In a criminal case, yes, it most certainly does raise reasonable doubt; and were the RIAA prosecuting criminally this would be suffcient cause for a finding of not guilty, or even dismisal.
However, for now, the RIAA is not prosecuting criminally (although this threat is always in the background of any negotiations to settle). They are prosecuting civilly.
In a civil case it is the preponderance of the evidence that is considered. In other words does the jury think it's more likely the defendant is "guilty" (liable actually) than not.
This is a much looser standard just ask O.J. ( Or Chaplin, who was found liable for the support of a child he had proven wasn't his).
The problem with arson as an economic driver is that you are just taking money out of the insurance companies.
Precisely the point. Moving the loss from one individual/group of individuals does not negate the loss.
The cost of recyling a computer is an ecomnomic loss. Tacking that cost onto the computer up front moves that loss from the general taxpayer onto those that are consuming the resource.
This may make some loss in the computer industry ( although I'm entirely sceptical of that and guess it means a loss to a movie company or a restaurant. If my computer had cost me $37 more I wouldn't have hesitated even a second about buying it. It still cost me a grand less than the computer it replaced), but it may well result in an overall gain to the economy by dealing with a problem when it is relatively cheap to do so, rather than after it has become an enviromental disaster.
There is an old saying, "Don't shit where you sleep." My cat understands this fully. My budgie (when I had one. See cat) understood this as well. Some people don't seem to grasp this concept.
As a small boater perhaps I understand it better than some, as I am constrained by the physical limits of my boat to shit directly under my pillow (you'll find virtually every sailboat under 25' feet keeps the head under the forebunk).
Japan is small. Japan is isolated, just as is a boat at sea. Japan has a fragile enviroment ( again, just as does a boat at sea). Japan is somewhat constrained to shit where they sleep whether they like it or not ( and I can't say I'm crazy about it either).
This may well give them a keener sense of "smell" than people in more comdious surroundings.
Indeed, and it stifles the economy in years down the road as well when all those jobs are lost to cleaning up the enviromental impact of improperly disposed of waste.
In this light we suddenly realize what a boon the terrorists provided for the international community by devestating the World Trade Center.
I can see the bumper stickers on the future cars of the building industry:
"Support the economy, support arson."
Some jobs, as it happens, while a personal boon to the job holder represent a loss of wealth. That is why you will see natural disasters couched in such terms, rather than being reported as a gain to certain individuals and industries. Man made disasters are just as much loss and natural ones.
You may not, of course, see it this way, but I'd hazard a guess you'd change your mind if someone stole and wrecked your car (stimulating the auto industry and creating jobs) or dumped a ton and a half of trash in your living room (stimulating the waste disposal industry).
You just miiiiiight see that as an overall loss of wealth.
That would fall under the added value and TCO I already covered in my original post.
A free coach ticket is a free flight. Period. Owning your own Lear jet costs a lot of money. The TCO of owning a Lear may be lower if the time you save in traveling is worth several thousand dollars an hour. Lear makes money selling jets to those few that fit into this catagory.
In the meantime my family flies coach for free and have determined that total cost, to us, is $0.
I'm not just talking Linux. BSD, Plan 9, maybe the BeOS projects soon and a number of other players are all distribuing with some form of open source license.
The IP of some of these is absolutely unassailable ( I'd like to see SCO claim rights to Plan 9 ).
During the antitrust trial one of the statments Bill made in his defence was "I'm just one good idea away from oblivion."
Well, there are lots of good ideas floating about freely these days and more on the way.
For every person that switches to a non MS OS their ability to control the market because they control the market weakens. Then they have to start marketing based on added value over the base of free.
You can see that this is actually what they're trying to do with the TCO campaign while trying to match open source with "shared source."
Well, guess what Bill? You'll have to do a bit better than that. I'm not saying you won't necessarily pull it off in the long run, but you'll still be reduced to just one of a number of players, without all extortionate markup gravy either.
The commoditization of the OS is an existing reality. The commoditization of the office suite arrives sometime next week or so.
It's a Brave New World.
KFG
Great, so now I can find out what a pdf of. . .
on
Snail Mail As E-Mail
·
· Score: 4, Funny
You really don't need more than 10 acres and a chainsaw. 40 is wealth. 10 is a living.
You'll need to get your income up to $20k a year somehow. You can live on that if you rethink the way you live a bit and still save enough money to come up with a downpayment ( but it's really better to wait longer and pay outright. You don't want to end up being a "sharecropper" for your mortgage holder).
