fnid2

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/187998/row-offset-in-ms-s...

What if it creates lots of little holes all around the area and the oil continues to leak. Now you have a bigger problem on your hands -- stopping lots of leaks a mile below the surface instead of just one.

I'd like to make it clear that I believe piracy is stealing.

Funny how the most upvoted comment here has pretty much nothing to do with the premise of the article. This community is going down hill rapidly...

I used to click on the discussions first to see what people were saying related to the article, but now I just come in and click on the articles and more and more I'm not even doing that because everything is about flash, facebook, apple or google.

pg, you say you are spending your time on thoughts to make the community remain great, but whatever you are doing isn't working... I wonder if this type of degradation is inevitable when the masses invade... Maybe it's time for a functional programming flood...

You have no idea of what I have an idea. Why do conversations here seem to degrade into "You don't know what you're talking about?" Or as camperbob puts it, "Clearly you've thought a lot about this?"

bit sharing and open source are two topics that are so religious around here. This community has a huge axe to grind against powerful organizations who have profited off intellectual property. Why?

What exactly is so wrong about profiting off intellectual property? Software, music, movies?

Yes, when you download it. Specifically, when you acquire possession of the material. If you steal someone's money, but don't spend it, you still stole it.

It's not a victimless crime. The victim is the artist who should have received compensation for your acquisition of the material.

Some laws do outlive their relevance, but these laws are just as relevant today as they were when the printing press was invented or audio recording devices.

Guns made murder easier, but not more legal -- or more moral.

If you aren't paying for the music, you aren't paying for the production. If you were paying for the production, you'd pay what the artists' time was worth to create it, the studio time to record it, the post production editing...

But you'd never pay that much. That's why the artists/record labels/whoever spreads out that cost over all the copies of the of the recording. Then they account for risk, some cash to reinvest, and profit.

When you buy a book, you aren't paying for production either. Nor when you buy a piece of art. Or watch a movie.

All this arguing on behalf of the people who think stealing music is okay is really immature. Everyone knows it is wrong and no one would want someone taking their livelihood away from them -- yet plenty of consumers argue, "oh, it's fine to 'pirate' music... because of yada yada"

Everyone knows it's not okay. It's not okay.

Look at the arguments you make:

  A) It's not stealing -- it's a copy
  B) Record labels deserve it
  C) Piracy is actually *good*!
  D) Everyone else is doing it!
  E) It's so easy!

If we have to stop calling equating it with stealing, then we also have to stop equating it with piracy, because pirates didn't make copies of the goods they stole either.

You're making the point that paying for content is good because it enables the artist to eat while concentrating on creating the content -- rather than some other task to earn money.

And no, record labels may not always be around in some form if they can't make money doing what they do.

It's called "checking out a book" or you could use the term "borrowing."

Look, this "it's not stealing" argument is a bunch of hog wash. If you think it isn't stealing because the "stolen" goods are simply a copy, why do you use the term "piracy"? Did pirates make a copy of the loot?

When you say someone is stealing music -- everyone knows what is happening. People use the same term with cable television -- they're stealing cable. It means they are enjoying the benefits of cable -- without paying the cable company.

You can use whatever term you want for the behavior -- we all know what it is and why it isn't right and it is just as wrong as stealing IMO.

No I didn't.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Everyone knows when you enter into a legal contract you should understand what the legal words mean or don't sign it.

I don't care about the major labels, what I care about is maintaining a social structure where creativity can be rewarded and the investment and time put into great quality intellectual products isn't wasted.

The reason no one uses Gimp is because the user interface is terrible. Photoshop kills gimp.

I know the motivation. They want it and they don't want to pay for it.

I'm saying that open office creators want you to use it for free. Creators of music do not want you to use it for free. They want to make some money that they can use to pay for rent and time to invest in more music. If you download a song, you are not entering into any product/consumer agreement.

There is a way, it's called the internet. They can put their music on their website and let paypal handle the transactions -- except people don't pay for it that way either and no one hears of the artist when they do...

I'd just do without. Just like I do without the latest version of photoshop or microsoft office. Instead, I use open office in a manner which its creators want me to use it.

The record labels never stole anything. They entered into agreements with the artists. They put cds in stores that consumers agreed to pay for.

How can people on your side, in one argument say it isn't stealing to copy music, but it is stealing to enter into an agreement whereby one party exchanges something (music) for something else (money) and all parties freely choose to do so?

I don't believe that two products are different simply because one is represented in bronze and the other in bits. No one would suggest it is okay to steal a bronze sculpture.

