DISQUS

Thanks for the reply, Tim. I still think that focusing exclusively on the body count -- even if we restrict ourselves to taking about "normal" people as opposed to prominent ones -- is oversimplifying things. Among other problems, it ignores the damage that terrorist attacks do to the physical and cultural infrastructures of liberal societies.

I've updated my post with a more complete response. Here's the link again:

http://weblog.roth-cline.net/archives/2006/08/more_than_meets_the_eye.html

Tim, this argument is appealing at first glance, but I think it's oversimplifying things. The social impact of a terrorist attack can't just be boiled down to a body count; there are more contextual factors at work.

I've replied to this post on my site:

http://weblog.roth-cline.net/archives/2006/08/more_than_meets_the_eye.html

I haven't heard that MS was denying security fixes for installations that don't pass WGA. It appears that MS is specifically *not* denying security fixes for WGA-failing machines, precisely because of the botnet issues.

Another, more minor, nitpick: pirates didn't remove the activation feature from XP. Saying that implies that they modified the XP code, which is completely false.

What really happened is that certain license keys don't require activation. These keys were intended to be used by large corporations, where activating each individual machine would be too time-consuming. Of course, some of these "Volume License Keys" eventually got out into the public.

Hate on Microsoft all you like, Tim, but do your research first.

I think the interviews with college students may be a bit misleading... As with taxes, their opinions on this subject are likely to change as they get older.

Ordinarily, I would agree with you. My opinions about various financial issues have certainly changed in the 6 years since I graduated college. I have a lot more money to spend now than I did then.

But I still think CDs are too damn expensive. I'll buy CDs from three artists (Live, Tool, and Joe Satriani), but that's it. If I want anything else, I'll take my chances on P2P, even though I now have the means to buy the CDs.

I'd be happy to avoid the risks and the hassles of P2P. But all of the online music stores have either A) DRM, B) low quality, or C) both. No thank you.

High prices help black markets grow. The music market is no exception.

It seems like Matt Y.'s comment argues that a union "would be a big help" in getting workers equity in their companies. (Matt, correct me if I'm wrong.)

But is this a problem that needs solving? Do workers not have enough equity? More generally, do they not have as much equity as they would like? And if not, why not? I hear more tech workers complaining that their compensation is too much equity than too little equity. (Yes, that's totally anecdotal, so I'm not too hung up on it.)

I think that Jim is totally right: the power balance between management and (say) programmers is totally different from the power balance between management and assembly-line workers. (For one thing, programmers are not fungible.) The labor union was not designed to address the balance of power that exists now in the technology industry, and it shows in the archaic language and perspective used by union advocates.

(Oh, and by the way, I say all of this as a "worker bee" programmer. A union won't do me any good; I don't want one for me, and I definitely don't want one for programmers as a whole.)

Oooh! Oooh! I spot a logical fallacy in Juan Akimbo's post!

Ah, it's always good to be able to use that Philosophy degree.

"policies that actively encourage people to work"
"policies that remove disincentives to workers"

These are effectively the same thing.

The market provides incentives to work: money, satisfaction, what-have-you.

In the absence of gov't policy, people collectively *do* generally act rationally. If they value a week of vacation more than they value a week's pay, then they'll take vacation.

It's a mistake to assume that "liesure contributes more than wealth to what people want". More than a mistake, it's begging the question.