That actually fails to be the case if the generator and associated machinery is placed inside the same building as the workout takes place.
You see, if the energy goes pedalling - generator - battery - ligthbulb - heat (with losses at every step, so the total heat ends up identical to the total pedalling-power, or just pedalling - friction - heat (as in a typical exersize bike) the total generated heat is identical, you don't get *less* heat by using the power for some othe purpose first, it turns into heat in the end anyway.
Now, if the building is *electrically* heated, then you're rigth. There's no point in saving 1Kwh, if that only means you'll spend 1Kwh more for your heaters anyway. But many buildings are heated by cheaper alternatives to pure electricity (such as gas, heat-pump or remotely distributed heat)
True. Nevertheless, for this application, even an order of magnitude reduction in price wouldn't be enough. Currently it takes 82 years for payback -- assuming 10 hour/day usage (which is excessive, very few machines are in practice used even half of this)
So, with an order of magnitude improvement, (i.e. $1500 not $15.000) in price, you'd still be looking at 8.2 years of 10 hour days for payback. (or on the order of 20 years or more for more typical gym-use) this for equipment that is typically replaced after aproximately 3-5 years.
Harvesting "human power" will never be able to do much for your energy-bills. It can make sense for other reasons though. For example, a handy that is powered by movement, and thus stays charged forever aslong as you're walking/moving would be a very practical thing to have for many people. I'd love this in my GPS too: I only bring it along when I go hiking in the mountains anyway, if my movements could somehow supply the (small; sub 1w) power-requirements it'd mean I could have it on all the time and never worry about running out of batteries again, rather than turning it on to log a certain point-of-interest only occasionally during the hike as I do today.
With low-enough energy-demands I could see this for for example remote-controls or wireless game-controllers too. Never having to replace batteries is a nice thing, more for practical reasons than for cost-reasons. (rechargable batteries aren't that expensive anyway)
Infantry also has need for gadgets. Many of them would benefit from being able to work indefinitely without access to recharging and/or new batteries. (nigth-vision, GPS, radio, led-torches,...)
Possibly, but doubtful. As stated, if the exersize-bikes where in use for 10 hours/day, they'd pay back the investment in 82 years, but since they probably get replaced within 5 years anyway, that's never going to happen.
It's much easier to *save* energy than to *create* it.
Replacing 10 of the ligth-bulbs in the gym with modern low-energy ones would've had a larger effect on energy-savings, and would've costed less than the $15.000 this cost.
For beginners, having a pre-installed sensibly-configured ready-to-go OS is by far the superior choice (indeed, it's the *only* choice that will work for them), so if you want to sell Linux-laptops to newbies, that's what you need. In that case choosing a single user-friendly distro such as for example Kubuntu is reasonable.
I just think that is some way off in the moment and can't be done overnigth. Dell would want to test and certify and make dead-certain that 100% of the hardware works as it should etc, which takes time.
In contrast, delivering *naked* machines should be easy.
For *advanced* Linux-users, pre-installing Linux is a waste (not harmful, just not very much of a plus), in contrast, giving detailed info on the hardware and on existence of free drivers is crucial.
Thing is, "why can't Synaptic...." kinds of answer assumes that all advanced Linux-users want to use a distro with synaptic, which fails to be the case. It also assumes people have no particular wishes as to partitioning, which also fails to be the case. Same for like a dozen other variables.
Get me rigth, I'd be *happy* to buy a laptop with pre-intalled Linux (ANY linux), I just think that there'd be a 95% chance that I'd end up wishing to reinstall it within the first week anyway.
The heat doesn't magically *know* that it was created by a ligthbulb rather than an electric heater.
IF warm air always rose so that heat under the roof was "near 100% wasted", what then, pray tell, prevents the heat from any other heater from doing precisely the same thing: rising until it's under the roof, then becoming "near 100% wasted" ?
Warm air *does* rise, but air also mixes, and heat also travels towards colder areas, and roofing actually *does* have significant insulating value -- a house without a roof would be *VERY* much colder than one with a roof.
As I said, you're free to believe what you want, doesn't make you rigth though. Having an incadescent bulb in a room which is already (at the time the bulb is on!) electrically heated, causes little extra waste (NONE in the case where the rooms above are also heated)
It's not just "inept government", it's a symptom of a larger disease. Government (imho) behave like they do among other reasons because they to far too large a degree has "drunk the Kool-aid" of the pro-copyrigth lobby.
So, it's argued, doing anything other than buying individual copies of copyrigthed works at the free market, would be communism or worse. (this ignores the fact that sale of copyrigthed goods *aren't* free markets, but that's doubletalk for you...)
There's other symptoms too, of this disease. Why is it, for example, that if a society have strong reasons to need a particular plot of land, they can use eminent domain to forcibly take it from the owner, and use it as they see fit. (for example for building a railroad-line) But similar law is not used against patents or copyrigths.
