And there are thousands of people that 'spent large amounts of money on a PS3 so that they can do one particular thing with it:' and that's use the OtherOS feature that Sony took away for no reason.
They had a reason: they didn't want to support it any more. This should have been obvious when Sony started to ship the PS3 Slim with no OtherOS support even before they removed it from older models.
Geohot, et. al. gave them just the opening they were looking for: an excuse to remove it from all older consoles via a firmware update.
If every company who "didn't want to support [some feature] anymore" simply issued an update removing it, then that would be a really bad thing.
What about those who purchased it expressly for the OtherOS Functionality? Anyone who purchased it for the OtherOS functionality (to have that AND be able to play games) was then legitimately wronged by Sony.
Not so, the idea of intelligent design predicates there being some being or beings with some form of sentience which did the designing. Obviously any being with the capability of "intelligently designing" the universe would be a deity regardless whether you would like to call it that or not.
If you stated that intelligent design does not predicate belief in a specific religion or the belief of a single deity over many, etc. you are correct. But in order for there to be "intelligent design" instead of evolution then there must have been a designer or designers. Without a sentience behind the design, then you are claiming that everything "came into being" spontaneously, only intelligently.
Actually, I'm saying the Republicans are wrong for not compromising on what to cut. The differences between the Democratic budget and the Republican budget, are not much different in the amount being cut, only where those cuts are happening. The Republicans insist on cutting Education, Medicare, Research, NPR, and Planned Parenthood, etc. While the Democrats' proposal chooses to cut Military spending, removing tax cuts, etc. They made concessions on cutting some of the things the Republicans want to cut, but they won't compromise at all on choosing different things that can be cut.
All budget measures must, constitutionally, come from the House. Thus the Senate Democrats cannot submit a budget.
The Democrats HAVE submitted a budget, including making some compromises to the Republicans. The Republicans insist they will not compromise on anything.
Blame exists on both sides, but right now the shutdown is being caused by a lack of willingness to compromise.
You do realize that the budget being argued over IS the FY2011 budget. Of course one might question the wisdom of arguing the budget of the current year when we're already 4 months in but eh.
Blame exists on both sides, not just the Democrats or Republicans.
As much as I enjoy Borderlands, the story is kinda non-existent beyond "go here, do this". I love the game, but calling it's "plot" and story line is being dishonest.
Actually, the largest factor that kept California from legalizing pot was propaganda from the medicinal marijuana outlets and the farmers who supply them. They don't want competition or the formation of a large "Big Pot" conglomerate or something.
That's the thing, they are only rare cases because it's rare that people try the strategy. Cory Doctorow noticed that the sales of his book skyrocketed after releasing it for download for free. This isn't a rare occurrence and in fact, happens over and over again. People want to support good writers and good artists, they don't want to support greedy publishers and managers. Provide a way for people to pay the writer or artist directly, and they'll do it. Show you understand the idea by releasing things so that the public can enjoy your work and people will pay you so that you can survive to create more. It's simple economics, people will give you money so you can write more so they can enjoy it. The amount of customers and money gained by releasing things, if you are well liked and good, outweighs the possible "lost sales" you will have because people are going to pirate it anyways.
Give them a reason to pay you (by being a good writer, by providing things that can't be pirated like autographs, books with personalized messages for a high cost, etc.) and people will pay you. Read up on the current state of self-publishing. Most writers nowadays can make more money by self-publishing a book digitally than by using a publishing house. That's without DRM or any draconian measures.
It's true that it doesn't work for everyone, but suing your customers doesn't get you more customers, piracy does.....
As has already been mentioned, what bout Time Warner having to remove channels from their iPad app? Or Music Studios threatening lawsuits against Amazon's new cloud storage application? These are two great applications that consumers want that might get completely canned due to greed on the part of MPAA and RIAA.
I know many musicians who make a perfectly good living purely using Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike Licenses because their fans DO have their libraries of free music and buy merchandise and go to their concerts to support them financially (I'm one of those fans of many of those artists.)
