Video and ebooks however continue to be wrapped in layers of DRM and little forward motion to push DRM out of those fields seems to be underway.
And that used to be the case with music too, and look how things have changed.
The fact that music CDs don't have copy protection probably has something to do with the difference. Non-copy protected mp3s compete with non-copy protected CDs. Copy protected videos compete with copy protected DVDs/BluRay. Copy protected ebooks compete with non-copy protected, but cumbersome to copy, books.
Just because music went DRM free doesn't mean movies and books will as well. -- JimFive
GP is not talking about research. E's talking about browsing. Browsing is not something that Google facilitates.
One of the biggest problems with web stores as they exist is the inability to easily browse the wares. If you go to a book store you can stand amidst several hunderd books of a given genre, select several, and leaf through them to get a sense of their quality (both of the object and the contents).
When looking at classics I regularly compare versions to decide whether the editor's notes meet my needs. This is next to impossible in the current web store environment.
And, yes, this is external to the ereader itself. It is, however, part of the experience if you go to an ereader, and that is what the GP was commenting on. -- JimFive
There is a reason we have courts, where such ridiculousness can be brought to justice, but then again, there is a reason we have freedom as well.
However, allowing a "you can't sue" clause eliminates the courts from the equation. In my opinion this is unconscionable and "can't sue" clauses should not be allowed (with possible exceptions for arbitration regarding the contract terms themselves) ---------- A company has a certain responsibility toward the safety of its employees and clients, especially when on company property or time. To what level should we allow the companies to abdicate that responsibility by imposing non-negotiable contract terms?
a contract is a willing agreement between 2 people.
We don't allow people to contract themselves into slavery, regardless of their willingness. We should not allow people to contract themselves into rape victims either. -- JimFive
"Groups are more likely than individuals to come up with better results, they say, because they will be exposed to the best arguments".
I don't think that it is a given at all.
It may not be a given, but it is reasonable. Take a group of four individuals, each with a different solution to the problem.
In the absence of any discussion, one of those people will implement the "best" solution that the group came up with (not necessarily the optimal solution).
With discussion all four people have been exposed to that best solution and thus have at least some chance of implementing it. The probability of implementing a solution that you have considered must be higher than the probability of implementing a solution that you have not considered.
Note, this analysis also works the other way, a group is more likely to implement a worse solution than an individual. -- JimFive
Its pretty hypocritical to expect Palin to release her's yet give Obama a free pass. He's been out of the senate over 2 and 1/2 years now and you don't see the media going ape shit over his emails. Why is that?
Because Palin has been (credibly) accused of misusing government resources (including her government email) for personal benefit while she was the Governor of Alaska. You may feel that those allegations are no longer important, but it is certainly reasonable for the media to investigate those allegations. The only reason it is being talked about now is that it took 2 years for the documents to be released.
As far as I am aware, no credible allegaton of wrong doing has been leveled at Obama. There certainly have been accusations of guilt by association (Wright, Alinsky) but that doesn't make the cut. -- JimFive
I only consistently read the opinion blogs, but I found that using the RSS feed doesn't get blocked. Searching for the article title in google also doesn't get blocked. -- JimFive
Next phase is of course 240Hz 3D tv that allows two player 3D gaming from the same screen.
With the current setup you always have image going to your eyes. For two-player 3D you would have to have 2 blank cycles (for the opponent's screen) for each frame (1 cycle left eye, 1 cycle right eye, 2 cycles no eyes). I think that would be very straining, even if it was L - 0 - R - 0, because the predominant signal from your eyes would be blank.
Not saying they couldn't do it, but I think it's a harder problem. -- JimFive
Maybe, but I'm still not too sure. As a former math guy, the difference between a finite number of finite retroactive extensions and indefinite extension is [...] I want a damn adjective form of "chasm,"
Maybe, "chasmic"
Also, the law is not math. A single copyright extension is almost certainly acceptable, however by forcing the proponents to say "but it's just this once" a situation is created in which the next time the lawyers can point out the hypocracy to the court. Whether that ends up having any real bearing is yet to be seen. -- JimFive
The nurse will spend more time talking to the patient to get an accurate understanding of symptoms. The expert system will then tell the doctor what the diagnosis is
If costs go down considerably in a computer-controlled utopia, with malpractice claims reduced to almost nothing, the "demand" to pay doctors at their current rate would likely be reduced considerably too.
