now
to still be shipping ones with XP pre-installed as well. The vast
majority of course just order "a computer" and get one with Vista;
lots actually don't care because they haven't educated themselves and
blithely assume that "new version" always means "better".
None of this changes the fact that Vista is a piece of shit. It just
happens to be a well-marketed, bundled-with-other-things, hard-to-
avoid piece of shit in a marketplace with a poor level of consumer
education on options and differences, a marketplace shaped to be that
way by Microsoft for its own financial gain and for no other reason I
might add.
[snip a bunch of junk, including more stuff written in that
insufferably irritatingly patronizing tone this asshole has for some
reason become especially fond of lately]
Perhaps. But this contradicts your claim that the improvements in
Vista are purely eye-candy.
No, it doesn't, because bundling something with Vista that you have to
get separately with XP is not an "improvement in Vista", any more than
if I bought a Chrysler station-wagon and found a duffel bag stuffed
with $50,000 in untraceable cash inexplicably in the trunk it would
represent an "improvement in Chrysler station-wagons". Even if the
duffel bag fulla cash came standard that wouldn't be the case. It
might attract a lot of customers to that make and model! But the
vehicle would still perform the same way. There'd be no difference at
all when the rubber hit the road.
No. The original situation was my quoting from the Ars Review, and it
contained the keyterm "fundamental change". I think the sentence went
something like "There are fundamental changes in Vista compared to XP".
You jumped on that and said "Fundamental changes are not necessarily
good", to which I shrugged and replied "Yeah, but they're not necessarily
bad either". You didn't believe me, so I provided you with an example of a
fundamental change which wasn't bad (from DOS1 to WinXP, or DOS1 to
Linux).
This is getting ridiculous. Stop arguing with me and **** the hell off
already! I am not wrong, and you are not, so far as I can determine,
*ever* correct about much of anything!
Fact is, if someone replaced their DOS 1.0 with WinXP just about
everything would stop working. Given the vintage of hardware likely in
use with DOS 1.0, "everything" would likely include even the new copy
of WinXP.
And I never disputed that a fundamental change was not necessarily
bad. I did dispute that a fundamental change is ever a reason for a
system administrator to jump in with both feet and without looking
first, of course. But since you can't possibly hope to defeat such an
unassailable and obvious claim, you attacked a straw man instead.
Fact is, Vista having any sort of "fundamental change" in it from NT-
based OSes is a very good reason for system administrators to be quite
wary and, at minimum, test extensively before making any kind of not-
easily-reversed commitment, such as a large deployment of upgrades.
And given what those who have done so have almost uniformly reported,
it does indeed seem that in the specific case of Vista it's better to
ignore it entirely and stick with XP, 2K, 2K3, or whatever you are
already running, or even contemplate migrating away from Windoze.
Those who test Vista, and especially those who unwisely "up"grade
large numbers of machines or any important production servers, seem to
be collectively largely and indeed almost solely responsible for the
large upswing in demand for Excedrin reported on CNN Money the other
day.
Can you post citation or quote showing where it is that you claimed
that defining what sucks means eventually leads in circles? As far as I
can see, you never even spoke about the definition of "suck" until now.
You merely said that the reason Vista objectively sucks is because it
objectively sucks.
Well I was kind of hoping that it would be rather obvious, but
apparently I grossly overestimated your intelligence.
You kept asking me why I thought Vista sucked. I said I think it sucks
because it actually sucks, rather like how I think your usenet posts
are too fucking long because they are too fucking long, and I think
the can of Coke here is red because it actually is red.
As for why Vista actually sucks, you'll have to ask Microsoft for the
definitive answer, and I doubt they'll cooperate. I can hazard some
guesses though: second-system effect, split incentives (DRM lockdown
vs. what customers want), reach exceeds their grasp ("very ambitious"
initial plans, repeatedly scaled down until merely "ambitious", and a
development team that can't code 2 gud to start with, seeing as we
*are* talking about Microsoft, after all), and general boneheaded
stupidity mixed with a liberal sprinkling of greed. Oh, and did I
mention Microsoft's usual lack of anything resembling proper QA? And
to top it off they rushed the development process, a sure fire recipe
for bugs and generally atrocious quality. And of course it will
necessarily have one more layer of legacy cruft under the hood than XP
did, in the interests of backwards compatibility of course, and
despite nonetheless managing to break backwards compatibility with a
lot of stuff -- pre-existing hardware *and* software and indeed plenty
of each.
