Thanks. Yes, I was conflating the two. They were both regulated, but the latter "owned or financed by gov't" comment was related to just passenger.
Freight transport was cut loose right after being throttled near death, and is making a comeback.
I'd also like to see trucking deregulated, particularly with aspect to the interstate routing certificates. Can't remember what those are called nowadays, and I'm not sure they're as comprehensive as they were in the 70's, but they were pretty bad.
Cable TV: cities only allow one cable company to string lines. No competition. Deregulate price, and the predictable happens.
Satellite is now sufficiently mature and cheap enough to compete with cable TV. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Airlines: price deregulated, yes, but FAA restrictions remained in place, along with commerce regulations. As another poster noted, price did fall, but the regulation is still a killer.
Another poster noted that California's deregulation caused massive blackouts and increases in price. I would like to note that deregulation is not necessarily "free market." The deregulation efforts in CA were doomed from the beginning.
As this is a different topic, I started another thread.
You note that the US "corporate welfare system" (and the more you learn about it, the worse it smells) caused problems with our wireless networks, and you note that we are in large part monopoly-controlled.
Why, then, do you say "The Market" is to blame?
Or are you referring to "The Market" as what politicians call "free trade" but isn't?
Because if that's your point I'm 100% behind you.
If you want to analyze free market failure, you probably don't want to look at any time in the past 100 years in the US. If you want to make the argument that the current US system is the natural product of a free-market economy, then I'd be interested to hear that.
it was lack of government foresight that allowed the auto and tire industries to shut down rail-based public transit.
Rail trains were (and, I believe, still are) price regulated by the government. When the highway system became viable for shipping goods, the price of rail transport for those goods was higher.
The railroad commission came about because farmers were complaining about the cost of short-haul shipping with trains. In short, because there was usually only one track between cities, you paid a high price to ship from city to city, but if you wished to go several cities over, you had your choice of train companies, and they would cut you a much better deal.
Well, when the grassroots movement to "solve the price discrepancy" voted, the new president (can't remember right now) appointed the railroad commission, composed of...railroad men. Because, of course, they knew the system best.
The solution to the problem was a new regulation: the cost of a train ticket must be the sum of the component journeys - ie no deal cutting.
Basically, the farmers got hustled.
The railroad commission continued to work, and during its reign the number of train companies dropped dramatically. Regulations were created to keep out small-time operators, and make competition with the trains expensive.
So when trucking came along, it decimated the trains. The very idea that a long-haul truck could beat the price of a train is ludicrous, however that was the case.
The price on trucking has since gone up, but that's another story.
The auto and tire industries were able to shut down rail-based public transit because they were being fed a lot of money from the trucking industry, as everyone who could moved from rail to truck.
There was a huge boom back then in trucking. Many, many people bought rigs to haul goods because there was so much demand. All you had to do was charge less than the train companies.
In the US, pretty much the only trains left in the country are owned and operated by the government, or with massive federal subsidies.
I wouldn't call this a market failure so much as the logical consequence of fascism.
One of the reasons drugs cost so much is because of all the hoops you have to jump through to get a new drug approved.
To add on to that and clarify: it's not that the pharmas tack on the cost of that process to the drug so much as there is no competition because there are not many emerging companies that can:
Develop a drug
Spend the amount of money it takes to get the drug approved
Spend the amount of money it takes to get the drug marketed
Have the influence/lobbying power to make sure none of the big boys "cuts off your air supply"
Oh yeah, and survive for 15 years without any money coming in on this Very Expensive Project.
So we've created an artificial shortage, leading to not-so-artificial oligopoly, and sky-high prices.
Oh, and you might want to throw in the prescription requirement as an additional cost factor.
More than that, parrot gives people the ability to quickly implement experimental or highly specific languages.
Want a language custom built for the analysis that your lab boys do? Want to use some old code from another language? You can do that quite quickly. Your compiler is written in Perl (or whatever you want), targeting Parrot.
The speed with which people have been able to implement new languages is astounding (the python-on-parrot project made huge strides in a week or so).
And since these languages will eventually start out with fully-functional libraries (better than most languages will ever get, in fact: everything Perl has to provide, and possibly Python and Ruby later), they will be usable.
I think Parrot will see more experimentation with languages than we've seen yet. And that will be a good thing.
How does one test a program like this that's more acurate the humans?
Simple, have someone classify their own mail for a month, and then have another person go over that person's decisions marking them correct or incorrect. Do the same for the filter.
If the probability that a person will incorrectly classify an email as spam is 10%, the probability that two people would do so is 10% of 10%. In other words: 1%.
