"If, instead of loaning Tesla the money directly, the government just wrote Tesla a check for $6 and let them get the loan from the private debt market, the result would be exactly the same"
Not quite. If the government makes the loan, the government makes $4 and the private lender gets nothing. If the government hands over $6 and sends Tesla to the private lender, the lender makes $10 and the government spends $6. It's the same from Tesla's POV, but not from anyone else's.
The mistake, though, is in thinking of government as equivalent to "a company" in terms of economic impact and behavior.
Not sure I'd declare victory until the facts are in. I don't know which way they'll go, but if I were to bet, I would bet against the name being Colbert.
Saying it would be "tacky" to announce a name other than Colbert on Colbert's show misses the entire context in which this is happening. Colbert doesn't take these stunts seriuosly. If anything, the Colbert character needs things to be outraged about.
Oh, is it? So for example, you've chosen not to say "Amazon isn't censoring", and therefore you are engaged in censorship?
Nope. When you stretch a term to include every behavior you don't like, the result is that it no longer means anything.
"Of course, filtering objectionable material from a search result is more what I was thinking of"
You've left out some key words, masking the fact that this is, indeed, merely a way in which the search engine operators control what they themselves say.
You submit a search query to Amazon -- this is you asking a question.
Amazon returns a result -- this is Amazon answering your question, i.e. Amazon saying something to you.
Any detail of the algorithm Amazon uses to come to its response -- including 'run algorithm X and then drop out certain results that algorithm would return' -- is merely Amazon choosing what to say.
Controlling what you yourself say is not censorship.
Amazon is not a platform from which others are offered a chance to speak. It is a store. What products it sells, or how it markets and presents those products, may have the side-effect of propagating others' speech, but that is not the purpose; the purpose is to make money.
If anyone is "speaking" or "expressing" anything by the content or organization of Amazon's catalogue, it is Amazon. Limiting the ease of finding certain material may (or may not) be foolish, bad business, or a million other negative things; but it is not censorship.
What I find the most amazing about this thread, is that each participant seems to assume that one, but not both, of the following statements are true:
1) It is wrong to take what isn't yours even if it is easy (i.e. because nobody has put security mesaures in place that can stop you).
2) It is foolish not to have decent security measures in place.
Now, I agree that the use of the term "stealing" in TFS was a stretch; but that has everything to do with the fact that the offense was one completely different from theft and nothing to do with whether the sites' security was as it should be.
The thing is, what constitutes "decent security" depends on the society and the situation. There are many places in the world where even today it is considered normal not to lock the doors of your home. This does not magically mean those places don't have property rights.
When 3rd party harm is a concern (securing a gun, etc.), the standards are different -- but even then the guy who takes the unsecured gun and abuses it is not blameless even if the gun owner also isn't blameless. With the world of botnets, etc., networked computers belong in a category somewhere more sensitive than an electrical outlet on your porch but less sensitive than a gun.
"There's an old saying that your freedoms are only valid to the extent that you're able to defend them"
One of the principle means by which we defend our freedoms is by organizing into a society of laws.
I don't check my local tax laws, because I know the law is pretty simple in that regard. "If you make money, you must report it" isn't the complex part of the tax code. (If you want to get technical, that may be read as "if you make/lose more than $1" instead of "if you make money"; but that's no practical difference.)
But hey, I'm in the U.S. Maybe there are complex rules for which income you report in Sweden. I doubt it, but maybe.
I assume the "1/12 of the way each month" number is based on the fact that we travel 1/12 of the way through an orbit each month... but again, the Sun itself makes a full rotation under us every month. So we'd actually have to suppose that the sunspot activity was moving quite rapidly around the Sun (relative to the Sun's surface) to keep out of our view.
But the expected (and historically observed) behavior is, sunspot activity moves with the Sun's surface. If there were activity on the far side one day, then about two weeks later that activity would have rotated into our view. That sort of observation is one of the ways solar rotation was first noticed.