The concept works very well for those who use it. The question is more a matter of what about those artists who don't use this model? People want to listen to the artists and are willing to go in droves to pay for concerts and merchandise. Embrace the fact that many of these people are going to download the music as a marketing tactic. I've seen musicians go from being completely nobody to gaining tens of thousands or even millions of fans while sharing their music. They make money in various ways, by merchandise, concerts, even having people donate money towards an album project in return for special things like having your name listed on the album or autographed copies, or even having a verbal thanks on the album itself, etc.
So yea, 'copyleft for music' actually works pretty damn well for those who try it.
uhm, motor vehicles are considered possessions and personal property and are taxed anyways. In addition, real estate is considered personal property (why else do you think people can put up "no trespassing" signs on their property or otherwise restrict entry to their land? Something being a "private property" or "possession" does not invalidate the ability to tax it.
You misread what I said. In 1932 the tax rate jumped from roughly 25% to roughly 63% and continued to rise until it hit roughly 90%. This is one of the factors that helped pull the country out of the recession after the Great Depression and prevented it from just collapsing again. After that, with unemployment having been lowered, years it was decided that we were taxing the wealthy too much and that lowering their tax burden would decrease unemployment.This is a new set of numbers now, i'm not saying that the drop in the tax rate in 1964 gives relatable data to unemployment in 1936.
What I am saying, is that lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest individuals corresponded with a rise in unemployment. http://www.bls.gov/cps/prev_yrs.htm
1964 we dropped the tax rate from 91 to 77, and all the way through 1980 it went down and stabilized around 70. Unemployment in 1964, according to the beaureu of labor statistics, was roughly 5.2%. It went down a little bit as the tax rate dropped, and then around 1975 spiked up. So 10 years after lowering the tax rates, and unemployment started to rise quickly (jumping from 5.4 in 1974 to 8.5 in 1975. Obviously other factors are involved).
Notice that after tax rates were at their lowest for "trickle down economics" in 1988, 89, 90. (28%) a decreasing unemployment turned around and started increasing again 1983 = 9.3%, 1985 = 7.2%, 1988 = 5.5% , 1990 = 5.6%, 1991 = 6.8% , 1992 = 7.5%.
Looking at the numbers, there's no historical or economic basis to claim that lowering the taxes on the wealthy will increase jobs. As I said before, increasing the wealthy taxes is the way to go. Either it'll only increase revenue and help the deficit having no effect on jobs, or it will allow the creation of more jobs. Lowering the taxes just has them save and concentrate their wealth.
As for corporate flight, what we need to do is close the loopholes that companies are using to get around paying their taxes. When GE's total tax bill is $0 and ends up with a tax benefit of over $3 billion, we have some serious problems. There's no way to really stop a company from leaving instead of paying taxes except by giving benefits for paying taxes or even just for being in that location. Either that or standardize more things across the country so leaving won't save them anything and they'll just have to pay. Either way, something needs to be done, and the answer is not tax cuts.
Let's see, last time we had a depression and recession, it was fixed by raising the taxes on the wealthy (they went up over 75%!!) and then they decided we needed more jobs (despite having lowered unemployment) so we lowered the taxes on the wealthy and businesses considerably. Yet unemployment continued to rise and it didn't change much.
Obviously there are other factors involved here, but it's fairly obvious based on history that taxing the wealthy more will either do nothing or will help. Lowering the taxes on them doesn't create jobs they just concentrate their wealth among themselves. Trickle down economics just doesn't work.
Apple fought tooth an nail trying to prevent Jailbreaking being a fair use exception so that they could sue people for copyright infringement for jailbreaking.
Apple pioneers the walled garden approach to locking the end user out of their own hardware.
Apple prefers patents and royalties to open source and freedom.
I'm sorry, how are they "one of the better corporate citizens when it comes to open source and the end customer"?
Companies such as Red Hat have proven you completely wrong. It seems that the difference is just in the business model, instead of selling a piece of software, you can sell a service such as support or customization etc. It seems the only way that the GPL ruins "any mechanism for monetizing the software" is if you think that 'selling' a copy of the software itself is the only way to monetize it.
Slashdot Mirror
They had a reason: they didn't want to support it any more. This should have been obvious when Sony started to ship the PS3 Slim with no OtherOS support even before they removed it from older models.
Geohot, et. al. gave them just the opening they were looking for: an excuse to remove it from all older consoles via a firmware update.
