149 karma · joined November 7, 2014
A suggestion to people who want to rationally engage on Hacker News: don't bother. If you disagree with the prevailing trends you will be downvoted. Hacker News is not for discussion. It's for promotion of Y Combinator and things that make the Y Combinator partners money.
If you disagree with the prevailing social trends, expect to be flagged. If you continue to disagree with the prevailing social trends, expect a shadowban/dead label on your posts. Remember, the life experience of a professional victim is more important than your own life experience.
You could dial back the snark a little here.
>Furthermore, are you kidding me? IBM should be absolved of responsibility for aiding and abating severe human rights violations?
I never said that. What I am saying is that there are other groups that would be better suited to take up this cause. Technologically minded people tend to be crappy socially and ethically.
In the United States at least the entertainment businesses can dictate what the broadcast television news business reports. ABC is owned by Disney. NBC is owned by Universal. CBS is owned by Viacom.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/eff-files-amicus-brief...
Questioning the theory of evolution (hint, it's not an -ism because it's not an ideological position, unless we're talking about the widely discredited concept of 'social darwinism') or the data on climate change is perfectly fine, but if you'd rather sling rumor and innuendo instead of backing up your claims with evidence then don't be surprised when people think you're a crank.
[1] http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape..., full study at http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape...
Person I'm talking to: "I don't mind giving up some privacy for safety. I've got nothing to hide."
Me: "That's great, but what I do, so long as I'm not hurting anybody, is nobody's business but my own."
>“You can’t thwart a billionaire,” Maharaj said in an interview after a stroll along the deserted sandy coastline on Jan. 15, a day when the gate leading to the beach was locked.
One day you'll get what's coming to you if you keep up that attitude, plutocrat. Noblesse oblige is the only thing that spared Andrew Carnegie and is sparing Bill Gates the universal, effortless scorn and ridicule they would otherwise deserve. You'd do well to remember that.
1. Don't be poor
2. Don't be busy
3. Be able to have a time machine to undo previous mistakes.
Problem solved with snark.
This government would be tripping all over itself to comment if Aaron Schwartz was a police officer that had shot an unarmed kid, although he likely wouldn't have been indicted.
This government would be tripping all over itself to comment if Aaron Schwartz had released data from a private, multinational and said it was about an upcoming movie, although his actions would likely be blamed on what this government considers a rogue state.
This government stands silent and swings its righteous hammer of legalism without concern for harm and proportionality since Aaron Schwartz committed a victimless crime that in no way would change the political party affiliation of anybody voting in the upcoming presidential election. Maybe if he had actually killed somebody or massively hurt the bottom line of a multinational company it would be different...
This might be less being smart and getting out of the way. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_%28Unix%29#Usage:
>By default, less displays the contents of the file to the standard output (one screen at a time). If the file name argument is omitted, it displays the contents from standard input (usually the output of another command through a pipe). If the output is redirected to anything other than a terminal, for example a pipe to another command, less behaves like cat.
Well thank goodness you're here to solve all the world's ills! Believe it or not, there are still significant numbers of people that either aren't connected or use software in a situation where they're not connected to the net. That totally screws the usefulness of webapps.
Even before those things became popular IRC was a popular way to trade files. The first MP3s that I downloaded came from an fserv on IRC. That lead me to alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* on Usenet.
This is really splitting hairs. Yes, I acknowledge that it wasn't _just_ piracy that caused the company to shut its doors. But to say that I can't be frustrated about people using the results of my work for free? In what other industry is it acceptable to say, "Yes, we like your product, but no, we're not going to pay, and if you try to make us pay we're going to throw our toys out of the pram about how evil the software developers are!" That's taking it to a whole new level, and that's really the point I was responding to.
That may be, but that doesn't mean that people have the right to unilaterally decide that the price should be zero against the wishes of the seller. They may have the technical ability to do so, but that does not make it moral or ethical to do so in the most general case. I'd like to have a lower electrical bill. Electricity is a non-tangible good, like bits. Does that mean that I should be able to tell the electric company to shove off just because I think they charge too much for electricity? Why is that any different?
If my software fails because nobody wants it at the price it's at then that's a signal that I should lower prices. If my software fails because a large group decides to void the social contract and get my software for free because they disagree with their pricing then I have every right to get angry about it. The software I produce took time and money to produce. It's okay if you don't want to pay for it. Then don't use it. You don't get to have all of the benefit for none of the cost. That's the part that's the most infuriating.
>Software piracy is a solved problem.
How do you make that logical jump?
>You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets.
Not if people are used to and can continue to get the software for free. That relies upon the generosity of some other person down the line to actually pay for the software. Some companies may choose to make that decision. Good for them! But the assumption that all companies will or must or otherwise be ethically or morally bankrupt is a bad one. I'd love to spend all of my time building software for others and let them pay what they want for it, but I have to eat and have a family to support.
Software piracy doesn't hurt big shops or new developers as much as it hurts the smaller guys. Big shops price it into their software costs, and as you said, industry standard software (Office, Photoshop) rely upon it to bring in new users because their target market is saturated. New developers are just happy to get their name out there in many cases - it's a cost of doing business that they can afford.
The small shops in the middle get it the worst. Not enough name recognition to be an industry leader yet enough people that feel entitled to their software for free. The vast majority of them can't win and fold. Is that what meritocracy is? Subject to the whims of an entitled core of freeloaders?
I'll tell my employees that as our company folds from lack of revenue. I'll tell my wife that as we apply for food stamps. I'll tell the that to the next person interviewing me for a job because people didn't want to pay for the value I provided.
Basically, if you don't want people to know that you're running a service over Tor then you're relying on a guarantee that isn't there. If you want to hide your location while announcing that you're running a service then you're relying on a guarantee that Tor actually claims to provide.
If this is research then given the above how is it "in bad faith" or "malicious"?