I've heard the arguments and when you take something without compensating the creator -- or otherwise rightful owner -- it's stealing. If you don't believe it is stealing because of some semantic argument, then it the effect is the same -- you're taking something of value without paying for it and harm is caused to the market in which that product exists because value is lost.

1) Informational copies aren't infinite, they take server space, electricity, and maintenance.

2) and more importantly, how do you overcome the hurdle that production itself requires resource consumption? Stuff at the lower level of Maslow's hierarchy: Food, Shelter?

Producing quality content requires investment. How is a producer of that content to get a return on that investment if people don't pay for the product after it is produced?

I agree that we should all produce and share, but not all sharers produce. Just because you have the bits on your hard drive does not mean the product those bits define are yours to share. Those bits are not simply bits, they are the definition of something that creates value. It takes risk to create the order of ones and zeros and if that risk is not rewarded, then the risk/reward ratio becomes too high and there is no incentive to take the risk to create the product.

I know that many people create for the love of the game, but those creators have to make money somehow. They have to have day jobs or something that distracts them from the many hours it takes to create quality content. If they could get paid for the content after it is produced, then they could spend more time creating more quality content for us to consume.

There was a quote from Ayn Rand about money where she describes money as a battery that stores labor so we can benefit from that labor over a longer time than it takes to perform the labor. Well, those bits are just like that. Bits are a battery that stores the labor required to create the order of bits. Content production is the opposite of entropy and to defeat entropy, we must take energy from outside the system. The artist in this metaphor is the closed system -- the artist's brain is the system that creates the content. The consumer is outside that system and must put energy into it in the form of food so that artist can use that energy to create order from a disordered set of random bits.

Money is that energy required to oppose entropy. Without a transfer of energy, there is no way to create order. Without order, there is no content. It's just white noise and consumers don't want that...

If consumers don't pay for the content, where will the energy to produce it come from?

If you are of that philosophical mindset, there is no rational argument that will change it. The florist may offer only 5 flowers so she can give more to more people and still charge a reasonable rate. Or maybe she only has 5 left.

If you think it's acceptable to go into someone's yard and pick the flowers they have spent money on for seeds, time designing the flower bed, water, fertilizer, weeding -- and then robbing them of the opportunity to benefit from the hard work they've put into it by seeing their flowers when they come home.

Well... what can I say to someone who thinks that is okay? It's not okay. If someone wants two cars and they can only afford one, is it okay for them to take your car out of your driveway?

Are you serious?

Extrapolate your philosophy to everyone in the world and tell me if you think it's a good one to live in. Do you think that would be a good world to live in? A world where people can just take whatever they want, simply because they want it? Without working for it? Without paying for it? Because that's the easiest way?

If every digital copy is charged the same as the old physical ones, the economic benefit of the internet's innovation is effectively obliterated.

No way! There is still a huge benefit to the internet. There's no plastic to pollute the environment. You don't have to leave home to get the movie. You can stream it from netflix or watch it on Hulu.

Available on the internet, doesn't mean it should be available for free. There are still costs for bandwidth, servers, and all the middlemen who put the pieces together so you can access it that way.

I don't think "that's the simplest way to get it" is a valid argument. The simplest way to get flowers is to pick them out of someone's flower bed, but we don't advocate that.

For me, it's more philosophical. Consumers need to some self control. We are consuming everything without conscience -- because that's the easiest way. It's easy to eat fish, so the oceans are going to run out. It's easy to consume oil, so the gulf is polluted. It's easy to bit torrent content so people do. But it does cause problems. Some people don't want their content consumed in that way.

To respond to some other commenters below, it doesn't matter if studies show only the middle men are hurt, middlemen are important for the distribution of content and much content wouldn't be known if it wasn't for the middlemen -- they need jobs too.

As for the argument that "people pay after they download it" -- that's simply not true. I know tons of people who download thousands of movies and redistribute them on limewire and never pay for a single one.

If you want to watch a movie and the only way to get it is to use netflix or blockbuster (both middle men) then go there and get it. If you can't get it there or you're too lazy to drive there or you don't subscribe to netflix, then don't watch the movie! Do something productive with your time. Control your desires to consume stuff you haven't supported.

The main supporter of the global warming ... scam really, also charges thousands of dollars to crowds of people who want to give his talk to others. He is the manager of a hedge fund investing billions in "green" technology. He is one of the most powerful people in the world, even almost becoming president once. His talks are full of inaccuracies and in-congruent cause/effect relationships.

If he was serious about his cause, he'd be encouraging people to move away from coasts. Instead, he encourages them to invest in the products and companies he's already holding.

I was searching for some legitimate software the other day and a link to the pirate bay came up on google. I was shocked.

