Posts by h4rm0ny582 posts • joined Saturday 26th July 2008 17:37 GMT
"await the moment firefox will come w/ installed (and configured) adblocker, easily winning the fastest browser award."
Mozilla is substantially funded by Google. You may have a long wait before the mainline releases of Firefox come with ad-block built in.
That's all kinds of wrong and long-term would do more harm to Facebook's share price than most other legal actions by an individual could. Note, I don't think you'd need to do that part where you buy some FB shares youself. Isn't that just wasting money?
I can tell the difference up until close to the 320kbps mark. Maybe with some Classical music that is big on strings I can still tell the difference. Beyond that, I can't really tell the difference between comparable formats. I.e. difference between a 320kbps and a FLAC, v. hard to tell the difference and with most recordings I don't think I could. Difference between either of those and something that kicks in my Dolby system (i.e. non-comparable sound formats), I can obviously tell the differences.
"Can you point a single moment in F***book history (or web 2.0 history for that matter) when users were not perceived as a cash cow and their private life was not perceived as a "monetizable item"."
Well, up until now, users have mostly been OFFERED as s monetizable item, i.e. FB has gotten big by the potential others thought they had. Now, with so much investor money flooded in and people expecting to get something in return, FB will be expected to DELIVER on their supposed potential. So yes, people have been the product all along, but now people have handed over money, they may expect that product to be made more use of.
Wow! Six thumbs down just for saying I've had good experiences with their support. I wasn't offering empirical proof that they are beyond all reproach or anything. Stories like this always provide an opportunity for people who are pissed off with company X to leap in and tell their stories of woe. And that's fine for them to do so. But just because someone has always had really good experiences with them that's reason to object to their post?
I have used Pipex for some years and I have to say I have always found their support levels very good. No, I'm not affiliated with them in any way. But I have called them up with a problem at gone 10:00pm at night (as a small business customer) and got straight through to someone who was able to look into the problem and assist.
I think there's a greater chance of producing Leeloo from Fifth Element. She was supposed to have all the vital information encoded in her DNA, was she not?
Latency may be slow, but it's a lot of fun...
"followed by self-righteous people telling everyone that has money to invest how dumb they are (while wishing they actually had money to invest)."
*Raises hand*
"Can anyone explain what happens when this really tanks like drops below 10 dollars a share? Any chance of them going out of business in two/three years? Or will it just drop to a certain point then limp along until they realise how they can make money from it?"
If Facebook don't have debts to pay off, which I don't think they do, then they can continue on even if the share price is low, so long as they are turning a profit. You ask a very good question. Low share price does not mean that Facebook will go out of business. But what it does is limit their options. Selling stock is a big way of raising capital. If the stock is not well valued, then they cannot make much money through that. Similarly, if the stock is not well valued, their options for borrowing are more limited. When we talk about their stock not being valued, we're really talking about their actual market capitalization. Ultimately, if the stock falls really low, it means that people don't think Facebook is a big business - no matter how many people use it or how high the brand recognition. And if they're a small business, then they are subject to takeovers and other market issues that big players shrug off through sheer size. Also, investors are going to be less tolerant of the board giving themselves nice big salaries and bonuses. Basically, it means that Facebook turns out to be just another run of the mill company along with numerous other corporations that are "just" worth a billion or whatever. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Baidu.. .they'll all just regard Facebook as another morsel. Given how much investors have paid for stock, who then see it devalue to <$10 (in your scenario), they would put a lot of pressure on the board to try and recoup their investment. A *lot* of pressure. If they think they could get a good price for FB, they might encourage takeovers.
So basically in answer to your question, if FB shares drop <$10, no that doesn't mean FB goes out of business. But it does mean that the market doesn't consider them a big player with all the limited credit, vulnerability, etc. that goes with that. Market Capitalization is your ability to go "Rarr" and have others jump.
"It is only possible to go long on this share option""
Seriously?!? :( How much more of a warning sign did small investors need?
P/E is now down to 74.1, but yes, that's still an insane ratio. Anything up in those regions is either the next greatest thing ever about to hit the big time, or a Dyson-sphere sized bubble. Guess which Facebook is...
"Actually - market has only been open for 25 minutes and the stock is already 2.42% up on it's opening price and increasing."