If every company who "didn't want to support [some feature] anymore" simply issued an update removing it, then that would be a really bad thing.
What about those who purchased it expressly for the OtherOS Functionality? Anyone who purchased it for the OtherOS functionality (to have that AND be able to play games) was then legitimately wronged by Sony.
Which is why copyright starting from date of publication works.
Encrypted files should not be a red flag of anything.
Intelligent design does not predicate a deity
Not so, the idea of intelligent design predicates there being some being or beings with some form of sentience which did the designing. Obviously any being with the capability of "intelligently designing" the universe would be a deity regardless whether you would like to call it that or not.
If you stated that intelligent design does not predicate belief in a specific religion or the belief of a single deity over many, etc. you are correct. But in order for there to be "intelligent design" instead of evolution then there must have been a designer or designers. Without a sentience behind the design, then you are claiming that everything "came into being" spontaneously, only intelligently.
Actually, I'm saying the Republicans are wrong for not compromising on what to cut. The differences between the Democratic budget and the Republican budget, are not much different in the amount being cut, only where those cuts are happening. The Republicans insist on cutting Education, Medicare, Research, NPR, and Planned Parenthood, etc. While the Democrats' proposal chooses to cut Military spending, removing tax cuts, etc. They made concessions on cutting some of the things the Republicans want to cut, but they won't compromise at all on choosing different things that can be cut.
Ah yes. So that means that it makes even less sense that with 5 months left in the Fiscal Year, we're still arguing about the current year's budget...
Uhm, wow.
Blame exists on both sides, but right now the shutdown is being caused by a lack of willingness to compromise.
You do realize that the budget being argued over IS the FY2011 budget. Of course one might question the wisdom of arguing the budget of the current year when we're already 4 months in but eh.
Blame exists on both sides, not just the Democrats or Republicans.
As much as I enjoy Borderlands, the story is kinda non-existent beyond "go here, do this". I love the game, but calling it's "plot" and story line is being dishonest.
Or maybe you just sweat and since the sweat is contained in your clothes.....
or just got true and false mixed up. C language logical or will terminate early if the first term evaluates to true.
Actually, the largest factor that kept California from legalizing pot was propaganda from the medicinal marijuana outlets and the farmers who supply them. They don't want competition or the formation of a large "Big Pot" conglomerate or something.
That's the thing, they are only rare cases because it's rare that people try the strategy. Cory Doctorow noticed that the sales of his book skyrocketed after releasing it for download for free. This isn't a rare occurrence and in fact, happens over and over again. People want to support good writers and good artists, they don't want to support greedy publishers and managers. Provide a way for people to pay the writer or artist directly, and they'll do it. Show you understand the idea by releasing things so that the public can enjoy your work and people will pay you so that you can survive to create more. It's simple economics, people will give you money so you can write more so they can enjoy it. The amount of customers and money gained by releasing things, if you are well liked and good, outweighs the possible "lost sales" you will have because people are going to pirate it anyways.
Give them a reason to pay you (by being a good writer, by providing things that can't be pirated like autographs, books with personalized messages for a high cost, etc.) and people will pay you. Read up on the current state of self-publishing. Most writers nowadays can make more money by self-publishing a book digitally than by using a publishing house. That's without DRM or any draconian measures.
It's true that it doesn't work for everyone, but suing your customers doesn't get you more customers, piracy does.....
As has already been mentioned, what bout Time Warner having to remove channels from their iPad app? Or Music Studios threatening lawsuits against Amazon's new cloud storage application? These are two great applications that consumers want that might get completely canned due to greed on the part of MPAA and RIAA.
Sure there would, they would just first grant themselves the ability to grant those favors in return for the money.....oh, wait...
I know many musicians who make a perfectly good living purely using Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike Licenses because their fans DO have their libraries of free music and buy merchandise and go to their concerts to support them financially (I'm one of those fans of many of those artists.)
The concept works very well for those who use it. The question is more a matter of what about those artists who don't use this model? People want to listen to the artists and are willing to go in droves to pay for concerts and merchandise. Embrace the fact that many of these people are going to download the music as a marketing tactic. I've seen musicians go from being completely nobody to gaining tens of thousands or even millions of fans while sharing their music. They make money in various ways, by merchandise, concerts, even having people donate money towards an album project in return for special things like having your name listed on the album or autographed copies, or even having a verbal thanks on the album itself, etc.
