I'm with you on the lovely Texas climate. We've got it great down here. I'll take a summer hotter than the fires of Hell as long as I know that by February winter is over and we'll break 80 again.
Even if he is wrong in some details, I would tend to agree with the gist of his post. The government will get its tax money, whether it be from Corporation X or the employees of Corporation X. The corporation is only allowed to deduct the difference from its net profit because the tax burden is distributed among the employees. Nobody is getting away with anything, as Fervent implied. It's just a clever way to make the employees pay the corporation's taxes and make them thing they're getting hooked up to boot.
>>or even the publisher paying the radio station (where they then have to play it very often).
EUREKA!!!
Things come into focus, and all of the sudden Faith Hill's awful "Breathe" song makes sense. It seems like for about 6 months, I could not tap a radio wave without my ears being assaulted by that pathetic contrivance, yet whenever I saw images of Faith Hill in public, I wondered, "With all the money she must be making, couldn't she afford some remotely decent clothes, or some makeup, or something to make her somewhat attractive, such as a face lift?"
This also could explain some other phenomena that I before thought could only be explained by the aliens who were controlling apparently every American citizen but me (I speak specifically the Back Street Boys and N'Sync).
Why are we making people obscenely wealthy for this music that is at best mediocre, and usually not even that good? I personally listen mostly to music that pre-dates about 1975 (some of it by centuries), and VERY RARELY listen anything produced after about 1990, which seems to be about the time the standards for what qualifies as "music" sunk about as low as the standards for what qualifies as a "President of the United States".
>>but it seems the individual members profit as much as they can.
Isn't it funny how everybody cries scandal when a city bribes Olympic officials to get The Games (a la Salt Lake City), but since the city that got The Games (read $$$ flow) is indeed the city that bribed the IOC folks, it would appear that bribery is in fact a prerequisite to getting The Games. In short, I would dare say that The Olympics (R)(C)(tm) and the IOC (R)(C)(tm) are about more than just giving amateur athletes a "moment to shine"(R)(C)(tm).
I thought the thing was funny, and I'm a staunch Republican. Why can't people have a sense of humor about politics and politicians? Taking them seriously could only lead to manic depression.
>> However, that didn't prevent the Republicans from capitalizing on the public perception that Al really did "invent" the internet.
Good thing the holy Democrats would never think to blow a simple misspoken word out of proportion and capitalize on it politically (especially if the Republican VP insisted on an alternative spelling of a vegetable).
Seriously, before everyone gets their underwear up in a bind over the political correctness of what's going on, consider two things.
1. Politicians are politicians. They will capitalize on any mistake their opponents make. It's part of the political game.
2. The article that is the subject of this story is a JOKE!!! Take it for what it is. If you think it's funny, laugh. If you don't think it's funny, don't laugh. But don't go having an aneurysm over the technicalities.
You can't tell me that if you were a technician working for the republicans on a television commercial, you wouldn't be tempted to throw that little jab in. I sure would.
I felt pretty safe buying online too -- Until somebody somewhere hijacked my card number, and I suddenly had over a $1000 worth of speakers and stereo equipment show up on my bill. No, I did not have to pay for it, and even if they caught the person who did it (a pretty good bet, since the moron also used it to pay his cell phone bill), I wouldn't know for sure that it was from an online purchase becuase they don't release any information about the investigation. But it makes you feel quite vulnerable, and does a lot to make you a little more cynical about tossing your card number around (it was an AmEx, by the way). So, I'm all for this because my security concerns are based on more than artificial worries.
I think it's even worse in the defense industry than in the software industry. Go to a trade show and you have to tote around an inch thick dictionary of acronyms just to be conversant. BTW IANAL AFAIK.
>>Sure you have to know SOMETHING with a GUI, but the knowledge is much simpler, easier, and you don't need to commit it to absolute memory, as you can remember the generic stuff and then discover the rest.
The GUI may make certain features accessible to people who don't know exactly what they are doing, but it also means they can very easily BREAK things they do not intent to break. Uncheck a little checkbox, or change one little number that kinda looks right to you, and you can kill the whole thing. And what's worse, until NT came out ANY user on a Windows machine could do this.
Consider the example of the POS Compaq machine I have. When I first bought it, I was trying to see what bloatware was installed and see what I could get rid of. I absent-mindedly click on one little executable to see what it is, and it instantly killed my entire file system. It turned out it was the restore "feature" Compaq uses to make sure all of their extra crap (mostly advertisements) gets installed and takes up HDD space (the very feature I was trying to undo).
