I have had a cell phone for 6 years or so. My first one was one of those giant Nextel walkie talkies. Man that thing was a pain to tote around. I was in great shape, though, from the arm curls with my mega-talkie. It was annoying and embarrassing when someone would beep in, or if the phone would ring in a restaurant. It was for work, though, and when you are on 24/7 support it's hard to get away (especially when you are "the dog")
From there I moved on to the smaller flip-phone nextel. Better to carry. That was when my midsection started to go downhill, but I had more energy. The accessibility was still annoying, though.
Now I am on a motorola v60 with a different service. no more beep-beeps demanding my immediate attention and pissing off everyone within 30 feet that doesn't care what my drive-through-clerk sounding co-worker has to say or why they are stupid tonight.
I have always been self conscious about using my phone except when I need to. I don't chat on it, I take care of work items quickly, and beyond that try only to use it to coordinate meeting times and so on.
Other people yak away all day long about whatever, trying to squeeze all the lemon juice out of their "whenever minutes" or whatever minutes they might have.
And still others hate cellphones to the point where they refuse to own one. My girlfriend fits into this category, which forces me to never be late to meet her because I can't call up with an excuse, and most of the time to have to gather her up and bring her places because of her challenged sense of locality. Not that these things are bad, I like treating her like an important person and not an extension of my electronic self.
You do have to wonder when and how the cell phone will successfully integrate itself into our collective social senses. Probably not before there are as many laws governing the use of phones as there are defining when and where the poor sods that smoke can prepetrate their slow demise.
"Which means that if you run your restaurant in a neglectful fashion and poison people, or if you run your print shop unsafely and employees are injured or killed, you can't be sued personally."
Absolutely not. This is where all the anti-corp people go wrong. An individual can absolutely be held responsible for their individual acts of neglect, harrassment, fraud, and so on. As an individual at any company, regardless of your ownership status you can be held civilly or criminally responsible for any of these things and more.
What you are protected from is finacial ruin if your business fails. That's it. Not lawsuits for poisoning people or personal injury. You pay for those mistakes, and can even be shut down. Creditors, and then only if you can PROVE (and the burden of proof is on the corporation, which is why companies audit themselves yearly) that you are not guilty of illegitimate business practices.
And, more often than not business are subject to frivolous lawsuits and claims. We fired a manager for in response to a supported sexual harrassment claim. We went to the unemployment hearing with signed documents from the accusing party AND several witnesses. The claim against the company was upheld and we had to pay his unemployment claim. Bogus, but we paid. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last.
Another time we had a labor audit because an employee reported us to the labor board. They did a 3 year audit for back overtime. At the time we paid all of our employees a salary, but some of the employees complained about it and one reported us for not paying overtime.
What the labor board found was that people at our company averaged between 36 and 38 hours per week, but got paid for 40. Then they tracked all the weeks that people worked over 40 hours and made us pay the employees. NOT all the weeks they worked over 40 minus all the weeks they worked less than 40, but just the weeks the employees worked over 40. Obviously the people weren't underpaid or overworked. The labor auditor reported that we pay higher than average wages, have better than average benefits, paid people for more than they had worked, and then stuck it up our ass for some 24 thousand dollars in back wages.
So, please, don't tell me I don't know what I am speaking about. I do not lack good arguements. I have personal experience with the matter. And...regardless of what the laws should be and if they should treat different entities differently, they don't. Those laws affect every person trying to run a business.
Funny that occasionally it's possible to disagree and not call each other names. I made it onto at least 4 foe lists with this thread without casting names.
Anyways, I personally think that federal and state spending taxes are the only taxes that should eb levied. Any time money is transacted between parties, tax it. Come up with an equitable rate. Get rid of income tax and the IRS. You'd save taxpayers billions AND put the burden on sellers to keep accurate inventory, labor and sales records. The bookkeeping would be much simpler, as companies are technically required to keep these records now. It would take all the complexity out of collecting and sorting all the taxes people now pay.
