In many areas of this country, local governments give out franchises to cable and phone companies, which can grant these companies legal monopolies. In such a case, it is legally impossible for anyone at all to enter the market in that area aside from regulatory duct tape that forces the providers to sell/give access to their cables to other companies. Those solutions do not strike at the core issue: legal monopolies.
In my own area, Comcast enjoys a legal monopoly on high-speed internet access. We've been hoping for some time that Verizon might be allowed to offer FiOS, but they regulators feel that that will interfere with a telephone monopoly. Grr......
You might find an electrical outlet, but will you find an electrical outlet that will allow you to plug up your electric car and charge it over night? The hotel you stop at might not allow it.
Really? Region locking is a *trade* issue? Region locking is a copyright issue, used by various large entertainment companies to force everyone to buy the same thing over and over and over again. It has nothing to do with trade.
I agree totally that region locking hurts legitimate users. However, I disagree that it should be illegal. I think it should be perfectly legal to mod/hack/whatever a way to play DVDs from another region, the manufacturer be damned. They can have all the fancy DRM they want, but I believe that breaking it should be perfectly legitimate. The DMCA disagrees with me, however. Now they can use that to extort money out of people for playing DVDs. "Pay us $LARGE_DOLLAR_AMOUNT or we'll take you to court."
Whether or not you sell my an item at a loss has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I now own that item, and am free to do whatever I want with it, so long as my use causes no direct physical harm to others. Modding a Wii does not cause any physical harm to anyone, so it should be OK. Or at least it would, if copyright/patent trolls didn't have the ear of legislatures.
If Nintendo sold Wiis at a loss (which they don't, IIRC) and discovered that everyone is now using them only for homebrew, they would jack up the price so they can remain profitable. I'm sure the other console makers would do the same.
I think having the Internet controlled by politicians in any organization is not a good thing. I would rather see it in the hands of something like ISO or something along those lines. Probably more like "along those lines."
A likely reason, in my opinion, for the fact that many jobs require a college degree is the fact that the subsidization of a college education has caused more and more people to get degrees, even if they get degrees in BS subjects (e.g. random ethnic group and/or ideology and/or sex or sexual orientation studies). Now it's far easier to put a college degree on the resume and, as a consequence, it is far easier for an employer to demand it.
You can hold them in tanks made of transparent aluminum during training. I guarantee that it'll hold whales as you transport them to the future in your spacecraft.
inalienable rights of users to download content for free off the internet.
I disagree that downloading content for free from the Internet is a right. However, I would say that there is no right to be granted a legal monopoly on the production of any item, physical or not. This in effect makes the result the same, that users would be capable of downloading whatever they can get access to, but it is a possibly large disagreement on why they can do this.
I wonder about a system wherein copyright is not automatic or even guaranteed, a system where each producer of IP (say, an artist) establishes a contract that has a clause prohibiting the copying of the IP in question. It would be very hard to enforce, and likely not work in practice, but is has the benefit that the only people who can be charged with anything are those who agreed to and broke the contract. And then it would be a contract violation, a situation in which I feel judges are less likely to issue mega fines for copying music.
It certainly wasn't $500 or $600 when she bought the computer, especially when even the weakest of netbooks has more than enough power for her needs. She'd need a bigger screen, but she already has that. All she runs is Internet Explorer and.....well....Windows Explorer? I don't remember if she has Office or not.
Re:What's the Difference Between a Computer Salesm
on
Bad PC Sales Staff Exposed
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I had to do something fairly similar for my grandmother's computer. Only problem was, the hard drive was working perfectly fine before she took it to Best Buy. I had given her a hand-me-down computer with Linux on it, and she wanted to install Windows on it. So she had to go buy a copy. Somehow in the process of installing Windows--an arduous task that involves the opening of the DVD drive--they had managed to open the case, unscrew the hard drive from the case, and then bust it up enough that it took over 24 hours for Windows to finish installing. I know this because they kindly provided my grandmother a receipt that had logs of everything they did, which I went over.
The best part is when they decided the slowness was due to the PC not having enough RAM for XP. Which is curious, because I had run XP on that PC just fine. So they tell her they need to buy 2 x 1 GB sticks. Eventually we managed to get a refund on all of that stuff after Windows failed to boot up.