It's not that hard to learn to administer a system if you have a good book. Just take a little time to learn the thing before you try to administer it (or you end up doing what I did:-).
>>The moment we exhaust the physical limitations of these three dimensions, we'll find a way to use some others
Yes, but did you read the article? One of the two possible "ultimate" supercomputers was a one-shot sub-microscopic black hole where you write the inputs on the event horizon and get your answer back in the form of Hawking Radiation when the thing self-destructs (operates at 10^-51 operations per second). There's a lot more than classical 3-D Newtonian physics going into that stuff.
I wonder if Apple will patent the idea of selling them in fruity colors...
I'd let them have my CPU cycles for free if they'd hook me up with free DSL!!! That would be something I would hop onto. My computer wouldn't be much use to them anyway on the current 56K modem that basically gets connected when my wife checks her e-mail. Give me the DSL, I get fast internet access, you get my free clock cycles, everyone wins:-)
>>I am surprised that there are only a couple of other states that don't have one
Actually, I kind of like the arrangement we have in Texas. The sales tax is the only state tax we pay (well, minus the gullability tax they call the "lottery", but I don't pay that tax:-) Sure, the sales tax is a little higher than in most states, but it sure makes my life easier on April 15.
>>If I go to California, all I have to do is to prove my Oregon residency to avoid sales tax (actually its pretty hard since most merchants don't want to screw with the paperwork). Does anyone know if this provision is being made?
From what I understand, you have to be a California resident purchasing from an online retailer with a physical california presence in the state for the tax to apply, so you would probably still be safe.
>>maybe the slashdot effect will crash him or something
Or better yet, prompt the university to yank his subdomain or something. I caught this story a couple of hours after it posted, and netscape is telling me that the server hobbes.resnet.tamu.edu does not even exist. Perhaps it was a little too much attention.
I don't see how slashdot could like it, personally, being that it actively disregards licenses while slashdot cries foul whenever the GPL appears to be in danger of violation...
I would have to agree with you on this, although I can't totally agree with your eariler post (i.e. that RIAA is not that bad). I personally think this is an issue where both sides are wrong. I believe that artists have a right to be compensated to whatever degree their works are marketable (although how some of the crap "Top 40" artists put out is marketable enough to make them obscenely wealthy, I will never know), and piracy artificially deflates that marketability. However, I think the internet age offers newcomers an opportunity to get known without the overhead of a label (or less overhead anyway), and old-timers the opportunity to distribute stuff they would personally own if they had the guts to make the break. If I were RIAA (as if it's one person:-) I would be afraid of the threat that is to my little empire.
I agree with IP and patents. I think they offer incentives to create and innovate. You seem to agree that these are not fundamentally bad things, but I would add that the abuse of these laws is becoming a mainstream business practice, which I do think is bad.. For example, purchasing a license to own a recording of a song I want to listen to at my discretion should be independent of the medium that song is distributed on (i.e. CD vs. Cassette). If that medium becomes damamged, or is superceded by a better technology, I should not be forced to purchase a new license with the new medium. At most, I should be responsible for the physical reproduction costs. Unfortunately, as long as the labels can charge me for a new license with each copy of the physical medium, they unvariably will do so. So, while Napster users are shafting the labels and "artists", the labels are shafting their legitimate customer base. It seems like a lose-lose situation for me. As long as they are getting screwed, many customers will continue to turn to illegal media to obtain music, and as long as the labels think they are losing income to pirating, they will continue to milk legitimate customers for all they can squeeze out. The solution? We should all listen to country music on the radio. Then we would never be tempted to go spend a bunch of monay for an overpriced CD. And if we survived the ordeal, we may indeed live to see the demise of RIAA. I'm still working on a similar alternative for the film industry, so we can drive MPAA out of business. Any suggestions.
>>Bootleg recordings (or underground recordings) are the unauthorized recordings of a live concert, or a musical broadcast on radio or television.
Although I know concerts and live performances are off limits, I always thought it was legal to record off of the TV or Radio. Am I wrong? Or has the Non-Entertainment cartel just changed the rules on us? Or are they just lying? Not that I really have a great desire to record the ssu-re-gi they play on the radio anyway, but it was always comforting to at least know I could if I wanted to.
>>He certainly is in danger of repeating the problem that plagued Star Trek The Motion Picture: reliance on the "wizz-bang" special effects even when wizz-bang special effect are neither called for nor expected.
