Agreed. Free software lowers the barriers to entry and the general cost of doing business. A developer can still add value just like always and get paid just like always. The nice part is not being forced to send tribute to Redmond in order to keep their livelihood going. Also, I'm sure the customers appreciates the lower costs associated with not needing to buy seat or CPU or user licenses to use the solution built by the developers. The overall savings are more than enough to allow contributions to groups like the FSF, the GNOME foundation, or to PayPal a developer $25 here and there. As a user I'm in love with the idea that I am not beholden to one corporation or another, too.
Of course cab drivers (probably in any city) are better drivers than the average person. Their livelihood (and their very lives, in fact) depend on them getting everyone to their intended destination in one piece. Not only that, one way to get better at any given skill is to do it frequently-- practice. These guys drive for several hours a day. Every day. Even the most active drivers among us are not likely to drive this much. Simple assumptions and logical reasoning would lead to the conclusion that taxi drivers are the best drivers around.
They aren't the best customer service folks, though. That's for sure. In Minneapolis I frequently get in cabs where the driver is on a cell phone-- from before I get in until after I get out. Or they've got the radio cranked.
And from the sound of it, government regulation keeps the prices anti-competitive both through expensive licensing and regulated fares. This actually puts the pressure on cabbies to do less well than normal, because somewhere in there, as you point out, they have to make their money. I hear this leads to a lot of interesting tax returns, as well.
As for the actual topic of the article. I've found that in many large cities the walk signs are either gospel or completely ignored. In Minneapolis, jaywalking seems to be considered a constitutionally protected right. In Seattle it surprised me to see that no one crossed against the light. When I've been in San Francisco, you couldn't cross against the light because it simply wasn't feasible with all the traffic. In either case I don't see why those little buttons were ever installed in the first place.
Except when you look at the crime rates in the U.S. they have been falling steadily since 1993. So maybe it's time to retool that argument.
Excessive government fines are simply taxation in disguise-- and in this case it sounds like those taxes will fall hardest on people who can least afford them (i.e. poor people trying to earn a living). If the drugs weren't illegal in the first place there would be no profit motive because normal market prices would drive the prices way down because the supply would go way up). And unlike prescription drugs, street drugs are unencumbered by patents, so anyone with a garden could potentially become a supplier of the plant derived stuff.:)
Or we get Instant Runoff Voting - and lobbyists lose the stranglehold they have on government (which only exists due our 'lesser of two evils' voting).
Maybe if the government didn't have such a stranglehold in the first place it wouldn't matter so much.
And anyway IRV changes nothing. It doesn't really promote win-win thinking, coalition building, communication. It does promote risk-taking and fragmentation-- which seems likely to lead to instability. Not only that... you thought Florida was bad? You can't stand Diebold now? Just wait until voting is some weird thing where votes have to be tabulated three times just to find out who wins. Do you know that this does to election day and the possibility for fraud and error? *shudder*
Besides... don't you know that if voting actually changed anything they would make it illegal?;)
I assume you mean the 9/10 sentence? If so, I knew it was a joke (albeit a somewhat common one). But I thought for once I'd have a little rant about it.:)
Personally I don't even trust facts. To quote my good friend Homer Simpson: "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true."
Besides, 9 out of 10 people know you can use statistics to prove anything!
No. You can't. Statistics is a very rigorous mathematical process. Most of what you see in the media, however, is not valid statistics. Further, even if valid statistics are to be found, there almost always logical fallacies involved that direct the reader to conclusions that are not supported by the data. The most common fallacy I see is confusing correlation with causation, followed closely by the false dichotomy.
As to which party serves the rich? The way I see it, they both do.
What's the start-up time (from sleep) like on the Clie? Does it work with the standard sync tools in Linux? I've got an SL-5500 I don't use anymore that I would gladly trade. But comparing the specs on these things, I'd think you were getting shorted.
Stove? I don't know about that. But I am using the same "air popper" technology that was available in 1985.
And personally I think if I can figure out how to upgrade to 2.6 anybody can. As I've demonstrated many times with my postings here on Slashdot, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I didn't have too many problems getting to 2.6. Just followed the directions I found on gentoo.org. On my other Debian systems I'm not even sure if I'm running 2.4 yet, let alone 2.6. But don't most of us have better things to do than upgrading kernels by hand when most distros have or will have upgrade paths available when it's appropriate for the mainstream?