This would be better, eliminate uneven and unfair taxation (no, I am not in favor of the current bracket structure. It's discriminatory), and most importantly eliminate all loopholes in the current tax code.
No. The corporation was invented to protect people that were trying to add something to the business markets of america from a level of liability. That is, if you tried to open a restaurant or print shop or some other business, and it failed, then you couldn't be sued directly for say, your house and be put on the street with your family in tow.
If you think that people running businesses aren't risking their necks then you are speaking from an uneducated standpoint. The lionshare of US businesses are small, family held businesses that have a difficult time paying rent and help every month, not giant corporate conglomerates with 5 million shareholders. These people go to work every day and bust their nuts to create something successful. They work long hours and take great risks with their time, money and family.
Whoever you are and whatever you do, do not compare people trying to strike out and create or run a business with playing the stockmarket like it's blackjack. You make yourself sound like a pretentious 19 year old that has nothing to go on but what his left-wing, coulnd't make it in the real world so they thought they'd teach professor has told them.
I've been through it. it's difficult. You work lots. You have no social life. you struggle with money. and, eventually, with some luck, all the work pays off and life starts to get a little easier. And incorporating helps with that. And those that have not been through it should bear in mind that the same laws that govern the Mega-companies also govern small ones like mine.
What does that have to do with you not paying taxes for things you don't use? Double taxation means that taxes are paid twice on the same money. It is inherently true of ALL taxes that are levied beyond income tax (as any money you take in has already been taxed and any money you earn from your money is also taxed)
Double taxation is illegal, however our government has found ways of implementing it.
Also, I don't think anyone should feel bad about taxing companies. What I do think is that people should educate themselves a little better on what a person has to do to run a company and provide jobs, and therefore income and benefits to people. If the costs involved were a little more obvious, people would scratch their heads a little less as to why companies do sone of the things they do.
I completely agree that to have rights, they must pay taxes. And...if they pay taxes, they deserve rights.
No, I do not believe that businesses shouldn't be taxed. Businesses make up a large percentage of the taxes that make this company tick.
That's one of the reasons I get ticked off with all the anti-corporate sentiment from the legions of liberal kids on sites like this. Kids that have likely yet to have a job beyond working at Newbury Comics, and in truth have yet to really pay a tax because in the end they get almost all of it back.
Many people that post here just have opinions based in opinions. They don't know what it's like to run a company, or more to the point, just how difficult the government makes it to actually give someone a job. We try to give people jobs.
Did you know that for the privalege of cutting an employee a paycheck we have to pay a 15% payroll tax on the amount of the check? That's 15% MORE taxes than I imagine most of the people reading this thought came out of paychecks.
Did you know that you pay income taxes, then pay sales taxes on something you buy from a company (double taxation), and then the company has to pay taxes on that money several more times in many of the ways listed in my original post including income taxes, making triple taxation and more?
Oh, yes. Much more than 50% of your paycheck goes to taxes. And, companies pay much, much more in taxes than you do.
If you rent, then you are still paying realastate tax. You are paying the taxes of the person you are renting from. You svae them the money for the real estate tax, but then they have to pay income tax on the rent money, which is more
Excise tax is a yearly tax you pay for owning a car. If you lease a car, you get a tax hike in the lease once per year.
Gas tax is factored into the price at the pump. Oh...and don't think that the gas company pays it. You pay it. The price of your gas includes any taxes they pay.
Because you don't fly doesn't mean someone else isn't paying a disproportionate amount of the taxes, including businesses
Same with Cigarettes and Alcohol
Entertainment tax: Many states/cities have an additional tax charged on hotel rooms and restaurant tabs to help pay for city expenses
Water and Sewage: I pay INCOME TAX. No, I don't expect those things for free, but it is an additional tax above and beyond your paycheck taxes
Luxury Tax is charged on expensive cars and other items. And again, looking at people as a whole, just because you don't pay it doesn't mean someone else isn't being whacked.
Capital Gains: Yes, you do in fact get hit with charges from Mutual Fund investments for the buying and selling of shares withing the fund, regardless of the overall value and change in value of your shares. I've been hit with that the last 4 years.
