I think Bill Gates just might have the power to get them some free licenses... maybe?
Darn tootin'. In fact, this is something a software company can really max out. Their marginal cost to print another copy of Windows XP or Office is about 50 cents, yet they can take a deduction for the fair market value. I don't know if this loophole has been closed, but in the past there were some abuses of this type.
His ideas and analysis HAS been the most influential movement of the 20th and probably the 21st.
Indeed. No intellectual has ever been responsible for more human suffering. Poverty, squalor, repression and death walk hand in hand with Marx, everywhere his repellent ideas go.
In fact, you sound exactly like the Fox News anchors who editorialize and astroturf by prefacing a comment with "well, some people say...", followed by the party line.
Oh jeez. And I suppose Dan Rather and Nina Totenberg never did this with their party lines and astroturf.
You want astroturf, well let me be the first to tell you about the gold standard: campaign finance reform and the Pew Charitable Trusts. (For which the mainstream media totally whored themselves without shame or hesitation.)
If it's been put into a mutual fund, it's staying in that mutual fund. It's not being spent on anything.
Good grief. Is this what passes for economic wisdom on Slashdot nowadays?
I suppose you think a mutual fund is some kind of giant bank vault full of greenbacks, like the place where Scrooge McDuck hoarded and fondled his stacks of cash.
It doesn't work that way at all. If you buy a share of stock, you either buy it from someone who already owns it, or you buy it directly from the company. In the first case, the prior owner takes the cash you gave him and spends it as he sees fit. In the second case, the company takes the cash and spends it as they see fit. In either case, the money circulates just as if you had bought some tangible good from the other party.
Your stock certificate is basically an IOU, good for some defined fraction of a company's value. You have to forgo the opportunity to spend the cash on something else yourself, and you hope it goes up in value due to future profits, but in the end you are most certainly putting your own real money in circulation.
A mutual fund just adds one more middleman to the transaction, but reduces some of the risk and volatility from owning individual stocks. The circulation is the same.
-ccm
Re:MOD PARENT +INF INSIGHTFUL!
on
Disney Buys Pixar
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
What matters, ultimately, is Disney's unique interpretation of the story.
Well of course, I am not objecting to Disney's right to do that. However, if the shoe were on the other foot, and I tried to do my own "unique interpretation" of Mickey Mouse, I'd hear from Disney's lawyers before sundown.
Every time Mickey Mouse gets almost old enough to fall into the public domain, Disney has paid off politicians to the tune of millions of dollars, and in return they have gotten repeated extensions of the duration of copyright protection. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of their position, and noting that much of what they have done in the past would have been illegal if the copyright protections they have received in recent times were in effect in those days.
Restructuring the Chicago Public School system will only get you so far without putting more money towards improving it.
Oh, of course, it all boils down to more money, doesn't it? Funny thing, though, we already shovel mountains of money into our public schools, by far more than any other country even on a per-student basis, and yet they continue to deteriorate. And the same pattern holds true within this country too. No school district spends more money per student than the District of Columbia, but it is a cesspool of corrupt cronyism and union featherbedding, with worse performance than almost any other district in the country.
We can easily solve 90% of our educational problems with current or even lesser levels of spending. Just introduce "follow-the-student" funding policies such as France does, paying the fees for any public or private school the student wishes to attend. Schools which teach children will thrive, and schools which do nothing but provide cushy sinecures for lazy, overpaid union educrats will fail.
Or a student takes a class on climatology and when the hockey stick graph showing a recent change in climate is brought up and its origins (dozens of studies dating from the 1950s onwards) explained, they will say "but isn't that a political move by the left to try to justify opposition to big oil?"
In a perfect world a large portion of America wouldn't have any voice in government at all, because they are so twisted, evil, judgemental, greedy, and vicious they should be locked away in pyschiatric wards.
I'm glad you posted this. I think I'll bookmark it. I know a few people who think the radical Left doesn't deserve its current marginalization, and they would gain enlightenment from reading your comment.
Good luck getting folks to respect your political opinions when you say stuff like this.
illegally redistributing the professor's intellectual property.
He's not collecting taped lectures in order to resell them to lazy students who didn't attend class. He's collecting them for purposes of commentary and criticism, and undoubtedly will only republish short excerpts. This should fall under what is left of the Fair Use exception to the copyright laws. That's usually a favorite hobby-horse around here, but judging from this thread, there seem to be people who think the privilege should not be extended to holders of conservative opinions.
Remember, the US is supposedly a republic. In a republic, the government is not exactly a separate entity from the general public. Indeed, it is indirectly made up of each and every voting individual.