Yes, but it seems to me that like another escalating battle there will be a simple agent-based, learning algorithm solution.
Bayesian filters learn to recognize spam and are personalized to the user. They are at least as effective as rules-based mail filters, but very effectively halt the rules race (where the filter writer writes a rule to filter by, and the spammer figures out a way around the rule, rinse, repeat).
We need something like that for web pages and web searching. It's not just about keywords with sites like Google. It's also about the other parts of their page rank scheme. But imagine that your spider software (unlike Google) was grading its results. For any bad result it could go back and score against every page involved in getting to that result. Same for good results. Next time you search it gives more emphasis to pages in good result trees. Etc.
I mean, that's not an actual technical idea there (I can think of lots of problems with that sort of spider/agent idea that would keep it from being practical). But that's the kind of thinking we need to be doing. Is there a way to solve this problem of finding information that won't involve a central repository of keyword scores and rankings?
Re:Could we get an editor to proofread please?
on
Great Zaurus Apps Review
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Why was this modded down? While I'm fine with a typo here and there, "Zaurii"? Please. First of all, this ought to be "Zauri" if we're going to pretend that Latin style plurals are actually appropriate usage in an Anglo-Saxon language. Of course, it doesn't make a difference. If you even have one of these things it's obviously because you're too geeky for your own good and whatever you call it really won't matter, because the only peole who will know what you're talking about in the first place are other geeks.
Which reminds me. I need to get my Zaurus listed on eBay. These things would be a lot more useful if they could wake from sleep a little faster, like the Palm/Visor type systems do. Plus, the battery life is ridiculous.
And I'm saying that really doesn't help much. If the "Bayesian" algorithm were properly implemented (Paul's "Plan" was a rough draft and the implementations out there are essentially by rote), you would already be able to toss 50% or more of the email as being certainly spam... leaving you with 50% or less "probably spams" to check manually. This method does not sound promising by comparison, since it won't help you even get to the "probably" stage with the remaining emails.
You could already accomplish a lot of this by using S::A score ranges as a type of triage system to sort incoming mail into high, medium, and low spam probabilities (not that I'd know for sure, I stopped using S::A because I got burned on a few important emails using the default settings).
The reason it's not giving you any false positives is because it's giving up on about half of the attempts. In my mind those are false negatives because they require additional effort (i.e. the filter errs on the side of accepting the maisl)... and at a 50% rate that's not much help. I don't think I've ever seen a Bayesian filter that was allowed to just give up on 50% of all inputs... and if it was, I'd bet good money that it wouldn't generate any false positives either.
Paul Graham kind of got everybody thinking about statistical filtering techniques, but people haven't really picked apart his algorithm or looked at ways to tighten it up. Personally I think that path is a lot more promising.
You're right. The phrasing was horrible because I certainly don't want to see restaurants barred from selling. I was reacting in part to something I incorrectly inferred about your original statement. My mistake and I'll just shut up before I dig myself in further.:)
Let people drink. Let people be responsible for their own actions. If someone drinks and drives, book'em, but leave the rest of us alone.
Uh, that's what I said. Please read what I wrote again. The restaurant comment had a context and was an inelegant phrasing (the person was trying to excuse restaurants as though no one ever drove home drunk after dinner, I was countering that). I was not intending to indict the restaurant in any way as I think the remainder of my comment clearly shows.
What's next is that you go back and reread what I wrote in context (not to mention my follow-up) and stop accusing me of not taking responsibility for myself or promoting a "nanny-state". I clearly stated the punishments needed to go on the drivers and not everyone else.
Crime rates have been falling since 1993 (see FBI crime stats for details)-- so it's possible that mandatory sentencing is a factor in that. But I never said anything about mandatory sentencing. I advocated harsher penalties. There is a big difference.
No it's not. But you're right. I misstated that. It should read "drinking in restaurants is contributing..." That would have been more consistent with the rest of my statement saying that it is the drunk drivers who should be punished, not the restaurants or other drivers.
If most restaurants are selling alcohol then most restaurants are certainly contributing to the problem of drunk driving. Personally I think rather than worrying about the restaurants' business, which is their own problem, we should focus on punishing criminal behavior with serious sentences instead of the wrist-slaps we've been giving out.
But in a country where a guy arrested for DUI can still hope to be elected president someday, how soon do you think that will happen? Instead we're going to get all these misdirected attempts to punish everyone (whether it's in-car breathalyzers or disappearing parking lots).
