If what you're saying is true, then I stand corrected (still not at all a fan of a flat tax though). I seriously thought that only "signed" artists qualified for SOCAN compensation.
How would SOCAN know to pay an original artist who had to pay out the SOCAN fee for a hall rental, and how would they decide how to slice up the pie?
Assuming we had some cable made from Chuck Norris unobtanium, then the argument still holds on the counterweight, yes there is no more pull past some threshold where the centrifugal force is stronger than gravity, but the same thing happens to the cargo, so all would be in balance. In fact the second weight would be another lift platform going down, trading the potential energy from one platform to the other.
A space elevator which uses a counterbalance weight would lower the energy required dramatically. Once it's built and in place, then the only energy consumed is the energy lost to friction in the pulley at the top as the thing simultaneously raises the cargo, and lowers the ballast weight..
Every time this issue comes up, I bring up lightning strikes as a thunderhead moves across the cable. I didn't know about the even bigger source of power you bring up!
Canada has an official government body (Canadian Ratio and Television C(something)) that is a protectionist body put in place to legislate "Canadian Culture" and protect it from the mass media juggernaut next door. Now that anyone can publish easily and cheaply on the Internet, it really ought to be disbanded, but Bureaucracy is like Entropy, always increasing..
It's really welfare, where someone gets money for absolutely no reason, IE Celine Dion getting Socan fees from a public hall rental where an independent artist plays their own original music.
Actually I have, yes on copyright issues. I also attended a town hall meeting put on by our local LIberal MP on Bill-C61 (Canadian version of the DMCA). The Conservatives put it away for the last useless election, but are expected to bring it back even worse than before, and are in the middle of the top secret multinational talks instigated by the US on copyrights, internet filtering etc. Seriously, they are not the slightest bit interested in what citizens have to say about this. Big corporate mass media are realizing that distributed and social networking on the internet is taking away their power, so they seem to be going for it in a big way to try to turn back the clock, and they have the Canadian Conservative party eating out of their hands. In a time when citizens are watching the financial meltdown, nobody cares about these issues, and it's an easy sales pitch "Protect the starving artists!" (which it doesn't..)
Now you've done it! It's as if the executives of a thousand industries suddenly looked up with a gleam in their eyes!
Actually, without electricity, none of this would be possible, so I think they should just go right to the source and put a 100% blank tax on power lines, and give it to all Canadians! (umm.. wait..)
I'm also a Canadian on Slashdot, and a hobbyist musician.
I have no issue with Socan collecting royalties when someone plays Canadian commercial music for financial benefit.
What I don't support is the blanket coverage "guilty until.. nah, guilty" that they promote along with the CRIA.
For example: anytime someone books a local hall for rent, you have to pay a couple hundred bucks to Socan, even if you were playing your own originals, or perhaps you're a Beatles cover band etc.
They don't send these royalties to non Canadian artists, only to Canadian Artists with a "recognized commercial recording contract", who recorded and produced their music in Canada, proportional to the number of record sales said artist has, so Celine Dion rakes in lots more free cash, and little or no benefit to independent or self published artists. A similar thing happens to the tax on blank CD's etc.
This is utter socialist bullshit.
Considering nowadays people can create their own music for under $1000.00 and promote it on the internet for free, this welfare system for commercial artists is quite ridiculous.
The commercial recording industry is an obsolete and dying business model that should be taken off of the government provided life support, and they know it. It's a good time for them to try to get a new source of income from the government, while said government is in a shambles.
You tell me: Are Bush and friends far more wealthy after 8 years or not?
Specific example: Is Haliburton Inc. in charge of the oil pipelines in Iraq or not?
At a time when GW Bush ought to be impeached and sent to Guantanimo for a "vacation" you damn near elected a new Republican puppet (MCain) and the dumbest pit bull with lipstick.
Should the US Gov. throw billions at the rich fat cats who drove GM, Ford and Chrysler into the ground will low quality gas guzzlers that nobody wants,
Or fund new electric car companies that are leading the way to getting off of the OPEC ediction?
I don't think any of them should be handed a bailout, the best way forward would be to use short term (5 year?) tax incentives to encourage anyone to build fuel efficient cars.
Now that China has a growing market for personal automobiles, and are starting to make their own, you can bet they will heavily fund electric car R&D since they too don't want to be slaves to OPEC, and quite obviously have a severe pollution problem.
You really don't have a free market when the elected white house clan have clear and direct ties to the world oil cartels, including Opec, and you have the automaker's board of directors made up of the same people.