You need 10 acres of wooded land. It has to be wooded or it won't work. Wooded land can be had cheaper than cleared land because the owner thinks of it as "unimproved" and that it will cost a lot of money to clear it to make usable. He's forgetting that trees are a cash crop.
You're going to set aside 5 acres as a woodlot and then call in a lumber company to clear the other 5 for you. You aren't going to pay them. They're going to pay you. If you've picked the right plot you now have 10 grand cash in your pocket.
It's a start.
KFG
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
·
· Score: 1
You ask people to buy it. It really is that simple (which isn't to say easy).
If you're not sure who to ask than start by asking that. If your product is software aimed at businesses call up the business and ask who is responsible for making software purchases. Then ask to speak to them. Then ask them to look at your product. Then ask them to buy it.
And don't be afraid not to get sales either. That's going to happen more often than not, so just get used to the idea, try to find out why you didn't sell, what you might (or might not) be able to do about it, then move on to the next potential customer.
Once upon a time, not so many years ago, there was a man you've never heard of named Clarence Stone. The remarkable thing about your never having heard of him is that he was the richest man in the world.
He started out building his fortune when he was 12, his father died, and he was the oldest male in his family at a time when women didn't work outside the home, and he thus felt obligated to support his mother and siblings.
At 12 years old.
He got a job selling one dollar insurance policies door to door. ..and became the richest man in the world, just from asking people to buy something. Nothing more, nothing less.
So ask. Ask a lot.
If you're unsure of yourself take a Christmas job in a commission department at a department store. Just three months, that's all. Sell some vacuum cleaners or stereos or something in an enviroment where you aren't making cold calls.
You don't have to turn into a guy in a polyester green suit with a bad haircut. Just get used to the practice of asking someone to buy something and telling/showing them why they should.
A chair, a trout fly, a tomato or a tree for instance.
Oh, wait. You meant how do I protect jobs, didn't you? Well that's an entirely different question. What peculiar notions of wealth and economics kids have these days.
If you choose the right 40 acres and the right mule you have enough wealth to last you and a small family the rest of your lives, even though you don't have "a good job" and draw a salary.
Our ancestors understanding that all real wealth lay in real estate is still essentially true today, although we've buried this simple truth under "industry" and "money" (which isn't wealth, it's just an abstract medium of exchange).
What can a software writer do?
He can write MS type stuff, all chrome, "features", and marketing hype designed to continually suck money out the pockets of the unsophisticated, or. . . he can put himself out of business by writing good, solid basic code that aids in the manufacture of tomatoes and trout flies and then take up the "menial" task of producing tomatoes and trout flies.
Software is like a hammer. Very few people make a living designing hammers. Very many people make a living using hammers to make things.
Most commercial software is a drain on wealth, sucking money out of the economy while accomplishing nothing real except paying people to toss stones over a wall so they can walk around to the other side to toss them back.
No software writer ever made a living as a software writer by saying, "Ummmmmmm, dude, why don't you just use vi/emacs/Wordpad instead of spending hundreds on a "Word Processing Package" that you don't need?"
Some of us make a bit of money here and there to give that advice though, although once everyone takes it we too will be out of work and will have to go actually produce some wealth.
Fortunately I like making and growing things and don't think of these tasks as "menial" in the least.
Usually ships in 1 to 2 months. Heh. Lots of used ones about though and I'd hazard a guess your local library has a copy. It was a very popular book back in the day.
Can't even find much of anything on the contest on the web. I did manage to find a link to the plane's designer (Irl Otte) because a year ago one of his neighbors flipped out and killed a bunch of people and a St. Louis newspaper interviewed him about it.
The only name the book gives to the plane is "Plane 20." Very helpful, no?:)
Sorry, best I could do. The web is still under construction with regards to being the source of all knowledge and information.
I have, sitting right here on my desk, a lifting body paper airplane designed at McDonnell-Douglas ( really ) in 1965, not only predating Farscape but even predating Star Trek.
It's a seriously cool paper airplane. You can find it's "plan" in The Great International Paper Airplane Book along with other planes of note from the first Scientific American International Paper Airplane Contest.
Star Trek not only didn't invent the automatic door, they couldn't even predict the advent of the LED clock.
I get a kick out of all the blinkenlights on the bridge. ..and the spinning mechanical clock drums.
These are all people whose primary business is selling things that don't exist yet.
You are thinking in terms of vaporware. I'm thinking in terms of business.
