Valenti actually seemed to understand the issues pretty well, and he gave pretty cogent answers to the interviewers questions. The only thing that seemed to stump/baffle him, was the fact that there are currently no Linux DVD players on the market. Otherwise, every question was answered in a straightforward manner, pretty much always coming back to: "If you don't have permission to watch a copyrighted work, then it's not ok to make digital copies to circumvent the encryption and watch that work. You'll have to find a legal and authorized means to view the content." I don't agree with him, but it's hard to say that he didn't understand the issue.
Also, I'd imagine that next time he'll have done a little bit more research and have something of an answer for the Linux DVD player question.
Other than that, I think it's a little bit unfair to say that he doesn't understand the issues. Remember, disagreeing is not the same as not understanding.
Working together as an industry to set prices would seem like price fixing to me. Each company coming to it's own decision about the cost of distributing a song online and choosing to raise their price to a point where it's more profitable would not be price fixing.
This story was a little unclear as to which end of the spectrum it was referencing (especially with a wide range of prices from 1.25 to 2.99, it could have been company A said 1.25, company B said 2.00, company C said 2.99. This would not be price fixing).
Yes, but who wants to car pool with strangers? The answer is practically nobody. The idea of sharing a car with strangers when you can own a car is not very appealing. You're looking at a country full of people who are quite proud of owning things. Just the other day numbers came out showing the home ownership was reaching record levels... we like to be owners, not co-owners, not renters, not sharers. You'll have to hope the social attitudes towards ownership change considerably before you see your dreams become reality. I don't see it happening in America anytime in the near future.
Ok, I couldn't find any good recent stats about the number of downloads per day from p2p but I did find a stat from Morpheus in 2001 which said users were downloading 20,000,000 files per day. I know they're not all music files, and I recognize that this is not at all a modern figure. I assume that the increases in the number of people with broadband over the last three years will compensate for the number of users not downloading music.
So I use 20,000,000/day as my base. Divide that by 5000 (since we're costing them one cd for every 5000 downloads) that leaves us with 4000 lost CD sales per day. Multiply this by $20 per cd and that gives us $80,000 lost per day. Mulitply this by 365 and you've got $28,000,000 per year in lost sales due to file downloading. Now, I admit this isn't that big for a record company, but it's silly for us to assume that 1 cd for every 5000 downloads is nothing. It's something. It's millions of dollars.
I'd still classify it as a business and not a scam. A scam would be advertising that you got the popular channels on basic cable, and then not delivering them.
I've been really wanting a google account for some time. The ability to actually log into an account and change settings that will stay set. I don't want to have to turn off their adult content filter every time I sit down. I don't want to have to tell the image search engine to default to the smallest pictures. Why can't I say that I don't ever want to see PDFs? Adding a user account to google would significantly increase the functionality for high frequency users and I think it's about time they implemented it.
This personalized searching is a far cry from what I want. Google, are you listening?
It already is cheap enough for tourists... just not cheap enough for tourists like you. Dennis Tito went into space with the Russians in 2001, and Mark Shuttleworth went in 2002. Of course, this cost them tens of millions of dollars, but they were tourists none the less. In addition, there's another tourist, an American, scheduled to fly later this year.
Now, admittedly these have all been based on national programs taking on a "charity" case now and again either for a few bucks, or for the attention that it gives them, but I'd say it's only a matter of time before a private company starts really marketing these trips to the extremely wealthy. If you can bring the price down to a million dollars a trip, you'll have your self a line of people out the door ready and willing to go. This is the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, Thorsten Veblen would be proud.
I think the response was pretty universally negative when this product came out. The pricing, the size of the hard drive and the physical size of the unit all seemed to get a thumbs down from the Slashdot community. And yet, the thing selling quite well and apparently making back it's investment. Has anyone from Slashdot actually bought one of these things? Is the market for this product completely filled by 14 year old girls looking for a slightly cuter Ipod? Did these have any appeal to the geek community?
Just curious.
Polluting other planets
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I once dated someone who was fully against the exploration, or colonization, of Mars because she feared that we were given this planet and we've made a mess of it. She argued that we had no right to go to another planet that didn't belong to us and alter it in any substantial way. After a few somewhat lenghty discussions trying to pin down exactly what her issue was about, I discovered that the she felt that GOD had given us this planet and not Mars, hence we shouldn't mess up God's plans with Mars by stomping all over it with our oversized space boots.
