The death penalty is bad because witnesses lie or are mistaken, cops lie or are mistaken, cops torture/beat confessions out of people, jailhouse snitches are allowed to testify to reduce their own sentence, evidence is planted (or hidden, if exculpatory), and so on.
You're only scratching the surface of why it's bad.
The death penalty is also bad because:
It makes juries less likely to convict, so it results in more truly dangerous people walking free.
It costs more than life incarceration.
It makes it harder to extradite criminals to your country to face justice.
Ah, but the £1.2 billion I quoted excluded digital TV. It was just for online. So even if you take the profits from BBC Worldwide as £89 million, that's still a massive shortfall for the magic money pixies to make up before you can theoretically have iPlayer and related DRMed and proprietary digital efforts (like the RealAudio streaming) not be funded out of taxation.
Specifically, the BBC made a grand total of £6.9 million in profits from BBC Worldwide last year according to their official figures linked to above, and the planned spending on iPlayer and related digital offerings as per the Guardian page is £1.2 billion. Explain to me again how BBC Worldwide is funding iPlayer?
Yeah, CD storage becomes a major pain once you get past the first couple of thousand CDs. I'd rather buy FLACs than CDs, and have been doing so where possible.
However, I'm still not sure whether I prefer high bitrate MP3 or AAC to CD.
I am shocked that these plans come in less expensive than the equivalent plans for other att smartphones.
They don't. They're the exact same price (well, modulo a difference of a penny) as the equivalent plans for other ATT smartphones. The iPhone plan is just the personal 450 minute plan ($39.99) plus the unlimited smartphone data plan ($19.99).
Web streaming is NOT covered by the charter nor, therefore, by any funding provided by the government. You licence fee is totally irrelevant to this discussion.
So who is paying for the BBC's existing web streaming infrastructure? Magic money pixies?
Sure, I guess way back in the day when Blade Runner came it, it must have been visually exciting to watch. But as a younger person, I only saw it for the first time last year. Personally, I find most of today's modern CGI movies to be the same or more interesting than Blade Runner.
It's not supposed to be visually exciting or interesting. It's supposed to be a believable world in which to tell an interesting story.
Yes, the John Major era myth of the US as a classless society was just that--a myth--though plenty of people still believe it. Statistically, the US has less social mobility than many European countries--though not the UK.
Most of the issues generally portrayed as "race" issues in the US are actually class issues, it's just that race is a much more convenient and visible distinction to latch on to. As more black people become middle and upper class, this is starting to become obvious. If you're interested to know more about social class in the US, PBS has an excellent documentary called People Like Us (not to be confused with the also-excellent BBC Radio comedy documentary).
I can modify the software, but I can't run the modified software. That makes the ability to modify it moot.
And there's nothing wrong with letting the market decide whether a closed hardware system is moot. What's wrong is using free software with hardware that is locked down to remove the freedoms the free software license says end users should have.
Frankly, Google should scrap their Summer of Code and have a Summer of Documentation. There's already too much badly documented (or undocumented) code.
This is the single biggest, highest profile way we can get the message to the industry that DRM doesn't pay.
So please, find a Mac or Windows box if you have to, but go buy something from the iTunes music store. Even if it's just one album and you then shunt the AAC files back to Linux to listen to.
Personally, I recommend something from the Mute back-catalog.
(And yes, I've bought 2 albums so far, I plan to keep buying preferentially from iTMS at least until the other labels get the message.)
And for that miniscule nearly-undetectable drop in quality, you're cutting your download time, increasing the amount of songs you can hold on your mp3 player, and maybe even increasing battery time.
I don't care about download time. However, if I have a lossless original, I can encode a high bitrate copy for home listening, and a lower bitrate one for my iPod.
That's why I prefer lossless. However, as iPods get more capacious, the need for lower bitrate mobile versions of tunes is going away.
some people mod me down any chance they get to make a plausible-looking negative moderation, simply because they recognize me and disapprove of that for which I stand.
Or maybe it's because half the time you're insightful and half the time you're talking out of your ass (or so I've noticed)--but they never have mod points at the right time.
