>>>It's free money. They print it on big printing presses and everything
No wonder the dollar is only worth half a euro - our saved wealth is rapidly disappearing as more-and-more paper is printed. Keep it up Americans and soon we'll have a healthy economy like Venezuela
>>>Basically your argument is "this is not worthwhile for me to do, but it is worthwhile for other people to do it for me".
Usually I say something like, "I've paid over $20,000 a year in taxes for the past ten years or so, which is frankly ridiculous. I feel like I've been raped. Here's an opportunity to get back some of that money from the thieves.... er, politicians via tax credits or subsidies." I consider a refund of my OWN money not other people's money.
Of course the ideal would be to reduce the tax rate so no middle income citizen pays more than $5000 in taxation each year. That's unlikely to happen.
Upgrading your house with a solar roof only makes sense if you're going to stay there for ~20 years, and few people do. Americans are very mobile, and even if someone does plan to stay in one place, oftentimes economic reality (layoffs) force them to leave before they had a chance to payoff their solar roof. Therefore people choose the path of least risk - don't invest.
As for New Jersey providing incentives to install these solar panels on electric poles, I think they'll find the longterm maintenance cost will be far higher than planned, and those panels will eventually be removed.
>>>Now that we are reaching the point where CD's are becoming a thing of the past for a much larger number of people
I hope CDs don't die.
It's still the only way to get uncompressed music. Some discs even have full surround sound encoding. The compressed AACs sold on itunes sound like crap on a full-sized 5-speaker stereo.
>>>It's part of that retro-is-new thing, all the kids are doing it, it's alltuhh-9ytujhff all the rage (sorry, electric typewriter keys got stuck - one of the hazards of being cool). >>>
I have an old manual typewriter that's virtually new in appearance. Wanna buy this old piece of ju.... er, fine piece of retro engineering?;-)
I can understand why retro has become cool, after all I collect old Commodores fr retrogaming, but I never liked the LP even when it was popular. Those old records were typically two good songs, and ten other songs I've never heard before and frankly didn't care to hear (if they had been good, they would have played on the radio). I'd rather just buy the 45s... oops I mean the singles, or wait for the "best of" collection.
Bringing back the LP holds zero interest for me. Give me individual songs so I can buy just the best and filter out the crap.
RCA invented a video-record back in the 1970s. It used a needle and concentric grooves, but instead of touching the platter the needle hovered above the grooves. Using this method they could store 60 minutes of broadcast quality (440x480) analog video on one side of a 12 inch record.
>>>The production of a quality map or chart has a higher cost than the production of a work of fiction
Yes TODAY it's more expensive, but that wasn't the case in 1790 when this law was passed. Running off a map lithograph on your printing press was trivial compared to the labor required to typeface an entire book, letter-by-letter. Copyright was later extended to maps/charts/sheetmusic in the 1890s.
Good point. The original "14 years" was derived by looking at actuarial tables, and determining how long the average artist lives after his creation. In 1790 the average was 13 years, 8 months..... today it would probably be longer..... still it was tied to the original creator's lifespan, not perpetual.
So that means Mickey Mouse, which was created in 1928, should now be public domain.
you would think this instantaneous sharing of digital content is some newfangled philosophical challenge brought about by the latest technological innovation..... and here's this guy from [almost 250] years ago... pretty much nailing the issue on the head. Man those founding fathers were smart
QFT (quoted for truth). The internet is just a new method of spreading ideas. Before the internet, it was radiowaves, and before radiowaves it was books, and before books it was stone tablets. The technology has changed but not the underlying foundational principle. Ideas are infinitely reproducible and can be spread to many, without depriving the original owner of his creation.
i guess al gore has to step aside: thomas jefferson conceptualized the internet!;-P
I already provided citations yesterday. As my profs were fond of saying, "It's not my fault you weren't here." Just google Harvard and "5000 downloads one lost sale" for study number one.
Well that's really fair to the original artist. He gets about 1 penny per song sold, but must spend 40 cents mailing-out permission forms to let people use his songs in college or high school.
I suppose one solution is to tell the students, "If you insist upon a piece-of-paper then you're going to pay for it. 40 cents for postage plus 40 cents for paypal fees. Make it an even 1 dollar. -OR- Just take this email as your permission. Your choice."