Why can't (or doesn't!) government expropriate say the patents for the most promising HIV-drugs ? It would seem to me, the need for treatment against HIV is a lot more pressing than the need to build a particular railway-line. Naturally there should be compensation (I'm even of the opinion that in such cases in general compensation should be lavish, because that is the best insurance against abuse of this priviledge -- the state should only forcibly take stuff when it really *IS* critically important to society, and when it does, it should compensate the former owners roundhandedly.)
Who controls the money has the power. If the Govt said: Here's a sack of $X money for HIV-research, any qualified medical research-institutions can apply from money from the sack, however it is a condition that all resulting papers be published openly. I somehow doubt that nobody would apply for the money.
Ok, so I can understand they need some time to get Linux properly tested on their laptops, I don't mind that. How about their number 5 popular idea at ideastorm then: "No OS Preloaded".
Surely it doesn't take a lot of time to manage to deliver a laptop or computer just with a plain-old *empty* hard-disc ? I don't see what testing or certifying or whatever should be needed to do that. It's also what most nerds would want anyway, because you can bet whatever linux-variant Dell opts for ain't going to be precisely the one you want anyway.
A "naked" variant for all their computers would be a good first step, and should be easy.
Not 0%, but significantly less savings then in summer, yes. In summer, the entire energy-difference between oldfashioned and modern ligth is completely wasted (or even harmful if it's warm enough that you need AC), in winther, most of the waste-heat helps heating your house.
I don't know why your bills change, there ain't enough information to tell. It could be for example a combination of any of the following:
Some of your ligth is outdoor. (where the waste heat really is wasted)
Some of your ligth is in rooms that aren't heated, like a basement or whatever.
Sometimes some ligth is on at times when you're not heating (dunno if you heat everywhere 24/7 in winther)
You also have some other heat-source (like burning wood or whatever), and there is ligths also in the rooms heated thus.
Your house is poorly insulated, making the difference in economics between top-heating and bottom-heating larger than it'd normally be.
There's more possibilities too. Since I know neither your habits nor your house, it's hard to tell precisely.
I think intelligence is tricky in that it has a threshold value, and benefits from intelligence explode above that threshold.
Running a *little* faster or spending a *little* less energy is always going to help. Being a *little* more intelligent probably also helps, but not as much.
In particular, robust communications (i.e. the ability to reliably share complex information) is a -huge- boost. But -almost- having it may not help you very much. Being capable of systematically collecting knowledge is also a -huge- boost, but only once you discover how to do it. Humanity spent millenia with little progress, until the collection and gathering of knowledge was systematised.
Thereafter we started advancing at a break-neck pace. Current tech is so superior over just sligthly-old tech that a few thousand top-equiped soldiers can dominate totally over an opposing force being 10-100 times as large, with say 50 year old equipment. 50 years is *2* human generations.
It may be a bit like fission: *almost* getting fission doesn't give you a small bang -- it gives you no noticeable bang at all.
OK, but if that's the whole story, what keeps the prices of CDs so high when the marginal cost of production is relatively low? Normally in a competitive market, we would expect prices to tend towards the marginal cost as the scale increases and up-front costs are spread more thinly, yet in this industry, that has never happened on a wide scale.
The simple fact that it *ISN'T* a competitive market. If you want the latest Robbie Williams-CD (or whatever) you have precisely *one* supplier capable of legally delivering it. This is not anywhere close to the definition of competitive market....
True, any number of sources can deliver some male singer, many can even deliver one that sounds kinda similar, and that may even look similar and dance similar. But it's still not *IT*. Copyrigthed works are the antithesis of commodities. And getting *THE* Robbie Williams (the one in TV!), as opposed to "some male singer" matters enough to the teenage girls that are the core music-market today that a $15 Robbie Williams CD is going to outsell a $5 "Male Singer" one. Indeed, the latter is likely to be "uninteresting" enough that it'll not even get any shelf-space, so people wouldn't find it even if they wanted.
I don't think I really disagree with any of that, nor with your objection to one-size-fits-all, nor even with your example using school textbooks. But my question remains: if copyright is broken, how do we fix it?
I think, there are no simple, easy, universal fixes. I think the best we can do is to start adjusting the course so that the situation starts *improving* rather than rapidly detoriorating as it has recently.
Outrigth *buying* copyrigthed works (not just X copies -- the work itself!) when you are financing the entire creation anyway is a no-brainer. People should do this when hiring wedding-photographers too by the way, but are typically to clueless to realize, so first they pay a good salary for the production of the photos -- and then the photographer owns the resulting work (which mean only he is allowed to duplicate it -- which he will -- for a modest 1000% overcharge)
Certainly in the case of school textbooks, it seems odd that a government would rely on copyright when it is in a position to commission works for hire directly. The latter is pretty much always going to be a better option for those who can afford it and are effectively the entire market anyway,
Yes. Agreed. Still, in the real world it works the other way around. I know not of even a single western government that outrigth buys its schoolbooks, rather than paying indirectly trough buying copies, and letting the publisher keep all control. Depressing.
but those people are in a strong bargaining position to start with.