Could a series of short-lived sunspots just happen to be forming out of our view and dying out before rotating into our view? Seems unlikely, but I don't guess I can disprove it. The thing is, that would still indicate that either (1) the dynamics of the Sun have substantially changed so that sunspots now tend to do that more than they used to, or (2) sunspot activity has decreased to the point that nearly the only ones left are the ones that behave that way. If I had to bet on one of those two, I'd bet on the latter; but again, I think it's reasonable that we assume sunspots aren't "hiding" from us as it were.
"There is no initial power surge to turn on a light. Where the hell are people getting this retarded idea?"
Actually, for a CFL there is. It just isn't significant (equivalent of a few seconds' operating time). So while people may have mis-conceptions about what it means, I'd hardly call it a "retarded idea". Perhaps you should reserve the insults for when you are factually correct.
Section 117 may not save you WRT putting the program on two hard systems' hard drives (though it does make your comment about "making a copy into RAM" incorrect). Since typical programs these days will not function from the installation CD, I'd argue that section 117 also means I don't need a license to install the program on a single computer. (The theme at which I'm driving is, I don't think I need an EULA at all to use a program I acquire legally. But that's probably a broader topic.)
Given how section 107 has been applied to other media, it might make installation to multiple computers ok so long as those computers are under a single user's control. Yes, I'm aware that MS would argue otherwise.
We should ignore a solution that can be brought about in the relative near term because a different solution, if it is ever proven to work, might eventually turn out to be better?
Tell that to the families of those who die in the mean time while we're figuring out whether a "grow-your-own" approach is even workable.
That's one interpretation. I don't know if it's ever been successfully argued, and actually I hope not.
As I see it, the intent ot the "impact on value" criteria has to do with whether there's negative impact -- if there is, it's an argument against fair use (though no criteria in isolation is conclusive either way).
Saying that positive impact is an argument for fair use (any more than 'no impact') implies that I can ignore your rights as long as its for your own good. Is it ok for your broker to trade your money without permission so long as he turns a profit?
If you watched any movies about computer security, you'd know... nobody thought they were accessible, but the spies hacked in through the power lines. HTH.
Sure he's a lawyer, and so we can assume he's qualified to talk about the law. But as Google's lawyer, it's his job to present a view of the law that agrees with Google. It doesn't mean he's right or wrong; but I wouldn't just take his word as gospel.
IANAL, though I've studied copyright a few times in my life and am certainly an opinionated layman. I generally like what he has to say, but fair use is a risky place to play. The law gives some guidance on what it is, but it's wide open to interpretation (and if you want anything more codified you have to dig through hundreds of pages of industry recommendations and case law, assuming those cover situations like the one you're interested in... and don't think industry recommendations are unbiased).
If I were on a jury deciding whether fair use applied, I suspect my reasoning would boil down to this: in a given use case, does Google allow me to read the substance of the article without seeing ads or doing whatever else the owner would normally have me do to generate revenue for them?
And I suspect that comes down in pretty good agreement with what Google's lawyer is saying; but I always do worry when people throw non-sequiturs into their copyright arguments, like "I'm really helping the copyright owner"... maybe; so what?
I think you're reading too much into that sentence. This is the flip side of the point that you don't patent "doing X", you patent "a method of doing X".
Normally people miss that a patent doesn't cover "a differnt method of doing X".
But in this case, you're suggesting that you can use the patented method, as long as you don't end up "doing X". IANAL, but I'll bet you're mistaken. If I write an update mechanism that follows Apple's design, and then somewhere along the way interrupt the user experience, I've still implemented Apple's patent even though I didn't use it to its full potential.
On one hand, you have to put it in context. There have been several models of network value, and none of them have taken this "common sense" approach of defining value in terms of what you get out of the network.
But before running with that, we have to look at the other hand, and see why none of the older models take this approach. I think it comes down to the question of "what is the model's purpose"? The simplicity and usability of a model are potentially as important as its accuracy.
