If this is what the music biz needs to do to prove to themselves a tiered pricing scheme is a bust, then more power to them. Too bad yahoo is going to get caught up in a losing business model, I hope they arent putting all their eggs in this one basket, because it is probably going to cost them quite a bit in the end. Though in the end the music biz will only blame the failure of this on p2p and never realize what a stupid idea this is.
Ever wonder why Jobs fights these tiered pricing schemes? Because he realizes in the end everyone is going to make less money and it will promote p2p sharing even more. Once the song gets to a certain price point people will stop buying it and start sharing it (the needed reality check in this equation). Its like the music business is encouraging sharing here so they can file more law suits and get more settlements? The music industry overlords really (and I mean really) need to do less cocaine, they seem to be losing IQ at an exponential rate. Either that or the music biz is getting their execs from "Joe's School of Business Management". You know, the "take this test" on the back of matchbook covers business school?
don't you think if they were really CGI'ing in the background they would have CGI'd the oval office in by now? I mean come on, the current administration would spend weeks trying to find them in the whitehouse.
Unfortunately that should have told you no one found true value in your software and motivated you to do some customer research to find out what features the users wanted, not to just give up and quit. Perhaps you had more useless features than useful features, perhaps you created a UI that was confusing or difficult to use. I have done the same and made money even though people were pirating my software. If the software has true value people will buy it even though they can download a copy off some warez site. Look at Microsoft and Adobe, people are pirating their stuff like mad, yet they keep making money off of that very same software. The only thing that ever bothered me about piracy were the people who would download my software then expected support on that pirated copy.
Of course the first question I have is which scriptures are you referring to? Sure the church has taken great cares to translate the original Aramaic transcripts to other languages. But the simple fact that I can pick up two different translations (Protestant vs Catholic not Spanish vs English) of the same bible and have them read differently tells me that any translation is not the literal word of God (Occams razor anyone?). I honestly think the Muslims have a good point by forcing all Muslims to learn Arabic and not allowing translations of Mohammads original texts. I once had a Trappist scholar tell me that the only way to actually read the bible is to learn Aramaic, otherwise you lose the true beauty of Jesus's words. Aramaic was required in the early Christian church and I am not sure when it was dropped for latin (somewhere around Constantines reign?), but it is the language of kings and prophets and has been around for approximately 3000 years.
but the one allegiance that I have to give is with God Good answer, actually the only answer.
Anyway back on topic I still am not sure how face recognition is or could lead to the mark. Unless we are all forced to be cosmetically altered to have the same face there are no markings involved here. Remember Jesus said the end will come like a thief in the night and no one can predict it, so always be ready.
As long as there are people out there who believe Revelations, we are in danger of someone trying to make it true. I have always seen Revelations as a threat rather than a prophecy. In other words "Keep going down the path your going down and this is whats going to happen".
I dont get this, Ajax is a tool. I couldnt sell my house solely on the nails I used to build it, why can I start up a company that appears to be based on technological buzzwords? You need a product, Ajax is not a product it is a tool used to create a product, Web 2.0 is not a product it is a set of tools you can use to actually build a real product that people may want to buy. If your product is viable it doesnt matter if your are using straight HTML 3.2 or Web 2.0, you will get customers and make money, but only if your product is viable. I actually think the crash (if you want to call it that) was VC's wising up and realizing that they were funding a bunch of morons who thought technology was going to save the day, but had no idea what starting a business entails. The current bubble (I think it is a bit of an overstatement) is just the VC money flowing back into the industry after their initial scare of the late 90's.
Whew! I can unpack my bags and get some sleep tonight then. What scared me is that I have met people that sound like that in this country, my only solace so far has been that those people arent smart enough to have their own opinion much less actually write them on a piece of paper (or website). I would have to say that is one of the best trolls I have seen so far on the net.
