The peak of production was in 1999 when 38,900 individual titles were released. But by 2001 this was down to 27,000. Releases grew again in 2002 but were still below the previous high.
Isn't it possible that the lack of new releases is a consequence of music piracy? Isn't it possible that some people are consciously not releasing because they are afraid their work will be stolen?
When is the RIAA going to address these concerns? How can keep saying it's all file sharing when it's obvious these factors come into play.
Well, file sharing very likely plays a role. This experiment with shareware showed that only about 20% of the people pay for the shareware they use if they are not forced to pay. I'm sure the same thing happens with other media.
Here is the text of the article:
Why Do People Register, Does Crippling Work, Does Anybody Really Know? Colin Messitt
Most authors......like I did, enter the Sharerware industry with the belief that nobody is going to pay them for their software unless they take some positive steps to ensure that happens. The real question of course is what the most effective steps are.
There are many, many things that must happen for a shareware program to become sucessful (and I define sucessful as producing a good income for the author, not just being a widely used and acclaimed program), but there are five that seem to me to form the fundamentals for success.
Five Fundamentals For Success First, the program must be something that users actually need, which, sadly, a lot of shareware releases aren't.
Second, it must actually be good, and again the vast majority of shareware releases are second-rate and buggy (and consider that this becomes more important for shareware because it is much simpler for the user to reject it than for him/her to reject commercial shrink-wrapped software if he/she doesn't like it).
Third, potential users must be alerted to the availability and desirability of the program - good old fashioned marketing that, again, a lot of shareware authors either don't enjoy or aren't very good at.
Fourth, the product must get into the hands of the potential evaluator, either by his getting the evaluation version himself (from a BBS or Vendor or the Internet etc.), or by it being presented to him in some way (on a magazine cover disk, bundled with other software or hardware etc.).
And finally, assuming the user actually needs the program after all the preceeding steps, there must be a reason for him to pay for it.
Industry Myths As anybody reading this will know, there are a vast number of "experts" in the shareware industry who purport to know what works and what doesn't, and they put forward any number of reasons why a user would pay for a piece of shareware, including additional features, removal of nag screens, printed manuals and just plain honesty. These so called "experts" also often put forward the myth that crippled software doesn't get distributed, doesn't sell and harms the shareware industry in general.
However, if you ask for statistical evidence of any of these claims you won't get any. And perhaps most sadly these mythical beliefs have been enshrined in what is known as the ASP's Policy on No Crippling (PONC) and taken to be gospel without a shred of evidence. Indeed people who put forward alternative views were decried in almost the same way as people who suggested the Earth was round back in the Middle Ages.
When I started attempting to market my programs as shareware I effectively time-limited them, and achieved a reasonable if not spectacular measure of success. Then I listened to the "experts" and thought that maybe I was doing things wrong, and would have more success by removing the time-limiting.
My registration rates went down dramatically, even though there were the suggested incentives of a manual an
Go right ahead... Provide some basic evidence that shows that P2P is eating lots of sales, and I'll agree with you. However, so far, I have not seen any such study. The RIAA is the only one that has made that claim, and their own evidence partically contradicts them.
This is a bit suggestive. The honor system doesn't work.
I found this interesting experiment concerning shareware registration/payment and I think it has some bearing on discussions about music copying, file trading and sharing.
What it shows is that people were 5 times more likely to pay for the shareware when they were made to pay versus relying on the honor system. So when the shareware was "free", only 1/5th of the time was the author paid for his work.
The extension of this result into the discussion of music sharing I think is obvious.
Music is more than property or possessions. It's culture. The studios take our culture, repackage it, lock it up and sell it back to us. It's not like all this 'intellectual property' was created from the void by some oracle at the studio. We had a public domain with things like folk music, Shakespeare, Greek theater, etc.
A song is not part of the culture before it's created, so this idea that they are taking something from "us" and giving it back is silly.
They are creating something new. They are not taking our culture. They are adding to it. The whole point of copyright is to insure they are fairly rewarded for it.
