I understand that there's risk in everything, but different risks. You're looking at a house as an asset, realize that it's also a roof. It may be decomposable into house_price - house_maintenance + rental_savings, and thus be comparable to stocks, but it's unlikely to go away simply through being owned, whereas a stock will.
Sure, for an investor, this all balanced out, that isn't your house so it's just income and expense. Just like those aren't your personal company assets, it's just a share of the books. So what's 'just another investment' for you isn't 'roof + investment' so trading one for the other doesn't work for someone who isn't in a position to rent out the house (ie, living in another).
I'm not saying stocks are random, really. I'm just saying that they're so different that almost all other types of investments that to the average Joe, they might as well be. If you just buy stocks that look good on any one metric you will lose money to more efficient and smarter players. You might play an index position, but that's just more stock to cover for the liabilities of stock...
You're playing the market in a general upward time. What if you invested in a DOW index fund in 1965 and wanted to cash out 20 years later? Or 1930 to 1990... See what I mean? I have friends buying $150k condos now worth $250 who think they're investment geniuses, even though they couldn't handle their mortgage if the interest rate climbs. They tell me how great real-estate is, as if it has no flaws. Nobody who owned through the 20% interest rates would ever say such a generic statement.
Stocks are neat, but only as far as they go... Ditto real-estate, etc.
Did you totally miss Winston's job, redactor of the old inaccurate newspapers, etc.
My point is that you can't very well reliably quote something you don't have in hardcopy, and a DRMed video that refuses to let you take a screenshot or display it to others isn't a hard copy. This is quite literally from the book - if people were allowed to have books or newspapers they could compare them to discover the government lies. The government restricted access, an actually went so far as to force library copies, to hide the truth.
1984 predicts the totalitarian outcome as being through government, but in reality most of the chilling effects are just as likely in a capitalist society where the means to communicate (tv, net and phone companies), utilities, etc, are private property. Ted Turner is as plausible a Big Brother as Joseph Stalin.
News agencies have been caught silently changing articles on their website (no notice of the edit) when this substantially changed the meaning of the article. If screenshots, saved copies, digital photos, etc, were all blocked with DRM, how would anyone prove this sort of thing to anyone else? Would you sign a contract and trust me to keep the only copy?
No less scary for the fact that we're buying into it in trade for glitzy movies and pop music. When everyone is using a console instead of a computer and can't run unsigned programs without a mod chip (illegal in many areas) the freedom to break the law (illicitly photograph a copyrighted document) and let a judge sort it out (in a whistle-blowing case) will be gone.
But yes, we have yet to be crushed so I shouldn't mention the sky falling.
Very few companies aren't in debt, it's inefficient to be sitting on a lot of money. That 10% of the assets will very rarely be worth the price you paid for 10% of the stock. When a company is this asset-rich it's an obvious buy, so the market corrects for capitalizations that are less than assets by the price rising. This means your average investor is very unlikely to find a stock that would be worth much after the bankruptcy of the parent company.
You are right that there's risk everywhere, but usually there's just the risk that you might be stuck with something someone else wants. If you ignore being upside-down on a mortgage after the price drops, there's no real problem - you've still got the land. However, if your company tanks, your stock might get you nothing. Not just something nobody wants at that price, but nothing.
There's a place for stock, as the way to capitalize large industry. But there's a downside, price manipulation is rampant. Stocks make money for some people, but on average an owner will lose in the long run while the market as a whole manages to climb.
It's a risk I take, but in limited ways. Even if I loved a stock and was sure it was going to win (perpetual motion machine) I keep in mind that the current price can vary overnight on essentially no real change. Apple could announce the imminent release of the PerpetualMac "soon" and the price could flop. Of course, that's mostly not a bad thing but still important in the sense of liquidity, if not eventual price.
So it would have been impolite to not be a thief... Um, wah.
As for the enforceability of verbal contracts, you are mistaken. They are every bit as binding as written ones, except that the courts allow more leeway for "meant" instead of "said". If you can prove (recording?) that someone said it, it's binding.
Yes, I'm suggesting that this woman is an overt thief, as if she had borrowed his coat and refused to return it. She should be forced to pay him, and jailed if this behavior continues - as we would jail a shoplifter of trivially priced items if they continued. If she wises up, the cost is only the $100 she took.
Re: paid sex, it's unlikely to be illegal in your area (Saudi Arabia?). Usually it's solicitation that's illegal; selling it on the street. Either way, he's still likely to meet a higher class of woman than the one who stole from him.
It would be hard to beat the stock market if valuations were random as well.
You know Dilbert on gift-certificates? "You exchange your money for something like money, but not money. It can't be used as many places, expires, etc"
Stocks are to ownership of company value, what gift-certificates are to ownership of a product. Strictly theoretical.
Until you've sold your share and have something tangible, it's only a promise to pay something at a later date. Unfortunately, your IOU is just one of millions, and in there with company debts, preferred IOUs, etc to be paid out. It's likely to be worth a lot less than you think all of a sudden.
If instead you actually went to a company, totaled up their assets, bought a 10% share in these assets (with forced buyout, etc) you would then own 10% of these, and would get this off the top if the company went belly up. Your 10% stock ownership though would put you in a huge pool all fighting for the each-other's money. You'd be lucky to get a tenth of the pre-bankruptcy value.
You can get rich in stocks, and baseball cards. To imply that this must prove their objective value is silly. Don't invest in a stock, invest in the market's valuation of a stock and keep an eye on your assumptions.
If you'd jump to the defense of your wife even if she received a minor and deserved thing like this, you're over-reacting. She's an adult an got into it herself. The "attack" is just a nonviolent joke where people do the equivalent of throwing foam-rubber penises at Donald Trump during a speech. She wasn't stuck there, and could leave whenever she wanted.
This isn't anywhere near the realm of physical violence or even verbal insults. It's like throwing soft stuffed toys, except that these ones floated slowly and weren't solid, there was absolutely no danger because of it being a game, etc, etc...
Sort of like if Kathy Lee Gifford (ran sweatshops in Asia) was teased by people at business lunches leaving dolls (to represent the children) around as a comment on her "crimes". Should their actions be attacks simply because the message is unwelcome?
Her inconvenience forgives her lie? Couldn't she have just said indignantly, "You invited me, you pay"?
