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Comment Liberation (Score 2) 515

You can't liberate people by forcing, or coercing them, into thinking the same way that you do. People who buy closed systems do so of their own free will, for reasons that might be more important to them they are to you. They do it in spite of reasons that may be more important to you than they are to them. True liberty is about respecting the choices of others, and allowing everyone access to a variety of options so that they may choose which is most suitable for them. If you want people to choose your option, make it as attractive to them as the options presented by the people you oppose. Don't blame others for presenting options that you disagree with.

Comment Re:Gary Johnson is not really third party (Score 2) 349

Your citation is here: http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/coalitions/choice
The fact that you even needed a citation for that doesn't speak well about how much you now about the candidate you are talking about. Remember, the OP said GARY JOHNSON is not a third party. There are some pro-life libertarians. I am not talking about them.

Gary Johnson IS for gay marriage. So are many other libertarian candidates. Marriage is a contract. Government should not be in the business of telling people who they can and cannot enter into a contract with. Your claims that Ron Paul only wants government out of marriage for tax breaks needs a citation. Ron Paul doesn't want ANY income tax, so it seems a bit strange that he'd be pushing a position just to increase someone's tax burden.

Yes Ron Paul is anti-war. You are again distorting both Ron's views, and the libertarian party's views with no citation. The same with your claim that everything is a fiscal issue. Personal liberty is a HUGE part of the libertarian platform, as the other reply to your comment has mentioned.

Comment Re:Gary Johnson is not really third party (Score 5, Informative) 349

How many pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-religion in government, anti-war Republicans do you know? Libertarians may be to the right of Republicans on fiscal issues, but they are to the left of Democrats on social issues. Even Cenk Uygur, as progressive as he is, remarked how much further left Johnson was on many issues than most Democrats. There are some libertarian leaning Republicans, but the RNC showed us all exactly what the GOP thinks of that faction of their membership.

Comment The bigger problem with the media. (Score 1) 571

It seems that more people know what Paul Ryan's classmates thought of him than know who Libertarian VP candidate Jim Gray is, or Libertarian POTUS candidate Gary Johnson. Regardless of your views on Libertarians, it has to be considered an atrocity that the public isn't informed on all of the candidates who have a mathematical chance of winning the election. To me, that's a bigger concern about the media than what insignificant details they are squabbling over.

Comment Re:Publishers (Score 1) 567

No you didn't fix it. He said profits, not income. Unless you think that the record companies are getting 100% of the money from iTunes sales, or that record stores sell records out of the kindness of their own hearts, and pass 100% of the sales price back to the labels. It amazes me how many people complain about Apple's 30%, as if it is the worst thing to happen to the industry, when it actually it is better than the amount gotten back from brick and mortar stores. As a software developer, I am much happier with my 70% of the pie than I would be if I had to go through separate publishing, distribution, and sales channels and be lucky to get 10-15% off of my work.

Comment Re:They still don't get it. (Score 1) 663

This argument becomes less convincing when you consider how many people pirate mobile apps. It's far more convenient to just pay your $0.99 and get the app from an official outlet than it is to pirate it. But there is still plenty of piracy. I don't think you can make the argument that people can't afford $0.99, or that (most) mobile software isn't worth less than the cost of a soda. I'm not saying that I've never pirated anything in my life. Most of the time it's because I can't afford it. Sometimes it's because I want to see a movie but don't have a car and can't get to theaters. But I do not represent everyone who does this sort of thing, and neither do you. Some people are just dirt cheap. And defending all of them based on your rationale for doing something isn't really helpful. Changes in the way companies think is going to come form open, HONEST, discussion. It seems that neither side is willing to do that, and both sides are simply pointing fingers at one another.

Comment Re:oh my word (Score 1) 231

When I read the article, it was 7 pages. 2 on the first page and then 3 on the remaining 6 pages. I'm assuming you read the whole thing since you made it to the mimeograph machine, so maybe they changed it since you did. Still kind of annoying, but not as bad as you made it out to be. Also, unless he records all of the sounds himself, he's kinda stuck dealing with whatever he can find out youtube. Although I will give you the mimeograph one, it was hard to hear the machine over the music, so that one should have been omitted.

Comment Agency model not new. (Score 1) 352

The Justice Dept. is suing Apple and publishers over the agency model, claiming that it keeps prices artificially high. However, app stores have been using the agency model since the iPhone came out, and mobile software has never been cheaper. Any time indies are allowed to enter a market and set realistic prices, prices over all will eventually drop. If there was any basis at all for this lawsuit then it would still cost me $5 to get Monopoly on my mobile phone.