The cost of providing a service has very little to do with the price of that service. The cost of providing a service is not particularly related to the perceived value of the service to the consumer. While it is possible that doctor salaries would go down a bit it is just as likely that high quality doctors would be in demand at the current price and low quality doctors would be out of work. -- JimFive
And if he says he was hacked, it's true, no? And his embarrassing attempts to deflect questions from the press don't suggest he just MIGHT be playing a little loose with the truth?
I suggest that hacked isn't quite the right word. I think that someone he knows -- a staff member, a relative, a friend -- posted the picture. -- JimFive
That doesn't mean they can't ask for something that doesn't yet exist.
Sure, you can ask, but you're not going to get it.
, especially if you mandate various technologies.
I agree which is why I said:
And it means you create standards but don't dictate process.
However, as I mentioned, enforcement becomes a problem. If one car requires that you wear a seatbelt to meet the legal requirements while another relies on airbags then it becomes much more difficult for law enforcement to determine whether someone is operating legally.
How about something where you could at least choose the level of insurance? No airbag? Sure, but pay us more road tax, just in case you fly out the front window.
Safety features are (also) about mitigating the external costs, either by reducing them, or internalizing them to the price of the car. Many of those costs are born by other individuals, not the government, so they can't all be covered by a "pay more road tax" system. For example, some of the external costs of not having an airbag and flying out of the window are born by the person you land on. -- JimFive
and ironically this is potentially less safe than they might be without the rules. Who's to say that people wouldn't have preferred alternative safety features to those that are mandated?
There is really no reason to believe that cars would be safer without the rules. There was and is nothing preventing auto makers from adding alternative safety features.
The consumer can only consume what is produced. It doesn't matter if people would prefer a 5 point harness in the driver's seat when no manufacturer produces one.
Shouldn't it be up to people themselves what level of risk they want to take, and how?
Yes and no. If you fail to wear your seatbelt you become more of a danger to the others on the road due to the increased likelihood of you being unable to retain control of your car in the event of an incident. If your car doesn't have an airbag you create more of a burden on the emergency response system when you have an accident. There is a societal cost involved and to mitigate that cost the society has decided what level of safety a car must have to be driven on the public roadway.
Are there situations where the bureaucracy has messed up the standards? Does building to the standard sometimes create absurdity? Sure. But that doesn't mean you get rid of standards. It means you try to improve your standards. And it means you create standards but don't dictate process.
This might mean that the standard should be that "The driver must be able to remain behind the wheel while in a spin with rotational velocity X" and then if the manufacturer decides that seatbelts are the way to do that then they add seatbelts and require them for use. However, having different reqirements set by the manufacturer is difficult to enforce in advance of an incident. -- JimFive
You may be joking, but Excel has never exported to csv properly. It is erratic in using quotes around textual fields. It attempts to determine the type of the column based on the first few rows regardless of the cell format property and then discards data that doesn't fit its guess. If you need fixed width fields or numeric padding you can't do it. (Ok, Excel has VBA so you can, but "Save As..." to CSV doesn't do it. -- JimFive
I'm afraid that this is just a foot in the door. To borrow a phrase from paranoid philosophers of years past, this is a slippery slope.
I just wanted to point out that "slippery slope" is the name of a fallacy. The fact that you can imagine these regulations does not mean that this act necessarily leads to those regulations.
We would do better to argue that this act itself is improper in itself. -- JimFive
She uses good filenames, so she can find stuff later. Using folders to organise her stuff just doesn't occur to her. Does anyone have an idea of how I can help her understand?
First, you say she uses good file names so she can find stuff. Presumably that means she uses names like "LetterToAnnApril2011AboutCat.doc" If so then her directory structure is built in: Letter\ToAnn\April2011\AboutCat.doc If you can explain to her why the Structure with the folders is better then she will use it.
The fundamental question is "What is the Benefit to her?" The main benefit of a folder structure for the end user is "Find stuff", if she can already find stuff then does it really matter?
