You could argue, "Sure, but better deals for new artists will come along," but that's little consolation to an artist *now* that can't find work. You speak as if "work for hire/one time payment" is the only business model right now. If that model became unprofitable, you really think the record labels would suddenly curl up and die, leaving thousands of starving artists? Please.
The Ewoks, showed signs of this too. It is the buyme syndrome of characters. They pulled a lot of unneeded stuff to get your kids asking for them. They were the Teddy Bears for the kids who weren't interested in the speeders, ships and action figures. I find the Ewoks are perfectly cromulent, so long as you can manage to ignore the cutesy music themes used with them and the few small bits of physical humor/goofiness. If you think of them as vicious little dog/bear monsters, they get a little creepier. Imagine being swarmed by two dozen furry little spear poking, sharp fanged, feral mini-bears.
Episode one was the one that bit the bullet for me too. You could weed all the annoying filler out of the three prequels and probably have one good movie. It is almost as if they made one good movie and stretched it into 3 to get an extra 2 movie tickets sold. The matrix did the same thing and it ended up sucking too. Eh... Matrix seemed to me more like one good, solid movie, and two slapped together fanfic sequels. The sequels were so badly written that it's strangely believable that the Wachowski brothers(siblings?) stole the original script from someone else, like that crazy lady claimed.
The truth is that not many bands make much of anything from album sales due to shady practices by the record companies.
Prove it.
Christ, it's not like the way record contracts work are a state secret. There's even an article in How Stuff Works detailing everything. Artists have complained about it for years. Record companies have a laundry list of "mitigating factors" that they use to rationalize the status quo. Christ, it's like someone mentioned that the sky is blue and now you're demanding a picture. Get a fucking clue. Google "record contract" and read, you lazy fuck.
'"What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.'"
An attitude like that is likely to make following them around very fruitful
What attitude? It's a rhetorical question setting up for a statement of fact. Stating that what they do is digital is likely to get them caught doing something a PI with a camera can catch? Your point makes no sense!
...you can be caught for a million different things: littering, jaywalking, illegal parking, u-turns, speeding... the list is endless....Tax evasion, anyone?... None of those things are anything a private investigator can do anything with. Even if they turned evidence of illegal parking or tax evasion over to the autorities, the most likely response would be "yeah, whatever pal".
TAFKAP (I think I know what one of those "A"s stands for).
The
Artist
Formerly
Known
As
Prince Yes, anyone who was around for the "my name is an unpronounceable symbol" period (or with access to Google) knows that. See, the original poster was being funny, implying that one of the A's....
oh, nevermind. I'll jhust say WHOOOSH! and leave it at that
Oh, and I'm Canadian, not Chinese. Not a drop of oriental blood. As a fractional heathen Chinaman myself, let me say that "Asian" is the preferred adjective.
Hey, it's the show that launched the careers of Lawrence Fishburne... Not really. He was a main supporting character in "Apocalypse Now" in 1979, and pretty much worked continuously thereafter.
None of the points you have listed make ANY difference. AT ALL. Or have YOU forgotten "innocent until proven guilty"? It never ceases to amaze me that idiots keep parroting that particular phrase as if we are all bound to adhere to it. "Innocent until proven guilty" applies to the courts, operating under the law. There is no such restriction on public opinion. I, nor anyone else, is under any compulsion to treat people as "innocent" simply because the legal system is unable to prove their guilt. Just as Party A is perfectly free to create a fake profile on MySpace and play mind games with troubled children, others in return are likewise perfectly free to post signs in their yards condemning Party A's behavior, refuse to speak to Party A, give Party A bad/no service in their business, and/or tell others of Party A's behavior and encourage them to do the same. It's not "vigilantism" until the law is broken. Until then, it's called society.
I completely agree with you that people shouldn't dig up this information. They should respect others' right to privacy. If the woman did something wrong, it's up to the police to deal with it, not a mob (not even a virtual one). The woman clearly did do something wrong. The problem is that while what she did is obviously morally reprehensible, it was also not illegal. Subsequently, the police aren't going to be dealing with it, and the only form of "punishment" available is public scorn*.
* note this does not include vandalism, assault, etc.; it is simply social ostracism. People seem to be under the impression that just because the legal system hasn't punished you, that the rest of us in society have to pretend you didn't do anything and be your "bestest pal". It's simply not the case. The court of public opinion is harsh and not bound by strict rules of evidence and impartiality.