A hotel that doesn't have most of its rooms booked before it opens is a hotel that is most likely to fail.
The fact that they're advertising and taking bookings while the scaffolding is still up doesn't mean they're doing anything slimey.
Entire cities have been sold before they existed.
If this sort of risk bothers you you don't want a business. You want a job.
That's ok. That's what most people really want, no matter what they say.
KFG
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
·
· Score: 1
Small is beautiful. What's more, small is fun, even in the early days when you're CEO/CPA and chief public restroom toilet unplugger sleeping on the office sofa you inhereted from your grandmother when she coudln't stand having that ratty old thing in her own house anymore.
Going public is the single biggest mistake most companies make.
If I ever get forced into it somehow I'll cash in my chips and go back to running a little hole in the wall bicycle repair shop.
In fact, that's basically my retirement plan.
KFG
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
·
· Score: 1
If I were I'd agree.
Quite frankly I wouldn't recommend people even get into the commercial software field. It's inherently more fraudulant than I can personally stomach and becoming more and more of a sucker's game every minute.
I enjoy helping people. I prefer to work in services these days using open code and showing people how they can do the same.
It really didn't matter much how fast my modem was. I still had to wait for the damned Selectric to type out each "screen."
KFG
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
·
· Score: 1
I am correct. To be sure I've just double checked myself.
You fail the following simple directions test, as well as failing to understand the meaning of your own post.
I suggest you read you own post again. Think about what it means very hard, then revisit the @stake website.
(And I'll leave what I think about companies that have "Cheif People Officers" who have "vision and stratagy" for "people-focused initiatives" for another day)
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. People who have demonstrated a particular talent for making money are often cloistered and given heavy protection in Kansas.
KFG
As it were, they just might be the next Stephen Hawking.
Ya never know.
KFG
In a criminal case, yes, it most certainly does raise reasonable doubt; and were the RIAA prosecuting criminally this would be suffcient cause for a finding of not guilty, or even dismisal.
However, for now, the RIAA is not prosecuting criminally (although this threat is always in the background of any negotiations to settle). They are prosecuting civilly.
In a civil case it is the preponderance of the evidence that is considered. In other words does the jury think it's more likely the defendant is "guilty" (liable actually) than not.
This is a much looser standard just ask O.J. ( Or Chaplin, who was found liable for the support of a child he had proven wasn't his).
KFG
The problem with arson as an economic driver is that you are just taking money out of the insurance companies.
Precisely the point. Moving the loss from one individual/group of individuals does not negate the loss.
The cost of recyling a computer is an ecomnomic loss. Tacking that cost onto the computer up front moves that loss from the general taxpayer onto those that are consuming the resource.
This may make some loss in the computer industry ( although I'm entirely sceptical of that and guess it means a loss to a movie company or a restaurant. If my computer had cost me $37 more I wouldn't have hesitated even a second about buying it. It still cost me a grand less than the computer it replaced), but it may well result in an overall gain to the economy by dealing with a problem when it is relatively cheap to do so, rather than after it has become an enviromental disaster.
There is an old saying, "Don't shit where you sleep." My cat understands this fully. My budgie (when I had one. See cat) understood this as well. Some people don't seem to grasp this concept.
As a small boater perhaps I understand it better than some, as I am constrained by the physical limits of my boat to shit directly under my pillow (you'll find virtually every sailboat under 25' feet keeps the head under the forebunk).
Japan is small. Japan is isolated, just as is a boat at sea. Japan has a fragile enviroment ( again, just as does a boat at sea). Japan is somewhat constrained to shit where they sleep whether they like it or not ( and I can't say I'm crazy about it either).
This may well give them a keener sense of "smell" than people in more comdious surroundings.
KFG
As in the future technology may well make the manufacture of cars cheaper. You'll find this is not reflected in the cost of your car now.
Where did you say you were parked?
KFG
Indeed, and it stifles the economy in years down the road as well when all those jobs are lost to cleaning up the enviromental impact of improperly disposed of waste.
In this light we suddenly realize what a boon the terrorists provided for the international community by devestating the World Trade Center.
I can see the bumper stickers on the future cars of the building industry:
"Support the economy, support arson."
Some jobs, as it happens, while a personal boon to the job holder represent a loss of wealth. That is why you will see natural disasters couched in such terms, rather than being reported as a gain to certain individuals and industries. Man made disasters are just as much loss and natural ones.