There are going to be mistakes. If you have a large enough sample population and checking crew, you're *going* to get errors, and you're *going* to find (most) of them.
If I were doing the experiment, I'd use two checkers, minimum, just to be sure. Probably three, if I could round up another person.
Calling this a correction is condescending. I merely posed it as an option, because if I said "free software" it means different things to different people. Is BSD free software? I think it is. Maybe it's not to you.
Thanks for the correction, I'll watch my tongue in the future.
You make an interesting point about the BSD license (how it's an inclusive license), and I'll have to think about it some more.
Also, something interesting: Shakespeare's original works are in the public domain, but the collections of them and assemblages of them are copyrighted and still under copyright. Almost all of the printed copies available are "translations" from his scattered works.
Yet most people would say that they are free. You have to pay to reproduce them, but not to perform them (IIRC), and not to base works off of them. Makes an interesting point about what we consider freedom to be when it comes to a work.
I differ because it appears that you're saying "In the absence of people not harming each other, crime is omnipresent."
I'd hoped to make clear that without people harming each other, there is no crime (or no investigable crime. I'm more fond of the former)
I think privacy extends a bit farther than the law and exists in a realm beyond written law. Privacy is something to be expected, not defended.
I too believe that privacy is a natural state, and deviation from that should require justification. However, that does not make a very convincing argument for someone who does not value privacy, which is the goal of the previous post.
In addition, it could be argued that if privacy is a normal, so is politeness. The reason you should comply with certain questions is because the policeman is being nice, and it causes no harm to you. The previous argument might stand as a brief sketching of an argument against that.
One of the large problems we face in America is differing values, hence different assumptions, but as we all are under one system of justice, we have to have our assumptions interact somehow, which means rational arguments for things.
To continue along your idea of "privacy is something to be expected, not defended," I would say that because we have different assumptions, we should leave off where it is not necessary, so as not to step on too many people's values.
Unfortuantely, "because you're trampling on people's ideas of right and wrong so as to enforce your own and deny them the choice" is not a very convincing argument to most, and often leads to things like liquor store hour laws and stifling regulation, as people will say "it's available to you, what more do you want?"
I think I have a moderately good defense of privacy: the foundation of our criminal code is based on external acts, that is acts against another person or entity. The proof for an external act would then be public material, or material provided ("made public") by the harmed party. Therefore, privacy is a restriction on the encroachment of law: if you can't be shown to be doing it, you can't be convicted of it. Thus privacy is a good thing can be derived from the idea that "if you didn't harm another, it's not a crime"
Another way to say all this is: If you didn't hurt anyone, you didn't commit a crime. If you did commit a crime, the person hurt (or a person witnessing or affected) would come forward with evidence: you don't have to prove you didn't do it. Privacy is your right to an accuser.
Many of the problems we've had in recent years with the law have been 1) "victimless crimes" or "societying-wronging" (drugs are the classic example), and 2) where the state is the accuser.
Both of these are in part because there is no concrete person wronged, so it's difficult to defend yourself. Even worse is when the state is the accuser, because the state is An Authority: what they say is true. Very hard to prove otherwise, and the individual clerks process so much information each day that things are just assumed to be true because they're written: no one remembers writing them.
These fears are often dismissed as being kafka-esque, but anyone who has ever delt with a large corporation that has a "it's written so it must be true" problem can understand what the problem is. Now imagine where the result is not paying an extra $100, but having 5 years of your life taken away. High stakes. And beaurocracies don't get any better when they're played at those stakes.
That's a basic defense of privacy. I'm still struggling with the "ihre papieren, bitte" (sic?).
If 10% of the people who want java open donated 10% of the increased usefulness of java being open to Sun, java would be bought into the public domain in no time. So, don't blame Sun.
First off, the desire is not for it to be public domain, it is for it to be Free as in speech. There is a difference. (probably just a slip, but it needs correcting).
Secondly, your basic Linux-based and BSD-based platforms are not designed to meet a spec that is controlled by a third party, though they may incorporate several of those specs (ACPI, OpenGL, etc, etc).
Keep in mind that whatever Sun releases as Java is Java. Unless the open source group were involved in the formulation of the next spec, they would be constantly chasing, and that's not the key to success.
In my opinion, that is the major block, and that is what ESR was talking about.
One of the reasons that the FCC is able to regulate broadcast television and radio is because (or so the argument goes) the amount of spectrum is finite, unlike the printing press.
If we had a network connection provided to every home by utilities, we would once again have a limited spectrum, hence regulatable by the FCC for content.