Yes, but each day so far has opened with a little rise on the day before where big players try various tricks agreed overnight to try and shore it up. And then it begins to sink. I predicted <$30 by the end of the month. I'm kind of alarmed to think I may actually have been wrong about that. It hit $31.02 yesterday and news of this lawsuit will NOT help.
People can follow the rollercoaster here:
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FB#symbol=fb;range=5d;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;
Greed is depressing.
Stupidity is also depressing.
An inflated sense of entitlement is really depressing.
How horrible is to see all three combined so seamlessly.
Unless you predicted this along with everyone else outside of those idiots looking to make a quick, unearned fortune and just find it all quite amusing. Suppose it depends on your point of view.
"Mines the one with EMEA economic outlook in the pocket."
What has Javascript to do with this?
Unless something has radically changed, then I'm pretty certain that an MS product licence for the USA will be valid for the same product in Europe and that this situation will not change. MS cannot tie their customers to a particular national alliegiance. There are a couple of soft restrictions though - i.e. if you're buying online and your address is a UK address, they may direct you to buy from a UK store. This is not unique to Microsoft. But it's only a soft restriction. If you can get the Microsoft (or Amazon, or whoever) site to sell you from a different region, you still get the same and legal product. E.g. I occasionally buy things from the French Amazon site. I just have to make sure it doesn't bounce me over to the UK one when it realizes where I am.
But as you recognize in the subject line, this is not about business use. For businesses it is different.
I'm unclear as to why this should signal a price [i]rise[/i], btw., Whilst some of the European economies are stronger than ours (i.e. Germany) I would have thought we're above the average. Thus we should be benefiting from a reduction to the European average, rather than having to rise to meet it. Price discrimination is actually beneficial for poorer purchasers. Look at the housing market for an analogy. It would be lovely for poorer people if the average house price wasn't pushed up by the purchasing power of those wealthier than themselves. Same for software licences.
Is there anyway to check if you're on there without downloading a tonne of other people's credit card details, however? That would be useful as I really don't need or desire the rest of the data.
At least with KDE you can spend ten or fifteen minutes turning it back into something nicer. With Unity, I was pretty much stumped as to what I could do to improve it.
"Can see it being good for touch screen though but touch screen for a desktop isn't exactly an upgrade over a mouse."
I was having this conversation with a colleague and made more or less the exact same point as the above. I said that I thought it was absolutely great on a tablet, but that for a desktop, whilst it wasn't exactly a disaster, was definitely a bit of a downturn.
They replied that the future was tablets and that desktops were on their way out. And I suddenly realized they might be right. In business use, people still want a monitor and keyboard. But outside of developers, most users would probably be happy just having Metro launch their "apps". They're not power-users. For leisure, browsing, etc. people are increasingly just wanting something they can lie on the sofa with and surf or ping friends or whatever. For which a tablet is better. There are a dozen scenarios where a proper desktop is better than a tablet. But they only add up to a smaller fraction of the total times a computer is used compared to when people are just surfing, doing v. light email and whatever. I was sure Metro was a real mistake. Now, I'm starting to wonder if MS have actually just skipped forward and taken things to their logical conclusion.
"If (theoretically) someone asked you if I would rather have $10k of Apple or $10k of FB what would your answer be (neither is not a valid answer)."
The Apple shares. They are more likely to have the same value or better than the FB shares by the time I organize selling them. With Apple I would be sitting here thinking 'I'm going to sell those and buy something nice'. With FB shares I would be sitting here hurriedly clicking through web pages trying to offload them whilst they were still work $10K.
Do I think <$30 by the end of the week? No - too many wealthy groups will keep propping the price up. Do I think <$30 by the end of the next week? Yes. They will only keep them propped up for as long as they need to to get out of there.
"The real story here is the % the banks bought. Apparently 86% were bought by 5 key banks."
Oh please, no. PLEASE tell me this isn't true. The banks, whose business is managing money and who have whole departments dedicated to analysing the stock markets... the can't not have seen coming what most of us all predicted.... Can they?
Do you have a reference for HP's patent? I would be surprised if it covered this, tbh.
Note the quote marks put around Linux. It seems that "Linux Distros" is the new standard euphemism for pirated material. Sucks to be someone downloading actual Linux distros, apparently.
"I agree, but you don't seem to notice that my comment was loaded with sarcasm"
Sorry. Round here, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish the sarcasm from some of the depressingly sincere comments that are posted. Your name noted for future sarcasm liklihood!
