I'd suggest that the PS3 is radically different enough that if your *reference design* wasn't PS3 specific, you've probably already failed.

You can't "optimize" a bubble sort into a quick sort.

(One interesting effect of both the PS2 and PS3 was that their design was so bizarre that it took years for programmers to be able to optimize effectively. This meant that games were consistently better every year even without any changes in the hardware. With a more conventional architecture, what you buy in the first year will essentially be state of the art for the life of the console. Makes it much harder to get people excited about "this year's version of xxx".)

Wow, now that's an analogy I didn't expect.

My analogy was chosen to refute "simply and natural => okay". Violence is simple and natural. Two year-olds can swap drives. They can also hit each other with them.

Likewise, the fact that you can probably get away with it does *not* have any bearing on how ethical an activity is.

Can we at least agree that ease of doing so and chance of getting caught has *nothing* to do with whether a behaviour is desirable or not? It may make a difference to enforceability, but that is completely different to whether a behaviour is ethical.

Copying is so cheap and easy that trying to regulate, tax, and impose levies on it is now the biggest impediment to sharing.

Well, with handguns, it's really easy to just shoot me and take my stuff, so I'll claim that simply because it's copying is easy, does not mean it should not be restricted. As for information, I'm not all that thrilled about having anything I produce be copied by corporations (who are in a much better place to do so) just because it's easy and cheap for them to do so.

*However*. Just as I approve limited use of taking things by force if there's a sufficient social benefit (i.e. taxes), I also don't have a problem with the taking of intellectual property when social benefits outweigh the social cost of seizure. Thus, while I am a strong believer in intellectual property, I *don't* believe in this progressive copyright extension any more than I believe in infinite patent extension.

Personally, I'd be okay with life of creator or 28 years, whichever is longer. After all, the creator is paying taxes on the benefit of the property until then, so it is a matter of partial benefit of from their creation followed by eventual total seizure of the work. Essentially it's a death tax of 100% for intellectual property, which I'm okay with.

(It would suck for my children, but that's the penalty they pay for choosing parents who make intellectual goods rather than physical goods.)

Oh God. Another one who is not content with stealing, but also has to pretend it's moral because... well, they're not stealing from me!

I don't consider piracy to be a huge crime (it's a theft of economic opportunity, really), but the self-righteous "it's okay if it's *me* that's stealing" gets on my nerves.

The funny part is that as soon as you start with examples of how moral it would be for Amazon to steal their music/book/game and sell it as their own, it instantly turns into "that's evil - that's stealing from me".

Steal or not, that's your business - but can the "they deserved it".

You want what they make, and you don't want to pay for it. That's all the justification you need. It's certainly all the justification you have.

A wise choice.

I was just making the point that the whole argument is based on the red herring that prices will go down. They might re-arrange a little, but in the end, my 10 channels will cost $100 regardless of whether they throw in a bunch of useless channels or not.

1-5 channels $80
6-10 channels $90
11-15 channels $100
16-20 channels $120
21+ channels $150

The average bill goes up, people get less variety, and everyone is happy that we're not paying for stuff we rarely watch.

Unfortunately, while starting your own tech company might mitigate peer perception problems in the workplace, you instantly are dealing with a far, far greater problem - the perceptions of your customers and your financiers, be they banks, VCs, or friends and relatives.

In fact, you get second order effects, where VCs won't invest, even when they believe you're completely capable, because they know that customers will question the competency of women founders. Since they're in it to make money, they completely rationally discriminate.

But it's still discrimination.

The other thing is that women like to claim they're paid less than men which begs the question why would companies hire men if they could pay women less?

(1) "women like to claim"? Come on, the statistics are iron-clad. How about "women are paid less than men for the same job". Period. Now, sure you can have lots of arguments about *why*, but don't even try to pretend the stats aren't clear. What's next "scientists like to claim evolution is real"?

(2) Companies are made of people. And those people have the same tics (especially where things don't have a perfect metric to make comparison easy) as the rest of us.

(3) Also, people like to hire like. I'm a techie, and I enjoy geek culture. But none of the women I work with, all of whom are exceedingly competent, are geeks, especially enjoy geek culture, or love tech for its own sake. Nor do they need to in order to be exceptionally valuable programmers. However, I've seen them occasionally overlooked because they lack all the "tells" of geek prowess. Certainly, if I was hiring, I could easily pass them over for someone who "speaks my language".

