One item in the bill I find especially objectionable is under the accounting section. http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2009/Bills/Senate/HTML/S1004v0.html "The annual accounting shall reflect any direct or indirect subsidies received by the city owned communications service provider, and any buildings, equipment, vehicles, and personnel that are jointly used with other city departments shall be fully allocated to the city owned communications service." It requires that if the Greenlight equivilant utilizes a resource shared with another part of the municipality then Greenlight has to count the annual cost of that resource as a subsidy.
For instance, if Greenlight has a cubicle in a large municipal office building they are sharing the building and have to count the cost of the building as a subsidy. That's the entire building, not just the space and resources that are necessary for that one cubicle but the whole building. It applies to buildings, vehicles, personnel and equipment.
It also applies to any direct subsidies. Such as Federal subsidy money directed at improving infrastructure. Which TWC of course will recieve and not have to count as a business expense. When you combine that with the innocuous sounding bit about pricing "In complying with this requirement, a city owned communications service provider shall not price any communications service below the cost of providing the service." It's saying that a program like Greenlight would have to price their product as if the subsidies they recieve are a cost of business.
In the case of using city workers to install fiber this makes sense, when you prorate it. But it makes no sense whatsoever when talking about federal subsidies for infrastructure improvements that private companies like TWC also recieve.
Mainly the issue is that this bill puts more stringent requirements on programs such as Greenlight than on the existing private companies such as TWC. Most notably is the requirements for auditing, which far surpass what the private companies are required to provide. Greenlight already provides more auditing than the private interests simple because it is a government project.
Also in (6) "The annual accounting shall reflect any direct or indirect subsidies received by the city owned communications service provider, and any buildings, equipment, vehicles, and personnel that are jointly used with other city departments shall be fully allocated to the city owned communications service."
Which makes no sense at all. Basically if Greenlight has a single cubicle allotted to it in the Municiple office building they have to claim the entire building as a subsidy. That's some heavy bullshit right there. And it applies to everything they might jointly use with the city.
Not to mention they are trying to prevent municipalities from getting any of the federal governments subsidy money for building broadband infrastructure.
From http://savencbb.wordpress.com/ a blog by Brian Bowman who is the Public Affairs Manager for the City of Wilson, NC.
"City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the 28-million dollar project. Instead of paying for the project through a tax increase, the Council chose to sell high speed Internet, cable TV, and phone service and let the subscriber revenue cover the cost of the network. Financing was unanimously approved by the North Carolina Local Government Commission and our debt was well-received by the financial markets."
The bonds were sold into the financial markets and are serviced, or paid for, by the revenue generated from subscribers. So Tax dollars are not being spent to pay for it.
TWC might have to pay that bribe or access fee but that money isn't subsidizing Greenlight. Greenlight's infrastructure was paid for with a special bonds issue. And it currently operates at a profit on it's revenues alone. It is not funded or supported by funds from anywhere but it's self.
It is a good arguement that they have a competitive edge if they aren't paying the same fees that the private companies have to pay. But those fees can't come close to closing the gap in their prices. In a previous discussion someone showed that a still inferior service package (six less channels, decent channels not fluff, and notably worse internet connection) from TWC costed close to $50 more per month, and it was an introductory rate.
I also seem to remember a line of the legislation, from the last time this was brought up, that seemed to be saying that the municipality couldn't price their service below what the private ISPs were charging. Much of the bill makes sense and won't matter to Greenligh because they already operate independantly of tax dollars and such.
Except that in this case it's not funded by tax payer dollars. Greenlight's infrastructure layout was funded by special bonds. It operates at a profit completely independant of tax payer dollars. TWC is in a hissy precisely because of that, they've been shown that what the community asked for was and is completely possible.
The real reason drop rates are so bad and only on bosses isn't actually to keep those items rare. It's a time sink, that's accomplished through making the better and best items rare though. That's why there are time restrictions on how often you can complete any raid instance. It's all a gambit to keep people playing longer so the subscriptions keep rolling in. Which isn't wrong or evil of them in particular. So long as the game play is entertaining enough even for being easily reduced to a grind.
I quit playing WoW myself when I got bored enough with it that even the social interactiong iwth old friends wasn't enough to keep me logging in. I've got other games I play now along but I don't really care if WoW fails or continues for another 10 years. I'm just done playing it, at least for the time being.