This trivial shit is exactly what small claims court is about - to let people solve problems (the judge gives you an answer that will work in the future) without resorting to violence, theft, or character assassination. She stole $100 from him, as much as if she'd fished it out of his coat. Should he just let it happen, beat the shit out of her and take it back, expose her theft in front of her friends and co-workers, or take her to court? Let an impartial judge could give her the cheap lesson that a promise is binding, if it fits the parameters of a contract (mainly, something for something, by competent people).
I'm sure he'd get better results next time if he just spent the $100 directly on sex. It'd be a way to meet a more-honest woman than the one he was dating...
I think he'd have been happy just to have someone say:
"Hey, thanks. I needed it to support UUCP so I hacked this on like so: "
That's not asking for CVS rights, looking to merge it, asking him to do anything, just letting him know what use his project it put to so that he could make it better. If ten people admit to writing hackish solutions to something he could use that as a starting point for doing it well.
Sure, they thought they'd screw with the Zune to the point that DRMed music was more convenient than ripped or downloaded, and that then the only obstacle to buying would be that the DRM wasn't tight enough...
As I say, it's "numbers" thinking, but they're wrong about the numbers.
The defense for Microsoft's actions was that they were thinking of the big picture, the number of legit sales they'd get a piece of would outweigh the number of unit sales lost to advanced users. The problem is that anyone who uses MP3s more than DRMed WMAs, or who doesn't like buying online music, is one of their advanced users who isn't going to buy the device. As that's almost everyone, there's nobody left over to fork money into their pockets through music sales.
If people want an MP3 player, they'll buy a generic one. If they want some specific feature of the Zune they may buy it instead.
So, what features does the Zune have? Wifi? Not really, as I was saying, because there are so many limitations on what you can wifi around that the no-fuss nature is gone and you're half-way to the hassle of plugging in a cable.
You say MS did this for the masses, in a numbers decision. That would mean that they think that crippled wifi + online music store > non-crippled wifi + kazaa. Obviously, they're delusional. It's a fantasy that the "masses" want another boring shoping experience and that their main turn-off is less than EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD in stock. We'd much rather have devices that work and the ability to mix songs between stores and devices seamlessly.
Their fixation on numbers caused them to forget that some "numbers" (customer satisfaction) are more important. Not in some fuzzy "aww, we loves the customers" kind of way, but simply in that people don't buy devices that suck at what they're for.
You sound like junior management, repeating the standard wisdom without understanding it.
What numbers?!
What masses of people is Microsoft reaching with this crippled device? Nearly zero. So obviously your way doesn't work. People don't care about having some full populated online store when they can't use any of the music. They've already got an online store, called Kazaa, without DRM. So they'll buy a device that allows them the most real usage.
Perhaps a 9-5 and a roof isn't his main concern. Being homeless isn't the same everywhere. Does it mean he's outside in a blizzard, or sleeping on beaches with a friend's garage to use if the weather gets rough?
A friend's relative is homeless due to a mix of mental conditions that he partially takes meds for. He's not happy with any attempt to control him, so he tends to wander during the warm months, dropping by various family for food, and living in a room above the garage at his brother's during the winter. He seems honestly to prefer rough conditions and no rules to living inside with fancier stuff and a million societal rules he doesn't "get". They all pitch in to send him to a doctor and dentist, and he does chores to help when feeling up to it, but that's as much help as he wants.
Actually, copyright refers to the right to copy, and publicly perform, mostly. It doesn't refer to a right to read/watch/etc.
If I leave a copyrighted book at your house you're free to read it, quote it, etc. You merely may not copy and reproduce it.
DRM actually interferes with legally granted rights, such as anything under fair use, editing out swear words, etc. It's legal, in that nobody guarantees the ability to perform those rights... It's a bit of a cop-out. Like if I said that I didn't kill you, I merely regulated your air supply with a bag and the bag's DRM prevented you from using your digits to manage your breathing rights...
Not to mention that Copyright was written into law with a give and take philosophy, where we the people grant a monopoly on distribution in trade for being given ownership to the rights after a limited period. Today lobbyists are trying to suggest that infinity - 1 year is technically a limited period. Sure... I'm just going to quote a limited bit, where the limit is all, of those works.
I don't recognize the validity of a copyright where my eventual rights at the owner of that work are impacted by the DRM - I don't take delivery of it, or grant copyright monopoly. Makes no difference in the end, but I see no reason to stress myself caring about an industry that bills me for pirated works I might put on CD, then tries to prevent the copying.
Ahhh, you think prohibition ended because everybody happily gave up alcohol and didn't protest. That makes total sense.
And your point about me damaging the movie industry, my total efforts will amount to little therefore I should not try. You sure are inspirational. Luckily, my energy outlay in pointing people to p2p programs is minimal. Therefore, my results/effort is actually fairly high. Thanks though, for your concern about the productivity of my free time.
As for the maximum and logical extension of copyright, this DRM you trumpet, it obviously totally fails to prevent any use of mine, I crack it. Anyone unable to google for 'crack windows' though, like a legitimate user with a problem booting, is more than a little inconvenienced. Not quite the 100% effectiveness you claim...
And as for locked files, I don't know what part of redactable email, or news sites you can't quote or screenshot, etc, you can't reconcile with 1984 (and such). Perhaps if you already share your encryption keys with everyone from Microsoft to the MPAA and the obviously trustworthy government, then you might not mind having this kind of crap built into your software. Maybe a tazer will personally demonstrate your patriot act some day.
If it were me pirating, yes. But I hook people up with p2p programs in direct response to their DRM woes. I don't suggest that you can get some indie band's music online, but they usually don't have DRM. I do tell people about cracks, rips, etc when they complain about any DRM feature of hardware or software. "Annoyed by unskippable ads? Just download the movie via piratebay.org!" "Game CD woes? Rip and crack the game, play without swapping disks." "Don't like remembering reg #s? Just download a keygen, always a new one - perfect for lan games!"
Hopefully it ads up to something in the ballpark of wasted taxes supporting one-sided laws.
I loathe playback controls, and the like. You're right. And the majority of my games, programs, media, and the like were purchased at one time, in one form. But I'm unabashedly a pirate by the standards of the industry, in that I'll freely time-shift, backup, crack DRM to do so, etc. So I figure, why deny myself the odd movie just because I'm opposed to those who made it. I'll just take advantage of legal loopholes to do so.
