Election fraud and the inaccessability of the general population prevent voting from being effective. If you aren't republican or democrat you don't get to talk to Americans in an effective way. Only 5 or so companies own around 90% of all television stations, and newspapers. The voting population simply doesn't get their information from sources outside the established powers.
Terrorism cannot be fought. If someone has a fear, they can be terrorized. Not all fears are rational or shared by all humans. Some fears are crafted and given to people. It is simply a banner under which people and behaviors can be placed and then fought without fear of political recourse.
Fighting such a vague and undefined enemy is a great distraction from real work, its no wonder the law makers continue to do it.
You are most certainly infringing their copyrights. To download you request the server make a copy for you that is sent/copied accross routers and filters and proxies. You then make another copy into your ram while downloading and another when saving to your hard drive. Then make another copy back to ram and likely to your video card when you view/play the file.
All of those are infringing copies since you had no copyrights for the first copy. This applies if you are an American or in America. Apologies if you meant in another jurisdiction.
The issue comes from the part about logically solving the problem. Anyone familar with a field should find the patented invention, well, inventive. Unfortunately, general education is not keeping pace with common practice of each field. So obvious ideas get through.
The worst offender is the "on a computer" or "in the cloud" patent. And it seems that this a case of "algorithm on a specific processor". Math is unpatentable because it exists and we just reorganize and discover pieces as we go. Claiming that because you wrote the math problem in x86 asm makes it inventive is simply greed.
It's actually a very short-term line of thinking. It starts with a fear of losing their oldest but still popular item (think Mickey Mouse). "Quick! Extend copyrights before we lose this monopoly!" they would think. Now they have a huge catalog that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Now whenever it's time to be creative they have two paths. Create something new, and try to make sure it's not infringing on anyone else's huge catalog. Or take something that was popular in a certain demographic and remake it at a time when that demo' is full of brand new people that likely don't have any emotional ties to a 15+ year old movie. Now that a AAA movie costs dozens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to make, those investors will prefer a proven performer versus a risky startup.
I agree that the people behind all this stagnation likely have little concious knowledge of it or it's long term effects. But they know what is profitable, regardless of how, and they keep doing it. Which is a pretty near-sighted short term strategy.
Yeah. And all people hate each other and never help anyone without making turning a profit. And all cultures are the same because all humans have not only the same impulses but no impulse control. Just because you say humans are dumb beasts that just want to eat, sleep and fuck indiscriminately doesn't make it true.
Plenty of people are convinced to volunteer and give away their resources. Some even believe that procreating is something that should only happen under certain situations and abstain from it otherwise. Others are even capable of going on hunger strikes for long periods of time.
People that were already lazy to begin with likely keep being lazy when they're provided for. People who already work hard will likely keep being productive and busy when they are provided for. Personally I'd rather have the lazy people provided for so they don't become destitute and desperate, which leads to crimes like assault and robberies.
Rainfall won't help if you're depleting your local water tables faster than rainfall can replenish it. The ocean won't help either if your local economy can't afford the insanely expensive desalination plant.
You are focusing on the wrong point. Just because people are freeloading doesn't mean you aren't meeting quotas and quarterly estimates. A product could have 99% piracy as long as that 1% actually pays the bills. If the DRM scheme causes a net loss of customers your DRM actually caused you to lose money, even if the piracy was 0.00%
The data shows that people LOVE buying cheaper games, so much so that the income from those sales (when lowered enough) actually exceeds the income at launch time. Lowering prices costs nothing to do and apparently increases income.
DRM has been shown to cause negative PR, bugs, and other defects. Those things have never lead to more customers or more income. All while costing money and time to implement and maintain.
So the attractive option is to just drop prices by 75% and make more profit while paying $0 extra. Instead of spending thousands developing and maintaining, or just licensing out a DRM solution that will create nothing but disincentives to actually pay money for the product.
You should really switch to a more secure operating system. When I type my passwords in linux the cursor doesn't even move, thus preserving the secret of how long my password and passphrases are.
Seriously consider increasing your security by moving to Linux.
Exactly. They conspired against the free market. You know what we used to do to the people that did that? Look back at McCarthy. Your ass would be blacklisted and you could no longer play with others that followed the rules. They would also spare no expense at throwing the legal system at you (regardless of the legality of their arguments).
Weather or not I agree with what happened back then it is plain to see just how different the American public feels about protecting their Free Market these days.
I've been helping some students learn programming that have similar math issues. Their code is sub-optimal. It's just that simple. They don't have the knowledge to design or understand certain algorithms and usually just brute force trial & error until they happen upon the correct output.