Oh Yawn! You libertarians are so clueless. Why must you always try to remove the humane element from everything you talk about? What you are seeing right now in front of your face is that government needs to fund pure research. Whether its in the form of tax relief to a beneficiary system, directly funding government sponsored research facilities or subsidising private industry to host research (the traditional method in America), the government is actually the most effective entity to do this, even despite all of its other inefficiencies.
Why? Because 1). Corporations are too profit motivated to effectively do this. 2). This research needs to be equally available to all, for it to have a positive effect on our society. Government is the only entity which can achieve and enforce #2, and there is nothing that can be done about #1 without more government regulation.
As we are seeing, corporate funded research always turns into nothing but product development and the science gets swept in the corner. In the last decade several large research labs that where sponsored (not funded) by corporations have been closed. Why is this? It is because they had their government subsidies taken away and those corporations could not turn a direct or immediate profit, causing a net loss to society as a whole.
Pure research provides the fundamentals that corporations can then use in their product development so they can innovate and stay competitive in the world market, and that is nothing but a good thing for the economy and society as a whole. Sure its expensive and the returns are not immediate, but scientific research is vital to creating a strong society. Corporations have proven that they do not have the resources or the motivation to fund this kind of research.
Its nothing but blind idealism to think that eliminating government from the economy is even viable much less achievable, without government regulation the economy would look like a manic depressive. One year everyone would be rich, the next year everyone would be dirt poor.
Though I agree that our economy is in trouble, removing government from the equation is not the answer. Perhaps we are in trouble because NO ONE VOTES ANYMORE, think about this. In the last presidential election 33% of the eligible voters voted, that means that we now have a government that only represents approximately 1/2 of 1/3 of the population (it was a close race). You think if the other 2/3 of the voters actually voted we might get something other than "trickle-down" economics? At least some other economic plan that is not designed to funnel large amounts of our tax money to small groups of people as political favors (welfare for the rich anyone?). So wake up, get out and vote, elect some politicians who have a clue and are smart enough to know when it is time for the government to step in and when it is time for the government to stay out of the economy. Do not rely on promises, take your representatives to task and make them prove they can do the job they are elected to do. Get involved in politics, ask the candidates the tough economic questions (you seem qualified). Now is not the time for partisanship, now is the time for Americans to look beyond political parties and to elect the people who are going to do whats best for America. I would be willing to wager a paycheck that the best government we can get is some combination of all the parties, and no single party is capable of leading us to the promise land.
Blindly chasing profit is no different than blindly following a religion, your (not you personally) both still blind. Happiness is found in the middle. So far all I have seen from libertarians are neocons without the religion. People who think they know whats best for everyone and have all the answers, whether they are right or not. Not people who are willing to bring all sides of an issue together to discuss and comprise a solution that is beneficial to all. But then this attitude seems to have infected all political parties in America.
I actually dont have a problem with this, I mean we already tag and track people with their license plates. Since there are so many more cars on the road, bar codes on license plates seem to be the next logical step.
What I do have a problem with is: 1.) Where is the regulatory board, who watching the watchers? If I get wrongly accused because of this where can I go to hold the wrongful accusers accountable. 2.) I just have a problem with the national crime database, see #1.
But in the end, if my car gets stolen and it gets recovered with one of these things, I would consider that a good thing. Where as today if my car gets stolen it is sheer luck if the police recover it.
Fuck it. Just install a chip in everyone that monitors this stuff 24x7. Aww hell lets just develop a way to record thoughts so that we can eliminate potential criminals. Better yet lets just imprison everyone who has any history of criminal activity in their family tree. There you go now we will be living in a Utopian world and God will personally come down and kiss each and everyone one of us.
I really cant tell if this is a troll or you are serious.
On the assumption that you are serious, porn exists, live with it. Unless you start some sort of holocaust against people who like to have sex in front of other people and people who like to watch them, you are fighting a losing battle. What the ACLU has done for the porn industry is to make sure it is run more ethically (notice I didnt mention morality). Because of the ACLU the exploitative nature of the industry is being reduced, women are being abused less and actually making a decent living. The nature of the industry is changing from one of a few assholes exploiting everyone else to an industry that is run by consensual adults. I am no big fan of porn (no morality issues I'm just not much of a voyeur), but it does fill a niche for people who like public displays of sex, and it keeps it in the privacy of those peoples homes.
