I finally got around to updating the dokuwiki/wordpress integration plugin to work with the newer versions of WP and DW. It ended up being only one additional step which was tracked down by the commenters, so a big thanks to them for keeping this up to date.
http://keeyai.com/projects-and-releases/dokuwiki-tools/dokuwiki-and-wordpress-integration/
My test installs I just used are Wordpress 2.9.1 and Dokuwiki 2009-12-25, which are the two latest stable releases as of this moment.
Good luck everyone and if you have any problems, please post in the comments.
Here we go for another round. This is really a rant, but I think enough people are going to blindly agree with the government and the RIAA/MPAA that this will fit snugly into controversy corner as well (judgmental, blanket statements like that will also help).
Like all the major issues that have vehement people on both sides, I think the argument fails because each side is arguing a different facet of the issue. For example, the abortion debate — one side is saying “don’t kill babies”. Nobody wants to kill babies guys, take a deep breath. The other side, instead of arguing “kill babies” like the first seems to think, is instead arguing “a couple cells aren’t babies yet”. The gray area of where they ARE babies, is what SHOULD be argued, but whatev. Now, some pro-life people say they are all babies from even one cell are doing great, from the argument’s perspective. However, the ‘potential for life’ side of the fence makes me think they should be up in arms about the millions of misused tube socks in teenage boys’ rooms across the world as well…
Back to the topic at hand! The RIAA/MPAA’s point is that stealing is wrong — they are calling it Piracy. Nobody disagrees with this. In fact, we all suffer through their anti-piracy ads (”You wouldn’t steal a handbag… You wouldn’t steal a car…”) and agree with each point as it goes by. That is, until they get to the “downloading movies is stealing” part. They really aren’t the same thing are they? At all… For some reason, we’re supposed to believe them when they just say things, even if they aren’t true.
Here is the crux of the issue: your harddrive doesn’t belong to the RIAA/MPAA, the government, or anyone else. Really, it doesn’t. When you make the bits inside it line up a certain way, it doesn’t magically become someone else’s property. Really, it doesn’t. When you show someone else the pattern of your bits (sounds naughty :D), and they line up theirs in the same way, no crime has happened here. Really. If you learn a song from the radio, it’s all there in your brain. Do you feel like you stole it? Of course not. There is something inherent in stealing, which is taking something away from someone else and keeping it. This is simply not the case. Nobody has lost anything, you have made a duplicate in exactly the same way as making a mix tape off the radio or taking a picture of a painting or literally just remembering something. Now taking that and selling it, that is abusing intellectual property, which is a different beast altogether.
The bad guys are desperately trying to hold on to a pre-digital business model in a digital age. We no longer MUST have a VHS tape in our VCR to watch a movie. We don’t need a CD in to listen to music. In fact, these things are very limiting and having them makes it harder to enjoy the content. They haven’t adapted to the changing market and, as capitalism demands, they’re beginning to fail. You can’t make a profit selling other obsolete things, why is it any different? If I tried selling mini-discs then starting complaining that MP3 players are stealing, you would laugh at me, and rightly so.
They are selling something people no longer need. Losing sales from a poor business idea is NOT the same as being stolen from.
I’d love to see some famous musicians make a major public push to having their music free online. They need to ALSO sell CDs to people who want them, and have merchandise (shirts, posters, autographs, etc). These are tangible things we want and are willing to pay for and can’t get without stealing (the real kind, which most people don’t want to do). Unfortunately, this is hard for artists because of the record label/radio conglomerate deadlock we have set up — perhaps in a few years there will be a strong enough internet presence to go around the radio BS and still be famous.
Synopsis:
Downloading movies/music isn’t stealing because ‘they’ can’t decide in what pattern you organize your hard drive, and because you aren’t taking anything from anyone.
Bands should be selling actual things — products like CDs, autographs, shirts, posters, and other merch, and services like live shows. These are things you can sell, and people will gladly pay for them.
The music/movie industry needs to adapt to the digital world. If they really want to keep their inflated sales model, maybe they should try selling custom hardware that is the only way to play their product. People will always crack it though, so a better solution is to adapt to the times — find a way to stream your content to users EASILY and CHEAPLY. The days of charging us $20 a dvd are dying, unfortunately (for you), but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have a viable distribution method that earns more revenue after theater sales.
The fact of the matter remains, however, that the RIAA/MPAA has TONS of money and has created legislature using that money to make sharing the contents of your hard drive a crime, despite things like logic and reason. Perhaps one day lawmakers and judges will learn how a computer works and reconsider, but I cynically think the money will always make the laws. If you don’t like it, your only options as a citizen are to protest (write your senator? lol) or just bend over further and keep taking it.
Maybe they should make their money selling lube instead…
I’ve decided to make a new category for my little blurbs, quips, and mutterings that are almost certainly going to offend people, including but not limited to being blatantly on one side of a controversial issue. Some things ‘matter’, like abortion, religion, gun control, etc, but most of them are meaningless opinions blathered about popular bands or icons or ‘american pasttimes’ (baseball, you know I’m coming for you). Perhaps we can start some hilariously heated comment chains…
So, without further ado, my first entry to controversy corner:
“War Pigs” is a terrible song and I can’t figure out why so many people seem to love it. It’s awkward, long, and boring.
I decided it was finally time to move the site off of shared hosting onto a dedicated server. Foolishly I also upgraded all the software the keeps the site up and running, which made the task at least twice as hard. I couldn’t get the wiki to share the site/blog/forum authentication, but I also don’t think we really need a wiki right now (or maybe ever). Anyway, the site should be much faster now and I can move on to creating some actual content for it.
