Disqus - Latest Comments for probabilityzero

Re: Does legality matter to you?

probabilityzero — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:55:48 -0000

then that also means that getting busted isn't a possibility- which means I don't care which one I pick.

That's exactly the sort of answer I was looking for. If the only (not just the most important -- only) factor is whether you'll get busted, then that is an answer to my question.

You could say the question is meaningless because your choice will change nothing, but (again) that is an answer to the question, not a problem with it. It is similar to saying that right and wrong are only defined with respect to how your actions effect others. If it doesn't hurt anyone and no one knows you're doing it, does it matter at all what you do?

I would choose the legal one for purely selfish reasons. Doing so would make me feel better than not doing so.

This is a tricky issue, and I can't articulate my thoughts well enough to express it directly, so I opted for a hypothetical question. I very much appreciate that you are willing to play along with such a strange experiment.

Re: Does legality matter to you?

probabilityzero — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:33:21 -0000

You're dodging the question, though. I made it clear that this would obviously never happen in reality. The purpose of the hypothetical question is to get to the abstract quality of legality. Think of it as a thought experiment, not of "what would I do if tomorrow I ran into a site that looked like this." Just take my word for it that in this thought experiment there is no hidden cost or anything like that.

Re: Does legality matter to you?

probabilityzero — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:08:25 -0000

I think I’d get the legal one if they were equal like that, it would look like a trap so I’d go for the safe answer.

Ah, but I mentioned that there would be no way to track who downloads what. Remember, this is a hypothetical situation meant to explain the abstract quality of "legality" as it relates to file sharing -- I'm not literally asking what you would actually do if you saw the page, but rather asking you to consider the ideas I'm bringing up and hopefully challenge your own conception of the issue.

If you can get something for free why would you pay?

(...)

That’s why I pay for indie music for example, but I don’t pay the RIAA a fucking cent.

Why, indeed, would someone like you pay for an indie music album that you could get for free?

Re: Jamendo and Magnatune

probabilityzero — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:07:45 -0000

Eh. Magnatune is worth a try, really. I tend to judge sites by their web design as well, but you should at least give it a shot.

Re: Piracy and Shoplifting

probabilityzero — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:35:24 -0000

How can you own blocks of data?

That's an interesting question.

Legend goes that the Native American Indians had no concept of property or ownership of land. There were probably valid reasons for that at the time, but in our modern world it is unthinkable that we would give up the ability to "own" land. Of course, I think it's also unthinkable that we'd give up the ability to "share" land as well; a right that we too often don't have when it comes to copyright. :P

A computer cannot differentiate between two sets of identical data even if their sources are different, but that does not mean a difference does not exist. Where the data came from matters greatly in the eyes of the law.

Whether a block of data is "legal" or not is essentially an abstract attribute of that data that isn't necessarily represented by that block of data. In other words, it may be impossible to tell simply by looking at the data whether it is legal in origin or not. But that does not mean the attribute of "legal" cannot be associated with the data; it just becomes a slightly more complex problem. In fact, some platforms and programming languages reserve a sort-of "meta-data" information, which is used to contain such abstract information that is not represented purely by the data itself.

Re: The Pirate Bay to be legalized, says new owners

probabilityzero — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:35:30 -0000

I agree that this doesn't seem very promising -- I imagine most of the content will be removed once copyright owners have the ability to do so. And we still don't have all of the details yet, so this is just speculation.

If they do end up using a flat fee price model that gives paying customers access to the whole library (I don't really have any evidence this is their plan, but it's probably the only one that has any chance of working), and if nearly all of the content remains as GGF claimed it would, I think I'd sign up.

Again, I doubt this will happen, but theoretically, I'd support a flat fee "buffet-style" system.

I think I'll probably start a thread about this soon.

Re: Radiohead leaks new song via bit torrent

probabilityzero — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:34:26 -0000

I have to say, after listening to their new song: it kicks ass!

Edgy, experimental and interesting, just like you'd expect from Radiohead.

