It's not really courageous of this minister though. When the right wing and the left wing press are arguing for something, mixed with public pressure from a lot of tech-savvy people (who are actually pretty well organised for an ad-hoc collective), it requires more courage to say no to them than the US.
Honestly if the US authorities had wanted him for some computer security violations, he'd probably have been sent over, tried and even if found guilty would be back in England having served his sentence by now, with little to no public fuss.
The US authorities' insistence on throwing the book at anyone who makes them look stupid caused them more problems than it was worth, and the people defending him had been so zealous in their defence that they'd managed to convince themselves that he hadn't done anything wrong.
Nearly all of them have i7 processors. Many have solid state drives as standard. Even the cheapest have competent graphics hardware. They have higher resolution displays than most other machines of the same screen size.
A Windows based laptop with the same specs would be considered high end even if it did cost less than the Apple equivalent.
Apple isn't in quite the same market. Apple computers are high end devices and their business model is based on lower number of units at higher per unit profit. Lenovo and HP are perfectly happy to sell to the people who want a low cost machine and make their profit on units sold. Apple aren't really interested in that area because doing so would damage their image
True. I think the official position is that he is a British citizen, therefore entitled to healthcare, and if the inland revenue decided to assess him, would probably find him liable for back taxes.
All cool stuff, but these are things that have fairly direct commercial applications. The private sector can, and in many cases already is developing this stuff. If the government is going to invest in something, it should be the sort of long term project that no individual company would be interested in.
Are these the same "sane" people that valued facebook?
I did say "apparently sane". Honestly, I have no idea how anyone who had ever played a game thought that the idea of streaming video games would work, given the latency involved. Or why they thought the business model was going to be so huge.
But these are people who are allowed control over their own money and apparently have a reasonable amount of it. So, apart from this very odd decision, most people would assume they were sane.
This is the sort of prediction I'd expect for 2012 if made in 1997. Really no thought given to the technologies that have been invented this century, except possibly bittorrent - which is a short term measure that will become substantially more specialised when the media industry works out how to sell us downloads.
Yes. It occurred to me that the benefit of a laptop is not portability, but stowability. A desktop PC requires a substantial chunk of space since it needs a dedicated desk, pus a chair. A laptop can be used on a kitchen table, and put on a shelf when not in use.
I have made no choice. I may, for all you know, oppose all laws. That does not change the fact that the laws exist, and that these are what the Supreme court is going to be ruling on.
Copyright law recognises that publishers may well want to publish the same item at a different price in another country. A textbook in the US or Europe can be sold at quite a high price. In poorer countries, there's no way they can sell for these markups, so they're a lot cheaper.
The law allows the copyright holder to licence distribution to another party for distribution in another territory. To prevent a companies own products from competing with their domestic sales, the law makes it an infringement of copyright to sell a copy licensed for sale in another country. Whether you think this is right or not, this is what the law recognises, and what the Supreme court will be basing its decision on.
Of course, the lawmakers don't want to prevent you from taking a book with you when you're travelling, nor do they think that you should buy an entire new library if you move to another country. So you're allowed to bring the foreign copy to your country if you have no intention of selling it.
So what happens if you change your mind? Do you have the right to sell something that you legally brought into the country? Is the "first sale" the first time the item was sold, or is it the first time the item is sold in the US?
The article is highly misleading. This has no effect on something that just happens to have been made in another country, as long as it was originally sold by the copyright holder. Only items where the item has not yet been sold in the US.
Or possibly hydrogen. Or some other hydrocarbon with a different energy density than petroleum.
Are you saying it's impossible that we'll find a more efficient way of converting chemicals to kinetic energy than exploding them in a big heavy chunk of metal?
Seems to me an effective way of reducing fuel consumption is to remove that huge mass in the front of the car. Another would be to increase efficiency across the entire range of power.
A suggestion that possibly we'll be doing something different, doesn't mean breaking the laws of thermodynamics, so stop using stupid false dichotomies.
It's possible that in the next few years, we'll have a practical alternative to the internal combustion engine, and in 10 years, all new cars being designed will use whatever it is we come up with.
