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My comments

• Agreed
  Why do people think that such attacks work? Most of all ad hominem attacks on Windows users. They certainly don't on me. All you end up doing is making Windows users defensive and angry.

  October 17, 2006

  1 reply

• The REAL Question Is...
  If you blow up the tanker, does the game still intone "Terrorists Win"?
  
  It *must* say something funny like "Holy Forces of Allah Are Victorious". And replace all references to the "Counter-Terrorists" with "Forces of the Great Satan" before I'll even be interested. Anything less than that gets a "n00b" rating for effort from me.

  October 4, 2006

  0 replies

• Woo.
  Then we have to pay for FireFox and Opera to be shipped to stores, for getting shelf space, and producing the CD's themselves. Glee.

  September 19, 2006

  0 replies

• But...
  Why do that when you could make Windows N!

  September 18, 2006

  0 replies

• Hehee!
  Don't you feel that its ironic at all to say other people live in fear when you seem to be living in fear of the police? I did. Just, FYI. Message got kinda garbled there.
  
  At any rate, here is what the 4th Ammendment to the Constitution says:
  "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
  
  You seem to be saying that running a license plate without probable cause is a violation of that?

  September 18, 2006

  0 replies

• Actually...
  Ok, I don't think the photograph is a good analogy. But lets say I'm a freelance photographer. I take pictures and sell them to some distributors. If someone copies my pictures without me being paid for it and puts it on the internet for free (or sells it first), have I lost something?
  
  Well, yeah. I've expended time and resources to obtain a photograph (opportunity cost) for nothing. Before this, I could count the photograph as an asset I could exchange for something else. This is my livelihood. Now I can't because its already plastered all over. I'd have to count on someone paying me for it anyway, or sue the news agencies that used the illegitimate copy.
  
  Heck, here's a good one. Is money a physical asset? Counterfeiters have been making illicit copies of money for a long time. They don't deprive anyone else of money... Until they exchange their bills for authentic ones or some other goods. This situation just moves that one to a further remove. Instead of a counterfeiter screwing someone out of something, two parties are screwing a third out of what they were supposed to receive.

  September 12, 2006

  0 replies

• Yeah, exactly.
  Thats why you pay for PhotoShop and you don't pay for the GIMP.

  September 12, 2006

  0 replies

• A Program is a Physical Asset.
  What is this idea that a Program isn't a physical asset? I guess all the physical assets that Adobe had to expend to create it all went into some kind of black hole, in which the product of the work of their employees became non-physical and totally theoretical in some way?
  
  People seem to be focused on "ideas" and "copies". What you seem to be ignoring is that PhotoShop and other graphics suites represent more than some collection of ideas. It is also all the labor that had to be put in by developers employed by Adobe (or whomever). Everyone could go find out the theory behind a Gaussian Blur, probably on Wikipedia or MathWorld or something. But that, by itself, has no application.
  
  You're going to have to take that 'idea' and implement it in some language (via another program probably, gasp, licensing costs loom). Then you're going to need to give it some way to load up an image that you want to edit. So you're going to have to implement ways to read images off the hard drive in different formats maybe. Plus ways to write them back if you want them to be compressed to GIF or PNG maybe. Then you're going to have to bring all of this together so that it makes sense and is easy to use. Lets not forget compiling and debugging (so you'll need a compiler and if you want to be more effecient maybe a debugger of some kind). It isn't an idea anymore, its an implementation. Which takes work.
  
  I can't really steal the idea of a matrix deformation for a graphic. What I could steal would be Adobe's implementation of that algorithm so that it is easily accessible, or easy to use in a GUI environment. If you take an illegitimate copy of Adobe PhotoShop, you are definitely stealing Adobe's implementation of whatever algorithms they've included. Copy or not. It is Adobe's copy.
  
  If you want a free copy of Adobe PhotoShop, why not go out and reimplement those algorithms into your own interface? Apparently, producing PhotoShop didn't require any PHYSICAL ASSETS for Adobe. So it ought to be a breeze for you too, right?

  September 11, 2006

  3 replies

• We'll know soon.
  Once Second Life has made an astoundingly unpopular change and the articles start comparing other games to "pre-trammel" or "pre-cu" Second Life, we'll know for sure. ;-)

  September 5, 2006

  0 replies

• That's what I've been wondering.
  I mean really now, the way their spokesperson comes across to me is the reverse of what Linux was supposed to stand for, right?
  
  Over all, not really concerned though. When these kids are looking for jobs, who knows what they'll be using. Ten years after that? Gads, what was big in 1986? There isn't really any point in worrying about what OS interface you end up learning because sooner or later you're going to need to learn to use a different one. Better, more than one.
  
  If this was an economic decision it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. What is weird is the message that comes along with it. Even if you don't like Microsoft's actions and market position, it seems like people should be willing to learn and use Windows if that is what they need to do in their field for whatever reason. The only thing that is screwy here is trying to instill children with a disinclination to Windows because Microsoft makes it.

  September 1, 2006

  1 reply