Movies and songs both have close to zero marginal costs when you up the number served by one. Me walking into a theatre unawares to watch a movie raises the box office's costs zilch, just as if I were to pirate a song.
Also, in both cases, my utility goes up, because I'm enjoying the service. However, since I haven't paid for it like I was supposed to, my consumer surplus goes up. My marginal utility will still go down however, and whatever satisfaction I got by cheating is that much less MU that I will seek to derive from a paid action.
By itself, then, piracy causes a loss to the industry, either directly by making them lose out on revenue you would have otherwise paid, or generally though the loss of demand that was satiated by the piracy.
The whole crux is that you become a "free rider", and rampant piracy turns media from a private good into a public good, with pirates becoming intrusive "free riders", much like a pristine beach that has been polluted and littered by offenders that get off scot free, or a river that gets ruined by companies that don't have to pay for the water they waste.
It would be like going into a theatre without buying a ticket. It doesn't prevent someone else from watching it, but you are still enjoying a benefit without contributing towards costs.
Tests are good for the company because they weed out the assholes, the outspoken, and anyone who would dare protest. In short, anyone who's not a shearable, obedient sheep.
They are bad for the company because they repel honest folk, and attract the weak, or the shrewd and dishonest.
A test to see how well you'll kiss ass and buckle down and do as you're told.
If you fight the test for ANY REASON, you haven't proven you have a backbone or a spine, you've only proven that you're not a sheep willing to be sheared, and you get the boot.
Suck it up and fill it out, you show you're willing to do your duty, not rock the boat, and generally be a "team player", and above all else, give utmost respect to the "team captain", aka, your boss. No matter how little respect they show you.
Face it. You don't kiss ass to some degree and submit to your boss like an omega to an alpha, you'll get your hide shredded to pieces, fed to the dogs, and crapped out of the company faster than you can blink.
Incidentally, if the tests are so completely outrageous that no reasonable person would tolerate them, then quite frankly, you can kiss the company's ass, because quite frankly, it's going to be a company you won't last long in anyway.
Office politics are an attention greedy reality in the workplace, sad to say. Human nature being what it is, life is NEVER fair.
Drinking your own urine doesn't actually help you all that much. Since the saline concentration of your pee matches pretty well what's already in your blood, all you're doing is retaining the same salt that your body is trying to get rid of.
Recently, urine drinkage was disadvised by survival experts.
The USPTO should be held to a duty of care not to issue a bullshit patent in the first place. Particularly, if the USPTO issues a bad patent, and a company is damaged by a patent troll that uses said patent, then the USPTO should be liable for that party's legal bills.
So in other words, the feds confiscated the domain, and when it became federal property, what used to be silly computer trespass became a major felonious assault on a government website.
I'd consider intervention by government referees into my own site as bad as if they'd searched my house without a warrant.
Why anyone thinks that they can resist a site owner's administration is beyond me. You agreed to the TOS when you signed up, and trusting anyone but yourself or an officially contracted third party with your data is sheer folly.
Yes, and might makes right. Unfortunately, that's actually true.
However, if you get into a fight, you almost always wind up with a few bruises, and I wonder how MySpace's ad revenue will be affected by the traffic changes this new policy will cause.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just figuring some randomness on how many times a sector was wiped would confuse the shit out of any forensic scientists
Up goes demand for security
but down goes marginal utility for stuff that's prone to theft
What if not all sectors were overwritten the same number of times?
Economically, there is no difference.
Movies and songs both have close to zero marginal costs when you up the number served by one. Me walking into a theatre unawares to watch a movie raises the box office's costs zilch, just as if I were to pirate a song.
Also, in both cases, my utility goes up, because I'm enjoying the service. However, since I haven't paid for it like I was supposed to, my consumer surplus goes up. My marginal utility will still go down however, and whatever satisfaction I got by cheating is that much less MU that I will seek to derive from a paid action.
By itself, then, piracy causes a loss to the industry, either directly by making them lose out on revenue you would have otherwise paid, or generally though the loss of demand that was satiated by the piracy.