Luckily, we are not talking about definitions right now, but
objectivity versus subjectivity.
No. YOU are talking about objectivity and subjectivity, and indeed,
you keep carping on about it despite its being totally irrelevant. I
say Vista sucks; you say something orthogonal about the totally
different subject of "objectivity and subjectivity" which bears zero
relation to "Vista".
This is apparently your preferred style of arguing: I say A is white,
and you say B is black and then pretend that somehow you've scored a
point or disproven that A is white or proven that A is black or
something of the sort.
I wish that you would stop doing that -- preferably by just shutting
the hell up already!
Really it's ridiculous. If we replaced all of the specific terms with
meaningless symbols and just looked at the logical structure this
thread would look kind of like this:
A is black.
No, B is white.
What's this B shit? A is black.
A cannot be black because that would mean C had to be red.
But C *is* red.
No, D is *grey*!
D is not C, numbnutz!
*shrugs*
Eh? D cannot be C because D has six wheels and C has five. Everyone
knows this!
Factually false. E has only four wheels.
E could have four million wheels and it wouldn't matter a whit to C or
D. Besides it actually has seven.
The number of wheels E has is a matter of subjective opinion anyway.
Even if E's wheel count was relevant to anything, what you just said
is fucking ridiculous.
A is white, and that's final.
OK -- prove it then.
No, *you* prove that A is *not* white.
*You're* the one making the bold assertion that it is!
A is white.
A is black.
A is white.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
A can't be anything but black or it would be much more visible in low-
light conditions.
Nevertheless it's white.
....
[snip more repeated BS, all of it already addressed earlier in this
post]
Actually, it boils down to whether or not you accept that "Vista
sucks" is a subjective statement.
It's not. It sucks as surely as a carpenter's hammer that does a piss-
poor job of hitting nails in straight sucks.
[snip repeated stuff from earlier in the thread, and condescending and
rude rhetorical question, and yet more broken HTML]
**** off. You have failed to refute anything in the paragraph I wrote
that you'd just quoted. You claim at one point to think that copyright
is good (specifically a belief that the optimum term length is not
zero) and at another to be neutral on the matter. You can't have it
both ways. If you're neutral on the matter, then you cannot assert
that the optimum term length is nonzero. If you're not, then you
obviously can't claim to be neutral!
Arguing with you is *maddening*. You refuse to play by the rules. It's
not even just the illogic (see above), it's the rudeness, the constant
repetition, the repetition of the same drivel over and over again as
bald assertion when told to produce evidence or shut the hell up, the
patronizing correcting-a-small-child tone, and most of all the sheer
fuckwittery of your manner of discourse in which you never say exactly
what you mean, never mean exactly what you say, and never interpret
what I wrote in any manner that is at all sensible. It's not even I
say tomAYto and you say toMAHto; it's I say tomAYto and you then
discuss tomAHtos as if they were a completely unrelated type of
object, and then make great sweeping monologues about other completely
unrelated objects that begin and end in midair with no evident
connection to the original tomAYto discussion!
Not only don't you play by the usual rules of debate; you don't even
play by any sane rules. In fact, you don't appear to play by any
consistent set of rules at all. You draw nonsensical inferences that
have no basis in logic. You refuse to recognize proper logical
inferences when they are presented to you. When backed into a corner
you retreat into solipsism or postmodernism or whatever the **** it
is, and assert that everything's really only a matter of opinion
anyway and no matter how god-awful Vista is on its technical merits,
it actually rocks if you think it does. I don't suppose you're even
intellectually honest enough to actually believe the implications of
that, such as that if you think it rocks it will actually magically
run Calculator as fast as XP does on identical hardware and without
even exhibiting twice the memory usage, and maybe even work properly
with your old laserjet despite not being compatible with it.
I don't know which you are: argumentative asshole looking to amuse
himself by trolling the newsgroup; stark raving loon; off your meds;
or just plain old stoned. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say you've
written most of these posts while under the influence of substances of
dubious legality in your jurisdiction, but that would only be a
guess.
(Meth users have been known to write very voluminously and
incoherently and think it genius until they sober up, whereupon their
reaction to what they wrote is the same as other peoples', and best
summed up in just three capital letters and two punctuation marks:
"WTF?!")
It shows that the assertion that "Vista sucks" is a subjective
statement.
It does nothing of the kind. False dichotomy is the name of the Oliver
Wrong Fallacy of the Day this time. The fact is that you can hold an
opinion of Vista *and* it can be, by any objective measure, a dog-
turd, *at the same time*; imagine that!