...civilisation will collapse. Many will survive however and recovering amidst the plentiful ruins or an advanced society, this future generation will once again quickly discover space flight. They will want to know what the Ancients were doing up there, they will have legends of artifacts that flew around the world and passed our voices between continents. In a ramshackle cargo-cult spaceship pieced together from old plans and new discoveries, these people will achieve orbit.
And then a rubber chicken in a knitted jumper will bounce off their windscreen and their minds will BLOW.
Hmmm. I wish I'd read your comment before I posted mine above. I look like a doofus now, don't I?
The guy is a low-life who should be punished and as much as currently possible, made to recompense society. Spending the next decade in prison though, wouldn't discourage others any more than spending two years in prison would and would only produce someone who was accustomed to living in prison rather than free, at great cost to the taxpayer.
"Most of the commentards here feel a lengthy prison sentence is justified for Anon defacing or DDoSing a website. I wonder how they would compare this?"
I don't think most of us have argued for lengthy prison sentences for Anon defacing or DDoSing a website. There's a big difference between someone saying DoSing a site or sticking a defacement on a page is a criminal act, and you assuming that we're saying lengthy prison sentences are a necessary consequence. Prison sentences are rarely a suitable punishment. For the most part they merely harden criminals, disconnect them from friends and families thus leaving them more likely to be excluded and return to crime when released. Oh, and they cost us a fortune too. As a deterrant, long prison sentences don't normally work that well. People who commit such crimes always seem to do so thinking they wont get caught. Compensating the victims or community service are usually better. Prison is usually only good for protecting society against those that represent an ongoing threat.
How this guy compares to defacing a website in Bahrain or similar? MUCH worse. For a start, he's ripping off people to make money. Anonymous protests are often about raising awareness of important issues (e.g. Scientology, gross human rights abuses in Bahrain). Sure, Anonymous do the less supportable things like many of Anonymous are pro-piracy which I think is an unsupportable position. But it's a completely different order of thing and it's downright odd for you to argue that the commentators here all think 18 months for DDoSing a website is a good idea. Criticising, e.g. piracy, is not the same as advocating extreme, life-changing punishments.
"Iran? The illegitimate country. threatning everyone with war?"
Illegitimate? It's one of the oldest continuously existing countries in the world. It goes back millenia and has had more or less the same borders for a long, long time. Even the name change from Persia to Iran is little more than an artifact of the revolution popularizing a name that goes back centuries in place of another name that goes back centuries (it's akin to swapping in Britain in place of United Kingdom - there are some actual differences, but it's the same basic political entity. The country has at least as much right to exist as any other.
As to threatening war? You have to be either massively biased or massively misinformed. Iran absolutely does not war. Currently the USA is running around organizing embargoes, sanctions and pretty much every political credit it can call in to try and isolate and pressure Iran. They have also run active operations in Iran, e.g. trying to forment revolution. Congress under the Bush administration approved millions to fund CIA operations within Iran. And you think Iran is the aggressor? The USA is pulling out all the diplomatic stops to try and get Iran to do as it is told for two reasons: One, with US power in the Middle East looking shaky, Iran is the natural alternative that Middle Eastern countries turn to. The USA does not want Iran to be the major power in the region. Two, the USA desperately wants to avoid Israel, which really is threatening war, to actually attack. If they do, then we likely see an enormous wave of violence engulf the Middle East and the USA will undoubtedly get dragged in.
"I was just stating the obvious. The Media MAFIAA® is the only suspect with any real motive. "
Not true. The Pirate Bay are making money from widespread copyright infringement. That puts them in the black market economic pool as some pretty unpleasant individuals and groups. They just attacked others who were copying their site and these others are not necessarily nice people. And they hit back. That's a more likely scenario given the timing and the unliklihood of content producers organizing an illegal DDOS.
"Obtaining actual forensic evidence to prove this, however, would require someone in the US government to actually care, and that's rather difficult when it's living in the Media MAFIAA's pocket"
Actually, the first step would be The Pirate Bay actually reporting the crime to the appropriate authorities. As far as I am aware, they have not done so, just as they could have gone to the appropriate authorities to complain about their IP being copied by other parties the other week but did not - for the obvious reason that having built a business model on other people's IP, the irony of seeking the protection of the law against their own IP being taken, would have put them on levels of hypocricy that would make Jeremy Hunt blush with embarrasment.