For instance, I'm taxed on CDs for the music industry, so I'll call all music fair game. DVDs are all DRMed, and I don't respect the copyrights on DRMed works. Ditto with most games, etc.
You may not agree with the last step, but I think it's fair. A DRMed product is a crappy one. Sixth Sense the movie has unskippable ads, Windows XP has hardware/activation issues, Starcraft wouldn't play in my machine because of my CD-Burner, etc. All of these are products I legally own, Win XP came on my laptop, Sixth Sense I misguidedly bought, etc. All of them have failed to work as advertised, because of DRM, and each was made to work properly with an open-source solution that ignored the DRM (Linux DVD players) or cracked the registration or anti-anti-anti-piracy checks...
In all of these cases I was unhappy with the product and had "legal" way to remedy the situation.
However, by applying common sense, for instance that EULAs are post-sale restrictions and don't apply, that binary modifications to software are no more "derivative works" than margin-notes in a book, and that CD and cd-key checks are another post-sale restiction, I come up with a workable solution that provides a just solution, that I get to use a product I purchased.
Needless to say, Blizzard's opinion of me cracking Starcraft to play it is that I was a thief. They didn't seem to want to offer me a refund for a game that wouldn't play - they wanted me to buy a new CD-ROM drive.
DRM = no copyright. It's not just justice, it's the best strategy for getting this changed - a massive public backlash against the 'rights' of those who do this.
Wah, wah, wah. I don't buy your political arguments so I'm cheap.
For what it's worth, I have helped everyone I know install p2p software and discouraged the purchase of media from companies that encourage DRM. My own lack of purchases (I spent little before mp3 piracy became the rage) is far from stunning and my efforts will be totally felt through my encouragement of others.
As for who decides that DRMed works don't have Copyright, yes, me. Can you think of anyone else? I don't respect them and to the limits of getting sued, I will continue to not do so. Further I'll work to weaken their DRM, cause others to disrespect the people who DRM the works, and to finally copy the work once DRM is broken. If I had millions, I'd bribe a politician. Instead, I'll convince everyone that DRM is wrong and that it violates the spirit of copyright law. Once nobody follows the law, we'll have an easier time getting a less restrictive one in place.
I see my industry, and one that thanks to things like Wikipedia, is one of the best things to ever happen. And I see companies looking to install mandatory DRM on computers, refuse to play high-res content unless it's signed from a *valid* copyright holder, etc, all in order to shut off the post-sale market on copyrighted works, etc. I see OSes refusing to run on changed hardware, files refusing to open without license servers that no-longer exist. Your data, your hardware, controlled by someone else.
So yes, I see those who are doing the DRM lobbying as the enemy. They'd gladly put me and my friends out of work to preserve their antiquated business model. So I'd gladly bring the world into a new sharing model and put them out of work, rather than being thrust into a 1984 world of locked files and access restrictions.
If you spend money on DRMed products, you're directly funding people who want to hurt us. Go donate a dollar to SCO or some patent camper, if you want to fund people who'd take your rights away. You're just a loser who doesn't want to assume responsibility for what you invest in.
When I last wrote a webpage, I simply let my content size automatically and thus my menu bar used just enough space and my content took the rest.
It might not be 'right' but it's the simplest way to do it and it lets me resize the fonts almost perfectly.
I wish we didn't think webpages should render the same between browsers, if the user was recognized as being master of the content on their screen we wouldn't have ever tried to offer pixel-perfect layout commands.
What I was suggesting is that I had done the first step in me applying as a developer, trying to get comfortable in the world I'd be developing. Besides, I highly doubt my ability to spot a flawed network architecture makes me the best person to work in whatever programming language they use, etc.
Programming for second Life is much like programming for the Palm Pilot. I had a Palm and thought it would be neat to play with. But the Palm OS sucked (no memory protection), didn't come with languages like Ruby or Python (at the time), and most of the developers were trying to write closed-source apps. Not *hard* to develop for, but not inviting. Even today, the palm software world is full of payware that would be a two-line script or little GUI toy for your desktop OS.
Second Life feels like that. Everyone there is based on selling usage licenses for "intellectual property". That same intellectual property they'd be giving away if they were part of other gaming or programming communities.
I imagine that if you came from the world of Oracle DBAs and some VB programmers, Second Life will seem amazingly open. If you come from the Free Software movement and have watched Linux be developed, have played on Lambda Moo, etc... It seems painfully closed and greedy.
And as for new users, no, I don't think it's too confusing. Just that the net is full of weird little things that you have to sign up for and require a special client... Most don't require you to spend real money to customize your avatar.
Re:Genuine question about perl vs ruby
on
Lisp and Ruby
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· Score: 1
Ruby's syntax *can* be complicated, but only if you're doing something unexpected..
Normally it's very clean
def foo x, y = nil
x + y end
but sometimes you need to write it with glyphs
def foo(y=nil)
return(@@x+y) end
They're used (@@, @, and no @) for scope, and () disambiguation. If you use local variables, you don't need scope modifiers. If you reference class variables, you do. Usually you'd use accessors functions rather than accessing the variable directly, so it doesn't come up as much as you'd expect. Similarly, the value of the last expression in a block is used as its return value, an implicit 'return' is only needed to bail out early.
In Ruby a lot of emphasis is placed on readability. This is through clean code without too many glyphs, but also by keeping functions short. What would be impractical (different parenthesis standards for each line) in C or C++ seems reasonable in Ruby where you write less code. Functional descriptives rather than imperative commands further this. map/collect, inject, etc.
things = [... ] # some huge array new_things = things.map {|thing| thing *= 3 }
For example, as you don't iterate through the array you don't need a counter, or a size, or a check. All you do is declare your collection, your name for individuals, and then the transformation code. That would be 5+ lines of C, more if it had to allocate new_things.
Further, that Ruby is polymorphic. It'll multiply numbers 2 * 3 = 6, strings "foo" * 2 = "foofoo", etc. If you want it to not be, you can simply add type checking with:
raise ArgumentError, "I need an integer, not #{var.inspect}" unless var.respond_to?:to_i
That raises an error, with explanation (and debugging dump of whatever the input was, try that with printf), unless the variable is an integer, or can be turned into one (through.to_i), in which case, we can treat it as such.
