IT seems like what you're hearing has more to do with differences in the mastering choices than the technology. Neither CDs nor Vinyl are perfect - they're both imperfect duplications of higher-end masters that are, themselves, imperfect duplications of real sound. But vinyl recordings are typically mastered to sound "thicker" than CDs - the difference is why, even after you've ripped the files to MP3s, which are imperfect copies of their sources as well, you still hear your preferred sound - it's the mastering choices, not a reflection of the technology or the precision of the reproduction.
No, you didn't test Konqueror 3.5.7 unitl AFTER Opera apparently passed. So Konqueror passed after Opera. Sure, it may have been ABLE to pass before, but it never took the initiative.
No, he didn't. He bought a shiny disk with lots of little encoded bits on it that happen to be useful to certain kinds of computing devices. He can use it to install the software, or he can use it as a frisbee. And he can do lots of other things with it, too. All he can't do is distribute copies of it without permission, because of copyright law.
There are plenty of useful, beneficial tasks in this world for which people expect, and get, no monetary reward. People are, indeed, less likely to volunteer for these tasks than they would be to do them for money. So it goes.
My employer pays me because he sees a direct value in what I do. It's inherent to the product of my work. Good for him, good for me.
There's certainly value in creating art. But commercial value depends, in part, on scarcity. With infinitely reproducible art, there is no natural scarcity. Intellectual property law is an attempt to artificially create scarcity where there is none. It creates a "right" to assign a higher value to work than the natural situation, absent the coercive force of government, creates. It's a very different situation than in most other forms of work.
If, once these contrived intellectual property considerations are set aside, the work has little or no commercial value, so be it. That happens. Again, lots of useful and beneficial things have little or no commercial value; the world's just not structured to reward them all.
It would still be quite possible to make money from art, but not via all the mechanisms available now. There are always live performances, or the creation of art on demand for specific purposes. I work in the newspaper industry, and there's a heavy intellectual/artistic component to what I do. My company claims intellectual property protection over its work, but it really doesn't matter much - the work is valuable because when it's initially released, we're the only ones providing it; 24 hours later, the value of the work is highly diminished, so if someone else copies it, we haven't lost much (and they haven't gained much).
"Grammar often being a pain the ass to get right, I'm willing to hear why I'm wrong about this."
Because "the better" isn't a subject.
The original sentence is funky in a lot of ways.
For one - "In girls, the shorter the ring finger to index finger ratio..." is problematic. Multiple girls, one ratio?
Two - the placement of the is/are is strange and illogical. It would be better to say "the better her/their (depending on how you fix the issue in the first point) verbal skills is/are." This new arrangement makes it much clearer that the subject is "girl/girls." Optionally, the is/are could even be omitted.
Three - "In girls" would be better as "In girls' cases" or "For girls" - or omit it entirely and use a cleaner construction
Four - The words before "ratio" need some hyphenation. Multi-part modifiers.
I'd go with "The shorter a girl's ring-finger-to-index-figure ratio, the better her verbal skills." or "The shorter a girl's ring-finger-to-index-figure ratio is, the better her verbal skills are."
Re:The original hardware store experiment
on
MacGyver Physics
·
· Score: 1
I couldn't decide whether to mod you funny or write - but I opted for the latter, just to tell you that made me grin so hard it hurt. That and the sunburn.
It's not O&A's station. They don't own the microphones, or the transmitters. They don't pay the salaries. They do a job at the pleasure of their employers, just like everyone else who takes home a paycheck.
They only get to be on the radio in the first place because it suits XM, which thinks it can make a profit off of them. They don't have an inherent right to even be on the air (if they did, why isn't anyone letting me on the air? I have lots to say?). They could be canceled for saying something offensive, or for low listenership, or for annoying their bosses. And there's nothing wrong with that - it's business.
Their right to speech hasn't been violated - but their privilege to use XM's resources for it has been taken away. They're still perfectly free to say whatever their want through any other media, so long as those who control those media resources see fit to give them the opportunity. And there are plenty of truly uncensored venues for speech - especially on the Internet. If O&A feel like putting their financial backing behind a medium, they can say absolutely whatever they want there as well (provided it's not standard broadcast, where there IS actual government censorship, which incidentally I find highly objectionable).
Don't know if you do, but I live in America, and I've yet to get that impression from our media. It's a whole lot of "Oh dear lord, we're stuck in a quagmire" - and I don't think that comes from an anti-war slant so much as a consistent barrage of bad news there's no way to spin in a positive way. The closest to "everything is fine" that we get is Fox telling us things are bad, but not nearly so bad as everyone else says.