"Mozilla are not cowboys, they have made a solid product for years"
Ignoring that I've had Firefox crash on my numerous times., if you say one third party software writer can bypass all the restrictions, how do you say whether any other can or can't? Are you just going to say anyone with a big enough brandname like Firefox gets a free pass? I don't think that's good.
It sounds like the way things are going. I'm a *very* occasional game player. The last game I played with Dragon Age and that itself was the first computer game I'd played in several years. It was a good game. Lots of story and a top-down tactical view. Then they did a sequel. It was pretty bad. They'd ripped out the top down camera angles I am told because it didn't work well for consoles, and they turned it into a super-fast short-attention span action movie. I played the demo. Did not want. Maybe I'll play another game in a couple of years and it will be back to being something that actually uses my PC's abilities and trusts me to keep playing if it doesn't feel like it's directed by Michael Bay. But that doesn't seem to be the way things are going.
Changes of name from outside are usually a prelude to aggression. Seriously, whether that is enforcing English names on places in Ireland (as the English did when they first started trying to invade Ireland), or Israel giving their own names to various places or China's refusal to recognize what Taiwan calls itself. Before territory grabs, aggressors attempt to assert their right to the territory and dismiss others. Name changes have historically been a part of that ever since people started to demand justifications from their governments for why it was right for them to take control of somewhere.
Given how threatened Iran feels by the West and by Israel recently, it's not surprising they are touchy on this subject. But like you say, that's by the by. There's no reason we should change the name of centuries upon centuries because arab nationalists would like it to be called the Arabian Gulf.
"ust because a stopped clock is right twice a day doesn't change the fact that it's stopped."
Doesn't stop it being right, either. Seriously, I find renaming of things for political purposes both extremely petty and destructive. It merely creates bad feeling and something to fight over, whilst at the same time causing confusion and a messy historical record. There's no practical gain for changing the name, it's purely an antagonistic move. That body of water has been called The Persian Gulf since the ancient greeks and has that name in multiple languages (including English). The attempt to change the name came along with Arab nationalism in the Sixties. It was even called the Persian Gulf BY the arabs up until that time.
Please Google, just file this one away with "Freedom Fries" as a stupid thing by petty people. No good will come of it.
"Watch out, you might get down-voted or flamed for not liking the "Slick, intuitive look"."
Actually no. It's an opinion of taste and everyone has some of that except for BIG DUMB GUY. What gets downvotes is irrational or dishonest information, or attempting to assert that your taste is objectively better than everyone elses. For example, I know what the poster means about the part of the next screen protruding onto the first screen. It does that on Metro on the PC and I think it's ugly on a monitor - I want to be able to flip between discrete pages. Just like I always read PDFs with page breaks because it feels a bit smushed together if I read it as continuous. However, I like it on the phone because that is a touch interface and it feels much more natural to just slide the tiles up and down to wherever I want them rather than flip between pages. It's very nice. However, you will note that I am not raving about how other phones are crap or shouting for joy because I've found something I think is wrong with them. I just have my WP7 phone and I really like it. I'm not going to downvote someone for not liking it.
However, I might downvote your comment for implying that anyone criticising a WP7 device gets flamed. On the contrary, I've been down voted just for saying I like my phone or correcting somone else's obviously false information about it. Funny how the first thing someone does when they don't like another group, is accuse them of all the things they do themselves.
"Yes, but look at it from those 6 people's point of view. They've chosen WP7 and so need as much access to technology news as they can get."
Okay. Offensive and inaccurate. But admittedly funny.
(Lumia 710 owner)
"You have to move forward - the extra features of online play out-weigh the disadvantages - I prefer electric lighting to candles as well - but there could be a mains failure."
But there the change is an advantage, here there change is a disadvantage. It is not sufficient to simply point at the fact that both are change and say they are therefore the same. If you want to see DRM done right look at something like the Zune music pass or movie downloads from e.g. BlinkBox. I have my music on multiple devices for as long as I want, I'm not bugged by sign-in issues when I play anything I've downloaded (if I want to play streaming, obviously I need to connect to the servers because my phone IS NOT MAGIC, but I can download locally any of the music I want to). But with Diablo III, it appears that you are constantly dependent on their servers and it's in your face.
If DRM is invisible, people will live with that, particularly if they know it's a requirement for the seller to feel comfortable selling online in the first place. But if it gets in their way... they get upset. It has to work well.