The historic reason for a folder structure for the user was to get around limitations of the computer. When you can't have more than 255 files in a directory then you have to have a directory structure. From the point of view of someone who does projects having a folder for each project makes sense. But from the view of someone who only uses documents, what is the benefit?
Why do you think your mother's system needs to be fixed? -- JimFive
Researchers don't get together and decide they're going to publish results saying coffee good or coffee bad.
That's true, but it isn't the whole story. The researchers come from the same culture as the rest of us and have been inculcated with the idea that "coffee is bad for you" just like the rest of us (because anything pleasurable (and/or addictive) must be bad). So they start their research with "How is coffee bad for you?" It seems that it is only recently that the question has shifted to "Is coffee bad for you?" In an ideal world research would start with the questions: "What chemicals are in coffee and how do they affect the body?" and only then come to a conclusion about the benefits/detriments of coffee.
Realistically, any chemical you put into your body that doesn't kill you right away is going to have good AND bad effects,
That seems on its face to be an almost outrageously bold statement. I'm almost certain we can find a chemical that doesn't kill you right away that doesn't have any beneficial effects on the body. Let's start with asbestos. -- JimFive
On an unrelated note, it is sentences like the ones above that have a quoted question at the end of a statement that make me wish there was a way to put a double space in html.
Does your mortgage deduction really bring you below a 10% tax rate? [...] Here I was wondering if I could really afford a $120k mortgage, and the mortgage company offers me $175k).
Short answer: NO!
The mortgage deduction is only going to benefit you if your itemized deductions exceed the standard deduction. This is unlikely to be the case for you. Even if it is the case, the only benefit you see is the amount that your itemized deductions exceed the standard deduction. So, if you are buying a house that you can reasonably afford and do not have astronomically high health care costs, you will not see a huge benefit from the mortgage deductions.
An interesting exercise would be to estimate your first year's interest and fill out this years tax forms to see what kind of benefit you would get.
The general rule used to be that your house should cost no more than 2.5x your annual salary. The last time I bought a house they approved me for 4x my salary, which is absurd. -- JimFive
The only unfair thing is taxing wealthy people way more just because they *happen* to be more successful
How about, those who benefit the most from the structure of society have a larger responsibility to provide for the support of that society.
But I don't see how you can say it's "unfair". A flat tax is the epitome of fair.
You already acknowledged that this isn't true when you said that
10% of someone making 10k/year is a lot harder to stomach than 10% of someone making 1mil/year.
Thus you understand that requiring someone to give up their sustenance is morally repugnant while requiring someone to give up a luxury is less so. Governmental policy is not and ought not to be obligated to adhere to some ideal of fairness that requires it to starve the poor in order to preserve tea time for the rich. -- JimFive
11 9's would mean about.0003 seconds of downtime per year. That's something like 1 dropped packet. I don't believe that to be possible. On the other hand, it's also probably not detectable. -- JimFive
...which you're allowed to do, so no, it's not infringement.
I don't think it is quite as clear as you are asserting. Fair use may allow you to make a backup copy of your CD or purchased MP3, but it might not allow you to put that back up copy on a remote web server for the purpose of streaming across the internet. The only way we'll find out is after someone gets sued and tries to defend it. Google probably isn't going to get sued in the first round, the users will. If it becomes established that using the service is infringing then Google might get sued. -- JimFive
The statute of limitations clock in many cases is pinned to the last infringing act - so not only would they have to prove you had the files and obtained the music files through copyright infringement, they would have to prove that they were still inside the statute of limitations (three years for civil suits, five for criminal), which means proving you downloaded the music or shared it with someone else during a specific period of time.
You clearly made a copy when you put it on this new Google Service so that would be the most recent infringement date. Not only did you make a copy, you clearly distributed it (albeit to yourself). -- JimFive
Slashdot Mirror
Video and ebooks however continue to be wrapped in layers of DRM and little forward motion to push DRM out of those fields seems to be underway.
And that used to be the case with music too, and look how things have changed.
The fact that music CDs don't have copy protection probably has something to do with the difference. Non-copy protected mp3s compete with non-copy protected CDs. Copy protected videos compete with copy protected DVDs/BluRay. Copy protected ebooks compete with non-copy protected, but cumbersome to copy, books.