The cheapest way to get photo quality prints of photos is to get them made at the local photo store.
The cheapest way to print anything else is a laser printer. I have a Konica Minolta which can also do magazine-quality photos, is networkable, and under $400.
Also, generally all-in-one devices are crap compared to separate ones.
TiVoization damages the community because it means TiVo owners can't improve the free software on their machines and share it with the rest of the community of TiVo owners. That's one reason why the TiVo software has stagnated in comparison with MythTV.
The security aspect is really unconvincing. TiVo's provision of listings information is, from a security standpoint, no harder than putting files on a web server. If they didn't lock me out of doing so, I'd be using my own network connection to obtain the information. Their servers are Internet accessible already, so they're just as hackable now as they would be if TiVo was freed.
The theft of service argument is bogus too, because the hardware already includes a unique piece of cryptographic hardware used to decode the signal, in the form of the DirecTV crypto card. By the time the data hits my TiVo's software, they've already verified that I'm a subscriber.
The logic behind requiring that hardware can run modified GPL software is simply that if you can't modify the software, the entire point of the GPL has been defeated.
In fact, I would like RockStar to make GTA4 an AO-rated game too. Then the stores would be forced to reevaluate whether they'd rather lose millions of dollars in sales, or stock AO games. GTA4 is pretty much a guaranteed big seller.
See the FSF's Four Freedoms page. Clearly the "whole community" cannot benefit from your being able to change the software if none of them can run it.
Also, further down:
"The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity."
i.e. without getting it signed by a device manufacturer.
And if you doubt that that was the historical intent of the GPL, read about the history of the GNU project and a 2001 speech from Stallman. RMS was prevented from fixing the printer controller of the AI lab's laser printer, which had been provided as part of a turnkey hardware bundle from Xerox.
So the right to improve the software that runs on your hardware, even if the software and hardware were sold as a bundle, is exactly what RMS wanted GPL to give users.
Slashdot Mirror
Tell that to JFK and E. Howard Hunt.
You're only scratching the surface of why it's bad.
The death penalty is also bad because:
Ah, but the £1.2 billion I quoted excluded digital TV. It was just for online. So even if you take the profits from BBC Worldwide as £89 million, that's still a massive shortfall for the magic money pixies to make up before you can theoretically have iPlayer and related DRMed and proprietary digital efforts (like the RealAudio streaming) not be funded out of taxation.
The Treo isn't an iPhone equivalent, as it can run arbitrary software. The iPhone is just like a 3125 with a fancy UI.
I think you're missing the point of my question. The BBC does online streaming right now. Are you saying they fund this via BBC Worldwide, not via the license fee? Because I was under the impression that they specifically asked for the license fee to be increased so that they could do more online, and are planning on spending far more on digital than BBC Worldwide takes in.
Specifically, the BBC made a grand total of £6.9 million in profits from BBC Worldwide last year according to their official figures linked to above, and the planned spending on iPlayer and related digital offerings as per the Guardian page is £1.2 billion. Explain to me again how BBC Worldwide is funding iPlayer?
Jeez, you think I made up the prices and everything rather than copying them from the web site?
e ll-phone-plans/smartphone-connect-plans.jsp
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service//c
It's called SmartPhone Connect Unlimited with Xpress Mail. Unlimited data, $19.99 a month.
It accomplishes even less than that. All the 9/11 terrorists had valid ID and weren't on watch lists.
Yeah, CD storage becomes a major pain once you get past the first couple of thousand CDs. I'd rather buy FLACs than CDs, and have been doing so where possible.
However, I'm still not sure whether I prefer high bitrate MP3 or AAC to CD.
They don't. They're the exact same price (well, modulo a difference of a penny) as the equivalent plans for other ATT smartphones. The iPhone plan is just the personal 450 minute plan ($39.99) plus the unlimited smartphone data plan ($19.99).
Actually, the iPhone plan is exactly the same as AT&T's regular price plans, to within a few pennies.
iPhone plan = 450 minute $39.99 voice plan plus $19.99 unlimited data smart phone plan with e-mail.
So who is paying for the BBC's existing web streaming infrastructure? Magic money pixies?