"The construction of Fukushima was taxpayer-funded, as are effectively all nuclear power plants ever built anywhere."
All nuclear power plants ever built anywhere are taxpayer-funded? That isn't even true in the UK! Our government is willing to underwrite nuclear power stations we have built recently, but not to pay for them. If you're against taxes going to power, I assume you are even more against wind power (massively subsidied) and oil (backed by tax-funded military force and regime support in significant part). Nuclear power is *profitable*.
"And did you fully document everything you did, so if you left the next guy who supports it actually knows what happened and exactly what you did?"
Well you're asking me to remember about a decade ago, but I think I recall adding an overview and set up document to the "Admin Info" set of documentation. A set of documentation that they did not have when I started, actually. Given that I was the one that centralised all their information and first introduced them to the concept handover documentation, I'm about 80% certain I would have put the essentials and a bit of background in there.
There seem to be a lot of people here certain they no best and who want to compare someone's briefly described behaviour with a perfect world. Hint - it was not a perfect world. Getting the offical people to set it up resulted in you having NO documentation of what you had. You were lucky if you could even find a username you were supposed to log into it with. Give it a rest people - it was just an example of cost differences.
"Sure nuclear plants are super productive NOW, but it took 40+ years to make that possible and only with massive government funding, one world war and one cold war."
You've answered your own question (albeit by trying to slip in the fallacious idea that nuclear power forty years ago wasn't profitable then. Hint: Fukishima was commissioned in the 1960's and has been providing Japan with electricity all this time until the earthquake and tsunami). Basically, if we've put 40 years of development into nuclear, we should be reaping the rewards of that. You seem to be using it as a reason to say (in effect), 'it took us forty years to get where we wanted, that's not good enough. Let's try getting here from somewhere else.'
You posit a false dichotomy when you say it is either nuclear power or research. Cheap power will lead to more money sloshing around for research than expensive power. And even if you're not a strong believer in AGW (I am not), the fact that fossil fuels are more polluting, rising in cost, finite and sourced primarily from nasty regimes in the Miidle East who exploit our dependence, it still makes more sense to get that cheap power from Nuclear than from fossil fuels until we can get the orbital solar stations going...
"The Japanese have a few unemployed nuclear engineers I hear. They thought they had a job for life too..."
And they should have. 40+ years without serious incident, using designs from the Sixties, commisioned in the Seventies and keeping a highly developed nation happily ticking over all that time. Then they get hit by a massive earthquake, followed by a tsunami and massively damaged infrastucture leading to an inability to lead power to the stations. And there was STILL minimal harm from radiation or pollution from the plants! The reaction about Fukishima is almost entirely manufactured by the media that finds scary stories sell more papers / get more hits. They should be ashamed of themselves for the fear-mongering. Nuclear power is one of our best hopes for avoiding an environmental collapse one day.
Sounds like you've both hit on the same solutions as this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eIUOUfhoJ8
;)
"Can a DDoS only affect certain routes? I thought the target machine would be the endpoint & therefore the server(s) under stress."
Simple answer, It can't and it would respecitvely, i.e. you're right. But the "Pirate Bay" is unlikely to be one machine at one address. There are probably proxies around the place which means if you connect from home (as in your case) you may be trying access one proxy, but if you connect via your VPN, you may be sent to a proxy for the site which isn't being DDoS'd.
More accurate answer, yes it can only affect certain routes because 2nd tier providers have smart folks working for them who will intervene in various ways to seal off the attack, but different routes may go through different 2nd tier providers.
"I wish I understood it. Is it some sort of religious thing?"
I think it must be something of that mindset. WP7 came up in another discussion and I chipped in with a correction to what was posted (I own a Lumia 710). And along came the downvotes on a short and purely factual post. I was even polite.
I went the opposite direction and got a Lumia 710 for about £160. It's the same O/S and the performance is snappy. All that's missing is the better camera, some memory and a bit better battery life. I only care about the last one and it's still good enough, so I basically saved myself three hundred quid as far as I'm concerned.
You've identified the key problem. It's not that patents are intrinsically bad (although rounded corners is... Well I don't know how that one got through so we may need to take a look at who is actually working in the patent office). The issue is that very large companies build up patent warchests and rather than licencing the patents, they are used as mutual non-aggression pacts with other big patent holders. And the net effect of that is to create barriers to entry for new players who don't have a big patent warchest.