If you believe that porn is removing religious belief from public life then it is up to you to help put it back. Or is there a possibility that people are just getting tired of the immorality and hypocrisy they have seen religions practice through out the centuries. Example: Jesus: Turn the other cheek and love your enemies, Modern Christians: Kill em before they kill us, but I still love Jesus. Oh, and by the way, which religious beliefs do you want to promote in public life, white christianity?, the christianity the rest of the world practices? (they are very different), Islam?, Hindu?. Personally I think this fragmentation of religions is the reason why there is less public exposure.
Think about this. You put a guy who likes S&M and a guy who likes gay porn in a room together and they are going to talk about how much they love their porn. You put a Christian and a Muslim in a room together and instead of praising God they will accuse each of being heretics/infidels and if you leave them in that room long enough they will eventually try to kill each other. With the religious its not about praising God and living the best life you can its more about rationalizing your religion to be the one true religion and excluding everyone who doesnt believe the exact same thing as you.
Yes it is generally cheaper to buy a SIM in the country you are in. Though when you install a new SIM you also are getting a new phone number and quite often you can only use that SIM in the country you bought it in (the network doesnt exist outside that country). So it depends on your trip, if you are country hopping then it is usually nicer to pay the extra cost to keep your cell phone intact. If you are going to one country for awhile it is often cheaper to just buy a SIM in that country and let your cell phone go native, one thing about Europe is that International rates tend to be cheaper in many countries than American International rates, so it is quite often cheaper to call back to the states by using the local provider.
No its not really about size, cell phones have been around for a long time now. There is no reason for us not to have the entire country covered by this time. Its short term profits trumping long term goals that are driving the current telecom industry, cell phone coverage is something that needs to get planned in the long term (they cant be setup over night).
Your absolutely right. The downside of a Monopoly is suppose to be more government regulation, otherwise the company with the monopoly ends up stagnating. If you had a monopoly on televisions and people could only buy, service and sell their televisions through you. Where is your motivation to innovate when you have no competition?
Now granted the telecoms do not have an exclusive monopoly, but there is definately collusion between the various providers to try and keep the status quo as it is. If there was not any collusion then there would be more providers offering services without lockin the way they are doing now. Because like cheap downloaded music, cell phone customers actually want the ability to buy any phone and use it with the provider of their choice, and like the music companies the cell phone providers for some reason think its better to loose billions of dollars maintaining an archaic business model than to just give the customers what they want.
You certainly CAN sell unlocked GSM phone in the United States that will work with many carriers.
Now try and get that fancy unlocked phone on a wireless network in this country without having to sign some sort of lock-in contract. I think t-mobile is about the only company friendly to unlocked phones, but if you have crappy or no t-mobile coverage you are SOL.
10 years in a shed, if you spent 10 years in a shed you would never have enough money to even think of applying for a patent. Want to build a few to make some extra money? Dont, because the second your product hits the market 20 large corps will be filing patents before you even get the chance to file yours. The patent system hasnt worked for anyone but the big corporations for a long time.
This is all about keeping someone in charge that is going to maintain the current status quo, the current patent system is a cash cow for lawyers. They just want to make sure nothing really changes in the patent system. Now you may begin to understand how horribly broken the patent system is in this country. Putting lawyers in charge of the patent system is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house, stupidity at best.
Slashdot Mirror
If this is what the music biz needs to do to prove to themselves a tiered pricing scheme is a bust, then more power to them. Too bad yahoo is going to get caught up in a losing business model, I hope they arent putting all their eggs in this one basket, because it is probably going to cost them quite a bit in the end. Though in the end the music biz will only blame the failure of this on p2p and never realize what a stupid idea this is.
