rick888

It's not theft. It's worse. Theft of something like a television means just that physical physical is stolen. It's the cost of doing business.

Over time, if piracy is not stopped, users will get the idea that your software is free and will be unwilling to pay for it in the future. This has the potential to destroy the profits for your entire product. Big companies like Microsoft and Adobe can handle this, but it's devastating to a smaller company.

Companies also lose money through support calls from people that haven't purchased the product (this happens more than you think).

Think about the newspaper industry: It's dying because you can get news stories anywhere, for free. Why would it be any different for the software industry?

Torrentfreak is a pro-piracy site. They want to change the word "theft" to something positive so piracy is accepted as a positive thing. It's not positive.

Piracy is the equivalent of a big company farming their work out to China: they don't want to pay the big prices here (software that's expensive) or worry about restrictions (drm/copy protection), so they go somewhere else where it's cheaper (piracy sites/bittorrent).

"If you have a middle-class family of 4 and it feels like average is struggling, then that's good: now you know how your voters feel."

Maybe. But I know when I'm struggling, I worry most about where I'm going to get my next dollar. I don't think we want politicians either getting another job on the side to make ends meet or not concentrating on the task at hand because they are struggling to pay the mortgage.

I would also worry that they could easily be bought off (more than they are now).

"Poor people could still run and would in fact get a pay raise, and rich people may not have to make a sacrifice at all (nothing unusual there; rich people have all sorts of other advantages, which is a separate issue)."

I honestly don't want poor people running my city, state, or country. If you can't manage your own life, how could you possibly manage the lives of thousands of other people effectively? You also don't want people running just for the money and it seems like this is exactly what you would be doing. At least when you are wealthy and running for government, it's a pay cut most of the time. They could be making lots of money elsewhere, but they choose to take the responsibility of running a government.

Even when I'm by myself, I still need version control. It's nice to know that I can easily go back to any version I've checked into the system.

I use visual SVN for windows+tortoise SVN. I also can ssh into my box and check source files in from anywhere. If I had more than one person working on my source, I would start using Git.

Can Dropbox do this?

Would this really be ideal though?

Most women (not all) want be pursued by men.

If you go to the entertainment section, there are lots of copyrighted movies and shows being streamed and I doubt they have permission from the content creators.

This brings in lots of traffic to Justin.tv (there are ads on each video). Because you can't really search for these, it becomes very difficult to get caught (unlike youtube).

Exactly!

I also think that building something cool in the hopes that you will get bought out by a large company is the hip thing to do.

Selling and marketing is boring to many of the people that want to start a company.

I'm a developer and while I do know CSS and html, I'm not a designer. I've cut up Photoshop templates in the past, but I usually leave it up to a designer.

Designers need to know at least some CSS or html. If not, then they are just graphic designers, not web designers.

"Otherwise how could anyone who needed a connection use it? Sheesh."

When enough people use your wireless connection and you get slapped with an IP letter for your ISP, you will realize the error of your ways.

"The only reason to fear someone on your LAN is because you aren't secure. If you job involves deploying anything Internet facing you can't rely on a firewall to keep the bad people away."

Yet, you still take security precautions. A firewall was just a example of taking a security precaution.

"even though you now had twice the number of security devices as before."

Is this a joke?

"Than fake security, I mean."

I'm still not quite sure what this "real security" is as opposed to "fake security" that we have now..and I don't think you do either. You haven't brought up one point.

..and if we had no security, would it be any better?

I'm shocked at all the anti-security people here on HN. Do you also have no password on you wireless connection and pay for goods online with no SSL?

I would really like to see if the people downvoting have any security precautions in place in their daily lives. If so, they are a little hypocritical.

This is exactly why it's good not to have a pure democracy: I'm just trying to get my point across an I'm immediately silenced.

It also explains why they wanted the thesis theme to be GNU: so they can add it to their services and not have to pay for it, giving them more potential value at less cost to them.

Evil, but brilliant.

"It doesn't stop trivial attacks we could come up with on here"

Show me an attack that's happened in the last 10 years.

"it's meant to pacify people like you"

I feel like you are on the side of the terrorists. If not, they love people like you. You fight for your right to have more security holes in our system.