After I had to head back to my home state, she was left with no computer and, even worse, no one who even remotely knows that they're talking about with computers. She went to the same Best Buy and asked for assistance on what computer to buy. They equipped her, someone whose most intensive task is copying photos off of a camera, with a quad core desktop with like 4 or 8 GB of RAM.
You might think that would work, until you realize the majority of the average electorate is more concerned with frivolity than rights violations.Certainly not rights violations against those wacko protesters. Look at the outrage at the various bailouts (not frivolous at all, mind you) or the various personal Clinton scandals (certainly frivolous) the Nixon scandal (frivolous compared to his warmongering) and compare that to the outrage over the PATRIOT act, the Iraq war, the various torture scandals, etc. etc.
Who do those protester guys think they are, anyways? Ah well, it's time for the football game.
Much of the sugar-water is not actually sugar water, at least here in the States. We have tariffs and import restrictions that essentially mandate using sugar replacements in soft drinks. Let's not even mention the fact that we have a country that produces sugar nearby that we are absolutely forbidden from trading with.
But I do agree, the minimum pricing (for any imaginable good) is ridiculous.
The fact is that people do not make good choices when it comes to food.
You can say the same thing about every possible human choice. What is so special about human food choices and not about anything else? Once you start pushing humans in a certain direction for one choice, there is no real reason why you can't try it with all other choices.
In order for the blacksmith, the coder, and the musician to make money, what they produce has to be of a quality people are willing to pay for. The mere act of producing a hammer, a line of code, or a song does not guarantee any money. If people (or not enough people) do not purchase these products, the producers will either have to shape up (if the business hasn't been destroyed) or the producer will have to do something else.
The US also happens to have harbored terrorists inside its borders. Luis Posada Carilles bombed a Cuban airliner, and so far as I know, he still lives in the US, and he cannot be deported. Since we will not hand him over, Cuba has the right to invade our country and, in the process, kill thousands of innocents who have no connection to the government (intentional or not). Then, after the invasion, the Cuban government
I'm not sure he's advocating cutting off the soldiers from support. He just seems to be saying that the war is really stupid, and any and all investment in such a war is folly to the extreme. The rest of his post is just trolling.
But, that said, I am not sure if it would be betrayal. From my point of view, everyone who signed up to invade Afghanistan and Iraq betrayed me, betrayed the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and betrayed the citizens of his respective nation. When it comes to randomly invading countries, I am a pacifist to the extreme.
I'd bet that many people wouldn't understand that document even if it were typed up in Times New Roman due to the differences in language from then to now.
There's more to cursive than simply writing rapidly. Developing good handwriting skills takes practice and discipline, concepts I find grossly underrepresented in modern education.
There may be more to cursive than simply writing quickly, but developing good handwriting skills is hardly necessary for communication nowadays. The problems with practice and discipline are separate from the issue of handwriting.
Look at us mere mortals still flying supersonically in Concorde. Oh wait, now we all have to use slow subsonic 747's and Airbus'. THAT'S progress for you.
Just because we are capable of supersonic flight doesn't necessarily mean it is viable economically. Let's use cars for example.
Many cars nowadays can reach speeds in the 100+ mph range. Few of us ever reach those speeds in a car, and even fewer of us manage to make long trips at that speed. Sure, it'd be nice, but the fuel/tire/maintenance costs at that speed might not make it worthwhile for most people.
I think the Concorde would have done much better if random people here in the States hadn't complained about noise and such. This is akin, for cars, to roads having speed limits and having to incur the (hefty) fines that would be incurred driving at high speeds. I don't think the noise would've been a problem. But then again, I also have lived on an Air Force base for most of my life, and am quite accustomed to aircraft noises. After a while, you just tune them out (save for the loud Navy jets).
I'm 20 and have never personally experienced it. But, I do understand it. I sort of intuitively understood that NO CARRIER meant you've lost a connection. A quick google returned more of the phrase's subtleties.
It's actually better to abolish patents then anything, but as long as the game stands, then having a responsible company or organization hold them can be better then just opening them up.
I agree, 100%, that patents should be completely abolished. I think that the granting of a legal monopoly on the implementation of an idea/machine/etc is quite silly. What is it about the act of inventing something that is so special that no one else in the entire universe deserves to able to use that invention without the inventor's permission?
Slashdot Mirror
In many areas of this country, local governments give out franchises to cable and phone companies, which can grant these companies legal monopolies. In such a case, it is legally impossible for anyone at all to enter the market in that area aside from regulatory duct tape that forces the providers to sell/give access to their cables to other companies. Those solutions do not strike at the core issue: legal monopolies.
