Hamartiogonic

I guess people downvoting you are thinking of Brother printers, AMD graphics cards and Intel WiFi cards. Sure, it’s great when you have the right hardware, but what if you don’t. I’ve banged my head against Optimus and Broadcom, until I learned to be extra picky when buying a laptop.

What about when a talented comedian speaks in the voice of someone else? Should we just write a law that humans are allowed to do it, but machines aren’t?

Maybe it’s time people start taking their business elsewhere to show they are not satisfied with this deal.

What’s wrong with the current UV tubes? Sure, the smaller ones take about 5-10 W to get the job done, so maybe an LED version would be more efficient. If you’re using UV to keep a massive pool clean, then you’re obviously going to be need more of those bulbs, and they can add up to hundreds of watts quite easily. Is that really a big problem though? Having a pool isn’t cheap, so electricity spent on UV probably isn’t going to be your main concern. Making it cheaper is always welcome, but are UV tubes really that big of a problem?

Imagine if there was a law for making the contracts easier to understand.

1. We’ll spy on you and sell your data to the highest bidder.
2. When something goes wrong, it’s your fault.
3. You can’t blame us.
4. No money back.
5. When in doubt, we do what Darth Vader would do.

Sign here: _______

Come to think of it, slot machines do tell you quite clearly how bad the odds really are, but people still dump their money on them. Why can’t we have similar honesty and clarity when it comes to contracts.

Meanwhile, the EU is crafting all sorts of consumer protection laws just like the member countries have been doing long before even joining the union.

Then again, it is traditional to hang pirates.

Source: Pirated pirate movies

It’s nice that they made the distinction between regular theft and theft of services. The harm associated with them isn’t the same, so it would make sense to treat them differently. However, I still think that describing free-riding as a theft of any kind is a bit too harsh.

This is a very tricky subject, because determining the value of entertainment is highly subjective. One song might be nothing more than background music to you, but it could be a life changing experience to someone else.

Performing music, theater, circus or something else is in the simpler end of the spectrum, but recordings changed everything. If I come up with a new song and perform it in a club, a one time compensation seems fair. If I record it, that’s when things get messy, and I don’t have a clean answer to those situations.

If I have to draw the line somewhere, I would say it’s fair that the artist gets compensated as long as they’re alive. It’s difficult to compare a recording to other types of transactions, because it’s just so different. Physical recordings are straightforward, but digital ones can get complicated due to how easy it is to copy them.

Nurses working night shifts is a good example of a situation where the compensation does not accurately reflect the importance of the work. How did we even end up in a situation like this? Maybe supply and demand just doesn’t always lead to a fair outcome, or maybe the government didn’t support the right parts of the economy. I really don’t know, but this situation needs to be fixed urgently.

Your idea of decoupling consumption and support is a really interesting one. It seems pretty good, but the more I think about it the more I feel like it might not be sustainable. Every time you watch your favorite movie, you’re getting some unquantifiable amount of entertainment out of it. As long as you feel like you’re getting something, shouldn’t you give something in return? If donations through Patreon were the only way for artists to get money, I don’t think we would have very many high quality movies, series, albums, paintings or sculptures.

Companies change the contracts all the time and customers just agree to them.

Consumer protection would help, so maybe it’s time to start voting for the people who support it.

Here’s my risky comment of the day.

I think piracy isn’t like stealing, but it’s still wrong in some interesting and nuanced ways. Just so you know, I’m in no position to judge people for pirating, because I’ve done my fair share of sailing the high seas. However, I would still like to discuss the ethical aspects of piracy and how it compares with stealing.

IMO, calling it stealing is completely wrong, but free-riding or trespassing could be more suitable words for this. Obviously, the movie industry would love to compare it with the most severe crime they can come up with, but they certainly have financial incentives behind that reasoning. I’m looking at it from a more neutral perspective.

Stealing has clear and direct harm associated with it, whereas the effects of piracy are more subtle and indirect. Free-riding a bus or sneaking into a circus (AKA trespassing) are somewhat similar, but there’s clear indirect harm. If you watch a football match from the outside of the fence, it’s probably still considered free-riding, but I would put that into a completely different category. IMO it’s also closer to piracy than the other examples.

Most pirates shouldn’t be counted as lost customers, so the argument about depriving the creator of their rightful income is only partially correct. If pirating wasn’t possible, but paying for the movie was, vast majority of these people would prefer to do something else like, go outside and play football with friends. To some extent, piracy still does reduce the demand for the pirated material, so there’s an indirect harm associated with it, and that’s what makes it unethical IMO. Still not wrong enough that I would stop doing it, especially considering what the alternatives are. Again, I have no moral high ground in this situation, and I’m willing to call my own actions unethical. You can call yours whatever you want.

Sodium batteries would be a welcome change. Solid state batteries are another interesting technology that looks promising.