The whole crux is that you become a "free rider", and rampant piracy turns media from a private good into a public good, with pirates becoming intrusive "free riders", much like a pristine beach that has been polluted and littered by offenders that get off scot free, or a river that gets ruined by companies that don't have to pay for the water they waste.
Copyright infringement is theft.
However, it is theft of services, not of goods.
It's very much like walking into a theater and watching a movie without buying a ticket.
Mod up, funny.
Copyright violators are thieves.
They just steal services, instead of goods.
It would be like going into a theatre without buying a ticket. It doesn't prevent someone else from watching it, but you are still enjoying a benefit without contributing towards costs.
Semantically, it's no different from being sent unsolicited faxes and burning up paper and toner/ink.
I speak from the perspective of the egotistical boss that issues these tests in the first place.
Tests are good for the company because they weed out the assholes, the outspoken, and anyone who would dare protest. In short, anyone who's not a shearable, obedient sheep.
They are bad for the company because they repel honest folk, and attract the weak, or the shrewd and dishonest.
Stupid tests are probably asshole catchers.
A test to see how well you'll kiss ass and buckle down and do as you're told.
If you fight the test for ANY REASON, you haven't proven you have a backbone or a spine, you've only proven that you're not a sheep willing to be sheared, and you get the boot.
Suck it up and fill it out, you show you're willing to do your duty, not rock the boat, and generally be a "team player", and above all else, give utmost respect to the "team captain", aka, your boss. No matter how little respect they show you.
Face it. You don't kiss ass to some degree and submit to your boss like an omega to an alpha, you'll get your hide shredded to pieces, fed to the dogs, and crapped out of the company faster than you can blink.
Incidentally, if the tests are so completely outrageous that no reasonable person would tolerate them, then quite frankly, you can kiss the company's ass, because quite frankly, it's going to be a company you won't last long in anyway.
Office politics are an attention greedy reality in the workplace, sad to say. Human nature being what it is, life is NEVER fair.
Drinking your own urine doesn't actually help you all that much. Since the saline concentration of your pee matches pretty well what's already in your blood, all you're doing is retaining the same salt that your body is trying to get rid of.
Recently, urine drinkage was disadvised by survival experts.
I'd be happy for a loser pays system.
One other thing...
The USPTO should be held to a duty of care not to issue a bullshit patent in the first place. Particularly, if the USPTO issues a bad patent, and a company is damaged by a patent troll that uses said patent, then the USPTO should be liable for that party's legal bills.
And yet, the anonymous, encrypted nature of Tor gives you plausible deniability.
In effect, you are a miniature ISP.
Why not just send the purge command through Tor?
If something goes wrong, it can't be traced easily.
Not to mention that botnet traffic is lucrative for ISP's to carry. Especially if they switch to metered like they've been discussing.
Unless there's a draught, the water company and your local plumber do not have interests that mesh well
Indeed, a case of sabotage.
What's great for MS is that US antitrust laws are not binding internationally.
Microsoft has been sabotaging this effort from day one.
I still remember the stunts they pulled in africa.
Indeed, a good question to ask.
I hope we don't have a repeat of the Searle, DOJ, and Nutrasweet aspartame scandal.
How about the square enix patent on ATB?
I dunno...having a pending court case would sound like need to know for me
Not to mention that having a case pending in court should grant you a need-to-know for any evidence that happens to be classified.
What about the H-bomb case where they had 2 hearings, one public and one in camera?
They gave the defendant's attorneys in that one a security clearance.
So in other words, the feds confiscated the domain, and when it became federal property, what used to be silly computer trespass became a major felonious assault on a government website.
It's called administrator fiat. Get over it.
I'd consider intervention by government referees into my own site as bad as if they'd searched my house without a warrant.
Why anyone thinks that they can resist a site owner's administration is beyond me. You agreed to the TOS when you signed up, and trusting anyone but yourself or an officially contracted third party with your data is sheer folly.
It's called "private property" for a reason.
Yes, and might makes right. Unfortunately, that's actually true.
However, if you get into a fight, you almost always wind up with a few bruises, and I wonder how MySpace's ad revenue will be affected by the traffic changes this new policy will cause.