Your implying otherwise, above, is rather analogous to this:
A number between 1 and 10 is written on a 3x5 card and turned face
down.
Two people who didn't see this are asked to guess.
One person thinks, subjectively, of the number 3.
The other thinks of 9.
You then say "Hey! 'The number on the card is 9' is a subjective
statement. The card is actually blank; the number is just a matter of
opinion, not of objective fact!"
Of course I then turn the card face up, point at you, and laugh.
The number on the card is, of course, Vista's quality boiled down to
some sort of number on a scale of 1-10. The actual number is indeed
probably close to 3, with Windows 1.0 ranking lower and nearly
everything else known to man ranking higher except, perhaps, MULTICS.
I'm the guy who guesses 3. You're the guy who guesses 9 and also the
guy who says it's really only a matter of opinion anyway when I
provide all kinds of evidence that it's actually lower than five and
probably three. You even go on to cite some random people who also
guessed 7 or 8 or 9 as evidence that the number on the card can't be
lower than five. Despite claiming at other times that there is no
number on the card at all.
(Of course, the guy who wrote the number on the card is Bill Gates. He
could have tried harder -- or better yet, not tried too hard. He could
have said "screw what the RIAA wants; they're not the customers!" He
could have said "WPA in XP was a complete and utter PR disaster; let's
not repeat that mistake, let alone make a worse one". But oh,
nooooo ...)
Now please stop being so obtuse and incoherent. It's getting very
tiresome.
I never claimed either OS is "superior" to the other, because I keep
telling you that such claims are meaningless
And you keep being wrong. Such claims are *not* meaningless. If they
were there'd be no such thing as the concept of a "software upgrade",
now, would there? Moron!
because it's subjective. I'm
not sure why you have so much trouble understanding this.
BECAUSE IT ISN'T TRUE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!!
That's false, because I've been repeatedly telling you I have no
interest in "winning".
It's true. You repeatedly telling me something doesn't prove anything
except, perhaps, that you're a bald-faced liar. The amount of time you
clearly put into each of this rambling and incoherent and patronizing
and rude crap-fests belies any claim you may ever make of having no
stake in the outcome. Shame on you for ever thinking you could make
such a blatantly false statement and not have me see right through it
to the truth like it was piece of glass. Even someone of merely normal
intelligence would probably not have been fooled.
Your words are exactly that -- mere words, and of themselves evidence
of very little save the unfortunate circumstance of your keyboard and
modem being in working condition. Your actions, on the other hand,
speak far louder, and they are evidence of far more.
[repetitive bullshit snipped; I'm really getting tired of this
asshole]
Alternatively, we could both accept that whether or not Vista sucks is
subjective, and that you (and a bunch of other people) feel that it sucks,
and leave it at that.
But that would be dishonest of me, so I will "accept" nothing of the
sort.
'Cause that wouldn't be defending the truth. You state falsehoods
every now and then
A vicious and insulting lie!
Then why resort to calling me a terrorist?
A vicious and insulting lie! I never did anything of the sort.
Here's my position: Whether any particular OS sucks or rocks is
subjective. Is it clear now?
That is a coherent statement, albeit one that is simply not true. Hell
*you* don't even believe it; you clearly and explicitly said that
WinXP was superior to DOS 1.0 earlier in the thread, and repeated it
in the very same post where you're making this ludicrous claim (and
repeating it for the ten zillionth time, I might add). And you did
indeed make it clear that you thought any sensible system
administrator would prefer WinXP to DOS 1.0, so you can't weasel out
of it by claiming you only meant to say that *you personally
preferred* XP to DOS 1.0; oh no, you quite clearly and strongly
implied that you consider XP's superiority there to be a *fact*, such
that no reasonable person would disagree.
I say that the same is true of XP and Vista, namely that XP is
superior. And you claim that it's a matter of opinion?
I take it back. Specifically, the bit about your having made a
coherent statement. Nothing about your argumentation is coherent. You
support a different position whenever it suits you; OS superiority is
objective *now*, but it's subjective *now*; copyright is neither good
nor bad but absence of copyright is definitely bad; etc. etc. etc.
You're either a troll, a madman, an asshole, or some other sort of
shit-disturber. I just cannot for the life of me determine with any
certainty which, or why, or *why me*...