Languages like C++ couldn't become truly polymorphic without templates and compile-time macros and stuff, where you with a hundred lines of declarations manage to turn off type safety appropriately to express your algorithm...
If you come from Perl you get many of these shortcuts, but as every variable is preceded by a glyph, and those glyphs change depending on context, you get many more little errors.
@foo = [1,2]; $foo[1] == 2 # One of the confusing Perl gotchas
Ruby it just shorter, in terms of code elements, than almost anything else I've ever seen, from Lisp to Prolog to Haskel, at 95% of the problem sets.
Hardware is just software running embedded. Software that expects nice factory-made content that isn't designed to trick it. That software is going to meet many hackers who will hit it with malformed everything attempting to trigger a debugging dump, an exploitable bug, a error on decode that could lead to a timing attack... It's also vulnerable to all the standard anti-anti-reverse engineering tricks out there which would let you read the key right out of the operating chip. It's destined to fail.
The industry knows this and thinks that the system of revoking player keys is going to help somehow. Sure, it'll stop that hack from working forever, but it won't prevent an identical hack against some outdated insecure played from working in the future and decrypting all the new title keys.
So the hacker then has a list of title keys for all movies they can get their hands on, which turns into many sources of decrypted video showing up around the world, which is then put on P2P networks, burned onto new disks in Asian marketplaces, etc.
And as soon as the industry finds out which specific hardware or software player was attacked, the legitimate users of it will be denied the ability to play any future movies, but the hacker will simply buy whatever the $49 x-mas special player is next year and crack it. Again, DRM will hurt the honest buyers and totally fail to disadvantage the attackers. Hah.
If the studios drop DRM, and I can move my HD-DVD content to blu-ray when HD-DVD drives stop being made, it'll be acceptable.
Otherwise, those expensive media licenses we buy will be rendered worthless when their DRM locks them to a format you can't buy a drive for anymore.
If the media industry wants DRM they'd better get together and create a guaranteed format, or maybe a guaranteed free upgrade policy. Otherwise it's just a George Lucas cash grab, release the same shit in a different format yet again.
Personally, I simply don't recognize a copyright on DRMed works. Copyright is something that I, the people and government, grant to creators in trade for their giving the work to the public domain, sans some distribution rights for a temporary period. When the work's creator denies me those contractual obligations, I don't grant them copyright. Seeing as how it would be impossible for me to get a tax refund over, say, Adobe's DRMing of Photoshop CS2, or how the XMen 3 movie is DRMed, I choose to simply apply that tax refund towards the purchase price. I don't grant you copyright, as you don't quid the pro quo, so I'm not breaking it when I copy your work.
I fully became a thief in the industry's eyes the day I copied disk images of all of my old Apple 2 images onto my new 486, so that I could keep playing Ultima 5 (which I had purchased from chore money as a kid) on my new PC. The games were engineered to prevent this, thus locking my usage license to a fragile medium which didn't represent the direction that I, the user, was moving my hardware in. So, I figured that this nasty assessment of my character could make me feel bad about myself, or I could simply look and see that absolutely nobody was harmed, greedy people merely did not get richer for no extra work, and that I was served in a fashion which treats fairly the creator of any other product I buy. I can refinish a chair, but not re-disk a game. I can scribble notes in a book, but not in software. Obviously it's not because people in this new medium need new protection that nobody has ever had before, but simply because they found a way to take what they wanted (my post-sale rights) away. Well, fair is fair then, and it's an arms race. Currently I use various fake CD programs to rip my CDs and throw them on my server where I can mount them from any PC in the house.
In general I still own most of the software I use, but where DRMing makes it problematic as with Blizzard games, I don't bother buying them anymore. They proved by telling me to buy a new CD rom (when by burner triggered their DRM in the Diablo days) that my property rights meant nothing to them, and by doing so, announced their intent to opt out of our copyright agreement.
Actually, as mentioned by an html spammer in another sub-thread, most of these people specifically don't include the plain-text because some browsers are set to render it first, defeating their fancy crap.
So yeah, your feature is their bug. And *they* wonder why html email is still the biggest spam indicator in filters.
The problem with HTML, web and email, is that it gives the creator control over scale, not just layout.
When plain-text email arrives it's *always* in the size and font that I have chosen for maximum readability, with HTML email it's almost always forced to a very inconvenient size.
I never had a problem reading stuff online before, until I got a 24" LCD. Now everything by default is this tiny ribbon down the middle third of the screen. When I use Firefox to resize the fonts (try that in IE! Hah!) unfortunately the layout doesn't change so there are now fewer and fewer words in that ribbon because it's still just as wide, but the font is now ten times bigger. If designers couldn't specify sizes these pages would just render properly.
If I didn't use Aardvark to fix these broken websites I'd be unable to use half the web. (I need to check out Opera, I hear its zooming works much better than Firefox.)
BTW, anyone who says that MS-Windows is ready for the prime time, try using Large Fonts and look at how many programs that screws the UI in and how many of those are Microsoft products. 21 years to copy the Mac...
Actually, he does have an obligation to do what they wanted - a client using the wrong terminology doesn't excuse a professional doing the wrong thing. That's what makes consulting so much fun, decoding what the client really wants to achieve instead of what their limited terminology makes them sound like they want.
That said, these are just high-class spammers who theoretically respect the 'remove me' link that everyone knows is really 'spam me harder' in 90% on the cases. They're still dumping their bulk-email on me and sticking me with the costs. So, I'd support doing just about anything to them.
I worked with a guy at an ISP a year or so ago, who had in the early 90s, written a spamming system at the insistence of his then bosses. He did something to the headers such that any two properly configured mail servers would drop the email, but where the bug went unnoticed by their mail server and a few others of that sort. So he wrote his script and the server chugged away for a month and sent an ever-growing number of spams which their ISP billed them by the gig for. Their test mailboxes filled up with spam and the system was apparently working perfectly. In this time my co-worker had changed jobs and left them like this, sending out spam, 99% of which didn't actually get anywhere except get their (spam-friendly) ISP blacklisted. That's some funny! Dunno how long till they figured it out, but because they wanted something essentially illegal, it hurts their ability to come back on the guy. Heh.
Slashdot Mirror
Would you want to work for a company going through emergency spending cuts?
