merc

@merc@sh.itjust.works

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merc,

So only Noone needs to wear a blindfold?

merc,

Yes, but no.

A quantum Santa could deliver presents to every house simultaneously if nothing observed his passage. On the other hand, at some point the wave function will collapse, like say when people check what presents are under the tree. When the wave function collapses, the probabilities all go away and there’s a single answer, so he could deliver presents to one and only one house.

merc,

There’s a reason most historical fiction focuses on nobles and land-owners. You can tell interesting stories about them, and modern people can sort-of relate to their lifestyles. If you told stories about the common people, modern people wouldn’t be able to focus on the story, and would get distracted by how brutal and awful their day-to-day lives were.

merc,

Anything talking about the evolution of the “Trash Can Icon” should be starting with the Apple version that Microsoft copied.

merc,

Simplify that to “Piracy isn’t stealing”. Copyright infringement (so-called piracy) is very different from stealing.

Sure, if “buying” isn’t permanent despite assurance it was at the time, then copyright infringement is even more justified. But, copyright infringement isn’t and has never been stealing.

merc,

Git is a DVCS. GitHub is a place where DVCS repositories are hosted. There are many other places where DVCS repositories can be hosted, but GitHub is the most famous one… Porn is a type of content. PornHub is a place where porn is hosted. There are many other places where porn can be hosted, but PornHub is the most famous one. It’s a pretty good analogy.

merc,

A key difference:

If you rely too much on PornHub, you’re never going to get fucked.

If you rely too much on GitHub, you’re eventually going to get fucked.

merc,

Sure… and you could pass around porn on thumb drives. But, having a central website where you can browse public repos and clone the interesting ones is a pretty key part of Open Source / Free Software development.

merc,

k

merc,

That looks quiet and positively spacious compared to the last open office environment I did time in.

Imagine that same space but 4 people between the column and the window instead of just 2. Then make the space 3x as long. Then reduce the space between the backs of the chairs by 50%.

Even though everyone in the space was doing individual programming / sysadmin work, the space was extremely loud just from a few spontaneous conversations between people working on the same thing together. Everyone wore headphones nearly all the time, only taking them off if they needed to talk / shout to the people near them about something. Often, if you needed to talk with someone sitting 4 desks away, the easiest way to do it was over IM.

merc,

Nope, just a massively overcrowded office building. The ventilation system could barely keep up. But, management made it clear to us that the reason for the open office layout was to encourage collaboration and foster creativity!

merc,

This wasn’t a call center, it was a sysadmin / software development sweatshop workspace.

merc,

This makes me wonder what would happen if you took the content off some celebrity-focused website like say TMZ but changed the formatting to make it look like New York Times articles.

Like, the “gravitas” of the NY Times politics section with content like “Guess Whose Shirtless Selfie!”

merc,

The entire definition matters. There’s already a term for “copyright infringement” it’s “copyright infringement”. Pretending it’s theft is just a trick the copyright cartels are using to try to make it seem like a serious crime that has existed for millennia instead of a relatively new rule imposed in the last few centuries by the government, then made ridiculous by the entertainment cartel.

merc,

you have stolen my labour

No, that’s not theft. That’s fraud.

merc,

Yes, which is not theft. It’s not murder either. Nor is it blasphemy. It’s just copyright infringement.

merc,

What part of that statement suggests that the artist no longer has the original art? As stated, no theft occurred.

merc,

Freelancers may be upset if they’re mistreated, but that doesn’t mean they get to declare they were murdered, or that they were raped, or any other crime that didn’t occur. Theft has a specific definition, and fraud is not the same thing as theft.

merc, (edited )

If it’s theft, it’s theft. If it’s fraud, it’s fraud. It could be either. But “wage theft” is not copyright infringement, which is not theft.

Here’s what California’s Department of Industrial Relations says:

Wage theft is a form of fraud

www.dir.ca.gov/fraud_prevention/Wage-Theft.htm

merc,

Not really, theft is theft. Fraud is fraud. Just because something feels like theft doesn’t make it theft.

merc,

I’m all in favour of people being pedantic, especially in the case of laws.

If you are using the term theft colloquially

I’m not, “theft” is misused all the time. It’s something that the copyright cartels encourage because they get to pretend that copyright infringement is theft. It’s not. We should push back and say theft has to meet certain conditions, and copyright infringement isn’t theft. Nor is “wage theft”, which is a form of fraud.

By buying into the colloquial definition of “theft” and expanding the scope to be any time someone is inconvenienced, you give the copyright cartels power to make people think copyright infringement is as bad as actual real theft, when it’s clearly not.

merc,

Nah, no need to go to laws, just use a dictionary.

merc,

That’s just one element of theft.

merc,

Wage theft isn’t theft, it’s fraud.

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