Since neither RIAA nor the lawyers seemed obliged to control themselves, then we need laws to do it for them.
- The law should exempt libraries, colleges, and individuals from copies made for personal use.
- The law should fine the RIAA $100,000 and the lawyers $1,000 each for cases brought before a judge, and then later dropped when the case is not going their way. Consider it a "court usage fee" to compensate the government for time/dollars wasted.
- And finally the law should forbid the use of extortionate letters that read "Pay us $5000 or be drug into court where we will sue you for one million dollars," or similar fear tactics. The letters may continue in the form of cease-and-desist actions, but the use of these letters to collect dollars is reminiscent of the Catholic Church's "indulgences" which collected dollars in exchange for forgiveness of sins. It's a perversion of the original intent of copyright (to promote progress and learning).
And their Copyright Act of 1790 said the following:
- for the encouragement of learning - limited term of 14 years with 14 year extension if the *original* author was still alive - libraries, colleges, and private individuals were not subject to the copyright (i.e. fair use) - was only for expensive works like books, not incidentals like maps or charts
This is the kind of copyright law we should have today, not the perpetual copyright that lasts ~100 years (five generations). When the original laborer who created the work dies, then the copyright should die as well. As Jefferson said "the Earth is for the living not the dead," and laws exist to serve the current generation not previous generations.
Actually it looks like John Philip Sousa's prediction was correct. We Don't sit-around home pianos in our parlors listening to somebody music, but I don't cry about it anymore than I cry that the horsewhip or candlestick makers no longer exist. Some forms of technology are obsolete and have been replaced by better forms, like direct recordings from far-off places.
Here's what Thomas Jefferson (found of the democratic party) and James Madison (author of the Constitution) said about it:
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
"Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Madison -
"But grants of this sort can be justified in very peculiar cases only, if at all; the danger being very great that the good resulting from the operation of the monopoly, will be overbalanced by the evil effect of the precedent; and it being not impossible that the monopoly itself, in its original operation, may produce more evil than good." Sounds like Mr. Madison was talking about RIAA.
Fine. Give me one and I'll take it. What's that? You don't have any jobs to offer? Well newsflash einstein - neither does anyone else! What few jobs exist have 1000 engineers each applying for them, so that my odds of landing it are 0.1%
This is an article about a person getting screwed over by unemployment, and you're evaluating her worthiness for a date? Can you turn that shit off for just a minute please? Because we're left with only one conclusion: that you evaluate all women this way, all the time, regardless of the context. Stop and think about how that makes women feel, and then maybe you'll understand why comments like this drive us away
You're driven-away by a man who thinks an Honest Woman with a lawschool degree makes for a worthy date, or even a great lifelong partner?
Really???
No wonder the feminist movement is dying. You're out of touch with reality.
>>>tea baggers want to whine about big government...the military?
I'm a "teabagger". I said from the beginning (9/12/2001) that a military response was inappropriate, but nobody wanted to listen to me - neither my Republican nor my Democrat Senators/representatives. They just went off and authorized military action. Then they BOTH voted to support the Patriot Act.
I think it's time for a third party - something like the Whig Party that existed in the early 1800s - so that the Ds and Rs no longer hold a majority.
A truly civilized nation doesn't let one neighbor swipe money from other neighbors' wallets. You don't have a right to force your neighbors to pay for your new Lexus. You don't have a right to make your neighbors pay for your new HDTV. Neither do you have a right to make your neighbors pay for your liposuction health bill.
They didn't stop her checks. They merely reduced the payout to reflect her new "part time but not fully employed" status. Unfortunately rather than subtracting $1 each month they subtract a percentage - about 33% - off your check.
That's why she removed the ads, so she can go back to getting full checks instead of ~66% checks.
I wonder if selling used games and videos on ebay constitutes income? I could probably argue "I paid $20 but only sold it for $10, so that's a loss not an income," but a lot of hassle. Maybe I won't be doing my annual Christmas clean-out/sale after all.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>It's free money. They print it on big printing presses and everything
No wonder the dollar is only worth half a euro - our saved wealth is rapidly disappearing as more-and-more paper is printed. Keep it up Americans and soon we'll have a healthy economy like Venezuela
>>>Basically your argument is "this is not worthwhile for me to do, but it is worthwhile for other people to do it for me".