It's insane that in a country where simple possession of a naturally growing plant can land you a felony conviction that being found guilty of drunk driving isn't a life-destroying event.
Yukihiro Matsumoto (the creator of Ruby) has frequently and often stated that one of the reasons to program in Ruby is that it is fun. And I quote: "Fun is the most important thing in the world... Ruby makes programming fun."
This book could fit perfectly into that when it is done. Therefore I think I'll reserve judgement until later. Especially since Why's web site is the only geek site I've ever recommended to my non-geek friends just because it's so amusing and fun to read.
Well, in both cases (XFree and libjpeg) there should be no problem at all then. Note that these licenses don't require a package to have documentation. So for most projects this won't be an issue, since they lack anything resembling documentation in the first place.;)
Kidding aside, I don't see how this is a big deal. If the GPL is not compatible with a request for credit in documentation, then it should be modified so that it is. This is no different than distributing software with documentation separately licensed under the GNU FDL when said documentation contains invariant sections that are political essays and the like (see emacs or gcc for examples).
Please note that I am not trying to bash the GNU FDL (well, ok, a little bit) as generally I am a strong supporter of Free Software (and a card-carrying member of the FSF). If we are all on the same side here (that is, the side that favors source code availability and the ability to share code/binaries freely), then we need to figure out ways to get along, even if sometimes it involves compromises on stuff like this.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint: the cost of including a small credit line in some documentation is nothing compared to the cost of maintaining forks. I would do it myself if I even needed to. As a Gentoo user, the license on software is mostly irrelevant to me. I download all my stuff as source code and compile it myself. Oh, except on a couple of Debian servers where I don't bother with X at all anyway.:)
Check my posting history to see that I don't approve of copyright law in the first place but...
Innocent until proven guilty is not at issue here. The write-up is totally misleading. Things like Anton Pillar orders are not license to "ransack" they are there to assist in finding infringing material. The orders cannot be issued without a court approval and there are oversight measures in place to ensure that things are done properly.
As far as I can tell this would be completely legal in the U.S., where the 4th amendment protects against "unreasonable" search and seizure, but does not say who is to conduct those searches. In some sense, what the government is doing here is deputizing the plaintiff temporarily and for a specific purpose.
If you can stand for the fairly arbitrary seizure practices that already exist vis-a-vis the drug war, then this is hardly a problem by comparison. In the case of the drug war, they redefine your property as the spoils of ill-gotten gains (i.e. drug-selling) and then seize them and resell them. In the case of Anton Pillar orders, the seizure is infringing materials themselves (or tools of infringement, I suppose, like computers or whatever).
The point is to preserve evidence of guilt through trial. Which makes sense.
The problem here is not the enforcement tools but the underlying notion that ideas are somehow a form of property (which is what the Berne convention changed in contradiction of the U.S. Constitution). So your ANTI-piracy attitude is behind this a lot more than some willing ignorance of constitutional/human rights is.
Or just come to the U.S. state of Minnesota and use Canadian coins. I'm shocked by how often I'm handed nearly worthless non-US coinage (although the value of the U.S. dollar by comparison has been sliding dramatically for quite a while now, so eventually it may not be such a big deal).
Typical. There is a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon word, "God", available and we have to argue about some Greek-derived thing that no one even knows how to spell or pronounce?;)
Kidding aside (and nitpicky hat on), it was not spelled "YHWH", it was spelled Yod, He, Waw (aka Vav), He (forgive me for not typing in the actual Hebrew letters, don't know how)... and according to some sources those letters, or at least some of them, can be either consonants or vowels? I think this tendency to transliterate words is creates more confusion than necessary in many cases.
My fault, I guess. I've believed wrongly for years then. Article or no, reporters and even law school professors make mistakes, too. But on further research of the actual copyright laws, it looks like the article is correct.
So what this indicates is that it's much worse than I thought. If there is a compulsory license available to play covers, then DangerMouse could have legally recorded his own "White Album" all he wanted-- as long as he plays the instruments himself and pays royalties? But when it comes to using samples instrumentally, he's suddenly breaking the law? You can see why I would find this confusing, yes? It's insane.
I don't think you can do covers for a "low fixed royalty" as you suggest. It is true that you can perform songs in public, and that things like ASCAP/BMI will make sure that the songwriter gets paid, but don't you still need to secure permission to record the song and release it on an album?