That doesn't give me warm fuzzies.
Secondly, if this network connection is provided by this project, would it be illegal to compete with it? That's how most government services and utilities work: you cannot compete with them. It's illegal.
Unless another network can roll fiber to your home, it's not competition. (yes, I'm aware that currently we don't have competition on cable, electricity, or phone lines under that definition).
Fine but there is no mechanism for me to tell the studios or stations what I want until after the fact. Then I presumably get the choice of how much am I prepared to pay to keep Buffy on air and the benefits of intermediation rapidly become apparent. I'll just watch whatever comes on and if I don't like it I'll do something else.
I'm with you on the intermediation bit. I view pay channels as a typical "feel." Paying for a channel is like saying "more like this." It's not exact ("keep this specific show going"), but I think in many cases it's exactly what we want: "go find me shows like this."
I think it's a crude approximation of what we might see in the future: buy specific content, and/or buy packages. It gets us much closer to the agent mentality for media.
As for "simplistic," yes. It is. I was trying to get across the idea that direct payment tends to get you more of what you want, rather than what the advertisers want. You are right, however, in that advertisers can easily pay to keep a show going, whereas the individual customer would be hard-pressed to do so.
You do have the right idea when it comes to dealing with broadcast television, though: "I'll just watch whatever comes on and if I don't like it I'll do something else." Good idea.
You Are The Product
on
WB Cancels Angel
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Perhaps some of you have heard the logic that goes along the lines of:
In a buyer/seller arrangement, the buyer can make demands upon the seller. After all, the buyer can always just not buy the product. The seller will usually pander to the buyer as long as the seller gets the price that he wants. Note the term price. When you watch network television, you aren't paying a dime to the network. It's free. That means that you're not the buyer.
Who does pay money? Advertisers. They are the buyer, the network is the seller. You? You're the product.
This cancellation should be a good demonstration of this proposition: the buyer wants teenage eyes watching the TV, so the seller will arrrange for shows that will get as many teenagers as possible to watch it. So there we are: "your" show gets cancelled, you non-teenager, you. In turn they put on something that is likely to capture the (perceived) average teenager.
This isn't a cynical post, it's just a working through of logic, and a possible solution: if you want to watch the shows you want to watch, pay for them.
DVD sales potential has changed some of the thinking of the networks, but still the best way to pay for your shows is directly, through pay channels: HBO, Showtime, etc, etc.
I like being a customer (or a collaborator, see open source). It's why I'm willing to pay for good work. Try being a customer, you'll get what you want more often.
I agree. Rather than let the court system take care of "misleading advertising" claims, we should establish laws to enable people to take companies to court to take care of "misleading advertising" claims.
Or, of course, we could set up extra-judicial systems for determining what networking companies can say in advertising, taking into account ease of understanding by a non-technical population, accuracy, completeness of information, and notifications of exemption[1]. Look how much car dealership advertising has been improved by such measures!
[1] - of course, this system will have to get expert advice, which major networking companies would be all too happy to provide.
This is almost exactly how it works on eBay. The person with the highest bid wins the item for a price a small increment higher than the second highest bid. The difference is trifling.
The bids are sealed in the second-highest auction, unlike eBay. Makes a big difference.
I just read the article (skimmed bits). They managed to determine that people don't like to release embarrasing information or break societal taboos.
This info might actually be interesting to people who say "What's the problem with the government being able to do this research?" My mother is a classic example of this. The fact is that she feels she has nothing to hide. Why? Because she feels normal. Inconspicuous.
Before, I kept trying to explain that "some people do have something to hide, and it might not necessarily be harmful." This argument was totally ineffective.
This suggests another way to explain these things to people: you go to your girlfriend's house for thanksgiving to meet the family, and everybody is great. Only problem is the huge migrane headache you came with, but you're coping and really having a wonderful time in spite of that, when suddenly the conversation turns to politics: her entire family is full of Limbaugh-Loving, "Liberal"-hating Born-Again Republicans. Now, some of your friends are Republicans, and that's okay: you have good conversations with them. You get the feeling after the 5th time her father refers to "those damned liberals who want to let every last sodomist destroy marriage" that this would NOT be a good time to discuss things. Now what's the problem with your girlfriend telling the whole family that they have an excellent debate candidate sitting right here!
After all, you have nothing to hide.
This research shows that it has a lot more to do with the situation you're in (do you know the people, do you care about how they feel, do you consider yourself negatively different from the group?) than what the secret is and how you feel about privacy in general.
Any info or pointers you could give me on the difference between (modern, I'm assuming) European socialism, and classical or American socialism? I'm interested to know what you mean exactly.