I'd probably ask you why pick on me except that I'm sure you'd have a
different answer every day of the fucking week and none of them would
make any sense anyway.
I think you either have a different definition of "superiority" than I
do, or you have a different definition of "objective, verifiable fact"
than I do.
That much is clear. Your definition of "superiority" is apparently
"whatever I like" and thus you regard superiority itself as an
inherently subjective thing; mine has a lot more to do with the
fitness of a tool to its purpose, and which gives the better value
proposition with the run of the mill use cases in mind. Mine of course
is the more widely used, accepted, and logical definition...
Basically you consider a tool superior if you like it in some warm-and-
fuzzy-feelgood sense. I consider a tool superior based on how well it
actually works. I pray that most serious workplaces make buying
decisions regarding tools the province of people who use my type of
thinking...and suspect that a fair number do not based simply on
shoddy products and inefficiencies I routinely encounter. Of course, a
lot of the times it's simple graft and corruption; they have a
"preferred supplier" for reasons wholly unrelated to product price and
quality. But a pretty common variation of "warm-and-fuzzy-feelgood"
decision-making is the notorious Not Invented Here Syndrome(tm)...
I find you often claim something is not physically possible, and yet
it happens right before your eyes. I wonder when you will start realizing
that you are not good at guessing what is or is not physically possible.
I find the manner in which this is phrased insulting and rude. Stop
with this patronizing tone.
I find the *content* frankly amazing; you are now more-or-less
explicitly claiming that you went back in time and changed history.
Regardless of whether the former is possible the latter certainly
violates just about every rule in the physics books, and in basic
logic and mathematics also.
The original discussion is whatever the original discussion was. It
can't have been about X the day we had it and now be about Y but not
X. Claiming otherwise doesn't make it so.
Not sure if you heard, but time is relative, according to Einstein.
You have no business citing Einstein after the nuttery you just posted
and that I just addressed above.
Regardless, relativity only means that to some observers, the time
elapsed since it happened is shorter than to others. The date on a
calendar sitting right next to Napoleon's freshly-dead corpse would
still read the same through a telescope.
historians as to the date of death, then "It is generally believe that
Napolean's death was May 5, 1821" is an objective statement. If we remove
any of these assumptions, then it weakens the objectivity of that
statement.
This is fascinating. Apparently you believe that his date of death is
actually a matter of opinion but not of hard fact, yet that beliefs
themselves are matters of fact. In particular, that "Napoleon died on
May 5, 1821" is not a matter of objective fact at all, but "Foo
believes that Napoleon died on May 5, 1821" *is* a matter of objective
fact.
If I were a psychiatrist, I'm fairly sure I'd be able to get a
research paper out of this, and probably more than half a dozen out of
all of your various recent instances of fuckwittery, lunacy, and
freakazoiditude. As it is, the linguist in me is interested in
publishing on the subject of the word "freakazoiditude", which has
never before been seen but only theorized to exist until you went and
actually exhibited the trait to which it refers! (Now maybe if you ate
a few doughnuts and put on a few dozen extra pounds the theorized
Higgs boson would pop up clear as a bell in the first run of data from
the LHC when they turn it on later this year. One can hope.)
The "nutter" is a red herring and completely irrelevant. "Napolean" is
just a name, a convenient label to refer to a specific person. We could
discard the label, and still talk about the death date of a particular
person, regardless of whether or not we agree on that person's name. The
nutter, for example, may disagree on whether that person was Napolean, but
may cede that he did die on that particular date.
The nutter thinks he's a French emperor born several centuries in the
past, and therefore his own age is apparently a matter of opinion,
regardless of the signed and witnessed birth certificate, Daddy's
video (complete with ugly timestamp) of the birth, and a variety of
other documentation, witnessings, and so forth.
If we allow re-naming the elements, then there exists yet another
system where 2 + 2 does not equal 4.
Only if you allow *arbitrary* re-naming of the elements, rather than
carrying the names from Z in a natural manner onto the elements of
Z_foo.
Basically 2 + 2 = 4 can be interpreted as "the fiber with 2, plus the
fiber with 2, is the fiber with 4", and this works generally -- in Z,
the fiber is just the one element; in Z_3, the quotient of Z by 3Z,
the fibers are 3Z (for 0), 3Z + 1 (for 1), and 3Z + 2 (for 2), and the
fiber with 2 is the element canonically called 2 in Z_3 and the fiber
with 4 is the element canonically called 1 in Z_3; the former sums
with itself to the latter just as expected.