What about the HUGE problem that plagued Episode I, i.e. "wizz-bang" special effects even when wizz-bang special effect are neither called for nor expected.
George has become like a little kid with a new toy. I think it was good that he cleaned up and digitized the masters for EP IV-VI, but I think past that he should have left it alone. They were already GREAT movies. Why mess them up? It's like he just wants to see what he can replace with a computer image. My answer to that is, "almost nothing." The computer generated images look dull and digitized. Plastic models were WAY better IMHO. They looked REAL!!! Get a clue, George. Episodes IV-VI took their places among the greatest movies of all time because they were well thought out and creative. If they had been just a bunch of empty special effects, they would have taken their places among the MANY forgotten Sci-Fi bombs of history.
I see one major problem with this system. How do you prove/disprove original invention of a similar system vs. pirating somebody else's idea? For example, if you invent a compression algorithm, and distribute it under the terms of your new patent law, and the GNU Foundation or FSF "happens" to invent a compression algorithm that is identical or very similar, how do you prove they copied yours instead of thinking it up themselves? Or how do they prove they thought it up on their own? Who has the burden of proof? And if you then modify the law to indicate that the "new" invention has to be clearly different from the "old" invention, so that it is obvious it isn't a derivative work, how would it be so radically different from the patent laws as they stand.
In principle, I think this is a decent idea, since the intent of Patent law should be to prevent other entities from capitalizing on the monetary and research investment you put into producing a new technology (so, if they invest and produce it independently, they could have as much right to it as you do). However, in practice, I don't think the distinction could be drawn clearly enough to make it radically different from the laws we already have.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm with you on the lovely Texas climate. We've got it great down here. I'll take a summer hotter than the fires of Hell as long as I know that by February winter is over and we'll break 80 again.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>Yes, you're correct, Pedersen is wrong.
Even if he is wrong in some details, I would tend to agree with the gist of his post. The government will get its tax money, whether it be from Corporation X or the employees of Corporation X. The corporation is only allowed to deduct the difference from its net profit because the tax burden is distributed among the employees. Nobody is getting away with anything, as Fervent implied. It's just a clever way to make the employees pay the corporation's taxes and make them thing they're getting hooked up to boot.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>or even the publisher paying the radio station (where they then have to play it very often).
EUREKA!!!
Things come into focus, and all of the sudden Faith Hill's awful "Breathe" song makes sense. It seems like for about 6 months, I could not tap a radio wave without my ears being assaulted by that pathetic contrivance, yet whenever I saw images of Faith Hill in public, I wondered, "With all the money she must be making, couldn't she afford some remotely decent clothes, or some makeup, or something to make her somewhat attractive, such as a face lift?"
This also could explain some other phenomena that I before thought could only be explained by the aliens who were controlling apparently every American citizen but me (I speak specifically the Back Street Boys and N'Sync).
Why are we making people obscenely wealthy for this music that is at best mediocre, and usually not even that good? I personally listen mostly to music that pre-dates about 1975 (some of it by centuries), and VERY RARELY listen anything produced after about 1990, which seems to be about the time the standards for what qualifies as "music" sunk about as low as the standards for what qualifies as a "President of the United States".
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
I had one too. Parsec was the game. I could play it for hours on end. I just wish I could find a ROM and an emulator.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>but it seems the individual members profit as much as they can.
Isn't it funny how everybody cries scandal when a city bribes Olympic officials to get The Games (a la Salt Lake City), but since the city that got The Games (read $$$ flow) is indeed the city that bribed the IOC folks, it would appear that bribery is in fact a prerequisite to getting The Games. In short, I would dare say that The Olympics (R)(C)(tm) and the IOC (R)(C)(tm) are about more than just giving amateur athletes a "moment to shine"(R)(C)(tm).
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
Flamebait???
The moderators must be stoned today. This one was even better than Trent Lott and the paperclip.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
I thought the thing was funny, and I'm a staunch Republican. Why can't people have a sense of humor about politics and politicians? Taking them seriously could only lead to manic depression.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>> However, that didn't prevent the Republicans from capitalizing on the public perception that Al really did "invent" the internet.
Good thing the holy Democrats would never think to blow a simple misspoken word out of proportion and capitalize on it politically (especially if the Republican VP insisted on an alternative spelling of a vegetable).
Seriously, before everyone gets their underwear up in a bind over the political correctness of what's going on, consider two things.