So, no, I don't expect a revolution in hiring any time soon.

So, the solution to this is to get people to stop worrying what society thinks, and not worry so much about being 'questioned.'

Oh please.
(1) Your promotions, raises and job security depend upon what other people think and remember of you.
(2) Human beings *do* care about what other human beings think about them. For the vast majority of human beings, this is about as useful as telling a child "stop being in pain when the bully hits you".

I'd say that part of being mature is recognizing that just because you aren't actively unjust doesn't mean that you aren't benefiting from an injustice.

One major problem is that human beings over-generalize. It's very easy for a field where there might be a "natural" split on the basis of ability and inclination of 60-40, that quickly becomes 90-10. Why? Because every member of the minority is subject to far higher scrutiny (see the famous "you suck at math", "women suck at math" (XKCD comic). Their errors are remembered, their abilities questioned.

Now, this is *not* deliberate discrimination. This is how the human brain works. We see a pattern and we over-generalize from it.

However, in the end, it does mean that a substantial social injustice is done. People who have both ability and inclination are driven out of the profession (who wants to be in a profession where every mistake you make will count for 5 times everybody else's in the opinion of your peers).

So, I see no great leap that we consider changing the the "natural" outcomes of a system to compensate for certain defects in human reasoning systems by building in certain other compensating elements.

To make a *rough* analogy, in a "natural" setting, the physically strong dominate the physically weaker. As a society, we've decided this domination is not ideal, and we've passed laws to restrain the natural interactions between people. At this point, this unnatural intervention is so all encompassing, we don't even blink at the idea that physically strong individuals are denied their natural dominance. (And indeed, lose the culture among the strong that they would otherwise enjoy.)

Obviously male dominance in the executive suite (or tech) is a far more subtle matter calling for far more subtle compensations, but lets not fool ourselves. Pretty much every reader here is already the recipient of interventions on their behalf. And no surprise, the world is a lot better for it.

Obviously, as this gets finer and finer, and eventually it becomes trivial. You'll have to decide for yourself where that occurs.

As an analogy, most people would say that going 100 miles over the speed limit in a residential zone is dangerous and immoral. So is going 50 mph over. Well, going 10 mph *is* more dangerous, just not a lot. Maybe it's a little immoral to raise the danger to adults and children in the neighborhood just so you can get somewhere a little faster. Then what about 5 mph? 2 mph? 1 mph?

We're adults here. We can use our judgement. (But I reserve the right to criticize the guy who's fine with going 25mph over the speed limit when they're kids about.)

If you're in the top 1%, you're probably earning 20-30K a year. Not millions. Don't mistake the top 0.0001% with the top 1%.

But perhaps earning tens of thousands a year is so much money that you find it acceptable that the publishers can now stop paying him, and companies that wish to use his work no longer need compensate him.

But I don't believe it's so. (So, not a matter of morality, just my preference.)

I would disagree with "no reason". I have enough respect for the artistic process and for artists to understand what having your music involuntarily turned into advertisement jingles would do to many artists. The involuntary commercialization of what is often part of one's soul is troubling enough, that I would say it balances others' natural rights.

But I don't claim this as grand truth, just preference.

As I pointed out elsewhere, the idea that one's work can be selling well, but you are living in poverty just strikes me as wrong enough that I prefer the artist at least own their work for the duration of their lifetime. After all, *very* few artists are successful for more than a few years, and I consider the body of an artists work to be their pension.

Also, can you imagine what it would be like to have your song suddenly appearing in all sorts of ads for products you hate? For publishers to start paying hacks to write new stories for the characters that you breathed life into?

I know too many artists that would be shattered by the experience. However, I'd not argue it as a matter of morality. Just a matter of preference.

However, if you want to actually make a living, popularity isn't important *unless* it results in revenue. It's a nice ego-boo, but if you want to put a roof over your kids' heads and food on their table, you can't put popularity in the bank.

(I always laugh at the "I love his work so much, I've pirated everything he's ever done." It's usually done with such sincerity.)

Don't think there's much to disagree with there. The idea that the RIAA enjoys special protections in law seems absurd. It is also likely to be short-lived. The cost of having terrible contracts is that it makes going one's own way, which is becoming more practical (although still very difficult), very attractive.

I won't mourn the loss of the big labels, but given that I am aware of most of the music I buy *because* of the label's efforts, it would be rather hypocritical of me to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but refuse to compensate them for it.