It also helps to "remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy", Exodus 20:8. Whether it be Saturday, Sunday or some other day, I believe the important thing is to have the day once a week and to actually share time with God on that day, and to refrain from working on that day. Very important for the peace of mind and concentration. (I have found this very different from just "remember to rest".)
I happen to be an atheist, but whoever modded the parent as "offtopic" is completely wrong.
Prayer is the Christian's form of meditation and the fact is, meditation works.
The current Time magazine is even featuring the subject. The story is here. In the article they discuss some of the science being used to explain the success of meditation.
Okay for the last 20 years they've been working on this. WHY are they not looking into solid state storage? There are plenty of companies within 2 years will have drives that will blow away current drives in speed and capacity. One such company is using nanotech to offer 1 terabit per cm2. And it'll run at 10x the speed of current memory.
I cant help to see how this is not wasted time trying to improve the platter drives in favor of pushing out solid state storage faster.
Why assume they don't know what they're doing?
A better approach might be to ask yourself what you're missing. For example, what are the economics like of producing such a device? I'm sure these companies have already looked at producing pure solid state devices. Would it produce a profit? Are customers willing to pay?
If not, then consumers are sending a message that its probably not worth doing.
Give the professionals a little credit. There's a lot involved in producing a working product and sustaining that production. These people don't only have to be electrical and material and computer engineers, they must also be financial and social engineers. It all has to work together: people and technology. They're in a much better position to consider all these things together than you. Give'm a bit of a break.
This is something that has been bothering me for a long time now: the United States has payed to educate many of the people that will now be our competitors. This doesn't seem right.
I've seen NSF grants given to faculty and grad students -- all Indian -- who will then take their results and education back to India to use in competition against us. I just completed an undergraduate course in where this was the case.
I asked the TA/GA: "So, what are you going to do after you graduate?" He said, "Go back to India".
The fact is that Education spending and Science research dollars are being used to Educate and train our competitors. We're being taxed to cut our own throats.
The logic behind public education is this: people that get educated can take that education somewhere else, so it doesn't make sense for a business to invest all that money is someone who will go elsewhere. So we get everyone to share paying for education. This way, one company doesn't get stuck with the bill with the others reap the rewards.
This doesn't work when the companies in places like India don't have to help pay for that education through taxes.
We also are forced to pay for other expenses of foreign student that default on debt. A very popular way right now to pay for food, housing etc, is to run up credit card debt, then leave the country with your shining new degree -- never to return.
Quotes In June 1989, Ronald Reagan said, "Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.... The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip." [1]
I'm old enough to remember when Reagan's bizarro-world EPA chief James Watt said that trees cause air polution. This is another demonstration of politicians & pundits (seemingly mostly conservative talk-show hosts) willingness to use misdirection to distract people. "Forget about dependence on oil, look at this shiny hydrogen economy over here! Look at it!"
(Note to Republican apologists: While certain aspects of Watts' statement might be chemically correct, they are of course misleading and irrelevant to the problem at hand.)
Note to Anti-Republican ideologues: Pollution is a chemical process.
First they take an unproven theory, that high-charged particles create low-level clouds, then they put another theory on top of it, that the fluctuations in high-charged particle concentrations, and the (unproven) low-level clouding, and that ALWAYS results in climatic cooling.
Ever hear of a cloud chamber? It works by looking at the condensation trails that form as charged particles move through a water vapor. Charles Wilson won the nobel prize for its invention.
From http://www.nobel.se/physics/educational/observing/ cloud-1.html
The Cloud Chamber
The Wilson Expansion Chamber
Charles Wilson saw tracks of single charged particles in his cloud chamber the first time in 1910. Having studied meteorology and the formation of water droplets that make clouds, he started his research on cloud formation in 1894. He made a chamber filled with water and air where the temperature could rapidly be lowered by pulling a piston that caused the air to expand. The water vapour would condense into droplets along a track of a charged particle that traverses the chamber at the right moment. The tracks could be photographed and with his invention Wilson visualised for the first time tracks of atomic particles. He received the Nobel Prize for his invention in 1927.
The Wilson cloud chamber was used to study different kinds of particles and interactions for more than 40 years and many discoveries were made.