As a developer, it would be like saying that I want to fight for no firewall and updates because it slows down the process of development and makes things to complicated.

"But the security isn't necessary. It doesn't stop trivial attacks we could come up with on here, and it's not meant to, it's meant to pacify people like you who demand SOMETHING be done."

How do you know? It's not like you can go back in time and change security to see if we have less attacks.

"Also, the freedoms we lose to this useless security aren't worth the trade-off. They wouldn't be even if the security worked, let alone with it being unworkable and counter-productive."

Okay, so if we do take all the security precautions away and there are attacks, can we hold you (and everyone that wants this) personally responsible?

It's kind of like when I've argued with ex-girlfriends in the past: They keep fighting and fighting on a certain subject..I let them see the error of their ways (usually with bad consequences)..and in the end, I get blamed anyway.

If the error means any deaths, I don't want to take that chance to show you I'm right. I would imagine you would then still blame the US government instead for their foreign policy.

It's not useless security and it's very selfish of you to demand less security simply because you are inconvenienced. yes it means a little less freedom, but it's for your own good.

I would like to see proof of this.

The fact that potential terrorists know that the security in the US is so high is most likely stopping many from attempting attacks in the first place.

You also can't say they've never caught a terrorist. There have been many stories on the news in the past couple of years about the TSA catching potential terrorists.

It reminds me of all the Y2K people that said: "See, nothing happened. Everything was fine!" When 1000s of man hours went into preventing computer problems.

"terrorizing millions of citizens"

I suppose your definition of terrorism includes checking your shoes and belongings for contraband. I've flown a lot in the last couple of years and the security is a pain-in-the-ass, but necessary. I would rather be safe in this situation. The US has many enemies.

exactly.

I thought they were phasing these functions out (mysql)? I've been using PDO for the last couple of years.

"You seem to not know anything about this, so I'll cut you some slack even though your wording is slightly offensive."

If these really worked and made sense, we would have more worker owned cooperatives as opposed to corporations. I haven't heard much about them because they are in the slim minority..and there's probably a reason for this.

"I never said that I wanted to make corporations illegal, just stop using tax dollars to subsidize them, while taxing them in order to balance out the extreme wealth redistribution that they engage in."

Which translates to: taxing the hell out of them so it's no longer profitable to start one. I'm cool with worker owned cooperatives as long as they are taxed exactly the same as corporations.

"It seems eminently sensible for a country that likes to call itself a democracy to promote (or at least set up a favorable regulatory scheme for) economic democracy rather than the techno-feudalism that corporate capitalism resembles when capital becomes too concentrated."

It is a democracy: you can start your own company at any time. You want to prevent someone from having too much money, even if they've earned it honestly. I don't want anyone to limit my success. When this happens, I will either leave the country or become a criminal.

"Good question. Why should a rich investor that spends a tiny fraction of his money own the product of the founders and workers who actually create the value? Why should capital own labor, rather than the other way around?"

Because the rich investor is risking their money. The founders can bootstrap. Many companies do. I personally wouldn't give up that much control to anyone. Most workers don't understand what it takes to run a company. It's more than just collecting a larger paycheck..

"re:bitcoin: what?"

Never heard of bitcoin?

Spamming isn't illegal. In fact, it can teach you a lot about marketing. I'm actually impressed than an 18 year old could make enough with it to pay for school.

It showed me that we still need banks. Even though bitcoin has no banks, people used the wallet sites as essentially a bank.

One of the other reasons the banking industry doesn't see much innovation is that it needs to be very secure (which is why it's a pain in the ass) and so it's going to take some time to adopt new technologies.

"Worker-owned cooperatives do not share that design flaw. They also have little to no motivation to outsource."

You can start a worker-owned cooperative now. Why don't you? You could even make it a non-profit and save on some taxes.

What you want to do is make it impossible for corporations as we know them to exist, taking away freedoms. Corporations aren't slave-owners and employees aren't slaves. You have the freedom to work for one or start your own company.

I suppose a worker-owned cooperative would be fine, as long as the workers also took on losses (IE: if sales are down this month, you might only get a $500 paycheck as opposed to a $3000 one).