Some people disagree with the Slashdot system that "funny" mods don't contribute to karma. So some people choose a different positive mod to use when something's funny.
I tend to agree. If I find something worthy of using a mod point for any reason, then I think it should be reflected in that user's karma. Why discriminate against humor? Personally, I use the "Underrated" mod. It doesn't look dumb like "insightful" on a joke.
Except that now MIT has developed wireless power transmission. Guess they need to learn physics as well, oh and stop faking having powered a light bulb wirelessly. No, MIT is not using the same effect Tesla was working on. It uses nearfield inductive coupling, which is of limited range. The GP poster said Tesla's idea made no sense, not that wireless power transmission of any kind wasn't possible. Tesla's wireless power idea was completely impractical.
Large quantities of long-lived radioactive isotopes are produced as waste and even after 60 years we still don't have any place to put them. Reprocessing. There are many posts here already on the subject. Read them.
The reactor containment on a fission reactor hasn't changed and would allow chernobyl-type contamination to spread if it fails due to operator or equipment failure. Wrong. Go read about the design of the Chernobyl RBMK reactor and learn why it was a particularly dangerous design. A design that only soviet dumbfucks would build, and operated by those same soviet dumbfucks.
Windmills, bicycles, sweaters, walking, transit, oil, coal, gas, hydropower, and solar cells are all much better alternatives. My god, you're a walking stereotype!
Power can be made is so many ways, why not try for something less... potentially devastating. Because Three Mile Island was essentially the worst possible thing--- a 98% meltdown--- and not a single bit of radioactive material escaped until several days after the incident when some fuckwit decided it'd be OK to just vent the radioactive hydrogen to the atmosphere (and even then, it was hardly even a relevant event). TMI is what you get when civilized western nations build reactors. Chernobyl is what you get only when you have dipshit "production before safety" soviet fucktards building and running reactors.
What reprocessing? If reprocessing was so effective (references please) then why is the US's current nuclear waste disposal in such a disastrous mess? Because that fuckwit Jimmy Carter signed an executive order banning the reprocessing of fuel because of "proliferation concerns" in a purely symbolic gesture, as the plutonium produced by a fuel reprocessing breeder reactor is a mix of isotopes that can't be used in a nuclear warhead.
You no doubt know that the fallout from Chernobyl circled the globe? That it contaminated neighboring countries fairly heavily Go read something (hell, even the wikipedia entry) on Chernobyl and come back after you understand the difference between a reactor run and built by a semi-responsible western nation and an RBMK reactor built by a bunch of soviet fuckwits more concerned with making lots of weapons grade plutonium, and run by dumbfuck soviet trained "engineers" who disable all the safety systems to see what happens. (hint: the former doesn't spew fallout which circles the globe, even when it melts down)
However, steer-by-wire systems are quickly coming into play in America, especially on some of the lower-end GM products. Now I'm no GM engineer yet, but from what I gather the steering system is either on the GMLAN high speed bus or it has its own bus but still gets data off GMLAN.
Now suppose the ECM stops giving out speed information on the GMLAN bus. Hopefully there is a contingency plan in the steering logic so that you can still have some steering I/O even without the vehicle speed information, but if the output isnt on its own bus, I cant say I'd want to be in that car. GM electronic steering system is simply an electric (rather than hydraulic) assisted mechanical steering system. If the system loses power, the steering wheel is still physically connected to the wheels. There are no pure steer-by-wire vehicles other than silly auto show concept cars. Steer-by-wire is really cool sounding, but has a major disadvantage in that you get a lot of fairly important feedback about the tire/road interaction through your mechanically linked steering system. Purely electronic doesn't have that.
If you have a carburator and a mechanical throttle, then I'd think you'd be good to go. Except for the electronic ignition controlling the spark and the electronic power regulation keeping the alternator at 13.5v.
A lot of the early electronics were more to do with emissions controls. Like there were O2 sensors or something like that, but many gen-x'ers remember ripping all that stuff off late 70s and early 80s clunkers in a desperate attempt to get more horsepower. O2 sensors are only used as part of a computer controlled fuel injection system. The only electronic smog control devices were scabbed on to the electronic ignition system to change the timing advance to produce less NOx. Even if you pulled 'em off, you still had electronic ignition.
I wonder if military vehicles have their vehicle's CPU's shielded... Think about it. They're designed to withstand the EMP from a nuclear detonation. They are shielded like you wouldn't believe.