That is a logic design, not a design for the transistors used to create the logic.
There is a huge amount of research into building transistors down at the tiny scale they are at today, and these are not free and open source designs. IBM and Intel are at the forefront of this, both have massive patent portfolios.
There actually are a number of open source hardware projects around. Modern "FPGA" (field programmable gate array) devices are getting incredibly cheap, and can be used to design your own CPU. (opencores.org is one such site) It won't touch the latest state of the art, but hey..
Don't forget you have to start back at the Semiconductor level. You don't think the transistor designs in any current commercial chip are open source do you? While the goal of the FSF might be virtuous, in practice you can't be completely "IP" free unless you live in a cave in a grass skirt.
Bullshit. Those of us outside the feverish and patriotic US Propaganda machine could see that machine heavily at work.
Yes it was entirely plausible that Saddam had WMD, so yes it was expedient to send in inspectors. When said inspectors turned up absolutely nothing, that wasn't the answer America wanted to hear, since "Something had to be done about 911!".
The best summary of the Iraq war propoganda machine at work is here:
Why should you care? America is now worse than broke, and you spend trillions blowing up a country for no benefit to that country or to the average US citizen.
It's a high speed serialized digital stream, in 8b10b format, with HDCP (digital copy protection) added to make sure it's unusable.
Converting it to analog is NOT EASY. (IE not cheap).
Those cheap "HDMI to Component" adaptors around the net only work if the HDMI plug on your source device already puts out component analog on the HDMI port.
In none of the razor/inkjet/etc business models are there any industry "standards" - in fact they all randomly change hardware at almost every new product release to force you to switch to the next gen every so often.
Slashdot Mirror
If what you're saying is true, then I stand corrected (still not at all a fan of a flat tax though). I seriously thought that only "signed" artists qualified for SOCAN compensation.
How would SOCAN know to pay an original artist who had to pay out the SOCAN fee for a hall rental, and how would they decide how to slice up the pie?
Assuming we had some cable made from Chuck Norris unobtanium, then the argument still holds on the counterweight, yes there is no more pull past some threshold where the centrifugal force is stronger than gravity, but the same thing happens to the cargo, so all would be in balance. In fact the second weight would be another lift platform going down, trading the potential energy from one platform to the other.
A space elevator which uses a counterbalance weight would lower the energy required dramatically.
Once it's built and in place, then the only energy consumed is the energy lost to friction in the pulley at the top as the thing simultaneously raises the cargo, and lowers the ballast weight..
But- lightning will fry it..
Aha!
Every time this issue comes up, I bring up lightning strikes as a thunderhead moves across the cable. I didn't know about the even bigger source of power you bring up!
Canada has an official government body (Canadian Ratio and Television C(something)) that is a protectionist body put in place to legislate "Canadian Culture" and protect it from the mass media juggernaut next door.
Now that anyone can publish easily and cheaply on the Internet, it really ought to be disbanded, but Bureaucracy is like Entropy, always increasing..
Good point..
I guess I chose the wrong term.
It's really welfare, where someone gets money for absolutely no reason, IE Celine Dion getting Socan fees from a public hall rental where an independent artist plays their own original music.
Actually I have, yes on copyright issues. I also attended a town hall meeting put on by our local LIberal MP on Bill-C61 (Canadian version of the DMCA). The Conservatives put it away for the last useless election, but are expected to bring it back even worse than before, and are in the middle of the top secret multinational talks instigated by the US on copyrights, internet filtering etc.
Seriously, they are not the slightest bit interested in what citizens have to say about this.
Big corporate mass media are realizing that distributed and social networking on the internet is taking away their power, so they seem to be going for it in a big way to try to turn back the clock, and they have the Canadian Conservative party eating out of their hands.
In a time when citizens are watching the financial meltdown, nobody cares about these issues, and it's an easy sales pitch "Protect the starving artists!" (which it doesn't..)
Now you've done it!
It's as if the executives of a thousand industries suddenly looked up with a gleam in their eyes!
Actually, without electricity, none of this would be possible, so I think they should just go right to the source and put a 100% blank tax on power lines,
and give it to all Canadians! (umm.. wait..)
I'm also a Canadian on Slashdot, and a hobbyist musician.
I have no issue with Socan collecting royalties when someone plays Canadian commercial music for financial benefit.
What I don't support is the blanket coverage "guilty until .. nah, guilty" that they promote along with the CRIA.
For example: anytime someone books a local hall for rent, you have to pay a couple hundred bucks to Socan, even if you were playing your own originals, or perhaps you're a Beatles cover band etc.
