I'm not going to make any/. friends today, but he's got a valid point.
1. When there's a show on British TV that I want to see, I don't wait for it to show up on BBC America with extra commercials a year later. I don't wait for it to come out on a region 2 DVD and then order the DVD through amazon.co.uk and have it shipped to my friend's parents' house in England so they can include it in his next care package from home and then buy a special non-region-coded DVD player so I can watch it. I just grab a torrent within an hour of the show airing in the UK and watch it on my big TV that connects directly to my computer.
2. When I DVR something (that I paid for the right to save and watch at my convenience) and it's sitting on my cable box in the living room and I want to watch it in the bedroom, or on my Blackberry, I don't just go without. I grab a torrent and watch that wherever I want.
3. When I want a copy of a worn-out cassette that I bought back in college (or a vinyl album I left in the sun...), I don't pay $18 for a new CD. I pay $8 for a DRM-free MP3 album from Amazon. If it's not available as an MP3 I grab a torrent. If I can't grab a torrent I'll try a used CD store and the RIAA gets no money at all.
4. When I want a collection of -- say -- all the songs that charted on the Billboard Modern Rock chart in the 90's (even the ones that never took off), I look for legal versions. You can't even get the *charts* for free; much less a convenient collection of the singles. (And if it was available they'd try to charge $5,000 even though we all know that half the stuff would be unlistenable.) They don't even want me to listen to their music in this case. How much more music would I want to buy if I could have dozens of "I remember that song!" moments?
In all of these cases I demand immediate access to DRM-free digital versions of my favorite media. And in most of those cases it's not that the store is closed, it's that the store either doesn't offer what I want to buy, they want one of my kidneys in exchange, or they think that making me jump through hoops and skirting US law is an acceptable substitute for just selling what I'm trying to PAY THEM FOR. When you get right down to it, I'm no different than an anarchist at a WTO meeting.
This is America, my friend. It can't be MY fault that I didn't read the article and misunderstood the summary. The article and summary were poorly written and therefore confused me. The writers should be forced to pay me for the time it took me to reply in error and for the public humiliation of being a victim of their poor writing.;-)
I don't know. You would have to be pretty committed to music to even know about this service. Committed fans are (I believe) happy to spend more money if they know that a significant percentage is going to the artist.
In some ways it's like being an old-fashioned patron of the arts, where you're paying the band so that they can afford to continue making music you like, rather than paying the RIAA $18 for a CD of songs that the artist has already been paid for. (Assuming it's one of the 95% of albums that never sell enough copies to repay their advance...)
In RI, the pay scales seem to be about double NOLA. I don't know about the cost of living differences, but I doubt New England is twice as expensive to live in.
I completely agree with your other points, although I'd like to add that if you have children the savings on child care are considerable. (And seeing your Mom or Dad more often is good, as well.)
That's a bit of an understatement. The teachers' contracts (and in some cases the law) specify how many children can be in each class. The population specifies how many children there are. The government specifies how many of them are entitled to a public education.
Teachers get laid off, but it's basically impossible to have the sort of massive 15%-25% layoffs that you get in the corporate world. The administration is somewhat exposed, but the rest of the system not so much.
Also (as was pointed out earlier) they can't outsource their science teachers. They can't decide to get out of the math education business. They can't just fire all the tenured teachers a la Circuit City and hire new graduates. They can't even decide to lower the standards and hire teachers without degrees because that's spelled out in the contract as well.
Firings happen, but whereas I can get fired for no reason at all, teachers can't. Neither can janitors, for that matter. (Unless they hire an outside firm, but the school districts in RI don't do that.)
I can't speak for the severance package, so I won't. It's pretty unlikely to come up. But the phrase "little salary" is not remotely true in RI. A teacher with 10 years' experience in a public school system will make 70-80k, with 16 weeks of vacation. I'm not saying they don't earn it or deserve it, and I realize that unlike those of us in the private sector teachers will never have the opportunity to get rich (not through teaching, at least). But they make a good living.
Labor unions and government-run institutions are less effective combined than either of them are on their own.
You're right, but in the corporate world there are two differences:
1. The company can fail, and if it does it takes everybody with it. The various parties in the GM fiasco all had competing interests, but GM's collapse is ultimately bad for the UAW workers, bad for GM's management, and bad for the shareholders. So they all had a strong incentive to cooperate in order to insure GM remained healthy. (Not that they did...)
