The basics should be provided for everyone. Food, shelter, and utilities at the minimum. A car, telephone, and computer are almost essentials today too
Wow, where do I sign up? I'd never work another day in my life if the government would give me all that.
I know if I were going to steal some free stuff and sell it in violation of its license I'd rename it first. In that case what would be the action based on?
Here's a case where there was an association, and yet the copyright holder was effectively prevented from legal action due to a noncommercial clause: Medievia MUD
Short version: Medievia started out as a diku/merc clone. Diku/merc license forbids commercial exploitation. Vryce, the owner, starts accepting "donations" in exchange for special items not available in-game otherwise. Diku/Merc people get pissed off, so he claims in the next release that he has written all the diku/merc code out of the codebase, and removes the diku/merc copyright notice. The claim looks pretty bogus, many dikusims remain. In any case, it's probably not possible to "revise the derivativness out of a derivative work"
The noncommercial clause effectively limits them from suing for damages due to lost income, since it would be impossible to show any lost potential income. He hasn't damaged the diku/merc name by associating it with anything bad either. If anything people would be impressed that such a big and successful MUD could be created from the codebase.
I agree with all your points. I'm not sure how practical it is to expect to have no large companies, but everything else, I'm with you.
Like it or not, the way unemployment is currently measured reflects the current economic situation. I'm all for changing that situation in ways that would address the problems you pointed out, but I don't think changing the way the numbers are reported is going to make that happen.
If they were working in an obselete industry (one that the US is no longer competitive at, or there just isn't enough demand for the end product) and the choice was between them losing their jobs, or us passing protectionist laws that would have hurt everyone in the long run, then the choice is obvious.
If I'm sleeping on a steam grate, that means I refused to adapt my skills to a changing economy.
silly-assed pronouncements are not the people out there scraping to make ends meet
I'm not rich either, just smart enough to understand economics.
Don't misread my point of view as support for the current joke of a federal legislature and executive branch either. The federal government is doing a lot to damage this country, but doctoring unemployment numbers isn't one of those things.
The unemployment numbers aren't that way for a political reason, it's because those numbers are the ones you need in order to do useful economic analysis on the data.
It's important to differentiate between cyclical, frictional, and structural unemployment.
Low unemployment can be a very bad thing. For example, structural unemployment is often created when technological change revolutionizes part of the economy. An economy with persistant low structural unemployment might find itself in serious trouble, in a world where technology has left it behind.
Frictional unemployment is caused when people seek out new careers or new locations. Extremely low frictional unemployment would indicate an economy where people are probably not putting their skills to the best use, staying in jobs that are not the most beneficial.
Cyclical unemployment is really the only type of unemployment that is not desirable. This is the one you want to look at. So you take out the unemployment numbers that likely represent the other two categories, so that you get an accurate picture of actual cyclical unemployment.
Suppose SPICE was released under CC non-commercial. What possible action could a few of the holders of part of the the IP bring against Cadence for making what would then be an infringing work in Cadence pspice?
Funny I was just discussing this with a coworker today.
I agree completely with RMS. The Creative Commons licenses are not something that should be lumped together.
They also have several legal problems. Because there are 10 different possibilities for CC license combinations, it's difficult to determine whether all 10 are enforcable or not. The process for vetting even one license is hard enough, much less 10 distinct licenses.
The other is the "no commercial use" licenses. I think these would work fine for a work where the ownership is tightly controlled, but for a collaborative work where no one can authorize license changes, it raises an enforcability question.
If you were to sue someone for infringement, you'd generally sue them for the monetary damages caused by their misuse of your work. If it's impossible for anyone to commercially exploit the work, there's no way there could be any damages. You therefore really have nothing to sue for, and no way to enforce.
For tightly held works, you can claim that you have the ability to license the work under another license if you desire, and therefore there is a commercial potential, and a potential for monetary damages. For works with tainted ownership (say 100 contributers, some dead, many with no contact information), it would be hard to argue that anyone anywhere could ever commercially exploit the project, and there's no basis for claiming damages.
Just to nitpick, irradiated things aren't radioactive generally, unless you are talking about used parts from a nuclear reactor, or something else with high energy neutrons.
I'd estimate 70% of Macguyverisms are just total BS, with no relation to reality at all. 10% might actually work, and the remaining 20% have some tenuous relation to a real thing.