I understand that there's risk in everything, but different risks. You're looking at a house as an asset, realize that it's also a roof. It may be decomposable into house_price - house_maintenance + rental_savings, and thus be comparable to stocks, but it's unlikely to go away simply through being owned, whereas a stock will.
Sure, for an investor, this all balanced out, that isn't your house so it's just income and expense. Just like those aren't your personal company assets, it's just a share of the books. So what's 'just another investment' for you isn't 'roof + investment' so trading one for the other doesn't work for someone who isn't in a position to rent out the house (ie, living in another).
I'm not saying stocks are random, really. I'm just saying that they're so different that almost all other types of investments that to the average Joe, they might as well be. If you just buy stocks that look good on any one metric you will lose money to more efficient and smarter players. You might play an index position, but that's just more stock to cover for the liabilities of stock...
You're playing the market in a general upward time. What if you invested in a DOW index fund in 1965 and wanted to cash out 20 years later? Or 1930 to 1990... See what I mean? I have friends buying $150k condos now worth $250 who think they're investment geniuses, even though they couldn't handle their mortgage if the interest rate climbs. They tell me how great real-estate is, as if it has no flaws. Nobody who owned through the 20% interest rates would ever say such a generic statement.
Stocks are neat, but only as far as they go... Ditto real-estate, etc.
Did you totally miss Winston's job, redactor of the old inaccurate newspapers, etc.
My point is that you can't very well reliably quote something you don't have in hardcopy, and a DRMed video that refuses to let you take a screenshot or display it to others isn't a hard copy. This is quite literally from the book - if people were allowed to have books or newspapers they could compare them to discover the government lies. The government restricted access, an actually went so far as to force library copies, to hide the truth.
1984 predicts the totalitarian outcome as being through government, but in reality most of the chilling effects are just as likely in a capitalist society where the means to communicate (tv, net and phone companies), utilities, etc, are private property. Ted Turner is as plausible a Big Brother as Joseph Stalin.
News agencies have been caught silently changing articles on their website (no notice of the edit) when this substantially changed the meaning of the article. If screenshots, saved copies, digital photos, etc, were all blocked with DRM, how would anyone prove this sort of thing to anyone else? Would you sign a contract and trust me to keep the only copy?
No less scary for the fact that we're buying into it in trade for glitzy movies and pop music. When everyone is using a console instead of a computer and can't run unsigned programs without a mod chip (illegal in many areas) the freedom to break the law (illicitly photograph a copyrighted document) and let a judge sort it out (in a whistle-blowing case) will be gone.
But yes, we have yet to be crushed so I shouldn't mention the sky falling.
Very few companies aren't in debt, it's inefficient to be sitting on a lot of money. That 10% of the assets will very rarely be worth the price you paid for 10% of the stock. When a company is this asset-rich it's an obvious buy, so the market corrects for capitalizations that are less than assets by the price rising. This means your average investor is very unlikely to find a stock that would be worth much after the bankruptcy of the parent company.
You are right that there's risk everywhere, but usually there's just the risk that you might be stuck with something someone else wants. If you ignore being upside-down on a mortgage after the price drops, there's no real problem - you've still got the land. However, if your company tanks, your stock might get you nothing. Not just something nobody wants at that price, but nothing.
There's a place for stock, as the way to capitalize large industry. But there's a downside, price manipulation is rampant. Stocks make money for some people, but on average an owner will lose in the long run while the market as a whole manages to climb.
It's a risk I take, but in limited ways. Even if I loved a stock and was sure it was going to win (perpetual motion machine) I keep in mind that the current price can vary overnight on essentially no real change. Apple could announce the imminent release of the PerpetualMac "soon" and the price could flop. Of course, that's mostly not a bad thing but still important in the sense of liquidity, if not eventual price.
So it would have been impolite to not be a thief... Um, wah.
As for the enforceability of verbal contracts, you are mistaken. They are every bit as binding as written ones, except that the courts allow more leeway for "meant" instead of "said". If you can prove (recording?) that someone said it, it's binding.
Yes, I'm suggesting that this woman is an overt thief, as if she had borrowed his coat and refused to return it. She should be forced to pay him, and jailed if this behavior continues - as we would jail a shoplifter of trivially priced items if they continued. If she wises up, the cost is only the $100 she took.
Re: paid sex, it's unlikely to be illegal in your area (Saudi Arabia?). Usually it's solicitation that's illegal; selling it on the street. Either way, he's still likely to meet a higher class of woman than the one who stole from him.
It would be hard to beat the stock market if valuations were random as well.
You know Dilbert on gift-certificates? "You exchange your money for something like money, but not money. It can't be used as many places, expires, etc"
Stocks are to ownership of company value, what gift-certificates are to ownership of a product. Strictly theoretical.
Until you've sold your share and have something tangible, it's only a promise to pay something at a later date. Unfortunately, your IOU is just one of millions, and in there with company debts, preferred IOUs, etc to be paid out. It's likely to be worth a lot less than you think all of a sudden.
If instead you actually went to a company, totaled up their assets, bought a 10% share in these assets (with forced buyout, etc) you would then own 10% of these, and would get this off the top if the company went belly up. Your 10% stock ownership though would put you in a huge pool all fighting for the each-other's money. You'd be lucky to get a tenth of the pre-bankruptcy value.
You can get rich in stocks, and baseball cards. To imply that this must prove their objective value is silly. Don't invest in a stock, invest in the market's valuation of a stock and keep an eye on your assumptions.
If you'd jump to the defense of your wife even if she received a minor and deserved thing like this, you're over-reacting. She's an adult an got into it herself. The "attack" is just a nonviolent joke where people do the equivalent of throwing foam-rubber penises at Donald Trump during a speech. She wasn't stuck there, and could leave whenever she wanted.
This isn't anywhere near the realm of physical violence or even verbal insults. It's like throwing soft stuffed toys, except that these ones floated slowly and weren't solid, there was absolutely no danger because of it being a game, etc, etc...
Sort of like if Kathy Lee Gifford (ran sweatshops in Asia) was teased by people at business lunches leaving dolls (to represent the children) around as a comment on her "crimes". Should their actions be attacks simply because the message is unwelcome?
Her inconvenience forgives her lie? Couldn't she have just said indignantly, "You invited me, you pay"?