There is hardly a similar incentive for public school systems. Virtually every person involved is protected by a union contract, state law, or both. And there's no equivalent to profits to measure the success of the whole enterprise. (Standardized test scores are a lot less objective than dollars.)
2. In the corporate world, there's a boss. I may not want to cooperate with the Finance department on a project, but there is a boss of both them and me who can force us to cooperate under penalty of termination.
But just about the only way to force teachers to do things (in most schools) is through the union contract. The only way to force the school committee to do anything is through bi-annual elections. Even the janitors and school principals are in unions. And parents can't be forced to do anything but make sure their kid shows up. There are some people in the administration who can actually be relieved of their duties for not cooperating, but they are in charge of a whole lot of people who barely have to obey them.
That doesn't sound terribly different from my business school experience. But there were also good professors who consulted so that they could stay active in the field.
My (teacher) wife has continued her education well past her Master's degree and there is a surprising amount of interaction between the colleges and the schools. Most of the education at her level has been focused around a bunch of teachers exchanging ideas about what works while guided by a professor who helps them synthesize all the different ideas into new ideas and techniques. A lot of the classes have actually been taught by college professors in the students' own classrooms. (They would rotate each week.)
So while I agree with you, I also think you might be painting with too broad a brush.
I'm married to a teacher, and I wanted to expand on your excellent points.
The pay scale also needs to be corrected for the 16 weeks of vacation most teachers get. If they teach during the summer it's for a stipend on top of their salary. They earn their money, but the money is certainly good. (At least in the Northeast).
As far as the main problems, it's an interesting issue. In RI, at least, teachers can switch school districts without losing retirement benefits or seniority-based pay (the pension system is run by the state for at least some school districts). But because a teacher with 10 years of experience is more expensive to hire than one right out of college, it's not all that common for teachers to move around. So good ideas don't spread as rapidly as we're used to in the computer field.
As far as management, I wouldn't disagree that it can be bad. But the bigger issue seems to be that everybody's priorities are for themselves; in a company everybody benefits (to different degrees) when the company prospers, and everybody is hurt (again, to different degrees*) when the company does poorly. But in the school system everybody's rewards are based on how well they help themselves rather than the students. The school committee needs to hold the budget (and thus taxes) down or they don't get re-elected. The administration needs to hold costs down and test scores up or they get fired. The union leaders (teachers, janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers) all need to get as much for their union members as possible or they get booted out of office. The legislative politicians need to look like they're doing *something* or they get accused of not supporting education. For the most part, everybody really wants the children to get the best education possible, but their immediate rewards are rarely in alignment with that, so EVERYBODY is frustrated and feels that the system prevents them from doing what needs to be done. And unlike a corporation, there really isn't any one person in charge who can set a vision and coerce everybody to move towards it.
As for the parents, the problem parents are just as likely to be the ones with the high IQs. There are certainly low-end parents who do nothing at home to help their child succeed in school. But the difficult ones are often the highly-educated types with lawyers and advocates who know how to make the school system bend over backwards for their kid. They constitute another interested party in a giant zero-sum game.
As for the problems faced by junior high and high school teachers, I have no first-hand knowledge. I just know that I wouldn't want to spend every day working with kids who don't want to be there.:-)
Ditto. I've never ordered from Newegg because their prices were a little higher than Tiger, but neither Tiger nor amazon have ever given me any cause for complaint.
But the interesting thing is that in the last 8 years of ordering things online, I can't recall a single problem (other than UPS delivering to the wrong house). And that's from any company--not just amazon and Tiger. I'm not saying I've never had an issue; only that I don't remember them.
My gut tells me that there are some people who just have very high expectations, and so every company they deal with goes through the "I LOVE this company"/"This company SUCKS" cycle. And then they complain to everyone they know about it. These people aren't much fun in restaurants, either.
(Note that I'm not defending TigerDirect; I'm only saying that I've never had a problem. I've also never bought any big-ticket or refurbished items from them...)
By that logic, property and inventory taxes would be illegal if the property or inventory was purchased out of state. I'm sure the logic goes something like "if it's IN this state, it can be TAXED by this state." This is followed by cries of "Gimmie!" and pig noises.