You could possibly communicate with the company that published the DvD and request a fresh DvD in trade for your damaged one. I have heard of people doing it with music CD's. If they sold you a license for the movie Robots on DvD then that license should not expire with the degradation of the medium it is recorded on, and hence they should replace it. If they argue that they sold you a DvD and not a license of the movie then you should be able to copy it to your hearts content. It's one of the other not both, as they might wish to believe.
Certainly, because a pirate is someone who takes something, not makes a copy of something, for personal gain. IP Pirates make copies of other people intellectual property and then resell it themselves. Both of those practices are agreed to be bad by the majority of people.
This article however does not involve pirates. It is about people being accused of non criminal Copyright infringement. This means they are accused of makign digital copies of something that they didn't pay the appropriate people for. While that's possibly frown worthy depending on your personal opinion it is not stealing or theft. Labeling it at such is seen as a juvenile or ignorant practice by most people capable of logical thought.
The use of deadly force as a threat is all that is required for responding with deadly force. In fact using an object that appears to be a deadly weapon, or claiming to have such a weapon, and using it to coerce others is enough to justify deadly force as a response.
If the pirates don't want to risk being killed outright then they shouldn't be carrying weapons let alone firearms and RPG's.
It sounds like Altoon was just a crappy implementation.
Your note that they failed to keep up with the times is also true of TWC and it's kin in most markets. How long has Fiber Optics been around? And how many providers have so far implemented it for the public? I can only think of Verizon as a major player that's started such a service and it's only available in some areas. All the major companies recieved huge sums of money to build and expand infrastructure and they in general haven't done it.
4-i: seems to be saying that when Greenlight is establishing it's price for services it has to take into account what TWC currently charges. Essentially saying that they want greenlight to be forced to use TWC's rates as a baseline for theirs.
That's simple. Don't provide tiered services for your network. Simply monitor the usage and bill accordingly. Maybe include a 10% over charge option that builds up a surplus so that if you have a couple months of very high usage it helps even out your bill. But that's really just fluff.
If it's a utility it should be billed as such and in this case it should most nearly resemble a water or electric bill.
I've only ever been to NYC once and I was lucky enough to have Amy's Bread recommended to me. I had a couple confections from their, but the best by far was the Cherry Fritter. It's been a few years since I was there and I still haven't eaten anything quite as aswesome.
http://www.amysbread.com/
The Greenlight site's FAQ says that the cost of establishing the service was paid for by issuing bonds. I imagine those bonds will be paid back with subscription fees. Someone was saying that it cost about $30 million to set up. If that's right and assume they pay the bonds off with a 10% annual interest rate compounded monthly over 15 years. The bill would come to under $19 a month per household, of which there are around 17,300 in Wilson. Sounds pretty reasonable to me for having fiber run directly to each house.
Actually from reading the FAQ on the Greenlight site it appears it is not tax dollar funded exactly. The layout costs, which from what I've seen was around $30 million, was covered by issuing bonds. I would expect that the money to pay back those bonds will come from the fees for using the service.
If you view that $30 million as a 15 year loan and just for kicks and giggles give it a 10% interest rate. The monthly payment comes out to less than $19 per household. I'd think 15 years would be more than reasonable to pay off that kind of infrastructure upgrade. Especially considering it's a Fiber to the House(FTTH) setup and not some other hybrid system.
Well he did say to mount military actions once the baddies have a resonable opportunity to surrender. So it's not like you are immediately killing the hostages. And even if you go in with a military response you aren't necessarily killing the hostages. Granted if that response is always to destroy the plane instead of a tactical team you will be killing the hostages.
On the other hand if a terrorist knows that all they get out of taking hostages is dead hostages and terrorists, then they won't bother taking hostages anymore. They'll stick with bombs in markets and such which isn't all that much better.
I think there was a currency but yeah it was definitely a Socialism system. Although it was an organization of volunteers so it's a bit more believable. And they had the technology and resources to see that all of their members needs were met. People are much more reasonable animals when they have all their needs met with no threat of losing that security.
I'm fairly sure I've seen articles before that demonstrated that the large media companies cook the books as it where to make almost everything they do appear to be a losing venture. Such was the case with Jackson and the LotR movies. One part of the studio paid another part unbelievable sums of money for promotion and advertisement, which on the books made the movies out to be barely profitable. Which let them get away with paying Jackson a much smaller share of the profits than they would have otherwise done. I don't have the links or experience to say for sure that's what happens all the time but I've been lead to believe it's a wide spread practice throughout the industry.
So you are saying that we should all be forced to by art by artists we like? The system is already voluntary for the most part. If I chose to buy a CD from a musician I have voluntarily donated to them. Do you propose that anyone passing by a street musician be forced to pay a dollar for the art they were provided?