Note the part about Wilson being influenced by his study of meteorology.
I just don't cosmic ray variation would account for more than half of the 20th century's climatic change. The variation just wouldn't be that great given the fact that the solar system simply hasn't moved very far in 100 years.
You're missing a lot.
One is that the sun's own cycles modulate cosmic rays. We see a decrease in neutron detections during peaks of the solar cycle, for example. This is 11 years (22 total for full pole reversal and return).
Another thing is that comic ray levels don't smoothly move up and down with the motion of the sun through the galaxy. There are large fluctuations.
What these scientists show is a possible link with large, but very long term changes in cosmic rays and large, long-term climate change.
The quality of sound you hear has much to do with how electrically isolated the sound circuit is and this is a function of the motherboard. The output of a great sound chip can be ruined if there is noise on the power input. As other components on the motherboard irregularly draw power, it can create fluctuations that end up being audible.
I've used motherboards that were so bad that you can actually hear clicks every time the mouse moves or siren like whistles as the cpu does certain tasks.
Its probably better to put a crappy chip on a separate sound board than it is to put a great chip directly on a motherboard -- unless that motherboard maker is being very careful of course.
So yeah, socialism has overrun much of Europe, but on an average person basis, your average mainland Europeaner is happier than his/her American counterpart.
I hear this sort of thing alot, but then I see something like this: Hypertension Prevalence and Blood Pressure Levels in 6 European Countries, Canada, and the United States
Conclusions: Despite extensive research on geographic patterns of CVD, the 60% higher prevalence of hypertension in Europe compared with the United States and Canada has not been generally appreciated. The implication of this finding for national prevention strategies should be vigorously explored.
Despite "taking it easy", Europeans actually seem to lead more stressful lives.
So where does this idea come from that things are better over there?
I'll lay odds that most of those new regulations are the results of new ways businesses found to abuse the consumer and the public trust. If business in general acted honorably, there would be no need for new regulations. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
And I'll lay odds that they're there because of a genernal anti-business prejudice that exists in the minds of the public.
You're over-generalization about businesses not acting honorably is an example.
And the fact that most people ignore road regulations proves a double-standard. How often do you break these regulations that you are required to follow? Does it mean you're not honorable? 40,000 people die in auto accidents every year, yet where is the outcry for more regulation of people that break the regulations of the road?
The anti-business sentiment that exists is way out of proportion to the harm that is done by businesses. Despite the fact that business are incredibly productive and beneficial social organisms, they get little credit for it. The truth is that certain people are looking for a group to villify. Many have chosen business people to go after.
It should also be noted that there can be harm done by regulations themselves. How many people die waiting for medication to be approved? Is housing more expensive because of building codes? Is it better to be without a home that complies with all the regulations (homeless) or owning a home that does not?
The government needs to simplify their regulations. You'd be shocked at how much of the fluff in business software is simply to satisfy local government regulations. The complexity becomes staggering when you apply it to international corporations.
People blow this off all the time as being insignificant, but then I point them to the regulations of the road.
There really aren't that many that drivers need to obey, yet even this small number seems too much. Try following them to the letter -- even those little yellow speed limits on off-ramps that say "15 mph" after you've been doing 70 mph on the interstate.
Now imagine 300 new rules are made. Thats the typical number of new business regulations created each year.
So you want to be the anti-Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to fund tax cuts for the rich?
That is a deceptive statement: Taking less from someone rich is not the same as stealing from the poor. And tax cuts aren't funded -- they are the opposite of funding.
And what motivates your above statement anyway? I was critical of your poor argument and it is still a poor arguement. It doesn't follow that I'm an anti-Robin Hood.
Taxes are not analogous to theft. Taxes are NECESSARY. They pay for our military. They pay for social programs. They pay for federal law enforcement. They pay for parks and recreation. They even pay the salaries of the people who are pushing for tax cuts (while voting themselves pay raises). The list goes on and on. Robbery contributes nothing to the country. Robbery does not provide for national defense. Robbers don't prosecute companies that pollute. Robbers do not provide unemployment checks to people out of work. You act like we get nothing for the tax dollars that we pay to the federal government. Every program from the Interstate highway system to rural electrification has been paid for by taxes.