Yeah, but they throw the position away by moving the purchase-money down to individual schools. (or in higher institutions even down to the individual student)
The Government of Norway saying: "We need a new english-textbook for 10 year-olds. We expect to buy 50.000/year of it, which is 97% of your total sales for this book" has a strong bargaining-position, essentially they can dictate the terms.
The School of Nordfjordeid saying: "We've decided to purchase *your* english-textbooks for our 10-year-olds this year. We expect to buy 100/year of it, which is 0.18% of your total sales for this book" still has a little bargaining-power. They can probably get a few percent off, particularily if they credibly threathen to go with a cheaper competitor. But they're in no position to dictate anything.
The student at UiB saying: "My class use *your* math-book for the first year in Uni this year, I need a copy of it." has -zero- bargaining power. The publisher is a monopolist by law, and it knows that the student *must* have exactly this book even under completely unreasonable terms. (the professor on the other hand will get complimentary copies as gifts...)
The entirety of the point of the research was that papers published in *medical* journals on antibiotic-resistance tends to not use the word evolution, nor any of the similar-meaning words (such as "evolved" or "genetic selection" or "fitness"), instead they choose to use words that say *NOTHING* about how the resistance comes about.
Sure, they should be more precise if that's the point of the paper, and if the answer is known, but that wasn't the point here. The point was, there is evidence that people are *DELIBERATELY* avoiding using the word evolution -- even when it would be the best word -- for the purpose of avoiding provoking certain groups. Nobody is saying evolution is the rigth word all the time. Just that it seems it'd be the best word much more often than usage reflects.
Some alternative wordings where just plain misleading or silly, such as:
"bacteria had learned to resist antibiotics" or "the activity of antimicrobial agents had decreased"
I think you'll agree that these aren't examples of more precise wording.
This is true, but unlikely to explain much of the discrepcancy. The resistance emerges in hospitals as a result of the bacteria living there undergoing evolution.
"Evolution" does not mean only "first emergence", but is used for the entire process of having a population of organisms change over time as a result of mutations, sexual breeding, horisontal gene-transfer and increased reproductive success for the most fit of the organisms.
Thus the spreading of "more desirable" characteristics is one of the core parts of evolution.
It makes *perfect* sense to say, for example: In many hospitals there are strains of bacteria that have evolved antibiotics-resistance.
Except, with DRM the intended recipient and the attacker you want to hide the content from is one and the same person, which changes the game from normal encryption to mathemathically impossible bullshit.
Mallory, having bougth a copyrigthed work should be able to decrypt the content if the purpose is displaying on a screen. (thus he must be in posession of all needed knowledge, including any keys).
Mallory, having bougth a copyrigthed work, should be *unable* to decrypt the content if the purpose is storing on a harddisk, hell he should even be able to electrical signals representing sound trough a cable *IF* the other end of that cable is connected to a speaker, but *NOT* if there's a digitizer with the same impedance on the other end of the cable.
How the decryption-algorithm is supposed to notice the difference, nobody knows.
Yeah, sure, doing 3 different jobs at one employer is going to give you more varied experiences than doing the same single job for the entire period. Particularily if that means working with completely different groups, which it likely will in a larger company.
You are free to believe anything you like. Doesn't make you rigth. The part you're missing is, there actually *is* a roof.
This has *some* insulating qualities (even built to US building-standards), which means there is something actually *preventing* (not perfectly, but *partly*) the heat from rising, while there is nothing whatsoever preventing the heat from spreading in the room. This makes more difference the better your house is built, but even in something with a *very* flimsy roof, such as for example a tent, the effect is quite noticeable.
I assure you, heating air near the roof in a room really *does* cause the entire room to get warmer. Yes, it's somewhat less efficient than heating from near the floor, but both will work.
Mea Culpa. You're rigth. Though you did write; "whether someone should ever be able to profit off the back of someone else's work without compensating them" nowhere did you say that that compensation should be equal to 100% of the profit. (Under todays copyrigth/patent regime though, the size of the compensation is nearly entirely decided by the copyrigth or patent-holder.)
Some of the abuses are likely illegal (though that doesn't really bring us forward as long as in *practice* they continue unpunished)
But others are a natural result of copyrigth. For example, monopoly: The *CORE* of copyrigth is that one person or one company owns the rigths to copy a certain work. That is a monopoly by definition. (btw a monopoly ain't illegal: *abusing* one is) Or another example: Price-fixing. Price-fixing means various companies who "should" compete with eachothers decide instead that they're better of agreeing on a higher price and all sell for this price while competing on other areas.
I don't see, however, how you can be guilty of price-fixing when by law you have a monopoly on a certain product. You don't need to cooperate with anyone to "fix" prices. You alone dictate it.
I don't have any easy answers either (and am wary of anyone who claims to) but the core of my belief is that compensating creativity with per-copy charges is fundamentally broken in a world with zero marginal cost. Financing (in whatever form) should go straigth at the target: creation.