AS far as number 2 - Vista sure makes it a lot harder to do those HD rips in the first place. So yes, he could still illegally get things over torrents. But Vista makes it harder for a person with legitimate access to the HD content to back it up or shift it to another form of media. Not sure that's a step forward for anyone.
In my other post, I wasn't arguing the merits of that economic system - just saying a true libertarian wouldn't have a problem with it. True libertarianism more or less demands laissez faire - not because it results in a more just marketplace, but because libertarians question the right of the government to (through a much more tangible form of coercion that involves guns and jails) interfere in informed agreements.
Although I wasn't getting at it before, I do happen to be of that particular brand of libertarianism myself. I see a big difference between tremendous market pressure and coercion. The retailer doesn't have any particular right to demand that the distributor will even exist, to speak nothing of offering products under reasonable terms. If the retailer is so dependent on being able to sell the distributor's products under his own terms, what happens when the distributor goes belly up and the retailer can't even get the products in the first place? What if the distributor stops making/distributing that product in favor of others in another type of market?
It's not that I think the economy will take care of itself - I think it might, but it's more likely monopolies and such will develop to the detriment of many. I just don't see where there's any particular violation of anyone's rights going on that should compel the government to get involved. No one has a basic right to expect his business plan to work - and we can't go around protecting rights people don't have in the first place.
Almost, but nope. The only way the distributors can force the retailers into anything is through agreements - ones the retailers enter into through their own volition. The conversation (and contract) goes something like this:
Big distributor: You soooo want my product. But if I'm going to enter into a deal with you to sell it, you're only allowed to sell if for $99. Retailer: I wanna sell it for $95. It'll do better in my store that way. Big distributor: And yet, here I am, requiring $99.
At this point, the retailer gets to chose whether the deal's worthwhile - if the product's a valuable enough product to accept the price requirement.
People will quite accurately point out that for small retailers, this is a pretty one-sided negotiation - and that it's virtually never going to be practical to say "no" - even if saying "yes" all the time is bad for business in the long run. People might also point out that a big retailer (say, Wal-Mart) has a considerable advantage over a distributor that just wants its product sold.
A real libertarian should be for all of this, though - it's all voluntary agreements, by informed parties.
Call it blatant link-whoring if you'd like, but I figured I'd provide a pointer to some resources on Sunshine Week my newspaper, a small Rhode Island Daily, put together - located here. Our stories this year weren't really in-depth analyses, just overviews and features of the current FOI climate in our area, but we hope they were interesting nonetheless.
I'm really getting sick of people telling me we're being artificially limited because it's better for us. It's not. Smart defaults are good; limitations are bad.
Have this behavior be the default, but somewhere in the menus have an option to turn it off. You can even pop up a window telling me how confusing my life will be if I change the setting, but let me do it.
No, no it's not. It's speech, and it's clearly offensive to you (and me, from your description). You've got this wonderful ability not to expose yourself to it.
Now, if they posters are actively encouraging people to shoot one another (not just saying some people deserve to be shot), or making threats that they'll do so, that's something else altogther.
Ugly is ugly, but it ain't up to us to decide what's too ugly. You have every right to be racist, homophobic and hateful. Just don't expect an invitation to dinner at my place or try to date my daughter.
Although it's a sickening scenario, that actually probably should be legal.
Child porn isn't illegal because it's sick to get your rocks off looking at a child. In fact, when we're not talking about pre-pubescents, it's biologically natural to be turned on by someone attractive - even if responsible adults understand why teens probably aren't really emotionally ready for sexual encounters, and don't have the wherewithall to consent to such encounters with adults who've got far more life experience.
Child porn is illegal because creating it involves subjecting a minor, who by definition can't consent to sexual activity, to sexual activity. The porn is a product of that process. Making it illegal to buy, sell and possession child porn is akin to making it illegal to do the same with stolen goods, or goods created in illegal sweatshops - it's a way of eating away at the root wrongful activity.
But when a person makes himself or herself the "victim," that logic breaks down somewhat. Is there really a victim at all? Especially if the choice to sell the pictures comes when the person is an adult, and theoretically responsible for his or her own actions? I can't imagine we'd want to create a precedent where cynical 16- or 17-year-olds are stashing away pictures of themselves to turn a quick buck when they turn 18, but if that's going to be illegal, we really need a different rationale.