New luxury cars are being developed (some BMW and Mercedes - I don't know if they're being sold) that don't even have a direct connection between the steering wheel and the drive train. Instead, it's all computerized with some type of central bus system. This allows for much smoother/easier handling. So far, only BMW and Lexus have electronic steering planned, but even those are hybrid systems that maintain a direct mechanical linkage. It's not just a safety issue, but an issue of control. Whether you realize it or not, you get quite a bit of feedback about how the tires are interacting with the road through the movement of the steering wheel. Control is actually better with a direct link. This is why they do not plan to go 100% electronic.
I'm pretty sure that cars exist/are planned that use "drive by wire"; that is, there are no physical connections between the driver's controls and the throttle, brakes, and steering, it's all handled by the computer. "Pretty sure", eh? I bet you can't name even one. Throttle, yes. Brakes and steering, absolutely not. No engineer in his right mind would design an automobile braking system that didn't revert to pure hydraulic "foot pressure in=braking pressure out" upon loss of power. Neither would NHTSA permit such a car to be sold. Same thing with the steering.
And just how many of the cars in Iraq do you expect to have electronic ignition control? Just about all of them. Iraq isn't Cuba, where the only cars they have are the ones left from before the revolution in the 50's. Most cars there are 80's and 90's Japanese models. Electronic ignition has been standard equipment since transistors got small and cheap enough to do the job, which was right around '70-'72. If you've ever owned a car with mechanical point ignition, you know why no one builds cars like that anymore.
The require maintenance is and always will be insane, as CIWS (pronounced seawiz) stands for 'closed in weapon system', it's the full package. Radar, weapon, tracking system, and cooling. Everything it needs to shoot except for its own power source. Errr.... CIWS stands for Close-In Weapons System, referring to its task of engaging targets at ranges too short for other systems. It is indeed a self-contained system, but that's not where its name comes from.
I hope no one mods me down for saying this, but I really feel like we should consider starting the draft again. We need to bolster our troop levels and try to do it in as egalitarian a way as possible. Our current system is not set up for conscripts, nor is our current method of warfighting. We don't fight linear battles like the "good ol' days" of WW2 and Korea. We don't have need of tens of thousands of units of cannon fodder to form battle lines. Conscription brings in a small percentage of useful folks, but mostly it brings in cannon fodder. There is no real place for cannon fodder in the modern military. For what little "block the bullets with our bodies" work that gets done, the Marines are apparently more than capable of handling it (going into Fallujah in unarmored vehicles = suicide; don't even get me started on the absurdity of letting the navy run its own little army). Really, the problem with conscripts is that most of them don't want to be there and have to be pushed around essentially at gunpoint. Currently, with the "War on Terror" having been going on for more than 5 years, there isn't hardly a soul in the military who didn't enlist or re-enlist knowing full well that combat deployment was a definite possibility. For all the dire stories about recruitment shortfalls, they haven't been missing the targets by much. In fact, they've been meeting the goals lately because they've decided that their standards of "squeaky clean boy scouts only, no arrests, no convictions" were a bit silly. Traditionally, the military was a place where social misfits could go to learn discipline and self-respect. Beginning in the mid 80's, however, it started to turn into a bit of a prissy boys club. Cold warriors practicing for a future war that was never going to happen, so they had lots of time to play dressup and have parades and then four years later they'd go home and spend their college fund and GI Bill money getting their English degrees and MBA's. I remember back in '89, during my first enlistment, when the Panama invasion rolled around, how a lot of my fellow soldiers in the 7th Light Infantry Division were a little thrown off by the idea of actual combat. Then in '90, when I was with the 101st Airborne and Desert Shield came up, there it was again, the sporadic whining and grumbling... "I joined for the college money".... "war? I never thought there'd be real war"... etc. Granted, it was from a very tiny minority, but it was emblematic of the "new Army": nothing but clean-cut high school grads. It almost seemed like the military wanted to "reinvent" itself as some sort of high-tech ivy-league organization. Now, with the business of a real honest-to-goodness ground war in Asia on their plate, they're being forced to abandon their snooty attitude and accept honest people committed to the job, rather than polished snobs looking for a good resume filler. Smoked pot once or were put on probation for breaking you girlfriend's car window as a teenager because she broke up with you? Used to be, you were considered untouchable. Not anymore. The preppy twits aren't signing up like they used to, so now they have to be realistic and accept regular folks. They don't need the draft. They need to realize they're not running a country club and set realistic enlistment standards.