I think different markets need different models. One-size-fits-all won't work. (arguably, it doesn't work even today, computer-programs and paintings *really* don't have similar cost-structures, nor similar aging-structures, so rewarding both in the same way is very very suboptimal).
Let me give an example for one limited area: textbooks for primary school.
Current financing (Norway):
Govt give money to schools.
Schools select books based on value/price
Schools buy books from companies, by paying pro-copy.
Companies finance the writing of schoolbooks, hoping to make back (more than) investments from selling copies.
The resulting books are copyrigthed, schools *aren't* free to do with them what they want, despite having financed their entire development.
Suggested reform:
Govt outrigth *pay* for the development of say 3 competing sets of schoolbooks for primary school. (about the current selection for Norway) Release the finished books as pdfs (or whatever) for free on the Internet.
Schools select the best book for themselves, select someone to print the book for them, and buy the number they need. They pay only the physical cost of printing (since the books themselves are free)
Schools report back to Govt what books they use.
Next year, Govt dispenses money to *improve* the books. They dispense money so that the "better" team gets a larger share.
Meanwhile, teams are free to copy and steal parts and improvements from eachothers.
The resulting books are free: Anyone can have them, for at most the price of physical reproduction.
Thing is, the government *ALREADY* pays 100% of the price for developing the schoolbooks. But for some (to me unfathomable!) reason they choose to do so while still letting the company doing the development keep all the rigths to the resulting books. That's bullshit, and only serves to reinforce monopoly-rents.
Ok, so that's a simple start. But we gotta start *somewhere*, rigth ?
And tell me, how are you "scientifically" going to justify a "correct" copyright period?
I personally think copyrigth is broken as a concept -- adjustments in the form of "correct" periods will do nothing to mend the fundamental brokenness of financing creation with per-copy charges in a world where per-copy costs are practically null.
It used to be something like this: (I know the numbers are out-of-the-air, but the general idea is sound)
Making a work: 1 man year: (~100K)
Preparing a book for print: (copyediting, coverdesign, etc) ~50K
Printing and selling 100.000 copies of book: ($10/book) ~1000K
Total cost ~1.150K, total price/book: $11.50 marginal price/book: $10
So, in this scenario, the work in question would need to be sold $11.50, while without the copyrigth-burden, it'd be $10. There's no large difference, and the harm from reduced circulation is small. Most people that would get the work at $10 will probably also get it at $11.50
The same book as an ebook:
Writing: 1 man year ($100K) This doesn't change.
Preparing: $50K, this also does not change significantly.
Making 100.000 copies and distributing those: ~$5K (most of it fixed-cost)
Total cost $155K, total price/book $1.55, marginal cost/book: $0.05
One notices two things. First, the total price is much lower, we've created the same work and made it accessible to the same number of people, but we spent $155K rather than nearly ten times that sum. This means, if people continue spending similar amount for culture, then we can finance ten times as many works, a HUGE boost.
Secondly, there's now a huge gap between the price and the marginal price. The marginal price is artificially high even, the tendency is towards zero. Yet ebooks are typically sold at like 2/3rds of the paper-book price to avoid cannibalising the profitable market.
It's likely there are many people interested in using a work for $0.01 (which in practice would mean free, possibly with an ad-banner on the page or supported by gifts or whatever) but which will not pay $7.
Copyrigth is ok when it works as a small added tax on the creation of a physical item that is expensive to create anyway. It's not so bad when it costs $10 to print, distribute and sell a book that copyrigth adds a $2 tax thereon making it a $12 purchase. Unfortunately, these days its more along the lines of copyrigth transforming a product that really cost $1/copy (including producing-costs!) to something costing ten times that much, while at the same time missing out on the extra revenue from all those that'd have wanted the product at $1. (but who won't at $10)
Sure. So we need *some* method of creating those resource. Everyone agrees on that.
The current system of rewards is *horribly* broken though.
A huge fraction of the added cost *fails* to actually reach those people doing the creation.
It seriously hampers the usability of the finished product.
It seriously hampers creation of new works if these can be considered to be derived rather than original works. Thus incentiving useless replication of work and hampering improvements to existing works.
It encourages piracy, because it arbitrarily taxes the step of copying despite the costs being elsewhere.
It encourages DRM -- thousands or tens of thousands of man-years are used trying to develop a technology that is both fundamentally impossible, AND actually harmful to the usefulness of the work.
It encourages harmful law. Many countries now have laws, for example, that actively hinder the preservation of old cultural works.
It restricts access to the created works. Once a work is created, it is more "useful" the more people have access to it. Copyrigth works by creating artifical scarcity.
or the question of whether someone should ever be able to profit off the back of someone else's work without compensating them
In general, that question can only be answered with a resounding YES. Profiting from the work of others is pretty much the entirety of what makes us as a society capable of progress. If, for using *any* advance, you always needed to 100% compensate the original creator, then there'd be no profit in doing it anymore. (because you'd need to "compensate" your advantage back to the creator.)