In my own area, Comcast enjoys a legal monopoly on high-speed internet access. We've been hoping for some time that Verizon might be allowed to offer FiOS, but they regulators feel that that will interfere with a telephone monopoly. Grr......
You might find an electrical outlet, but will you find an electrical outlet that will allow you to plug up your electric car and charge it over night? The hotel you stop at might not allow it.
Really? Region locking is a *trade* issue? Region locking is a copyright issue, used by various large entertainment companies to force everyone to buy the same thing over and over and over again. It has nothing to do with trade.
I agree totally that region locking hurts legitimate users. However, I disagree that it should be illegal. I think it should be perfectly legal to mod/hack/whatever a way to play DVDs from another region, the manufacturer be damned. They can have all the fancy DRM they want, but I believe that breaking it should be perfectly legitimate. The DMCA disagrees with me, however. Now they can use that to extort money out of people for playing DVDs. "Pay us $LARGE_DOLLAR_AMOUNT or we'll take you to court."
Whether or not you sell my an item at a loss has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I now own that item, and am free to do whatever I want with it, so long as my use causes no direct physical harm to others. Modding a Wii does not cause any physical harm to anyone, so it should be OK. Or at least it would, if copyright/patent trolls didn't have the ear of legislatures.
If Nintendo sold Wiis at a loss (which they don't, IIRC) and discovered that everyone is now using them only for homebrew, they would jack up the price so they can remain profitable. I'm sure the other console makers would do the same.
I think having the Internet controlled by politicians in any organization is not a good thing. I would rather see it in the hands of something like ISO or something along those lines. Probably more like "along those lines."
Just because he can't pluralize correctly doesn't mean that his argument was incorrect.
But even the, how do you know that he wasn't trying to say "kids' heads" and simply made a typo?
A likely reason, in my opinion, for the fact that many jobs require a college degree is the fact that the subsidization of a college education has caused more and more people to get degrees, even if they get degrees in BS subjects (e.g. random ethnic group and/or ideology and/or sex or sexual orientation studies). Now it's far easier to put a college degree on the resume and, as a consequence, it is far easier for an employer to demand it.
Perhaps he's talking about smokers being allowed to go outside and smoke. I've never been in any office building that allows people to smoke inside.
You can hold them in tanks made of transparent aluminum during training. I guarantee that it'll hold whales as you transport them to the future in your spacecraft.
inalienable rights of users to download content for free off the internet.
I disagree that downloading content for free from the Internet is a right. However, I would say that there is no right to be granted a legal monopoly on the production of any item, physical or not. This in effect makes the result the same, that users would be capable of downloading whatever they can get access to, but it is a possibly large disagreement on why they can do this.
I wonder about a system wherein copyright is not automatic or even guaranteed, a system where each producer of IP (say, an artist) establishes a contract that has a clause prohibiting the copying of the IP in question. It would be very hard to enforce, and likely not work in practice, but is has the benefit that the only people who can be charged with anything are those who agreed to and broke the contract. And then it would be a contract violation, a situation in which I feel judges are less likely to issue mega fines for copying music.
It certainly wasn't $500 or $600 when she bought the computer, especially when even the weakest of netbooks has more than enough power for her needs. She'd need a bigger screen, but she already has that. All she runs is Internet Explorer and.....well....Windows Explorer? I don't remember if she has Office or not.
I had to do something fairly similar for my grandmother's computer. Only problem was, the hard drive was working perfectly fine before she took it to Best Buy. I had given her a hand-me-down computer with Linux on it, and she wanted to install Windows on it. So she had to go buy a copy. Somehow in the process of installing Windows--an arduous task that involves the opening of the DVD drive--they had managed to open the case, unscrew the hard drive from the case, and then bust it up enough that it took over 24 hours for Windows to finish installing. I know this because they kindly provided my grandmother a receipt that had logs of everything they did, which I went over.
The best part is when they decided the slowness was due to the PC not having enough RAM for XP. Which is curious, because I had run XP on that PC just fine. So they tell her they need to buy 2 x 1 GB sticks. Eventually we managed to get a refund on all of that stuff after Windows failed to boot up.
After I had to head back to my home state, she was left with no computer and, even worse, no one who even remotely knows that they're talking about with computers. She went to the same Best Buy and asked for assistance on what computer to buy. They equipped her, someone whose most intensive task is copying photos off of a camera, with a quad core desktop with like 4 or 8 GB of RAM.