Tolls: See above. Someone's paying it. I also forgot parking and traffic tickets, which are just a big revenue producer for states and towns.
Don't get me started on how those taxes are wasted.
So...the point is that they exist and you are paying many of them whether you see it or not. If I had more time to brainstorm I could come up with many, many more taxes that are paid by US. Think about where your money goes after it leaves your hands.
Well, now, you are implying that if that copyright did exist that Disney would try and defend their right to make a movie out of it anyways.
Movie studios make movies of copyrighted material all the time. They pay the owner. Simple. If you wanted to do something based on a disney work, You would have to negotiate the right to do it as they would. It works both ways.
On Taxes...There are more taxes than Income Tax. How about sales tax in your state of any significant amount. Or real estate taxes. or excise taxes. or gas taxes, airport taxes, cigarette taxes, alcohol taxes, entertainment taxes. Taxes on leased vehicles. Water and sewage taxes. Taxes on electricity and phone. Luxury taxes and capital gains taxes, even on invested money when you are LOSING money in your mutual funds you get whacked for capital gains takes. How about tolls on the roads, which are another kind of tax, or any other similar situation.
After I pay my 30something percent in income tax, I keep paying thousands more all year long.
IANAL, but I am involved in running a family owned business and know a bit about this.
Corperations do not shield individuals from committing illegal acts such as Fraud (See Enron). Individuals at corporations are AS RESPONSIBLE for detrimental acts as the company is and can be prosecuted, sued, or whatever the appropriate course of action regarding their conduct.
A corporation provides financial protection to stockholders and can in most instances limit liability for financial problems. It is not a license to commit fraudulant acts.
"And it's even worse because Disney got to steal from the cultural works of their fathers and grandfathers"
Did they? I mean, really? Is there a history of mickey mouse book out there that I am missing that details how disney gave birth to the mouse through someone else's idea?
That sounds sarcastic, but it's not. I would like someone to come out with the information and prove this arguement, because otherwise it's baseless.
True, but not. Corporations have morals and ethics that can only be based in the HUMANS that run them. They don't run themselves...so it takes an unethical person to make an unethical coorperation.
I'll take the $1 bet that there are more unethical humans on the planet than corperations.
Perhaps it's because we allow thousands of Illegal Immigrants into the country every day, the type of people you wouldn't want to chum around with because they are criminals.
At the same time we make it very difficult for people that you would want as countrymen and women to come here using the legitimate immigration system.
At the same time we give the illegal immigrants food, shelter, clothes, money, education, all taken from hard working american taxpayers. This is great for the immigrants. Free Stuff! And, it immediately sends the message of "Why work when I can sponge?"
At the same time, we don't require people to speak our language to function here. So, we waste more money providing services to people in any language they want to speak but ours.
So, if you work hard and be a good citizen, you get the bonus of paying out 50%+ of your income to taxes to support people that don't deserve to be supported. If you try to come to the country and add to the society and add something, to really become an american, you can't get in. But...if you sneak into the country illegally you can get medical care, food, shelter, and clothing for free, and better than you could get in the country you came from.
So, an Author does not have the right to own the novel they spent years writing because they based it in something, or on som amalgomation of things they have taken in over their lives and spun them into a story?
J.R.R. Tolkien's family doesn't have the right to own copyright on the Lord of the Ring's. Why? Why should his work become public domain? What gives you the right to it?
Not True. A Corporation is a legal entity put in place to protect the people that own businesses from direct impact of the success or failures of that business. There are many different kinds, and most of them serve only to form layers of legal parachute for people that risk their necks to provide goods, services, and ultimately jobs.
It's better that "The United Moneyless Jobless Hungry Unclothed Wretches That Are About To Suffer A Societal Collapse And Become a Third World, Back Assed Nation of America "
Seriously People. Companies are an absolutely enormous part of what makes the U.S. possible.
And, people have a right to own what they produced, and keep it in the family if they wish. If it's worth enough, someone will buy it. If it's not, then it will stay owned and worthless to anyone except for sentimental reasons.