If I can't predict the inputs to my model, then my model can't be used for prediction. I can predict a certain level of information about a hypothetical network using size-based models.
Moreover, if I can't measure the inputs to my model, then I can't use it at all. Claims that we can "measure the value of the Internet" are a bit much.
Don't get me wrong, this model may be well-suited to some purposes. But it does not, as TFS claims, "replace" the existing models any more than relativity "replaces" classical physics. Sure, it may be a highly accurate definition of the value of a network when you can observe that network empirically (but a definition is not a "law"). This assumes that it accounts for negative value of a transaction, though. (What is the contribution of spam to the value of the Internet?)
"Isn't macular degeneration just a normal part of the aging process?"
It is more common amongst the elderly; I don't know that this makes it "normal". What's the difference? If nature says you should stop seeing at 50, you should stop seeing?
This could also be applicable to any number of macular dystrophies that affect people at younger ages; the point is it reduces the importance of the macula and lets the user get the most out of the peripheral vision, which usually isn't impacted (at least not to the same degree).
"we take the lenses from the telescope, and make them really large and flat, and put them in front of the face, maybe with a wire or plastic holder"
Glasses don't help with macular degeneration. The lenses in glasses can't do what this can do. If you're gong to be condescending, you might want to get your facts straight first.
And yet, quorum rules are considered basic to governance and are used by most voting bodies (including, as another poster explained, the French body in question; the loop-hole is that the quorum isn't automatically enforced).
A typical 50% (or even 50%+1) quorum rule does not give the minority a practical ability to block a measure. Sure, the opposition can decide not to show up, but they have to be 50% (or 50%-1) of the body. If 50% of the body is opposed enough to pull this stunt, then the measure wasn't likely to pass anyway. (They couldn't muster even one additional no vote or abstention from outside their ranks? Every yes vote was guaranteed to show up?) And, each member of this slight-minority is taking a risk by not showing up, because if even 1 breaks rank and does show up, business can proceed without them and they lose their voice in all such business.
Ok, but let's focus on the situation at hand. Why should a legislative body not require a quorum of some sort to act?
Sure, sometimes you have to rely on people to act honorably. Sometimes your system can't be "good enough" to prevent abuse if someone's clever enough to abuse it. This doesn't look like one of those times; this looks like a case where the system is inexplicably broken.
JK Rowling followed the rules set by your society for someone who was poor at the time.
If anyone stole from you, it was your government.
Sure, she left when she was rich. If the government wants to prevent that, to attach strings to the public dole money, then they need to modify the program accordingly. Until then, "followed the rules but did something I don't like" is a pretty strange definition of "stole from me".
The impact of global climate is very different from the impact of local weather (or even local climate). There's a lot more to it than "the expected high and low temperature in your 5-day forcast will be X degrees higher/lower than before". Your assumption about the range of conditions in which humanity can prosper is extremely optimistic.
As for species survival... if your concerns are limited to "will the species survive", then neither this nor any other matter is important enough to deserve your attention. That isn't how I see the world, though.
Human adaptability is pretty impressive, but far from boundless.
The "extremes" you noted can support some humans, but not at the level of population density we have in temperate climates. If the entire planet were at those extremes, there would be no densely-populated, highly-developed parts of the world that could provide the support that allows population densities in "extreme" areas to be as high as they are.
Plus, those areas you mention aren't really the extremes of what the planet can throw at us today. 70% of the planet is uninhabitable because it's underwater. The poles are uninhabitable. The majority of Austrailia, large parts of Affrica... the list goes on. Climate change can conform larger parts of the plaent to the true extremes where we cannot live, and could even create more extreme conditions than those.
Slashdot Mirror
"If, instead of loaning Tesla the money directly, the government just wrote Tesla a check for $6 and let them get the loan from the private debt market, the result would be exactly the same"
Not quite. If the government makes the loan, the government makes $4 and the private lender gets nothing. If the government hands over $6 and sends Tesla to the private lender, the lender makes $10 and the government spends $6. It's the same from Tesla's POV, but not from anyone else's.