It's not supposed to be visually exciting or interesting. It's supposed to be a believable world in which to tell an interesting story.
Yes, the John Major era myth of the US as a classless society was just that--a myth--though plenty of people still believe it. Statistically, the US has less social mobility than many European countries--though not the UK.
Most of the issues generally portrayed as "race" issues in the US are actually class issues, it's just that race is a much more convenient and visible distinction to latch on to. As more black people become middle and upper class, this is starting to become obvious. If you're interested to know more about social class in the US, PBS has an excellent documentary called People Like Us (not to be confused with the also-excellent BBC Radio comedy documentary).
I can modify the software, but I can't run the modified software. That makes the ability to modify it moot.
And there's nothing wrong with letting the market decide whether a closed hardware system is moot. What's wrong is using free software with hardware that is locked down to remove the freedoms the free software license says end users should have.
Frankly, Google should scrap their Summer of Code and have a Summer of Documentation. There's already too much badly documented (or undocumented) code.
TiVo use a lot more than just the kernel.
If I were Rockstar, I'd say to Sony "Release Manhunt 2, or GTA IV is exclusive to Xbox 360".
Sony are in no position to be dictating what does and does not get released, given their terrible sales.
This is the single biggest, highest profile way we can get the message to the industry that DRM doesn't pay.
So please, find a Mac or Windows box if you have to, but go buy something from the iTunes music store. Even if it's just one album and you then shunt the AAC files back to Linux to listen to.
Personally, I recommend something from the Mute back-catalog.
(And yes, I've bought 2 albums so far, I plan to keep buying preferentially from iTMS at least until the other labels get the message.)
I don't care about download time. However, if I have a lossless original, I can encode a high bitrate copy for home listening, and a lower bitrate one for my iPod.
That's why I prefer lossless. However, as iPods get more capacious, the need for lower bitrate mobile versions of tunes is going away.
Or maybe it's because half the time you're insightful and half the time you're talking out of your ass (or so I've noticed)--but they never have mod points at the right time.
The cheapest way to get photo quality prints of photos is to get them made at the local photo store.
The cheapest way to print anything else is a laser printer. I have a Konica Minolta which can also do magazine-quality photos, is networkable, and under $400.
Also, generally all-in-one devices are crap compared to separate ones.
TiVoization damages the community because it means TiVo owners can't improve the free software on their machines and share it with the rest of the community of TiVo owners. That's one reason why the TiVo software has stagnated in comparison with MythTV.
The security aspect is really unconvincing. TiVo's provision of listings information is, from a security standpoint, no harder than putting files on a web server. If they didn't lock me out of doing so, I'd be using my own network connection to obtain the information. Their servers are Internet accessible already, so they're just as hackable now as they would be if TiVo was freed.
The theft of service argument is bogus too, because the hardware already includes a unique piece of cryptographic hardware used to decode the signal, in the form of the DirecTV crypto card. By the time the data hits my TiVo's software, they've already verified that I'm a subscriber.
The logic behind requiring that hardware can run modified GPL software is simply that if you can't modify the software, the entire point of the GPL has been defeated.
I use Dovecot on a home server. Standard Debian/Ubuntu package. Connect with Thunderbird and OS X Mail, Maildir+ configured to use ~/.mail as maildir.
In fact, I would like RockStar to make GTA4 an AO-rated game too. Then the stores would be forced to reevaluate whether they'd rather lose millions of dollars in sales, or stock AO games. GTA4 is pretty much a guaranteed big seller.
See the FSF's Four Freedoms page. Clearly the "whole community" cannot benefit from your being able to change the software if none of them can run it.
Also, further down:
"The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity."
i.e. without getting it signed by a device manufacturer.
And if you doubt that that was the historical intent of the GPL, read about the history of the GNU project and a 2001 speech from Stallman. RMS was prevented from fixing the printer controller of the AI lab's laser printer, which had been provided as part of a turnkey hardware bundle from Xerox.
So the right to improve the software that runs on your hardware, even if the software and hardware were sold as a bundle, is exactly what RMS wanted GPL to give users.