Another interesting question is why oil is so cheap.
It's cheap, because once you get past the initial enormous outlay for finding the oil field, drilling, and building the refinery, you have enormous economies of scale that bring the price per gallon of crude and per gallon of refined fuel down to a very low level.
Now, I haven't actually done the research on this, but I suspect that there is a lot of price regulation, political pressure, and even warfare involved. Not exactly a free market.
You've got it right on all counts. What do you think OPEC is? In any other industry it would be called a cartel, members would be charged with collusion and price fixing. Then there are the various taxes that in some countries make up over 70% of the price paid at the pump.
There have also been multiple revisions to the way the mpg is tested, so it's not very fair to compare door stickers.
Look, if you want to know about a product, you go and test it for yourself.
Or you try to find somebody you trust, and make allowances for errors and bias, and take a big pinch of salt.
You should never take the manufacturer's claims as being true, nor should you accept the EPA "guesstimate" mpg figure.
Get in, fill the tank, drive two or three hundred miles in your everyday typical usage, fill the tank again and note the amount it takes to fill up.
Calculate from that the miles per gallon.
Same with a phone. Youhave to make the distinction between the features (characteristics inherent in the object) and the benefits (the use you make of the object).
From the list of features (camera, MP3 player, FM radio, GPS, SMS, MMS, web browser), just cross out those you'll not use.
Once you've got it down to only the benefits (ability to make phone calls at $0.05 per minute, clock, pocket calculator), you'll be better able to judge whether you're prepared to spend $50 (or whatever) to get those benefits.
Then do the equivalent for books: cross out the name you or someone else wrote in there on an inside page, and proceed to do whatever you were going to do.
This is precisely what Privatunes proposes to do.
To use the book analogy again, when I buy a book, I can choose to mark my name in it, or paste an "ex libris" in it. If I decide to sell the book, I can obliterate my name.
When I buy a song from iTunes, Apple embeds my name in the file. If I decide to sell the song, I want to be able to remove my name from it.
Remembering that this discusses the case of a hypothetical French consumer, the most pertinent facts are:
if I download for a fee a file from iTunes, then I have bought it and it has now become my property;
if I decide after some time to sell the file to somebody else, then I have every right to do so;
if the subsequent owner chooses to distribute numerous copies of this file in violation of some other law, this is not my responsibility.
There are some goods whose possession and sale are strictly regulated, so that at any moment the government can trace who possesses them. The two examples that spring to mind are firearms and motor vehicles.
But these are articles that are either high value and heavily taxed (providing the gov't with a regular revenue), or are considered dangerous, or are both high value and dangerous.
Books, CDs, music files fit into neither category.
The simplest, most elegant way to ensure my right as a private individual to be able to sell surplus books, CDs and other "products of the human mind" (French legal term is something like "oeuvre d'esprit") is to make their possession and occasional trade by private individuals both free and anonymous.
Apple and the recording houses have the choice between these two options:
provide a free-of-charge marketplace that allows me to sell a file, replacing my own name in the file with that of the new owner;
accept that people will find ways to assert their right to transfer files without being permanently linked to the file by having their names embedded in them.
I find it particularly amusing that the principles of liberal trade and libertarianism supposedly so dear to Americans, should be exemplified by the French and vilified by so many Americans whenever we mention Apple and its restrictive practices.
[6% efficiency is] terrible for a steam engine and suggests that they're exhausting the steam rather than recycling it in the engine. (Possibly for cooling purposes?)
Since the car is designed to just do the measured mile, it makes much more sense to let the steam escape, rather than recycle it.
The engine is simpler and lighter, and the vehicle loses mass as it goes, making it less difficult to accelerate.
"Please enter your Postcode Due to licensing changes, we're only allowed to offer our radio stream to those in the UK. You seem to be outside the UK, so you need to enter a valid UK postcode below:"
Imagine that I drive along a straight, wide road, in daylight. The road surface is in good condition, is dry, and my vehicle is in excellent condition. I am in full control of my vehicle. I drive at 65 mles per hour like this for five miles or so, without endangering myself or others.
I look in my read view mirror to see flashing blue lights. It's the cops, and I'm pulled over for exceeding the speed limit of 50mph.
I committed a crime, plain and simple, because the law sets the limit and I exceeded it.
That, in essence is the whole of the argument. The law (statute, common law, penal code, whatever you want to call it) sets down certain limits, and if you exceed them you have committed a crime. End of story.
After that, you can argue 'til you're blue in the face that your crime hurt nobody, put nobody at risk, and deserves no punishment, but those are mitigating circumstances to reduce your penalty, and do not negate the crime itself.
Caption under the photo at the start of the article:
How's $54 million for a dry cleaning bill? A Washington, D.C., judge is suing an area dry cleaning business for losing a pair of his trousers. The business owners claim they have his pants, but he's pressing ahead with his suit. (AP Photo )
If I had been the plaintiff in that case, I would have sued for "promise of breeches".
If I ask you to do without something in return for some recompense (some other item or some sum of money), your response is going to be conditioned by two main "motivating conditions" (for want of a better term).
Opportunity cost, or your estimation of the value of the item you're giving up compared to the recompense promised.
Trust, or your estimation of the likelihood of the recompense ever being given.
As a certain Alan pointed out, in his reply to the article:
I bet the answers would have been different if the survey takers had actually had a million pound cheque in their hands. Why sholuld anyone take such a question seriously?
Alan | Fri 22 June, 2007 1:32am
If you promised me such an exaggerated amount of money that it far outweighed anything I would reasonably expect to receive, then I am likely to distrust the offer, and refuse.
Offer me a visible ten dollars (i.e., wave the bill in front of me) for the cup of coffee I just made for myself, and I will probably accept.
Offer me over the telephone a million dollars in return for never using a mobile phone, and I'll not take the offer seriously. Even if I were willing to accept such a trade, I don't take your offer seriously and reject it out of hand.
So if fair use is legislated, then not allowing fair use would violate that law, and make the contract (agreement) or perhaps that one segment of the agreement unenforcable within the courts.
Which means that if the CCA adds a clause to the contract that the Kaleidoscope signs, and that clause forbids something that is considered "Fair Use", then that single clause is null though other clauses remain in force.
But Kaleidoscope has a very strong claim, that this clause has been drafted with the clear intent of attempting to prevent it from carrying on its business, as is pointed out in the article. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2148802,00.as p
As I understand it, French law specifically prohibits the publication of any image derived from a photograph taken in a public place without the consent of the person in that image, if the person is the main or only subject in that image.
If I take a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, and you happen to be in the shot along with a few other people, I don't have to get your consent before publishing the photo, even if I gain commercially from doing so, and even if you could be recognized and identified by your face in the photograph.
There are no doubt some guidelines somewhere about the percentage surface area taken up by the person's face, compared to the main subject (the Eiffel tower, in my example), and you could dig up some jurisprudence on the subject.
Cas d'une photo prise devant la maison d'arrêt de la santé
Dans l'hebdomadaire France Dimanche en illustration d'articles consacrés à Bernard TAPIE, alors incarcéré, figurait une photographie où l'on pouvait voir, à la droite de la famille TAPIE, un policier entrant dans une voiture en stationnement devant la maison d'arrêt de la santé. La Cour d'Appel de Paris (3) a considéré que la prise de vue était réalisée sur la voie publique, que rien ne venait isoler le policier du groupe de personnes représentées par la photographie, centrée sur la famille de Bernard TAPIE à l'entrée de la maison d'arrêt, et non sur la personne du policier dont l'identité n'était pas révélée. Elle a jugé que cette photographie illustrait un événement d'actualité auquel ce dernier s'est trouvé mêlé objectivement et de façon impersonnelle par l'effet d'une coïncidence due à des circonstances tenant exclusivement à sa vie professionnelle.
Since this is so important, I'll summarize from the text.
Bernard Tapie had been held in a prison called "la Santé" and was being released. A weekly magazine "France Dimanche" published on its cover a photo of Tapie's release. The photo showed a police officer getting into a car to the right of Tapie and his family.
The court decided that
since the officer was not picked out by the framing of the photo (centered on tapie and family)
since the photo was taken on a public road
there was no grounds to penalise the magazine or to compensate the office.
Contrast this with article 226-1 of the French Penal Code, which concerns publication of photographs taken in a private place.
l'article 226-1 CP dispose qu'"est puni d'un an d'emprisonnement et de 45.000 euros d'amende le fait, au moyen d'un procédé quelconque," de porter atteinte volontairement à l'intimité de la vie privée d'autrui, en captant (parole) ou fixant (image), enregistrant ou transmettant, sans le consentement de la personne concernée, des paroles prononcées à titre privé ou confidentiel, ou l'image d'une personne se trouvant dans un lieu privé. Le consentement est présumé lorsque ces actes ont été accomplis au vu et au su de cette personne sans qu'elle s'y soit opposée.
46 to the gallon... ok thats a uk gallon, the us gallon is a little smaller but not by that much
Ahem!
US Gallon == 8 US Pints
UK Gallon == 8 UK Pints
But, I hasten to add,
1 US Pint == 16 US Fluid Ounces
1 UK Pint == 20 UK Fluid Ounces
And furthermore,
1 US Fluid Ounce == 29.5735295625 milliliters
1 UK Fluid Ounce == 28.4130625 millilitres
So once you convert 1 US gallon and 1 UK gallon to SI units (giving respectively 3785.411784 ml and 4546.09 ml), you find that a UK gallon is a full 20% more than a US Gallon.
So you need to leave your computer always on, but in a state such that switching off the power without doing a clean shutdown would result in permanent loss or corruption of all data on the filesystem you wish to protect...
Maybe your personal files could be loaded into RAM, then the data from the drive be overwritten several times...
The idea being that a during the seizure of your computer, the agents might think that you have set up the system to require a password to permit a shutdown without wiping the data.
Of course with the mechanism I just described the data would be lost if for some reason your computer locked up and you had to do a hard reset...
During a clean shutdown, you need to enter a special password to write the data back to the (encrypted or steganographic) filesystem.
But then this leaves your computer powered off and with the private data on the disc...
Now the forensic specialists know that there is a good probability that failing to use the correct password could trigger a mechanism to wipe out the private data, so they won't boot your computer. They'll open it up, remove the hard drive and make an image of it to work on.
So, to prevent this, you wire the "case open detect" switch to a device that physically destroys the platters. Maybe by breaking a strategically-placed phial of hydrofluoric acid.
CD WOW! is owned and operated by Music Trading Online (HK) Limited (a Hong Kong company).
Items over the UK HM Customs & Excise VAT Personal Import allowances
Orders containing items over the UK Customs & Excise VAT personal import allowance are sent via Hong Kong Post, our postal agent.
Hong Kong Post arranges the payment of VAT and or any other taxes and duties which may apply to UK H M Customs and Excise on your behalf FROM THE AMOUNT YOU HAVE ALREADY PAID. You will not be asked to pay any additional sums upon delivery / collection.
If I live in the UK and order something from overseas, I am officially the importer.
I have to pay the relevant import duties and taxes when the goods arrive. In this case, as you will notice from the text quoted from CD Wow's site, the duties are paid on my behalf by the shipping agent, out of the payment made to CD Wow. But in essence, it is still me, as the importer, who is paying the duties albeit through an agent.
The company selling the stuff to me is the exporter.
When I was 11, we had a Sharp MZ-80K in the computer room.
It had little transparent keycaps, and you could change the paper slips below to change the symbols.
Decades later, I found myself typing in a mixture of languages, and wished for LCD or LED image keycaps.
Here they are, at long last.
At over $1000 for a keyboard, I'm not going to be an early adopter... but when the price drops I'll be on for one!
Heck, if the price drops to around $250, my boss might get me one.
I can get by with a standard AZERTY or QWERTY keyboard for most languages, but for Russian and Greek, my typing speed slows dramatically if I have to keep looking at the paper copy of the keyboard layout.
Beef.
Let's see if I've understood this correctly...
Microsoft claims that some piece of free software infringes an MS-held patent.
MS identifies me as a user of said software.
MS sues me for patent infringement?
Let's change the names, to see if this makes any more sense.
Let's imagine a purely hypothetical situation involving automobile manufacturers.
Toyota claims that certain models of Volkswagen infringe a toyota held patent.
I drive one of those VWs.
Toyota sues me for patent infringment?
Nope.
Doesn't make any sense to me...
Beef.
Slashdot Mirror
It's cheap, because once you get past the initial enormous outlay for finding the oil field, drilling, and building the refinery, you have enormous economies of scale that bring the price per gallon of crude and per gallon of refined fuel down to a very low level.
Now, I haven't actually done the research on this, but I suspect that there is a lot of price regulation, political pressure, and even warfare involved. Not exactly a free market.You've got it right on all counts. What do you think OPEC is? In any other industry it would be called a cartel, members would be charged with collusion and price fixing. Then there are the various taxes that in some countries make up over 70% of the price paid at the pump.
Beef
Look, if you want to know about a product, you go and test it for yourself.
Or you try to find somebody you trust, and make allowances for errors and bias, and take a big pinch of salt.
You should never take the manufacturer's claims as being true, nor should you accept the EPA "guesstimate" mpg figure.
Get in, fill the tank, drive two or three hundred miles in your everyday typical usage, fill the tank again and note the amount it takes to fill up.
Calculate from that the miles per gallon.
Same with a phone. Youhave to make the distinction between the features (characteristics inherent in the object) and the benefits (the use you make of the object).
From the list of features (camera, MP3 player, FM radio, GPS, SMS, MMS, web browser), just cross out those you'll not use.
Once you've got it down to only the benefits (ability to make phone calls at $0.05 per minute, clock, pocket calculator), you'll be better able to judge whether you're prepared to spend $50 (or whatever) to get those benefits.
Beef
I think that the nearest candidate would be the Atari ST.
Beef
A few years ago an electrolytic capacitor in my PSU literally exploded, frying the mobo, both CPUs, keyboard and mouse...
Beef.
This is precisely what Privatunes proposes to do.
To use the book analogy again, when I buy a book, I can choose to mark my name in it, or paste an "ex libris" in it. If I decide to sell the book, I can obliterate my name.
When I buy a song from iTunes, Apple embeds my name in the file. If I decide to sell the song, I want to be able to remove my name from it.
Beef.
While ad hominem attacks are wrong, you should also remember the principal of cui bono.
When a guy selling burglar alarms tells you that you're living in a high crime neighborhood, don't you question the impartiality of his statement?
Beef.
Your sarcasm is noted and appreciated for its just value.
But you seem to want the whole world to adopt and enforce US copyright and contract law...
Beef.
Absolutely correct.
The Ratiatum explanation http://www.ratiatum.com/news5257_EXCLUSIF_Privatun es_pour_supprimer_les_espions_d_iTunes_Plus.html is more pertinent that those quotes from http://www.privatunes.com/ that Apple Fanboy DaveSchroeder quotes in his first post (though I admit that the Ratiatum text is still less than elegant).
Remembering that this discusses the case of a hypothetical French consumer, the most pertinent facts are:
There are some goods whose possession and sale are strictly regulated, so that at any moment the government can trace who possesses them. The two examples that spring to mind are firearms and motor vehicles.
But these are articles that are either high value and heavily taxed (providing the gov't with a regular revenue), or are considered dangerous, or are both high value and dangerous.
Books, CDs, music files fit into neither category.
The simplest, most elegant way to ensure my right as a private individual to be able to sell surplus books, CDs and other "products of the human mind" (French legal term is something like "oeuvre d'esprit") is to make their possession and occasional trade by private individuals both free and anonymous.
Apple and the recording houses have the choice between these two options:
I find it particularly amusing that the principles of liberal trade and libertarianism supposedly so dear to Americans, should be exemplified by the French and vilified by so many Americans whenever we mention Apple and its restrictive practices.
Beef.
Since the car is designed to just do the measured mile, it makes much more sense to let the steam escape, rather than recycle it.
The engine is simpler and lighter, and the vehicle loses mass as it goes, making it less difficult to accelerate.
Beef.
Go to Google's map of the UK and choose where you live. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=U K&ie=UTF8&ll=53.080827,-3.032227&spn=5.095991,21.1 37695&z=6&om=1
Then go to the Royal Mail and look up your post code. http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/postcodefinder
Beef.
No. You are wrong, on a technical point.
Imagine that I drive along a straight, wide road, in daylight. The road surface is in good condition, is dry, and my vehicle is in excellent condition. I am in full control of my vehicle. I drive at 65 mles per hour like this for five miles or so, without endangering myself or others.
I look in my read view mirror to see flashing blue lights. It's the cops, and I'm pulled over for exceeding the speed limit of 50mph.
I committed a crime, plain and simple, because the law sets the limit and I exceeded it.
That, in essence is the whole of the argument. The law (statute, common law, penal code, whatever you want to call it) sets down certain limits, and if you exceed them you have committed a crime. End of story.
After that, you can argue 'til you're blue in the face that your crime hurt nobody, put nobody at risk, and deserves no punishment, but those are mitigating circumstances to reduce your penalty, and do not negate the crime itself.
Beef.
Nope.
The great thing about standards, is that there are so many to choose from.
Beef
Caption under the photo at the start of the article:
If I had been the plaintiff in that case, I would have sued for "promise of breeches".
Beef.
I used an Amiga program called Soundtracker to do this kind of stuff way, way back in 1987....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtrack er
Beef.
There is a severe flaw in the survey.
If I ask you to do without something in return for some recompense (some other item or some sum of money), your response is going to be conditioned by two main "motivating conditions" (for want of a better term).
As a certain Alan pointed out, in his reply to the article:
If you promised me such an exaggerated amount of money that it far outweighed anything I would reasonably expect to receive, then I am likely to distrust the offer, and refuse.
Offer me a visible ten dollars (i.e., wave the bill in front of me) for the cup of coffee I just made for myself, and I will probably accept.
Offer me over the telephone a million dollars in return for never using a mobile phone, and I'll not take the offer seriously. Even if I were willing to accept such a trade, I don't take your offer seriously and reject it out of hand.
Beef.
Like TheRecklessWanderer mentioned.
Which means that if the CCA adds a clause to the contract that the Kaleidoscope signs, and that clause forbids something that is considered "Fair Use", then that single clause is null though other clauses remain in force.
But Kaleidoscope has a very strong claim, that this clause has been drafted with the clear intent of attempting to prevent it from carrying on its business, as is pointed out in the article. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2148802,00.as p
Beef.
Your question:
is flawed.Since you assert that
it follows that Perl accepts that Python's way of doing things is perfectly acceptable whenever Python "does it".Beef.
As I understand it, French law specifically prohibits the publication of any image derived from a photograph taken in a public place without the consent of the person in that image, if the person is the main or only subject in that image.
If I take a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, and you happen to be in the shot along with a few other people, I don't have to get your consent before publishing the photo, even if I gain commercially from doing so, and even if you could be recognized and identified by your face in the photograph.
There are no doubt some guidelines somewhere about the percentage surface area taken up by the person's face, compared to the main subject (the Eiffel tower, in my example), and you could dig up some jurisprudence on the subject.
source: http://www.scaraye.com/article.php?rub=27&sr=36&a= 270
Since this is so important, I'll summarize from the text.
Bernard Tapie had been held in a prison called "la Santé" and was being released. A weekly magazine "France Dimanche" published on its cover a photo of Tapie's release. The photo showed a police officer getting into a car to the right of Tapie and his family.
The court decided that
there was no grounds to penalise the magazine or to compensate the office.
Contrast this with article 226-1 of the French Penal Code, which concerns publication of photographs taken in a private place.
source: http://www.cru.fr/droit-deonto/droit/protection-dr oits/personnalite.htm
Yet another commentary on this article gives the contrasting situation of a person in a public place:
and goes on to:
Ahem!
US Gallon == 8 US Pints
UK Gallon == 8 UK Pints
But, I hasten to add,
1 US Pint == 16 US Fluid Ounces
1 UK Pint == 20 UK Fluid Ounces
And furthermore,
1 US Fluid Ounce == 29.5735295625 milliliters
1 UK Fluid Ounce == 28.4130625 millilitres
So once you convert 1 US gallon and 1 UK gallon to SI units (giving respectively 3785.411784 ml and 4546.09 ml), you find that a UK gallon is a full 20% more than a US Gallon.
Beef
So you need to leave your computer always on, but in a state such that switching off the power without doing a clean shutdown would result in permanent loss or corruption of all data on the filesystem you wish to protect...
Maybe your personal files could be loaded into RAM, then the data from the drive be overwritten several times...
The idea being that a during the seizure of your computer, the agents might think that you have set up the system to require a password to permit a shutdown without wiping the data.
Of course with the mechanism I just described the data would be lost if for some reason your computer locked up and you had to do a hard reset...
During a clean shutdown, you need to enter a special password to write the data back to the (encrypted or steganographic) filesystem.
But then this leaves your computer powered off and with the private data on the disc...
Now the forensic specialists know that there is a good probability that failing to use the correct password could trigger a mechanism to wipe out the private data, so they won't boot your computer. They'll open it up, remove the hard drive and make an image of it to work on.
So, to prevent this, you wire the "case open detect" switch to a device that physically destroys the platters. Maybe by breaking a strategically-placed phial of hydrofluoric acid.
Beef.
The Sansa players I've tried out are able (more or less) to update their internal database.
Connect the device to the computer, it is mounted automatically and Nautilus pops up a file browser window.
Drag your directories containing your MP3 files over to the window representing the device's Music or Audio (or whatever it's called) directory.
Unmount the device and unplug it; the device displays some message like "rebuilding database" and if you're lucky everything works.
Beef
My c250 was less than optimal.
Read this review:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home? O=NavBar&A=getItemDetail&Q=&sku=459166&is=REG&si=r ev#anchorToReadReviews
Not CD Wow.
If I live in the UK and order something from overseas, I am officially the importer.
I have to pay the relevant import duties and taxes when the goods arrive. In this case, as you will notice from the text quoted from CD Wow's site, the duties are paid on my behalf by the shipping agent, out of the payment made to CD Wow. But in essence, it is still me, as the importer, who is paying the duties albeit through an agent.
The company selling the stuff to me is the exporter.
Beef.
When I was 11, we had a Sharp MZ-80K in the computer room. It had little transparent keycaps, and you could change the paper slips below to change the symbols. Decades later, I found myself typing in a mixture of languages, and wished for LCD or LED image keycaps. Here they are, at long last. At over $1000 for a keyboard, I'm not going to be an early adopter... but when the price drops I'll be on for one! Heck, if the price drops to around $250, my boss might get me one. I can get by with a standard AZERTY or QWERTY keyboard for most languages, but for Russian and Greek, my typing speed slows dramatically if I have to keep looking at the paper copy of the keyboard layout. Beef.
Let's see if I've understood this correctly... Microsoft claims that some piece of free software infringes an MS-held patent. MS identifies me as a user of said software. MS sues me for patent infringement? Let's change the names, to see if this makes any more sense. Let's imagine a purely hypothetical situation involving automobile manufacturers. Toyota claims that certain models of Volkswagen infringe a toyota held patent. I drive one of those VWs. Toyota sues me for patent infringment? Nope. Doesn't make any sense to me... Beef.