Okay. Now that is a better argument, but its not the same one that you used before.
Still, it seems weak. The government is nortoriously ineffecient. We get very little for what we pay. I wonder if you remember the stories of $900 toilet seats awhile back? A single Patriot Air Defense Missile costs $3,000,000. Who is stealing from whom?
Now I agree that there are functions that governments ought to perform and these must be funded through taxes, but you can't possibly believe that this requires fully 28% of our GDP. At some point the people being taxed are being taken advantage of.
And just who benefits from these expensive services? Well, we all benefit from defence for example, but we all don't pay for it. The bottom 50% pay just 4% of the income taxes. And do you really think the people that benefitted from the rural electrification program were the same that payed for it? No way. So again, you're argument is weak.
You know how Bush kept saying "it's your money"? Well, he was wrong. It's not your money. That's not how government works.
This is one of the scariest things you've written. We are not slaves. The money we earn IS our's and the government should serve us. Its not the other way around. This also runs counter to your government-provides-services argument. After all, if the money already belongs to the government, why justify taking it on the grounds that services are being provided?
You elect representatives and agree to abide by laws that they pass. If they pass a law saying that you will pay income tax, then the tax money that they collect is not yours. It's the government's.
Bullshit. The biggest group decides how much will be taken. My representative, if it can be said I really have one at all, can stand there and say "no", and the rest will say: "tough shit, hand it over."
Now I realize this is the way it is and I've got to suck it up, but don't tell me I'm eating ice cream when I'm really getting it in the ass. And don't tell me that finger-painting class for homeless, single, dyslexic, crack whore mothers with A.D.D. is a service I can enjoy generously provided by the government. I know the score and so do you.
Oh, and you're a hypocrite, too. I read your rant about the H1B program. Remember, you're "the rich" compared to poor skilled workers from other countries, and you don't seem to have a problem screwing them out of a job if it will help you, right? Right. Fck'em. They ain't 'mercans.
Let's look at this rationally: What does the federal government do with tax dollars? It buys goods and services, primarily from U.S. corporations. That money then goes to U.S. workers who spend it, supporting everyone from salespeople to restaurant workers to truck drivers.
If your reasoning were rational, it would argue for robbery: After all, what does a robber do with the money he stole from you?
The per-clock performance on an Athlon is much better than what you'll get from a P4 based Xeon, and that is just on integer. When it comes to floating-point performance a lower clocked Athlon will meet or beat the performance of a higher-clocked P4.
What you see as an advantage for the Athlon is actually a disadvantage.
The Athlon is trying to do too much per clock and this limits its maximum clock rate. What matters is realized performance. Right now, less work at a higher clock seems to be pulling ahead.
It really comes down to how large you can make the product (work x clock rate). Less per clock isn't bad if it means you can greatly increase clock rate.
many counties and cities have laws which will not allow you to lay a fiber into homes if similar thing already exist (even if it is owned by some monopolist).
Exactly right. What we need is deregulation at the local level.
Remember though, that local governments get a lot of money because they allow local monopolies.
Where I live, they get 5% of the cable company's GROSS.
You think they're going to give this money up just to allow competition?
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say that the experiment in question was perhaps the most un-scientific I've ever seen.
Science isn't about reinforcing your prejudices. Just because you don't like the obvious conclusion, doesn't mean it isn't science.
In fact, a big part of science is giving up ideas that fail experiment.
The peak of production was in 1999 when 38,900 individual titles were released. But by 2001 this was down to 27,000. Releases grew again in 2002 but were still below the previous high.
...like I did, enter the Sharerware industry with the belief that nobody is going to pay them for their software unless they take some positive steps to ensure that happens. The real question of course is what the most effective steps are.
Isn't it possible that the lack of new releases is a consequence of music piracy? Isn't it possible that some people are consciously not releasing because they are afraid their work will be stolen?
When is the RIAA going to address these concerns? How can keep saying it's all file sharing when it's obvious these factors come into play.