Ever wonder why Jobs fights these tiered pricing schemes? Because he realizes in the end everyone is going to make less money and it will promote p2p sharing even more. Once the song gets to a certain price point people will stop buying it and start sharing it (the needed reality check in this equation). Its like the music business is encouraging sharing here so they can file more law suits and get more settlements? The music industry overlords really (and I mean really) need to do less cocaine, they seem to be losing IQ at an exponential rate. Either that or the music biz is getting their execs from "Joe's School of Business Management". You know, the "take this test" on the back of matchbook covers business school?
yeah, too bad they shut down allofmp3.com.
In this day and age, there is no reason why virtually every album ever recorded isn't available to buy a digital copy of.
Yes there is:
1). Greedy recording companies
2). Clueless artists.
3). The RIAA and other industry associations.
Oh! you mean there is no technological reason? Well that is a whole different story.
don't you think if they were really CGI'ing in the background they would have CGI'd the oval office in by now? I mean come on, the current administration would spend weeks trying to find them in the whitehouse.
Unfortunately that should have told you no one found true value in your software and motivated you to do some customer research to find out what features the users wanted, not to just give up and quit. Perhaps you had more useless features than useful features, perhaps you created a UI that was confusing or difficult to use. I have done the same and made money even though people were pirating my software. If the software has true value people will buy it even though they can download a copy off some warez site. Look at Microsoft and Adobe, people are pirating their stuff like mad, yet they keep making money off of that very same software. The only thing that ever bothered me about piracy were the people who would download my software then expected support on that pirated copy.
Of course the first question I have is which scriptures are you referring to? Sure the church has taken great cares to translate the original Aramaic transcripts to other languages. But the simple fact that I can pick up two different translations (Protestant vs Catholic not Spanish vs English) of the same bible and have them read differently tells me that any translation is not the literal word of God (Occams razor anyone?). I honestly think the Muslims have a good point by forcing all Muslims to learn Arabic and not allowing translations of Mohammads original texts. I once had a Trappist scholar tell me that the only way to actually read the bible is to learn Aramaic, otherwise you lose the true beauty of Jesus's words. Aramaic was required in the early Christian church and I am not sure when it was dropped for latin (somewhere around Constantines reign?), but it is the language of kings and prophets and has been around for approximately 3000 years.
but the one allegiance that I have to give is with God
Good answer, actually the only answer.
Anyway back on topic I still am not sure how face recognition is or could lead to the mark. Unless we are all forced to be cosmetically altered to have the same face there are no markings involved here. Remember Jesus said the end will come like a thief in the night and no one can predict it, so always be ready.
As long as there are people out there who believe Revelations, we are in danger of someone trying to make it true. I have always seen Revelations as a threat rather than a prophecy. In other words "Keep going down the path your going down and this is whats going to happen".
one definition of insane is doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Well he does get some pretty good threads started here, even if its just everyone trying to prove what a tool he is.
I dont get this, Ajax is a tool. I couldnt sell my house solely on the nails I used to build it, why can I start up a company that appears to be based on technological buzzwords? You need a product, Ajax is not a product it is a tool used to create a product, Web 2.0 is not a product it is a set of tools you can use to actually build a real product that people may want to buy. If your product is viable it doesnt matter if your are using straight HTML 3.2 or Web 2.0, you will get customers and make money, but only if your product is viable. I actually think the crash (if you want to call it that) was VC's wising up and realizing that they were funding a bunch of morons who thought technology was going to save the day, but had no idea what starting a business entails. The current bubble (I think it is a bit of an overstatement) is just the VC money flowing back into the industry after their initial scare of the late 90's.
Whew! I can unpack my bags and get some sleep tonight then. What scared me is that I have met people that sound like that in this country, my only solace so far has been that those people arent smart enough to have their own opinion much less actually write them on a piece of paper (or website). I would have to say that is one of the best trolls I have seen so far on the net.