If you want to exactly control how your art is used and enjoyed then you can share it with exactly yourself and no one else. If you'd like to distribute your art and possibly profit from it then you will have to abide by whatever rules society decides to impose on it. If you give something to someone else then it's theirs and beyond your control, unless society imposes some sort of laws or rules on it.
You are part of society get used to it. I'm not advocating no patents and copyright laws but the system we have currently isn't doing what it was meant to do and is prone to all kinds of abuse. Which has resulted in society at large disregarding it and moving on with their lives.
That's why Copyright is necessary but not in it's current incarnation. Say five years with stiff civil penalties, and criminal penalties where piracy is concerned. But terms of 70 years and more is complete crap. By the time things produced today are released into the public domain I'll be wearing diapers and likely be deaf. Where is the incentive for the public to support that?
Your first statement is not a proven fact. While widely distributing something for free that another wants to distribute for profit can reduce the demand, and hence purchase of the product, it doesn't keep anyone from purchasing the product. A free copy does not equate to a lost sale, 10 free copies does not equate to a lost sale either.
Artists and developers should be producing the things they want because they want to. Historically the artists have starved for most of their lives, but they persevered because it was what they were passionate about, not because they thought they'd wind up rich. If a person wants to make money as an artist of some sort they should be selling the service of their arts not an object or recording that anyone else can mimic. In the developer world this would equate to selling a service.
I'd rather have art and music inspired by love of art and music than by financial greed.
The whole reason we have patent and copy write is to allow some financial stability to those artistic individuals and thereby promote them creating more which can eventually enter the public domain. It isn't to provide a lottery wherby an artist might obtain a life of luxury and leisure for one performance. Let alone for a corporation to profit for decades or centuries off the efforts of an artist they likely exploited.
I'm in favor of very limited copyright and patent laws myself. Say 10 and five years respectively.
Your story reminds me of a guy a knew that when he deployed decided to try and bulk up, he was always skinny though not low enough to get him in trouble. Anyways he did the whole routine of weight gain drinks and such and worked out religiously for his whole deployment and came back skinnier than he left.
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One item in the bill I find especially objectionable is under the accounting section. http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2009/Bills/Senate/HTML/S1004v0.html "The annual accounting shall reflect any direct or indirect subsidies received by the city owned communications service provider, and any buildings, equipment, vehicles, and personnel that are jointly used with other city departments shall be fully allocated to the city owned communications service." It requires that if the Greenlight equivilant utilizes a resource shared with another part of the municipality then Greenlight has to count the annual cost of that resource as a subsidy.
For instance, if Greenlight has a cubicle in a large municipal office building they are sharing the building and have to count the cost of the building as a subsidy. That's the entire building, not just the space and resources that are necessary for that one cubicle but the whole building. It applies to buildings, vehicles, personnel and equipment.
It also applies to any direct subsidies. Such as Federal subsidy money directed at improving infrastructure. Which TWC of course will recieve and not have to count as a business expense. When you combine that with the innocuous sounding bit about pricing "In complying with this requirement, a city owned communications service provider shall not price any communications service below the cost of providing the service." It's saying that a program like Greenlight would have to price their product as if the subsidies they recieve are a cost of business.
In the case of using city workers to install fiber this makes sense, when you prorate it. But it makes no sense whatsoever when talking about federal subsidies for infrastructure improvements that private companies like TWC also recieve.
Mainly the issue is that this bill puts more stringent requirements on programs such as Greenlight than on the existing private companies such as TWC. Most notably is the requirements for auditing, which far surpass what the private companies are required to provide. Greenlight already provides more auditing than the private interests simple because it is a government project.
Also in (6) "The annual accounting shall reflect any direct or indirect subsidies received by the city owned communications service provider, and any buildings, equipment, vehicles, and personnel that are jointly used with other city departments shall be fully allocated to the city owned communications service."
Which makes no sense at all. Basically if Greenlight has a single cubicle allotted to it in the Municiple office building they have to claim the entire building as a subsidy. That's some heavy bullshit right there. And it applies to everything they might jointly use with the city.
Not to mention they are trying to prevent municipalities from getting any of the federal governments subsidy money for building broadband infrastructure.
From http://savencbb.wordpress.com/ a blog by Brian Bowman who is the Public Affairs Manager for the City of Wilson, NC.