Well, file sharing very likely plays a role. This experiment with shareware showed that only about 20% of the people pay for the shareware they use if they are not forced to pay. I'm sure the same thing happens with other media.
Here is the text of the article:
Why Do People Register, Does Crippling Work, Does Anybody Really Know?
Colin Messitt
Most authors...
There are many, many things that must happen for a shareware program to become sucessful (and I define sucessful as producing a good income for the author, not just being a widely used and acclaimed program), but there are five that seem to me to form the fundamentals for success.
Five Fundamentals For Success
First, the program must be something that users actually need, which, sadly, a lot of shareware releases aren't.
Second, it must actually be good, and again the vast majority of shareware releases are second-rate and buggy (and consider that this becomes more important for shareware because it is much simpler for the user to reject it than for him/her to reject commercial shrink-wrapped software if he/she doesn't like it).
Third, potential users must be alerted to the availability and desirability of the program - good old fashioned marketing that, again, a lot of shareware authors either don't enjoy or aren't very good at.
Fourth, the product must get into the hands of the potential evaluator, either by his getting the evaluation version himself (from a BBS or Vendor or the Internet etc.), or by it being presented to him in some way (on a magazine cover disk, bundled with other software or hardware etc.).
And finally, assuming the user actually needs the program after all the preceeding steps, there must be a reason for him to pay for it.
Industry Myths
As anybody reading this will know, there are a vast number of "experts" in the shareware industry who purport to know what works and what doesn't, and they put forward any number of reasons why a user would pay for a piece of shareware, including additional features, removal of nag screens, printed manuals and just plain honesty. These so called "experts" also often put forward the myth that crippled software doesn't get distributed, doesn't sell and harms the shareware industry in general.
However, if you ask for statistical evidence of any of these claims you won't get any. And perhaps most sadly these mythical beliefs have been enshrined in what is known as the ASP's Policy on No Crippling (PONC) and taken to be gospel without a shred of evidence. Indeed people who put forward alternative views were decried in almost the same way as people who suggested the Earth was round back in the Middle Ages.
When I started attempting to market my programs as shareware I effectively time-limited them, and achieved a reasonable if not spectacular measure of success. Then I listened to the "experts" and thought that maybe I was doing things wrong, and would have more success by removing the time-limiting.
My registration rates went down dramatically, even though there were the suggested incentives of a manual an
Go right ahead... Provide some basic evidence that shows that P2P is eating lots of sales, and I'll agree with you. However, so far, I have not seen any such study. The RIAA is the only one that has made that claim, and their own evidence partically contradicts them.
This is a bit suggestive. The honor system doesn't work.
I found this interesting experiment concerning shareware registration/payment and I think it has some bearing on discussions about music copying, file trading and sharing.
The same experiment is also related here.
What it shows is that people were 5 times more likely to pay for the shareware when they were made to pay versus relying on the honor system. So when the shareware was "free", only 1/5th of the time was the author paid for his work.
The extension of this result into the discussion of music sharing I think is obvious.
Music is more than property or possessions. It's culture. The studios take our culture, repackage it, lock it up and sell it back to us. It's not like all this 'intellectual property' was created from the void by some oracle at the studio. We had a public domain with things like folk music, Shakespeare, Greek theater, etc.
A song is not part of the culture before it's created, so this idea that they are taking something from "us" and giving it back is silly.
They are creating something new. They are not taking our culture. They are adding to it. The whole point of copyright is to insure they are fairly rewarded for it.
No, really. It helps.
It also helps to "remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy", Exodus 20:8. Whether it be Saturday, Sunday or some other day, I believe the important thing is to have the day once a week and to actually share time with God on that day, and to refrain from working on that day. Very important for the peace of mind and concentration. (I have found this very different from just "remember to rest".)
I happen to be an atheist, but whoever modded the parent as "offtopic" is completely wrong.
Prayer is the Christian's form of meditation and the fact is, meditation works.
The current Time magazine is even featuring the subject. The story is here. In the article they discuss some of the science being used to explain the success of meditation.