I suspect the reason it's OK is because they're taxing the use of the item--not the transaction itself. Having just filed my RI taxes a few days ago, the Use Tax is assessed on goods that will be "used or stored" in RI, regardless of where they were purchased.
And then the sales tax is assessed on any money spent in RI, regardless of where the item will be used or stored. State workers need to feed their families too, ya know.
I wish, I wish, I wish that Rhode Island had a legitimate opposition party. Healy could have started one, but no man who looks like Richard Stallman will ever be elected to public office.
And to pile it on, he wasn't only executed for indirectly murdering tens of thousands of people. He was also the titular head of a specific group of Iraqis who were trying to claw their way back into power.
It was more of a military strike than about the serving of justice. (Although it's nice when you can accomplish both tasks with one rope...)
First, I didn't realize the use of word "piracy" to describe copyright infringement was that old. +1 Informative.
But I also think that continuing to use the word "piracy" in place of "copyright infringement" only conflates a category of things that are clearly wrong (e.g. making 10,000 copies of a DVD and selling them in local flea markets) with a category of things that are benign (e.g. making a mix tape to give to a friend or posting a video of my toddler dancing to a Prince song). The less pejorative the terms we use, the harder it is for Warner Bros. et al to claim the moral high ground.
For an example of why this is important, see "Digital Rights Management". It almost sounds like a Good Thing when you phrase it that way.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not going to make any /. friends today, but he's got a valid point.
1. When there's a show on British TV that I want to see, I don't wait for it to show up on BBC America with extra commercials a year later. I don't wait for it to come out on a region 2 DVD and then order the DVD through amazon.co.uk and have it shipped to my friend's parents' house in England so they can include it in his next care package from home and then buy a special non-region-coded DVD player so I can watch it. I just grab a torrent within an hour of the show airing in the UK and watch it on my big TV that connects directly to my computer.
2. When I DVR something (that I paid for the right to save and watch at my convenience) and it's sitting on my cable box in the living room and I want to watch it in the bedroom, or on my Blackberry, I don't just go without. I grab a torrent and watch that wherever I want.
3. When I want a copy of a worn-out cassette that I bought back in college (or a vinyl album I left in the sun...), I don't pay $18 for a new CD. I pay $8 for a DRM-free MP3 album from Amazon. If it's not available as an MP3 I grab a torrent. If I can't grab a torrent I'll try a used CD store and the RIAA gets no money at all.
4. When I want a collection of -- say -- all the songs that charted on the Billboard Modern Rock chart in the 90's (even the ones that never took off), I look for legal versions. You can't even get the *charts* for free; much less a convenient collection of the singles. (And if it was available they'd try to charge $5,000 even though we all know that half the stuff would be unlistenable.) They don't even want me to listen to their music in this case. How much more music would I want to buy if I could have dozens of "I remember that song!" moments?
In all of these cases I demand immediate access to DRM-free digital versions of my favorite media. And in most of those cases it's not that the store is closed, it's that the store either doesn't offer what I want to buy, they want one of my kidneys in exchange, or they think that making me jump through hoops and skirting US law is an acceptable substitute for just selling what I'm trying to PAY THEM FOR. When you get right down to it, I'm no different than an anarchist at a WTO meeting.
Some committed fans are too old to go out to live shows very often. (Although I took my 9-year old to see Chris Duarte, and he wants to do it again.)
As far as sharing, the best fans buy the CDs (if the money goes to the artist) and then shares the music to help make more fans.
Actually, the BEST fan would just send wheelbarrows of cash and hookers, but that type of fan is all-too-rare.
I love to see an artist (eldavojohn) work in his preferred medium (wit). Smartly done.
This is America, my friend. It can't be MY fault that I didn't read the article and misunderstood the summary. The article and summary were poorly written and therefore confused me. The writers should be forced to pay me for the time it took me to reply in error and for the public humiliation of being a victim of their poor writing. ;-)
I don't know. You would have to be pretty committed to music to even know about this service. Committed fans are (I believe) happy to spend more money if they know that a significant percentage is going to the artist.
In some ways it's like being an old-fashioned patron of the arts, where you're paying the band so that they can afford to continue making music you like, rather than paying the RIAA $18 for a CD of songs that the artist has already been paid for. (Assuming it's one of the 95% of albums that never sell enough copies to repay their advance...)