Of course I'm referring to the earlier seasons, the show really started to suck once it became about "rehabilitating inner city youth" instead of "fighting commies and cartel leaders".
Funny you say that, I did a search and from Pete Townshend's blog:
If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK. It may only be studio earphones that cause bad damage. I only have long experience of the studio side of things
Of course, if you take medical advice from Pete Townshend, you probably deserve what you get.:)
I agree with the AC. As a reader of your blog, you should write up this whole "millionaire in 6 years making $60,000 a year"...
That's only $360k. You'd have to invest $360k at a 17% rate of return (compounded daily) today to have a million in 6 years. And that's assuming you can live eating air and not wearing clothes. And it assumes you got paid for the next 6 years of labor all at once.
I don't have a calculator handy for figuring how much the rate of return would have to be in reality, making only 60k available per year to be invested, but I suspect somewhere around 25-30% rate of return.
I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and really pretty crappy. Switched from Opera, because I got sick of Opera rendering bad HTML badly.
I'm CCed on many bugs, one WONTFIX and some open, but all have been filed for over 2 years, some 4 or 5 years.
The WONTFIX is that Firefox stores all your credit card numbers on your hard disk unencrypted *by default*. Just wait until some worm writer finds that one out.
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The basics should be provided for everyone. Food, shelter, and utilities at the minimum. A car, telephone, and computer are almost essentials today too
Wow, where do I sign up? I'd never work another day in my life if the government would give me all that.
Doesn't anyone have savings?
There are some MEMS single-chip accelerometers out there that could be adapted to mouse use. Would make an interesting device.
Well what if there isn't an association?
I know if I were going to steal some free stuff and sell it in violation of its license I'd rename it first. In that case what would be the action based on?
Here's a case where there was an association, and yet the copyright holder was effectively prevented from legal action due to a noncommercial clause: Medievia MUD
Short version:
Medievia started out as a diku/merc clone. Diku/merc license forbids commercial exploitation. Vryce, the owner, starts accepting "donations" in exchange for special items not available in-game otherwise. Diku/Merc people get pissed off, so he claims in the next release that he has written all the diku/merc code out of the codebase, and removes the diku/merc copyright notice. The claim looks pretty bogus, many dikusims remain. In any case, it's probably not possible to "revise the derivativness out of a derivative work"
The noncommercial clause effectively limits them from suing for damages due to lost income, since it would be impossible to show any lost potential income. He hasn't damaged the diku/merc name by associating it with anything bad either. If anything people would be impressed that such a big and successful MUD could be created from the codebase.
I agree with all your points. I'm not sure how practical it is to expect to have no large companies, but everything else, I'm with you.
Like it or not, the way unemployment is currently measured reflects the current economic situation. I'm all for changing that situation in ways that would address the problems you pointed out, but I don't think changing the way the numbers are reported is going to make that happen.
Why don't you just become an economist?
Seems like the logical solution, since your chosen industry seems pretty unstable, and you seem to envy the stability that being an economist offers.
Some of them, yes.
If they were working in an obselete industry (one that the US is no longer competitive at, or there just isn't enough demand for the end product) and the choice was between them losing their jobs, or us passing protectionist laws that would have hurt everyone in the long run, then the choice is obvious.
Don't feel sorry for me.
If I'm sleeping on a steam grate, that means I refused to adapt my skills to a changing economy.
silly-assed pronouncements are not the people out there scraping to make ends meet
I'm not rich either, just smart enough to understand economics.
Don't misread my point of view as support for the current joke of a federal legislature and executive branch either. The federal government is doing a lot to damage this country, but doctoring unemployment numbers isn't one of those things.
You just don't understand economics.
The unemployment numbers aren't that way for a political reason, it's because those numbers are the ones you need in order to do useful economic analysis on the data.
It's important to differentiate between cyclical, frictional, and structural unemployment.
Low unemployment can be a very bad thing. For example, structural unemployment is often created when technological change revolutionizes part of the economy. An economy with persistant low structural unemployment might find itself in serious trouble, in a world where technology has left it behind.
Frictional unemployment is caused when people seek out new careers or new locations. Extremely low frictional unemployment would indicate an economy where people are probably not putting their skills to the best use, staying in jobs that are not the most beneficial.
Cyclical unemployment is really the only type of unemployment that is not desirable. This is the one you want to look at. So you take out the unemployment numbers that likely represent the other two categories, so that you get an accurate picture of actual cyclical unemployment.
What ways?