This trivial shit is exactly what small claims court is about - to let people solve problems (the judge gives you an answer that will work in the future) without resorting to violence, theft, or character assassination. She stole $100 from him, as much as if she'd fished it out of his coat. Should he just let it happen, beat the shit out of her and take it back, expose her theft in front of her friends and co-workers, or take her to court? Let an impartial judge could give her the cheap lesson that a promise is binding, if it fits the parameters of a contract (mainly, something for something, by competent people).
I'm sure he'd get better results next time if he just spent the $100 directly on sex. It'd be a way to meet a more-honest woman than the one he was dating...
Wrong? No. Less than helpful, Yes.
I think he'd have been happy just to have someone say:
"Hey, thanks. I needed it to support UUCP so I hacked this on like so: "
That's not asking for CVS rights, looking to merge it, asking him to do anything, just letting him know what use his project it put to so that he could make it better. If ten people admit to writing hackish solutions to something he could use that as a starting point for doing it well.
Feedback isn't required, but helps everyone.
Sure, they thought they'd screw with the Zune to the point that DRMed music was more convenient than ripped or downloaded, and that then the only obstacle to buying would be that the DRM wasn't tight enough...
As I say, it's "numbers" thinking, but they're wrong about the numbers.
The defense for Microsoft's actions was that they were thinking of the big picture, the number of legit sales they'd get a piece of would outweigh the number of unit sales lost to advanced users. The problem is that anyone who uses MP3s more than DRMed WMAs, or who doesn't like buying online music, is one of their advanced users who isn't going to buy the device. As that's almost everyone, there's nobody left over to fork money into their pockets through music sales.
If people want an MP3 player, they'll buy a generic one. If they want some specific feature of the Zune they may buy it instead.
So, what features does the Zune have? Wifi? Not really, as I was saying, because there are so many limitations on what you can wifi around that the no-fuss nature is gone and you're half-way to the hassle of plugging in a cable.
You say MS did this for the masses, in a numbers decision. That would mean that they think that crippled wifi + online music store > non-crippled wifi + kazaa. Obviously, they're delusional. It's a fantasy that the "masses" want another boring shoping experience and that their main turn-off is less than EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD in stock. We'd much rather have devices that work and the ability to mix songs between stores and devices seamlessly.
Their fixation on numbers caused them to forget that some "numbers" (customer satisfaction) are more important. Not in some fuzzy "aww, we loves the customers" kind of way, but simply in that people don't buy devices that suck at what they're for.
You sound like junior management, repeating the standard wisdom without understanding it.
What numbers?!
What masses of people is Microsoft reaching with this crippled device? Nearly zero. So obviously your way doesn't work. People don't care about having some full populated online store when they can't use any of the music. They've already got an online store, called Kazaa, without DRM. So they'll buy a device that allows them the most real usage.
Perhaps a 9-5 and a roof isn't his main concern. Being homeless isn't the same everywhere. Does it mean he's outside in a blizzard, or sleeping on beaches with a friend's garage to use if the weather gets rough?
A friend's relative is homeless due to a mix of mental conditions that he partially takes meds for. He's not happy with any attempt to control him, so he tends to wander during the warm months, dropping by various family for food, and living in a room above the garage at his brother's during the winter. He seems honestly to prefer rough conditions and no rules to living inside with fancier stuff and a million societal rules he doesn't "get". They all pitch in to send him to a doctor and dentist, and he does chores to help when feeling up to it, but that's as much help as he wants.
Actually, copyright refers to the right to copy, and publicly perform, mostly. It doesn't refer to a right to read/watch/etc.
If I leave a copyrighted book at your house you're free to read it, quote it, etc. You merely may not copy and reproduce it.
DRM actually interferes with legally granted rights, such as anything under fair use, editing out swear words, etc. It's legal, in that nobody guarantees the ability to perform those rights... It's a bit of a cop-out. Like if I said that I didn't kill you, I merely regulated your air supply with a bag and the bag's DRM prevented you from using your digits to manage your breathing rights...
Not to mention that Copyright was written into law with a give and take philosophy, where we the people grant a monopoly on distribution in trade for being given ownership to the rights after a limited period. Today lobbyists are trying to suggest that infinity - 1 year is technically a limited period. Sure... I'm just going to quote a limited bit, where the limit is all, of those works.
I don't recognize the validity of a copyright where my eventual rights at the owner of that work are impacted by the DRM - I don't take delivery of it, or grant copyright monopoly. Makes no difference in the end, but I see no reason to stress myself caring about an industry that bills me for pirated works I might put on CD, then tries to prevent the copying.
Ahhh, you think prohibition ended because everybody happily gave up alcohol and didn't protest. That makes total sense.
And your point about me damaging the movie industry, my total efforts will amount to little therefore I should not try. You sure are inspirational. Luckily, my energy outlay in pointing people to p2p programs is minimal. Therefore, my results/effort is actually fairly high. Thanks though, for your concern about the productivity of my free time.
As for the maximum and logical extension of copyright, this DRM you trumpet, it obviously totally fails to prevent any use of mine, I crack it. Anyone unable to google for 'crack windows' though, like a legitimate user with a problem booting, is more than a little inconvenienced. Not quite the 100% effectiveness you claim...
And as for locked files, I don't know what part of redactable email, or news sites you can't quote or screenshot, etc, you can't reconcile with 1984 (and such). Perhaps if you already share your encryption keys with everyone from Microsoft to the MPAA and the obviously trustworthy government, then you might not mind having this kind of crap built into your software. Maybe a tazer will personally demonstrate your patriot act some day.
If it were me pirating, yes. But I hook people up with p2p programs in direct response to their DRM woes. I don't suggest that you can get some indie band's music online, but they usually don't have DRM. I do tell people about cracks, rips, etc when they complain about any DRM feature of hardware or software. "Annoyed by unskippable ads? Just download the movie via piratebay.org!" "Game CD woes? Rip and crack the game, play without swapping disks." "Don't like remembering reg #s? Just download a keygen, always a new one - perfect for lan games!"
Hopefully it ads up to something in the ballpark of wasted taxes supporting one-sided laws.