You may not, of course, see it this way, but I'd hazard a guess you'd change your mind if someone stole and wrecked your car (stimulating the auto industry and creating jobs) or dumped a ton and a half of trash in your living room (stimulating the waste disposal industry).
You just miiiiiight see that as an overall loss of wealth.
KFG
While the article refers to South Korea adopting Linux, please note that I did not.
I spoke of open source operating systems.
KFG
That would fall under the added value and TCO I already covered in my original post.
A free coach ticket is a free flight. Period. Owning your own Lear jet costs a lot of money. The TCO of owning a Lear may be lower if the time you save in traveling is worth several thousand dollars an hour. Lear makes money selling jets to those few that fit into this catagory.
In the meantime my family flies coach for free and have determined that total cost, to us, is $0.
KFG
And people are starting to realize this.
I'm not just talking Linux. BSD, Plan 9, maybe the BeOS projects soon and a number of other players are all distribuing with some form of open source license.
The IP of some of these is absolutely unassailable ( I'd like to see SCO claim rights to Plan 9 ).
During the antitrust trial one of the statments Bill made in his defence was "I'm just one good idea away from oblivion."
Well, there are lots of good ideas floating about freely these days and more on the way.
For every person that switches to a non MS OS their ability to control the market because they control the market weakens. Then they have to start marketing based on added value over the base of free.
You can see that this is actually what they're trying to do with the TCO campaign while trying to match open source with "shared source."
Well, guess what Bill? You'll have to do a bit better than that. I'm not saying you won't necessarily pull it off in the long run, but you'll still be reduced to just one of a number of players, without all extortionate markup gravy either.
The commoditization of the OS is an existing reality. The commoditization of the office suite arrives sometime next week or so.
It's a Brave New World.
KFG
an AOL disk looks like.
KFG
Lions don't lie with lambs
They most certainly do. . . when they're hungry.
KFG
Yeah, that's the tricky bit, isn't it?
You really don't need more than 10 acres and a chainsaw. 40 is wealth. 10 is a living.
You'll need to get your income up to $20k a year somehow. You can live on that if you rethink the way you live a bit and still save enough money to come up with a downpayment ( but it's really better to wait longer and pay outright. You don't want to end up being a "sharecropper" for your mortgage holder).
You need 10 acres of wooded land. It has to be wooded or it won't work. Wooded land can be had cheaper than cleared land because the owner thinks of it as "unimproved" and that it will cost a lot of money to clear it to make usable. He's forgetting that trees are a cash crop.
You're going to set aside 5 acres as a woodlot and then call in a lumber company to clear the other 5 for you. You aren't going to pay them. They're going to pay you. If you've picked the right plot you now have 10 grand cash in your pocket.
It's a start.
KFG
You ask people to buy it. It really is that simple (which isn't to say easy).
.and became the richest man in the world, just from asking people to buy something. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you're not sure who to ask than start by asking that. If your product is software aimed at businesses call up the business and ask who is responsible for making software purchases. Then ask to speak to them. Then ask them to look at your product. Then ask them to buy it.
And don't be afraid not to get sales either. That's going to happen more often than not, so just get used to the idea, try to find out why you didn't sell, what you might (or might not) be able to do about it, then move on to the next potential customer.
Once upon a time, not so many years ago, there was a man you've never heard of named Clarence Stone. The remarkable thing about your never having heard of him is that he was the richest man in the world.
He started out building his fortune when he was 12, his father died, and he was the oldest male in his family at a time when women didn't work outside the home, and he thus felt obligated to support his mother and siblings.
At 12 years old.
He got a job selling one dollar insurance policies door to door. .
So ask. Ask a lot.
If you're unsure of yourself take a Christmas job in a commission department at a department store. Just three months, that's all. Sell some vacuum cleaners or stereos or something in an enviroment where you aren't making cold calls.
You don't have to turn into a guy in a polyester green suit with a bad haircut. Just get used to the practice of asking someone to buy something and telling/showing them why they should.
It's just talking to people.
KFG
Just make something of value.
A chair, a trout fly, a tomato or a tree for instance.
Oh, wait. You meant how do I protect jobs, didn't you? Well that's an entirely different question. What peculiar notions of wealth and economics kids have these days.
If you choose the right 40 acres and the right mule you have enough wealth to last you and a small family the rest of your lives, even though you don't have "a good job" and draw a salary.
Our ancestors understanding that all real wealth lay in real estate is still essentially true today, although we've buried this simple truth under "industry" and "money" (which isn't wealth, it's just an abstract medium of exchange).