The mistake, though, is in thinking of government as equivalent to "a company" in terms of economic impact and behavior.
Not sure I'd declare victory until the facts are in. I don't know which way they'll go, but if I were to bet, I would bet against the name being Colbert.
Saying it would be "tacky" to announce a name other than Colbert on Colbert's show misses the entire context in which this is happening. Colbert doesn't take these stunts seriuosly. If anything, the Colbert character needs things to be outraged about.
"Sure it is."
Oh, is it? So for example, you've chosen not to say "Amazon isn't censoring", and therefore you are engaged in censorship?
Nope. When you stretch a term to include every behavior you don't like, the result is that it no longer means anything.
"Of course, filtering objectionable material from a search result is more what I was thinking of"
You've left out some key words, masking the fact that this is, indeed, merely a way in which the search engine operators control what they themselves say.
You submit a search query to Amazon -- this is you asking a question.
Amazon returns a result -- this is Amazon answering your question, i.e. Amazon saying something to you.
Any detail of the algorithm Amazon uses to come to its response -- including 'run algorithm X and then drop out certain results that algorithm would return' -- is merely Amazon choosing what to say.
Controlling what you yourself say is not censorship.
Amazon is not a platform from which others are offered a chance to speak. It is a store. What products it sells, or how it markets and presents those products, may have the side-effect of propagating others' speech, but that is not the purpose; the purpose is to make money.
If anyone is "speaking" or "expressing" anything by the content or organization of Amazon's catalogue, it is Amazon. Limiting the ease of finding certain material may (or may not) be foolish, bad business, or a million other negative things; but it is not censorship.
What I find the most amazing about this thread, is that each participant seems to assume that one, but not both, of the following statements are true:
1) It is wrong to take what isn't yours even if it is easy (i.e. because nobody has put security mesaures in place that can stop you).
2) It is foolish not to have decent security measures in place.
Now, I agree that the use of the term "stealing" in TFS was a stretch; but that has everything to do with the fact that the offense was one completely different from theft and nothing to do with whether the sites' security was as it should be.
The thing is, what constitutes "decent security" depends on the society and the situation. There are many places in the world where even today it is considered normal not to lock the doors of your home. This does not magically mean those places don't have property rights.
When 3rd party harm is a concern (securing a gun, etc.), the standards are different -- but even then the guy who takes the unsecured gun and abuses it is not blameless even if the gun owner also isn't blameless. With the world of botnets, etc., networked computers belong in a category somewhere more sensitive than an electrical outlet on your porch but less sensitive than a gun.
"There's an old saying that your freedoms are only valid to the extent that you're able to defend them"
One of the principle means by which we defend our freedoms is by organizing into a society of laws.
I don't check my local tax laws, because I know the law is pretty simple in that regard. "If you make money, you must report it" isn't the complex part of the tax code. (If you want to get technical, that may be read as "if you make/lose more than $1" instead of "if you make money"; but that's no practical difference.)
But hey, I'm in the U.S. Maybe there are complex rules for which income you report in Sweden. I doubt it, but maybe.
Hmm... I guess Wikipedia is out of touch, too.
"Yo dawg, I heard you like..." No, that's not quite going to work out, is it?
I assume the "1/12 of the way each month" number is based on the fact that we travel 1/12 of the way through an orbit each month... but again, the Sun itself makes a full rotation under us every month. So we'd actually have to suppose that the sunspot activity was moving quite rapidly around the Sun (relative to the Sun's surface) to keep out of our view.
But the expected (and historically observed) behavior is, sunspot activity moves with the Sun's surface. If there were activity on the far side one day, then about two weeks later that activity would have rotated into our view. That sort of observation is one of the ways solar rotation was first noticed.