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Agreed. Free software lowers the barriers to entry and the general cost of doing business. A developer can still add value just like always and get paid just like always. The nice part is not being forced to send tribute to Redmond in order to keep their livelihood going. Also, I'm sure the customers appreciates the lower costs associated with not needing to buy seat or CPU or user licenses to use the solution built by the developers. The overall savings are more than enough to allow contributions to groups like the FSF, the GNOME foundation, or to PayPal a developer $25 here and there. As a user I'm in love with the idea that I am not beholden to one corporation or another, too.
Thank you! It's like a voice of sanity. :)
Of course cab drivers (probably in any city) are better drivers than the average person. Their livelihood (and their very lives, in fact) depend on them getting everyone to their intended destination in one piece. Not only that, one way to get better at any given skill is to do it frequently-- practice. These guys drive for several hours a day. Every day. Even the most active drivers among us are not likely to drive this much. Simple assumptions and logical reasoning would lead to the conclusion that taxi drivers are the best drivers around.
They aren't the best customer service folks, though. That's for sure. In Minneapolis I frequently get in cabs where the driver is on a cell phone-- from before I get in until after I get out. Or they've got the radio cranked.
And from the sound of it, government regulation keeps the prices anti-competitive both through expensive licensing and regulated fares. This actually puts the pressure on cabbies to do less well than normal, because somewhere in there, as you point out, they have to make their money. I hear this leads to a lot of interesting tax returns, as well.
As for the actual topic of the article. I've found that in many large cities the walk signs are either gospel or completely ignored. In Minneapolis, jaywalking seems to be considered a constitutionally protected right. In Seattle it surprised me to see that no one crossed against the light. When I've been in San Francisco, you couldn't cross against the light because it simply wasn't feasible with all the traffic. In either case I don't see why those little buttons were ever installed in the first place.
Except when you look at the crime rates in the U.S. they have been falling steadily since 1993. So maybe it's time to retool that argument.
:)
Excessive government fines are simply taxation in disguise-- and in this case it sounds like those taxes will fall hardest on people who can least afford them (i.e. poor people trying to earn a living). If the drugs weren't illegal in the first place there would be no profit motive because normal market prices would drive the prices way down because the supply would go way up). And unlike prescription drugs, street drugs are unencumbered by patents, so anyone with a garden could potentially become a supplier of the plant derived stuff.
Or we get Instant Runoff Voting - and lobbyists lose the stranglehold they have on government (which only exists due our 'lesser of two evils' voting).
;)
Maybe if the government didn't have such a stranglehold in the first place it wouldn't matter so much.
And anyway IRV changes nothing. It doesn't really promote win-win thinking, coalition building, communication. It does promote risk-taking and fragmentation-- which seems likely to lead to instability. Not only that... you thought Florida was bad? You can't stand Diebold now? Just wait until voting is some weird thing where votes have to be tabulated three times just to find out who wins. Do you know that this does to election day and the possibility for fraud and error? *shudder*
Besides... don't you know that if voting actually changed anything they would make it illegal?
I assume you mean the 9/10 sentence? If so, I knew it was a joke (albeit a somewhat common one). But I thought for once I'd have a little rant about it. :)
Personally I don't even trust facts. To quote my good friend Homer Simpson: "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true."
Besides, 9 out of 10 people know you can use statistics to prove anything!
No. You can't. Statistics is a very rigorous mathematical process. Most of what you see in the media, however, is not valid statistics. Further, even if valid statistics are to be found, there almost always logical fallacies involved that direct the reader to conclusions that are not supported by the data. The most common fallacy I see is confusing correlation with causation, followed closely by the false dichotomy.
As to which party serves the rich? The way I see it, they both do.
What's the start-up time (from sleep) like on the Clie? Does it work with the standard sync tools in Linux? I've got an SL-5500 I don't use anymore that I would gladly trade. But comparing the specs on these things, I'd think you were getting shorted.
Stove? I don't know about that. But I am using the same "air popper" technology that was available in 1985.
And personally I think if I can figure out how to upgrade to 2.6 anybody can. As I've demonstrated many times with my postings here on Slashdot, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I didn't have too many problems getting to 2.6. Just followed the directions I found on gentoo.org. On my other Debian systems I'm not even sure if I'm running 2.4 yet, let alone 2.6. But don't most of us have better things to do than upgrading kernels by hand when most distros have or will have upgrade paths available when it's appropriate for the mainstream?