And I'm still working on at least classifying the types and specifics of what the ideology/attitude is. Any ideas?
Open Source is like socialism, you just help out where you can, and share what you got. If people don't take it, then it's their loss:) At least it was useful for myself, and it might be useful for others.
I've been struggling with how to characterize Open Source development for a while now, so maybe you can help me out.
I don't think it's like socialism, as you do not do work "for the good of the community," you do it for yourself, and then contribute it to the community. It's not just a minor word issue: consider how code development under OSS is often characterized as "scratching an itch."
Also, there's no government in charge of allocating or re-allocating resources.
And it's not really a cooperative, either: if one group really slacks off we don't suffer. Things might not go forward as fast, but we don't depend on others for immediate survival.
It's really more of a network of loose relationships and an attitude. Maybe "philanthropic anarchy"?
The RIAA and the MPAA are groups that do not sell anything or own any media. An antitrust exemption is not for the members of the **AA, but for the organization itself.
What an anti-trust exemption would mean is that all producers could be members without setting off alarm bells at the DOJ.
That's what "market realities" refers to.
Mind you, this entire argument neglects "reality realities" such as "when the group is exempt, wouldn't the RIAA/MPAA members channel any anti-competitive behavior through their perspective groups?" Amongst others.
I imagine this is the argument you're going to hear from your senators in that letter you get back from them telling you they think they did the right thing. Because protecting artists is important.
Come on guys, lets keep the standards high, and use solid arguments in place of trying to sling mud at the RIAA.
Hear, hear. I'm with you all the way.
Of course, there is one problem. You see, I was a philosophy major in college, and it imbued me with a strong distaste for sophistry. So I attempted to stop using sophist arguments, such as the "for the children."
Only problem was that after I stopped, I noticed that people stopped listening to my arguments. Completely.
Mind you, I wasn't using arguments along the lines of "you're using extrinsic nature to infer and intrinsic property in pro-forma action." It was normal stuff.
The problem is that people are so used to sophistry that they expect --- nay demand --- it.
If you use a normal argument, they'll play softball for the opposed group ("well, they're trying their best"), and then get offended as if you were personally attacking them when you refute their defenses.
Of course, I'm willing to admit that I could be the problem, but I am pretty gentle when it comes to debate and discussion.
So, if I'm talking to Commoners, these days I'll throw in a little hyperbole, sophistry, and indecency at the beginning to as to get their attention, and then present the good arguments.
Damned shame, really.
(Though I do try to use less and less of the trash the more often I talk to people).
Here's the reason that the major labels will not change until a huge disaster occurs:
If your company is huge, in order to have a large change in the structure of your business, you have to draw up some cost plans. How much it would cost to change, what the benefit will be if you do, and what the cost will be if you don't. That way you can make an informed decision. This part of the process is completely rational (well, usually).
The problem comes when the business plan is reviewed. Trying to convince people that their current business plan is going to fail drastically and they need to change everything and (this is the important part) the new plan will make less money than they're making right now, well...they're going to be a bit skeptical.
At some level, the directors of the major labels either
Really believe that the current business plan is and will be successful.
Are willing to ride it out until they have to change.
From a purely fiscal perspective, I can't really blame 2. Why convert over to a lower-income system until you have to?
Though being first does have its perks. The goodwill of artists and ease of recruitment isn't a huge goal, though: all the major names are tied up in contracts while their liver is being eaten. You're not getting them from the other labels except for by buying them from the labels, and you wouldn't be able to make money with their price and your new business model.
Also consider: the amount of change required to change a major label to artist- and consumer-friendly would be on the order of change required for IBM. You have an entire corporate culture devoted to screwing artists and consumers and getting rewarded for it.
So, have they lost touch with their markets and reality? Yes, probably. But they're not going to change for a while.
they'll be totally prepared and calmly waiting for when the next megalomaniac in charge gets the idea to finally implement the Big Brother society that will be the end of democracy.
On the contrary: I think it will be the continuation of democracy.
We're thinking the same way: if you pollute the electorate enough to where freedom isn't what they want, then so it will be.
Consider: if you dismantled the ruling powers in China today and gave everyone there 18 or older a vote, what they vote for?
My guess is that they'd vote in another communist-like[1] regime within 5 years.
Maybe my environment has brainwashed me to think that that's a bad thing.
[1] - communist-talking, at least. I'm not really sure what you'd call the PRoC.
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Thanks. Yes, I was conflating the two. They were both regulated, but the latter "owned or financed by gov't" comment was related to just passenger.