They don't send these royalties to non Canadian artists, only to Canadian Artists with a "recognized commercial recording contract", who recorded and produced their music in Canada,
proportional to the number of record sales said artist has, so Celine Dion rakes in lots more free cash, and little or no benefit to independent or self published artists.
A similar thing happens to the tax on blank CD's etc.
This is utter socialist bullshit.
Considering nowadays people can create their own music for under $1000.00 and promote it on the internet for free, this welfare system for commercial artists is quite ridiculous.
The commercial recording industry is an obsolete and dying business model that should be taken off of the government provided life support, and they know it. It's a good time for them to try to get a new source of income from the government, while said government is in a shambles.
Yes, I think it would be wise for countries to use tax incentives for electric car companies, even ones whose business model is:
First build a high end sportscar model that only the rich can afford, then use that profit to develop cheaper mass production models.
I do not think any company should get a free handout to solve for their own incompetence, or obsolescence.
Good thing there isn't a terrorist flag in the moderation set!
You tell me: Are Bush and friends far more wealthy after 8 years or not?
Specific example:
Is Haliburton Inc. in charge of the oil pipelines in Iraq or not?
At a time when GW Bush ought to be impeached and sent to Guantanimo for a "vacation" you damn near elected a new Republican puppet (MCain) and the dumbest pit bull with lipstick.
I think they did alright by their own agenda.
Should the US Gov. throw billions at the rich fat cats who drove GM, Ford and Chrysler into the ground will low quality gas guzzlers that nobody wants,
Or fund new electric car companies that are leading the way to getting off of the OPEC ediction?
I don't think any of them should be handed a bailout, the best way forward would be to use short term (5 year?) tax incentives to encourage anyone to build fuel efficient cars.
Now that China has a growing market for personal automobiles, and are starting to make their own,
you can bet they will heavily fund electric car R&D since they too don't want to be slaves to OPEC, and quite obviously have a severe pollution problem.
Time to wake up and compete!
You really don't have a free market when the elected white house clan have clear and direct ties to the world oil cartels, including Opec,
and you have the automaker's board of directors made up of the same people.
That is a logic design, not a design for the transistors used to create the logic.
There is a huge amount of research into building transistors down at the tiny scale they are at today, and these are not free and open source designs. IBM and Intel are at the forefront of this, both have massive patent portfolios.
Damn good point. Hopefully not inevitable!
There actually are a number of open source hardware projects around. Modern "FPGA" (field programmable gate array) devices are getting incredibly cheap, and can be used to design your own CPU.
(opencores.org is one such site)
It won't touch the latest state of the art, but hey..
Don't forget you have to start back at the Semiconductor level. You don't think the transistor designs in any current commercial chip are open source do you?
While the goal of the FSF might be virtuous, in practice you can't be completely "IP" free unless you live in a cave in a grass skirt.
Bullshit.
Those of us outside the feverish and patriotic US Propaganda machine could see that machine heavily at work.
Yes it was entirely plausible that Saddam had WMD,
so yes it was expedient to send in inspectors.
When said inspectors turned up absolutely nothing,
that wasn't the answer America wanted to hear, since "Something had to be done about 911!".
The best summary of the Iraq war propoganda machine at work is here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html
Why should you care? America is now worse than broke, and you spend trillions blowing up a country for no benefit to that country or to the average US citizen.
Easy to say it's easy.
Details perhaps?
It's a high speed serialized digital stream, in 8b10b format, with HDCP (digital copy protection)
added to make sure it's unusable.
Converting it to analog is NOT EASY. (IE not cheap).
Those cheap "HDMI to Component" adaptors around the net only work if the HDMI plug on your source device already puts out component analog on the HDMI port.
By the light spectrum it emits.
All molecules emit a very precise combination (or individual frequency) of light frequencies when enough energy is added to them.
Think of different pure wavelengths of light as notes on a piano. Each unique atom and molecule produces it's own unique chord when energy is added.
Does it do true high def? 1080i or 1080p?
So, you're grabbing the analog VGA and converting it to HDTV broadcast, but you only support windows on the PC. (or Mac OS on Mac)..
WTF?
It "looks" like a hardware solution, why the hell would you care what OS is behind the VGA connector?
Some applet written in a non portable way?
I just want a box that can grab media files off a network server. Interface: Web browser.
Cue southpark sound track: "dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.."
They want customer lock in.
In none of the razor/inkjet/etc business models are there any industry "standards" - in fact they all randomly change hardware at almost every new product release to force you to switch to the next gen every so often.