Oh Yawn! You libertarians are so clueless. Why must you always try to remove the humane element from everything you talk about? What you are seeing right now in front of your face is that government needs to fund pure research. Whether its in the form of tax relief to a beneficiary system, directly funding government sponsored research facilities or subsidising private industry to host research (the traditional method in America), the government is actually the most effective entity to do this, even despite all of its other inefficiencies.
Why? Because
1). Corporations are too profit motivated to effectively do this.
2). This research needs to be equally available to all, for it to have a positive effect on our society.
Government is the only entity which can achieve and enforce #2, and there is nothing that can be done about #1 without more government regulation.
As we are seeing, corporate funded research always turns into nothing but product development and the science gets swept in the corner. In the last decade several large research labs that where sponsored (not funded) by corporations have been closed. Why is this? It is because they had their government subsidies taken away and those corporations could not turn a direct or immediate profit, causing a net loss to society as a whole.
Pure research provides the fundamentals that corporations can then use in their product development so they can innovate and stay competitive in the world market, and that is nothing but a good thing for the economy and society as a whole. Sure its expensive and the returns are not immediate, but scientific research is vital to creating a strong society. Corporations have proven that they do not have the resources or the motivation to fund this kind of research.
Its nothing but blind idealism to think that eliminating government from the economy is even viable much less achievable, without government regulation the economy would look like a manic depressive. One year everyone would be rich, the next year everyone would be dirt poor.
Though I agree that our economy is in trouble, removing government from the equation is not the answer. Perhaps we are in trouble because NO ONE VOTES ANYMORE, think about this. In the last presidential election 33% of the eligible voters voted, that means that we now have a government that only represents approximately 1/2 of 1/3 of the population (it was a close race). You think if the other 2/3 of the voters actually voted we might get something other than "trickle-down" economics? At least some other economic plan that is not designed to funnel large amounts of our tax money to small groups of people as political favors (welfare for the rich anyone?). So wake up, get out and vote, elect some politicians who have a clue and are smart enough to know when it is time for the government to step in and when it is time for the government to stay out of the economy. Do not rely on promises, take your representatives to task and make them prove they can do the job they are elected to do. Get involved in politics, ask the candidates the tough economic questions (you seem qualified). Now is not the time for partisanship, now is the time for Americans to look beyond political parties and to elect the people who are going to do whats best for America. I would be willing to wager a paycheck that the best government we can get is some combination of all the parties, and no single party is capable of leading us to the promise land.
Blindly chasing profit is no different than blindly following a religion, your (not you personally) both still blind. Happiness is found in the middle. So far all I have seen from libertarians are neocons without the religion. People who think they know whats best for everyone and have all the answers, whether they are right or not. Not people who are willing to bring all sides of an issue together to discuss and comprise a solution that is beneficial to all. But then this attitude seems to have infected all political parties in America.
Damn, if that site isnt satire Im buying a gun.
I actually dont have a problem with this, I mean we already tag and track people with their license plates. Since there are so many more cars on the road, bar codes on license plates seem to be the next logical step.
What I do have a problem with is:
1.) Where is the regulatory board, who watching the watchers? If I get wrongly accused because of this where can I go to hold the wrongful accusers accountable.
2.) I just have a problem with the national crime database, see #1.
But in the end, if my car gets stolen and it gets recovered with one of these things, I would consider that a good thing. Where as today if my car gets stolen it is sheer luck if the police recover it.
Fuck it. Just install a chip in everyone that monitors this stuff 24x7. Aww hell lets just develop a way to record thoughts so that we can eliminate potential criminals. Better yet lets just imprison everyone who has any history of criminal activity in their family tree. There you go now we will be living in a Utopian world and God will personally come down and kiss each and everyone one of us.
I really cant tell if this is a troll or you are serious.