Freight transport was cut loose right after being throttled near death, and is making a comeback.
I'd also like to see trucking deregulated, particularly with aspect to the interstate routing certificates. Can't remember what those are called nowadays, and I'm not sure they're as comprehensive as they were in the 70's, but they were pretty bad.
Cable TV: cities only allow one cable company to string lines. No competition. Deregulate price, and the predictable happens.
Satellite is now sufficiently mature and cheap enough to compete with cable TV. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Airlines: price deregulated, yes, but FAA restrictions remained in place, along with commerce regulations. As another poster noted, price did fall, but the regulation is still a killer.
Another poster noted that California's deregulation caused massive blackouts and increases in price. I would like to note that deregulation is not necessarily "free market." The deregulation efforts in CA were doomed from the beginning.
If you'd like to see a pretty good discussion of what happened from a free-market perspective, see: why the cost went up, and why it wasn't deregulation.
If you're in the mood for something meatier, try Borenstein and Bushnell's article in Regulation magazine, summer 2000.
Of course, that is Cato, and they are pro-free-market. But that doesn't mean that they aren't pretty bright.
As this is a different topic, I started another thread.
You note that the US "corporate welfare system" (and the more you learn about it, the worse it smells) caused problems with our wireless networks, and you note that we are in large part monopoly-controlled.
Why, then, do you say "The Market" is to blame?
Or are you referring to "The Market" as what politicians call "free trade" but isn't?
Because if that's your point I'm 100% behind you.
If you want to analyze free market failure, you probably don't want to look at any time in the past 100 years in the US. If you want to make the argument that the current US system is the natural product of a free-market economy, then I'd be interested to hear that.
it was lack of government foresight that allowed the auto and tire industries to shut down rail-based public transit.
Rail trains were (and, I believe, still are) price regulated by the government. When the highway system became viable for shipping goods, the price of rail transport for those goods was higher.
The railroad commission came about because farmers were complaining about the cost of short-haul shipping with trains. In short, because there was usually only one track between cities, you paid a high price to ship from city to city, but if you wished to go several cities over, you had your choice of train companies, and they would cut you a much better deal.
Well, when the grassroots movement to "solve the price discrepancy" voted, the new president (can't remember right now) appointed the railroad commission, composed of...railroad men. Because, of course, they knew the system best.
The solution to the problem was a new regulation: the cost of a train ticket must be the sum of the component journeys - ie no deal cutting.
Basically, the farmers got hustled.
The railroad commission continued to work, and during its reign the number of train companies dropped dramatically. Regulations were created to keep out small-time operators, and make competition with the trains expensive.
So when trucking came along, it decimated the trains. The very idea that a long-haul truck could beat the price of a train is ludicrous, however that was the case.
The price on trucking has since gone up, but that's another story.
The auto and tire industries were able to shut down rail-based public transit because they were being fed a lot of money from the trucking industry, as everyone who could moved from rail to truck.
There was a huge boom back then in trucking. Many, many people bought rigs to haul goods because there was so much demand. All you had to do was charge less than the train companies.
In the US, pretty much the only trains left in the country are owned and operated by the government, or with massive federal subsidies.
I wouldn't call this a market failure so much as the logical consequence of fascism.
Pharmaceuticals are corrupt and overpriced because of the pharma companies.
Telecom sucks oh so bad because of the telecom companies.
Why are there so few pharmas? Why are there so few telecom companies?
Legislation and regulation created monopolies/oligopolies.
Why do the telecoms have the profits to lobby so effectively? Because they don't have to fear real competition. It's a pretty bad feedback cycle.
One of the reasons drugs cost so much is because of all the hoops you have to jump through to get a new drug approved.
To add on to that and clarify: it's not that the pharmas tack on the cost of that process to the drug so much as there is no competition because there are not many emerging companies that can:
So we've created an artificial shortage, leading to not-so-artificial oligopoly, and sky-high prices.
Oh, and you might want to throw in the prescription requirement as an additional cost factor.
More than that, parrot gives people the ability to quickly implement experimental or highly specific languages.
Want a language custom built for the analysis that your lab boys do? Want to use some old code from another language? You can do that quite quickly. Your compiler is written in Perl (or whatever you want), targeting Parrot.
The speed with which people have been able to implement new languages is astounding (the python-on-parrot project made huge strides in a week or so).
And since these languages will eventually start out with fully-functional libraries (better than most languages will ever get, in fact: everything Perl has to provide, and possibly Python and Ruby later), they will be usable.
I think Parrot will see more experimentation with languages than we've seen yet. And that will be a good thing.