Could a series of short-lived sunspots just happen to be forming out of our view and dying out before rotating into our view? Seems unlikely, but I don't guess I can disprove it. The thing is, that would still indicate that either (1) the dynamics of the Sun have substantially changed so that sunspots now tend to do that more than they used to, or (2) sunspot activity has decreased to the point that nearly the only ones left are the ones that behave that way. If I had to bet on one of those two, I'd bet on the latter; but again, I think it's reasonable that we assume sunspots aren't "hiding" from us as it were.
"There is no initial power surge to turn on a light. Where the hell are people getting this retarded idea?"
Actually, for a CFL there is. It just isn't significant (equivalent of a few seconds' operating time). So while people may have mis-conceptions about what it means, I'd hardly call it a "retarded idea". Perhaps you should reserve the insults for when you are factually correct.
Here's what the U.S. Dept. of Energy has to say on the matter; you'll want to read about half way down the page, 3rd paragraph under "Flourescent Lighting".
Section 117 may not save you WRT putting the program on two hard systems' hard drives (though it does make your comment about "making a copy into RAM" incorrect). Since typical programs these days will not function from the installation CD, I'd argue that section 117 also means I don't need a license to install the program on a single computer. (The theme at which I'm driving is, I don't think I need an EULA at all to use a program I acquire legally. But that's probably a broader topic.)
Given how section 107 has been applied to other media, it might make installation to multiple computers ok so long as those computers are under a single user's control. Yes, I'm aware that MS would argue otherwise.
The sun rotates. In the course of a month, we see it from all sides.
You mean like how Star Wars fans went easy on Lucas for Episodes I-III?
We should ignore a solution that can be brought about in the relative near term because a different solution, if it is ever proven to work, might eventually turn out to be better?
Tell that to the families of those who die in the mean time while we're figuring out whether a "grow-your-own" approach is even workable.
That's one interpretation. I don't know if it's ever been successfully argued, and actually I hope not.
As I see it, the intent ot the "impact on value" criteria has to do with whether there's negative impact -- if there is, it's an argument against fair use (though no criteria in isolation is conclusive either way).
Saying that positive impact is an argument for fair use (any more than 'no impact') implies that I can ignore your rights as long as its for your own good. Is it ok for your broker to trade your money without permission so long as he turns a profit?
If you watched any movies about computer security, you'd know... nobody thought they were accessible, but the spies hacked in through the power lines. HTH.
And remember folks, he is Google's lawyer
Fixed.
Sure he's a lawyer, and so we can assume he's qualified to talk about the law. But as Google's lawyer, it's his job to present a view of the law that agrees with Google. It doesn't mean he's right or wrong; but I wouldn't just take his word as gospel.
IANAL, though I've studied copyright a few times in my life and am certainly an opinionated layman. I generally like what he has to say, but fair use is a risky place to play. The law gives some guidance on what it is, but it's wide open to interpretation (and if you want anything more codified you have to dig through hundreds of pages of industry recommendations and case law, assuming those cover situations like the one you're interested in... and don't think industry recommendations are unbiased).
If I were on a jury deciding whether fair use applied, I suspect my reasoning would boil down to this: in a given use case, does Google allow me to read the substance of the article without seeing ads or doing whatever else the owner would normally have me do to generate revenue for them?
And I suspect that comes down in pretty good agreement with what Google's lawyer is saying; but I always do worry when people throw non-sequiturs into their copyright arguments, like "I'm really helping the copyright owner"... maybe; so what?
I think you're reading too much into that sentence. This is the flip side of the point that you don't patent "doing X", you patent "a method of doing X".
Normally people miss that a patent doesn't cover "a differnt method of doing X".
But in this case, you're suggesting that you can use the patented method, as long as you don't end up "doing X". IANAL, but I'll bet you're mistaken. If I write an update mechanism that follows Apple's design, and then somewhere along the way interrupt the user experience, I've still implemented Apple's patent even though I didn't use it to its full potential.
