Oskar's Profile

Is it normal for Apple to announce consumer products/services at the developer-targeted WWDC?

I just want to add one more thing to what I said here: If you want to see their movie or listen to their music, you have to pay them, and do it now. Please don't suggest that you've already paid for it. When you bought the DVD for the movie Finding Nemo, you did not buy ownership rights to every version of that movie to come in the future, such as the HD edition. You have a specific contract: The right to watch that movie on that DVD disc. You can't redefine the terms of the contract later on to justify pirating the HD version. It doesn't work that way.

You sure do talk a lot. Responding to your three points: 1) Nazis still exist, but they are marginalized and no longer a military threat. Any trouble they start is dealt with at the police level. 2) No, only Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "vaporized," if the term is understood to mean "nuked." Dresden, Tokyo, and other cities were only hit by conventional bombs. 3) I can't find any point where I accused anyone of comparing America to Nazi Germany. And the rest: -I didn't say I was for DRM. I said that if you don't like it, don't buy it and let others decide for themselves. Beeb and others actually want the government to step in and force companies to open their DRM. If you're going to violate the property rights of a corporation for the sake of "the public good," don't be surprised when right-wingers like myself accuse you of being a socialist in sheep's clothes. -I haven't argued that DRM "helps artists." I don't care about the artists. I care about the property rights of the corporations. -I haven't heard that the RIAA is trying to prevent incidental copies. They absolutely have the right to do so via DRM, but I don't think they should actually change the law. -The right to life applies to non-Americans, but not to enemy combatants. They can be tortured if it will help intelligence-gathering. And yes, this right is more important than derivative rights, because it makes them possible. If protecting derivative rights works against protecting one's right to life, there's a conflict. I choose to prioritize protecting the more fundamental one; liberals choose to prioritize protecting the derivative ones. -I'm surprised you knew about the right to property and its relation to the DoI - most people don't know that. You're right that I believe it is a fundamental right; the four fundamental rights are life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. -Don't make assumptions about me. I stressed fiscal conservative for a reason: I'm an atheist with no desire at all to promote religion using government or unnecessarily control everyone's personal lives. So yes, I'm for legalizing drugs - for adults. As for those who sell drugs to kids, they deserve execution. -You can't compare the war on drugs to the war on piracy. Adults using drugs doesn't hurt anyone; stealing intellectual property emphatically does hurt people, so legalizing it is wrong-headed. The fact that both are uncontrollable black markets doesn't matter; child pornography is also an uncontrollable black market, but I seriously doubt you'd suggest we legalize that, too. -The open source movement might actually interest me were it not dominated by anti-corporate, anti-IP, privacy-paranoid, pro-nambla liberal wackos.

For Islamists, yes. God may have mercy on them, but I won't.

I've mentioned no parallels between Islamofascism and Nazism, other than that they both will one day (God willing) be in the same dustbin. And no, I don't need another lecture from a liberal on why we shouldn't go to war (or on what betraying one's country means, for that matter). Remember: I go to college. I'm surrounded by you guys all the time. You could fit the entire GOP club in a Prius (not that you could convince them to go into one). I hear your arguments from my profs every day - and if I skip, I can catch them in the textbooks we're made to buy. I even commit them to memory, less my papers get points deducted for displaying indecent viewpoints. God bless America!

I love how when YOU complain about fascism (Islamo- or otherwise), it’s okay. When someone else does, it’s a paranoia and fear-mongering. That's because I'm actually using the word "fascism" correctly: Iran has de facto government ownership of private property and actively restricts freedom of speech. When liberals use the word "fascism" to describe America, the freest country on the planet, they either don't understand the term or are attempting to say we're morally equivalent to a nation that hangs fourteen-year-old girls for showing their ankles. Those who make such an offensive comparison are indeed fear-mongers and traitors. If you’re not guaranteed the right to privacy, certainly you are not guaranteed the right to go to Walmart hazard-free. Why not? The right to life is fundamental; the right to privacy is derivative. You can't conflate the two. And since conservatives are defending everything from govt snooping, wiretapping without a warrant, torture and denial of right to trial (as in Getmo), then there is NO line at which you are not willing to give up everyone’s civil liberty in the name of false security. I'm not sure how you can judge them to be "false security," since you clearly don't know what information they're gleaning from the "snooping." If they're getting valuable information to protect Americans, but are doing so at the cost of derivative privacy rights, then they're performing the very "triage" I speak of. Gitmo is an oddball for you to mention - they aren't Americans, they are enemy combatants, so I don't care if they're being tortured or having their diaries read. But Medicare is somehow over the line? What a joke. Medicare violates fundamental rights by redistributing income - so yes, it's "over the line." Wiretapping, properly done, protects fundamental rights (sometimes at the expense of derivative ones) - so no, it's not "over the line." There's my line. If you'd like me to define "fundamental," I can do so, but we may drift even further off-topic...

Beeb, let's make this clear. Civil liberties are derivative rights, not fundamental ones. They include such procedural rights as "trial by jury" and "right to not be searched without a warrant." The most fundamental of all rights is the right to life; without it, no other right can exist. So yes, during a wartime situation, the government may decide to prioritize and temporarily restrain certain civil liberties for the sake of protecting our most fundamental right of all. And it’s astonishing to me how quickly and easily people are willing to give up their rights and civil liberties simply because someone makes a reference to terrorists and pedophiles, as if that’s what NSA eavesdropping or DRM is really about. -Beeblebrox (my bold) Why is this hard to believe? We were attacked on September 11th, and pedophilia is a widespread epidemic. These aren't made-up problems. Fascist dictatorship, on the other hand, is a made-up problem. I always thought the people now in charge were supposed to be for LESS intrusive govt and MORE freedoms. -Beeblebrox If you're talking about fiscal conservatives like myself, we believe in LIMITED government, not vague terms like "small government" or "less intrusive government." Limited means that they have one role: To protect individual rights, including the right to life. Within that limited role, they can and should do whatever it takes to accomplish that mission, including (in the case of World War II) vaporizing two cities and napalming several more. That said, Bush is not my ideal. His horrific medicare bill is just an example of how far-removed he is from his free-market base. (I probably won't be able to reply for like three hours.)

Oskar, indirect loss of profits from competition is NOT the same as paying a hardware manufacturer for outsourcing, which is what you were originally talking about and which is, of course, not correct. -Beeblebrox No, I never meant to suggest that one must directly pay Dell & Friends for the priviledge of including one's OS, you just misread me. I spoke of outsourcing to them as a "tax" because of the opportunity cost. And like I said, my argument is that the increase in revenue from licensing the OS would more than make up for the loss of revenue (which you are NOW referring to) in hardware sales. -Beeblebrox The question is, why would selling OS X on generic PCs sell more copies? Of course, it's because PCs are cheaper. So why can't Apple simply make cheaper hardware themselves? They'll increase volume just the same, and yet they'll be able to keep all the profits to themselves. That's the point I'm making. And why o’ why must everyone cite Gruber? -Beeblebrox I just agree with him in this instance and would rather just cite him than reproduce his arguments here. Less work.