Oh, well, that’s pretty well documented. Most of those guys started companies and worked giant amounts of time.

What are you disagreeing with?

And I in no way was saying that the wealth inequity wasn’t absurd.

What are you basing that on? Here’s a list - most are workaholics.

Yeah, that’s mostly the case. There’s a lot of people here just making a lot of assumptions, but there’s quite a bit of information on billionaires as individuals. For instance, there’s this Forbes list, where you can click each one to get a summary of how they got rich.

There isn’t one type. There are the ones like Bezos and Dell, who got rich by growing one or more businesses, and are still at it. They likely don’t work normal hours, but they likely work more than 40. Some of those, like Gates, get older and move on to other things like foundation work, but not an actual job. Hard to say what kind of hours they work. Then there are the ones like Christy Walton, who inherited their wealth and don’t really ever work.

Yep, you get it. And it’s really hard to get people to understand the value in learning to do that stuff without the tools.

Are you saying that she’s a bot or a troll?

We do a lot of real-time control software, and just yesterday we were taking about how the newer folks are really good at using available tools and libraries, but they have less understanding of what’s happening underneath and they have problems when those tools don’t/can’t do what we need.

Apparently he wants everything written in COBOL

Will that’s complete bullshit. What ridiculous rationalization. If you don’t like those places, don’t do business with them. If enough people don’t do business with them, they’ll go away.

Look at the title of this thread and then the first sentence of your comment. How else should it be read?

Then what did you mean by the first sentence?

Instead you could stop making shitty movies and reheating successful recipes.

Sure it is. You’re taking something that isn’t yours without paying for it.

They didn’t argue the product (the content on streaming platforms) was bad,

Really? How do you interpret the very first sentence?

Instead you could stop making shitty movies and reheating successful recipes. And stop inventing three new streaming services every week.

That seems to be saying it’s bad to me.

they argued the only legal ways you can get the product are not acceptable.

You know what I do when a product I want is unacceptably expensive or whatever? I don’t buy it. It’s not like we’re talking about food or medicine. This is all lame rationalization.

At least now we’ve gotten to the common understanding that it is theft, but you just don’t care. I personally think copyright laws have been good for our society because they’ve allowed people to live off of creating art. You obviously have a different view.

I’m not at all frustrated by the conversation - it’s like discussing car registration or driver’s licenses with a SovCit. In fact, it’s pretty much exactly like that. It’s interesting for me to see how you rationalize your view, but I don’t expect you to change your mind.

So a writer spends a year of his life writing a book with the idea that he can sell copies for $15 each so that, if he sells enough copies, he can make that year’s time worthwhile. But you think it’s okay to just make a copy for free since he still has his original?

So it’s okay to keep a rental car because you don’t own it and it’s therefore not stealing?

I always liked this one. And I always get this one in my head whenever I encounter any of the words.

Not my favorite one, but I really liked Kliban. Very surreal sometimes.

Not sure I get the “You make a bad product so I feel justified in stealing it” argument.