Just because music went DRM free doesn't mean movies and books will as well.
--
JimFive
GP is not talking about research. E's talking about browsing. Browsing is not something that Google facilitates.
One of the biggest problems with web stores as they exist is the inability to easily browse the wares. If you go to a book store you can stand amidst several hunderd books of a given genre, select several, and leaf through them to get a sense of their quality (both of the object and the contents).
When looking at classics I regularly compare versions to decide whether the editor's notes meet my needs. This is next to impossible in the current web store environment.
And, yes, this is external to the ereader itself. It is, however, part of the experience if you go to an ereader, and that is what the GP was commenting on.
--
JimFive
the courts are there to determine what responsibilities the companies do or don't have.
That sounds an awful lot like advocating for activist courts. The courts are there to interpret the laws that congress makes.
Congress is not there to pass laws to make every contract perfect
Congress is there to pass laws, and declaring certain contract terms to be invalid seems to fall well within the interstate commerce clause.
Your use of the word "perfect" above just turns your comment into a strawman argument.
--
JimFive
There is a reason we have courts, where such ridiculousness can be brought to justice, but then again, there is a reason we have freedom as well.
However, allowing a "you can't sue" clause eliminates the courts from the equation. In my opinion this is unconscionable and "can't sue" clauses should not be allowed (with possible exceptions for arbitration regarding the contract terms themselves)
----------
A company has a certain responsibility toward the safety of its employees and clients, especially when on company property or time. To what level should we allow the companies to abdicate that responsibility by imposing non-negotiable contract terms?
a contract is a willing agreement between 2 people.
We don't allow people to contract themselves into slavery, regardless of their willingness. We should not allow people to contract themselves into rape victims either.
--
JimFive
"Groups are more likely than individuals to come up with better results, they say, because they will be exposed to the best arguments". I don't think that it is a given at all.
It may not be a given, but it is reasonable. Take a group of four individuals, each with a different solution to the problem.
In the absence of any discussion, one of those people will implement the "best" solution that the group came up with (not necessarily the optimal solution).
With discussion all four people have been exposed to that best solution and thus have at least some chance of implementing it. The probability of implementing a solution that you have considered must be higher than the probability of implementing a solution that you have not considered.
Note, this analysis also works the other way, a group is more likely to implement a worse solution than an individual.
--
JimFive
Men with guns.
--
JimFive
Its pretty hypocritical to expect Palin to release her's yet give Obama a free pass. He's been out of the senate over 2 and 1/2 years now and you don't see the media going ape shit over his emails. Why is that?
Because Palin has been (credibly) accused of misusing government resources (including her government email) for personal benefit while she was the Governor of Alaska. You may feel that those allegations are no longer important, but it is certainly reasonable for the media to investigate those allegations. The only reason it is being talked about now is that it took 2 years for the documents to be released.
As far as I am aware, no credible allegaton of wrong doing has been leveled at Obama. There certainly have been accusations of guilt by association (Wright, Alinsky) but that doesn't make the cut.
--
JimFive
I only consistently read the opinion blogs, but I found that using the RSS feed doesn't get blocked. Searching for the article title in google also doesn't get blocked.
--
JimFive
Next phase is of course 240Hz 3D tv that allows two player 3D gaming from the same screen.
With the current setup you always have image going to your eyes. For two-player 3D you would have to have 2 blank cycles (for the opponent's screen) for each frame (1 cycle left eye, 1 cycle right eye, 2 cycles no eyes). I think that would be very straining, even if it was L - 0 - R - 0, because the predominant signal from your eyes would be blank.
Not saying they couldn't do it, but I think it's a harder problem.
--
JimFive
When you trade for equal value it's not immoral, but when one party profits because they are selling for more than item is worth then it's immoral.
It is not possible to sell an item for more than it is worth to the consumer.
--
JimFive
Maybe, but I'm still not too sure. As a former math guy, the difference between a finite number of finite retroactive extensions and indefinite extension is [...] I want a damn adjective form of "chasm,"
Maybe, "chasmic"
Also, the law is not math. A single copyright extension is almost certainly acceptable, however by forcing the proponents to say "but it's just this once" a situation is created in which the next time the lawyers can point out the hypocracy to the court. Whether that ends up having any real bearing is yet to be seen.
