"Inflexibility is the hallmark of the tiny mind." It's not a matter of principle, it's a matter of adjusting to situations as they exists, rather than always trying to shape the world to one's own vision. It's not juvenile to attempt to adhere to one's own principles, it is, however, juvenile to adhere to them so strictly and without interpretation that it becomes more a problem for yourself than adjusting to the situation would be. I stopped buying music until all DRM was removed as it was hardly an inconvenience to be without the dreck that is passed off as music by the RIAA members. However, I did not stop buying DVDs as, has been pointed out, the encryption was such that I could use the material for personal use (read, off my HDD) without undue encumberment. Did I sell out to DRM? In your view, yes. In my interpretation, I fought the "battle" that I needed to, and ignored the pecking annoyance of realizing that I was technically in violation of the movie studio's interpretation of my license. I just figured that it was within my rights to copy a movie to my HDD for my own personal use and did so. It required no extra software (I'm sure it required extra coding, but I didn't have to do that) to RIP them, and I got what I wanted. I'm afraid that you'll find that, in real life, you can't fight every battle, or alternately put, you can fight the ones which you are willing to pay the price for winning, or even losing.If you fight without thought for the cost, and still fight even when the cost isn't worth it, then, and only then, does it become juvenile. Since the original statement that I was replying to was about how unobtrusive and easy to live with the DRM was, then that would be one case where the battle often isn't worth fighting. And, as I originally stated, if you still feel that the deal would be Faustian, more power to you for sticking to your principles. But please don't expect every one else to sacrifice all for your cause or even believe that there is a battle left to be fought.
Mark my words; as soon as ebooks are the norm, they will cost "full price" no matter what the reader costs. The cost savings are never passsed on to the consumer, it will be taken as profit once they can. eBook readers are case of "oooh, it's digital" "coolness" more than anything else for the user, for the publishers it's a way of delivering less so that they can increase their profit margins.
If the DRM is so good that "the average person has no pragmatic or material objection to its restrictions" then objecting to it on "principle" alone becomes an exercise in, well, juvenile-wish-fulfillment. In fact, the "average" person has no problem with DRM schemes such as those that "lock" down DVDs or VHS (macrovision), nor those that iTunes had or most software has. I'm not saying that most DRM schemes are there yet, but if DRM is that unobtrusive, then I'd consider it an acceptable part of the real-world compromise necessary when dealing with the owners. I leave to each person to decide if that deal is Faustian or not.
What I'd fear more is the DRM schemes that are designed not to control but to outright discourage the use of digital media. Put on your tin-foil hat with me and ask for a second why content owners would allow online digital providers such as Wal-Mart, Amazon, MicroSoft, and Audible to run a service which can disable your ability to use a license not due to breach on your part but just because they don't want to maintain their servers anymore (and in some cases this has already happened, see Walmart). Any good contract between owner and provider would require that the customer be allowed continued use of the product as sold. Not having those provisions smacks of a scheme by the owners to be able to say "oh, your product doesn't work anymore, well, that's digital downloads for you. Aren't CDs so much nicer!"
Your point 2 is exactly how Public Radio works. We pool our money and have shows produced paying the producers for the product. Then, the product is distributed and first right of distribution is given to the stations that paid directly. After airing the shows are then free to download via the internet (check out iTunes free podcasts). It works for me. I haven't paid for a downloaded show in years, and I also haven't pirated either. So, yeah, it can work that way, and quite well thankyouverymuch. Until music works that way I'm boycotting it (really!)
on point 3, try getting pay from contract work with individuals and tell me no risk is involved... right after you tell me that all wiring is the same and involves no creativity.~
Dude, yeah, you're right. I mean, I remember learning about how the formation of a democracy in the U.S. was all peaceful and such. ~
Oh, and maybe you don't include "former Yugoslavia" among eastern/soviet influenced countries, but I do seem to remember some violence occurring there... And I'm guessing that you never received a frantic phone call from a friend in Moscow when the tanks rolled through the streets. You really don't seem to know what you're talking about. I'd normally welcome debate on the issue, but right now I have to write STFU if you can't help out. These people are fighting the battle that they need to for themselves.
Except for the cost of printing rights which will add x cost to the book.
