I bet you could find that one of these companies would be willing to help you with your RedHat 2 problems, for the right price. I also bet that it would be several orders of magnitude less than it would cost you to convince Microsoft to fix bugs in Windows 95, especially the pre-service pack 1 version that was contemporary with RedHat 2. You need to face up, it is not possible for the typical business, for any amount of money, to get fixes to old versions of Microsoft software, while it is possible, both in theory and in practice, to get fixes to old versions of most open-source software.
Perhaps to handle shared business, like the kids, the divorce settlement, etc., etc.? Perhaps because she interacted with him so much before he was her ex-husband that he's still one of her top three most contacted contacts, and she can't or hasn't yet cut all contact with him due to remaining shared business? Also, abusive much yourself? Why in the hell would you feel a need to resort to such offensive characterizations?
Also, Segways require you to stand upright. Do you really think the scooter jockeys would be willing to stand up, even if the Segway cost the same as their nice comfy electric armchairs on wheels?
Pictures of burgers are representative of the type of burger you can expect, you do not expect the exact burger that is in the photo otherwise they would have to take a lot of photos!
I can only assume that one or more of the following is true:
You have never seen a McDonalds hamburger.
You have never seen a picture advertising McDonalds hamburgers.
I find designer clothes are way more expensive to buy than they are to produce so i've taken to stealing them from shops until these rip-off designers get the message and reduce the prices.
That would be stealing, not copyright infringement, and it certainly causes more damages to more the store, manufacturer, and designer than downloading an mp3 causes to the artists.
As for music, i made an album on my laptop which sounds ace and it didn't cost a penny.
Good for you! If you let me listen to 128k MP3s off the album for free, maybe I'd give you some money for a DRM-free 256k MP3, if I like your music.
So all these bands have been taking the piss out of us for years!
Happy to pay the artists, just not so much the studios; I know the studios don't pay the artists very well. In the video industry, the creative types (screenwriters and actors) have been suing / striking because they're tired of being screwed by the studios.
I'm going to sneak into their gigs for free too.
OK. Good luck with that. I've never considered gatecrashing and I don't know anyone who has.
I went to see Madonna and it was really expensive.
Supply and demand keep the prices high. There's limited space in an arena, and taking up space makes it impossible for others to occupy the same space. This is one of the differences between IP and other kinds of property.
I worked out the cost of her show with all the dancers and stuff wasn't that much.
You might want to sharpen your pencil. A roadshow like Madonna's is expensive to put on. Also, a live concert isn't something that can be canned or reproduced or downloaded.
Gatecrashing and shoplifting are not the same as copyright infringement. For one thing, far fewer people think either of them is socially acceptable than think that downloading MP3s is socially acceptable. There's a reason for that that has to do with people's perception of what's fair. Seems more people agree with me than with you about this, and that's dangerous to the major studios and labels, who can tell they're losing their grip on this market. Anyway, I think it may be time for you to get back to that briefing with the lawyers about how the anti-customer litigation campaign is going, Mr. Valenti.
It's not the stars or the writers whose livelihoods are at risk. That's why it's the MPAA, the RIAA, and their ilk fighting piracy and not the screenwriters or actors or musicians (except for Lemmy, who noone ever thought was mentally stable). In fact, the actors and screenwriters have been in legal battles with the studios trying to get paid. Both the actual creators of the music and video and the actual consumers of it want to do the same thing, which is to cut the fat out of this market and thus reap the benefits of all the wonderful technology that made the major studios and labels unnecessary.
If what you said was true, there would simply be less sales.
On what do you base this assertion?
Instead we see more piracy.
More than what?
Hence the fallacy of your argument comes crumbling upon itself.
It looks like your sentence is crumbling upon itself.
It was never about prices being "unfair" and you know it.
It is about prices being unfair and it will continue to be about prices being unfair no matter how many times you or anyone says it isn't about prices being unfair. Millions of dollars of equipment and a specially-designed studio are no longer necessary to produce professional-looking or -sounding media. Most creative personnel signed by major labels / studios aren't being paid well. Social networking and not expensive advertising is driving sales. Lots of people know this stuff. Older folks know that prices haven't come down since all the expenses associated with producing and distributing music and video dropped. Put all of this together and it's clear to anyone who thinks about it for a moment that the pricing is unfair. Some people (like me) have cut way back on acquiring new music rather than pay the inflated prices. Others are settling for the decidedly inferior product available through filesharing and torrent sites. "Piracy" is what happens when markets are distorted the way the market for music and video are distorted.
Nuts to this argument. The packaging, extras, quality, and convenience that are offered as part of non-pirated media will keep the honest artists and publishers going strong.
The music industry as it exists today is horrifically ineffecient and has had to settle price-fixing litigation as a result. Even after this wake-up call, they refuse to lower their prices signficantly. Do you honestly believe that it costs more to produce a 45 minute CD than it does to produce a 90 minute DVD?