Okay for the last 20 years they've been working on this. WHY are they not looking into solid state storage? There are plenty of companies within 2 years will have drives that will blow away current drives in speed and capacity. One such company is using nanotech to offer 1 terabit per cm2. And it'll run at 10x the speed of current memory.
I cant help to see how this is not wasted time trying to improve the platter drives in favor of pushing out solid state storage faster.
Why assume they don't know what they're doing?
A better approach might be to ask yourself what you're missing. For example, what are the economics like of producing such a device? I'm sure these companies have already looked at producing pure solid state devices. Would it produce a profit? Are customers willing to pay?
If not, then consumers are sending a message that its probably not worth doing.
Give the professionals a little credit. There's a lot involved in producing a working product and sustaining that production. These people don't only have to be electrical and material and computer engineers, they must also be financial and social engineers. It all has to work together: people and technology. They're in a much better position to consider all these things together than you. Give'm a bit of a break.
This is something that has been bothering me for a long time now: the United States has payed to educate many of the people that will now be our competitors. This doesn't seem right.
I've seen NSF grants given to faculty and grad students -- all Indian -- who will then take their results and education back to India to use in competition against us. I just completed an undergraduate course in where this was the case.
I asked the TA/GA: "So, what are you going to do after you graduate?"
He said, "Go back to India".
The fact is that Education spending and Science research dollars are being used to Educate and train our competitors. We're being taxed to cut our own throats.
The logic behind public education is this: people that get educated can take that education somewhere else, so it doesn't make sense for a business to invest all that money is someone who will go elsewhere. So we get everyone to share paying for education. This way, one company doesn't get stuck with the bill with the others reap the rewards.
This doesn't work when the companies in places like India don't have to help pay for that education through taxes.
We also are forced to pay for other expenses of foreign student that default on debt. A very popular way right now to pay for food, housing etc, is to run up credit card debt, then leave the country with your shining new degree -- never to return.
Quotes ... The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip." [1]
j html?articleID=10300367
In June 1989, Ronald Reagan said, "Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.
[1] http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
I'm old enough to remember when Reagan's bizarro-world EPA chief James Watt said that trees cause air polution. This is another demonstration of politicians & pundits (seemingly mostly conservative talk-show hosts) willingness to use misdirection to distract people. "Forget about dependence on oil, look at this shiny hydrogen economy over here! Look at it!"
(Note to Republican apologists: While certain aspects of Watts' statement might be chemically correct, they are of course misleading and irrelevant to the problem at hand.)
Note to Anti-Republican ideologues: Pollution is a chemical process.
Trees cause pollution after all - Reagan vindicated
First they take an unproven theory, that high-charged particles create low-level clouds, then they put another theory on top of it, that the fluctuations in high-charged particle concentrations, and the (unproven) low-level clouding, and that ALWAYS results in climatic cooling.
/ cloud-1.html
Ever hear of a cloud chamber? It works by looking at the condensation trails that form as charged particles move through a water vapor. Charles Wilson won the nobel prize for its invention.
From http://www.nobel.se/physics/educational/observing
The Cloud Chamber
The Wilson Expansion Chamber
Charles Wilson saw tracks of single charged particles in his cloud chamber the first time in 1910. Having studied meteorology and the formation of water droplets that make clouds, he started his research on cloud formation in 1894. He made a chamber filled with water and air where the temperature could rapidly be lowered by pulling a piston that caused the air to expand. The water vapour would condense into droplets along a track of a charged particle that traverses the chamber at the right moment. The tracks could be photographed and with his invention Wilson visualised for the first time tracks of atomic particles. He received the Nobel Prize for his invention in 1927.
The Wilson cloud chamber was used to study different kinds of particles and interactions for more than 40 years and many discoveries were made.
Note the part about Wilson being influenced by his study of meteorology.
As far a comsic rays creating low-level clouds, there is a pretty strong correlation between the two.
Republicans aren't anti-science, they're justf uture- and-everybody-else-on-the-planet-except-ME.
pro-do-whatever-serves-me-NOW-and-damn-the-
How is this any different from the Democrats?