Since it is the correct output they've done well for introductory courses. Unfortunately their code is littered with superfluous variables, if/else blocks, and no ability to sub-divide into smaller problems with well defined inputs and outputs. In fact I assume these are exactly the kinds of programmers that end up on TheDailyWTF.com
They really should just re-scale everything.
100-93 - A
92-85 - B
84-77 - C
77-70 - D
70-0 - F
Now that I type that out I realize that actually was my school district's grade scale.
I was with you until the yelling part, an interview is a two way street. If I'm getting yelled at in an interview I can only imagine how bad it will be in the workplace.
On second thought, if that's actually how your office functions, then I guess it is honest and appropriate. I just wouldn't want to work there.
To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.
You are correct. Verizon is showing no compassion. What she's done is screw with them just as hard as they were screwing with her. What's cheaper to her, a phone call to a tv station, or $350?
I think you give privacy too much importance. I can live with machine observation for the purpose of better serving and meeting my needs. It's the human abuse of that data that is the problem, and privacy has always just been a way to prevent those abuses.
If people would just stop abusing others for their own personal gain we wouldn't have an issue with a profile shared ubiquitously for our own benefit. I guess it's mostly a moot issue since privacy is much more attainable than expecting to be treated with dignity and respect.
Political power influences a small amount of corporations known as governments that have restrictions on what they can do, economic power influences EVERYONE.
There is a fixed amount of money in the world, so the more money they have the less money you can have, it is zero sum. Those that seek political power do so (theoretically) in a system that has spelled out what power you can take, and what power you can't take. You have a certain amount of political power guaranteed to you at all times. So for economic power to be morally equal to political power, everyone would need to have a guaranteed amount of money at all times.
Once the broadband net is no longer neutral, the case to argue about keeping it neutral is already over. Right now the broadband net is theoretically neutral, so it makes sense to treat it like other neutral networks (e.g. telephone).
Once broadband is not carrying mostly neutral traffic, but paid-partner traffic the argument that is should be treated like a neutral network becomes much harder to argue. That is why the FCC wants to make this move now.
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Election fraud and the inaccessability of the general population prevent voting from being effective. If you aren't republican or democrat you don't get to talk to Americans in an effective way. Only 5 or so companies own around 90% of all television stations, and newspapers. The voting population simply doesn't get their information from sources outside the established powers.
Terrorism cannot be fought. If someone has a fear, they can be terrorized. Not all fears are rational or shared by all humans. Some fears are crafted and given to people. It is simply a banner under which people and behaviors can be placed and then fought without fear of political recourse.
Fighting such a vague and undefined enemy is a great distraction from real work, its no wonder the law makers continue to do it.
Where else were people going to get that game a month before release? Best Buy? Steam?
You can't cram a culture of consumption down people's throat, then act surprised when the consumption skyrockets past their artificial scarcity.
All of those are infringing copies since you had no copyrights for the first copy. This applies if you are an American or in America. Apologies if you meant in another jurisdiction.
The issue comes from the part about logically solving the problem. Anyone familar with a field should find the patented invention, well, inventive. Unfortunately, general education is not keeping pace with common practice of each field. So obvious ideas get through. The worst offender is the "on a computer" or "in the cloud" patent. And it seems that this a case of "algorithm on a specific processor". Math is unpatentable because it exists and we just reorganize and discover pieces as we go. Claiming that because you wrote the math problem in x86 asm makes it inventive is simply greed.
Of course you will then have thousands of traffic cops serving no purpose. Good luck getting your job killing car approved for public roads.
That is a perfect explanation of an HTTP GET for the modern layman.
It's actually a very short-term line of thinking. It starts with a fear of losing their oldest but still popular item (think Mickey Mouse). "Quick! Extend copyrights before we lose this monopoly!" they would think. Now they have a huge catalog that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Now whenever it's time to be creative they have two paths. Create something new, and try to make sure it's not infringing on anyone else's huge catalog. Or take something that was popular in a certain demographic and remake it at a time when that demo' is full of brand new people that likely don't have any emotional ties to a 15+ year old movie. Now that a AAA movie costs dozens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to make, those investors will prefer a proven performer versus a risky startup.
I agree that the people behind all this stagnation likely have little concious knowledge of it or it's long term effects. But they know what is profitable, regardless of how, and they keep doing it. Which is a pretty near-sighted short term strategy.
Yeah. And all people hate each other and never help anyone without making turning a profit. And all cultures are the same because all humans have not only the same impulses but no impulse control. Just because you say humans are dumb beasts that just want to eat, sleep and fuck indiscriminately doesn't make it true.