The mistakes thing is such a red herring. There is no reason to believe mistakes would be remotely likely. It's a flag in the database - "DRM? yes" or "DRM? no," or something similar. The system can keep track of whether a track's sold in a given country, of when its release date is, and of all sorts of other conditions important to the labels. Why should this be any different? You're no more likely to order a DRM track and get it DRM-free than you are to order a Bob Dylan track and get Kelis (if that latter one happens, I recommend suing Apple for emotional distress).
Mistakes are always hypothetically, theoretically possible, but we trust the system to handle lots of other equally or more important details - including our payments for transactions. Why would this be different?
It's absurd that we're getting this off-topic in a conversation about an RIAA-related legal battle, but...
Neither form of lieing is OK. Didn't your mother teach you that?
Clinton's lieing, though about a matter many consider trivial in the grand scheme of things, was before a grand jury. That makes it perjury. That makes it illegal. That also makes it significantly morally wrong, particularly for someone whose job involves representing the country and its system of government. Perjury is very, very bad if your goal is to have a functioning judiciary, a key part of that system of government.
Bush's lieing is also very, very bad, albeit not necessarily illegal. It would have been a perfectly good reason to vote him and all of his associates out of office, but the American people unfortunately stopped just short of that in 2004. If any of it does amount to criminal activity, then he should be prosecuted. But the fact that is lieing inspires great moral outrage (as well it should) has nothing to do with whether it violates written law. So far, no one's brought a cohesive and compelling argument forth that Bush broke any law.
1) Dis-barring him wouldn't shut him up) 2) It's not like it's a staffed position and they have to find a new scare-monger if he leaves; a more effective JT could show up at any time whether the current one's around or not 3) Someone smarter would be just fine - they could be debated on the merits of their arguments.
The DMCA is about more than the anti-circumvention clause. It also lays out a framework for how to get your copywritten material removed from (allegedly) infringing sites or distribution points, and the conditions service providers must adhere to when notified of (alleged) infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
Not if you're a hunt-and-pecker.
IT seems like what you're hearing has more to do with differences in the mastering choices than the technology. Neither CDs nor Vinyl are perfect - they're both imperfect duplications of higher-end masters that are, themselves, imperfect duplications of real sound. But vinyl recordings are typically mastered to sound "thicker" than CDs - the difference is why, even after you've ripped the files to MP3s, which are imperfect copies of their sources as well, you still hear your preferred sound - it's the mastering choices, not a reflection of the technology or the precision of the reproduction.
Unfortunately, they forgot to test for HuMor3 at http://www.itwasajoke.com./
No, you didn't test Konqueror 3.5.7 unitl AFTER Opera apparently passed. So Konqueror passed after Opera. Sure, it may have been ABLE to pass before, but it never took the initiative.
That speaks to the taxation being wrong. It doesn't justify taxing him for a product just because of his chosen use of it.
No, he didn't. He bought a shiny disk with lots of little encoded bits on it that happen to be useful to certain kinds of computing devices. He can use it to install the software, or he can use it as a frisbee. And he can do lots of other things with it, too. All he can't do is distribute copies of it without permission, because of copyright law.
There are plenty of useful, beneficial tasks in this world for which people expect, and get, no monetary reward. People are, indeed, less likely to volunteer for these tasks than they would be to do them for money. So it goes.
My employer pays me because he sees a direct value in what I do. It's inherent to the product of my work. Good for him, good for me.
There's certainly value in creating art. But commercial value depends, in part, on scarcity. With infinitely reproducible art, there is no natural scarcity. Intellectual property law is an attempt to artificially create scarcity where there is none. It creates a "right" to assign a higher value to work than the natural situation, absent the coercive force of government, creates. It's a very different situation than in most other forms of work.
If, once these contrived intellectual property considerations are set aside, the work has little or no commercial value, so be it. That happens. Again, lots of useful and beneficial things have little or no commercial value; the world's just not structured to reward them all.
It would still be quite possible to make money from art, but not via all the mechanisms available now. There are always live performances, or the creation of art on demand for specific purposes. I work in the newspaper industry, and there's a heavy intellectual/artistic component to what I do. My company claims intellectual property protection over its work, but it really doesn't matter much - the work is valuable because when it's initially released, we're the only ones providing it; 24 hours later, the value of the work is highly diminished, so if someone else copies it, we haven't lost much (and they haven't gained much).