It is true that professional and consumer digital cameras have come a long way in the last 10 years. My first expereince in digital photography was retouching images from a Kodack DCS200 singleshot camera. Those images really needed some work, but that the time the technology was amazing.
I have worked with many different types of cameras, Shooting, retouching, and reproducing on press, large format printers, and billboards, etc.. I would say that it is a fairly bold statement to claim "most photo editors and labs" think the cameras you named make better pictures.
Most people do not grasp that film has and will continue to have flexibility over digital images for some time. The X3 is great and is a big step forward in terms of accurate color reproduction, but film and scanning will continue to dominate the large format market for some time yet. The ability to focus in on areas of the film, create a significantly increased amount of enlargement, etc. are tools that advertising professionals can't quite live without.
Mind you I think that the time will come where film is outdated on the professional level. On the consumer level...well, that's another story. I think the answer there lies in what percentage of people have access to a computer, and therefore would even bother with a digital camera.
Not all photographs get printed out int the way you think.
I am in the business of retail advertising. We take hundreds of digital pictures every week and never make prints from them. They go on the web, in printed weekly advertisements, on posters or shelftalker cards, etc..
The applications for this kind of chip are numerous. The best thing for us will be having a camera of such quality that we can use to shoot on location, and then bring back to the shop and load it into the system for use in our advertisements without having to make slides/prints/whatever. We have that now, but the cameras we use have the pixel-noise issue that we have to deal with. This will save us touch-up work, and therefore time and money.
In classic CCD digital cameras, there is an array of RGB pixels. many of these chips come from the same manufacturerd, and what differentiates one camera from another are the algorithms within the camera to take the captured light waves at each pixel and calculate what that wave would be on surrounding pixels. This process is called interpolating the color. Often times the process of interpolation will produce pixel noise, referred to as 'Artifacts' among digital imaging professionals. There are ways to eliminate artifacts, but it's a pain.
Cameras have existes for several years that have a "monochrome" chip. These cameras shoot through colored filters to capture red, green, and blue fields and then stitch the colors together to form a composite image. No interpolation has to take place in this situation
The problem with this method is that it is only good for shooting still-life product shots. Add something in as simple as a lit candle and you end up with color ghosting (the channels of color do not line up exactly because at the moment of the capture the flame may be flickering)
In the case of this chip, each image pixel is reading all three light waves and understands color at each pixel. No calculations need to be done on the color to "fake it" in between pixels, so no image artifacts, or pixel noise occurs.
On a side note, remember "Disloyalty is the Greatest Sin Of All, Little Wooden Boy!" (para-quoted from "The Tick", who would bumble into kicking all their asses)
Did I mention that I agree with the guy that said Drunken Brawl = Superman, Planned event = Batman
With the new harddrives coming out at such large sizes combined with the Superdrive available in the G$ towers, who needs it. Record all week to your HD. Take a couple of hours and write it to DVD. Repeat.
I know...I was merely making a point for the masses. The fellowship of the relatively computer illiterate. It's not their fault...and they have better social lives (curse WarCraft III).
This is exactly what we need, more gratuitous ads splashing across our computers. I love when e-mails pop up explorer windows with advertisements, or when you go to view a web page and 6 more windows pop up.
Heh...this is especially great when a porn e-mail pops up it's own site, and as you desperately try to close it, 15 more porn windows pop up in succession behind it. Invariably, someone will walk up behind you or into you office/cubicle while you are trying to get rid of the porn they will NEVER believe you weren't looking at.
Interestingly enough...they are probably right because you probably did pause for a second and think about that link!
No, I don't like the idea of advertisers putting content on my computer. Regardless of what it can accomplish.
Slashdot Mirror
I have had a cell phone for 6 years or so. My first one was one of those giant Nextel walkie talkies. Man that thing was a pain to tote around. I was in great shape, though, from the arm curls with my mega-talkie. It was annoying and embarrassing when someone would beep in, or if the phone would ring in a restaurant. It was for work, though, and when you are on 24/7 support it's hard to get away (especially when you are "the dog")
From there I moved on to the smaller flip-phone nextel. Better to carry. That was when my midsection started to go downhill, but I had more energy. The accessibility was still annoying, though.