Usually I say something like, "I've paid over $20,000 a year in taxes for the past ten years or so, which is frankly ridiculous. I feel like I've been raped. Here's an opportunity to get back some of that money from the thieves.... er, politicians via tax credits or subsidies." I consider a refund of my OWN money not other people's money.
Of course the ideal would be to reduce the tax rate so no middle income citizen pays more than $5000 in taxation each year. That's unlikely to happen.
>>>"home equity loan"
Upgrading your house with a solar roof only makes sense if you're going to stay there for ~20 years, and few people do. Americans are very mobile, and even if someone does plan to stay in one place, oftentimes economic reality (layoffs) force them to leave before they had a chance to payoff their solar roof. Therefore people choose the path of least risk - don't invest.
As for New Jersey providing incentives to install these solar panels on electric poles, I think they'll find the longterm maintenance cost will be far higher than planned, and those panels will eventually be removed.
My poor Mac only has one button.
>>>Now that we are reaching the point where CD's are becoming a thing of the past for a much larger number of people
I hope CDs don't die.
It's still the only way to get uncompressed music. Some discs even have full surround sound encoding. The compressed AACs sold on itunes sound like crap on a full-sized 5-speaker stereo.
>>>It's part of that retro-is-new thing, all the kids are doing it, it's alltuhh-9ytujhff all the rage (sorry, electric typewriter keys got stuck - one of the hazards of being cool).
>>>
I have an old manual typewriter that's virtually new in appearance. Wanna buy this old piece of ju.... er, fine piece of retro engineering? ;-)
I can understand why retro has become cool, after all I collect old Commodores fr retrogaming, but I never liked the LP even when it was popular. Those old records were typically two good songs, and ten other songs I've never heard before and frankly didn't care to hear (if they had been good, they would have played on the radio). I'd rather just buy the 45s... oops I mean the singles, or wait for the "best of" collection.
Bringing back the LP holds zero interest for me. Give me individual songs so I can buy just the best and filter out the crap.
RCA invented a video-record back in the 1970s. It used a needle and concentric grooves, but instead of touching the platter the needle hovered above the grooves. Using this method they could store 60 minutes of broadcast quality (440x480) analog video on one side of a 12 inch record.
I still own one of these things. Unfortunately it failed for the same reason LaserDisc failed - it couldn't record live television or home movies as VHS could do. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc
>>>The production of a quality map or chart has a higher cost than the production of a work of fiction
Yes TODAY it's more expensive, but that wasn't the case in 1790 when this law was passed. Running off a map lithograph on your printing press was trivial compared to the labor required to typeface an entire book, letter-by-letter. Copyright was later extended to maps/charts/sheetmusic in the 1890s.
Good point. The original "14 years" was derived by looking at actuarial tables, and determining how long the average artist lives after his creation. In 1790 the average was 13 years, 8 months..... today it would probably be longer..... still it was tied to the original creator's lifespan, not perpetual.
So that means Mickey Mouse, which was created in 1928, should now be public domain.
you would think this instantaneous sharing of digital content is some newfangled philosophical challenge brought about by the latest technological innovation..... and here's this guy from [almost 250] years ago... pretty much nailing the issue on the head. Man those founding fathers were smart
QFT (quoted for truth). The internet is just a new method of spreading ideas. Before the internet, it was radiowaves, and before radiowaves it was books, and before books it was stone tablets. The technology has changed but not the underlying foundational principle. Ideas are infinitely reproducible and can be spread to many, without depriving the original owner of his creation.
i guess al gore has to step aside: thomas jefferson conceptualized the internet! ;-P
+1 Funny.
I already provided citations yesterday. As my profs were fond of saying, "It's not my fault you weren't here." Just google Harvard and "5000 downloads one lost sale" for study number one.
He'll go where most of the obsoleted employees go: Into the factories which specialize in unskilled labor.
>>>they need the permission by snail mail. YIkes!
Well that's really fair to the original artist. He gets about 1 penny per song sold, but must spend 40 cents mailing-out permission forms to let people use his songs in college or high school.
I suppose one solution is to tell the students, "If you insist upon a piece-of-paper then you're going to pay for it. 40 cents for postage plus 40 cents for paypal fees. Make it an even 1 dollar. -OR- Just take this email as your permission. Your choice."