TRUE! Confusing myself with the various scenarios.
"Grammar often being a pain the ass to get right, I'm willing to hear why I'm wrong about this."
..." is problematic. Multiple girls, one ratio?
Because "the better" isn't a subject.
The original sentence is funky in a lot of ways.
For one - "In girls, the shorter the ring finger to index finger ratio
Two - the placement of the is/are is strange and illogical. It would be better to say "the better her/their (depending on how you fix the issue in the first point) verbal skills is/are." This new arrangement makes it much clearer that the subject is "girl/girls." Optionally, the is/are could even be omitted.
Three - "In girls" would be better as "In girls' cases" or "For girls" - or omit it entirely and use a cleaner construction
Four - The words before "ratio" need some hyphenation. Multi-part modifiers.
I'd go with "The shorter a girl's ring-finger-to-index-figure ratio, the better her verbal skills."
or "The shorter a girl's ring-finger-to-index-figure ratio is, the better her verbal skills are."
I couldn't decide whether to mod you funny or write - but I opted for the latter, just to tell you that made me grin so hard it hurt. That and the sunburn.
It's not O&A's station. They don't own the microphones, or the transmitters. They don't pay the salaries. They do a job at the pleasure of their employers, just like everyone else who takes home a paycheck.
They only get to be on the radio in the first place because it suits XM, which thinks it can make a profit off of them. They don't have an inherent right to even be on the air (if they did, why isn't anyone letting me on the air? I have lots to say?). They could be canceled for saying something offensive, or for low listenership, or for annoying their bosses. And there's nothing wrong with that - it's business.
Their right to speech hasn't been violated - but their privilege to use XM's resources for it has been taken away. They're still perfectly free to say whatever their want through any other media, so long as those who control those media resources see fit to give them the opportunity. And there are plenty of truly uncensored venues for speech - especially on the Internet. If O&A feel like putting their financial backing behind a medium, they can say absolutely whatever they want there as well (provided it's not standard broadcast, where there IS actual government censorship, which incidentally I find highly objectionable).
If that's true, it's probably why the grandparent isn't posting in that guy's language.
Um, huh?
Don't know if you do, but I live in America, and I've yet to get that impression from our media. It's a whole lot of "Oh dear lord, we're stuck in a quagmire" - and I don't think that comes from an anti-war slant so much as a consistent barrage of bad news there's no way to spin in a positive way. The closest to "everything is fine" that we get is Fox telling us things are bad, but not nearly so bad as everyone else says.
AS far as number 2 - Vista sure makes it a lot harder to do those HD rips in the first place. So yes, he could still illegally get things over torrents. But Vista makes it harder for a person with legitimate access to the HD content to back it up or shift it to another form of media. Not sure that's a step forward for anyone.
In my other post, I wasn't arguing the merits of that economic system - just saying a true libertarian wouldn't have a problem with it. True libertarianism more or less demands laissez faire - not because it results in a more just marketplace, but because libertarians question the right of the government to (through a much more tangible form of coercion that involves guns and jails) interfere in informed agreements.
Although I wasn't getting at it before, I do happen to be of that particular brand of libertarianism myself. I see a big difference between tremendous market pressure and coercion. The retailer doesn't have any particular right to demand that the distributor will even exist, to speak nothing of offering products under reasonable terms. If the retailer is so dependent on being able to sell the distributor's products under his own terms, what happens when the distributor goes belly up and the retailer can't even get the products in the first place? What if the distributor stops making/distributing that product in favor of others in another type of market?
It's not that I think the economy will take care of itself - I think it might, but it's more likely monopolies and such will develop to the detriment of many. I just don't see where there's any particular violation of anyone's rights going on that should compel the government to get involved. No one has a basic right to expect his business plan to work - and we can't go around protecting rights people don't have in the first place.
Almost, but nope. The only way the distributors can force the retailers into anything is through agreements - ones the retailers enter into through their own volition. The conversation (and contract) goes something like this:
Big distributor: You soooo want my product. But if I'm going to enter into a deal with you to sell it, you're only allowed to sell if for $99.
Retailer: I wanna sell it for $95. It'll do better in my store that way.
Big distributor: And yet, here I am, requiring $99.
At this point, the retailer gets to chose whether the deal's worthwhile - if the product's a valuable enough product to accept the price requirement.