Now I am on a motorola v60 with a different service. no more beep-beeps demanding my immediate attention and pissing off everyone within 30 feet that doesn't care what my drive-through-clerk sounding co-worker has to say or why they are stupid tonight.
I have always been self conscious about using my phone except when I need to. I don't chat on it, I take care of work items quickly, and beyond that try only to use it to coordinate meeting times and so on.
Other people yak away all day long about whatever, trying to squeeze all the lemon juice out of their "whenever minutes" or whatever minutes they might have.
And still others hate cellphones to the point where they refuse to own one. My girlfriend fits into this category, which forces me to never be late to meet her because I can't call up with an excuse, and most of the time to have to gather her up and bring her places because of her challenged sense of locality. Not that these things are bad, I like treating her like an important person and not an extension of my electronic self.
You do have to wonder when and how the cell phone will successfully integrate itself into our collective social senses. Probably not before there are as many laws governing the use of phones as there are defining when and where the poor sods that smoke can prepetrate their slow demise.
"Which means that if you run your restaurant in a neglectful fashion and poison people, or if you run your print shop unsafely and employees are injured or killed, you can't be sued personally."
Absolutely not. This is where all the anti-corp people go wrong. An individual can absolutely be held responsible for their individual acts of neglect, harrassment, fraud, and so on. As an individual at any company, regardless of your ownership status you can be held civilly or criminally responsible for any of these things and more.
What you are protected from is finacial ruin if your business fails. That's it. Not lawsuits for poisoning people or personal injury. You pay for those mistakes, and can even be shut down. Creditors, and then only if you can PROVE (and the burden of proof is on the corporation, which is why companies audit themselves yearly) that you are not guilty of illegitimate business practices.
And, more often than not business are subject to frivolous lawsuits and claims. We fired a manager for in response to a supported sexual harrassment claim. We went to the unemployment hearing with signed documents from the accusing party AND several witnesses. The claim against the company was upheld and we had to pay his unemployment claim. Bogus, but we paid. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last.
Another time we had a labor audit because an employee reported us to the labor board. They did a 3 year audit for back overtime. At the time we paid all of our employees a salary, but some of the employees complained about it and one reported us for not paying overtime.
What the labor board found was that people at our company averaged between 36 and 38 hours per week, but got paid for 40. Then they tracked all the weeks that people worked over 40 hours and made us pay the employees. NOT all the weeks they worked over 40 minus all the weeks they worked less than 40, but just the weeks the employees worked over 40. Obviously the people weren't underpaid or overworked. The labor auditor reported that we pay higher than average wages, have better than average benefits, paid people for more than they had worked, and then stuck it up our ass for some 24 thousand dollars in back wages.
So, please, don't tell me I don't know what I am speaking about. I do not lack good arguements. I have personal experience with the matter. And...regardless of what the laws should be and if they should treat different entities differently, they don't. Those laws affect every person trying to run a business.
Funny that occasionally it's possible to disagree and not call each other names. I made it onto at least 4 foe lists with this thread without casting names.
Anyways, I personally think that federal and state spending taxes are the only taxes that should eb levied. Any time money is transacted between parties, tax it. Come up with an equitable rate. Get rid of income tax and the IRS. You'd save taxpayers billions AND put the burden on sellers to keep accurate inventory, labor and sales records. The bookkeeping would be much simpler, as companies are technically required to keep these records now. It would take all the complexity out of collecting and sorting all the taxes people now pay.
This would be better, eliminate uneven and unfair taxation (no, I am not in favor of the current bracket structure. It's discriminatory), and most importantly eliminate all loopholes in the current tax code.
Later,
G.
No. The corporation was invented to protect people that were trying to add something to the business markets of america from a level of liability. That is, if you tried to open a restaurant or print shop or some other business, and it failed, then you couldn't be sued directly for say, your house and be put on the street with your family in tow.