So, Einstein (or his heirs) get not a cent for making current GPS-accuracy possible, Pasteur and his heirs get no compensation whatsoever for the fact that his discoveries make us all healthier. This is as it should be and completely *nessecary* for us as a society to be able to progress.
Now, there are limited circumstances where we should make exceptions. But in *general*, everyone should be free to profit from the works of others.
It is probably desirable to offer some incentive for the creation of new useful works. Copyrigth is our current method for achiving that, and the US constitution even makes this purpose explicit. It is not at all a given that this method is the best one. It appears to over-reward a few "superhit"-creations, and at the same time under-reward much that is useful but with less immediate mass-appeal.
VAT is quite high in many European countries, but nowhere is it near 40%, I have no idea where you got that idea.
In actual fact, VAT in EU-countries vary from about 10% to a maximum of 25%. The countries with the highest VATs normally have a lower VAT-bracket for goods deemed "essentials" such as food. For example Sweden has 25% VAT in general, but only 6% of essentials.
Italy has 20% VAT on laptops. (and less for "essentials")
Yes, jumping ship regularily will definitely make you look less attractive in a more downturn market.
Given a choice between two developers with similar skills and experiences, but one has had 2 different jobs in the last decade, and the other has had 17, none lasting longer than 18 months, there's no question at all which one will be most desirable.
Thing is, people don't have any choice other than take past behaviour as indicative of future. So, I'd only hire the job-hopper if I desperately needed him to get us over some crunch -- but I'd be assuming from the get go that he'd be gone within the year anyway, that's what past experience says anyway.
When demand is high enough you take anyone you get with the rigth skills. When demand is less spectacular so you (as an employer) get the luxury of choice, you'll be their last choice.
Notice that *some* job-changes are probably good for you. Given 2 programmers, both with 20 years experience, it's quite likely the one with 3 different jobs has more varied experience and is *more* desirable than the one who got a single job after graduating and has kept it ever since.
It's just that, changing jobs every 4 months mean you're normally gone before you're even fully trained, a resource-sink. And you're certainly gone before you even get the chance to see a large project trough to completion.
Sure. I don't think it's a very important complaint. It only makes a difference at all if either someone forgot a library in rpms list of requirements (unlikely) or if you use --nodeps to explicitly ignore dependencies (like Eric did here)
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You see, if the energy goes pedalling - generator - battery - ligthbulb - heat (with losses at every step, so the total heat ends up identical to the total pedalling-power, or just pedalling - friction - heat (as in a typical exersize bike) the total generated heat is identical, you don't get *less* heat by using the power for some othe purpose first, it turns into heat in the end anyway.
Now, if the building is *electrically* heated, then you're rigth. There's no point in saving 1Kwh, if that only means you'll spend 1Kwh more for your heaters anyway. But many buildings are heated by cheaper alternatives to pure electricity (such as gas, heat-pump or remotely distributed heat)
So, with an order of magnitude improvement, (i.e. $1500 not $15.000) in price, you'd still be looking at 8.2 years of 10 hour days for payback. (or on the order of 20 years or more for more typical gym-use) this for equipment that is typically replaced after aproximately 3-5 years.
Harvesting "human power" will never be able to do much for your energy-bills. It can make sense for other reasons though. For example, a handy that is powered by movement, and thus stays charged forever aslong as you're walking/moving would be a very practical thing to have for many people. I'd love this in my GPS too: I only bring it along when I go hiking in the mountains anyway, if my movements could somehow supply the (small; sub 1w) power-requirements it'd mean I could have it on all the time and never worry about running out of batteries again, rather than turning it on to log a certain point-of-interest only occasionally during the hike as I do today.
With low-enough energy-demands I could see this for for example remote-controls or wireless game-controllers too. Never having to replace batteries is a nice thing, more for practical reasons than for cost-reasons. (rechargable batteries aren't that expensive anyway)
Infantry also has need for gadgets. Many of them would benefit from being able to work indefinitely without access to recharging and/or new batteries. (nigth-vision, GPS, radio, led-torches, ...)
It's much easier to *save* energy than to *create* it.
Replacing 10 of the ligth-bulbs in the gym with modern low-energy ones would've had a larger effect on energy-savings, and would've costed less than the $15.000 this cost.
It's a gimmick, nothing more.
I just think that is some way off in the moment and can't be done overnigth. Dell would want to test and certify and make dead-certain that 100% of the hardware works as it should etc, which takes time.
In contrast, delivering *naked* machines should be easy.
For *advanced* Linux-users, pre-installing Linux is a waste (not harmful, just not very much of a plus), in contrast, giving detailed info on the hardware and on existence of free drivers is crucial.
Thing is, "why can't Synaptic ...." kinds of answer assumes that all advanced Linux-users want to use a distro with synaptic, which fails to be the case. It also assumes people have no particular wishes as to partitioning, which also fails to be the case. Same for like a dozen other variables.
