Not that you aren't right to avoid pirated software, but I'd love to see your data on this. As it turns out, the pirate scene is big on reputation and cred, which can only be obtained with quick, clean releases. Anyone spreading malware with their cracks is basically done before they start.

I agree with you almost entirely, but there is a wide difference between "you should at least carefully consider what you are doing" and "we should eliminate all of culture".

That's where we get into some shady areas. For one, if it's an environmental difference, but only in the American population in 2008, it doesn't even come close to proving that men are better at it (although you might get away with the statement that, currently in the United States men are better at 3D perceptualisation, so long as the rest of the conditions I listed have been filled, but that's a vastly different statement). Similarly, an environmental distance, even in a worldwide study, from 1970 would be worthless now except as a historical view.

Secondly, if it shows to be a strictly environmental distance, especially one caused because of an environment negative towards women (such as constantly saying that women are bad at driving), then the continuation of jokes of women being bad at driving and the notion that science has proven it okay would be, not only mistaken, but also setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy that I'm not really okay with.

So, yes, the difference between environment or inheritance is a big deal here, even though your first sentence is strictly correct.

Unfortunately, my uni library doesn't seem to have a copy on hand. However, I do have access to just about every journal ever, so if you could just cite the studies that this book references, I'd love to check them out.

I'm amazed by how your brain leaped from "Do we want our culture to be degrading to women?" to "We should have no culture." Is that really what that post said to you?

Really now? Can you link me to a few unbiased studies the topic with statistically significant sample sizes and shows results of men having, not only higher scores, but statistically significantly higher scores? I assume, of course, that you also have available the justification for why we can trust the tests to be testing purely for 3d perceptualisation, without testing for additional unrelated factors (such as how well you can decipher difficult instructions, a common additional factor in such tests). And I also trust that these studies have properly isolated for sex, ensuring that additional factors such as training and practice in related skills or a lifetime of "you can do anything" vs. "oh, you're just a girl" have no bearing on the final results?

I'll be rather impressed if you can show me any such study. Now, I'll be the first to admit that not all people are created equal and that it is quite possible that people of different sexes and genders and races and sexual orientations have some amount of differences. However, I think you'll find that most of these studies in these topics are entirely inconclusive after you consider all of the factors surrounding them.

It's also worth noting the striking parallels to the number of 19th century studies "proving" that black people were strictly inferior to white people. Confirmation bias can prove anything, as it turns out.

Did you warn them when autocomplete wouldn't autocomplete pornographic searches? Because that's been happening for a while, and nobody cares.

What I want to know is when discrimination became an inherently dirty word. It's meaning is simple: to draw a distinction between things. As a programmer, I need to be able to discriminate between a language that might be good for NLP (say, Lisp) and one that might be good for making a game (say, C++). As an eater, I need to be able to discriminate delicious foods (a rare steak) and foods that might kill me (peanuts). As a drinker, I need to be able to discriminate between a good drink (Johnnie Walker Black Label) and piss-in-a-can (Bud Light).

But as soon as I start talking about people, discrimination is dirty. But you don't mind if we discriminate between men and women and give them separate (but equal! (sometimes)) bathroooms. You don't mind if we discriminate between children (compulsory education) and senior citizens (receiving social security). You even don't mind if we discriminate between white people (most US presidents) and a black guy (Obama, The First Black President).

Now, I'm not saying that this means black people should sit in the back of the bus or be banned from various restaurants. There are bad types of discrimination, too. But you can't just hide behind that word as if it proves that something is wrong. Teenage boys driving muscle cars pay more for their insurance than 40-something soccer moms driving mini vans because they are more likely to have damages. You and I have both been genetically "blessed" to be a little large, so we both impose more fuel costs on the airlines. There is no good reason they shouldn't charge us more except for the fact that the population would get upset over this "discrimination".

I really don't see what you're getting at at all....

Do you want me to look at the pirates' side of the game? It doesn't change, regardless of how the MPAA plays.

Do you want me to look at the pirates as first movers? That doesn't make any sense.

Do you want me to try to minimise profits for the MPAA? That doesn't make sense in terms of them wanting to do well, but it at least would make sense for why they are continuing on as they are.

Do you want me to look at the MPAA seeing eliminating piracy as better than making profits? The game presented here still remains unchanged as far as the pirates are concerned, though the MPAA's new strategy is to stop creating anything.

So, to be blunt, what the hell do you mean?

I think you are missing the point entirely. I specifically stated that I wasn't trying to argue that the pirates are justified, and yet you're responding as if I had. I just said that the copyright system was broken, and that your statement had exemplified how and why it was broken. Now, I know I did state that the copyright holders were a bigger problem than the pirates, but I was not doing this from the standpoint that pirates were not a problem, nor that the copyright holders were losing themselves more money, nor anything else where your response would have made sense.

Look at this from a game theoretical perspective (yeah, I'm one of those). The MPAA moves first and they can either sell the movie in a cheap and convenient format or not. If they do not, they get no profit from it and then the pirates get the option to put the movie on file sharing sites or not. We have proven that they will by the fact that this is the state we're in. Now, say the MPAA does sell the movie in a cheap and convenient format online. They start making money from this (I know I'd certainly purchase cheap, high-quality, DRM-free movies if the MPAA let me). The pirates then, again, put the movie on file sharing sites, doing exactly what they're doing now.

So, the MPAA, knowing how the pirates will move, have two options. They can continue not selling cheap, convenient movies and make 0 profit or they can start selling them and start making some non-zero profit. The rest of the game doesn't change a smidge.

There is a stark difference between a parent setting such rules for their children and a state doing it on their behalf, and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best.

This attitude here is how we got where we are today. Copyright law was intended to promote culture by creating a temporary artificial monopoly as an incentive to create new things, which would, after a short and reasonable time, become the property of the public. Notice how that term is no longer short and reasonable and how the only works newer than the 1920s to enter into public domain have been only done so by specific requests of the authors (and rarely, at that) and you'll notice exactly how the system is broken. Now, I'm not here to root for the pirates (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't root for them at least somewhat in general), but it's clear that the copyright owners refusing to adapt are a far larger problem than the pirates.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but copies of high quality DRM-free movies are already available on every file sharing site. It's not as if the MPAA offering the same would change anything with regards to that. But it would offer them a way to get a slice of the potential profits here, from the people who pirate just because they think $20 is too much for a film, or the ones who want to watch a film now and don't want to wait or whatever.