If you think that people running businesses aren't risking their necks then you are speaking from an uneducated standpoint. The lionshare of US businesses are small, family held businesses that have a difficult time paying rent and help every month, not giant corporate conglomerates with 5 million shareholders. These people go to work every day and bust their nuts to create something successful. They work long hours and take great risks with their time, money and family.
Whoever you are and whatever you do, do not compare people trying to strike out and create or run a business with playing the stockmarket like it's blackjack. You make yourself sound like a pretentious 19 year old that has nothing to go on but what his left-wing, coulnd't make it in the real world so they thought they'd teach professor has told them.
I've been through it. it's difficult. You work lots. You have no social life. you struggle with money. and, eventually, with some luck, all the work pays off and life starts to get a little easier. And incorporating helps with that. And those that have not been through it should bear in mind that the same laws that govern the Mega-companies also govern small ones like mine.
On Double Taxation:
What does that have to do with you not paying taxes for things you don't use? Double taxation means that taxes are paid twice on the same money. It is inherently true of ALL taxes that are levied beyond income tax (as any money you take in has already been taxed and any money you earn from your money is also taxed)
Double taxation is illegal, however our government has found ways of implementing it.
Also, I don't think anyone should feel bad about taxing companies. What I do think is that people should educate themselves a little better on what a person has to do to run a company and provide jobs, and therefore income and benefits to people. If the costs involved were a little more obvious, people would scratch their heads a little less as to why companies do sone of the things they do.
I completely agree that to have rights, they must pay taxes. And...if they pay taxes, they deserve rights.
No, I do not believe that businesses shouldn't be taxed. Businesses make up a large percentage of the taxes that make this company tick.
That's one of the reasons I get ticked off with all the anti-corporate sentiment from the legions of liberal kids on sites like this. Kids that have likely yet to have a job beyond working at Newbury Comics, and in truth have yet to really pay a tax because in the end they get almost all of it back.
Many people that post here just have opinions based in opinions. They don't know what it's like to run a company, or more to the point, just how difficult the government makes it to actually give someone a job. We try to give people jobs.
Did you know that for the privalege of cutting an employee a paycheck we have to pay a 15% payroll tax on the amount of the check? That's 15% MORE taxes than I imagine most of the people reading this thought came out of paychecks.
Did you know that you pay income taxes, then pay sales taxes on something you buy from a company (double taxation), and then the company has to pay taxes on that money several more times in many of the ways listed in my original post including income taxes, making triple taxation and more?
Oh, yes. Much more than 50% of your paycheck goes to taxes. And, companies pay much, much more in taxes than you do.
In response...
If you rent, then you are still paying realastate tax. You are paying the taxes of the person you are renting from. You svae them the money for the real estate tax, but then they have to pay income tax on the rent money, which is more
Excise tax is a yearly tax you pay for owning a car. If you lease a car, you get a tax hike in the lease once per year.
Gas tax is factored into the price at the pump. Oh...and don't think that the gas company pays it. You pay it. The price of your gas includes any taxes they pay.
Because you don't fly doesn't mean someone else isn't paying a disproportionate amount of the taxes, including businesses
Same with Cigarettes and Alcohol
Entertainment tax: Many states/cities have an additional tax charged on hotel rooms and restaurant tabs to help pay for city expenses
Water and Sewage: I pay INCOME TAX. No, I don't expect those things for free, but it is an additional tax above and beyond your paycheck taxes
Luxury Tax is charged on expensive cars and other items. And again, looking at people as a whole, just because you don't pay it doesn't mean someone else isn't being whacked.
Capital Gains: Yes, you do in fact get hit with charges from Mutual Fund investments for the buying and selling of shares withing the fund, regardless of the overall value and change in value of your shares. I've been hit with that the last 4 years.
Tolls: See above. Someone's paying it. I also forgot parking and traffic tickets, which are just a big revenue producer for states and towns.
Don't get me started on how those taxes are wasted.