I just don't cosmic ray variation would account for more than half of the 20th century's climatic change. The variation just wouldn't be that great given the fact that the solar system simply hasn't moved very far in 100 years.
You're missing a lot.
One is that the sun's own cycles modulate cosmic rays. We see a decrease in neutron detections during peaks of the solar cycle, for example. This is 11 years (22 total for full pole reversal and return).
Another thing is that comic ray levels don't smoothly move up and down with the motion of the sun through the galaxy. There are large fluctuations.
What these scientists show is a possible link with large, but very long term changes in cosmic rays and large, long-term climate change.
The point about short-term global warming is that a correlation has been found between cosmic ray flux (down 20% over the past 100 year) and low-level, and generally cooling clouds.
When it comes to government, failure is rewarded with more money. In fact, failure is often cited as proof not enough money is being spent.
Besides, why bother doing a good job if you know you'll get paid either way? That's what the tax collector is there for!
The quality of sound you hear has much to do with how electrically isolated the sound circuit is and this is a function of the motherboard. The output of a great sound chip can be ruined if there is noise on the power input. As other components on the motherboard irregularly draw power, it can create fluctuations that end up being audible.
I've used motherboards that were so bad that you can actually hear clicks every time the mouse moves or siren like whistles as the cpu does certain tasks.
Its probably better to put a crappy chip on a separate sound board than it is to put a great chip directly on a motherboard -- unless that motherboard maker is being very careful of course.
So yeah, socialism has overrun much of Europe, but on an average person basis, your average mainland Europeaner is happier than his/her American counterpart.
I hear this sort of thing alot, but then I see something like
this:
Hypertension Prevalence and Blood Pressure Levels in 6 European Countries, Canada, and the United States
Conclusions: Despite extensive research on geographic patterns of CVD, the 60% higher prevalence of hypertension in Europe compared with the United States and Canada has not been generally appreciated. The implication of this finding for national prevention strategies should be vigorously explored.
Despite "taking it easy", Europeans actually seem to lead more stressful lives.
So where does this idea come from that things are better over there?
I'll lay odds that most of those new regulations are the results of new ways businesses found to abuse the consumer and the public trust. If business in general acted honorably, there would be no need for new regulations. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
And I'll lay odds that they're there because of a genernal anti-business prejudice that exists in the minds of the public.
You're over-generalization about businesses not acting honorably is an example.
And the fact that most people ignore road regulations proves a double-standard. How often do you break these regulations that you are required to follow? Does it mean you're not honorable? 40,000 people die in auto accidents every year, yet where is the outcry for more regulation of people that break the regulations of the road?
The anti-business sentiment that exists is way out of proportion to the harm that is done by businesses. Despite the fact that business are incredibly productive and beneficial social organisms, they get little credit for it. The truth is that certain people are looking for a group to villify. Many have chosen business people to go after.
It should also be noted that there can be harm done by regulations themselves. How many people die waiting for medication to be approved? Is housing more expensive because of building codes? Is it better to be without a home that complies with all the regulations (homeless) or owning a home that does not?
These trade-offs are ignored all the time.
The government needs to simplify their regulations. You'd be shocked at how much of the fluff in business software is simply to satisfy local government regulations. The complexity becomes staggering when you apply it to international corporations.
People blow this off all the time as being insignificant, but then I point them to the regulations of the road.
There really aren't that many that drivers need to obey, yet even this small number seems too much. Try following them to the letter -- even those little yellow speed limits on off-ramps that say "15 mph" after you've been doing 70 mph on the interstate.
Now imagine 300 new rules are made. Thats the typical number of new business regulations created each year.
It has to have a cost.
It seems a strange thing that such a culture
lacked the wheel. In fact, the wheel was unknown to all the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans.
It's amazing they got so far without it.
These days, money incurrs rights and protection granted by the government. Odd how things have turned out, eh?
Its always been this way.
The cops know who pays the bills. "Oh thank you, thank you, officer" doesn't put bread on the table.
So you want to be the anti-Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to fund tax cuts for the rich?