1. Politicians are politicians. They will capitalize on any mistake their opponents make. It's part of the political game.
2. The article that is the subject of this story is a JOKE!!! Take it for what it is. If you think it's funny, laugh. If you don't think it's funny, don't laugh. But don't go having an aneurysm over the technicalities.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>better than Bush's flubbing of subliminalal
You can't tell me that if you were a technician working for the republicans on a television commercial, you wouldn't be tempted to throw that little jab in. I sure would.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
The real Al_Gore has slashdot user ID 999999999. All others are impersonators.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>I'm not gonna say who you should vote for
:-)
I think we should organize a huge write-in for Linus Torvalds
That could cause an interesting twist in all of the legal battles on the table now. Too bad he's not even eligible.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>I feel pretty safe buying online
I felt pretty safe buying online too -- Until somebody somewhere hijacked my card number, and I suddenly had over a $1000 worth of speakers and stereo equipment show up on my bill. No, I did not have to pay for it, and even if they caught the person who did it (a pretty good bet, since the moron also used it to pay his cell phone bill), I wouldn't know for sure that it was from an online purchase becuase they don't release any information about the investigation. But it makes you feel quite vulnerable, and does a lot to make you a little more cynical about tossing your card number around (it was an AmEx, by the way). So, I'm all for this because my security concerns are based on more than artificial worries.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
:-)
I think it's even worse in the defense industry than in the software industry. Go to a trade show and you have to tote around an inch thick dictionary of acronyms just to be conversant. BTW IANAL AFAIK.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>Sure you have to know SOMETHING with a GUI, but the knowledge is much simpler, easier, and you don't need to commit it to absolute memory, as you can remember the generic stuff and then discover the rest.
:-).
The GUI may make certain features accessible to people who don't know exactly what they are doing, but it also means they can very easily BREAK things they do not intent to break. Uncheck a little checkbox, or change one little number that kinda looks right to you, and you can kill the whole thing. And what's worse, until NT came out ANY user on a Windows machine could do this.
Consider the example of the POS Compaq machine I have. When I first bought it, I was trying to see what bloatware was installed and see what I could get rid of. I absent-mindedly click on one little executable to see what it is, and it instantly killed my entire file system. It turned out it was the restore "feature" Compaq uses to make sure all of their extra crap (mostly advertisements) gets installed and takes up HDD space (the very feature I was trying to undo).
It's not that hard to learn to administer a system if you have a good book. Just take a little time to learn the thing before you try to administer it (or you end up doing what I did
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>Watch out, you might get sucked in when you go to take your data to be processed by the black hole computer.
It's okay, you're totally safe. The thing gives you your output by evaporating, so it's already gone.
>>Are there any predictions for how large the average black hole should be?
The other reason it won't suck you in is it's only like 10^-24 meters or something like that.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
Sorry, it's already operating at the theoretical maximum speed. You'd have to cluster some toghether and try some distributed operations.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>The moment we exhaust the physical limitations of these three dimensions, we'll find a way to use some others
Yes, but did you read the article? One of the two possible "ultimate" supercomputers was a one-shot sub-microscopic black hole where you write the inputs on the event horizon and get your answer back in the form of Hawking Radiation when the thing self-destructs (operates at 10^-51 operations per second). There's a lot more than classical 3-D Newtonian physics going into that stuff.
I wonder if Apple will patent the idea of selling them in fruity colors...
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
I'd let them have my CPU cycles for free if they'd hook me up with free DSL!!! That would be something I would hop onto. My computer wouldn't be much use to them anyway on the current 56K modem that basically gets connected when my wife checks her e-mail. Give me the DSL, I get fast internet access, you get my free clock cycles, everyone wins :-)
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>I just wish they'd secede from the union before they spread
:-)
Perhaps we could make some arrangement with the San Andreas fault to "help" them
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>I am surprised that there are only a couple of other states that don't have one
:-) Sure, the sales tax is a little higher than in most states, but it sure makes my life easier on April 15.
Actually, I kind of like the arrangement we have in Texas. The sales tax is the only state tax we pay (well, minus the gullability tax they call the "lottery", but I don't pay that tax
>>If I go to California, all I have to do is to prove my Oregon residency to avoid sales tax (actually its pretty hard since most merchants don't want to screw with the paperwork). Does anyone know if this provision is being made?