People will quite accurately point out that for small retailers, this is a pretty one-sided negotiation - and that it's virtually never going to be practical to say "no" - even if saying "yes" all the time is bad for business in the long run. People might also point out that a big retailer (say, Wal-Mart) has a considerable advantage over a distributor that just wants its product sold.
A real libertarian should be for all of this, though - it's all voluntary agreements, by informed parties.
Call it blatant link-whoring if you'd like, but I figured I'd provide a pointer to some resources on Sunshine Week my newspaper, a small Rhode Island Daily, put together - located here. Our stories this year weren't really in-depth analyses, just overviews and features of the current FOI climate in our area, but we hope they were interesting nonetheless.
I'm really getting sick of people telling me we're being artificially limited because it's better for us. It's not. Smart defaults are good; limitations are bad.
Have this behavior be the default, but somewhere in the menus have an option to turn it off. You can even pop up a window telling me how confusing my life will be if I change the setting, but let me do it.
No, no it's not. It's speech, and it's clearly offensive to you (and me, from your description). You've got this wonderful ability not to expose yourself to it.
Now, if they posters are actively encouraging people to shoot one another (not just saying some people deserve to be shot), or making threats that they'll do so, that's something else altogther.
Ugly is ugly, but it ain't up to us to decide what's too ugly. You have every right to be racist, homophobic and hateful. Just don't expect an invitation to dinner at my place or try to date my daughter.
Although it's a sickening scenario, that actually probably should be legal.
Child porn isn't illegal because it's sick to get your rocks off looking at a child. In fact, when we're not talking about pre-pubescents, it's biologically natural to be turned on by someone attractive - even if responsible adults understand why teens probably aren't really emotionally ready for sexual encounters, and don't have the wherewithall to consent to such encounters with adults who've got far more life experience.
Child porn is illegal because creating it involves subjecting a minor, who by definition can't consent to sexual activity, to sexual activity. The porn is a product of that process. Making it illegal to buy, sell and possession child porn is akin to making it illegal to do the same with stolen goods, or goods created in illegal sweatshops - it's a way of eating away at the root wrongful activity.
But when a person makes himself or herself the "victim," that logic breaks down somewhat. Is there really a victim at all? Especially if the choice to sell the pictures comes when the person is an adult, and theoretically responsible for his or her own actions? I can't imagine we'd want to create a precedent where cynical 16- or 17-year-olds are stashing away pictures of themselves to turn a quick buck when they turn 18, but if that's going to be illegal, we really need a different rationale.
Um, no.
The mistakes thing is such a red herring. There is no reason to believe mistakes would be remotely likely. It's a flag in the database - "DRM? yes" or "DRM? no," or something similar. The system can keep track of whether a track's sold in a given country, of when its release date is, and of all sorts of other conditions important to the labels. Why should this be any different? You're no more likely to order a DRM track and get it DRM-free than you are to order a Bob Dylan track and get Kelis (if that latter one happens, I recommend suing Apple for emotional distress).
Mistakes are always hypothetically, theoretically possible, but we trust the system to handle lots of other equally or more important details - including our payments for transactions. Why would this be different?
It's absurd that we're getting this off-topic in a conversation about an RIAA-related legal battle, but ...
Neither form of lieing is OK. Didn't your mother teach you that?
Clinton's lieing, though about a matter many consider trivial in the grand scheme of things, was before a grand jury. That makes it perjury. That makes it illegal. That also makes it significantly morally wrong, particularly for someone whose job involves representing the country and its system of government. Perjury is very, very bad if your goal is to have a functioning judiciary, a key part of that system of government.
Bush's lieing is also very, very bad, albeit not necessarily illegal. It would have been a perfectly good reason to vote him and all of his associates out of office, but the American people unfortunately stopped just short of that in 2004. If any of it does amount to criminal activity, then he should be prosecuted. But the fact that is lieing inspires great moral outrage (as well it should) has nothing to do with whether it violates written law. So far, no one's brought a cohesive and compelling argument forth that Bush broke any law.
He said a *good* Wii joke.
1) Dis-barring him wouldn't shut him up)
2) It's not like it's a staffed position and they have to find a new scare-monger if he leaves; a more effective JT could show up at any time whether the current one's around or not
3) Someone smarter would be just fine - they could be debated on the merits of their arguments.
The DMCA is about more than the anti-circumvention clause. It also lays out a framework for how to get your copywritten material removed from (allegedly) infringing sites or distribution points, and the conditions service providers must adhere to when notified of (alleged) infringement.