This is mistaken for Windows. Even if programs are run from Program Files, they will often source their DLLs from other locations.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18152888

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146318

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You didn't respond to my actual comment. Again, it is victimless because no one would've bought the overpriced book except for those who have $40 to throw away on a lark.

If we focus on making a quality product at a reasonable price, sales follow. The fact that technology has reduced this price to near $0 is unfortunate but is merely a consequence of computers.

I get that technology is often upsetting, but why take it out on users? The way to win is to pay attention to trends and adapt, not wish the world were different.

Riddle me this: Why did people write books before there was an economic incentive for them to? The crux of our disagreement appears to be this: it wouldn't hurt the world for us to return to those times. And technology seems to make this inevitable.

I wish I could get paid to write programming languages all day, but many people wish they could be paid for many things that are not feasible. Are you so sure your book would have maid those thousands of dollars in an era before it was possible to widely distribute it? Who would buy it? And moreover, who would hear about it and how?

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate.

It's always interesting to watch Stallman's writings become reality.

In fact, this is so prescient as to be worth quoting in full:

Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for class exercises.

It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a modified system kernel. Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.

Substitute "Microsoft Support" for "Apple". We even have officially-licensed and bonded programmers now: The $100 developer ransom.

Lissa did not report Dan to the SPA. His decision to help her led to their marriage, and also led them to question what they had been taught about piracy as children. The couple began reading about the history of copyright, about the Soviet Union and its restrictions on copying, and even the original United States Constitution. They moved to Luna, where they found others who had likewise gravitated away from the long arm of the SPA. When the Tycho Uprising began in 2062, the universal right to read soon became one of its central aims.

You claim you are a victim. Yet you refuse to acknowledge that there are people who can't afford your work who would otherwise be enriched by it. Of the two victims, it's hard to say which is worse. Especially given that people will continue writing books even when there is no incentive to.

Is that an accurate summary? I am trying to respond to the strongest possible interpretation of what you're saying.

What is the difference between someone doing this, which is an illegal victimless crime, and recreational drug use, which is also an illegal victimless crime? Why is one immoral and unethical, but not the other? Furthermore, why is it justifiable to believe that it's an important right to be able to ingest whatever you want into your body as long as you're not harming anyone else? And are you sure the same argument doesn't apply to this case?

That may sound like a dismissive question, but it's at the crux of our disagreement. If we can resolve that, we might be able to see eye to eye.

You act as if I have $40. Would it surprise you to learn my power was cut off within the last few months?

Another point: "Stealing" implies something was lost. The words are still there, even if I have copied them.

The game industry and the iPhone app store have proven that when you price something closer to $1, it will generate exponentially more revenue than $40.

I think you could've made the same sort of argument against movies or music before netflix and napster, but here we are, and the markets still seem thirsty for new content.

Also if you were to somehow poll everyone reading this and ask "Did you buy this book?" you'd get some number, x. But if the book were priced at $5, then $5y would be much greater than $40x.

I bought a bamboo fineline pencil for $50 the other day. It's a tool that will serve me for at least a year. It's unclear whether this book would.

I want work like this to exist, and for the author to be rewarded for it. But ultimately, in an era when words are infinitely and instantaneously copyable, the economic value of words seems to drop.

Given the choice between stealing knowledge and not stealing knowledge, when you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, where's the harm?

Also Library Genesis is amazing: http://libgen.io/search.php?req=knuth

It's everything I dreamed of when I was a kid. I used to spend hours at the local library scouring through crummy "Learn C++ in 24 hours" type books.

http://custodians.online/ is worth a read too.

It's worth being aggressively negative toward such companies, because negotiating to your market value is step one in leading a good life. The fact that they would have you not do this means they don't care about the quality of your life, so you shouldn't care about their company.

At first glance, this seems to be a useless theory, since it's not refutable. But it lends itself to a belief system: by studying the universe, we gain an understanding of whatever created it. This is helpful as a motive: a reason for studying any of this at all, in absence of economic or social incentives.

This seems important. As the centuries tick by, and as we confirm and re-confirm that we are indeed alone and that we do indeed have a mostly-complete model of physics, there will become less and less incentive to analyze the corner cases. It's costly, and takes decades. But at one time, it was costly and took decades to build a cathedral. Yet we accomplished these impressive feats due to a shared belief system.

The reason I brought this up is that we often like to believe there is an advanced alien civilization tucked away in some corner of some galaxy, sending out messages via gravitational waves or neutrinos. But why do humans find this idea so seductive? It's because of an underlying loneliness: we want to believe that we are connected with the universe in some fashion, that our existence has a point, and that there is reason to do anything at all in a universe that will exist long after we've gone, long after our solar system and sun has gone. Because if there were an alien civilization, at least we would not be so alone.

In that context, a solution to Fermi's paradox is simply to believe that our very universe exists due to some higher-order phenomena not knowable within our reality. And by studying the laws of physics, we gain a glimpse into the boundary between our universe and its hypervisor.

One of my favorite videos is on his alternate channel, 2veritasum. Survivor Bias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w

If you don’t have funding, a team will get some and blow your bootstrapped app out of the water.