You have confused "republic" with "democracy". Two different things.
So when a private groups resorts of fascism, and they support the republican-style government, then it is a case of fascism.
This doesn't make any sense at all. What are you trying to say?
The Disney archive is intact because it is self-financing.
If the current copyright laws had been in effect in the 30's and 40's, much of the Disney archive wouldn't exist, having been ripped off from 19th-century authors like the Brothers Grimm.
Sorry, I couldn't let this pass. There are two reasons that Clinton's troubles were entirely deserved:
1) He was not hauled into court because he got a blowjob from an intern. He was hauled into court as part of a sexual harassment suit. If you accept recent leftist/feminist dogma, there is almost nothing in public life that needs to be rooted out as vigorously as piggish men who hit on women that work for them. As Camille Paglia said, "All feminists who sincerely support sexual harassment guidelines should indeed defend Paula Jones, since Bill Clinton's alleged behavior broke every rule. She was on the job at the time, and he was her ultimate boss; he illegally used state troopers for a private escapade; and he began his approach by coercively mentioning a friendship with her immediate boss. Feminist leaders would have tarred and feathered any Republican who carried on like this." Bill Clinton's perjury denied her the day in court that she deserved.
2) A President who takes such foolish risks exposes himself to blackmail. As an adulterer, Clinton couldn't have gotten a high enough security clearance even to be a janitor in the White House. If Monica had been a Mossad agent instead of a slutty bimbo, Clinton might have been dancing to Israel's tune for most of his second term.
I have found the US to be the one country that has made the most advances in "Equal Opportunities".
I would like to thank you for recognizing this and commenting on it. I also think this country has made tremendous progress over the years, but you would never know it from the way we are still continually harangued by the self-appointed spokesmen for the black community. For them, time is always frozen in 1859 or 1963, and America is always the most evil country in the world because of the way we have treated people of African descent.
I want to say this to the leftist race-baiters: The two institutions that did the most to eradicate slavery from the face of the Earth were the British Royal Navy and the Union Army of the United States. Yes, white people owned slaves, but we also abolished slavery. I don't think we get enough credit for that, and I think it's about time for a heartfelt thank-you from Jesse Jackson and his ilk, and an apology for the vicious and racist rhetoric they use when talking about white pople.
Muslims kept black African slaves before the Europeans ever did, as well as during the whole period of European/American slavery, and long afterwards as well. There are still black Christians and animists who are treated as slaves or worse by their Arab Muslim masters. Yet what does the racially hyper-sensitive black-studies major in this country do ? He drops his "slave name" and takes on a Muslim name. It's crazy, a symptom of profound historical ignorance, ingratitude, and misdirected anger.
One of my ancestors was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, smuggling slaves to freedom in Canada at great personal risk to himself, and another was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga while fighting in the Union Army to free the slaves. My grandfather was a teacher who almost lost his job during the Red Scare becuase of his outspokenness, including his views on racial equality. My mom and dad hired black people in the 60's when nobody else in their line of work would even consider it, and lost some business doing so.
I don't buy into the "white guilt" that the extreme leftists and racial grievance mongers are ramming down our throats. My family has already done its share to help black folks. I treat them as equals and expect likewise in return. Jesse Jackson, Ward Churchill, and the rest of the angry anti-American quota queens can kiss my ass.
Unless they start bundling iPods with their macs, they aren't going to sell any better than they are now.
I disagree. I foresee Apple doubling or tripling their market share if they can run Winblows easily. I've heard lots of people say they'd like to take the plunge but can't afford two computers, and can't give up Windows because of some jerkwater legacy app from work.
I'm not talking about walking through the casino while strapped, you dingaling. I mean if you have a gun in your luggage and carry it into your hotel room, nobody is going to give a shit and you would not be breaking any laws.
Especially since some societies like the Polynesians, Hawaiians, and the Maori of New Zealand all practiced cannibalism with no taboo.
"Polynesian" is not a specific nationality, but a supranational cultural/ethnic group. As the name implies, it encompasses many widespread Pacific islands and their related languages and cultures. Hawaiians and Maoris are both subsets of the Polynesians. So are the original inhabitants of Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Easter Island, the Marquesas, Tonga, Niue, Tuvalu, and about 1000 more islands.
A few of the Polynesians were definitely cannibals, e.g. Maoris, Marquesans, and Fijians. The Tongans, Niueans, and Hawaiians, among others, have been accused of it, but there is little supporting evidence.
The Hawaiians themselves insist that they never practiced cannibalism and consider the allegation insulting. They did perform human sacrifice and kept relics of the dead, but they did not actually consume any part of their victims.