"City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the 28-million dollar project. Instead of paying for the project through a tax increase, the Council chose to sell high speed Internet, cable TV, and phone service and let the subscriber revenue cover the cost of the network. Financing was unanimously approved by the North Carolina Local Government Commission and our debt was well-received by the financial markets."
The bonds were sold into the financial markets and are serviced, or paid for, by the revenue generated from subscribers. So Tax dollars are not being spent to pay for it.
TWC might have to pay that bribe or access fee but that money isn't subsidizing Greenlight. Greenlight's infrastructure was paid for with a special bonds issue. And it currently operates at a profit on it's revenues alone. It is not funded or supported by funds from anywhere but it's self.
It is a good arguement that they have a competitive edge if they aren't paying the same fees that the private companies have to pay. But those fees can't come close to closing the gap in their prices. In a previous discussion someone showed that a still inferior service package (six less channels, decent channels not fluff, and notably worse internet connection) from TWC costed close to $50 more per month, and it was an introductory rate.
I also seem to remember a line of the legislation, from the last time this was brought up, that seemed to be saying that the municipality couldn't price their service below what the private ISPs were charging. Much of the bill makes sense and won't matter to Greenligh because they already operate independantly of tax dollars and such.
Except that in this case it's not funded by tax payer dollars. Greenlight's infrastructure layout was funded by special bonds. It operates at a profit completely independant of tax payer dollars. TWC is in a hissy precisely because of that, they've been shown that what the community asked for was and is completely possible.
Actually, it's what you data CRAVES!
The real reason drop rates are so bad and only on bosses isn't actually to keep those items rare. It's a time sink, that's accomplished through making the better and best items rare though. That's why there are time restrictions on how often you can complete any raid instance. It's all a gambit to keep people playing longer so the subscriptions keep rolling in. Which isn't wrong or evil of them in particular. So long as the game play is entertaining enough even for being easily reduced to a grind.
I quit playing WoW myself when I got bored enough with it that even the social interactiong iwth old friends wasn't enough to keep me logging in. I've got other games I play now along but I don't really care if WoW fails or continues for another 10 years. I'm just done playing it, at least for the time being.
If you are seriously asking:
You could possibly communicate with the company that published the DvD and request a fresh DvD in trade for your damaged one. I have heard of people doing it with music CD's. If they sold you a license for the movie Robots on DvD then that license should not expire with the degradation of the medium it is recorded on, and hence they should replace it. If they argue that they sold you a DvD and not a license of the movie then you should be able to copy it to your hearts content. It's one of the other not both, as they might wish to believe.
For safety's sake, I AM NOT A LAWYER!
Certainly, because a pirate is someone who takes something, not makes a copy of something, for personal gain. IP Pirates make copies of other people intellectual property and then resell it themselves. Both of those practices are agreed to be bad by the majority of people.
This article however does not involve pirates. It is about people being accused of non criminal Copyright infringement. This means they are accused of makign digital copies of something that they didn't pay the appropriate people for. While that's possibly frown worthy depending on your personal opinion it is not stealing or theft. Labeling it at such is seen as a juvenile or ignorant practice by most people capable of logical thought.
The use of deadly force as a threat is all that is required for responding with deadly force. In fact using an object that appears to be a deadly weapon, or claiming to have such a weapon, and using it to coerce others is enough to justify deadly force as a response.
If the pirates don't want to risk being killed outright then they shouldn't be carrying weapons let alone firearms and RPG's.
It sounds like Altoon was just a crappy implementation.
Your note that they failed to keep up with the times is also true of TWC and it's kin in most markets. How long has Fiber Optics been around? And how many providers have so far implemented it for the public? I can only think of Verizon as a major player that's started such a service and it's only available in some areas. All the major companies recieved huge sums of money to build and expand infrastructure and they in general haven't done it.
4-i: seems to be saying that when Greenlight is establishing it's price for services it has to take into account what TWC currently charges. Essentially saying that they want greenlight to be forced to use TWC's rates as a baseline for theirs.
That's simple. Don't provide tiered services for your network. Simply monitor the usage and bill accordingly. Maybe include a 10% over charge option that builds up a surplus so that if you have a couple months of very high usage it helps even out your bill. But that's really just fluff.
If it's a utility it should be billed as such and in this case it should most nearly resemble a water or electric bill.