Frankly, I think one of the (few) good things to come from the current state of war (at least for the Army and USMC) is that it is quickly flushing the dilettantes out of the enlisted ranks and (more slowly) the ranks of the commissioned officers. The military isn't a game. Too many people seemed to think it was like the Boy Scouts, only with mortars and rifles.
And just because technology currently makes it easy to distribute doesn't make it wrong to ask to be compensated for work.
Producing software, music, movies, art, whatever, still costs money, even if the distribution is much, much cheaper.
The problem with your argument is that it is based on the notion that work inherently deserves some form of compensation. I could work all day at pounding your car with a sledgehammer. How much do you owe me for that day's work? I spent all day calling people "ass-pump". Now others are calling people "ass-pump". Do they owe me money? There is no natural right to compensation for work without prior arrangement (i.e. contract).
I'm no fan of the RIAA, but I completely disagree that digital media should be free. Digital media is free, there is no "should be" about it. It's the same price as a conversation between two people. How much should an hour of conversation cost?
The cost should be reduced to compensate for cheaper distribution (not to mention cutting out the middleman), but the creators of the work should still be compensated, if they choose so (I just want to be clear that I think the creator of the work should decide what the price is, whether it's free or not, or whether they should be paid in money or goats). The problem this continually runs into is that information is not scarce. It is infinitely replicable for only the cost of the medium that encodes it. The idea that a creator of patterns of information is somehow "owner" of that pattern is a modern contrivance. Sure, there should be a mechanism for voluntary compensation, but the assertion that a creator has some natural right to control the free flow of information through society is asinine.
So are you saying bad law should be obeyed because somebody makes money off it?
No, it's because disobeying a bad law can still cost you money and time in jail.
So the law is just because they enforce it? Bwa?
And because it sets a dangerous precedent. Who gets to decide which laws should be obeyed or disobeyed? If I don't like the drinking and driving law, can I disobey that one? Sure, but just wait and see how much sympathy you garner when you run down a blind child in a crosswalk! Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is viewed by a large portion of the population as a victimless crime. That is generally how laws come about--- by societal consensus. All reasonable people agree that behaving in a reckless manner that endangers others is a Bad Thing. Large numbers of reasonable people fall on both sides of the copyright debate, therefore the validity of the law is questionable.
Because there's no moral justification in civil disobedience unless it's a great injustice, like segregation?
I hope you're not seriously comparing the morality between segregation and free downloads.
If you don't think there's a difference, and think that these two issues are at the same level on the "morality" scale, then we can just end the debate here, because I just don't have the capability or the desire to explain why that's wrong. Put the fucking strawman down, fool. I was offering the extreme example to get the OP to consider the possibility that civil disobedience is arguably a legitimate course of action for any unjust law, not just obviously unjust ones like segregation. If you think I was suggesting the two are equal, then yes, we can end the debate here, because your reading comprehension is obviously not up to the task of following reasoned discourse.
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Episode one was the one that bit the bullet for me too. You could weed all the annoying filler out of the three prequels and probably have one good movie. It is almost as if they made one good movie and stretched it into 3 to get an extra 2 movie tickets sold. The matrix did the same thing and it ended up sucking too. Eh... Matrix seemed to me more like one good, solid movie, and two slapped together fanfic sequels. The sequels were so badly written that it's strangely believable that the Wachowski brothers(siblings?) stole the original script from someone else, like that crazy lady claimed.
Prove it.
Christ, it's not like the way record contracts work are a state secret. There's even an article in How Stuff Works detailing everything. Artists have complained about it for years. Record companies have a laundry list of "mitigating factors" that they use to rationalize the status quo. Christ, it's like someone mentioned that the sky is blue and now you're demanding a picture. Get a fucking clue. Google "record contract" and read, you lazy fuck.
What attitude? It's a rhetorical question setting up for a statement of fact. Stating that what they do is digital is likely to get them caught doing something a PI with a camera can catch? Your point makes no sense!An attitude like that is likely to make following them around very fruitful
...you can be caught for a million different things: littering, jaywalking, illegal parking, u-turns, speeding... the list is endless....Tax evasion, anyone?... None of those things are anything a private investigator can do anything with. Even if they turned evidence of illegal parking or tax evasion over to the autorities, the most likely response would be "yeah, whatever pal".The
Artist
Formerly
Known
As
Prince Yes, anyone who was around for the "my name is an unpronounceable symbol" period (or with access to Google) knows that. See, the original poster was being funny, implying that one of the A's....
oh, nevermind. I'll jhust say WHOOOSH! and leave it at that
* note this does not include vandalism, assault, etc.; it is simply social ostracism. People seem to be under the impression that just because the legal system hasn't punished you, that the rest of us in society have to pretend you didn't do anything and be your "bestest pal". It's simply not the case. The court of public opinion is harsh and not bound by strict rules of evidence and impartiality.