The cost of the binding (spiral or otherwise) that you need special equipment for, especially to do in volume. Then you need to have presses to handle the number of books needed, so you could have many, many small presses, or one big press, each solution costing in the millions. Then the cost of shipping to the districts. Then replacement costs for lost units. Plus "cost of quality" for reprinting when amateurs are doing the printing and it gets fracked up. Ever plan to have enough paper for a textbook shipped to a printer when you need it, warehoused, tracked, and used? Do you know how much that paper costs or even where to buy it? And don't even get me started on the Prep required to get California standard products out the door correctly. It can be done, but it would cost, I kid you not, orders of magnitude more than it does now unless you use Zero printed materials.
Or you could go with the people who already print this shit, who've spent decades working to get the costs down and the quality up to the most efficient levels. I've got news for you, it costs the publishers less than $10 per unit right now from the printers, the user cost is all in the mark-up for quality research and fact checking, quality layout and design, and the ability to produce quality products in a timely, efficient, manner. Add that cost to more expensive printing and you're in for a world of fiscal hurt. It IS hard to do right.
Hear hear! Wanna know why Blu Ray isn't catching on? Because I (like many others) have one player in my house that can play those disks. When I get a movie, I often see the DVD sitting right next to the Blu Ray, and I think "well, DVD looks good enough, it's $10 cheaper, and I can play it in any room in my house and on the road in my computer." The Blu Ray sits on the shelf while the DVD goes home with me. It's only by making tech ubiquitous and easy to use, and by changing the laws to make the content that we buy/pay for actually usable that products get sold. DECSS probably sold more DVDs than any marketing campaign ever... and anyone else notice how free, recordable, over the air television (paid for with embedded-but-removable commercials) is catching back on?
It's not whether or not it's available, it's whether an average person would scroll down, follow the link, read it, understand it, and consider it a legally binding contract. That's what a lot of contract law is about: defining what things mean so that both parties can reasonably be expected to understand and therefore be held to the meat of the contract. Right?
It's called a dependent clause. Learn about it, says a white male (me). I've seen extreme poverty, I've lived around it, and therefore I have some understandings of it. But I don't know it the way someone who's lived it does. And I have no clue what it must be like to grow up as a female. Repeat after me, "I don't know everything."
Visit someplace like Somalia. See how you like it. Try driving your BMW on their roads. Have fun getting a reliable phone, let along internet connection. You may have fun in your villa until your security guards start upping their fees or if you want to walk to the market without an armed escort, then you'll appreciate what you have in the U.S. Any one else find that the "don't tax me" crowd seems to be the people who've led the most insular lives and don't know how 98% of the world lives?
Simple answer, make the cars less powerful and one gets much better mileage right off the bat. Face it, people may want 100+ horsepower vehicles, but precious few people need the kind of power that even the lowest end car delivers. No reason not to make whatever people want to buy, but there's also no reason that I should have to subsidize their lust for power with my lungs, my planet, and my wallet; let them drive their Suburbans on private roads, or make them pay through the nose in taxes to use the public roads. If we get the gas guzzlers that don't need to be on the road off of it, then there'll be plenty of leeway to allow the commercial vehicles that do need to pollute onto the road without undue harm to us all.
Simple answer to your question: it's a free market. If you're not one of the beasts, then you can afford a private school. If you can't afford a private school, then I'd look again in the mirror and ask who the "beast" is.
Bad teachers can't be fired because parents and administrators simply aren't smart enough to figure out who's really good and who's stupid. Make it a requirement that all administrators have had to teach for 10 years first and then maybe I'd consider giving them more power.
As a avowed Apple Fan (TM), I call WTF? It's a computer for cripes sake! What do people expect, a magic box? Computer's have problems; yes you should get a new power adapter for free if you haven't abused it and it's under warrantee, but, really, why are you upset about it? Are there really people who look at something that you buy from any company as more than a, well, a thing? If the Apple fit and finish are worth it to you, then pay for it. If not, then don't. It's not like anyone forces a Lamborghini owner to pay $15K for an oil change, and no one forces anyone to pay for shiny iPods or other items. Maybe that's Apple's biggest problem right there; people do expect it to be more than a thing, and folks are disappointed when they find out that that is just what it is.