Yes, but it seems to me that like another escalating battle there will be a simple agent-based, learning algorithm solution.
Bayesian filters learn to recognize spam and are personalized to the user. They are at least as effective as rules-based mail filters, but very effectively halt the rules race (where the filter writer writes a rule to filter by, and the spammer figures out a way around the rule, rinse, repeat).
We need something like that for web pages and web searching. It's not just about keywords with sites like Google. It's also about the other parts of their page rank scheme. But imagine that your spider software (unlike Google) was grading its results. For any bad result it could go back and score against every page involved in getting to that result. Same for good results. Next time you search it gives more emphasis to pages in good result trees. Etc.
I mean, that's not an actual technical idea there (I can think of lots of problems with that sort of spider/agent idea that would keep it from being practical). But that's the kind of thinking we need to be doing. Is there a way to solve this problem of finding information that won't involve a central repository of keyword scores and rankings?
Why was this modded down? While I'm fine with a typo here and there, "Zaurii"? Please. First of all, this ought to be "Zauri" if we're going to pretend that Latin style plurals are actually appropriate usage in an Anglo-Saxon language. Of course, it doesn't make a difference. If you even have one of these things it's obviously because you're too geeky for your own good and whatever you call it really won't matter, because the only peole who will know what you're talking about in the first place are other geeks.
Which reminds me. I need to get my Zaurus listed on eBay. These things would be a lot more useful if they could wake from sleep a little faster, like the Palm/Visor type systems do. Plus, the battery life is ridiculous.
And I'm saying that really doesn't help much. If the "Bayesian" algorithm were properly implemented (Paul's "Plan" was a rough draft and the implementations out there are essentially by rote), you would already be able to toss 50% or more of the email as being certainly spam... leaving you with 50% or less "probably spams" to check manually. This method does not sound promising by comparison, since it won't help you even get to the "probably" stage with the remaining emails.
You could already accomplish a lot of this by using S::A score ranges as a type of triage system to sort incoming mail into high, medium, and low spam probabilities (not that I'd know for sure, I stopped using S::A because I got burned on a few important emails using the default settings).
The reason it's not giving you any false positives is because it's giving up on about half of the attempts. In my mind those are false negatives because they require additional effort (i.e. the filter errs on the side of accepting the maisl)... and at a 50% rate that's not much help. I don't think I've ever seen a Bayesian filter that was allowed to just give up on 50% of all inputs... and if it was, I'd bet good money that it wouldn't generate any false positives either.
Paul Graham kind of got everybody thinking about statistical filtering techniques, but people haven't really picked apart his algorithm or looked at ways to tighten it up. Personally I think that path is a lot more promising.
You're right. The phrasing was horrible because I certainly don't want to see restaurants barred from selling. I was reacting in part to something I incorrectly inferred about your original statement. My mistake and I'll just shut up before I dig myself in further. :)
Let people drink. Let people be responsible for their own actions. If someone drinks and drives, book'em, but leave the rest of us alone.
Uh, that's what I said. Please read what I wrote again. The restaurant comment had a context and was an inelegant phrasing (the person was trying to excuse restaurants as though no one ever drove home drunk after dinner, I was countering that). I was not intending to indict the restaurant in any way as I think the remainder of my comment clearly shows.
What's next?
What's next is that you go back and reread what I wrote in context (not to mention my follow-up) and stop accusing me of not taking responsibility for myself or promoting a "nanny-state". I clearly stated the punishments needed to go on the drivers and not everyone else.
Crime rates have been falling since 1993 (see FBI crime stats for details)-- so it's possible that mandatory sentencing is a factor in that. But I never said anything about mandatory sentencing. I advocated harsher penalties. There is a big difference.
No it's not. But you're right. I misstated that. It should read "drinking in restaurants is contributing..." That would have been more consistent with the rest of my statement saying that it is the drunk drivers who should be punished, not the restaurants or other drivers.
If most restaurants are selling alcohol then most restaurants are certainly contributing to the problem of drunk driving. Personally I think rather than worrying about the restaurants' business, which is their own problem, we should focus on punishing criminal behavior with serious sentences instead of the wrist-slaps we've been giving out.
But in a country where a guy arrested for DUI can still hope to be elected president someday, how soon do you think that will happen? Instead we're going to get all these misdirected attempts to punish everyone (whether it's in-car breathalyzers or disappearing parking lots).
