Re: I'm at a loss for words

[swhite@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu (Steve White)]

In article <552o2q$4ke@client2.news.psi.net>, smentzer@pacbell.net (Steve
Mentzer) wrote:


> Without your "moral" foothold, your arguments are nonexistent.


For some reason unknown to me you have failed to complete your education.
If you had and had taken a logic class, you would have learned that the
moral argument in this running conversation is the primary issue. You have
admitted to pirating software at each stage of your life, and are
unapologetic about it. In fact, you wish others would quit pointing it out
since it's irrelevant to you.

It might be irrelevant to you but it isn't to any other moral person who
believes that stealing is wrong.

You continue to attempt to justify your pirating and then complain that I
don't accept your arguments. Of course I don't. There is no justification.

Your "argument" that piracy didn't kill the Apple II is self-serving at
best. What are you going to do, admit that your actions and those of
people like you killed off the computer line? Of course you don't want to
live with the consequences of that one.

So you resort to issues of proprietary technology, yaddah-yaddetdah. But
to do that you have to claim that a computer that was designed and built
to be one of the most open architectures in its day was somehow closed and
proprietary. Your argument doesn't work, not when one witnesses the
hundreds of thousands of people who learned to program Apple II's and the
tens of thousands who made excellent money writing programs (despite your
thievery).

In the end, the Apple II was closed down as a business decision of Apple,
Inc. They were probably right. The Apple II wasn't going to keep pace with
the industry in the direction the industry wanted to move. As good as the
IIgs was, it wasn't going to keep up with 386 and 486 PC's in the business
market, and Apple knew it was going to face a stiff challenge in the home
and education markets before much longer. Right or wrong, that was a
business decision and not a moral one.

No, the moral argument in this debate is, and continues to be, your
continued stealing of that which doesn't belong to you. You wish others
would just accept your theft without comment. I won't grant you that.



steve