I tend to agree. If I find something worthy of using a mod point for any reason, then I think it should be reflected in that user's karma. Why discriminate against humor? Personally, I use the "Underrated" mod. It doesn't look dumb like "insightful" on a joke.
Now suppose the ECM stops giving out speed information on the GMLAN bus. Hopefully there is a contingency plan in the steering logic so that you can still have some steering I/O even without the vehicle speed information, but if the output isnt on its own bus, I cant say I'd want to be in that car. GM electronic steering system is simply an electric (rather than hydraulic) assisted mechanical steering system. If the system loses power, the steering wheel is still physically connected to the wheels. There are no pure steer-by-wire vehicles other than silly auto show concept cars. Steer-by-wire is really cool sounding, but has a major disadvantage in that you get a lot of fairly important feedback about the tire/road interaction through your mechanically linked steering system. Purely electronic doesn't have that.
"Pretty sure", eh? I bet you can't name even one. Throttle, yes. Brakes and steering, absolutely not. No engineer in his right mind would design an automobile braking system that didn't revert to pure hydraulic "foot pressure in=braking pressure out" upon loss of power. Neither would NHTSA permit such a car to be sold. Same thing with the steering.
Frankly, I think one of the (few) good things to come from the current state of war (at least for the Army and USMC) is that it is quickly flushing the dilettantes out of the enlisted ranks and (more slowly) the ranks of the commissioned officers. The military isn't a game. Too many people seemed to think it was like the Boy Scouts, only with mortars and rifles.
Producing software, music, movies, art, whatever, still costs money, even if the distribution is much, much cheaper.
The problem with your argument is that it is based on the notion that work inherently deserves some form of compensation. I could work all day at pounding your car with a sledgehammer. How much do you owe me for that day's work? I spent all day calling people "ass-pump". Now others are calling people "ass-pump". Do they owe me money? There is no natural right to compensation for work without prior arrangement (i.e. contract). I'm no fan of the RIAA, but I completely disagree that digital media should be free. Digital media is free, there is no "should be" about it. It's the same price as a conversation between two people. How much should an hour of conversation cost? The cost should be reduced to compensate for cheaper distribution (not to mention cutting out the middleman), but the creators of the work should still be compensated, if they choose so (I just want to be clear that I think the creator of the work should decide what the price is, whether it's free or not, or whether they should be paid in money or goats). The problem this continually runs into is that information is not scarce. It is infinitely replicable for only the cost of the medium that encodes it. The idea that a creator of patterns of information is somehow "owner" of that pattern is a modern contrivance. Sure, there should be a mechanism for voluntary compensation, but the assertion that a creator has some natural right to control the free flow of information through society is asinine.So are you saying bad law should be obeyed because somebody makes money off it?
No, it's because disobeying a bad law can still cost you money and time in jail.
So the law is just because they enforce it? Bwa? And because it sets a dangerous precedent. Who gets to decide which laws should be obeyed or disobeyed? If I don't like the drinking and driving law, can I disobey that one? Sure, but just wait and see how much sympathy you garner when you run down a blind child in a crosswalk! Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is viewed by a large portion of the population as a victimless crime. That is generally how laws come about--- by societal consensus. All reasonable people agree that behaving in a reckless manner that endangers others is a Bad Thing. Large numbers of reasonable people fall on both sides of the copyright debate, therefore the validity of the law is questionable.Because there's no moral justification in civil disobedience unless it's a great injustice, like segregation?
I hope you're not seriously comparing the morality between segregation and free downloads.If you don't think there's a difference, and think that these two issues are at the same level on the "morality" scale, then we can just end the debate here, because I just don't have the capability or the desire to explain why that's wrong. Put the fucking strawman down, fool. I was offering the extreme example to get the OP to consider the possibility that civil disobedience is arguably a legitimate course of action for any unjust law, not just obviously unjust ones like segregation. If you think I was suggesting the two are equal, then yes, we can end the debate here, because your reading comprehension is obviously not up to the task of following reasoned discourse.