So what happens if you buy a book and they disable the TTS capability 10 days later? You're SOL?
In RI, the pay scales seem to be about double NOLA. I don't know about the cost of living differences, but I doubt New England is twice as expensive to live in.
I completely agree with your other points, although I'd like to add that if you have children the savings on child care are considerable. (And seeing your Mom or Dad more often is good, as well.)
(For most values of Mom or Dad...)
"it's a lot harder"
That's a bit of an understatement. The teachers' contracts (and in some cases the law) specify how many children can be in each class. The population specifies how many children there are. The government specifies how many of them are entitled to a public education.
Teachers get laid off, but it's basically impossible to have the sort of massive 15%-25% layoffs that you get in the corporate world. The administration is somewhat exposed, but the rest of the system not so much.
Also (as was pointed out earlier) they can't outsource their science teachers. They can't decide to get out of the math education business.
They can't just fire all the tenured teachers a la Circuit City and hire new graduates. They can't even decide to lower the standards and hire teachers without degrees because that's spelled out in the contract as well.
Firings happen, but whereas I can get fired for no reason at all, teachers can't. Neither can janitors, for that matter. (Unless they hire an outside firm, but the school districts in RI don't do that.)
I can't speak for the severance package, so I won't. It's pretty unlikely to come up. But the phrase "little salary" is not remotely true in RI. A teacher with 10 years' experience in a public school system will make 70-80k, with 16 weeks of vacation. I'm not saying they don't earn it or deserve it, and I realize that unlike those of us in the private sector teachers will never have the opportunity to get rich (not through teaching, at least). But they make a good living.
Labor unions and government-run institutions are less effective combined than either of them are on their own.
You're right, but in the corporate world there are two differences:
1. The company can fail, and if it does it takes everybody with it. The various parties in the GM fiasco all had competing interests, but GM's collapse is ultimately bad for the UAW workers, bad for GM's management, and bad for the shareholders. So they all had a strong incentive to cooperate in order to insure GM remained healthy. (Not that they did...)
There is hardly a similar incentive for public school systems. Virtually every person involved is protected by a union contract, state law, or both. And there's no equivalent to profits to measure the success of the whole enterprise. (Standardized test scores are a lot less objective than dollars.)
2. In the corporate world, there's a boss. I may not want to cooperate with the Finance department on a project, but there is a boss of both them and me who can force us to cooperate under penalty of termination.
But just about the only way to force teachers to do things (in most schools) is through the union contract. The only way to force the school committee to do anything is through bi-annual elections. Even the janitors and school principals are in unions. And parents can't be forced to do anything but make sure their kid shows up. There are some people in the administration who can actually be relieved of their duties for not cooperating, but they are in charge of a whole lot of people who barely have to obey them.
It's not a recipe for effectiveness.
That doesn't sound terribly different from my business school experience. But there were also good professors who consulted so that they could stay active in the field.
My (teacher) wife has continued her education well past her Master's degree and there is a surprising amount of interaction between the colleges and the schools. Most of the education at her level has been focused around a bunch of teachers exchanging ideas about what works while guided by a professor who helps them synthesize all the different ideas into new ideas and techniques. A lot of the classes have actually been taught by college professors in the students' own classrooms. (They would rotate each week.)
So while I agree with you, I also think you might be painting with too broad a brush.
I'm married to a teacher, and I wanted to expand on your excellent points.
The pay scale also needs to be corrected for the 16 weeks of vacation most teachers get. If they teach during the summer it's for a stipend on top of their salary. They earn their money, but the money is certainly good. (At least in the Northeast).
As far as the main problems, it's an interesting issue. In RI, at least, teachers can switch school districts without losing retirement benefits or seniority-based pay (the pension system is run by the state for at least some school districts). But because a teacher with 10 years of experience is more expensive to hire than one right out of college, it's not all that common for teachers to move around. So good ideas don't spread as rapidly as we're used to in the computer field.
