Last I checked under my method you'd be able to create as much as you desire, it just wouldn't be copyrighted for a very long time. I give away a lot of my work under creative commons because I believe it's in my best interests to actually make things available to people for free and allow them to re purpose it. As it turns out this is correct and I've made a living for over a decade now doing this. It's not my job to find a workable business model that you like.
Simple, you have a yearly registration and nominal fee (say $1 per work). If the copyright holder doesn't register and pay the fee within say 30 days of a new year the copyright lapses and the work enters the public domain. Optionally you have the fee increase with the value of the copyrighted material (this could be done arbitrarily by raising the fee yearly, if the copyrighted material is worth enough money the fee will continue to be registered). This is basically the same idea as property taxes (you pay a few to keep the land even if you "own" it). The money made from this fee system could be tossed into general revenue, used to pay for the arts/etc, or whatever. I think the cost of copyright should be carried by the copyright holder and not by society (as it is right now since one automatically gets copyright for an absurdly long time just by creating a work).
At least in Canada about the only type of company that can sell a "lifetime" membership or type of product is a cemetery (and they have to put aside funds to pay for upkeep/etc. to ensure that what you pay in will actually get you what is promised). Pretty much every other "lifetime" type of membership (gym, etc.) is a scam, this applies to online services as well.
Try running a laptop off an SSD for a month and then go back to a mechanical drive - the apparent slowness will drive you crazy:)
Not to mention the battery life decrease, HD -> SSD got me 40% longer battery life on my netbooks. About 11 hours in total now, which is the way it should be. Plus no more worries about vibrations, decreased heat and it's quieter.
I have no problem with OCZ releasing press releases, they're a company that sells stuff so that's what they do. Slashdot OTOH is supposed to be some sort of quasi-news site (or at least it used to be) with discussion, not a PR mouthpiece.
Is that new-speak for "cheaper"? I also love "the drive was able to best the Intel X25-M" this is one of the worst written pieces of commercial press release I have ever seen on Slashdot.
Actually this is incorrect. Google "california brownouts". Most utilities cannot meet anything near peak demand which is why the have large industrial customers shut down (in return for which they get a much cheaper rate).
How can game engines not take advantage of multiple cores?
Because not everyone has multiple cores so PC games have to go for some version of the lowest common denominator whereas a console game has a known platform to work with that is standardized.
One place where laptops/software really falls down for me is spatially organizing notes. Writing in the margins ("see page 435.") or organizing notes into blocks, adding diagrams/etc/etc. works so much better on paper than on a laptop. To say nothing of quickly switching pens (colors/line thickness) which isn't to bad on in most programs but also isn't super great. What I don't get though is why the professors can't simply make a base set of notes and use something like I dunno... a photocopier or the internet to distribute them so students don't spend 90% of a class taking notes, but instead actually can pay attention to the prof and note down anything extra that comes up. This is quite a medieval way of doing things (scribe-monks in training?).
At least they know this stuff exists and they aren't alone. "Hey wait, there are people concerned about X/Y/Z, but I can't view it.. hmm" vs. "I guess no-one else cares about X/Y/Z, I give up".
Seriously. Anyone earning a bachelors (let alone a masters or a PhD) in a "hard" science or a list of accepted majors (CS, EE/ME/etc.) should have a green card stapled to their diploma at their commencement ceremony. Perhaps for Masters you get to bring your significant other over and for a PhD you get up to 5 additional family members (mom+dad and any siblings/brother/sister in law with no criminal record), whatever, if you're going to lure the best and brightest, train them, etc, you should bloody well hang on to them (it's just common sense!). This from a Canadian no less (personally I think we should give automatic landed immigrant status to anyone that speaks English or French, has no criminal record and has a 4 year degree in anything remotely useful). Our countries are founded on immigration, this seems like a no-brainer to me!