So...the point is that they exist and you are paying many of them whether you see it or not. If I had more time to brainstorm I could come up with many, many more taxes that are paid by US. Think about where your money goes after it leaves your hands.
Well, now, you are implying that if that copyright did exist that Disney would try and defend their right to make a movie out of it anyways.
Movie studios make movies of copyrighted material all the time. They pay the owner. Simple. If you wanted to do something based on a disney work, You would have to negotiate the right to do it as they would. It works both ways.
On Taxes...There are more taxes than Income Tax. How about sales tax in your state of any significant amount. Or real estate taxes. or excise taxes. or gas taxes, airport taxes, cigarette taxes, alcohol taxes, entertainment taxes. Taxes on leased vehicles. Water and sewage taxes. Taxes on electricity and phone. Luxury taxes and capital gains taxes, even on invested money when you are LOSING money in your mutual funds you get whacked for capital gains takes. How about tolls on the roads, which are another kind of tax, or any other similar situation.
After I pay my 30something percent in income tax, I keep paying thousands more all year long.
IANAL, but I am involved in running a family owned business and know a bit about this.
Corperations do not shield individuals from committing illegal acts such as Fraud (See Enron). Individuals at corporations are AS RESPONSIBLE for detrimental acts as the company is and can be prosecuted, sued, or whatever the appropriate course of action regarding their conduct.
A corporation provides financial protection to stockholders and can in most instances limit liability for financial problems. It is not a license to commit fraudulant acts.
"Jefferson was a writer and inventor and even he didn't believe in ownership into perpetuity."
Just to play Devil's Advocate, but that would except his slaves and the children of his slaves and so on...of course to be inherited by his family.
"And it's even worse because Disney got to steal from the cultural works of their fathers and grandfathers"
Did they? I mean, really? Is there a history of mickey mouse book out there that I am missing that details how disney gave birth to the mouse through someone else's idea?
That sounds sarcastic, but it's not. I would like someone to come out with the information and prove this arguement, because otherwise it's baseless.
True, but not. Corporations have morals and ethics that can only be based in the HUMANS that run them. They don't run themselves...so it takes an unethical person to make an unethical coorperation.
I'll take the $1 bet that there are more unethical humans on the planet than corperations.
Bad people let Enron happen. Not a company.
Good Question.
Perhaps it's because we allow thousands of Illegal Immigrants into the country every day, the type of people you wouldn't want to chum around with because they are criminals.
At the same time we make it very difficult for people that you would want as countrymen and women to come here using the legitimate immigration system.
At the same time we give the illegal immigrants food, shelter, clothes, money, education, all taken from hard working american taxpayers. This is great for the immigrants. Free Stuff! And, it immediately sends the message of "Why work when I can sponge?"
At the same time, we don't require people to speak our language to function here. So, we waste more money providing services to people in any language they want to speak but ours.
So, if you work hard and be a good citizen, you get the bonus of paying out 50%+ of your income to taxes to support people that don't deserve to be supported. If you try to come to the country and add to the society and add something, to really become an american, you can't get in. But...if you sneak into the country illegally you can get medical care, food, shelter, and clothing for free, and better than you could get in the country you came from.
Fix that problem, and you have a good start.
So, an Author does not have the right to own the novel they spent years writing because they based it in something, or on som amalgomation of things they have taken in over their lives and spun them into a story?
J.R.R. Tolkien's family doesn't have the right to own copyright on the Lord of the Ring's. Why? Why should his work become public domain? What gives you the right to it?
Not True. A Corporation is a legal entity put in place to protect the people that own businesses from direct impact of the success or failures of that business. There are many different kinds, and most of them serve only to form layers of legal parachute for people that risk their necks to provide goods, services, and ultimately jobs.
Yes, Dante`, that is true. And, sarcasm aside I agree with that.
But we aren't talking about collective unconsciousness. We are talking about copyrighted creative works. Mickey Mouse, to be precise.
