The po-lice state is coming
Do dah do dah
The po-lice state is coming
Oh do dah day.

Oh do dah day
It's on its merry way
The po-lice state is coming
Oh do dah day.

WTF people, a business group releases a study and we all get to waste our time shooting down a ridiculously absurd figure regarding piracy for what, sport? It seems anyone can release a study these days and it will get examined by every nerd on the planet! Obviously not all studies, only ones that support the existence of an economic system that is splintering under the weight of its internal contradictions, viz the attempt to turn digital content into private property. Will you all PLEASE all get an anti-capitalist consciousness from somewhere, anywhere! -- this FOG you all seem to live in is driving me nuts!

Again with the explaining the world by yourself! Still waiting for the name of ONE person who actually studies this stuff who agrees with you.

Yes they did, but commodity production was not the dominant form of production until well after that time. Capital does not rule in that situation and so you can hardly call it capitalism.

It was only with the advent of national and world-wide markets with a common currency, common laws, i.e the necessities for the formation of the nation state, that commodity production became dominant.

You can look all this stuff up yourself you know... and if you don't really know about the system you were sort of defending in the first place, you REALLY know NOTHING about the resolution to the myriad of capitalist contradictions, i.e communism. You can look that up to, it's all on the web, hidden in plain sight ;)

[from The Iron Heel by Jack London, 1907]

"What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of thinking, young man?" [the priest] demanded ... "You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.... Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened to you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine- man making incantation in the primeval forest ten thousand years ago."

"I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically ... Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness."

"The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains himself by the universe."

"There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians ... Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the emotions, while the scientists were formulating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while the scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science, they have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts of science have overthrown their subjective explanations of things, they have made new subjective explanations of things, including explanations of the latest ascertained facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to the end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained facts. That is all."

"Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries," Dr. Ballingford announced pompously. "And Aristotle was a metaphysician."

"Your illustration is most unfortunate," Ernest replied. "You refer to a very dark period in human history. In fact, we call that period the Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination of Aristotle's thought!"

Oh please. Name one serious economist or economic historian that claims capitalism, a monetary system where capital is at the heart of the mode of production, has existed for thousands of years.

You are explaining the world by yourself, instead of explaining yourself by the world.

The first phase of capitalism began with primitive accumulation, which included the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the looting and genocide of the Americas, without which Capitalism wouldn't have got it's start as a world system divided extremely unevenly between the North and South, or 1st and 3rd worlds, take your pick. Whatever, this wasn't 1000s of years ago.

How about being sure of what you are saying next time?!

Sometimes i like to fantasize about what people will be taught in the future looking back to our time. We're talking 500+ years here. Because there's one thing i know for sure, we won't have a world capitalist system -- either we get rid of it, or we don't and it will be a case of there will be history lessons in the future or we will be too busy trying to survive an inhospitable planet to worry about the luxury of teaching people things. And in every one of these daydreams, the students are completely incredulous.

"But miss, why couldn't people see how unsustainable, irrational and inhumane the capitalist system was?!? I mean it was a system of exploitation and oppression! I just don't get it!"

I also recommend this, i only use batch scripts and AutoIT scripts ... the language does have a few funny limitations where you will actually find youself using it to run batch commands (moving entire folder trees is one example) but for the ability to write a script in 2 seconds and compile it on the spot for immediate testing, AutoIT is king. It was originally designed to automate rolling out 1000s of new Windows machines and so it was designed to control a Windows machine intimately. i can't recommend it enough :)

The pol-lice state is coming
Doo dah
Doo dah

The pol-lice state is coming
Oh doo dah day.

Oh doo dah day
It's on its merry way

The pol-lice state is coming
Oh doo dah day.

How about creating an SOE (standard operating environment) DVD with driverpacks from driverpacks.net? To see an example of this, do a google search for my little baby Winborg XP. Anytime we get a new machine that will host Windows, we just use the SOE on it and the drivers question is not an issue. We also install our essential 3rd-party apps as a part of setup and so it really is a dream to use. Stick the DVD in and come back in an hour with the PC totally ready to go. Takes 2 minutes to individualize it for the user it is for and wallah! The best thing about my Winborg XP is that the latest edition is a builder edition and so u could just modify that for your needs, but this is the lazy option, i fully recommend getting into unattended installs, beats the Ghost method hands down due to the drivers problem being solved. Each month i make a new SOE that incorporates the new hotfixes from MS, any updates to the 60 or so addons we integrate into the SOE, and any updates to the 3rd party apps. I have even scripted the SOE to be built automatically, so its a pain and trouble-free process. Having said all this, if i didn't know this could be done, i would go with a VM method for sure :)

When one guy can hold an entire country of gamers to ransom, it's not hard to understand the frustrated reactions of those who are effectively politically disenfranchised. Australians have very low levels of political consciousnesses compared to the rest of the world's population and part of this is reflected by the way the system was setup over here. It's not as if the convicts ever had much say in what went on and this top-down and top-heavy system of governance has developed as such, such that we have a nanny-state style of organising society. The wowsers are in control and don't you forget it! Sit down, shut up, or you won't EVER get your R18+ gaming classifications. I think it's fair to say it's never gonna come without a little pressure, but immature notes under the door probably isn't the sort of pressure that will work. Having said that, the dickhead deserves nasty things said to him. Very nasty things. I would say R rated things, but he's probably never heard any :(

deserves an infinity of mod points, totally hilarious

think of the children! And by children i mean profit from movies, music, digital content, whatever. Here we have a situation where it's clear to every technologically minded person on the planet that the old business model of 'units' and 'profits' has been made obsolete, and yet the primary focus of politicians will be to try to preserve the old business models because this is where the donations come from for some time to come. Think of the profits! Oh, won't somebody please think of the profits!

Nazis did in Germany was legal. DO NOT BUY INTO THE LEGALITY ARGUMENT. If for some reason hell freezes over and Big Music proposes legal limits to the profits they can make out of the changing face of music distribution, then and only then would they begin to have an argument for their 'laws'. I'm not holding my breath.

This is exactly why 'piracy' is such a good thing. Before, when there were tollbooths before all the artists of the world, we could only really sample the delights of a few. Now, there's no where on earth most of us could afford to pay for all the content we consume. How can we be convinced that it is GOOD to be able to only taste a tiny fraction of what is out there? The Big Music enforced tollbooths are a plague of this planet, and it is PIRACY, resolving the contradictions of digital content in the age of private property, that is the cure.