Get me rigth, I'd be *happy* to buy a laptop with pre-intalled Linux (ANY linux), I just think that there'd be a 95% chance that I'd end up wishing to reinstall it within the first week anyway.
Nope. The plaintiff represented himself (and ain't no lawyer, if he had been he'd have seen from the get go that this would never get off the ground)
The heat doesn't magically *know* that it was created by a ligthbulb rather than an electric heater.
IF warm air always rose so that heat under the roof was "near 100% wasted", what then, pray tell, prevents the heat from any other heater from doing precisely the same thing: rising until it's under the roof, then becoming "near 100% wasted" ?
Warm air *does* rise, but air also mixes, and heat also travels towards colder areas, and roofing actually *does* have significant insulating value -- a house without a roof would be *VERY* much colder than one with a roof.
As I said, you're free to believe what you want, doesn't make you rigth though. Having an incadescent bulb in a room which is already (at the time the bulb is on!) electrically heated, causes little extra waste (NONE in the case where the rooms above are also heated)
So, it's argued, doing anything other than buying individual copies of copyrigthed works at the free market, would be communism or worse. (this ignores the fact that sale of copyrigthed goods *aren't* free markets, but that's doubletalk for you...)
There's other symptoms too, of this disease. Why is it, for example, that if a society have strong reasons to need a particular plot of land, they can use eminent domain to forcibly take it from the owner, and use it as they see fit. (for example for building a railroad-line) But similar law is not used against patents or copyrigths.
Why can't (or doesn't!) government expropriate say the patents for the most promising HIV-drugs ? It would seem to me, the need for treatment against HIV is a lot more pressing than the need to build a particular railway-line. Naturally there should be compensation (I'm even of the opinion that in such cases in general compensation should be lavish, because that is the best insurance against abuse of this priviledge -- the state should only forcibly take stuff when it really *IS* critically important to society, and when it does, it should compensate the former owners roundhandedly.)
Who controls the money has the power. If the Govt said: Here's a sack of $X money for HIV-research, any qualified medical research-institutions can apply from money from the sack, however it is a condition that all resulting papers be published openly. I somehow doubt that nobody would apply for the money.
Surely it doesn't take a lot of time to manage to deliver a laptop or computer just with a plain-old *empty* hard-disc ? I don't see what testing or certifying or whatever should be needed to do that. It's also what most nerds would want anyway, because you can bet whatever linux-variant Dell opts for ain't going to be precisely the one you want anyway.
A "naked" variant for all their computers would be a good first step, and should be easy.
I don't know why your bills change, there ain't enough information to tell. It could be for example a combination of any of the following:
There's more possibilities too. Since I know neither your habits nor your house, it's hard to tell precisely.
Running a *little* faster or spending a *little* less energy is always going to help. Being a *little* more intelligent probably also helps, but not as much.
In particular, robust communications (i.e. the ability to reliably share complex information) is a -huge- boost. But -almost- having it may not help you very much. Being capable of systematically collecting knowledge is also a -huge- boost, but only once you discover how to do it. Humanity spent millenia with little progress, until the collection and gathering of knowledge was systematised.
Thereafter we started advancing at a break-neck pace. Current tech is so superior over just sligthly-old tech that a few thousand top-equiped soldiers can dominate totally over an opposing force being 10-100 times as large, with say 50 year old equipment. 50 years is *2* human generations.
It may be a bit like fission: *almost* getting fission doesn't give you a small bang -- it gives you no noticeable bang at all.
The simple fact that it *ISN'T* a competitive market. If you want the latest Robbie Williams-CD (or whatever) you have precisely *one* supplier capable of legally delivering it. This is not anywhere close to the definition of competitive market....
True, any number of sources can deliver some male singer, many can even deliver one that sounds kinda similar, and that may even look similar and dance similar. But it's still not *IT*. Copyrigthed works are the antithesis of commodities. And getting *THE* Robbie Williams (the one in TV!), as opposed to "some male singer" matters enough to the teenage girls that are the core music-market today that a $15 Robbie Williams CD is going to outsell a $5 "Male Singer" one. Indeed, the latter is likely to be "uninteresting" enough that it'll not even get any shelf-space, so people wouldn't find it even if they wanted.
I don't think I really disagree with any of that, nor with your objection to one-size-fits-all, nor even with your example using school textbooks. But my question remains: if copyright is broken, how do we fix it?
I think, there are no simple, easy, universal fixes. I think the best we can do is to start adjusting the course so that the situation starts *improving* rather than rapidly detoriorating as it has recently.