Or much simpler (in my case):
1) Up and coming author puts his first books on the net for free, hoping to gain readership. http://www.seifried.org/lasg/
2) Author is offered weekly column by company, after 2 months author is offered another weekly column by same company, after another 2 months author is offered large contract.
3) Author works as full time technical writer for next 11 years for various companies based on the strength of the work he gives away
4) Author posts to slashdot.
Amen. I "enjoy" renovating my house. Most people would sooner shoot themselves than do drywall and subfloors. But if you told me that would be my career I'd be pretty damn unhappy.
"If our power becomes so erratic that these things actually start to make sense, I'm going to say we've a lot more serious issues to deal with. "
Sadly we're on the way there, load is increasing a lot more rapidly than generation capacity, largely thanks to misplaced fears/NIMBY (not in my back yard) and so on.
"Due diligence". That's all I have to say. Do I audit the code for my personal website? No. Would I audit code for a large commercial site? I should think so.
Advertisers might modify their business models? The world economy might crash and we revert to the stone age? If a site doesn't like me not looking at their ads they can easily block me, charge for content, etc. It's not my job to figure this out for them. You may want to apply some critical thinking to your questions before you ask them.
But you can easily get a list of known good domains and common user names (or you can just get a list of email addresses) which significantly reduces the search space.
Since an EC2 server not running an EC2 instance is literally burning cash for Amazon (depreciation value, electricity, maintenance, building cost, etc.) being able to sell surplus time like this through a secondary market that allows Amazon to recoup value for the EC2 instances at a minimum price is brilliant, of course the infrastructure needed to support EC2 let alone is pretty staggering, no wonder EC2 is stomping everyone with their insane flexibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Last I checked under my method you'd be able to create as much as you desire, it just wouldn't be copyrighted for a very long time. I give away a lot of my work under creative commons because I believe it's in my best interests to actually make things available to people for free and allow them to re purpose it. As it turns out this is correct and I've made a living for over a decade now doing this. It's not my job to find a workable business model that you like.
Simple, you have a yearly registration and nominal fee (say $1 per work). If the copyright holder doesn't register and pay the fee within say 30 days of a new year the copyright lapses and the work enters the public domain. Optionally you have the fee increase with the value of the copyrighted material (this could be done arbitrarily by raising the fee yearly, if the copyrighted material is worth enough money the fee will continue to be registered). This is basically the same idea as property taxes (you pay a few to keep the land even if you "own" it). The money made from this fee system could be tossed into general revenue, used to pay for the arts/etc, or whatever. I think the cost of copyright should be carried by the copyright holder and not by society (as it is right now since one automatically gets copyright for an absurdly long time just by creating a work).
At least in Canada about the only type of company that can sell a "lifetime" membership or type of product is a cemetery (and they have to put aside funds to pay for upkeep/etc. to ensure that what you pay in will actually get you what is promised). Pretty much every other "lifetime" type of membership (gym, etc.) is a scam, this applies to online services as well.
The solution to social/management problems is rarely technical in nature.
Why not just fire a few people since you were obviously over staffed? Or better yet simply allow people who are done work to go home early.
Try running a laptop off an SSD for a month and then go back to a mechanical drive - the apparent slowness will drive you crazy :)
Not to mention the battery life decrease, HD -> SSD got me 40% longer battery life on my netbooks. About 11 hours in total now, which is the way it should be. Plus no more worries about vibrations, decreased heat and it's quieter.
I have no problem with OCZ releasing press releases, they're a company that sells stuff so that's what they do. Slashdot OTOH is supposed to be some sort of quasi-news site (or at least it used to be) with discussion, not a PR mouthpiece.
Is that new-speak for "cheaper"? I also love "the drive was able to best the Intel X25-M" this is one of the worst written pieces of commercial press release I have ever seen on Slashdot.
Actually this is incorrect. Google "california brownouts". Most utilities cannot meet anything near peak demand which is why the have large industrial customers shut down (in return for which they get a much cheaper rate).