I loathe playback controls, and the like. You're right. And the majority of my games, programs, media, and the like were purchased at one time, in one form. But I'm unabashedly a pirate by the standards of the industry, in that I'll freely time-shift, backup, crack DRM to do so, etc. So I figure, why deny myself the odd movie just because I'm opposed to those who made it. I'll just take advantage of legal loopholes to do so.
For instance, I'm taxed on CDs for the music industry, so I'll call all music fair game. DVDs are all DRMed, and I don't respect the copyrights on DRMed works. Ditto with most games, etc.
You may not agree with the last step, but I think it's fair. A DRMed product is a crappy one. Sixth Sense the movie has unskippable ads, Windows XP has hardware/activation issues, Starcraft wouldn't play in my machine because of my CD-Burner, etc. All of these are products I legally own, Win XP came on my laptop, Sixth Sense I misguidedly bought, etc. All of them have failed to work as advertised, because of DRM, and each was made to work properly with an open-source solution that ignored the DRM (Linux DVD players) or cracked the registration or anti-anti-anti-piracy checks...
In all of these cases I was unhappy with the product and had "legal" way to remedy the situation.
However, by applying common sense, for instance that EULAs are post-sale restrictions and don't apply, that binary modifications to software are no more "derivative works" than margin-notes in a book, and that CD and cd-key checks are another post-sale restiction, I come up with a workable solution that provides a just solution, that I get to use a product I purchased.
Needless to say, Blizzard's opinion of me cracking Starcraft to play it is that I was a thief. They didn't seem to want to offer me a refund for a game that wouldn't play - they wanted me to buy a new CD-ROM drive.
DRM = no copyright. It's not just justice, it's the best strategy for getting this changed - a massive public backlash against the 'rights' of those who do this.
Wah, wah, wah. I don't buy your political arguments so I'm cheap.
For what it's worth, I have helped everyone I know install p2p software and discouraged the purchase of media from companies that encourage DRM. My own lack of purchases (I spent little before mp3 piracy became the rage) is far from stunning and my efforts will be totally felt through my encouragement of others.
As for who decides that DRMed works don't have Copyright, yes, me. Can you think of anyone else? I don't respect them and to the limits of getting sued, I will continue to not do so. Further I'll work to weaken their DRM, cause others to disrespect the people who DRM the works, and to finally copy the work once DRM is broken. If I had millions, I'd bribe a politician. Instead, I'll convince everyone that DRM is wrong and that it violates the spirit of copyright law. Once nobody follows the law, we'll have an easier time getting a less restrictive one in place.
I see my industry, and one that thanks to things like Wikipedia, is one of the best things to ever happen. And I see companies looking to install mandatory DRM on computers, refuse to play high-res content unless it's signed from a *valid* copyright holder, etc, all in order to shut off the post-sale market on copyrighted works, etc. I see OSes refusing to run on changed hardware, files refusing to open without license servers that no-longer exist. Your data, your hardware, controlled by someone else.
So yes, I see those who are doing the DRM lobbying as the enemy. They'd gladly put me and my friends out of work to preserve their antiquated business model. So I'd gladly bring the world into a new sharing model and put them out of work, rather than being thrust into a 1984 world of locked files and access restrictions.
If you spend money on DRMed products, you're directly funding people who want to hurt us. Go donate a dollar to SCO or some patent camper, if you want to fund people who'd take your rights away. You're just a loser who doesn't want to assume responsibility for what you invest in.
When I last wrote a webpage, I simply let my content size automatically and thus my menu bar used just enough space and my content took the rest.
It might not be 'right' but it's the simplest way to do it and it lets me resize the fonts almost perfectly.
I wish we didn't think webpages should render the same between browsers, if the user was recognized as being master of the content on their screen we wouldn't have ever tried to offer pixel-perfect layout commands.
What I was suggesting is that I had done the first step in me applying as a developer, trying to get comfortable in the world I'd be developing. Besides, I highly doubt my ability to spot a flawed network architecture makes me the best person to work in whatever programming language they use, etc.
Programming for second Life is much like programming for the Palm Pilot. I had a Palm and thought it would be neat to play with. But the Palm OS sucked (no memory protection), didn't come with languages like Ruby or Python (at the time), and most of the developers were trying to write closed-source apps. Not *hard* to develop for, but not inviting. Even today, the palm software world is full of payware that would be a two-line script or little GUI toy for your desktop OS.
Second Life feels like that. Everyone there is based on selling usage licenses for "intellectual property". That same intellectual property they'd be giving away if they were part of other gaming or programming communities.
I imagine that if you came from the world of Oracle DBAs and some VB programmers, Second Life will seem amazingly open. If you come from the Free Software movement and have watched Linux be developed, have played on Lambda Moo, etc... It seems painfully closed and greedy.
And as for new users, no, I don't think it's too confusing. Just that the net is full of weird little things that you have to sign up for and require a special client... Most don't require you to spend real money to customize your avatar.
Ruby's syntax *can* be complicated, but only if you're doing something unexpected..
... ] # some huge array
:to_i
.to_i), in which case, we can treat it as such.
Normally it's very clean
def foo x, y = nil
x + y
end
but sometimes you need to write it with glyphs
def foo(y=nil)
return(@@x+y)
end
They're used (@@, @, and no @) for scope, and () disambiguation. If you use local variables, you don't need scope modifiers. If you reference class variables, you do. Usually you'd use accessors functions rather than accessing the variable directly, so it doesn't come up as much as you'd expect. Similarly, the value of the last expression in a block is used as its return value, an implicit 'return' is only needed to bail out early.
In Ruby a lot of emphasis is placed on readability. This is through clean code without too many glyphs, but also by keeping functions short. What would be impractical (different parenthesis standards for each line) in C or C++ seems reasonable in Ruby where you write less code. Functional descriptives rather than imperative commands further this. map/collect, inject, etc.
things = [
new_things = things.map {|thing| thing *= 3 }
For example, as you don't iterate through the array you don't need a counter, or a size, or a check. All you do is declare your collection, your name for individuals, and then the transformation code. That would be 5+ lines of C, more if it had to allocate new_things.
Further, that Ruby is polymorphic. It'll multiply numbers 2 * 3 = 6, strings "foo" * 2 = "foofoo", etc. If you want it to not be, you can simply add type checking with:
raise ArgumentError, "I need an integer, not #{var.inspect}" unless var.respond_to?