Outrigth *buying* copyrigthed works (not just X copies -- the work itself!) when you are financing the entire creation anyway is a no-brainer. People should do this when hiring wedding-photographers too by the way, but are typically to clueless to realize, so first they pay a good salary for the production of the photos -- and then the photographer owns the resulting work (which mean only he is allowed to duplicate it -- which he will -- for a modest 1000% overcharge)
Certainly in the case of school textbooks, it seems odd that a government would rely on copyright when it is in a position to commission works for hire directly. The latter is pretty much always going to be a better option for those who can afford it and are effectively the entire market anyway,
Yes. Agreed. Still, in the real world it works the other way around. I know not of even a single western government that outrigth buys its schoolbooks, rather than paying indirectly trough buying copies, and letting the publisher keep all control. Depressing.
but those people are in a strong bargaining position to start with.
Yeah, but they throw the position away by moving the purchase-money down to individual schools. (or in higher institutions even down to the individual student)
The Government of Norway saying: "We need a new english-textbook for 10 year-olds. We expect to buy 50.000/year of it, which is 97% of your total sales for this book" has a strong bargaining-position, essentially they can dictate the terms.
The School of Nordfjordeid saying: "We've decided to purchase *your* english-textbooks for our 10-year-olds this year. We expect to buy 100/year of it, which is 0.18% of your total sales for this book" still has a little bargaining-power. They can probably get a few percent off, particularily if they credibly threathen to go with a cheaper competitor. But they're in no position to dictate anything.
The student at UiB saying: "My class use *your* math-book for the first year in Uni this year, I need a copy of it." has -zero- bargaining power. The publisher is a monopolist by law, and it knows that the student *must* have exactly this book even under completely unreasonable terms. (the professor on the other hand will get complimentary copies as gifts...)
Yeah, I realize the example doesn't gene
The entirety of the point of the research was that papers published in *medical* journals on antibiotic-resistance tends to not use the word evolution, nor any of the similar-meaning words (such as "evolved" or "genetic selection" or "fitness"), instead they choose to use words that say *NOTHING* about how the resistance comes about.
Sure, they should be more precise if that's the point of the paper, and if the answer is known, but that wasn't the point here. The point was, there is evidence that people are *DELIBERATELY* avoiding using the word evolution -- even when it would be the best word -- for the purpose of avoiding provoking certain groups. Nobody is saying evolution is the rigth word all the time. Just that it seems it'd be the best word much more often than usage reflects.
Some alternative wordings where just plain misleading or silly, such as:
"bacteria had learned to resist antibiotics" or "the activity of antimicrobial agents had decreased"
I think you'll agree that these aren't examples of more precise wording.
This is true, but unlikely to explain much of the discrepcancy. The resistance emerges in hospitals as a result of the bacteria living there undergoing evolution.
Thus the spreading of "more desirable" characteristics is one of the core parts of evolution.
It makes *perfect* sense to say, for example: In many hospitals there are strains of bacteria that have evolved antibiotics-resistance.
Mallory, having bougth a copyrigthed work should be able to decrypt the content if the purpose is displaying on a screen. (thus he must be in posession of all needed knowledge, including any keys).
Mallory, having bougth a copyrigthed work, should be *unable* to decrypt the content if the purpose is storing on a harddisk, hell he should even be able to electrical signals representing sound trough a cable *IF* the other end of that cable is connected to a speaker, but *NOT* if there's a digitizer with the same impedance on the other end of the cable.
How the decryption-algorithm is supposed to notice the difference, nobody knows.
In science, there *are* no "known facts", trollboy.
Yeah, sure, doing 3 different jobs at one employer is going to give you more varied experiences than doing the same single job for the entire period. Particularily if that means working with completely different groups, which it likely will in a larger company.
This has *some* insulating qualities (even built to US building-standards), which means there is something actually *preventing* (not perfectly, but *partly*) the heat from rising, while there is nothing whatsoever preventing the heat from spreading in the room. This makes more difference the better your house is built, but even in something with a *very* flimsy roof, such as for example a tent, the effect is quite noticeable.
I assure you, heating air near the roof in a room really *does* cause the entire room to get warmer. Yes, it's somewhat less efficient than heating from near the floor, but both will work.
Some of the abuses are likely illegal (though that doesn't really bring us forward as long as in *practice* they continue unpunished)
But others are a natural result of copyrigth. For example, monopoly: The *CORE* of copyrigth is that one person or one company owns the rigths to copy a certain work. That is a monopoly by definition. (btw a monopoly ain't illegal: *abusing* one is) Or another example: Price-fixing. Price-fixing means various companies who "should" compete with eachothers decide instead that they're better of agreeing on a higher price and all sell for this price while competing on other areas.
I don't see, however, how you can be guilty of price-fixing when by law you have a monopoly on a certain product. You don't need to cooperate with anyone to "fix" prices. You alone dictate it.
I don't have any easy answers either (and am wary of anyone who claims to) but the core of my belief is that compensating creativity with per-copy charges is fundamentally broken in a world with zero marginal cost. Financing (in whatever form) should go straigth at the target: creation.
I think different markets need different models. One-size-fits-all won't work. (arguably, it doesn't work even today, computer-programs and paintings *really* don't have similar cost-structures, nor similar aging-structures, so rewarding both in the same way is very very suboptimal).