Then you would have to deal with the day-to-day stuff and you would end up having a president, treasurer, managers, etc, etc, etc, essentially creating what thousands of years of human history have already told you. Bitcoin, which was suppose to get around those pesky banks, essentially gave you the reason why banks are necessary: Most people don't want to or don't have the ability to secure their own money.

Most people aren't willing to take a risk. They won't start a company and take no paycheck for months or possible years while barely scraping by hoping their idea actually is successful.

Why should someone that takes absolutely no risk get anything close to the owners of a company?

"Yet how exactly is creating a company any better? If you keep servicing other people interest, it could be called an illusion of freedom"

If you sell a product or service, you get to choose what goes into that product or service. Look at apple: If they listened to the general public, the Ipad would have never been released.

" You will compromise yourself at a time or another."

You don't ever need to. Plenty of companies release what they want and it just so happens to coincide with what other people want.

Why do people have this mindset? You aren't forced to work for anyone.

If you feel that being an employee is slavery, start your own company. At least for now, you still have the freedom to do this in the US.

Freedom means you have to take responsibility for your own life. If you rack of $10K in debt and can't pay it back, you will be a slave to it.

I learned my lesson with debt years ago and haven't kept a balance on my credit card since. It takes discipline to not live beyond your means and most people just don't have this discipline and it gets them into trouble.

This is also why so few people are actually successful at business. They won't stick it out when times get tough and give up when they aren't making a profit right now.

"Cases of rape and murder could be quelled substantially through better economic opportunities and greater access to healthcare, including abortions. Bad men usually had bad upbringings."

This isn't necessarily the case. There are plenty of rapists and murderers that came from a good home. It's hard to say why some people do bad things.

Bad upbringing is usually caused by bad parenting. You can't force a parent to spend time with their child or be there for them.

Some people also just shouldn't be parents. They pass on terrible traits that result in criminals.

"We probably can do better as a species, but we need to address all of the issues of the human condition with compassion, research, and empathy, not with guns and cages."

You make it sound so simple. We will always need guns and cages because no matter how much health care and good upbringing a person has, there will still be criminals.

Look at Norway as an example. Everyone has free health care, easy access to abortions, and the unemployment rate is ~3%. Prisoners are treated very well there and the prison systems are some of the best in the world (if I was a criminal, I would probably move to Norway). Here is an article about it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1384308/Norw...

By taking away "guns and cages" you will only hurt the honest people in this world. They are there for our protection and no amount of compassion or empathy will prevent our need for them.

I wish people would not downvote based on their own personal opinions.

"No war needs to be fought."

No war needs to be fought: If you want to allow evil people to either run the world or continue with atrocities. Because we are not always dealing with rational people, brute force is sometimes the only answer.

But piracy hasn't stopped or slowed down.

so, you need to give them everything for free at the fastest bandwidth possible.

The only way to stop piracy is:

1) give all of your stuff out for free 2) have a service that can't be pirated

The reason big companies don't want piracy to become mainstream is because at a certain point, it becomes part of culture and "normal" to just pirate something, which means they won't be able to charge money for it (everyone will expect it for free). This is exactly what is starting to happen.

Back in 1999, there was no antipiracy technology, yet piracy was just as rampant as it is today. We have: Last.fm, Pandora, Youtube, Grooveshark, etc,etc. Yet, people still pirate music.

It's funny because back when Napster first started, everyone said that the artists weren't getting treated right, so that's why they were downloading music. Now that any artist can pretty music start a website with no record label, those reasons have changed.

I don't think it has anything to do with any of those reasons. Nobody wants to spend their hard-earned money on something they can just as easily get for free.

This parallels many of the people protesting wall street: Just as investing in an education doesn't mean you are guaranteed a good job, investing your time and effort in software, music, and movies doesn't mean you are guaranteed a profit.

I wish we could, but the problem is there will always be new forms of criminals that need to be imprisoned and wars that need to be fought.

What I want to know is why we need to have rapists, murderers, and criminals? Can't we do better as a species?

He was in his senior year when he dropped out. That's like giving up a marathon when you are in the last stretch of the race.

This is asked almost every single time there is a black line.