I've only ever been to NYC once and I was lucky enough to have Amy's Bread recommended to me. I had a couple confections from their, but the best by far was the Cherry Fritter. It's been a few years since I was there and I still haven't eaten anything quite as aswesome. http://www.amysbread.com/
The Greenlight site's FAQ says that the cost of establishing the service was paid for by issuing bonds. I imagine those bonds will be paid back with subscription fees. Someone was saying that it cost about $30 million to set up. If that's right and assume they pay the bonds off with a 10% annual interest rate compounded monthly over 15 years. The bill would come to under $19 a month per household, of which there are around 17,300 in Wilson. Sounds pretty reasonable to me for having fiber run directly to each house.
Actually from reading the FAQ on the Greenlight site it appears it is not tax dollar funded exactly. The layout costs, which from what I've seen was around $30 million, was covered by issuing bonds. I would expect that the money to pay back those bonds will come from the fees for using the service.
If you view that $30 million as a 15 year loan and just for kicks and giggles give it a 10% interest rate. The monthly payment comes out to less than $19 per household. I'd think 15 years would be more than reasonable to pay off that kind of infrastructure upgrade. Especially considering it's a Fiber to the House(FTTH) setup and not some other hybrid system.
Well he did say to mount military actions once the baddies have a resonable opportunity to surrender. So it's not like you are immediately killing the hostages. And even if you go in with a military response you aren't necessarily killing the hostages. Granted if that response is always to destroy the plane instead of a tactical team you will be killing the hostages.
On the other hand if a terrorist knows that all they get out of taking hostages is dead hostages and terrorists, then they won't bother taking hostages anymore. They'll stick with bombs in markets and such which isn't all that much better.
Great, well thought out post!
I think there was a currency but yeah it was definitely a Socialism system. Although it was an organization of volunteers so it's a bit more believable. And they had the technology and resources to see that all of their members needs were met. People are much more reasonable animals when they have all their needs met with no threat of losing that security.
I'm fairly sure I've seen articles before that demonstrated that the large media companies cook the books as it where to make almost everything they do appear to be a losing venture. Such was the case with Jackson and the LotR movies. One part of the studio paid another part unbelievable sums of money for promotion and advertisement, which on the books made the movies out to be barely profitable. Which let them get away with paying Jackson a much smaller share of the profits than they would have otherwise done. I don't have the links or experience to say for sure that's what happens all the time but I've been lead to believe it's a wide spread practice throughout the industry.
So you are saying that we should all be forced to by art by artists we like? The system is already voluntary for the most part. If I chose to buy a CD from a musician I have voluntarily donated to them. Do you propose that anyone passing by a street musician be forced to pay a dollar for the art they were provided?
If you want to exactly control how your art is used and enjoyed then you can share it with exactly yourself and no one else. If you'd like to distribute your art and possibly profit from it then you will have to abide by whatever rules society decides to impose on it. If you give something to someone else then it's theirs and beyond your control, unless society imposes some sort of laws or rules on it.
You are part of society get used to it. I'm not advocating no patents and copyright laws but the system we have currently isn't doing what it was meant to do and is prone to all kinds of abuse. Which has resulted in society at large disregarding it and moving on with their lives.
That's why Copyright is necessary but not in it's current incarnation. Say five years with stiff civil penalties, and criminal penalties where piracy is concerned. But terms of 70 years and more is complete crap. By the time things produced today are released into the public domain I'll be wearing diapers and likely be deaf. Where is the incentive for the public to support that?
Your first statement is not a proven fact. While widely distributing something for free that another wants to distribute for profit can reduce the demand, and hence purchase of the product, it doesn't keep anyone from purchasing the product. A free copy does not equate to a lost sale, 10 free copies does not equate to a lost sale either.
Artists and developers should be producing the things they want because they want to. Historically the artists have starved for most of their lives, but they persevered because it was what they were passionate about, not because they thought they'd wind up rich. If a person wants to make money as an artist of some sort they should be selling the service of their arts not an object or recording that anyone else can mimic. In the developer world this would equate to selling a service.
I'd rather have art and music inspired by love of art and music than by financial greed.
The whole reason we have patent and copy write is to allow some financial stability to those artistic individuals and thereby promote them creating more which can eventually enter the public domain. It isn't to provide a lottery wherby an artist might obtain a life of luxury and leisure for one performance. Let alone for a corporation to profit for decades or centuries off the efforts of an artist they likely exploited.
I'm in favor of very limited copyright and patent laws myself. Say 10 and five years respectively.
Your story reminds me of a guy a knew that when he deployed decided to try and bulk up, he was always skinny though not low enough to get him in trouble. Anyways he did the whole routine of weight gain drinks and such and worked out religiously for his whole deployment and came back skinnier than he left.