So yea, 'copyleft for music' actually works pretty damn well for those who try it.
uhm, motor vehicles are considered possessions and personal property and are taxed anyways. In addition, real estate is considered personal property (why else do you think people can put up "no trespassing" signs on their property or otherwise restrict entry to their land? Something being a "private property" or "possession" does not invalidate the ability to tax it.
I'll see your "fire on the Internet" and raise you "fire in a crowded theatre".
and I will raise it to "fire for various uses in a consumer environment"
I will raise it to "Orangish-Red fire with a bit of blue in the middle".
You misread what I said. In 1932 the tax rate jumped from roughly 25% to roughly 63% and continued to rise until it hit roughly 90%. This is one of the factors that helped pull the country out of the recession after the Great Depression and prevented it from just collapsing again. After that, with unemployment having been lowered, years it was decided that we were taxing the wealthy too much and that lowering their tax burden would decrease unemployment.This is a new set of numbers now, i'm not saying that the drop in the tax rate in 1964 gives relatable data to unemployment in 1936.
What I am saying, is that lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest individuals corresponded with a rise in unemployment. http://www.bls.gov/cps/prev_yrs.htm
1964 we dropped the tax rate from 91 to 77, and all the way through 1980 it went down and stabilized around 70. Unemployment in 1964, according to the beaureu of labor statistics, was roughly 5.2%. It went down a little bit as the tax rate dropped, and then around 1975 spiked up. So 10 years after lowering the tax rates, and unemployment started to rise quickly (jumping from 5.4 in 1974 to 8.5 in 1975. Obviously other factors are involved).
Notice that after tax rates were at their lowest for "trickle down economics" in 1988, 89, 90. (28%) a decreasing unemployment turned around and started increasing again 1983 = 9.3%, 1985 = 7.2%, 1988 = 5.5% , 1990 = 5.6%, 1991 = 6.8% , 1992 = 7.5%.
Looking at the numbers, there's no historical or economic basis to claim that lowering the taxes on the wealthy will increase jobs. As I said before, increasing the wealthy taxes is the way to go. Either it'll only increase revenue and help the deficit having no effect on jobs, or it will allow the creation of more jobs. Lowering the taxes just has them save and concentrate their wealth.
As for corporate flight, what we need to do is close the loopholes that companies are using to get around paying their taxes. When GE's total tax bill is $0 and ends up with a tax benefit of over $3 billion, we have some serious problems. There's no way to really stop a company from leaving instead of paying taxes except by giving benefits for paying taxes or even just for being in that location. Either that or standardize more things across the country so leaving won't save them anything and they'll just have to pay. Either way, something needs to be done, and the answer is not tax cuts.
Let's see, last time we had a depression and recession, it was fixed by raising the taxes on the wealthy (they went up over 75%!!) and then they decided we needed more jobs (despite having lowered unemployment) so we lowered the taxes on the wealthy and businesses considerably. Yet unemployment continued to rise and it didn't change much.
Obviously there are other factors involved here, but it's fairly obvious based on history that taxing the wealthy more will either do nothing or will help. Lowering the taxes on them doesn't create jobs they just concentrate their wealth among themselves. Trickle down economics just doesn't work.
It would have been better if they hadn't removed tons of beneficial things for the sake of "compromise" and "bipartisanship"
Apple fought tooth an nail trying to prevent Jailbreaking being a fair use exception so that they could sue people for copyright infringement for jailbreaking.
Apple pioneers the walled garden approach to locking the end user out of their own hardware.
Apple prefers patents and royalties to open source and freedom.
I'm sorry, how are they "one of the better corporate citizens when it comes to open source and the end customer"?
Companies such as Red Hat have proven you completely wrong. It seems that the difference is just in the business model, instead of selling a piece of software, you can sell a service such as support or customization etc. It seems the only way that the GPL ruins "any mechanism for monetizing the software" is if you think that 'selling' a copy of the software itself is the only way to monetize it.
The celery was great though. Not many people can pull off a decorative vegetable.