What can a software writer do?
He can write MS type stuff, all chrome, "features", and marketing hype designed to continually suck money out the pockets of the unsophisticated, or. . . he can put himself out of business by writing good, solid basic code that aids in the manufacture of tomatoes and trout flies and then take up the "menial" task of producing tomatoes and trout flies.
Software is like a hammer. Very few people make a living designing hammers. Very many people make a living using hammers to make things.
Most commercial software is a drain on wealth, sucking money out of the economy while accomplishing nothing real except paying people to toss stones over a wall so they can walk around to the other side to toss them back.
No software writer ever made a living as a software writer by saying, "Ummmmmmm, dude, why don't you just use vi/emacs/Wordpad instead of spending hundreds on a "Word Processing Package" that you don't need?"
Some of us make a bit of money here and there to give that advice though, although once everyone takes it we too will be out of work and will have to go actually produce some wealth.
Fortunately I like making and growing things and don't think of these tasks as "menial" in the least.
KFG
The best I can do it give you the Amazon link:
5 78 660289/qid=1064849275/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-185451 7-2775858?v=glance&s=books
:)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1
Usually ships in 1 to 2 months. Heh. Lots of used ones about though and I'd hazard a guess your local library has a copy. It was a very popular book back in the day.
Can't even find much of anything on the contest on the web. I did manage to find a link to the plane's designer (Irl Otte) because a year ago one of his neighbors flipped out and killed a bunch of people and a St. Louis newspaper interviewed him about it.
The only name the book gives to the plane is "Plane 20." Very helpful, no?
Sorry, best I could do. The web is still under construction with regards to being the source of all knowledge and information.
KFG
Now they're reinventing the wheel in Spaaaaaace, spaaaaace, spaaaaace!
KFG
I have, sitting right here on my desk, a lifting body paper airplane designed at McDonnell-Douglas ( really ) in 1965, not only predating Farscape but even predating Star Trek.
.and the spinning mechanical clock drums.
It's a seriously cool paper airplane. You can find it's "plan" in The Great International Paper Airplane Book along with other planes of note from the first Scientific American International Paper Airplane Contest.
Star Trek not only didn't invent the automatic door, they couldn't even predict the advent of the LED clock.
I get a kick out of all the blinkenlights on the bridge. .
KFG
No, that's Bun-Bun.
Zoe preserve me from the "gaping headwound of love."
KFG
Gee. Thanks. Now I'm having a Cadbury Fruit & Nut fit.
I have an Easter Bunny on my back.
KFG
Just try to measure the speed of dar. . .
Oh, nevermind.
KFG
Architect. Custom cabinet maker. Custom bicycle frame builder. Custom software coder. Luthier. Interior Decorator. Anyone who fixes anything. Publisher. Musician. Tailor.
These are all people whose primary business is selling things that don't exist yet.
You are thinking in terms of vaporware. I'm thinking in terms of business.
A hotel that doesn't have most of its rooms booked before it opens is a hotel that is most likely to fail.
The fact that they're advertising and taking bookings while the scaffolding is still up doesn't mean they're doing anything slimey.
Entire cities have been sold before they existed.
If this sort of risk bothers you you don't want a business. You want a job.
That's ok. That's what most people really want, no matter what they say.
KFG
Small is beautiful. What's more, small is fun, even in the early days when you're CEO/CPA and chief public restroom toilet unplugger sleeping on the office sofa you inhereted from your grandmother when she coudln't stand having that ratty old thing in her own house anymore.
Going public is the single biggest mistake most companies make.
If I ever get forced into it somehow I'll cash in my chips and go back to running a little hole in the wall bicycle repair shop.
In fact, that's basically my retirement plan.
KFG
If I were I'd agree.
Quite frankly I wouldn't recommend people even get into the commercial software field. It's inherently more fraudulant than I can personally stomach and becoming more and more of a sucker's game every minute.
I enjoy helping people. I prefer to work in services these days using open code and showing people how they can do the same.
KFG
It really didn't matter much how fast my modem was. I still had to wait for the damned Selectric to type out each "screen."
KFG
I am correct. To be sure I've just double checked myself.
You fail the following simple directions test, as well as failing to understand the meaning of your own post.
I suggest you read you own post again. Think about what it means very hard, then revisit the @stake website.
(And I'll leave what I think about companies that have "Cheif People Officers" who have "vision and stratagy" for "people-focused initiatives" for another day)
KFG