--
JimFive
The nurse will spend more time talking to the patient to get an accurate understanding of symptoms. The expert system will then tell the doctor what the diagnosis is
FTFY
If costs go down considerably in a computer-controlled utopia, with malpractice claims reduced to almost nothing, the "demand" to pay doctors at their current rate would likely be reduced considerably too.
The cost of providing a service has very little to do with the price of that service. The cost of providing a service is not particularly related to the perceived value of the service to the consumer. While it is possible that doctor salaries would go down a bit it is just as likely that high quality doctors would be in demand at the current price and low quality doctors would be out of work.
--
JimFive
And if he says he was hacked, it's true, no? And his embarrassing attempts to deflect questions from the press don't suggest he just MIGHT be playing a little loose with the truth?
I suggest that hacked isn't quite the right word. I think that someone he knows -- a staff member, a relative, a friend -- posted the picture.
--
JimFive
That doesn't mean they can't ask for something that doesn't yet exist.
Sure, you can ask, but you're not going to get it.
, especially if you mandate various technologies.
I agree which is why I said:
And it means you create standards but don't dictate process.
However, as I mentioned, enforcement becomes a problem. If one car requires that you wear a seatbelt to meet the legal requirements while another relies on airbags then it becomes much more difficult for law enforcement to determine whether someone is operating legally.
How about something where you could at least choose the level of insurance? No airbag? Sure, but pay us more road tax, just in case you fly out the front window.
Safety features are (also) about mitigating the external costs, either by reducing them, or internalizing them to the price of the car. Many of those costs are born by other individuals, not the government, so they can't all be covered by a "pay more road tax" system. For example, some of the external costs of not having an airbag and flying out of the window are born by the person you land on.
--
JimFive
and ironically this is potentially less safe than they might be without the rules. Who's to say that people wouldn't have preferred alternative safety features to those that are mandated?
There is really no reason to believe that cars would be safer without the rules. There was and is nothing preventing auto makers from adding alternative safety features.
The consumer can only consume what is produced. It doesn't matter if people would prefer a 5 point harness in the driver's seat when no manufacturer produces one.
Shouldn't it be up to people themselves what level of risk they want to take, and how?
Yes and no. If you fail to wear your seatbelt you become more of a danger to the others on the road due to the increased likelihood of you being unable to retain control of your car in the event of an incident. If your car doesn't have an airbag you create more of a burden on the emergency response system when you have an accident. There is a societal cost involved and to mitigate that cost the society has decided what level of safety a car must have to be driven on the public roadway.
Are there situations where the bureaucracy has messed up the standards? Does building to the standard sometimes create absurdity? Sure. But that doesn't mean you get rid of standards. It means you try to improve your standards. And it means you create standards but don't dictate process.
This might mean that the standard should be that "The driver must be able to remain behind the wheel while in a spin with rotational velocity X" and then if the manufacturer decides that seatbelts are the way to do that then they add seatbelts and require them for use. However, having different reqirements set by the manufacturer is difficult to enforce in advance of an incident.
--
JimFive
What's wrong with the export to csv option?
You may be joking, but Excel has never exported to csv properly. It is erratic in using quotes around textual fields. It attempts to determine the type of the column based on the first few rows regardless of the cell format property and then discards data that doesn't fit its guess. If you need fixed width fields or numeric padding you can't do it. (Ok, Excel has VBA so you can, but "Save As..." to CSV doesn't do it.
--
JimFive
I'm afraid that this is just a foot in the door. To borrow a phrase from paranoid philosophers of years past, this is a slippery slope.
I just wanted to point out that "slippery slope" is the name of a fallacy. The fact that you can imagine these regulations does not mean that this act necessarily leads to those regulations.
We would do better to argue that this act itself is improper in itself.
--
JimFive
She uses good filenames, so she can find stuff later. Using folders to organise her stuff just doesn't occur to her. Does anyone have an idea of how I can help her understand?