As far as management, I wouldn't disagree that it can be bad. But the bigger issue seems to be that everybody's priorities are for themselves; in a company everybody benefits (to different degrees) when the company prospers, and everybody is hurt (again, to different degrees*) when the company does poorly. But in the school system everybody's rewards are based on how well they help themselves rather than the students. The school committee needs to hold the budget (and thus taxes) down or they don't get re-elected. The administration needs to hold costs down and test scores up or they get fired. The union leaders (teachers, janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers) all need to get as much for their union members as possible or they get booted out of office. The legislative politicians need to look like they're doing *something* or they get accused of not supporting education. For the most part, everybody really wants the children to get the best education possible, but their immediate rewards are rarely in alignment with that, so EVERYBODY is frustrated and feels that the system prevents them from doing what needs to be done. And unlike a corporation, there really isn't any one person in charge who can set a vision and coerce everybody to move towards it.
As for the parents, the problem parents are just as likely to be the ones with the high IQs. There are certainly low-end parents who do nothing at home to help their child succeed in school. But the difficult ones are often the highly-educated types with lawyers and advocates who know how to make the school system bend over backwards for their kid. They constitute another interested party in a giant zero-sum game.
As for the problems faced by junior high and high school teachers, I have no first-hand knowledge. I just know that I wouldn't want to spend every day working with kids who don't want to be there. :-)
*CEOs excepted, of course
Ditto. I've never ordered from Newegg because their prices were a little higher than Tiger, but neither Tiger nor amazon have ever given me any cause for complaint.
But the interesting thing is that in the last 8 years of ordering things online, I can't recall a single problem (other than UPS delivering to the wrong house). And that's from any company--not just amazon and Tiger. I'm not saying I've never had an issue; only that I don't remember them.
My gut tells me that there are some people who just have very high expectations, and so every company they deal with goes through the "I LOVE this company"/"This company SUCKS" cycle. And then they complain to everyone they know about it. These people aren't much fun in restaurants, either.
(Note that I'm not defending TigerDirect; I'm only saying that I've never had a problem. I've also never bought any big-ticket or refurbished items from them...)
By that logic, property and inventory taxes would be illegal if the property or inventory was purchased out of state. I'm sure the logic goes something like "if it's IN this state, it can be TAXED by this state." This is followed by cries of "Gimmie!" and pig noises.
That's impressive in its evil efficiency. Next they can just assume you didn't *report* a certain percentage of your income, and tax you on *that*.
I gives a new meaning to "Adjusted Gross".
I suspect the reason it's OK is because they're taxing the use of the item--not the transaction itself. Having just filed my RI taxes a few days ago, the Use Tax is assessed on goods that will be "used or stored" in RI, regardless of where they were purchased.
And then the sales tax is assessed on any money spent in RI, regardless of where the item will be used or stored. State workers need to feed their families too, ya know.
I wish, I wish, I wish that Rhode Island had a legitimate opposition party. Healy could have started one, but no man who looks like Richard Stallman will ever be elected to public office.
And to pile it on, he wasn't only executed for indirectly murdering tens of thousands of people. He was also the titular head of a specific group of Iraqis who were trying to claw their way back into power.
It was more of a military strike than about the serving of justice. (Although it's nice when you can accomplish both tasks with one rope...)
I wish there was a "± 0 Confusing" mod point...
Except they opened up the lander after docking, made sure it was OK, and then sealed it up again until they got to the moon...
How Apollo Flew To The Moon
We would need the results of the Grammatical Literacy test to be sure.
(I mis-read the statement in the exact same was as the OP, incidentally.)
Does HP really need an algorithm to tell them not to ship fifteen single sheets of paper in fifteen 9"x12"x2" cardboard boxes?
They need an algorithm that prevents them from hiring dummies in their shipping department.
First, I didn't realize the use of word "piracy" to describe copyright infringement was that old. +1 Informative.
But I also think that continuing to use the word "piracy" in place of "copyright infringement" only conflates a category of things that are clearly wrong (e.g. making 10,000 copies of a DVD and selling them in local flea markets) with a category of things that are benign (e.g. making a mix tape to give to a friend or posting a video of my toddler dancing to a Prince song). The less pejorative the terms we use, the harder it is for Warner Bros. et al to claim the moral high ground.
For an example of why this is important, see "Digital Rights Management". It almost sounds like a Good Thing when you phrase it that way.
I'd mod you up if I had points, but without points I can only say "Good idea!"
Thanks.
I know you're not really a truther because you spelled "they're" correctly.
I formally had the same problem, until I started using Linux.
I tried to suspend my inner critic, but that writing style is unreadable. I didn't even get halfway through.