I didn't agree. I've got a feeling this argument, while maybe not coming from a religious perspective, has a lot of the same concepts built in. Guess what, we humans, as a race, own everything in the solar system. It is ours to do with as we see fit... other planets are being wasted until we make full use of them for humanity as a whole. Until and unless I'm shown proof of life on another planet, and it would probably have to be a somewhat substantially high order of life, I'm going to argue that it's our position to decide the destiny of every bit of metal, gas and rock that's floating in orbit around our sun.
Small Wonder complete epsides, for example?
on
Retro Vision
·
· Score: 1
I think the "in diameter" was implied by the fact that the sentence structure was parralleling the previous sentence . If Item A is several hundred microns in diameter, and Item B is 100 microns, I think it's safe to say (unless we're being tested on logic here) that Item B is 100 microns in diameter.
I love my No-Ad suntan lotion. It's cheaper, you get a huge bottle, it doesn't smell weird, and it works great.
"Since 1960, NO-AD, as in "not advertised," has succeeded in providing high quality suncare products at a fraction of the cost of other advertised brands. Rather than promoting the NO-AD line of products through expensive advertising campaigns or glitzy beauty pageants, we'd rather pass the savings directly onto you, our valued customer. This is what we call ~ "the NO-AD concept" -from their site
Blah, my batteries won't last long enough to watch full video / sound for two hours. It's neat, but we still need some battery tech before this becomes worthwhile. I don't want to have to switch batteries just to watch the Big Lebowski.
Recyclable batteries do not last nearly as long as non-recyclables... at least the ones I use. I don't mind, it's worth the saved money in most cases, but I can see if you need your batteries to be long lasting the recyclables are not a good alternative.
Yegads? Would you have them say "Ok, Maam, you have wires protruding from your weird jacket, please pass on through this security checkpoint without further questioning?"
No, of course they should treat her like she's got a bomb in her coat. If you're travelling on an airplane you've got to know that they're going to be looking for bombs, and for you to wear something that looks kind of like a bomb is going to get you pulled out of line and questioned. It's foolish of you not to expect it to happen and it's dangerous of you to call for it NOT to happen. I expect everyone getting on a plane with me with weird wires protruding from their clothing to be very thouroughly examed before they get on board. Anything else is dangerous.
Are you saying that he released a song with copyrighting it? Copyright occurs at conception, and besides that, why on Earth do you think the Eminem wouldn't have his songs copyrighted when they're released to an outside entity. He may be a rapper, but I'm sure he's got lawyers on his staff.
Not really. I actually get paid in 1099s quite often, which don't act in the same way as W2s. Also, if you earn less than $600 on one 1099 the company doesn't need to report it... you could potential earn $599 from 1000 different corporations and walk away with $599,000 unreported and untaxed dollars that the government would only find out about if you were honest enough to report it.
I work a number of different jobs throughout the year, and have to deal with the considerable annoyance of having each one attempt to deduce what my yearly earnings are going to be and tax me accordingly.
The jobs that pay me $200/week (even if I'm only working two days there) will take out almost no taxes becuase they assume I'm making $10,000/year. When I'm paid $2000 for one week of work, I get taxed on the ludicrous assumption that I'm going to be making $100,000/year. Neither assumption is accurate and both leave the government taking out a grossly incorrect percent of my wages in tax anticipation.
Why can't the government compile a system that will help companies to estimate what my tax payment should be not simply by what I'm being paid in the current week, but by looking back over the whole last year and seeing how much I've made this tax-year (through different employers) and what that average income is going to end up being near.
Better yet, why can't we come up with a system that doesn't depend upon weird estimates as the year goes on, but allows you to announce at the beginning what your income is going to be near and then simply take out the percent that that tax bracket would warrant. Then, if you were accurate, you'd have no refund and no taxes do and you could just fold everything up and go home.
Well, unless those people cashing their checks are being paid under the table, they are probably having taxes taken out for them based on their income linked to their social security number. It doesn't matter how you cash the check, the company has filed what it paid the person with the social security number to the government on their tax return.
And even if taxes aren't taken out, if the person is making over $600 he/she's being 1099'd and again the business is going to be reporting that amount to the government on their tax return.
There are a number of things that still won't be accurately tracked, but it's going to be remarkably easy to keep track of what people are earning from honest and legally operated businesses.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but if you look at this one you'll see that they're still better off than they were a year ago.