From what I understand, you have to be a California resident purchasing from an online retailer with a physical california presence in the state for the tax to apply, so you would probably still be safe.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>maybe the slashdot effect will crash him or something
Or better yet, prompt the university to yank his subdomain or something. I caught this story a couple of hours after it posted, and netscape is telling me that the server hobbes.resnet.tamu.edu does not even exist. Perhaps it was a little too much attention.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
I don't see how slashdot could like it, personally, being that it actively disregards licenses while slashdot cries foul whenever the GPL appears to be in danger of violation...
:-) I would be afraid of the threat that is to my little empire.
I would have to agree with you on this, although I can't totally agree with your eariler post (i.e. that RIAA is not that bad). I personally think this is an issue where both sides are wrong. I believe that artists have a right to be compensated to whatever degree their works are marketable (although how some of the crap "Top 40" artists put out is marketable enough to make them obscenely wealthy, I will never know), and piracy artificially deflates that marketability. However, I think the internet age offers newcomers an opportunity to get known without the overhead of a label (or less overhead anyway), and old-timers the opportunity to distribute stuff they would personally own if they had the guts to make the break. If I were RIAA (as if it's one person
I agree with IP and patents. I think they offer incentives to create and innovate. You seem to agree that these are not fundamentally bad things, but I would add that the abuse of these laws is becoming a mainstream business practice, which I do think is bad.. For example, purchasing a license to own a recording of a song I want to listen to at my discretion should be independent of the medium that song is distributed on (i.e. CD vs. Cassette). If that medium becomes damamged, or is superceded by a better technology, I should not be forced to purchase a new license with the new medium. At most, I should be responsible for the physical reproduction costs. Unfortunately, as long as the labels can charge me for a new license with each copy of the physical medium, they unvariably will do so. So, while Napster users are shafting the labels and "artists", the labels are shafting their legitimate customer base. It seems like a lose-lose situation for me. As long as they are getting screwed, many customers will continue to turn to illegal media to obtain music, and as long as the labels think they are losing income to pirating, they will continue to milk legitimate customers for all they can squeeze out. The solution? We should all listen to country music on the radio. Then we would never be tempted to go spend a bunch of monay for an overpriced CD. And if we survived the ordeal, we may indeed live to see the demise of RIAA. I'm still working on a similar alternative for the film industry, so we can drive MPAA out of business. Any suggestions.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>Bootleg recordings (or underground recordings) are the unauthorized recordings of a live concert, or a musical broadcast on radio or television.
Although I know concerts and live performances are off limits, I always thought it was legal to record off of the TV or Radio. Am I wrong? Or has the Non-Entertainment cartel just changed the rules on us? Or are they just lying? Not that I really have a great desire to record the ssu-re-gi they play on the radio anyway, but it was always comforting to at least know I could if I wanted to.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
>>He certainly is in danger of repeating the problem that plagued Star Trek The Motion Picture: reliance on the "wizz-bang" special effects even when wizz-bang special effect are neither called for nor expected.
What about the HUGE problem that plagued Episode I, i.e. "wizz-bang" special effects even when wizz-bang special effect are neither called for nor expected.
George has become like a little kid with a new toy. I think it was good that he cleaned up and digitized the masters for EP IV-VI, but I think past that he should have left it alone. They were already GREAT movies. Why mess them up? It's like he just wants to see what he can replace with a computer image. My answer to that is, "almost nothing." The computer generated images look dull and digitized. Plastic models were WAY better IMHO. They looked REAL!!! Get a clue, George. Episodes IV-VI took their places among the greatest movies of all time because they were well thought out and creative. If they had been just a bunch of empty special effects, they would have taken their places among the MANY forgotten Sci-Fi bombs of history.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
I see one major problem with this system. How do you prove/disprove original invention of a similar system vs. pirating somebody else's idea? For example, if you invent a compression algorithm, and distribute it under the terms of your new patent law, and the GNU Foundation or FSF "happens" to invent a compression algorithm that is identical or very similar, how do you prove they copied yours instead of thinking it up themselves? Or how do they prove they thought it up on their own? Who has the burden of proof? And if you then modify the law to indicate that the "new" invention has to be clearly different from the "old" invention, so that it is obvious it isn't a derivative work, how would it be so radically different from the patent laws as they stand.
In principle, I think this is a decent idea, since the intent of Patent law should be to prevent other entities from capitalizing on the monetary and research investment you put into producing a new technology (so, if they invest and produce it independently, they could have as much right to it as you do). However, in practice, I don't think the distinction could be drawn clearly enough to make it radically different from the laws we already have.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters