If basic cable in your area costs $80 you should move. For about $30 here you can get about a hundred cable channels, targeted towards all kinds of special interests. Without cable you would never have this kind of narrowcasting because it would be FAR too expensive for say, HGTV or Discovery to have affiliates in each market. And don't complain about paying for what you can get for free either. That really isn't the case with cable. The cable companies would love to drop network programing and open up space for a few more paying channels.
The cost of basic cable barely pays for the infrastructure that brings stations from all over the world into your house. Cable companies really only offer this level of service because they have to. The premium channels mostly don't have commercials, they make their money off of subscribers and syndication of their shows. All the other channels make money off of advertising and don't see a dime of your monthly bill. You are paying for the transport not the content.
I didn't misread what you wrote, but perhaps your point is unclear.
You disagree with the OP contention that, "It is not the government's role to change people's behavior," refering to cell phone usage. You support your position with counter examples where the state does attempt through statute to change violent behavior. Ignoring for a moment that you have not demonstrated by any measure that these existing statutes are in fact beneficial to society you are placing this law in the same category: laws that attempt to change malfeasant behavior.
I assumed you were attempting to make your argument reductio ad ridiculum since clearly cell phone users do not have a societal ompact in the same class as those who commit violence. There is clearly a need for society to regulate physical harm caused to another person, but there is no clear need for society to protect your right to hear the movie.
I'm not completely satisfied that you have comprehended the point Goethe was making either.
I understand the point from the position of one desiring freedom, surrounded by those who "falsely believe they are free." The irony is that true freedom only exists with personal responsibility, something that is completly lacking in supporters of regulations like this. Goethe knew the cost of making people "free" to watch the play undisturbed was making others un-free to talk on their phones. I assumed that someone using the quotation as their.sig would realize this as well.
Goethe also said, "No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others."
I though you were a moron for comparing cell phones to rape and murder, and then I read your sig and realized it must be an attempt at irony. Of course talking on a cell phone in a theater causes bodily harm to no one, but you are incorrect that existing statute provides no relief. Theaters can make (almost)whatever rules they want ans kick out anyone who isn't following them.
The people who are using the law to force behavior on the minority always think it is a success when they are able to compel others to do their wishes. How do the 25% of the population that smokes feel about the ban?
The reason restaurants didn't go to full bans on their own was because they weren't willing to write off 25% of the population -- and the non-smokers dining with them -- unless everybody else was too. If it had been profitable they would have done it, but there wasn't a demand to be satisfed. You might not remember when the non-smoking sections of restaurants were the tiny area at the back near the kitchen. That changed because of a demand. There was no demand for full smoking ban except from those trying to control other's behavior. In this area the restaurant owners all fought a ban (that was passed anyway) because they were afraid it would hurt business.
Back on topic, this law is rediculous and will never get pass the first court test. If a theater owner wants to kick out cellphone users, or make them check their phones at the front then by all means, but the city has no authority to tell people that they must have good manners. Theater managers don't do this because it would be disruptive and inconvinient. What are they going to do when the ban is in place, have cops with ticket books standing in the aisles waiting to write tickets when a phone rings? What's next a law against talking to your neighbor during the show?
If SomaFM had an average of 2,400 listeners around the clock they'd be paying around $20,000/month just for bandwidth. 2,400 streams X 16kb/sec (just a guess) = 38.4Mb/sec. Of course I don't think they were because I think their numbers are bullshit, but if they have been paying $240,000 a year for bandwidth they must be getting money from somewhere.
I have seen lots of webcasters claim they will be out of business because their bill will be $x (where x is a large inflammatory number) but I have yet to see a single webcaster show their math. Until they do I will remain skeptical of their claims. I'm surprised so many here take these numbers at face value.
Quite right. But the other expenses aren't new, nor are the brodcasters bitching about them. The broadcasters can pay the royalties any way they choose the same as all their other expenses. It is perfectly understandable that the webcasters don't want to take on any additional expenses, but they want to continue to use other's music. How is that fair?
I didn't reply to the AC, but of course no one is forcing the webcasters to attempt to make a profit, or even have a business model. If they want to continue operating at a loss and living off personal money and donations, fine this is simply an additional expense. An expense that they have known was coming for the last 4 years. No one can claim to have been blind sided by this.
As for those who choose not to make a profit, the rates for non-commercial broadcasters are half the rates for commercial broadcasters.
The FCC has a real Chicken and Egg problem. They mandated that all TV stations stop broadcasting analog signals by 2006. Then congress came along and said stations couldn't stop transmitting analog signals if fewer than 85% of the TV households were able to recieve the digital signal. 85% is an impossibly high number, and congress knows it. Cable TV and VCR's don't even have 85% market penetration so how could DTV have it in only 8 years?
Of course the FCC knows that any TV can view DTV signals with a converter -- they even put it in their FAQ but no one is going to buy a $200 piece of equipment to see what they are already watching down converted from DTV to analog. This also ignores whatever equipment people would need to actually recieve the DTV signal in the first place.
So, the FCC knows people aren't going to invest in the equipment until the analog signal goes away. And the analog signal won't go away until people have the equipment. The FCC has no choice but what they are doing. The only other alternatives would be to force consumers to buy converters (or give them away). The FCC already forced broadcasters to send the DTV signal, and they won't send both signals forever.
It will still take a long while for the tuners to get up tp the 85% level (even though that represents households and not sets) and I predict that number will eventually be lowered. Doing it this way will take much longer than the FCC originaly hoped, since it will first start with large TV's and then gradually all TV's, but it will happen eventually. And once the analog signal is turned off the number will climb rapidly. You can say now that you just won't buy a new TV, but eventually you'll need a DTV tuner to see anything at all. Much like the V-chip, DTV is something you will eventually have whether you want it or not.
I guess you haven't heard of a little Internet site called Ebay? They have lot's of CD's and you can set your own prices. If no one is willing to pay more, you win!
It's interesting to note that some of the auctions close at or above the retail price, indicating the cost is not the limiting factor, but the availability elsewhere.
Your calculation assumes 100 people listening continuously to 12 songs an hour, every hour for the last 4 years at $.0007/song/listener. Please give one example of such am Internet radio station.
On SomaFM's home page they claim to have calculated their annual royalties to be $176,541. Of course they don't show their math, but using the same 12 songs an hour figure we can arrive at 176,541/365/24/12/.0007 = 2,399. Wow! They have 2,400 people listening to their station 24 hours a day and they can't figure out how to make $180,000 a year off of it?
I have some suggestions for them:
Assuming each listener listens on average 2 hours a day, that's 28,800 total listeners. Each listener could cough up $7/year to pay the entire bill.
If the had 4 30 second commercials each hour they could charge $5/spot. That's a CPM of $.20. I'm sure they could find some sponsors who want to support Internet Radio for that much. If they are willing to increase the commercial loading they can lower the CPM.
They can play music from non-RIAA labels, and they can also deal directly with the labels for better rates. Regardless of what the other poster said if you don't play covered music you don't have to pay any royalties including the minimum.
As for the Monkey Radio guy, he went off the air because he didn't want to give *anything* to the RIAA, so it wouldn't matter to him what the rates were.
And to those bitching about the retroactivity of the rates, you should know that the reason they go back to 1998 is because that is when the decision was made to start charging the royalties and it has been known all this time that when the rates were finalized they would be retroactive to that date. Anyone who didn't want to pay no royalties no way no how could have gotten out then.
What if you're making a copy because you're worried that you are going to lose or damage the original? Fair use, right?
If the original is a computer program, right. If the original is a video tape, wrong. From USC, Title 17, Chapter 1:
Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include
Nothing in there about backup copies.
From Section 117:
Sec. 117. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
So the privilege of making backup copies only applies to computer programs (and possibly rare printed material in certain circumstances) but not videos, CDs, DVDs, etc. It would appear that you and Timothy are both mistaken.
Nobody is saying click-through licenses would be required. The question is should they be allowable under the official Open Source definition.
The OSI board doesn't force anyone to use a particular approved license on any given program. What they want to know is should they approved any license that requires assent before installing the associated program.
In my mind this doesn't violate any of the other requirements of the Open Source Definition so I think it really matters more what is in the license than how it is presented. The questioner seems to be acknowledged the fact that the receiving party has to agree to the license for it to be valid, so I don't really understand the problem. The GPL (and any other open source license) can be violated just like commercial licenses. Instead of assuming the user agrees to the license make them say so if you want the extra legal protection. You might need it if you wind up in court.
Don't kid yourself. Either you believe that a person has a right to acquire and spend wealth as they see fit (barring causing injury to others) or you believe society should tell them how to spend it.
If you believe that you have the right to tell anyone how they should spend any of their wealth, why would you stop until they've spent it all on "humanitarian" causes? Where do you draw the line? Are people allowed to be 50-60-70% wealthier than the median family? Once you start redistributing the wealth were would you draw the line?
This simply defies belief. These animals became extinct 50,000 years ago, yet except for scale they are just like the modern animals living in the same area today. I'm not a palentologist, but this just doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It isn't like we have mini-brontosauri wandering around the plains in the central US.
If nobody recharges the phones they make even more money.
They are suggesting a $5 rebate on the phone when yo turn it in for recycling. Most people who aren't going to recharge the phone will want the five bucks. If the new phone cost $32 to produce they are probably sold to wholesale near cost. Hop-On buys recycled phones back for $6 from retailers (they get an extra dollar as incentive to encourage recycling) and adds another $2 worth of minutes, $1 worth of packaging and sells it wholesale for $32.
Hop-On makes nothing the first time they sell the phone, but they make $23 each subsequent time it is sold. Not bad.
You can also bet extra minutes will sell for at least $.15/minute. So if you recharge they make $7.20 on each 60 minute phone card.
I would expect CNN to at least comment on the past history of the company. There is the possibility that Hop-On pulled a fast one with the FCC you know. An informed journalist might be a little more skeptical of their claims.
How could CNN print this crap without checking into the history of this company? Surely someone there remembers that this same company has pulled this scam before. Hop-On keeps issuing press releases every month or so touting how close they are to product release, and how succesful they are even though no one has seen one of their phones.
According to all of their press releases they will have CDMA, TDMA, and GSM phones. Quite an engineering and desgin feat for a company that employs 15 people.
I think the point is that in an emergency you could use this phone to make a call. If they have non-rechargeable batteries you should be able to store then for quite a while and have the phone ready in case of emergency. Maybe a 12 volt adapter just in case.
I am dubious of the utility of these phone for receiving calls. I'm sure Hop-On will simply have a bulk deal with the carrier where they get a bunch of accounts and rotate them through the phones as they get "recycled." I think that is the disposable part -- the account not the phone. The minutes are way to expensive to be recieving calls for the last guy who had your number.
One of the original markets for these was you could by a phone for $40 and stick it in your [car | first aid kit | boat | lake house] or anywhere you might like to have a phone in case of emergencies.
Slashdot Mirror
If basic cable in your area costs $80 you should move. For about $30 here you can get about a hundred cable channels, targeted towards all kinds of special interests. Without cable you would never have this kind of narrowcasting because it would be FAR too expensive for say, HGTV or Discovery to have affiliates in each market. And don't complain about paying for what you can get for free either. That really isn't the case with cable. The cable companies would love to drop network programing and open up space for a few more paying channels.
The cost of basic cable barely pays for the infrastructure that brings stations from all over the world into your house. Cable companies really only offer this level of service because they have to. The premium channels mostly don't have commercials, they make their money off of subscribers and syndication of their shows. All the other channels make money off of advertising and don't see a dime of your monthly bill. You are paying for the transport not the content.
You're not going to the moon in something that lands like an airpane, ever... no runways, gas stations, or air to hold the wings up.
Of course it's already happened. I just watched this documentary about the Shuttle landing on the moon. Where have you been?
The vehicle is hoisted to the top of a large hyperbole
It may be a hyperbola or a parabola, but it isn't a hyperbole.
Track point on a mouse:
l
l
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/tp/tpmouse.htm
We actually have these on some IBM workstations. It works like a 2 axis wheel.
Double Trackpoint:
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/user/tp/tpmouse.htm
Oops, minor problem
Their poem is not Haiku
How did that happen?
X-Habeas-SWE-1: winter into spring -- 5
X-Habeas-SWE-2: brightly anticipated -- 7
X-Habeas-SWE-3: like Habeas SWE (tm) -- 11?
I didn't misread what you wrote, but perhaps your point is unclear.
.sig would realize this as well.
You disagree with the OP contention that, "It is not the government's role to change people's behavior," refering to cell phone usage. You support your position with counter examples where the state does attempt through statute to change violent behavior. Ignoring for a moment that you have not demonstrated by any measure that these existing statutes are in fact beneficial to society you are placing this law in the same category: laws that attempt to change malfeasant behavior.
I assumed you were attempting to make your argument reductio ad ridiculum since clearly cell phone users do not have a societal ompact in the same class as those who commit violence. There is clearly a need for society to regulate physical harm caused to another person, but there is no clear need for society to protect your right to hear the movie.
I'm not completely satisfied that you have comprehended the point Goethe was making either.
I understand the point from the position of one desiring freedom, surrounded by those who "falsely believe they are free." The irony is that true freedom only exists with personal responsibility, something that is completly lacking in supporters of regulations like this. Goethe knew the cost of making people "free" to watch the play undisturbed was making others un-free to talk on their phones. I assumed that someone using the quotation as their
Goethe also said, "No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others."
I though you were a moron for comparing cell phones to rape and murder, and then I read your sig and realized it must be an attempt at irony. Of course talking on a cell phone in a theater causes bodily harm to no one, but you are incorrect that existing statute provides no relief. Theaters can make (almost)whatever rules they want ans kick out anyone who isn't following them.
The people who are using the law to force behavior on the minority always think it is a success when they are able to compel others to do their wishes. How do the 25% of the population that smokes feel about the ban?
The reason restaurants didn't go to full bans on their own was because they weren't willing to write off 25% of the population -- and the non-smokers dining with them -- unless everybody else was too. If it had been profitable they would have done it, but there wasn't a demand to be satisfed. You might not remember when the non-smoking sections of restaurants were the tiny area at the back near the kitchen. That changed because of a demand. There was no demand for full smoking ban except from those trying to control other's behavior. In this area the restaurant owners all fought a ban (that was passed anyway) because they were afraid it would hurt business.
Back on topic, this law is rediculous and will never get pass the first court test. If a theater owner wants to kick out cellphone users, or make them check their phones at the front then by all means, but the city has no authority to tell people that they must have good manners. Theater managers don't do this because it would be disruptive and inconvinient. What are they going to do when the ban is in place, have cops with ticket books standing in the aisles waiting to write tickets when a phone rings? What's next a law against talking to your neighbor during the show?
Besides that, armed security(army/police) on airports is nothing new. At least not in europe.
If we apply your analysis we will see that it is trivial to hijack a plane in Europe.
-dress in a fancy French Army costume. (pick up boys with it as well)
-wear a gun.
To a 5 franc an hour security person. "Sorry i forgot my army id".
I think you are an idiot.
If SomaFM had an average of 2,400 listeners around the clock they'd be paying around $20,000/month just for bandwidth. 2,400 streams X 16kb/sec (just a guess) = 38.4Mb/sec. Of course I don't think they were because I think their numbers are bullshit, but if they have been paying $240,000 a year for bandwidth they must be getting money from somewhere.
I have seen lots of webcasters claim they will be out of business because their bill will be $x (where x is a large inflammatory number) but I have yet to see a single webcaster show their math. Until they do I will remain skeptical of their claims. I'm surprised so many here take these numbers at face value.
Quite right. But the other expenses aren't new, nor are the brodcasters bitching about them. The broadcasters can pay the royalties any way they choose the same as all their other expenses. It is perfectly understandable that the webcasters don't want to take on any additional expenses, but they want to continue to use other's music. How is that fair?
I didn't reply to the AC, but of course no one is forcing the webcasters to attempt to make a profit, or even have a business model. If they want to continue operating at a loss and living off personal money and donations, fine this is simply an additional expense. An expense that they have known was coming for the last 4 years. No one can claim to have been blind sided by this.
As for those who choose not to make a profit, the rates for non-commercial broadcasters are half the rates for commercial broadcasters.
The FCC has a real Chicken and Egg problem. They mandated that all TV stations stop broadcasting analog signals by 2006. Then congress came along and said stations couldn't stop transmitting analog signals if fewer than 85% of the TV households were able to recieve the digital signal. 85% is an impossibly high number, and congress knows it. Cable TV and VCR's don't even have 85% market penetration so how could DTV have it in only 8 years?
Of course the FCC knows that any TV can view DTV signals with a converter -- they even put it in their FAQ but no one is going to buy a $200 piece of equipment to see what they are already watching down converted from DTV to analog. This also ignores whatever equipment people would need to actually recieve the DTV signal in the first place.
So, the FCC knows people aren't going to invest in the equipment until the analog signal goes away. And the analog signal won't go away until people have the equipment. The FCC has no choice but what they are doing. The only other alternatives would be to force consumers to buy converters (or give them away). The FCC already forced broadcasters to send the DTV signal, and they won't send both signals forever.
It will still take a long while for the tuners to get up tp the 85% level (even though that represents households and not sets) and I predict that number will eventually be lowered. Doing it this way will take much longer than the FCC originaly hoped, since it will first start with large TV's and then gradually all TV's, but it will happen eventually. And once the analog signal is turned off the number will climb rapidly. You can say now that you just won't buy a new TV, but eventually you'll need a DTV tuner to see anything at all. Much like the V-chip, DTV is something you will eventually have whether you want it or not.
I guess you haven't heard of a little Internet site called Ebay? They have lot's of CD's and you can set your own prices. If no one is willing to pay more, you win!
It's interesting to note that some of the auctions close at or above the retail price, indicating the cost is not the limiting factor, but the availability elsewhere.
On SomaFM's home page they claim to have calculated their annual royalties to be $176,541. Of course they don't show their math, but using the same 12 songs an hour figure we can arrive at 176,541/365/24/12/.0007 = 2,399. Wow! They have 2,400 people listening to their station 24 hours a day and they can't figure out how to make $180,000 a year off of it?