Let me give an example for one limited area: textbooks for primary school.
Current financing (Norway):
- Govt give money to schools.
- Schools select books based on value/price
- Schools buy books from companies, by paying pro-copy.
- Companies finance the writing of schoolbooks, hoping to make back (more than) investments from selling copies.
- The resulting books are copyrigthed, schools *aren't* free to do with them what they want, despite having financed their entire development.
Suggested reform:Thing is, the government *ALREADY* pays 100% of the price for developing the schoolbooks. But for some (to me unfathomable!) reason they choose to do so while still letting the company doing the development keep all the rigths to the resulting books. That's bullshit, and only serves to reinforce monopoly-rents.
Ok, so that's a simple start. But we gotta start *somewhere*, rigth ?
I personally think copyrigth is broken as a concept -- adjustments in the form of "correct" periods will do nothing to mend the fundamental brokenness of financing creation with per-copy charges in a world where per-copy costs are practically null.
It used to be something like this: (I know the numbers are out-of-the-air, but the general idea is sound)
- Making a work: 1 man year: (~100K)
- Preparing a book for print: (copyediting, coverdesign, etc) ~50K
- Printing and selling 100.000 copies of book: ($10/book) ~1000K
- Total cost ~1.150K, total price/book: $11.50 marginal price/book: $10
So, in this scenario, the work in question would need to be sold $11.50, while without the copyrigth-burden, it'd be $10. There's no large difference, and the harm from reduced circulation is small. Most people that would get the work at $10 will probably also get it at $11.50The same book as an ebook:
One notices two things. First, the total price is much lower, we've created the same work and made it accessible to the same number of people, but we spent $155K rather than nearly ten times that sum. This means, if people continue spending similar amount for culture, then we can finance ten times as many works, a HUGE boost.
Secondly, there's now a huge gap between the price and the marginal price. The marginal price is artificially high even, the tendency is towards zero. Yet ebooks are typically sold at like 2/3rds of the paper-book price to avoid cannibalising the profitable market.
It's likely there are many people interested in using a work for $0.01 (which in practice would mean free, possibly with an ad-banner on the page or supported by gifts or whatever) but which will not pay $7.
Copyrigth is ok when it works as a small added tax on the creation of a physical item that is expensive to create anyway. It's not so bad when it costs $10 to print, distribute and sell a book that copyrigth adds a $2 tax thereon making it a $12 purchase. Unfortunately, these days its more along the lines of copyrigth transforming a product that really cost $1/copy (including producing-costs!) to something costing ten times that much, while at the same time missing out on the extra revenue from all those that'd have wanted the product at $1. (but who won't at $10)
The current system of rewards is *horribly* broken though.
In general, that question can only be answered with a resounding YES. Profiting from the work of others is pretty much the entirety of what makes us as a society capable of progress. If, for using *any* advance, you always needed to 100% compensate the original creator, then there'd be no profit in doing it anymore. (because you'd need to "compensate" your advantage back to the creator.)
So, Einstein (or his heirs) get not a cent for making current GPS-accuracy possible, Pasteur and his heirs get no compensation whatsoever for the fact that his discoveries make us all healthier. This is as it should be and completely *nessecary* for us as a society to be able to progress.
Now, there are limited circumstances where we should make exceptions. But in *general*, everyone should be free to profit from the works of others.
It is probably desirable to offer some incentive for the creation of new useful works. Copyrigth is our current method for achiving that, and the US constitution even makes this purpose explicit. It is not at all a given that this method is the best one. It appears to over-reward a few "superhit"-creations, and at the same time under-reward much that is useful but with less immediate mass-appeal.
In actual fact, VAT in EU-countries vary from about 10% to a maximum of 25%. The countries with the highest VATs normally have a lower VAT-bracket for goods deemed "essentials" such as food. For example Sweden has 25% VAT in general, but only 6% of essentials.
Italy has 20% VAT on laptops. (and less for "essentials")
Given a choice between two developers with similar skills and experiences, but one has had 2 different jobs in the last decade, and the other has had 17, none lasting longer than 18 months, there's no question at all which one will be most desirable.
Thing is, people don't have any choice other than take past behaviour as indicative of future. So, I'd only hire the job-hopper if I desperately needed him to get us over some crunch -- but I'd be assuming from the get go that he'd be gone within the year anyway, that's what past experience says anyway.
When demand is high enough you take anyone you get with the rigth skills. When demand is less spectacular so you (as an employer) get the luxury of choice, you'll be their last choice.
Notice that *some* job-changes are probably good for you. Given 2 programmers, both with 20 years experience, it's quite likely the one with 3 different jobs has more varied experience and is *more* desirable than the one who got a single job after graduating and has kept it ever since.
It's just that, changing jobs every 4 months mean you're normally gone before you're even fully trained, a resource-sink. And you're certainly gone before you even get the chance to see a large project trough to completion.
Eric does however seem to consider it a big deal.