Yeah, and some of the newer hotels in Vegas (which hosts CES) have a cousin of this imaging technology built-in to the walls of their guest rooms --so they can detect firearms and whether or not a guest is present.
Even if they could detect firearms, which I doubt, why would it matter? Nevada has extremely lax firearms regulations. I have never seen a hotel that had a posted policy against firearms; in fact I'm not even sure they can. Your hotel room is considered your residence and you have an inviolable right to have any kind of gun you like there.
Its a little different here. We had slavery, Europe did not. If the country you lived in enslaved the Africans this overreaction would make sense.
There were African slaves all over Europe before there ever was a United States of America, or for that matter before the New World had been discovered.
Of course, the all-time gold standard for rapacious colonialist cruelty was reached in the French and Belgian colonies in Africa, when entire nations were turned into slave camps.
Moreover, I think that Europeans have not been given near enough credit for the abolition of slavery. If there are two institutions which did more than any other to eliminate chattel slavery, they would be the Royal Navy and the Union Army. (The Muslims, of course, were enthusiastic slavers before, during, and after the period of European slavery, and continue to this day. I'll never understand why so many black activists adopt Muslim names.)
You are obviously the product of an American pubblik skoul edumakashun. It's not your fault. Blame the Gramscian termites of the educational establishment, whose teaching and textbooks are becoming ever more devoted to the idea that the USA is the fount of all evil that has ever existed under the sun.
Most people don't know that Charlton Heston not only participated in the 1963 March on Washington, but spoke from the podium shortly before MLK delivered the famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
Heston was a lot more than just a scenery chewing actor and gun nut.
I'm not American so I'm not really exposed to this over-the-top sensitive PC stuff
What's that supposed to mean? I'd say the many European and Canadian laws against racist thoughtcrime are more over-the-top than our own racial grievance mongers, however noisy they may be. Public criticism and corporate boycotts are not comparable to being locked in prison for your beliefs.
Also, are you absolutely sure that you can get away with having the wrong opinions in America?
As regards the government, yes. I can stand on a street corner and discuss my opinion on any subject whatsoever, with no fear of prosecution.
As regards the political correctness commissars in most large companies, certainly not. But all they can do is fire me. In Europe or Canada, the mere statement of your sincerely held beliefs on homosexuality or race relations can get you locked in prison, as I'm sure you are aware.
they are simply 'evil communists' who persecute pious religious practitioners like Falun Gong, American style 'evangelicals' and other representatives of the worst in mankind.
Wow. So you're saying that the apolitical, tai-chi-practicing mystics of Falun Gong are representatives of the "worst in mankind", and not the people who were responsible for Tienanmen? Will you defend China's destruction of Tibetan Buddhism too? Nobody as evil as that ol' devil the Dalai Lama, is there. . .
I think you are the one with a comprehension problem. The chart clearly states that the date given is when the scandals went public. They were happening for years before that in the go-go 90's, as well as 2000, for all of which W. J. Clinton was President.
I am not trying to defend the Republicans involved in these scandals, but I refuse to let this fall down the memory hole. These scandals did not take place on the watch of George Bush, and yet they are being portrayed that way in the mainstream media.
Slashdot Mirror
Darn tootin'. In fact, this is something a software company can really max out. Their marginal cost to print another copy of Windows XP or Office is about 50 cents, yet they can take a deduction for the fair market value. I don't know if this loophole has been closed, but in the past there were some abuses of this type.
Indeed. No intellectual has ever been responsible for more human suffering. Poverty, squalor, repression and death walk hand in hand with Marx, everywhere his repellent ideas go.
-ccm
Oh jeez. And I suppose Dan Rather and Nina Totenberg never did this with their party lines and astroturf.
You want astroturf, well let me be the first to tell you about the gold standard: campaign finance reform and the Pew Charitable Trusts. (For which the mainstream media totally whored themselves without shame or hesitation.)
-ccm
Teledildonics, baby!
-ccm
Good grief. Is this what passes for economic wisdom on Slashdot nowadays?
I suppose you think a mutual fund is some kind of giant bank vault full of greenbacks, like the place where Scrooge McDuck hoarded and fondled his stacks of cash.
It doesn't work that way at all. If you buy a share of stock, you either buy it from someone who already owns it, or you buy it directly from the company. In the first case, the prior owner takes the cash you gave him and spends it as he sees fit. In the second case, the company takes the cash and spends it as they see fit. In either case, the money circulates just as if you had bought some tangible good from the other party.