This is the timeframe in which either nothing or everything will change.
Personally I was never all that impressed with the start menu in the first place. The task bar was a nice addition from Windows 95, but a menu with submenus is a fairly tedious way of starting an application. Give me a list of icons.
Well, if, as you say, money is just a way of keeping score and the multibillionaires are not any more productive or valuable than other people,
I'm not saying they're not more productive either. Just not thousands of times more productive.
and why are we using it if it doesn't keep proper score?
What do you propose we replace it with? And how do you propose we get mass acceptance of this? If you can answer these questions, then great! For now the system we have works pretty well.
Would you like to earn more than $38000 a year for less than 65 hours a week?
If you had the skills that people were willing to pay for that allowed you to do so, would you?
If so, then you're accepting that the capitalist system works. If you can find a way for the system to work without offering ridiculous rewards for those at the top, then great. You should write down your thoughts and publish them. Who knows - you might become successful.
That's a lie that's told over and over again to justify massive wealth inequity.
Which part? We do have a society largely based on capitalist principles. The stated reason for this is that it promotes innovation. Evidence seems to suggest that it does so.
But after the first couple of million, you've got enough to live a very comfortable life, and there's no relationship between comfort and a desire to create.
Of course there's not. It's not about comfort. It appears to be more about competitiveness. After the first million, money's just a way of keeping score. Of course there is the incentive that if you really excel you might get to go to space.
We aren't creating multibillionaires because these people are millions of times more productive or valuable than others.
No we're not. And nobody says we are. This is a side effect of the system.
We have a system that largely works. Yes, it does lead to wealth inequality. Yes, this is a problem that should be addressed. The fact that the super-rich can afford this sort of thing isn't the problem though. It's just a symptom.
Slashdot Mirror
Learn Latin and Anglo Saxon. Find a time machine. Become extremely wealthy.
The second part may be a little tricky but look for a strangely dressed eccentric and you might have some joy.
Isn't "cruel and unusual" or rather "inhumane and degrading" to be taken on absolute terms though, rather than relative to the crime?
It's not really courageous of this minister though. When the right wing and the left wing press are arguing for something, mixed with public pressure from a lot of tech-savvy people (who are actually pretty well organised for an ad-hoc collective), it requires more courage to say no to them than the US.
Honestly if the US authorities had wanted him for some computer security violations, he'd probably have been sent over, tried and even if found guilty would be back in England having served his sentence by now, with little to no public fuss.
The US authorities' insistence on throwing the book at anyone who makes them look stupid caused them more problems than it was worth, and the people defending him had been so zealous in their defence that they'd managed to convince themselves that he hadn't done anything wrong.
Nearly all of them have i7 processors. Many have solid state drives as standard. Even the cheapest have competent graphics hardware. They have higher resolution displays than most other machines of the same screen size.
A Windows based laptop with the same specs would be considered high end even if it did cost less than the Apple equivalent.
I suspect that won't happen.
Apple isn't in quite the same market. Apple computers are high end devices and their business model is based on lower number of units at higher per unit profit. Lenovo and HP are perfectly happy to sell to the people who want a low cost machine and make their profit on units sold. Apple aren't really interested in that area because doing so would damage their image
True. I think the official position is that he is a British citizen, therefore entitled to healthcare, and if the inland revenue decided to assess him, would probably find him liable for back taxes.
Yes. Also, technically she's above the law. Although if she actually exercised this right, she probably wouldn't remain Queen for long.
She does pay taxes, but this is entirely voluntary.
All cool stuff, but these are things that have fairly direct commercial applications. The private sector can, and in many cases already is developing this stuff. If the government is going to invest in something, it should be the sort of long term project that no individual company would be interested in.
I did say "apparently sane". Honestly, I have no idea how anyone who had ever played a game thought that the idea of streaming video games would work, given the latency involved. Or why they thought the business model was going to be so huge.
But these are people who are allowed control over their own money and apparently have a reasonable amount of it. So, apart from this very odd decision, most people would assume they were sane.
The thing is, apparently sane people valued OnLive at $1.8 billion.
It was based off DNA from blood from an insect trapped in amber.