It's insane that in a country where simple possession of a naturally growing plant can land you a felony conviction that being found guilty of drunk driving isn't a life-destroying event.
Yukihiro Matsumoto (the creator of Ruby) has frequently and often stated that one of the reasons to program in Ruby is that it is fun. And I quote: "Fun is the most important thing in the world... Ruby makes programming fun."
This book could fit perfectly into that when it is done. Therefore I think I'll reserve judgement until later. Especially since Why's web site is the only geek site I've ever recommended to my non-geek friends just because it's so amusing and fun to read.
Well, in both cases (XFree and libjpeg) there should be no problem at all then. Note that these licenses don't require a package to have documentation. So for most projects this won't be an issue, since they lack anything resembling documentation in the first place. ;)
:)
Kidding aside, I don't see how this is a big deal. If the GPL is not compatible with a request for credit in documentation, then it should be modified so that it is. This is no different than distributing software with documentation separately licensed under the GNU FDL when said documentation contains invariant sections that are political essays and the like (see emacs or gcc for examples).
Please note that I am not trying to bash the GNU FDL (well, ok, a little bit) as generally I am a strong supporter of Free Software (and a card-carrying member of the FSF). If we are all on the same side here (that is, the side that favors source code availability and the ability to share code/binaries freely), then we need to figure out ways to get along, even if sometimes it involves compromises on stuff like this.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint: the cost of including a small credit line in some documentation is nothing compared to the cost of maintaining forks. I would do it myself if I even needed to. As a Gentoo user, the license on software is mostly irrelevant to me. I download all my stuff as source code and compile it myself. Oh, except on a couple of Debian servers where I don't bother with X at all anyway.
Check my posting history to see that I don't approve of copyright law in the first place but...
Innocent until proven guilty is not at issue here. The write-up is totally misleading. Things like Anton Pillar orders are not license to "ransack" they are there to assist in finding infringing material. The orders cannot be issued without a court approval and there are oversight measures in place to ensure that things are done properly.
As far as I can tell this would be completely legal in the U.S., where the 4th amendment protects against "unreasonable" search and seizure, but does not say who is to conduct those searches. In some sense, what the government is doing here is deputizing the plaintiff temporarily and for a specific purpose.
If you can stand for the fairly arbitrary seizure practices that already exist vis-a-vis the drug war, then this is hardly a problem by comparison. In the case of the drug war, they redefine your property as the spoils of ill-gotten gains (i.e. drug-selling) and then seize them and resell them. In the case of Anton Pillar orders, the seizure is infringing materials themselves (or tools of infringement, I suppose, like computers or whatever).
The point is to preserve evidence of guilt through trial. Which makes sense.
The problem here is not the enforcement tools but the underlying notion that ideas are somehow a form of property (which is what the Berne convention changed in contradiction of the U.S. Constitution). So your ANTI-piracy attitude is behind this a lot more than some willing ignorance of constitutional/human rights is.
Or just come to the U.S. state of Minnesota and use Canadian coins. I'm shocked by how often I'm handed nearly worthless non-US coinage (although the value of the U.S. dollar by comparison has been sliding dramatically for quite a while now, so eventually it may not be such a big deal).
Typical. There is a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon word, "God", available and we have to argue about some Greek-derived thing that no one even knows how to spell or pronounce? ;)
Kidding aside (and nitpicky hat on), it was not spelled "YHWH", it was spelled Yod, He, Waw (aka Vav), He (forgive me for not typing in the actual Hebrew letters, don't know how)... and according to some sources those letters, or at least some of them, can be either consonants or vowels? I think this tendency to transliterate words is creates more confusion than necessary in many cases.
My fault, I guess. I've believed wrongly for years then. Article or no, reporters and even law school professors make mistakes, too. But on further research of the actual copyright laws, it looks like the article is correct.
So what this indicates is that it's much worse than I thought. If there is a compulsory license available to play covers, then DangerMouse could have legally recorded his own "White Album" all he wanted-- as long as he plays the instruments himself and pays royalties? But when it comes to using samples instrumentally, he's suddenly breaking the law? You can see why I would find this confusing, yes? It's insane.
I don't think you can do covers for a "low fixed royalty" as you suggest. It is true that you can perform songs in public, and that things like ASCAP/BMI will make sure that the songwriter gets paid, but don't you still need to secure permission to record the song and release it on an album?
Other than that I agree 100% with your analysis.