You could be asked to check over those emails which the reviewers considered mis-categorized.
How does one test a program like this that's more acurate the humans?
Simple, have someone classify their own mail for a month, and then have another person go over that person's decisions marking them correct or incorrect. Do the same for the filter.
If the probability that a person will incorrectly classify an email as spam is 10%, the probability that two people would do so is 10% of 10%. In other words: 1%.
There are going to be mistakes. If you have a large enough sample population and checking crew, you're *going* to get errors, and you're *going* to find (most) of them.
If I were doing the experiment, I'd use two checkers, minimum, just to be sure. Probably three, if I could round up another person.
Calling this a correction is condescending. I merely posed it as an option, because if I said "free software" it means different things to different people. Is BSD free software? I think it is. Maybe it's not to you.
Thanks for the correction, I'll watch my tongue in the future.
You make an interesting point about the BSD license (how it's an inclusive license), and I'll have to think about it some more.
Also, something interesting: Shakespeare's original works are in the public domain, but the collections of them and assemblages of them are copyrighted and still under copyright. Almost all of the printed copies available are "translations" from his scattered works.
Yet most people would say that they are free. You have to pay to reproduce them, but not to perform them (IIRC), and not to base works off of them. Makes an interesting point about what we consider freedom to be when it comes to a work.
I differ because it appears that you're saying "In the absence of people not harming each other, crime is omnipresent."
I'd hoped to make clear that without people harming each other, there is no crime (or no investigable crime. I'm more fond of the former)
I think privacy extends a bit farther than the law and exists in a realm beyond written law. Privacy is something to be expected, not defended.
I too believe that privacy is a natural state, and deviation from that should require justification. However, that does not make a very convincing argument for someone who does not value privacy, which is the goal of the previous post.
In addition, it could be argued that if privacy is a normal, so is politeness. The reason you should comply with certain questions is because the policeman is being nice, and it causes no harm to you. The previous argument might stand as a brief sketching of an argument against that.
One of the large problems we face in America is differing values, hence different assumptions, but as we all are under one system of justice, we have to have our assumptions interact somehow, which means rational arguments for things.
To continue along your idea of "privacy is something to be expected, not defended," I would say that because we have different assumptions, we should leave off where it is not necessary, so as not to step on too many people's values.
Unfortuantely, "because you're trampling on people's ideas of right and wrong so as to enforce your own and deny them the choice" is not a very convincing argument to most, and often leads to things like liquor store hour laws and stifling regulation, as people will say "it's available to you, what more do you want?"
I think I have a moderately good defense of privacy: the foundation of our criminal code is based on external acts, that is acts against another person or entity. The proof for an external act would then be public material, or material provided ("made public") by the harmed party. Therefore, privacy is a restriction on the encroachment of law: if you can't be shown to be doing it, you can't be convicted of it. Thus privacy is a good thing can be derived from the idea that "if you didn't harm another, it's not a crime"
Another way to say all this is: If you didn't hurt anyone, you didn't commit a crime. If you did commit a crime, the person hurt (or a person witnessing or affected) would come forward with evidence: you don't have to prove you didn't do it. Privacy is your right to an accuser.
Many of the problems we've had in recent years with the law have been 1) "victimless crimes" or "societying-wronging" (drugs are the classic example), and 2) where the state is the accuser.
Both of these are in part because there is no concrete person wronged, so it's difficult to defend yourself. Even worse is when the state is the accuser, because the state is An Authority: what they say is true. Very hard to prove otherwise, and the individual clerks process so much information each day that things are just assumed to be true because they're written: no one remembers writing them.
These fears are often dismissed as being kafka-esque, but anyone who has ever delt with a large corporation that has a "it's written so it must be true" problem can understand what the problem is. Now imagine where the result is not paying an extra $100, but having 5 years of your life taken away. High stakes. And beaurocracies don't get any better when they're played at those stakes.
That's a basic defense of privacy. I'm still struggling with the "ihre papieren, bitte" (sic?).
If 10% of the people who want java open donated 10% of the increased usefulness of java being open to Sun, java would be bought into the public domain in no time. So, don't blame Sun.
First off, the desire is not for it to be public domain, it is for it to be Free as in speech. There is a difference. (probably just a slip, but it needs correcting).
Secondly, your basic Linux-based and BSD-based platforms are not designed to meet a spec that is controlled by a third party, though they may incorporate several of those specs (ACPI, OpenGL, etc, etc).
Keep in mind that whatever Sun releases as Java is Java. Unless the open source group were involved in the formulation of the next spec, they would be constantly chasing, and that's not the key to success.