Your stock certificate is basically an IOU, good for some defined fraction of a company's value. You have to forgo the opportunity to spend the cash on something else yourself, and you hope it goes up in value due to future profits, but in the end you are most certainly putting your own real money in circulation.
A mutual fund just adds one more middleman to the transaction, but reduces some of the risk and volatility from owning individual stocks. The circulation is the same.
-ccm
Well of course, I am not objecting to Disney's right to do that. However, if the shoe were on the other foot, and I tried to do my own "unique interpretation" of Mickey Mouse, I'd hear from Disney's lawyers before sundown.
Every time Mickey Mouse gets almost old enough to fall into the public domain, Disney has paid off politicians to the tune of millions of dollars, and in return they have gotten repeated extensions of the duration of copyright protection. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of their position, and noting that much of what they have done in the past would have been illegal if the copyright protections they have received in recent times were in effect in those days.
-ccm
Oh, of course, it all boils down to more money, doesn't it? Funny thing, though, we already shovel mountains of money into our public schools, by far more than any other country even on a per-student basis, and yet they continue to deteriorate. And the same pattern holds true within this country too. No school district spends more money per student than the District of Columbia, but it is a cesspool of corrupt cronyism and union featherbedding, with worse performance than almost any other district in the country.
We can easily solve 90% of our educational problems with current or even lesser levels of spending. Just introduce "follow-the-student" funding policies such as France does, paying the fees for any public or private school the student wishes to attend. Schools which teach children will thrive, and schools which do nothing but provide cushy sinecures for lazy, overpaid union educrats will fail.
-ccm
Funny you should mention that, as it now appears that the "hockey stick" upon which so much alarmist rhetoric has been staked was recently shown to be a statistical artifact.
-ccm
I'm glad you posted this. I think I'll bookmark it. I know a few people who think the radical Left doesn't deserve its current marginalization, and they would gain enlightenment from reading your comment.
Good luck getting folks to respect your political opinions when you say stuff like this.
-ccm
He's not collecting taped lectures in order to resell them to lazy students who didn't attend class. He's collecting them for purposes of commentary and criticism, and undoubtedly will only republish short excerpts. This should fall under what is left of the Fair Use exception to the copyright laws. That's usually a favorite hobby-horse around here, but judging from this thread, there seem to be people who think the privilege should not be extended to holders of conservative opinions.
-ccm
You have confused "republic" with "democracy". Two different things.
So when a private groups resorts of fascism, and they support the republican-style government, then it is a case of fascism.
This doesn't make any sense at all. What are you trying to say?
-ccm
If the current copyright laws had been in effect in the 30's and 40's, much of the Disney archive wouldn't exist, having been ripped off from 19th-century authors like the Brothers Grimm.
-ccm
Sorry, I couldn't let this pass. There are two reasons that Clinton's troubles were entirely deserved:
1) He was not hauled into court because he got a blowjob from an intern. He was hauled into court as part of a sexual harassment suit. If you accept recent leftist/feminist dogma, there is almost nothing in public life that needs to be rooted out as vigorously as piggish men who hit on women that work for them. As Camille Paglia said, "All feminists who sincerely support sexual harassment guidelines should indeed defend Paula Jones, since Bill Clinton's alleged behavior broke every rule. She was on the job at the time, and he was her ultimate boss; he illegally used state troopers for a private escapade; and he began his approach by coercively mentioning a friendship with her immediate boss. Feminist leaders would have tarred and feathered any Republican who carried on like this." Bill Clinton's perjury denied her the day in court that she deserved.
2) A President who takes such foolish risks exposes himself to blackmail. As an adulterer, Clinton couldn't have gotten a high enough security clearance even to be a janitor in the White House. If Monica had been a Mossad agent instead of a slutty bimbo, Clinton might have been dancing to Israel's tune for most of his second term.
-ccm
I would like to thank you for recognizing this and commenting on it. I also think this country has made tremendous progress over the years, but you would never know it from the way we are still continually harangued by the self-appointed spokesmen for the black community. For them, time is always frozen in 1859 or 1963, and America is always the most evil country in the world because of the way we have treated people of African descent.
I want to say this to the leftist race-baiters: The two institutions that did the most to eradicate slavery from the face of the Earth were the British Royal Navy and the Union Army of the United States. Yes, white people owned slaves, but we also abolished slavery. I don't think we get enough credit for that, and I think it's about time for a heartfelt thank-you from Jesse Jackson and his ilk, and an apology for the vicious and racist rhetoric they use when talking about white pople.