That is a deceptive statement: Taking less from someone rich is not the same as stealing from the poor. And tax cuts aren't funded -- they are the opposite of funding.
And what motivates your above statement anyway? I was critical of your poor argument and it is still a poor arguement. It doesn't follow that I'm an anti-Robin Hood.
Taxes are not analogous to theft. Taxes are NECESSARY. They pay for our military. They pay for social programs. They pay for federal law enforcement. They pay for parks and recreation. They even pay the salaries of the people who are pushing for tax cuts (while voting themselves pay raises). The list goes on and on. Robbery contributes nothing to the country. Robbery does not provide for national defense. Robbers don't prosecute companies that pollute. Robbers do not provide unemployment checks to people out of work. You act like we get nothing for the tax dollars that we pay to the federal government. Every program from the Interstate highway system to rural electrification has been paid for by taxes.
Okay. Now that is a better argument, but its not the same one that you used before.
Still, it seems weak. The government is nortoriously ineffecient. We get very little for what we pay. I wonder if you remember the stories of $900 toilet seats awhile back? A single Patriot Air Defense Missile costs $3,000,000. Who is stealing from whom?
Now I agree that there are functions that governments ought to perform and these must be funded through taxes, but you can't possibly believe that this requires fully 28% of our GDP. At some point the people being taxed are being taken advantage of.
And just who benefits from these expensive services? Well, we all benefit from defence for example, but we all don't pay for it. The bottom 50% pay just 4% of the income taxes. And do you really think the people that benefitted from the rural electrification program were the same that payed for it? No way. So again, you're argument is weak.
You know how Bush kept saying "it's your money"? Well, he was wrong. It's not your money. That's not how government works.
This is one of the scariest things you've written. We are not slaves. The money we earn IS our's and the government should serve us. Its not the other way around. This also runs counter to your government-provides-services argument. After all, if the money already belongs to the government, why justify taking it on the grounds that services are being provided?
You elect representatives and agree to abide by laws that they pass. If they pass a law saying that you will pay income tax, then the tax money that they collect is not yours. It's the government's.
Bullshit. The biggest group decides how much will be taken. My representative, if it can be said I really have one at all, can stand there and say "no", and the rest will say: "tough shit, hand it over."
Now I realize this is the way it is and I've got to suck it up, but don't tell me I'm eating ice cream when I'm really getting it in the ass. And don't tell me that finger-painting class for homeless, single, dyslexic, crack whore mothers with A.D.D. is a service I can enjoy generously provided by the government. I know the score and so do you.
Oh, and you're a hypocrite, too. I read your rant about the H1B program. Remember, you're "the rich" compared to poor skilled workers from other countries, and you don't seem to have a problem screwing them out of a job if it will help you, right? Right. Fck'em. They ain't 'mercans.
Let's look at this rationally: What does the federal government do with tax dollars? It buys goods and services, primarily from U.S. corporations. That money then goes to U.S. workers who spend it, supporting everyone from salespeople to restaurant workers to truck drivers.
If your reasoning were rational, it would argue for robbery: After all, what does a robber do with the money he stole from you?
It really is too bad they can't use Athlons.
The per-clock performance on an Athlon is much better than what you'll get from a P4 based Xeon, and that is just on integer. When it comes to floating-point performance a lower clocked Athlon will meet or beat the performance of a higher-clocked P4.
What you see as an advantage for the Athlon is actually a disadvantage.
The Athlon is trying to do too much per clock and this limits its maximum clock rate. What matters is realized performance. Right now, less work at a higher clock seems to be pulling ahead.
It really comes down to how large you can make the product (work x clock rate). Less per clock isn't bad if it means you can greatly increase clock rate.
If you're looking for some of the images, they're inside a presentation right here.
many counties and cities have laws which will not allow you to lay a fiber into homes if similar thing already exist (even if it is owned by some monopolist).
Exactly right. What we need is deregulation at the local level.
Remember though, that local governments get a lot of money because they
allow local monopolies.
Where I live, they get 5% of the cable company's GROSS.
You think they're going to give this money up just to allow competition?