Plenty of people are convinced to volunteer and give away their resources. Some even believe that procreating is something that should only happen under certain situations and abstain from it otherwise. Others are even capable of going on hunger strikes for long periods of time.
People that were already lazy to begin with likely keep being lazy when they're provided for. People who already work hard will likely keep being productive and busy when they are provided for. Personally I'd rather have the lazy people provided for so they don't become destitute and desperate, which leads to crimes like assault and robberies.
Rainfall won't help if you're depleting your local water tables faster than rainfall can replenish it. The ocean won't help either if your local economy can't afford the insanely expensive desalination plant.
You are focusing on the wrong point. Just because people are freeloading doesn't mean you aren't meeting quotas and quarterly estimates. A product could have 99% piracy as long as that 1% actually pays the bills. If the DRM scheme causes a net loss of customers your DRM actually caused you to lose money, even if the piracy was 0.00%
The data shows that people LOVE buying cheaper games, so much so that the income from those sales (when lowered enough) actually exceeds the income at launch time. Lowering prices costs nothing to do and apparently increases income.
DRM has been shown to cause negative PR, bugs, and other defects. Those things have never lead to more customers or more income. All while costing money and time to implement and maintain.
So the attractive option is to just drop prices by 75% and make more profit while paying $0 extra. Instead of spending thousands developing and maintaining, or just licensing out a DRM solution that will create nothing but disincentives to actually pay money for the product.
It does when the 10% that play it goes from 100 to 500.
You should really switch to a more secure operating system. When I type my passwords in linux the cursor doesn't even move, thus preserving the secret of how long my password and passphrases are.
Seriously consider increasing your security by moving to Linux.
Exactly. They conspired against the free market. You know what we used to do to the people that did that? Look back at McCarthy. Your ass would be blacklisted and you could no longer play with others that followed the rules. They would also spare no expense at throwing the legal system at you (regardless of the legality of their arguments).
Weather or not I agree with what happened back then it is plain to see just how different the American public feels about protecting their Free Market these days.
I've been helping some students learn programming that have similar math issues. Their code is sub-optimal. It's just that simple. They don't have the knowledge to design or understand certain algorithms and usually just brute force trial & error until they happen upon the correct output.
Since it is the correct output they've done well for introductory courses. Unfortunately their code is littered with superfluous variables, if/else blocks, and no ability to sub-divide into smaller problems with well defined inputs and outputs. In fact I assume these are exactly the kinds of programmers that end up on TheDailyWTF.com
Good, I'm tired of being expected to work for 1/2 of my waking hours.
They really should just re-scale everything.
100-93 - A
92-85 - B
84-77 - C
77-70 - D
70-0 - F
Now that I type that out I realize that actually was my school district's grade scale.
I was with you until the yelling part, an interview is a two way street. If I'm getting yelled at in an interview I can only imagine how bad it will be in the workplace.
On second thought, if that's actually how your office functions, then I guess it is honest and appropriate. I just wouldn't want to work there.
To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.
You are correct. Verizon is showing no compassion. What she's done is screw with them just as hard as they were screwing with her. What's cheaper to her, a phone call to a tv station, or $350?
Now if the MAFIAA just ran a torrent index they could just send out settlement letters to everyone with that zip+4!
I think you give privacy too much importance. I can live with machine observation for the purpose of better serving and meeting my needs. It's the human abuse of that data that is the problem, and privacy has always just been a way to prevent those abuses.
If people would just stop abusing others for their own personal gain we wouldn't have an issue with a profile shared ubiquitously for our own benefit. I guess it's mostly a moot issue since privacy is much more attainable than expecting to be treated with dignity and respect.
Political power influences a small amount of corporations known as governments that have restrictions on what they can do, economic power influences EVERYONE.
There is a fixed amount of money in the world, so the more money they have the less money you can have, it is zero sum. Those that seek political power do so (theoretically) in a system that has spelled out what power you can take, and what power you can't take. You have a certain amount of political power guaranteed to you at all times. So for economic power to be morally equal to political power, everyone would need to have a guaranteed amount of money at all times.
Every consumer always picks the lowest cost, that's what they call the "market".
Every consumer always picks the best value, that's what they call the "market".
Always choosing the lowest cost would mean there is no high-end market and everyone shops at Wal-Mart.
Once the broadband net is no longer neutral, the case to argue about keeping it neutral is already over. Right now the broadband net is theoretically neutral, so it makes sense to treat it like other neutral networks (e.g. telephone).
Once broadband is not carrying mostly neutral traffic, but paid-partner traffic the argument that is should be treated like a neutral network becomes much harder to argue. That is why the FCC wants to make this move now.