In my opinion, that is the major block, and that is what ESR was talking about.
One of the reasons that the FCC is able to regulate broadcast television and radio is because (or so the argument goes) the amount of spectrum is finite, unlike the printing press.
If we had a network connection provided to every home by utilities, we would once again have a limited spectrum, hence regulatable by the FCC for content.
That doesn't give me warm fuzzies.
Secondly, if this network connection is provided by this project, would it be illegal to compete with it? That's how most government services and utilities work: you cannot compete with them. It's illegal.
Unless another network can roll fiber to your home, it's not competition. (yes, I'm aware that currently we don't have competition on cable, electricity, or phone lines under that definition).
Fine but there is no mechanism for me to tell the studios or stations what I want until after the fact. Then I presumably get the choice of how much am I prepared to pay to keep Buffy on air and the benefits of intermediation rapidly become apparent. I'll just watch whatever comes on and if I don't like it I'll do something else.
I'm with you on the intermediation bit. I view pay channels as a typical "feel." Paying for a channel is like saying "more like this." It's not exact ("keep this specific show going"), but I think in many cases it's exactly what we want: "go find me shows like this."
I think it's a crude approximation of what we might see in the future: buy specific content, and/or buy packages. It gets us much closer to the agent mentality for media.
As for "simplistic," yes. It is. I was trying to get across the idea that direct payment tends to get you more of what you want, rather than what the advertisers want. You are right, however, in that advertisers can easily pay to keep a show going, whereas the individual customer would be hard-pressed to do so.
You do have the right idea when it comes to dealing with broadcast television, though: "I'll just watch whatever comes on and if I don't like it I'll do something else." Good idea.
Perhaps some of you have heard the logic that goes along the lines of:
In a buyer/seller arrangement, the buyer can make demands upon the seller. After all, the buyer can always just not buy the product. The seller will usually pander to the buyer as long as the seller gets the price that he wants. Note the term price. When you watch network television, you aren't paying a dime to the network. It's free. That means that you're not the buyer.
Who does pay money? Advertisers. They are the buyer, the network is the seller. You? You're the product.
This cancellation should be a good demonstration of this proposition: the buyer wants teenage eyes watching the TV, so the seller will arrrange for shows that will get as many teenagers as possible to watch it. So there we are: "your" show gets cancelled, you non-teenager, you. In turn they put on something that is likely to capture the (perceived) average teenager.
This isn't a cynical post, it's just a working through of logic, and a possible solution: if you want to watch the shows you want to watch, pay for them.
DVD sales potential has changed some of the thinking of the networks, but still the best way to pay for your shows is directly, through pay channels: HBO, Showtime, etc, etc.
I like being a customer (or a collaborator, see open source). It's why I'm willing to pay for good work. Try being a customer, you'll get what you want more often.
I agree. Rather than let the court system take care of "misleading advertising" claims, we should establish laws to enable people to take companies to court to take care of "misleading advertising" claims.
Or, of course, we could set up extra-judicial systems for determining what networking companies can say in advertising, taking into account ease of understanding by a non-technical population, accuracy, completeness of information, and notifications of exemption[1]. Look how much car dealership advertising has been improved by such measures!
[1] - of course, this system will have to get expert advice, which major networking companies would be all too happy to provide.
The bids are sealed in the second-highest auction, unlike eBay. Makes a big difference.
I just read the article (skimmed bits). They managed to determine that people don't like to release embarrasing information or break societal taboos.
This info might actually be interesting to people who say "What's the problem with the government being able to do this research?" My mother is a classic example of this. The fact is that she feels she has nothing to hide. Why? Because she feels normal. Inconspicuous.
Before, I kept trying to explain that "some people do have something to hide, and it might not necessarily be harmful." This argument was totally ineffective.
This suggests another way to explain these things to people: you go to your girlfriend's house for thanksgiving to meet the family, and everybody is great. Only problem is the huge migrane headache you came with, but you're coping and really having a wonderful time in spite of that, when suddenly the conversation turns to politics: her entire family is full of Limbaugh-Loving, "Liberal"-hating Born-Again Republicans. Now, some of your friends are Republicans, and that's okay: you have good conversations with them. You get the feeling after the 5th time her father refers to "those damned liberals who want to let every last sodomist destroy marriage" that this would NOT be a good time to discuss things. Now what's the problem with your girlfriend telling the whole family that they have an excellent debate candidate sitting right here!
After all, you have nothing to hide.