Exactly. By socializing the fiber pull, the gov't was able to give the people a true free-market when it comes to shopping for providers allowing the free market to actually work. This is what gov't is supposed to do when it meddles with business; level the playing field, let competition happen forcing companies to compete (yes, there will be losers), and allow consumers to actually win. It's monopolies that screw up the system, not having some socialist elements. When will people learn that the goal of government should be to improve the lot of the people, not to just to do the cheapest thing.
First, what competition? I have exactly one (1) Broadband provider where I live, and that's with the extremely low-end definition of broadband of 384kb/s down. Show me the competition.
Second, this is a monopolistic anti-competition move. I just checked the uptime and network usage on my laptop which does only "light" surfing and all of my e-mail: in 29 days of uptime I've used 3.2 GB. Ok, I could sneak in at the low tier pricing, right? No, 'cause my computer that's hooked up to a large screen with Hulu as my home page can download upwards of 3.2GB per day of perfectly legal content from Hulu, the Apple Store, and ABC.com. I'd top out the highest tier doing nothing but watching TV; oh, wait, that's the point, isn't it. I don't have to pay for cable TV, so they want to shaft internet users who use it as a competing product to their rob-you-blind cable TV monopoly (yeah, one TV provider in my area too). If TW wasn't using this to stifle the growth of online competition to their existing product, I might not be so pissed, but as it is, I'm livid that they are being allowed to get away with this crap.
Or you don't. I love the English language as much as the next guy, and realize that fascism used to refer to to a specific sociopolitical system. However, I also realize that "fascism" is used in the the vernacular to refer to any over-reaching authoritarian system that uses strong arm tactics to maintain it's power; more specifically one that used these tactics against anyone who disagrees with them, regardless of whether or not their target is guilty of anything other than this disagreeing. These tactics generally include intimidation, harassment, unlawful search and seizure, or even incarceration of the targeted individual or individuals. "Ain't" didn't used to be in the dictionary either, even when everybody knew what it meant. Get over it.
Hear hear. You're exactly right. There's just a certain percentage of people out there who are crazy; we can only hope that the cops use common sense to sort out the wackos. I actually had a guy stop by my house to tell me that he'd called the cops because he thought he'd seen my cat down the street and that it wasn't right that the cat was out. He was just lucid enough to tell me that the cops told him that it wasn't their problem, and to call animal control. I gained some respect for what the police must have to deal with on a daily basis if they get calls about a cat being outside; 'course if he ever shows up again I'd probably be calling them to report the wacko in the neighborhood bothering me about my cat...
I don't know what your pay works out to in an hourly rate, but $275 per drive saves me money over the do-it-yourself opportunity cost of the time it would take to, well, do it myself. And it's warranted, so when it fails I can send a lackey to deal with the RMA bullcrap and slap the new component in. The current American work force isn't all that bright, so if I can buy a component that allows me to hire a $17/hr drone to install and maintain it then the extra few tens of thousands for equipment pays for itself within the first year over equipment that needs a real professional to maintain it.
Yours is the best comment I've seen. It cuts straight to the heart of the problem we're discussing. People who work at McDonalds may need a 3-ring binder with flow charts for all possible scenarios spelled out for them. School administrators who gross more than 100K/yr should not have the luxury of set rules to follow; they get paid to have judgment, and they should be expected to exercise sound judgment. If they can't do that, then they should be fired summarily. I don't get an hourly wage because the work that I do is all about judgment; I make decisions, solve problems, and direct action. Hourly people work under me; they have their problems solved for them and perform scripted duties. If one of my decisions is so bad that it goes to the Supreme Court, you can bet I'd expect to be fired. It's not that hard to figure out, but no one seems to get that we're humans, and not machines, because we have judgment. If we can't expect judgment at even administrator levels, then we forfeit that which makes us better than animals blindly casting about in the dark or under a yoke.