No. The ring of integers modulus 4 has 4 elements, which are
traditionally given the labels 0, 1, 2 and 3.
You lie! Not about Z_4 having four elements, of course, but your
implying that we were discussing Z_4 at all; we were discussing Z_3.
Your latest dishonest attempt to paint me as some kind of incompetent
fool has failed; indeed, it is very easy to confirm your sleight of
hand in replacing a 3 with a 4 using the Google Groups archive.
Asshole!
[snip a load of pointless hooey]
Actually, I think I do have the right to insult you
No. But you most certainly do have the right to remain silent, not to
mention the right to **** the hell off and the right to bust up your
modem with a hammer and eat it. Well, unless the modem is on loan from
your ISP, in which case they might not be too happy with you if you do
that.
I know, and I was trying to bring to your attention a different point.
So you frankly admit to "rebutting" something I said by writing
something totally irrelevant and acting as if you somehow thus scored
a point? I'm surprised. Not that you did that (you do it often) but
that you'd admit to it.
Now go away. You're bothering me.
A is black.
You're wrong. B is actually *white*!
But A is not B.
I know. So?
Oh boy. Here we go again...
So consider everything I do towards you to be "callous disregard", I
guess.
You have shown no consideration for my wishes or feelings, that much
is true. Of course I've shown little for yours, mainly because of your
behavior just noted, and because, quite frankly, you're damn
annoying.
And if you something false, and I tell you that I think what you said
is false, you may consider that to be "acting hostilely", and I may
consider it to be "acting neutrally", hence the subjectivity.
False premise. Presupposes I actually say something false. What
actually happens is:
I say something true. You accuse me of being incompetent or
unintelligent, or even accuse me of lying. That IS acting hostilely,
or at least with wanton disregard!
Equally often I say something true and you simply say something
completely irrelevant apparently at random.
Well, I'm inhaling oxygen, thus depriving you of it. That's is
"damaging" to a certain degree.
If the oxygen were scarce and we were in close quarters that might be
true; on the other hand, I'd probably sooner die than be in any kind
of close quarters with *you*, so I doubt this will ever be an issue.
Under the present circumstances (thousands of miles apart, and oxygen
quite abundant) none of this is at all relevant to anything, of
course.
There's also that lesser-of-evils factor. Your alternative to using
oxygen is to die. Your alternative to insulting me is what, exactly?
Surely nothing even close to that heinously bad. Maybe even something
*good*, perhaps something like "wasting much less time on usenet each
week", just as an example.
I'm disappointed with your answer.
Fine; feel that way. It's no skin off my nose, and it certainly
doesn't prove anything I said wrong.
You've been smearing yourself quite a lot.
Factually false. I do not post messages calling myself nasty names or
making other negative claims. I even go to the trouble of redacting
the exact words of insults when quoting rather than have them be
repeated when one occurrence in the newsgroup archive is one too many
as it is. I certainly don't post additional ones to myself.
And this fact is easy to verify via the same newsgroup archive. You
won't find any post where I write anything like "Twisted is an idiot"
as an assertion, rather than (as in this sentence) to refer to such a
phrase without making any claim that it is anything other than false.
And then only rarely lest it be misinterpreted.
Or do you believe that one of my more strident detractors -- Joe
Attacki, say, or Jack T -- is actually a sock puppet of mine? If so, I
have no idea how to disabuse you of the notion; most likely, I can't,
irrational though it is given that it would be highly irrational
behavior on my part if it were true and that furthermore there is no
evidence to support such an extraordinary claim.
[evidence of Oliver's continued predilection for irrelevancy snipped]
Right, but maybe the interests of the general public has higher
priority than your personal interests.
We were discussing the logic or illogic of my choices, which obviously
depend on my interests; genuinely altruistic and self-sacrificing
behavior is irrational. (What appears altruistic is often behavior
that either costs nothing in real terms -- e.g. giving away a penny
when you have thousands of dollars, or ten thousand when you have
billions -- or has subtle benefits -- e.g. a donation to a cause may
be a source of good PR; a common case is kin selection; 19 recent and
notorious cases of supposed self-sacrifice were apparently motivated
by sex -- 72 virgins, I heard they were each promised? Believing
they'd actually survive in some form and that this promise was at all
true despite lack of evidence for either was obviously irrational, but
that's an entirely different kettle of fish altogether.)
Of course, it's also true that the general public's interests and my
interests do not actually come into conflict anyway; my demands and
desires are quite modest and none involve non-consenting partners or
anything like that.