How can game engines not take advantage of multiple cores?
Because not everyone has multiple cores so PC games have to go for some version of the lowest common denominator whereas a console game has a known platform to work with that is standardized.
One place where laptops/software really falls down for me is spatially organizing notes. Writing in the margins ("see page 435.") or organizing notes into blocks, adding diagrams/etc/etc. works so much better on paper than on a laptop. To say nothing of quickly switching pens (colors/line thickness) which isn't to bad on in most programs but also isn't super great. What I don't get though is why the professors can't simply make a base set of notes and use something like I dunno... a photocopier or the internet to distribute them so students don't spend 90% of a class taking notes, but instead actually can pay attention to the prof and note down anything extra that comes up. This is quite a medieval way of doing things (scribe-monks in training?).
At least they know this stuff exists and they aren't alone. "Hey wait, there are people concerned about X/Y/Z, but I can't view it.. hmm" vs. "I guess no-one else cares about X/Y/Z, I give up".
"Smart and motivated people is in limited supply, so nations would complete for them." Apparently English majors are not in demand.
Seriously. Anyone earning a bachelors (let alone a masters or a PhD) in a "hard" science or a list of accepted majors (CS, EE/ME/etc.) should have a green card stapled to their diploma at their commencement ceremony. Perhaps for Masters you get to bring your significant other over and for a PhD you get up to 5 additional family members (mom+dad and any siblings/brother/sister in law with no criminal record), whatever, if you're going to lure the best and brightest, train them, etc, you should bloody well hang on to them (it's just common sense!). This from a Canadian no less (personally I think we should give automatic landed immigrant status to anyone that speaks English or French, has no criminal record and has a 4 year degree in anything remotely useful). Our countries are founded on immigration, this seems like a no-brainer to me!
I don't get it. Everyone just parks their ship and slugs it out? No maneuvering? Boring. Gratuitous Space Battles has way better game play.
Or much simpler (in my case): 1) Up and coming author puts his first books on the net for free, hoping to gain readership. http://www.seifried.org/lasg/ 2) Author is offered weekly column by company, after 2 months author is offered another weekly column by same company, after another 2 months author is offered large contract. 3) Author works as full time technical writer for next 11 years for various companies based on the strength of the work he gives away 4) Author posts to slashdot.
Amen. I "enjoy" renovating my house. Most people would sooner shoot themselves than do drywall and subfloors. But if you told me that would be my career I'd be pretty damn unhappy.
I guess it's gone out of fashion. Sad.
"If our power becomes so erratic that these things actually start to make sense, I'm going to say we've a lot more serious issues to deal with. " Sadly we're on the way there, load is increasing a lot more rapidly than generation capacity, largely thanks to misplaced fears/NIMBY (not in my back yard) and so on.
"Due diligence". That's all I have to say. Do I audit the code for my personal website? No. Would I audit code for a large commercial site? I should think so.
Advertisers might modify their business models? The world economy might crash and we revert to the stone age? If a site doesn't like me not looking at their ads they can easily block me, charge for content, etc. It's not my job to figure this out for them. You may want to apply some critical thinking to your questions before you ask them.
Everyone I know whom I have shown Firefox with Adblock Plus switches and stays with it. The Internet with ads is just horrid (sorry Slashdot!).
Yeah, because governments that are supported by taxation of financial transactions are going to LOVE anonymous cash.
But you can easily get a list of known good domains and common user names (or you can just get a list of email addresses) which significantly reduces the search space.
Since an EC2 server not running an EC2 instance is literally burning cash for Amazon (depreciation value, electricity, maintenance, building cost, etc.) being able to sell surplus time like this through a secondary market that allows Amazon to recoup value for the EC2 instances at a minimum price is brilliant, of course the infrastructure needed to support EC2 let alone is pretty staggering, no wonder EC2 is stomping everyone with their insane flexibility.