Now, the enzyme degradation will no doubt be an issue, as well as the rareness of mosquitoes preserved in amber, but that's another matter.
This is the sort of prediction I'd expect for 2012 if made in 1997. Really no thought given to the technologies that have been invented this century, except possibly bittorrent - which is a short term measure that will become substantially more specialised when the media industry works out how to sell us downloads.
Yes. It occurred to me that the benefit of a laptop is not portability, but stowability. A desktop PC requires a substantial chunk of space since it needs a dedicated desk, pus a chair. A laptop can be used on a kitchen table, and put on a shelf when not in use.
I have made no choice. I may, for all you know, oppose all laws. That does not change the fact that the laws exist, and that these are what the Supreme court is going to be ruling on.
There's no absolute legal right to property. Copyright law is well established, as are laws such as taxation and eminent domain.
This is a legal matter, about explicit legal rights, not about hypothetical moral rights which may or may not exist.
Copyright law recognises that publishers may well want to publish the same item at a different price in another country. A textbook in the US or Europe can be sold at quite a high price. In poorer countries, there's no way they can sell for these markups, so they're a lot cheaper.
The law allows the copyright holder to licence distribution to another party for distribution in another territory. To prevent a companies own products from competing with their domestic sales, the law makes it an infringement of copyright to sell a copy licensed for sale in another country. Whether you think this is right or not, this is what the law recognises, and what the Supreme court will be basing its decision on.
Of course, the lawmakers don't want to prevent you from taking a book with you when you're travelling, nor do they think that you should buy an entire new library if you move to another country. So you're allowed to bring the foreign copy to your country if you have no intention of selling it.
So what happens if you change your mind? Do you have the right to sell something that you legally brought into the country? Is the "first sale" the first time the item was sold, or is it the first time the item is sold in the US?
The article is highly misleading. This has no effect on something that just happens to have been made in another country, as long as it was originally sold by the copyright holder. Only items where the item has not yet been sold in the US.
Or possibly hydrogen. Or some other hydrocarbon with a different energy density than petroleum.
Are you saying it's impossible that we'll find a more efficient way of converting chemicals to kinetic energy than exploding them in a big heavy chunk of metal?
Seems to me an effective way of reducing fuel consumption is to remove that huge mass in the front of the car. Another would be to increase efficiency across the entire range of power.
A suggestion that possibly we'll be doing something different, doesn't mean breaking the laws of thermodynamics, so stop using stupid false dichotomies.
It's possible that in the next few years, we'll have a practical alternative to the internal combustion engine, and in 10 years, all new cars being designed will use whatever it is we come up with.
This is the timeframe in which either nothing or everything will change.
But if we do that, we might like it and then we might have to admit that actually Microsoft have come up with a good idea!
I presume there's a list somewhere.
Personally I was never all that impressed with the start menu in the first place. The task bar was a nice addition from Windows 95, but a menu with submenus is a fairly tedious way of starting an application. Give me a list of icons.
Could this just be a bad pun? GTA Bin - i.e throw GTA into the Waste Bin.
I'm not saying they're not more productive either. Just not thousands of times more productive.
What do you propose we replace it with? And how do you propose we get mass acceptance of this? If you can answer these questions, then great! For now the system we have works pretty well.
Would you like to earn more than $38000 a year for less than 65 hours a week?
If you had the skills that people were willing to pay for that allowed you to do so, would you?
If so, then you're accepting that the capitalist system works. If you can find a way for the system to work without offering ridiculous rewards for those at the top, then great. You should write down your thoughts and publish them. Who knows - you might become successful.
Which part? We do have a society largely based on capitalist principles. The stated reason for this is that it promotes innovation. Evidence seems to suggest that it does so.
Of course there's not. It's not about comfort. It appears to be more about competitiveness. After the first million, money's just a way of keeping score. Of course there is the incentive that if you really excel you might get to go to space.
No we're not. And nobody says we are. This is a side effect of the system.
We have a system that largely works. Yes, it does lead to wealth inequality. Yes, this is a problem that should be addressed. The fact that the super-rich can afford this sort of thing isn't the problem though. It's just a symptom.