I have some suggestions for them:
If the had 4 30 second commercials each hour they could charge $5/spot. That's a CPM of $.20. I'm sure they could find some sponsors who want to support Internet Radio for that much. If they are willing to increase the commercial loading they can lower the CPM.
They can play music from non-RIAA labels, and they can also deal directly with the labels for better rates. Regardless of what the other poster said if you don't play covered music you don't have to pay any royalties including the minimum.
As for the Monkey Radio guy, he went off the air because he didn't want to give *anything* to the RIAA, so it wouldn't matter to him what the rates were.
And to those bitching about the retroactivity of the rates, you should know that the reason they go back to 1998 is because that is when the decision was made to start charging the royalties and it has been known all this time that when the rates were finalized they would be retroactive to that date. Anyone who didn't want to pay no royalties no way no how could have gotten out then.
If the original is a computer program, right. If the original is a video tape, wrong. From USC, Title 17, Chapter 1: Nothing in there about backup copies.
From Section 117: So the privilege of making backup copies only applies to computer programs (and possibly rare printed material in certain circumstances) but not videos, CDs, DVDs, etc. It would appear that you and Timothy are both mistaken.
According to the Department of State we have extradited at least 12 US citizens to Mexico between 1995 and 2000.
Nobody is saying click-through licenses would be required. The question is should they be allowable under the official Open Source definition.
The OSI board doesn't force anyone to use a particular approved license on any given program. What they want to know is should they approved any license that requires assent before installing the associated program.
In my mind this doesn't violate any of the other requirements of the Open Source Definition so I think it really matters more what is in the license than how it is presented. The questioner seems to be acknowledged the fact that the receiving party has to agree to the license for it to be valid, so I don't really understand the problem. The GPL (and any other open source license) can be violated just like commercial licenses. Instead of assuming the user agrees to the license make them say so if you want the extra legal protection. You might need it if you wind up in court.
Don't kid yourself. Either you believe that a person has a right to acquire and spend wealth as they see fit (barring causing injury to others) or you believe society should tell them how to spend it.
If you believe that you have the right to tell anyone how they should spend any of their wealth, why would you stop until they've spent it all on "humanitarian" causes? Where do you draw the line? Are people allowed to be 50-60-70% wealthier than the median family? Once you start redistributing the wealth were would you draw the line?
This simply defies belief. These animals became extinct 50,000 years ago, yet except for scale they are just like the modern animals living in the same area today. I'm not a palentologist, but this just doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It isn't like we have mini-brontosauri wandering around the plains in the central US.
I suggest you read Marx's Communist Manifesto. You'll love it!
If nobody recharges the phones they make even more money.
They are suggesting a $5 rebate on the phone when yo turn it in for recycling. Most people who aren't going to recharge the phone will want the five bucks.
If the new phone cost $32 to produce they are probably sold to wholesale near cost. Hop-On buys recycled phones back for $6 from retailers (they get an extra dollar as incentive to encourage recycling) and adds another $2 worth of minutes, $1 worth of packaging and sells it wholesale for $32.
Hop-On makes nothing the first time they sell the phone, but they make $23 each subsequent time it is sold. Not bad.
You can also bet extra minutes will sell for at least $.15/minute. So if you recharge they make $7.20 on each 60 minute phone card.
I would expect CNN to at least comment on the past history of the company. There is the possibility that Hop-On pulled a fast one with the FCC you know. An informed journalist might be a little more skeptical of their claims.
How could CNN print this crap without checking into the history of this company? Surely someone there remembers that this same company has pulled this scam before. Hop-On keeps issuing press releases every month or so touting how close they are to product release, and how succesful they are even though no one has seen one of their phones.
According to all of their press releases they will have CDMA, TDMA, and GSM phones. Quite an engineering and desgin feat for a company that employs 15 people.
I think the point is that in an emergency you could use this phone to make a call. If they have non-rechargeable batteries you should be able to store then for quite a while and have the phone ready in case of emergency. Maybe a 12 volt adapter just in case.
I am dubious of the utility of these phone for receiving calls. I'm sure Hop-On will simply have a bulk deal with the carrier where they get a bunch of accounts and rotate them through the phones as they get "recycled." I think that is the disposable part -- the account not the phone. The minutes are way to expensive to be recieving calls for the last guy who had your number.
Plus no LCD means no Caller ID.
I guess we should outlaw pay phones then.
One of the original markets for these was you could by a phone for $40 and stick it in your [car | first aid kit | boat | lake house] or anywhere you might like to have a phone in case of emergencies.