I find it amusing that you think *I* am the one with poor memory in
the same sentence in which you admit you can't remember whether or not I
actually told the lie which you are accusing me of telling.
You are the one who accused me of lying so the onus is on you, not I.
Also amusing is that the part you snipped and replaced with "[insults
me and calls me a liar]" contains the list of countries I listed.
It contains a subset, not the whole list. I distinctly remember there
being multiple foreign-language countries listed.
[snip a bunch of repeated crud and some even-more-atrociously-mangled-
than-usual XML, including this gem: "<quote>>>" -- no browser in the
world will treat that sort of malformed XML as anything but the
garbage that it is, even if it tolerates tag-soup HTML with shit like
<b><i>foo</b></i> with no <html> or <body> element enclosing (and, of
course, no DTD line!)]
[calls me a liar]
**** you.
You didn't. That's what I meant by "Sorry about making that false
assumption".
So you assumed I was from the US, which I never stated. But I also
never claimed to be from Canada. "I now know you're from Canada" is a
peculiar statement for you to be making without any evidence. Or have
you been stalking or investigating me as well as composing thirty-
megabyte off-topic shitograms to spew onto usenet? My, you have been
busy then, haven't you? I'm not flattered, though. I'd rather you
focused your attention on somebody else; I'm clearly not your type
anyway.
You keep saying this but not supporting it with evidence.
Put up or shut up!
Because I dislike the concept of "zero copyright". I explained it in
the paragraph above, remember?
So you like copyright (argue against its complete removal). You are
neutral towards copyright (elsewhere). You dislike copyright (here, a
few exchanges ago). You dislike the absence of copyright.
You apparently simultaneously like and dislike everything.
I'm not sure now that you're a troll, a nut, a druggie, or off your
meds, or any other such species of wackball. It now seems you're an
automated theorem prover given a set of inconsistent axioms and
proceeding to tirelessly derive every single statement in a very large
space as a theorem, including both Foo and !Foo for any Foo within
your grammar to compose. One that some irresponsible idiot turned
loose, unsupervised and equipped with a fat net connection, and has so
far left running for weeks.
How about the problem of allowing people to own the intellectual
property which they create?
Allowing people to own stories, images, and things like that (and not
just particular copies) is a problem, yes.
[more mangled HTML]
I said trademark is unlike copyright and patent. It isn't prone to
anywhere near the kinds of severe and global problems and abuses,
although it's also far from a shining example of right and proper
justice.
'Cause you keep posting? =P
No, because YOU keep posting. I'm only replying. If you truly have no
stake in this as you claim, then you can just let one of my posts go
without a response and suffer no adverse consequences.
I, on the other hand, keep having to respond in my own defense "or
else".
I understood all of that. The misunderstanding comes from you assuming
that it should be rendered as something other than raw source code.
No, you are the one misunderstanding. Markup doesn't belong here
except as example code. HTML-like markup absent a JSP, applet, or JWS
context is clearly inappropriate. It doesn't matter how you intend it
to be rendered by anyone's user-agent; markup used to actually mark up
text rather than to illustrate the markup is off-charter here
regardless.
[snip a bunch of dribble]
Well, what if I want the characters sequence '<', 'q', 'u', 'o', 't',
'e', '>' to appear in this newsgroup? I presume I am doing exactly what is
required to get most standard-compliant newsgroup readers to display that
character sequence.
That character sequence doesn't belong in this newsgroup. Even an
SSCCE involving JSP, applet, or JWS issues would not include it, as it
could surely be omitted without compromising the SSCCE, making the
original not the smallest possible. And if it did it would be
"<blockquote>".
[various BS, some of it insulting and all of it bogus, snipped]
I'm not sure if you realize this, but source code (in most programming
languages) is a subset of plain text.
Stop being a wiseass. You know what I mean by "plain text". I don't
mean "anything, so long as the 7th bit is never set". I mean *plain
fucking text*, as in plain ordinary human-readable standards-compliant
English prose, you raving lunatic!
So "because people enjoy a good game of basketball, competition is
good" is what they were arguing, right?
No; they were saying that people enjoying a good game of basketball
was evidence that competition has its upside. The idea that it could
decide the issue all by itself rather than just being one point of
evidence is entirely of your own invention and, of course, frankly
ludicrous, much like everything else of your invention.
[snip some more stuff that assumes the false premise I again attack
above]
It is not.