It's better that "The United Moneyless Jobless Hungry Unclothed Wretches That Are About To Suffer A Societal Collapse And Become a Third World, Back Assed Nation of America "
Seriously People. Companies are an absolutely enormous part of what makes the U.S. possible.
And, people have a right to own what they produced, and keep it in the family if they wish. If it's worth enough, someone will buy it. If it's not, then it will stay owned and worthless to anyone except for sentimental reasons.
It is true that professional and consumer digital cameras have come a long way in the last 10 years. My first expereince in digital photography was retouching images from a Kodack DCS200 singleshot camera. Those images really needed some work, but that the time the technology was amazing.
I have worked with many different types of cameras, Shooting, retouching, and reproducing on press, large format printers, and billboards, etc.. I would say that it is a fairly bold statement to claim "most photo editors and labs" think the cameras you named make better pictures.
Most people do not grasp that film has and will continue to have flexibility over digital images for some time. The X3 is great and is a big step forward in terms of accurate color reproduction, but film and scanning will continue to dominate the large format market for some time yet. The ability to focus in on areas of the film, create a significantly increased amount of enlargement, etc. are tools that advertising professionals can't quite live without.
Mind you I think that the time will come where film is outdated on the professional level. On the consumer level...well, that's another story. I think the answer there lies in what percentage of people have access to a computer, and therefore would even bother with a digital camera.
Not all photographs get printed out int the way you think.
I am in the business of retail advertising. We take hundreds of digital pictures every week and never make prints from them. They go on the web, in printed weekly advertisements, on posters or shelftalker cards, etc..
The applications for this kind of chip are numerous. The best thing for us will be having a camera of such quality that we can use to shoot on location, and then bring back to the shop and load it into the system for use in our advertisements without having to make slides/prints/whatever. We have that now, but the cameras we use have the pixel-noise issue that we have to deal with. This will save us touch-up work, and therefore time and money.
In classic CCD digital cameras, there is an array of RGB pixels. many of these chips come from the same manufacturerd, and what differentiates one camera from another are the algorithms within the camera to take the captured light waves at each pixel and calculate what that wave would be on surrounding pixels. This process is called interpolating the color. Often times the process of interpolation will produce pixel noise, referred to as 'Artifacts' among digital imaging professionals. There are ways to eliminate artifacts, but it's a pain.
Cameras have existes for several years that have a "monochrome" chip. These cameras shoot through colored filters to capture red, green, and blue fields and then stitch the colors together to form a composite image. No interpolation has to take place in this situation
The problem with this method is that it is only good for shooting still-life product shots. Add something in as simple as a lit candle and you end up with color ghosting (the channels of color do not line up exactly because at the moment of the capture the flame may be flickering)
In the case of this chip, each image pixel is reading all three light waves and understands color at each pixel. No calculations need to be done on the color to "fake it" in between pixels, so no image artifacts, or pixel noise occurs.
Yoda...the other green meat.
On a side note, remember "Disloyalty is the Greatest Sin Of All, Little Wooden Boy!" (para-quoted from "The Tick", who would bumble into kicking all their asses)
Did I mention that I agree with the guy that said Drunken Brawl = Superman, Planned event = Batman
With the new harddrives coming out at such large sizes combined with the Superdrive available in the G$ towers, who needs it. Record all week to your HD. Take a couple of hours and write it to DVD. Repeat.
I know...I was merely making a point for the masses. The fellowship of the relatively computer illiterate. It's not their fault...and they have better social lives (curse WarCraft III).
This is exactly what we need, more gratuitous ads splashing across our computers. I love when e-mails pop up explorer windows with advertisements, or when you go to view a web page and 6 more windows pop up.
Heh...this is especially great when a porn e-mail pops up it's own site, and as you desperately try to close it, 15 more porn windows pop up in succession behind it. Invariably, someone will walk up behind you or into you office/cubicle while you are trying to get rid of the porn they will NEVER believe you weren't looking at.
Interestingly enough...they are probably right because you probably did pause for a second and think about that link!
No, I don't like the idea of advertisers putting content on my computer. Regardless of what it can accomplish.