You might think that would work, until you realize the majority of the average electorate is more concerned with frivolity than rights violations.Certainly not rights violations against those wacko protesters. Look at the outrage at the various bailouts (not frivolous at all, mind you) or the various personal Clinton scandals (certainly frivolous) the Nixon scandal (frivolous compared to his warmongering) and compare that to the outrage over the PATRIOT act, the Iraq war, the various torture scandals, etc. etc.
Who do those protester guys think they are, anyways? Ah well, it's time for the football game.
Much of the sugar-water is not actually sugar water, at least here in the States. We have tariffs and import restrictions that essentially mandate using sugar replacements in soft drinks. Let's not even mention the fact that we have a country that produces sugar nearby that we are absolutely forbidden from trading with.
But I do agree, the minimum pricing (for any imaginable good) is ridiculous.
The fact is that people do not make good choices when it comes to food.
You can say the same thing about every possible human choice. What is so special about human food choices and not about anything else? Once you start pushing humans in a certain direction for one choice, there is no real reason why you can't try it with all other choices.
In order for the blacksmith, the coder, and the musician to make money, what they produce has to be of a quality people are willing to pay for. The mere act of producing a hammer, a line of code, or a song does not guarantee any money. If people (or not enough people) do not purchase these products, the producers will either have to shape up (if the business hasn't been destroyed) or the producer will have to do something else.
The US also happens to have harbored terrorists inside its borders. Luis Posada Carilles bombed a Cuban airliner, and so far as I know, he still lives in the US, and he cannot be deported. Since we will not hand him over, Cuba has the right to invade our country and, in the process, kill thousands of innocents who have no connection to the government (intentional or not). Then, after the invasion, the Cuban government
I'm not sure he's advocating cutting off the soldiers from support. He just seems to be saying that the war is really stupid, and any and all investment in such a war is folly to the extreme. The rest of his post is just trolling.
But, that said, I am not sure if it would be betrayal. From my point of view, everyone who signed up to invade Afghanistan and Iraq betrayed me, betrayed the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and betrayed the citizens of his respective nation. When it comes to randomly invading countries, I am a pacifist to the extreme.
I sure hope they get that fixed quickly, I'm tired of the tubes that connect to my modem rusting out so often. It's very frustrating.
Have you seen this document recently?
I'd bet that many people wouldn't understand that document even if it were typed up in Times New Roman due to the differences in language from then to now.
There's more to cursive than simply writing rapidly. Developing good handwriting skills takes practice and discipline, concepts I find grossly underrepresented in modern education.
There may be more to cursive than simply writing quickly, but developing good handwriting skills is hardly necessary for communication nowadays. The problems with practice and discipline are separate from the issue of handwriting.
Look at us mere mortals still flying supersonically in Concorde. Oh wait, now we all have to use slow subsonic 747's and Airbus'. THAT'S progress for you.
Just because we are capable of supersonic flight doesn't necessarily mean it is viable economically. Let's use cars for example.
Many cars nowadays can reach speeds in the 100+ mph range. Few of us ever reach those speeds in a car, and even fewer of us manage to make long trips at that speed. Sure, it'd be nice, but the fuel/tire/maintenance costs at that speed might not make it worthwhile for most people.
I think the Concorde would have done much better if random people here in the States hadn't complained about noise and such. This is akin, for cars, to roads having speed limits and having to incur the (hefty) fines that would be incurred driving at high speeds. I don't think the noise would've been a problem. But then again, I also have lived on an Air Force base for most of my life, and am quite accustomed to aircraft noises. After a while, you just tune them out (save for the loud Navy jets).
I'm 20 and have never personally experienced it. But, I do understand it. I sort of intuitively understood that NO CARRIER meant you've lost a connection. A quick google returned more of the phrase's subtleties.
Stop Microsoft's monopole
Down with Microsoft's evil magnets! Dipole magnets for everybody!
It's actually better to abolish patents then anything, but as long as the game stands, then having a responsible company or organization hold them can be better then just opening them up.
I agree, 100%, that patents should be completely abolished. I think that the granting of a legal monopoly on the implementation of an idea/machine/etc is quite silly. What is it about the act of inventing something that is so special that no one else in the entire universe deserves to able to use that invention without the inventor's permission?