On one hand, you have to put it in context. There have been several models of network value, and none of them have taken this "common sense" approach of defining value in terms of what you get out of the network.
But before running with that, we have to look at the other hand, and see why none of the older models take this approach. I think it comes down to the question of "what is the model's purpose"? The simplicity and usability of a model are potentially as important as its accuracy.
If I can't predict the inputs to my model, then my model can't be used for prediction. I can predict a certain level of information about a hypothetical network using size-based models.
Moreover, if I can't measure the inputs to my model, then I can't use it at all. Claims that we can "measure the value of the Internet" are a bit much.
Don't get me wrong, this model may be well-suited to some purposes. But it does not, as TFS claims, "replace" the existing models any more than relativity "replaces" classical physics. Sure, it may be a highly accurate definition of the value of a network when you can observe that network empirically (but a definition is not a "law"). This assumes that it accounts for negative value of a transaction, though. (What is the contribution of spam to the value of the Internet?)
"Isn't macular degeneration just a normal part of the aging process?"
It is more common amongst the elderly; I don't know that this makes it "normal". What's the difference? If nature says you should stop seeing at 50, you should stop seeing?
This could also be applicable to any number of macular dystrophies that affect people at younger ages; the point is it reduces the importance of the macula and lets the user get the most out of the peripheral vision, which usually isn't impacted (at least not to the same degree).
"we take the lenses from the telescope, and make them really large and flat, and put them in front of the face, maybe with a wire or plastic holder"
Glasses don't help with macular degeneration. The lenses in glasses can't do what this can do. If you're gong to be condescending, you might want to get your facts straight first.
And yet, quorum rules are considered basic to governance and are used by most voting bodies (including, as another poster explained, the French body in question; the loop-hole is that the quorum isn't automatically enforced).
A typical 50% (or even 50%+1) quorum rule does not give the minority a practical ability to block a measure. Sure, the opposition can decide not to show up, but they have to be 50% (or 50%-1) of the body. If 50% of the body is opposed enough to pull this stunt, then the measure wasn't likely to pass anyway. (They couldn't muster even one additional no vote or abstention from outside their ranks? Every yes vote was guaranteed to show up?) And, each member of this slight-minority is taking a risk by not showing up, because if even 1 breaks rank and does show up, business can proceed without them and they lose their voice in all such business.
Ok, but let's focus on the situation at hand. Why should a legislative body not require a quorum of some sort to act?
Sure, sometimes you have to rely on people to act honorably. Sometimes your system can't be "good enough" to prevent abuse if someone's clever enough to abuse it. This doesn't look like one of those times; this looks like a case where the system is inexplicably broken.
JK Rowling followed the rules set by your society for someone who was poor at the time.
If anyone stole from you, it was your government.
Sure, she left when she was rich. If the government wants to prevent that, to attach strings to the public dole money, then they need to modify the program accordingly. Until then, "followed the rules but did something I don't like" is a pretty strange definition of "stole from me".
The impact of global climate is very different from the impact of local weather (or even local climate). There's a lot more to it than "the expected high and low temperature in your 5-day forcast will be X degrees higher/lower than before". Your assumption about the range of conditions in which humanity can prosper is extremely optimistic.
As for species survival... if your concerns are limited to "will the species survive", then neither this nor any other matter is important enough to deserve your attention. That isn't how I see the world, though.
Human adaptability is pretty impressive, but far from boundless.
The "extremes" you noted can support some humans, but not at the level of population density we have in temperate climates. If the entire planet were at those extremes, there would be no densely-populated, highly-developed parts of the world that could provide the support that allows population densities in "extreme" areas to be as high as they are.
Plus, those areas you mention aren't really the extremes of what the planet can throw at us today. 70% of the planet is uninhabitable because it's underwater. The poles are uninhabitable. The majority of Austrailia, large parts of Affrica... the list goes on. Climate change can conform larger parts of the plaent to the true extremes where we cannot live, and could even create more extreme conditions than those.