Valenti actually seemed to understand the issues pretty well, and he gave pretty cogent answers to the interviewers questions. The only thing that seemed to stump/baffle him, was the fact that there are currently no Linux DVD players on the market. Otherwise, every question was answered in a straightforward manner, pretty much always coming back to: "If you don't have permission to watch a copyrighted work, then it's not ok to make digital copies to circumvent the encryption and watch that work. You'll have to find a legal and authorized means to view the content." I don't agree with him, but it's hard to say that he didn't understand the issue.
Also, I'd imagine that next time he'll have done a little bit more research and have something of an answer for the Linux DVD player question.
Other than that, I think it's a little bit unfair to say that he doesn't understand the issues. Remember, disagreeing is not the same as not understanding.
Working together as an industry to set prices would seem like price fixing to me. Each company coming to it's own decision about the cost of distributing a song online and choosing to raise their price to a point where it's more profitable would not be price fixing.
This story was a little unclear as to which end of the spectrum it was referencing (especially with a wide range of prices from 1.25 to 2.99, it could have been company A said 1.25, company B said 2.00, company C said 2.99. This would not be price fixing).
Yes, but who wants to car pool with strangers? The answer is practically nobody. The idea of sharing a car with strangers when you can own a car is not very appealing. You're looking at a country full of people who are quite proud of owning things. Just the other day numbers came out showing the home ownership was reaching record levels... we like to be owners, not co-owners, not renters, not sharers. You'll have to hope the social attitudes towards ownership change considerably before you see your dreams become reality. I don't see it happening in America anytime in the near future.
Ok, I couldn't find any good recent stats about the number of downloads per day from p2p but I did find a stat from Morpheus in 2001 which said users were downloading 20,000,000 files per day. I know they're not all music files, and I recognize that this is not at all a modern figure. I assume that the increases in the number of people with broadband over the last three years will compensate for the number of users not downloading music.
So I use 20,000,000/day as my base. Divide that by 5000 (since we're costing them one cd for every 5000 downloads) that leaves us with 4000 lost CD sales per day. Multiply this by $20 per cd and that gives us $80,000 lost per day. Mulitply this by 365 and you've got $28,000,000 per year in lost sales due to file downloading. Now, I admit this isn't that big for a record company, but it's silly for us to assume that 1 cd for every 5000 downloads is nothing. It's something. It's millions of dollars.
I'd still classify it as a business and not a scam. A scam would be advertising that you got the popular channels on basic cable, and then not delivering them.
I've been really wanting a google account for some time. The ability to actually log into an account and change settings that will stay set. I don't want to have to turn off their adult content filter every time I sit down. I don't want to have to tell the image search engine to default to the smallest pictures. Why can't I say that I don't ever want to see PDFs? Adding a user account to google would significantly increase the functionality for high frequency users and I think it's about time they implemented it.
This personalized searching is a far cry from what I want. Google, are you listening?
It already is cheap enough for tourists... just not cheap enough for tourists like you. Dennis Tito went into space with the Russians in 2001, and Mark Shuttleworth went in 2002. Of course, this cost them tens of millions of dollars, but they were tourists none the less. In addition, there's another tourist, an American, scheduled to fly later this year.
Now, admittedly these have all been based on national programs taking on a "charity" case now and again either for a few bucks, or for the attention that it gives them, but I'd say it's only a matter of time before a private company starts really marketing these trips to the extremely wealthy. If you can bring the price down to a million dollars a trip, you'll have your self a line of people out the door ready and willing to go. This is the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, Thorsten Veblen would be proud.
"It's all a scam to make people pay extra for stuff they want"
How exactly does that qualify as a scam?
I think the response was pretty universally negative when this product came out. The pricing, the size of the hard drive and the physical size of the unit all seemed to get a thumbs down from the Slashdot community. And yet, the thing selling quite well and apparently making back it's investment. Has anyone from Slashdot actually bought one of these things? Is the market for this product completely filled by 14 year old girls looking for a slightly cuter Ipod? Did these have any appeal to the geek community?
Just curious.
I once dated someone who was fully against the exploration, or colonization, of Mars because she feared that we were given this planet and we've made a mess of it. She argued that we had no right to go to another planet that didn't belong to us and alter it in any substantial way. After a few somewhat lenghty discussions trying to pin down exactly what her issue was about, I discovered that the she felt that GOD had given us this planet and not Mars, hence we shouldn't mess up God's plans with Mars by stomping all over it with our oversized space boots.
I didn't agree. I've got a feeling this argument, while maybe not coming from a religious perspective, has a lot of the same concepts built in. Guess what, we humans, as a race, own everything in the solar system. It is ours to do with as we see fit... other planets are being wasted until we make full use of them for humanity as a whole. Until and unless I'm shown proof of life on another planet, and it would probably have to be a somewhat substantially high order of life, I'm going to argue that it's our position to decide the destiny of every bit of metal, gas and rock that's floating in orbit around our sun.