That raises an error, with explanation (and debugging dump of whatever the input was, try that with printf), unless the variable is an integer, or can be turned into one (through
Languages like C++ couldn't become truly polymorphic without templates and compile-time macros and stuff, where you with a hundred lines of declarations manage to turn off type safety appropriately to express your algorithm...
If you come from Perl you get many of these shortcuts, but as every variable is preceded by a glyph, and those glyphs change depending on context, you get many more little errors.
@foo = [1,2]; $foo[1] == 2 # One of the confusing Perl gotchas
Ruby it just shorter, in terms of code elements, than almost anything else I've ever seen, from Lisp to Prolog to Haskel, at 95% of the problem sets.
Hardware is just software running embedded. Software that expects nice factory-made content that isn't designed to trick it. That software is going to meet many hackers who will hit it with malformed everything attempting to trigger a debugging dump, an exploitable bug, a error on decode that could lead to a timing attack... It's also vulnerable to all the standard anti-anti-reverse engineering tricks out there which would let you read the key right out of the operating chip. It's destined to fail.
The industry knows this and thinks that the system of revoking player keys is going to help somehow. Sure, it'll stop that hack from working forever, but it won't prevent an identical hack against some outdated insecure played from working in the future and decrypting all the new title keys.
So the hacker then has a list of title keys for all movies they can get their hands on, which turns into many sources of decrypted video showing up around the world, which is then put on P2P networks, burned onto new disks in Asian marketplaces, etc.
And as soon as the industry finds out which specific hardware or software player was attacked, the legitimate users of it will be denied the ability to play any future movies, but the hacker will simply buy whatever the $49 x-mas special player is next year and crack it. Again, DRM will hurt the honest buyers and totally fail to disadvantage the attackers. Hah.
If the studios drop DRM, and I can move my HD-DVD content to blu-ray when HD-DVD drives stop being made, it'll be acceptable.
Otherwise, those expensive media licenses we buy will be rendered worthless when their DRM locks them to a format you can't buy a drive for anymore.
If the media industry wants DRM they'd better get together and create a guaranteed format, or maybe a guaranteed free upgrade policy. Otherwise it's just a George Lucas cash grab, release the same shit in a different format yet again.
Personally, I simply don't recognize a copyright on DRMed works. Copyright is something that I, the people and government, grant to creators in trade for their giving the work to the public domain, sans some distribution rights for a temporary period. When the work's creator denies me those contractual obligations, I don't grant them copyright. Seeing as how it would be impossible for me to get a tax refund over, say, Adobe's DRMing of Photoshop CS2, or how the XMen 3 movie is DRMed, I choose to simply apply that tax refund towards the purchase price. I don't grant you copyright, as you don't quid the pro quo, so I'm not breaking it when I copy your work.
I fully became a thief in the industry's eyes the day I copied disk images of all of my old Apple 2 images onto my new 486, so that I could keep playing Ultima 5 (which I had purchased from chore money as a kid) on my new PC. The games were engineered to prevent this, thus locking my usage license to a fragile medium which didn't represent the direction that I, the user, was moving my hardware in. So, I figured that this nasty assessment of my character could make me feel bad about myself, or I could simply look and see that absolutely nobody was harmed, greedy people merely did not get richer for no extra work, and that I was served in a fashion which treats fairly the creator of any other product I buy. I can refinish a chair, but not re-disk a game. I can scribble notes in a book, but not in software. Obviously it's not because people in this new medium need new protection that nobody has ever had before, but simply because they found a way to take what they wanted (my post-sale rights) away. Well, fair is fair then, and it's an arms race. Currently I use various fake CD programs to rip my CDs and throw them on my server where I can mount them from any PC in the house.
In general I still own most of the software I use, but where DRMing makes it problematic as with Blizzard games, I don't bother buying them anymore. They proved by telling me to buy a new CD rom (when by burner triggered their DRM in the Diablo days) that my property rights meant nothing to them, and by doing so, announced their intent to opt out of our copyright agreement.
Actually, as mentioned by an html spammer in another sub-thread, most of these people specifically don't include the plain-text because some browsers are set to render it first, defeating their fancy crap.
So yeah, your feature is their bug. And *they* wonder why html email is still the biggest spam indicator in filters.
The problem with HTML, web and email, is that it gives the creator control over scale, not just layout.
When plain-text email arrives it's *always* in the size and font that I have chosen for maximum readability, with HTML email it's almost always forced to a very inconvenient size.
I never had a problem reading stuff online before, until I got a 24" LCD. Now everything by default is this tiny ribbon down the middle third of the screen. When I use Firefox to resize the fonts (try that in IE! Hah!) unfortunately the layout doesn't change so there are now fewer and fewer words in that ribbon because it's still just as wide, but the font is now ten times bigger. If designers couldn't specify sizes these pages would just render properly.
If I didn't use Aardvark to fix these broken websites I'd be unable to use half the web. (I need to check out Opera, I hear its zooming works much better than Firefox.)
BTW, anyone who says that MS-Windows is ready for the prime time, try using Large Fonts and look at how many programs that screws the UI in and how many of those are Microsoft products. 21 years to copy the Mac...
Actually, he does have an obligation to do what they wanted - a client using the wrong terminology doesn't excuse a professional doing the wrong thing. That's what makes consulting so much fun, decoding what the client really wants to achieve instead of what their limited terminology makes them sound like they want.
That said, these are just high-class spammers who theoretically respect the 'remove me' link that everyone knows is really 'spam me harder' in 90% on the cases. They're still dumping their bulk-email on me and sticking me with the costs. So, I'd support doing just about anything to them.
I worked with a guy at an ISP a year or so ago, who had in the early 90s, written a spamming system at the insistence of his then bosses. He did something to the headers such that any two properly configured mail servers would drop the email, but where the bug went unnoticed by their mail server and a few others of that sort. So he wrote his script and the server chugged away for a month and sent an ever-growing number of spams which their ISP billed them by the gig for. Their test mailboxes filled up with spam and the system was apparently working perfectly. In this time my co-worker had changed jobs and left them like this, sending out spam, 99% of which didn't actually get anywhere except get their (spam-friendly) ISP blacklisted. That's some funny! Dunno how long till they figured it out, but because they wanted something essentially illegal, it hurts their ability to come back on the guy. Heh.