If only Consolas wasn't a M$ product. Or to put it the way I really think, if only Consolas was open source...Since it's not, I use Liberation Mono on a big screen and Droid Sans Mono at home.
If Opera would open up their code, I'd dump Firefox like a bag of rocks.
Oh, the only other thing FF is great for is web development: Firebug is irreplaceable (although I haven't yet used Opera's DragonFly). For every day browsing, though, I run a FF profile without Firebug--it drags Google Aps (reader and gmail) down too much, so I'm sure I could get by just using it when I'm coding.
People download and distribute music out of greed or convenience.
I agree.
But if an author creates and publishes a work in part due to the incentive of a copyright, then he was greedy; a copyright is merely a way to make money, after all. If he was incentivized wholly by other reasons, then he doesn't deserve a copyright, as it would be a wasteful restriction on the public to grant him one.
Both sides act out of greed. There's nothing particularly wrong with this.
That has nothing to do with the development of Mankind.
I disagree.
First, the more widespread a work is, the more likely it is to survive in the long term. Many books only survived to the present day because they were widely copied. Many of those copies were destroyed by accident or deliberately. So long as at least one survived to be copied again, however, the work lived on. Sadly, many works did not survive; languages died out, libraries were burned down, paper rotted away, and often we're lucky just to know some of the titles of these works that were part of the development of mankind, which were lost forever.
Second, society benefits immeasurably by having more works created and published, and by having works which are free for anyone to obtain and use as they like, including at no cost. I think we can agree that the ideal world would be one in which everyone who wanted to create and publish works could, and anyone who wanted to read those works, and possess copies, and make their own versions or adaptations or translations could. Everyone could have all or at least most of human knowledge at their fingertips, for free, ready to be used to make some more. Realistically, we can't have this. But we can strive for it at least.
Copyright is basically amoral. It's a purely utilitarian system. But if there is any morality, it is on the side of the pirates, who use and spread knowledge, and not on the side of the copyright holders, who seek to restrict access and use of their works for mere money.
one of several significant stimulus points
There are actually quite a few. For those that don't know them, here's a good list of the 4 I've learned of
Why do you need to multimedia dock to use its alarm function? It comes w/ an alarm clock app. I've been using it as an alarm clock for a few weeks.
It's cut and dry
i 3'd omni. the scifi stories were awesome (like gravity's angel about the SSC) and i still keep a bunch of issues lying around.
It was midichlorians. Happy now?
The sheer number of book available is mindblowingly gigantic. The number of people making a living by WRITING this material is abysmally small. Example: a friend of mine just wrote the Illinois book in a series on good tent camping in Illinois. He'll be lucky to break even on the endeavor. Which isn't to say he didn't enjoy the process and isn't glad he did it, just that a lack of monetary reward wouldn't change his mind one way or another about writing the Indiana version (ok, granted, somebody's going to have to reimburse for Indiana due to the stupid Hoosier entry tax on state parks).
In any case, the parent is correct--we can only hope that piracy undercuts the razor thin margins that are shoring up the book industry. We don't need more of that crap. I feel as bad for the publishing execs (the only people making money on the crap production) losing their jobs as I about the RIAA execs. Let's get our signs out for the protest: "No bail out for the leaders of the Crap Production Industry."
Thin crispy crust can really only be cut in triangles
Not true--here in central Illinois, we often cut our thin crust pizza in a grid. This is proven to be a superior method of slicing pizza (citation needed), but only works on moderately crispy, thin crust pizza that doesn't need a handle like deep dish does.
Buying a nook is not buying a 3G wireless data connection to the internet. It's buying a 3G wireless data connection to buy B&N ebooks. Hack the hardware all you want, but if you use that hardware to get a service you haven't paid for, that's just like stealing TV.
Mod parent up. When somebody changes my mind with two sentences, they deserve to be heard.
Note that he's NOT saying, "it's like stealing A television", he's saying it's like stealing cable from your neighbor. It may or may not be stealing, but I have a hard time figuring out how it'd be unethical.
All said, I think the question is whether or not the contract says you're only going to B&N.com or whatever.
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