Barriers to entry are where we have the problems occur. When new players cannot enter the market, existing players divvy up the market between them and keep prices high (and progress slow).
Here is a solution: patents should require enforcement. So two big corporate behemoths can't just sit on their patents and use them to squash smaller players. If you have Patent X and Apple are infringing it, you have to either defend it (and grant them a licence in some set of conditions) or lose it. Then when someone else wants to use the patent, they know how much it will cost. And if the big players don't like paying for a particular patent (which they often wont as many patents are bogus), then they will undertake to challenge it (or often merely threaten to challenge it, or even ignore it and wait to be challenged on it which they wont be), and then the patent is gone for the little players too.
A simplish change in the law with a large positive outcome in reducing patents as a barrier to entry.
Why do you have to make enemies of your friends? You want to argue that AGW is dubious - that's fine. Many of us who consider ourselves environmentalists agree with you. You want to argue that a reduction in living standards is a bad thing (almost by definition) and is unnecessary - again, that's a position many of us support. You want to say wind farms are in the vast majority of cases a bad solution - huge numbers of envrionmentally minded types will agree with you! And yet you have to cast your net wide and start poking fun at, e.g. animal species being wiped out.
You're like a person who hates some positions of a group and therefore reflexively argues against them on all their positions, even when they have a valid point. Pick and choose your battles. Otherwise you become just like your opponents - irrationally lashing out at anything you see "the other side" say. Rated your article in the middle. Positive for the valid points against wind farms etc., negative for your dislike of tigers and mockery of people who try to preserve biodiversity.
"We must not let the Luddites, or the MAFIAA close it off to us, through either stupidity or criminal self-interest"
No-one is. Copyright law doesn't stop anyone from distributing copies or allowing others to distribute copies, for any work they are the copyright holder for. So the example of the author you keep citing... There is no body or legal authority *trying* to stop him using that model. He's perfectly free to do so. Your implication that copyright law restricts him is utter straw-manning.
"If a product costs nothing to make and distribute then it effectively ceases to be a product and becomes an advert - effortless free publicity"
That only works if the thing you're advertising is worth more than the advert itself. It's non-sensical to give away something of siginficant value to advertise something that is not. E.g. how exactly does someone getting an exact digital reproduction of a movie from somewhere I'm not getting paid for it help me when the product I'm trying to sell is an exact digital reproduction. Your example is a Brazillian author who found sales of a physical print book increasing in a market where he had no presence (Russia) because of file distribution. You miss so many things in this. Firstly, copyright law doesn't stop anyone from doing this at all. If you really are touting this as a better business model, fine, you are free to distribute your work this way. So is Paulo Cohelo. So is anyone else. If it's that much better as a business model you don't *need* any changes to copyright law, just go ahead of legally distribute your books. What you are arguing for is that other people should have to use one particular business model, i.e. a reduction in choice. Secondly, this example is from over a decade ago when people still wanted physical media - he was happy because physical sales went up. That's not going to be as true today when eBooks are becoming popular and it's going to be even less true in the future as digital versions of books become the preferred option. And it isn't true today when music, movies and software are pretty much preferred in digital format. Once someone has the iso of a DVD, they gain nothing more buy actually going out and buying the DVD. The products are the same, unlike a print book and a bad scan over a decade ago being read on a desktop or 1997 laptop which actually are different experiences. Also what's true of an author who is unknown in a country is not going to be true of a current popular movie, etc.
Your whole car analogy remains only that - an analogy in which you arbitrarily state that selling services and maintenance will recoup cost of investment and make more profit than actually selling the cars. In your analogy that is true, *because it is your analogy and you can say that's how it is*. It doesn't mean that the economic model actually works for any given product. Yet you want to force people to use that model without their consent. If I write a novel and anyone who wants it takes it for free, then I'm not going to make a lot of money on maintenance or offering support and I'm not interested in advertising *myself*. The only thing I'm interested in is advertising the novel. So I'm hardly going to want to give away the novel as an advertisment for itself am I? Because I am not a Brazillian author trying to break into a market where I am unknown and capitalise on print sales vs. ereader technology from the 1990s. And you do realize that without copyright, *anyone* can sell the physical copies of the books, movies, software, etc. without giving the creators a penny for it?
I thought copying someone else's work was the approved method in China...?
"Coincidence or not?"
Good question. Because I see a lot of men whose bosses are also men... It makes me very suspicious now you mention it. *narrows eyes*