Suppose SPICE was released under CC non-commercial. What possible action could a few of the holders of part of the the IP bring against Cadence for making what would then be an infringing work in Cadence pspice?
That's who RMS is.
If you wanted someone in a stuffed shirt that business people could relate to, you should have invited Bruce Perens instead.
Funny I was just discussing this with a coworker today.
I agree completely with RMS. The Creative Commons licenses are not something that should be lumped together.
They also have several legal problems. Because there are 10 different possibilities for CC license combinations, it's difficult to determine whether all 10 are enforcable or not. The process for vetting even one license is hard enough, much less 10 distinct licenses.
The other is the "no commercial use" licenses. I think these would work fine for a work where the ownership is tightly controlled, but for a collaborative work where no one can authorize license changes, it raises an enforcability question.
If you were to sue someone for infringement, you'd generally sue them for the monetary damages caused by their misuse of your work. If it's impossible for anyone to commercially exploit the work, there's no way there could be any damages. You therefore really have nothing to sue for, and no way to enforce.
For tightly held works, you can claim that you have the ability to license the work under another license if you desire, and therefore there is a commercial potential, and a potential for monetary damages. For works with tainted ownership (say 100 contributers, some dead, many with no contact information), it would be hard to argue that anyone anywhere could ever commercially exploit the project, and there's no basis for claiming damages.
It's precisely the watering down of normal entertainment that makes games look so bad.
In the 80s when I was a kid, it was common to watch action shows during prime time TV where the hero got shot or shot someone nearly every episode.
Those sort of shows mostly only existed as syndication-only shows in the 90s, and are almost nonexistant today.
there will be a fee for posting on Slashdot to reduce the spam.
There is sorta a fee already. If you type fast you have to waste a minute of your precious time waiting for the stupid timer to expire.
Pretty soon Google will reach the level of sophistication AOL offered in 1993. Amazing.
I wonder when they'll install a way to access Gopher and FTP sites?
They need a sponsorship from Kodak to get a competant photographer.
Those pictures look like they were taken by a drunk 5 year old.
Casinos in nevada take in around 90 million wagers on the Super Bowl every year.
And that's just nevada casinos, who knows how many illegal bets there are.
I'd say a billion is entirely possible. How many of them actually give a fuck about football is probably a lot less.
Sports wouldn't exist without gambling, period.
Just to nitpick, irradiated things aren't radioactive generally, unless you are talking about used parts from a nuclear reactor, or something else with high energy neutrons.
Check our rdiff-backup.
You only do a full backup once, and the incrementals are stored as reverse deltas. It's really the only way to go with large datasets.
The show mostly just made up random stuff.
I'd estimate 70% of Macguyverisms are just total BS, with no relation to reality at all. 10% might actually work, and the remaining 20% have some tenuous relation to a real thing.
Of course I'm referring to the earlier seasons, the show really started to suck once it became about "rehabilitating inner city youth" instead of "fighting commies and cartel leaders".
Funny you say that, I did a search and from Pete Townshend's blog:
:)
If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK. It may only be studio earphones that cause bad damage. I only have long experience of the studio side of things
Of course, if you take medical advice from Pete Townshend, you probably deserve what you get.
I agree with the AC. As a reader of your blog, you should write up this whole "millionaire in 6 years making $60,000 a year"...
That's only $360k. You'd have to invest $360k at a 17% rate of return (compounded daily) today to have a million in 6 years. And that's assuming you can live eating air and not wearing clothes. And it assumes you got paid for the next 6 years of labor all at once.
I don't have a calculator handy for figuring how much the rate of return would have to be in reality, making only 60k available per year to be invested, but I suspect somewhere around 25-30% rate of return.
Not if it's protected with a password locally.
Most don't want it to be encrypted anyway, they just don't want firefox to store credit numbers locally *by default*.
Good luck on that one.
I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix and really pretty crappy. Switched from Opera, because I got sick of Opera rendering bad HTML badly.
I'm CCed on many bugs, one WONTFIX and some open, but all have been filed for over 2 years, some 4 or 5 years.
The WONTFIX is that Firefox stores all your credit card numbers on your hard disk unencrypted *by default*. Just wait until some worm writer finds that one out.
Why does San Fran want all bloggers to register?
Because somewhere along the way, liberals lost sight of what freedom means. Conservatives too, but here it's liberals.
All this stuff will likely be struck down by the supreme court.