As a producer of software and content including movies and pics, I am also shocked that websites like this find so much support from this community. I believe producers of content should be able to reap rewards for that production.

It takes time, energy, passion, dedication, and practice to create something of value. These products are of value if someone is downloading them and filling up hard drives.

The people supporting the copyright violations the pirate bay support, don't also support piracy off the coast of Somalia or theft of hard drives to store those songs. The argument is that bits aren't property.

But those bits are the mechanism that supports the creators of the content that has improved their lives throughout the years. If you don't believe that -- take all your lines of code, databases and photos and delete them. How much will it cost you to replace them?

I know I am in the minority around here, but I am not a supporter of the pirate bay. I acquire the content I consume legally and legitimately and in a manner consistent with how the producers have agreed that content should be consumed. Anything less would violate the golden rule. I don't want people using the software I create without helping me pay the bills.

More like division into zero right? If it was by zero, then there'd be no engineers and an undefined supply of jobs.

But more to the point, there are lots of ways to be technically engaged. Elance, guru.com, hireacoder kind of places need technical people and they don't care where you are.

The startup phase into a life style like that (this), can be long and arduous, but also something you can do in your spare time. Point is, if you want to be in a rural area and still have your fingers in technical stuff, there are avenues to that -- the internet.

That's the beauty of the internet. You can do almost anything technical from anywhere, like the main post to this thread... Lots of people, myself included, do. When I talk to my clients/customers, they're always like, "Where are you now?" It's awesome.

You know, when you boil it all down, most things in life are about the approval process. Money has become the defacto standard for approval. If the FDA requires millions of dollars to be approved, then the people, law, and pharmacies believe that organization getting approval must be approve worthy.

If you are a guy in a shed with a couple thousand bucks and a cancer cure, ... hmm... you're just a guy in a shed. If you were smart enough to cure cancer, obviously you'd have more than a couple thousand bucks -- right?

So that's how society works. A series of gate keepers who have become persuasive enough to acquire "convincing wealth". Wealth is all you need to convince others that whatever you have and whatever you may have in the future is worth buying into, either in thought, or as a product. Many times, this convincing is as easy as an advertisement on television or some clever lawyers who can figure out that all you have to do is change the name of your product and market it to another segment to extend your patent.

You imply that works of geniuses should be noticed, but geniuses are so esoteric, rare, and difficult to understand that most wouldn't notice. Since the majority of people don't care about what geniuses care about, it's unlikely they'll appreciate it enough to link to it. If they do link to it, then it's "they" are probably a very small population of people, maybe a handful of other geniuses themselves.

The google page rank algorithm is designed in such a way that the work of geniuses should go unnoticed. Pagerank is designed for the masses. For the masses of consumers specifically.

Google is not designed for the geniuses. It's designed for people who want what everyone else wants.

In the beginning, when google was a tool used primarily by geniuses, then geniuses were the community. They were the masses that used google. Their algorithms now pick selections from a new community. Bloggers who can copy/paste. Bloggers with lots of friends who will link to their posts because the friends are asked to and because other friends reciprocate.

Google doesn't know if you are linking to a web page because you like the web page or because someone who built the web page asked you to link to it or because you are getting paid.

And google doesn't care.

I work remotely with people on different continents, so I think they don't need to be local. Probably isn't going to be a local person because I live in a rural area with few technical/business people anyway.

I use gotomeeting / phone and skype to work remotely with people.

Nothing serious or too time consuming. More in line with "every piece of software can be made better."

Here's what's done: The data model is built, online forms to enter the data, reporting, an easy to administer setup system and accept new clients, easy integration with paypal subscription. It's a multi-tenant system, so we can have lots of companies sign up and it's fairly easy to add new customers. It can also be packaged as a "behind the firewall" system. It's also built on a flexible platform in case the clients want to add fields or modify the application to suit their needs. There's a rest-like interface for integration into existing information systems the clients may already be using. Tons of security setups for multiple groups and who which information they can view or enter. It works on mobile devices so client reps can enter data while out on the road. Lots of pharmaceutical sales people will love this capability.

What still needs to be done is setting up the brochure site to sell the product. Create a blog and start adding content to get people involved. I've bought a great domain name that will help with SEO. There's also some aesthetic stuff like gradients and moving form fields around, but this can be done with drag and drop.

It's ready now to do a demo for clients. My thought is put up a brochure site where potential customers can sign up for a webinar and we can walk them through the site and how it works. It's not very complicated really.

More work from the business side would be finding the decision makers and approaching them. Someone with a Rolodex would be very beneficial to the team.

I suspect the SaaS could sell for between $2,000 and $5,000 a month. Behind the firewall systems on the order of $50,000 + maintenance fees.