There really isn't anything like the complete episodes of Small Wonder available online. You simply can't beat the internet.
I think the "in diameter" was implied by the fact that the sentence structure was parralleling the previous sentence . If Item A is several hundred microns in diameter, and Item B is 100 microns, I think it's safe to say (unless we're being tested on logic here) that Item B is 100 microns in diameter.
You're overreacting.
I love my No-Ad suntan lotion. It's cheaper, you get a huge bottle, it doesn't smell weird, and it works great.
"Since 1960, NO-AD, as in "not advertised," has succeeded in providing high quality suncare products at a fraction of the cost of other advertised brands. Rather than promoting the NO-AD line of products through expensive advertising campaigns or glitzy beauty pageants, we'd rather pass the savings directly onto you, our valued customer. This is what we call ~ "the NO-AD concept" -from their site
Blah, my batteries won't last long enough to watch full video / sound for two hours. It's neat, but we still need some battery tech before this becomes worthwhile. I don't want to have to switch batteries just to watch the Big Lebowski.
Recyclable batteries do not last nearly as long as non-recyclables... at least the ones I use. I don't mind, it's worth the saved money in most cases, but I can see if you need your batteries to be long lasting the recyclables are not a good alternative.
Yegads? Would you have them say "Ok, Maam, you have wires protruding from your weird jacket, please pass on through this security checkpoint without further questioning?"
No, of course they should treat her like she's got a bomb in her coat. If you're travelling on an airplane you've got to know that they're going to be looking for bombs, and for you to wear something that looks kind of like a bomb is going to get you pulled out of line and questioned. It's foolish of you not to expect it to happen and it's dangerous of you to call for it NOT to happen. I expect everyone getting on a plane with me with weird wires protruding from their clothing to be very thouroughly examed before they get on board. Anything else is dangerous.
Damn, I've been talking about this as a while. It really would be a great feature. Go read my old comment about it.
Are you saying that he released a song with copyrighting it? Copyright occurs at conception, and besides that, why on Earth do you think the Eminem wouldn't have his songs copyrighted when they're released to an outside entity. He may be a rapper, but I'm sure he's got lawyers on his staff.
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0@google.com.
You can go ahead and try to send email there now, but I haven't quite got it activated yet. Soon though, soon.
Damn, I was going to make this joke, but you beat me to it. Oh well. Next time I'll be the Real Genius.
And give the money right back to Sony? Isn't there some crazy foreign brand we can buy?
Not really. I actually get paid in 1099s quite often, which don't act in the same way as W2s. Also, if you earn less than $600 on one 1099 the company doesn't need to report it... you could potential earn $599 from 1000 different corporations and walk away with $599,000 unreported and untaxed dollars that the government would only find out about if you were honest enough to report it.
I work a number of different jobs throughout the year, and have to deal with the considerable annoyance of having each one attempt to deduce what my yearly earnings are going to be and tax me accordingly.
The jobs that pay me $200/week (even if I'm only working two days there) will take out almost no taxes becuase they assume I'm making $10,000/year. When I'm paid $2000 for one week of work, I get taxed on the ludicrous assumption that I'm going to be making $100,000/year. Neither assumption is accurate and both leave the government taking out a grossly incorrect percent of my wages in tax anticipation.
Why can't the government compile a system that will help companies to estimate what my tax payment should be not simply by what I'm being paid in the current week, but by looking back over the whole last year and seeing how much I've made this tax-year (through different employers) and what that average income is going to end up being near.
Better yet, why can't we come up with a system that doesn't depend upon weird estimates as the year goes on, but allows you to announce at the beginning what your income is going to be near and then simply take out the percent that that tax bracket would warrant. Then, if you were accurate, you'd have no refund and no taxes do and you could just fold everything up and go home.
Damned taxes.
Well, unless those people cashing their checks are being paid under the table, they are probably having taxes taken out for them based on their income linked to their social security number. It doesn't matter how you cash the check, the company has filed what it paid the person with the social security number to the government on their tax return.
And even if taxes aren't taken out, if the person is making over $600 he/she's being 1099'd and again the business is going to be reporting that amount to the government on their tax return.
There are a number of things that still won't be accurately tracked, but it's going to be remarkably easy to keep track of what people are earning from honest and legally operated businesses.