Slashdot Mirror
"Inflexibility is the hallmark of the tiny mind." It's not a matter of principle, it's a matter of adjusting to situations as they exists, rather than always trying to shape the world to one's own vision. It's not juvenile to attempt to adhere to one's own principles, it is, however, juvenile to adhere to them so strictly and without interpretation that it becomes more a problem for yourself than adjusting to the situation would be. I stopped buying music until all DRM was removed as it was hardly an inconvenience to be without the dreck that is passed off as music by the RIAA members. However, I did not stop buying DVDs as, has been pointed out, the encryption was such that I could use the material for personal use (read, off my HDD) without undue encumberment. Did I sell out to DRM? In your view, yes. In my interpretation, I fought the "battle" that I needed to, and ignored the pecking annoyance of realizing that I was technically in violation of the movie studio's interpretation of my license. I just figured that it was within my rights to copy a movie to my HDD for my own personal use and did so. It required no extra software (I'm sure it required extra coding, but I didn't have to do that) to RIP them, and I got what I wanted. I'm afraid that you'll find that, in real life, you can't fight every battle, or alternately put, you can fight the ones which you are willing to pay the price for winning, or even losing.If you fight without thought for the cost, and still fight even when the cost isn't worth it, then, and only then, does it become juvenile. Since the original statement that I was replying to was about how unobtrusive and easy to live with the DRM was, then that would be one case where the battle often isn't worth fighting. And, as I originally stated, if you still feel that the deal would be Faustian, more power to you for sticking to your principles. But please don't expect every one else to sacrifice all for your cause or even believe that there is a battle left to be fought.
Mark my words; as soon as ebooks are the norm, they will cost "full price" no matter what the reader costs. The cost savings are never passsed on to the consumer, it will be taken as profit once they can. eBook readers are case of "oooh, it's digital" "coolness" more than anything else for the user, for the publishers it's a way of delivering less so that they can increase their profit margins.
*For some definitions of "good".
If the DRM is so good that "the average person has no pragmatic or material objection to its restrictions" then objecting to it on "principle" alone becomes an exercise in, well, juvenile-wish-fulfillment. In fact, the "average" person has no problem with DRM schemes such as those that "lock" down DVDs or VHS (macrovision), nor those that iTunes had or most software has. I'm not saying that most DRM schemes are there yet, but if DRM is that unobtrusive, then I'd consider it an acceptable part of the real-world compromise necessary when dealing with the owners. I leave to each person to decide if that deal is Faustian or not.
What I'd fear more is the DRM schemes that are designed not to control but to outright discourage the use of digital media. Put on your tin-foil hat with me and ask for a second why content owners would allow online digital providers such as Wal-Mart, Amazon, MicroSoft, and Audible to run a service which can disable your ability to use a license not due to breach on your part but just because they don't want to maintain their servers anymore (and in some cases this has already happened, see Walmart). Any good contract between owner and provider would require that the customer be allowed continued use of the product as sold. Not having those provisions smacks of a scheme by the owners to be able to say "oh, your product doesn't work anymore, well, that's digital downloads for you. Aren't CDs so much nicer!"
Selling the live feed isn't so off...especially if the line "You've been voted off of the capsule!" was uttered every once in a while.
Your point 2 is exactly how Public Radio works. We pool our money and have shows produced paying the producers for the product. Then, the product is distributed and first right of distribution is given to the stations that paid directly. After airing the shows are then free to download via the internet (check out iTunes free podcasts). It works for me. I haven't paid for a downloaded show in years, and I also haven't pirated either. So, yeah, it can work that way, and quite well thankyouverymuch. Until music works that way I'm boycotting it (really!)
on point 3, try getting pay from contract work with individuals and tell me no risk is involved... right after you tell me that all wiring is the same and involves no creativity.~
Oh, and point 1 just makes you a dick.
Dude, yeah, you're right. I mean, I remember learning about how the formation of a democracy in the U.S. was all peaceful and such. ~
Oh, and maybe you don't include "former Yugoslavia" among eastern/soviet influenced countries, but I do seem to remember some violence occurring there... And I'm guessing that you never received a frantic phone call from a friend in Moscow when the tanks rolled through the streets. You really don't seem to know what you're talking about. I'd normally welcome debate on the issue, but right now I have to write STFU if you can't help out. These people are fighting the battle that they need to for themselves.
Except for the cost of printing rights which will add x cost to the book.