On the assumption that you are serious, porn exists, live with it. Unless you start some sort of holocaust against people who like to have sex in front of other people and people who like to watch them, you are fighting a losing battle. What the ACLU has done for the porn industry is to make sure it is run more ethically (notice I didnt mention morality). Because of the ACLU the exploitative nature of the industry is being reduced, women are being abused less and actually making a decent living. The nature of the industry is changing from one of a few assholes exploiting everyone else to an industry that is run by consensual adults. I am no big fan of porn (no morality issues I'm just not much of a voyeur), but it does fill a niche for people who like public displays of sex, and it keeps it in the privacy of those peoples homes.
If you believe that porn is removing religious belief from public life then it is up to you to help put it back. Or is there a possibility that people are just getting tired of the immorality and hypocrisy they have seen religions practice through out the centuries. Example: Jesus: Turn the other cheek and love your enemies, Modern Christians: Kill em before they kill us, but I still love Jesus. Oh, and by the way, which religious beliefs do you want to promote in public life, white christianity?, the christianity the rest of the world practices? (they are very different), Islam?, Hindu?. Personally I think this fragmentation of religions is the reason why there is less public exposure.
Think about this. You put a guy who likes S&M and a guy who likes gay porn in a room together and they are going to talk about how much they love their porn. You put a Christian and a Muslim in a room together and instead of praising God they will accuse each of being heretics/infidels and if you leave them in that room long enough they will eventually try to kill each other. With the religious its not about praising God and living the best life you can its more about rationalizing your religion to be the one true religion and excluding everyone who doesnt believe the exact same thing as you.
Let the flamefest begin.
Or maybe the guy who wrote it is an MS stockholder.
Yes it is generally cheaper to buy a SIM in the country you are in. Though when you install a new SIM you also are getting a new phone number and quite often you can only use that SIM in the country you bought it in (the network doesnt exist outside that country). So it depends on your trip, if you are country hopping then it is usually nicer to pay the extra cost to keep your cell phone intact. If you are going to one country for awhile it is often cheaper to just buy a SIM in that country and let your cell phone go native, one thing about Europe is that International rates tend to be cheaper in many countries than American International rates, so it is quite often cheaper to call back to the states by using the local provider.
No its not really about size, cell phones have been around for a long time now. There is no reason for us not to have the entire country covered by this time. Its short term profits trumping long term goals that are driving the current telecom industry, cell phone coverage is something that needs to get planned in the long term (they cant be setup over night).
Your absolutely right. The downside of a Monopoly is suppose to be more government regulation, otherwise the company with the monopoly ends up stagnating. If you had a monopoly on televisions and people could only buy, service and sell their televisions through you. Where is your motivation to innovate when you have no competition?
Now granted the telecoms do not have an exclusive monopoly, but there is definately collusion between the various providers to try and keep the status quo as it is. If there was not any collusion then there would be more providers offering services without lockin the way they are doing now. Because like cheap downloaded music, cell phone customers actually want the ability to buy any phone and use it with the provider of their choice, and like the music companies the cell phone providers for some reason think its better to loose billions of dollars maintaining an archaic business model than to just give the customers what they want.
You certainly CAN sell unlocked GSM phone in the United States that will work with many carriers.
Now try and get that fancy unlocked phone on a wireless network in this country without having to sign some sort of lock-in contract. I think t-mobile is about the only company friendly to unlocked phones, but if you have crappy or no t-mobile coverage you are SOL.
10 years in a shed, if you spent 10 years in a shed you would never have enough money to even think of applying for a patent. Want to build a few to make some extra money? Dont, because the second your product hits the market 20 large corps will be filing patents before you even get the chance to file yours. The patent system hasnt worked for anyone but the big corporations for a long time.
Tell that to the AARP (the real #1 donator) and thousands of businesses that cater to the baby boomer generation.
You must be new here!
This is all about keeping someone in charge that is going to maintain the current status quo, the current patent system is a cash cow for lawyers. They just want to make sure nothing really changes in the patent system. Now you may begin to understand how horribly broken the patent system is in this country. Putting lawyers in charge of the patent system is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house, stupidity at best.
right next to the high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated fats.