This research shows that it has a lot more to do with the situation you're in (do you know the people, do you care about how they feel, do you consider yourself negatively different from the group?) than what the secret is and how you feel about privacy in general.
Any info or pointers you could give me on the difference between (modern, I'm assuming) European socialism, and classical or American socialism? I'm interested to know what you mean exactly.
And I'm still working on at least classifying the types and specifics of what the ideology/attitude is. Any ideas?
Open Source is like socialism, you just help out where you can, and share what you got. If people don't take it, then it's their loss :) At least it was useful for myself, and it might be useful for others.
I've been struggling with how to characterize Open Source development for a while now, so maybe you can help me out.
I don't think it's like socialism, as you do not do work "for the good of the community," you do it for yourself, and then contribute it to the community. It's not just a minor word issue: consider how code development under OSS is often characterized as "scratching an itch."
Also, there's no government in charge of allocating or re-allocating resources.
And it's not really a cooperative, either: if one group really slacks off we don't suffer. Things might not go forward as fast, but we don't depend on others for immediate survival.
It's really more of a network of loose relationships and an attitude. Maybe "philanthropic anarchy"?
This is just something to consider.
The RIAA and the MPAA are groups that do not sell anything or own any media. An antitrust exemption is not for the members of the **AA, but for the organization itself.
What an anti-trust exemption would mean is that all producers could be members without setting off alarm bells at the DOJ.
That's what "market realities" refers to.
Mind you, this entire argument neglects "reality realities" such as "when the group is exempt, wouldn't the RIAA/MPAA members channel any anti-competitive behavior through their perspective groups?" Amongst others.
I imagine this is the argument you're going to hear from your senators in that letter you get back from them telling you they think they did the right thing. Because protecting artists is important.
Come on guys, lets keep the standards high, and use solid arguments in place of trying to sling mud at the RIAA.
Hear, hear. I'm with you all the way.
Of course, there is one problem. You see, I was a philosophy major in college, and it imbued me with a strong distaste for sophistry. So I attempted to stop using sophist arguments, such as the "for the children."
Only problem was that after I stopped, I noticed that people stopped listening to my arguments. Completely.
Mind you, I wasn't using arguments along the lines of "you're using extrinsic nature to infer and intrinsic property in pro-forma action." It was normal stuff.
The problem is that people are so used to sophistry that they expect --- nay demand --- it.
If you use a normal argument, they'll play softball for the opposed group ("well, they're trying their best"), and then get offended as if you were personally attacking them when you refute their defenses.
Of course, I'm willing to admit that I could be the problem, but I am pretty gentle when it comes to debate and discussion.
So, if I'm talking to Commoners, these days I'll throw in a little hyperbole, sophistry, and indecency at the beginning to as to get their attention, and then present the good arguments.
Damned shame, really.
(Though I do try to use less and less of the trash the more often I talk to people).
Here's the reason that the major labels will not change until a huge disaster occurs:
If your company is huge, in order to have a large change in the structure of your business, you have to draw up some cost plans. How much it would cost to change, what the benefit will be if you do, and what the cost will be if you don't. That way you can make an informed decision. This part of the process is completely rational (well, usually).
The problem comes when the business plan is reviewed. Trying to convince people that their current business plan is going to fail drastically and they need to change everything and (this is the important part) the new plan will make less money than they're making right now, well...they're going to be a bit skeptical.
At some level, the directors of the major labels either
From a purely fiscal perspective, I can't really blame 2. Why convert over to a lower-income system until you have to?
Though being first does have its perks. The goodwill of artists and ease of recruitment isn't a huge goal, though: all the major names are tied up in contracts while their liver is being eaten. You're not getting them from the other labels except for by buying them from the labels, and you wouldn't be able to make money with their price and your new business model.
Also consider: the amount of change required to change a major label to artist- and consumer-friendly would be on the order of change required for IBM. You have an entire corporate culture devoted to screwing artists and consumers and getting rewarded for it.
So, have they lost touch with their markets and reality? Yes, probably. But they're not going to change for a while.
they'll be totally prepared and calmly waiting for when the next megalomaniac in charge gets the idea to finally implement the Big Brother society that will be the end of democracy.
On the contrary: I think it will be the continuation of democracy.
We're thinking the same way: if you pollute the electorate enough to where freedom isn't what they want, then so it will be.
Consider: if you dismantled the ruling powers in China today and gave everyone there 18 or older a vote, what they vote for?
My guess is that they'd vote in another communist-like[1] regime within 5 years.
Maybe my environment has brainwashed me to think that that's a bad thing.
[1] - communist-talking, at least. I'm not really sure what you'd call the PRoC.