The cost of the binding (spiral or otherwise) that you need special equipment for, especially to do in volume. Then you need to have presses to handle the number of books needed, so you could have many, many small presses, or one big press, each solution costing in the millions. Then the cost of shipping to the districts. Then replacement costs for lost units. Plus "cost of quality" for reprinting when amateurs are doing the printing and it gets fracked up. Ever plan to have enough paper for a textbook shipped to a printer when you need it, warehoused, tracked, and used? Do you know how much that paper costs or even where to buy it? And don't even get me started on the Prep required to get California standard products out the door correctly. It can be done, but it would cost, I kid you not, orders of magnitude more than it does now unless you use Zero printed materials.
Or you could go with the people who already print this shit, who've spent decades working to get the costs down and the quality up to the most efficient levels. I've got news for you, it costs the publishers less than $10 per unit right now from the printers, the user cost is all in the mark-up for quality research and fact checking, quality layout and design, and the ability to produce quality products in a timely, efficient, manner. Add that cost to more expensive printing and you're in for a world of fiscal hurt. It IS hard to do right.
Hear hear! Wanna know why Blu Ray isn't catching on? Because I (like many others) have one player in my house that can play those disks. When I get a movie, I often see the DVD sitting right next to the Blu Ray, and I think "well, DVD looks good enough, it's $10 cheaper, and I can play it in any room in my house and on the road in my computer." The Blu Ray sits on the shelf while the DVD goes home with me. It's only by making tech ubiquitous and easy to use, and by changing the laws to make the content that we buy/pay for actually usable that products get sold. DECSS probably sold more DVDs than any marketing campaign ever... and anyone else notice how free, recordable, over the air television (paid for with embedded-but-removable commercials) is catching back on?
It's not whether or not it's available, it's whether an average person would scroll down, follow the link, read it, understand it, and consider it a legally binding contract. That's what a lot of contract law is about: defining what things mean so that both parties can reasonably be expected to understand and therefore be held to the meat of the contract. Right?
"...than a white male who hasn't lived that life"
It's called a dependent clause. Learn about it, says a white male (me). I've seen extreme poverty, I've lived around it, and therefore I have some understandings of it. But I don't know it the way someone who's lived it does. And I have no clue what it must be like to grow up as a female. Repeat after me, "I don't know everything."
Visit someplace like Somalia. See how you like it. Try driving your BMW on their roads. Have fun getting a reliable phone, let along internet connection. You may have fun in your villa until your security guards start upping their fees or if you want to walk to the market without an armed escort, then you'll appreciate what you have in the U.S. Any one else find that the "don't tax me" crowd seems to be the people who've led the most insular lives and don't know how 98% of the world lives?
Simple answer, make the cars less powerful and one gets much better mileage right off the bat. Face it, people may want 100+ horsepower vehicles, but precious few people need the kind of power that even the lowest end car delivers. No reason not to make whatever people want to buy, but there's also no reason that I should have to subsidize their lust for power with my lungs, my planet, and my wallet; let them drive their Suburbans on private roads, or make them pay through the nose in taxes to use the public roads. If we get the gas guzzlers that don't need to be on the road off of it, then there'll be plenty of leeway to allow the commercial vehicles that do need to pollute onto the road without undue harm to us all.
Isn't there an "xkcd" strip about that... ;)
Simple answer to your question: it's a free market. If you're not one of the beasts, then you can afford a private school. If you can't afford a private school, then I'd look again in the mirror and ask who the "beast" is.
Bad teachers can't be fired because parents and administrators simply aren't smart enough to figure out who's really good and who's stupid. Make it a requirement that all administrators have had to teach for 10 years first and then maybe I'd consider giving them more power.
As a avowed Apple Fan (TM), I call WTF? It's a computer for cripes sake! What do people expect, a magic box? Computer's have problems; yes you should get a new power adapter for free if you haven't abused it and it's under warrantee, but, really, why are you upset about it? Are there really people who look at something that you buy from any company as more than a, well, a thing? If the Apple fit and finish are worth it to you, then pay for it. If not, then don't. It's not like anyone forces a Lamborghini owner to pay $15K for an oil change, and no one forces anyone to pay for shiny iPods or other items. Maybe that's Apple's biggest problem right there; people do expect it to be more than a thing, and folks are disappointed when they find out that that is just what it is.