Re: Assholery Never Ends

probabilityzero — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:50:19 -0000

I don't know if we should expect all these right-wing homophobes to be closet homosexuals, but it's uncanny how often turns out they are.

Re: Joe the Shoe Guy Hits it Big

probabilityzero — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:45:53 -0000

Wow... I'll have to pick up a pair of those myself.

Re: IF Comp '08 Review - probabilityZero's Channel Surfing!

probabilityzero — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:33:06 -0000

"Is this probabilityZero being self-deprecating here? I honestly can’t tell."
I was. I think I read every review of Channel Surfing, and you were the only one to catch that. One other review misinterpreted it completely, thinking it referred to the television producers.

"And how is this message consistent with the game’s presentation of itself as comedy?"
Well, I know I had a sudden change in tone at the end, and that's mainly due to the fact that I procrastinated too long and had to write _something_ for the ending, but there's something else that I don't think anyone caught. A few times in the game when you ask various people questions like "what is the point of this," they generally answer by telling you there is no point, and maybe advising you to just have fun along the way. My original intention was to contrast this with the rather bleak ending, but I don't think I quite pulled it off. I regret writing the ending paragraphs with such a serious tone.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading all your reviews. Generally, I would only read the review of my game then move on to the next reviewer, but with your blog I went back and read every one of the reviews (while laughing my ass off). Thanks!

Re: Things You Shouldn’t Do With Nintendo’s Mag Kid.

probabilityzero — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 06:53:42 -0000

This is hilarious. I was laughing out loud after you mentioned the Sarlacc Pit.

Re: Cool Gadgets – The Cool G108 Watch Phone

probabilityzero — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:18:05 -0000

Nice looking. Seems like something out of a Bond movie.

Re: Our Forum has been Migrated to vBulletin

probabilityzero — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:44:38 -0000

I run SMF for inanetalk.com and I'm perfectly happy with it. Whenever possible, I like to go with open source software.

Re: How to Watch Restricted YouTube Videos

probabilityzero — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:41:12 -0000

I've never actually run into that error, but it's good to know how to get around it.

Re: Using the Threshold Tool in the GIMP

probabilityzero — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:34:32 -0000

I'm a die-hard Photoshop user (I run CS2 in Linux thanks to Wine), so I don't know much about Gimp. Certainly it looks like it might be a good Photoshop replacement for someone short on cash.

pzero's last blog post..Ammo for the OS wars

Re: Rebel Monkey, a casual game developer, raises $1M

probabilityzero — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:04:16 -0000

I've been following the indie game scene for a while, and while casual games certainly aren't the best it has to offer, it is nice to see this sort of thing happening.

Re: A Note to Ron Paul Activists

probabilityzero — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:14:25 -0000

I completely agree. What the Ron Paul supporters are doing is spamming.

It's especially entertaining when there's a backlash to their spam, like there was on Digg a while ago, and they immediately claim censorship and blame it on government agencies.

Re: Gmail adds Colored Labels, Folders coming soon!

probabilityzero — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:19:53 -0000

The new chat functions look pretty nice. I use the downloaded version of gtalk, but the browser-based gmail version is sounding better and better.

Re: Yahoo Messenger 9 for Windows

probabilityzero — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:08:32 -0000

Looks nice, but is it still adware?

Re: Insert Files in your blog post using Live Writer

probabilityzero — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:42:54 -0000

What's wrong with the built-in visual editor for Wordpress? It's always been good enough for me.

Re: Skype Blames Microsoft for the outage

probabilityzero — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:41:28 -0000

Despite this headline that's been floating around the blogosphere thanks to Slashdot, Skype never actually blamed Microsoft for the outage. If you look at the announcement they made (which you even linked to and quoted from), they took full responsibility for the problem in their login system.

They acknowledged that the problem was in _their_ system: the update "triggered" the problem, leading to "issue has now been identified explicitly within Skype." There was a big update (bigger than the usual), and the higher-than-average logins triggered a problem with the Skype code, as explained in their announcement.

Skype never blamed Microsoft.

Re: Kill Dash Nine!

probabilityzero — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:50:03 -0000

Wow, that's awesome :D