First, you say she uses good file names so she can find stuff. Presumably that means she uses names like "LetterToAnnApril2011AboutCat.doc" If so then her directory structure is built in: Letter\ToAnn\April2011\AboutCat.doc If you can explain to her why the Structure with the folders is better then she will use it.
The fundamental question is "What is the Benefit to her?" The main benefit of a folder structure for the end user is "Find stuff", if she can already find stuff then does it really matter?
The historic reason for a folder structure for the user was to get around limitations of the computer. When you can't have more than 255 files in a directory then you have to have a directory structure. From the point of view of someone who does projects having a folder for each project makes sense. But from the view of someone who only uses documents, what is the benefit?
Why do you think your mother's system needs to be fixed?
--
JimFive
Researchers don't get together and decide they're going to publish results saying coffee good or coffee bad.
That's true, but it isn't the whole story. The researchers come from the same culture as the rest of us and have been inculcated with the idea that "coffee is bad for you" just like the rest of us (because anything pleasurable (and/or addictive) must be bad). So they start their research with "How is coffee bad for you?" It seems that it is only recently that the question has shifted to "Is coffee bad for you?" In an ideal world research would start with the questions: "What chemicals are in coffee and how do they affect the body?" and only then come to a conclusion about the benefits/detriments of coffee.
Realistically, any chemical you put into your body that doesn't kill you right away is going to have good AND bad effects,
That seems on its face to be an almost outrageously bold statement. I'm almost certain we can find a chemical that doesn't kill you right away that doesn't have any beneficial effects on the body. Let's start with asbestos.
--
JimFive
On an unrelated note, it is sentences like the ones above that have a quoted question at the end of a statement that make me wish there was a way to put a double space in html.
Does your mortgage deduction really bring you below a 10% tax rate? [...] Here I was wondering if I could really afford a $120k mortgage, and the mortgage company offers me $175k).
Short answer: NO!
The mortgage deduction is only going to benefit you if your itemized deductions exceed the standard deduction. This is unlikely to be the case for you. Even if it is the case, the only benefit you see is the amount that your itemized deductions exceed the standard deduction. So, if you are buying a house that you can reasonably afford and do not have astronomically high health care costs, you will not see a huge benefit from the mortgage deductions.
An interesting exercise would be to estimate your first year's interest and fill out this years tax forms to see what kind of benefit you would get.
The general rule used to be that your house should cost no more than 2.5x your annual salary. The last time I bought a house they approved me for 4x my salary, which is absurd.
--
JimFive
The only unfair thing is taxing wealthy people way more just because they *happen* to be more successful
How about, those who benefit the most from the structure of society have a larger responsibility to provide for the support of that society.
But I don't see how you can say it's "unfair". A flat tax is the epitome of fair.
You already acknowledged that this isn't true when you said that
10% of someone making 10k/year is a lot harder to stomach than 10% of someone making 1mil/year.
Thus you understand that requiring someone to give up their sustenance is morally repugnant while requiring someone to give up a luxury is less so. Governmental policy is not and ought not to be obligated to adhere to some ideal of fairness that requires it to starve the poor in order to preserve tea time for the rich.
--
JimFive
11 9's would mean about .0003 seconds of downtime per year. That's something like 1 dropped packet. I don't believe that to be possible. On the other hand, it's also probably not detectable.
--
JimFive
...which you're allowed to do, so no, it's not infringement.
I don't think it is quite as clear as you are asserting. Fair use may allow you to make a backup copy of your CD or purchased MP3, but it might not allow you to put that back up copy on a remote web server for the purpose of streaming across the internet. The only way we'll find out is after someone gets sued and tries to defend it. Google probably isn't going to get sued in the first round, the users will. If it becomes established that using the service is infringing then Google might get sued.
--
JimFive
The statute of limitations clock in many cases is pinned to the last infringing act - so not only would they have to prove you had the files and obtained the music files through copyright infringement, they would have to prove that they were still inside the statute of limitations (three years for civil suits, five for criminal), which means proving you downloaded the music or shared it with someone else during a specific period of time.
You clearly made a copy when you put it on this new Google Service so that would be the most recent infringement date. Not only did you make a copy, you clearly distributed it (albeit to yourself).
--
JimFive