Comment Re:Who Watches the Coastguard? (Score 1) 71

I don't need to go back in time. I regularly speak to my 91-year-old grandmother, who is absolutely fine with all of that.

You have a revisionist view of history. It's not like being gay or rebellious is a new thing, our grandparents were once young and did these things, too.

If you think that homosexuals were accepted as well 70 years ago as they are today then I am not the one with revisionist history. The key word in social media is media. In your grandparents day, that would have been radio and early television. I don't see a lot of openly gay characters on the Dick Van Dyke show or I Love Lucy. As society changed, they began to appear in media. The younger generation grew up with more exposure to it, so it wasn't as big of a deal. The new youth is going to grow up with differing views of privacy than we had. Facebook won't be a NEW concept to them. This notion of having all of your pictures shown to anyone won't be something that they have to come to terms with, or learn to deal with. It will be something that they already have come to terms with and already have learned to deal with.

And if the majority of your acquaintances are running around shunning people because they wear the wrong color or sing off key, then it's your world that I question. Not mine. Does that sort of thing happen? Sure, I guess. But only among the infinitely small minded, and only on issues that don't really matter to anything, such as who is going to win the next episode of whatever flavor of the month reality show is on at the time.

Comment Re:Who Watches the Coastguard? (Score 1) 71

Scandalous photos aren't new, but social networks that make them a click away are. In order to see my grandparents drunken party photos, I would have had to sneak into their bedroom, rifle through their closet, and rummage through a stack of printed photos. As people's craziness becomes more and more exposed to the public eye, it will become more of a non-issue. If you don't believe me, go back in time and ask your grandparents how they feel about gays getting married, couples living together out of wedlock, or any other activity that was once never talked about and is now common place.

Comment Re:Who Watches the Coastguard? (Score 1) 71

In fifteen years, we're not going to have D's and R's in congress any more, but not because things will have improved. Instead, we're going to have the whomever the hell Mark Zuckerberg feels like keeping drunk party pictures under wraps for party...

Either that, or the next generation, having grown up around social media, will realize that everyone has drunken party pics or embarrassing costume party pics, or what have you and it will no longer be an issue.

Comment Android Market Problems (Score 5, Interesting) 614

I tried to read all of the posts to see if someone else mentioned it, but didn't see one that did. Aside from the problems with Google Checkout not being widespread, there is a huge problem with the functionality of the market. At least once a month I get an email from someone that says they bought my app but the download would not complete. They demand their money back from me. This is annoying for two reasons. One, it is entirely possible that their order was never charged. If you look over your checkout account, there are several attempted purchases every single day that didn't go through. It happened to a friend of mine that tried to purchase one of my apps, and I know there was money on his debit card. This is a lot of money in lost sales. The second reason it is annoying is because I am being wrongly blamed for Google's incompetence. When customers complain to me that an app they purchased wasn't downloaded, it is the equivalent of buying a PS3 off of Amazon and complaining to Sony that Amazon never shipped it. I've never once gotten a support email from an iOS user about the same issue. And over a two year period there have been dozens from Android users. Google also has MUCH less developer support than Apple does. They simply do not care about us or our opinions. Period. They seem to view the market as an after thought as well. Why should I make them my primary platform under those circumstances?

Comment Re:No apps? RIM's fault. (Score 1) 341

Speaking as an iPhone, Android developer who looked into Blackberry, I can say that there was that fee. The $200 "bought" you 10 app reviews. After that you had to spend another $200 to get another 10 reviews. The same can be said of feature phone makers like Nokia that, until recently, required you to have 3rd party signing that costs quite a bit of money while Apple and Google where doing it for free. But in the end, Blackberry still relies heavily on J2ME. They extended the platform enough to be a smart phone years ago. In fact, to practically invent the term. But they have been surpassed and failed to keep up with the times. The days when cell phone software went for $4.99 have came and gone. It is sad for developers. But RIM and feature phone makers adapted very slowly to taking the initial investment out of creating apps. And in the process they were surpassed in profitability by app stores with a smaller barrier to entry. I'm not going to pay more to make less. You either roll with the punches or you get knocked out by them. Nokia offers free signing now, and Blackberry is now free as well. The difference is that J2ME is still fine for feature phone development. Blackberry needs to give developers closer access to the metal, and to provide a much higher level of development tools than they are currently offering if they want to remain a smart phone competitor. As it is now, they are sort of the bridge between feature phones and smart phones. QNX was a good start, forcing us to develop in Actionscript was a bad lead off to that good start.

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