Whatever gets you there...
Exactly. By socializing the fiber pull, the gov't was able to give the people a true free-market when it comes to shopping for providers allowing the free market to actually work. This is what gov't is supposed to do when it meddles with business; level the playing field, let competition happen forcing companies to compete (yes, there will be losers), and allow consumers to actually win. It's monopolies that screw up the system, not having some socialist elements. When will people learn that the goal of government should be to improve the lot of the people, not to just to do the cheapest thing.
Technological change is most definitely not a good thing. Those stinking truck drivers and their trucks have ruined my career as a stage coach driver!
Great solution. Now explain how that works to my sister or my mom.
Ok, on the off chance that you're not a troll...
First, what competition? I have exactly one (1) Broadband provider where I live, and that's with the extremely low-end definition of broadband of 384kb/s down. Show me the competition.
Second, this is a monopolistic anti-competition move. I just checked the uptime and network usage on my laptop which does only "light" surfing and all of my e-mail: in 29 days of uptime I've used 3.2 GB. Ok, I could sneak in at the low tier pricing, right? No, 'cause my computer that's hooked up to a large screen with Hulu as my home page can download upwards of 3.2GB per day of perfectly legal content from Hulu, the Apple Store, and ABC.com. I'd top out the highest tier doing nothing but watching TV; oh, wait, that's the point, isn't it. I don't have to pay for cable TV, so they want to shaft internet users who use it as a competing product to their rob-you-blind cable TV monopoly (yeah, one TV provider in my area too). If TW wasn't using this to stifle the growth of online competition to their existing product, I might not be so pissed, but as it is, I'm livid that they are being allowed to get away with this crap.
Or you don't. I love the English language as much as the next guy, and realize that fascism used to refer to to a specific sociopolitical system. However, I also realize that "fascism" is used in the the vernacular to refer to any over-reaching authoritarian system that uses strong arm tactics to maintain it's power; more specifically one that used these tactics against anyone who disagrees with them, regardless of whether or not their target is guilty of anything other than this disagreeing. These tactics generally include intimidation, harassment, unlawful search and seizure, or even incarceration of the targeted individual or individuals. "Ain't" didn't used to be in the dictionary either, even when everybody knew what it meant. Get over it.
Hear hear. You're exactly right. There's just a certain percentage of people out there who are crazy; we can only hope that the cops use common sense to sort out the wackos. I actually had a guy stop by my house to tell me that he'd called the cops because he thought he'd seen my cat down the street and that it wasn't right that the cat was out. He was just lucid enough to tell me that the cops told him that it wasn't their problem, and to call animal control. I gained some respect for what the police must have to deal with on a daily basis if they get calls about a cat being outside; 'course if he ever shows up again I'd probably be calling them to report the wacko in the neighborhood bothering me about my cat...
I don't know what your pay works out to in an hourly rate, but $275 per drive saves me money over the do-it-yourself opportunity cost of the time it would take to, well, do it myself. And it's warranted, so when it fails I can send a lackey to deal with the RMA bullcrap and slap the new component in. The current American work force isn't all that bright, so if I can buy a component that allows me to hire a $17/hr drone to install and maintain it then the extra few tens of thousands for equipment pays for itself within the first year over equipment that needs a real professional to maintain it.
Yours is the best comment I've seen. It cuts straight to the heart of the problem we're discussing. People who work at McDonalds may need a 3-ring binder with flow charts for all possible scenarios spelled out for them. School administrators who gross more than 100K/yr should not have the luxury of set rules to follow; they get paid to have judgment, and they should be expected to exercise sound judgment. If they can't do that, then they should be fired summarily. I don't get an hourly wage because the work that I do is all about judgment; I make decisions, solve problems, and direct action. Hourly people work under me; they have their problems solved for them and perform scripted duties. If one of my decisions is so bad that it goes to the Supreme Court, you can bet I'd expect to be fired. It's not that hard to figure out, but no one seems to get that we're humans, and not machines, because we have judgment. If we can't expect judgment at even administrator levels, then we forfeit that which makes us better than animals blindly casting about in the dark or under a yoke.