Since neither RIAA nor the lawyers seemed obliged to control themselves, then we need laws to do it for them.
- The law should exempt libraries, colleges, and individuals from copies made for personal use.
- The law should fine the RIAA $100,000 and the lawyers $1,000 each for cases brought before a judge, and then later dropped when the case is not going their way. Consider it a "court usage fee" to compensate the government for time/dollars wasted.
- And finally the law should forbid the use of extortionate letters that read "Pay us $5000 or be drug into court where we will sue you for one million dollars," or similar fear tactics. The letters may continue in the form of cease-and-desist actions, but the use of these letters to collect dollars is reminiscent of the Catholic Church's "indulgences" which collected dollars in exchange for forgiveness of sins. It's a perversion of the original intent of copyright (to promote progress and learning).
And their Copyright Act of 1790 said the following:
- for the encouragement of learning
- limited term of 14 years with 14 year extension if the *original* author was still alive
- libraries, colleges, and private individuals were not subject to the copyright (i.e. fair use)
- was only for expensive works like books, not incidentals like maps or charts
This is the kind of copyright law we should have today, not the perpetual copyright that lasts ~100 years (five generations). When the original laborer who created the work dies, then the copyright should die as well. As Jefferson said "the Earth is for the living not the dead," and laws exist to serve the current generation not previous generations.
Good thing we have sheetmusictorrent.
Actually it looks like John Philip Sousa's prediction was correct. We Don't sit-around home pianos in our parlors listening to somebody music, but I don't cry about it anymore than I cry that the horsewhip or candlestick makers no longer exist. Some forms of technology are obsolete and have been replaced by better forms, like direct recordings from far-off places.
Here's what Thomas Jefferson (found of the democratic party) and James Madison (author of the Constitution) said about it:
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
"Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Madison -
"But grants of this sort can be justified in very peculiar cases only, if at all; the danger being very great that the good resulting from the operation of the monopoly, will be overbalanced by the evil effect of the precedent; and it being not impossible that the monopoly itself, in its original operation, may produce more evil than good." Sounds like Mr. Madison was talking about RIAA.
>>>Maybe you should just get a job.
Fine. Give me one and I'll take it. What's that? You don't have any jobs to offer? Well newsflash einstein - neither does anyone else! What few jobs exist have 1000 engineers each applying for them, so that my odds of landing it are 0.1%
>>>his juxtaposition of the qualities of 'datability' and 'hirability' reveal that he perhaps links them, and that's definitely not OK.
Oh jeez. It was just humor.
SuperfeminaziDana wrote:
This is an article about a person getting screwed over by unemployment, and you're evaluating her worthiness for a date? Can you turn that shit off for just a minute please? Because we're left with only one conclusion: that you evaluate all women this way, all the time, regardless of the context. Stop and think about how that makes women feel, and then maybe you'll understand why comments like this drive us away
You're driven-away by a man who thinks an Honest Woman with a lawschool degree makes for a worthy date, or even a great lifelong partner?
Really???
No wonder the feminist movement is dying. You're out of touch with reality.
>>>tea baggers want to whine about big government...the military?
I'm a "teabagger". I said from the beginning (9/12/2001) that a military response was inappropriate, but nobody wanted to listen to me - neither my Republican nor my Democrat Senators/representatives. They just went off and authorized military action. Then they BOTH voted to support the Patriot Act.
I think it's time for a third party - something like the Whig Party that existed in the early 1800s - so that the Ds and Rs no longer hold a majority.
A truly civilized nation doesn't let one neighbor swipe money from other neighbors' wallets. You don't have a right to force your neighbors to pay for your new Lexus. You don't have a right to make your neighbors pay for your new HDTV. Neither do you have a right to make your neighbors pay for your liposuction health bill.
They didn't stop her checks. They merely reduced the payout to reflect her new "part time but not fully employed" status. Unfortunately rather than subtracting $1 each month they subtract a percentage - about 33% - off your check.
That's why she removed the ads, so she can go back to getting full checks instead of ~66% checks.
I'd hire her. Heck I'd probably date her.
Hmmmm.
I wonder if selling used games and videos on ebay constitutes income? I could probably argue "I paid $20 but only sold it for $10, so that's a loss not an income," but a lot of hassle. Maybe I won't be doing my annual Christmas clean-out/sale after all.