Muslims kept black African slaves before the Europeans ever did, as well as during the whole period of European/American slavery, and long afterwards as well. There are still black Christians and animists who are treated as slaves or worse by their Arab Muslim masters. Yet what does the racially hyper-sensitive black-studies major in this country do ? He drops his "slave name" and takes on a Muslim name. It's crazy, a symptom of profound historical ignorance, ingratitude, and misdirected anger.
One of my ancestors was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, smuggling slaves to freedom in Canada at great personal risk to himself, and another was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga while fighting in the Union Army to free the slaves. My grandfather was a teacher who almost lost his job during the Red Scare becuase of his outspokenness, including his views on racial equality. My mom and dad hired black people in the 60's when nobody else in their line of work would even consider it, and lost some business doing so.
I don't buy into the "white guilt" that the extreme leftists and racial grievance mongers are ramming down our throats. My family has already done its share to help black folks. I treat them as equals and expect likewise in return. Jesse Jackson, Ward Churchill, and the rest of the angry anti-American quota queens can kiss my ass.
--ccm
I disagree. I foresee Apple doubling or tripling their market share if they can run Winblows easily. I've heard lots of people say they'd like to take the plunge but can't afford two computers, and can't give up Windows because of some jerkwater legacy app from work.
-ccm
-ccm
"Polynesian" is not a specific nationality, but a supranational cultural/ethnic group. As the name implies, it encompasses many widespread Pacific islands and their related languages and cultures. Hawaiians and Maoris are both subsets of the Polynesians. So are the original inhabitants of Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Easter Island, the Marquesas, Tonga, Niue, Tuvalu, and about 1000 more islands.
A few of the Polynesians were definitely cannibals, e.g. Maoris, Marquesans, and Fijians. The Tongans, Niueans, and Hawaiians, among others, have been accused of it, but there is little supporting evidence.
The Hawaiians themselves insist that they never practiced cannibalism and consider the allegation insulting. They did perform human sacrifice and kept relics of the dead, but they did not actually consume any part of their victims.
-ccm
Even if they could detect firearms, which I doubt, why would it matter? Nevada has extremely lax firearms regulations. I have never seen a hotel that had a posted policy against firearms; in fact I'm not even sure they can. Your hotel room is considered your residence and you have an inviolable right to have any kind of gun you like there.
-ccm
Also any minister or other religious person, or anybody who works for a corporation. Hollywood told me so.
-ccm
There were African slaves all over Europe before there ever was a United States of America, or for that matter before the New World had been discovered.
The Portuguese and Spaniards began enslaving black Africans in the 1300's. The Dutch and English were also vigorous slave traders for centuries.
Of course, the all-time gold standard for rapacious colonialist cruelty was reached in the French and Belgian colonies in Africa, when entire nations were turned into slave camps.
Moreover, I think that Europeans have not been given near enough credit for the abolition of slavery. If there are two institutions which did more than any other to eliminate chattel slavery, they would be the Royal Navy and the Union Army. (The Muslims, of course, were enthusiastic slavers before, during, and after the period of European slavery, and continue to this day. I'll never understand why so many black activists adopt Muslim names.)
You are obviously the product of an American pubblik skoul edumakashun. It's not your fault. Blame the Gramscian termites of the educational establishment, whose teaching and textbooks are becoming ever more devoted to the idea that the USA is the fount of all evil that has ever existed under the sun.
-ccm
Heston was a lot more than just a scenery chewing actor and gun nut.
-ccm
What's that supposed to mean? I'd say the many European and Canadian laws against racist thoughtcrime are more over-the-top than our own racial grievance mongers, however noisy they may be. Public criticism and corporate boycotts are not comparable to being locked in prison for your beliefs.
-ccm
As regards the government, yes. I can stand on a street corner and discuss my opinion on any subject whatsoever, with no fear of prosecution.
As regards the political correctness commissars in most large companies, certainly not. But all they can do is fire me. In Europe or Canada, the mere statement of your sincerely held beliefs on homosexuality or race relations can get you locked in prison, as I'm sure you are aware.
they are simply 'evil communists' who persecute pious religious practitioners like Falun Gong, American style 'evangelicals' and other representatives of the worst in mankind.
Wow. So you're saying that the apolitical, tai-chi-practicing mystics of Falun Gong are representatives of the "worst in mankind", and not the people who were responsible for Tienanmen? Will you defend China's destruction of Tibetan Buddhism too? Nobody as evil as that ol' devil the Dalai Lama, is there. . .
-ccm
Sorry, that is horse shit.
I am not trying to defend the Republicans involved in these scandals, but I refuse to let this fall down the memory hole. These scandals did not take place on the watch of George Bush, and yet they are being portrayed that way in the mainstream media.