Finding decent quality rips and downloading them takes time and effort. A lot of people would rather not go through the hassle and instead just buy the product from a legitimate retailer if the prices weren't artificially twice as high as they ought to be. This is not a case of people not wanting professionally produced works or of people not being willing to buy them for a fair price. It is a case of the media industry refusing to sell things for a fair price.
When CDs came out, they were fifty to a hundred percent more expensive than vinyl, but we were all told that the prices would come down because CDs are cheaper to make than vinyl or cassettes. Guess what - that didn't happen. Instead, the music industry just decided to charge as much as they wanted to charge and dare us to find a way around them. We found a way around them, and now they're trying to lobby and sue the entire world into submission. This guy is not the first one to tell them there's no way it works and that they'd better just start making the adjustment now to a less-lavish lifestyle now that large parts of the contribution they used to make to music production and distribution are no longer needed.
The contrast between the earnest old dude and the smarmy kid couldn't be a lot starker. You can tell the old guy wants to just cry, until the kid blows it off, and then the old guy wants to kill himself or the kid, but can't decide.
I never heard that the children's families were expected to pay for these. My understanding has been that, other than the "Give One" part of G1G1, most of the buying is done by governments, charities, and NGO's.
That doesn't mean the keyboards shouldn't work, but it's not as though the whole family is eating nothing but shoe leather in order to get an XO.
So, according to you, there are only two ways to parent a child. The old way involved watching what your child was doing, correcting them if they did wrong, and, most importantly, instilling violently racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs. The new way that you seem to advocate mostly involves, from what I'm able to tell, providing for basic needs while just letting them figure out for themselves what's right and wrong.
Call me (and my wife) crazy, but we've got this totally out-there idea that we'll raise our child by watching what she does, correcting her when she does wrong, and (this is the truly insane part) instilling our generally peace-loving, non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic values. I know, I know, just totally bonkers, but we've got a hunch that, this way, we might be able to raise a child that doesn't graduate high school as a morally bankrupt illiterate with an insatiable appetite for celebrity news, "reality" tv, and fast food. Probably we got this crazy idea from our parents, who apparently missed the part of the mandatory pre-1980 parenting classes that said they had to turn us into KKK members.
What does being American have to do with this? Are you saying that Royal Philips Electronics operates differently because they're Dutch? How about Lenovo? Are they a bunch of dope-smoking hippies trying to change the world and going broke while they do it? I'm sure Gazprom wouldn't dream of screwing someone for a bit of cash, no, no, they *really* care.
So no, even if a lot of people think so, Muzak is not a slang word for rotten music.
Muzak *is* a slang word for rotten music to precisely the degree that people think it is. It is horrifying to contemplate for some (myself included), but the rules of language are whatever people believe they are. People break the rules all the time; if a large enough number of people start breaking a given rule the same way, their way of doing things becomes a new rule, at least within whatever group(s) those people have sufficient influence.
Short version: languages change in ways that cannot be controlled. Methinks that he that dost not realize the truth of this will be considered a pedant anon.
Ever read the Book of Joshua? Something about taking the land of Canaan from the previous inhabitants by, ah, non-peaceful means. I'm excited to find out what hair you will split to get out of this...
Rabbinical Judaism is about as close to the Temple- and Blood-sacrifice-based old Israelite religion as Christianity. Rabbinical Judaism is maybe a hundred or so years older than Christianity, and wasn't a dominant factor in Judaea or elsewhere until the destruction of the Temple in CE 70, 30-something years after the end of Jesus's ministry. I think it's a lot more accurate to say that Rabbinical Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are basically the Israelite prophets with some bits added on top. Christianity is certainly not a descendant of Rabbinical Judaism, but a (very slightly younger) sibling to it. Islam arose too far away in time and space from all three (Temple Israelite, Rabbinical Judaism, Christianity) for its relationship to the others to be either clear or simple. I think it's fair to say that Rabbinical Judaism and early Christianity influenced each other's development in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The claim of Rabbinical Judaism to be the sole legitimate descendant of the Temple relies more on people's foggy notions of the differences between the Priests and the Rabbis than on any historical or theological argument. Either way, what we know of today as Judaism was brandy-spanking new when Christianity got started; characterizing Christianity (or Islam) simply as an offshoot of the Judaism we know today is a gross and irresponsible oversimplification.
I don't believe that the availability of readily available first aid supplies to middle and upper class persons in industrialized countries is the primary goal of the Red Cross.
I think it's perfectly OK for an organization to charge those who can afford to pay enough money to both cover the item and subsidize the donation of that item to someone less fortunate.
Certainly, if the Red Cross were to say that their mission is to give first aid kits away to rich people, it would be really strange for them to then insist on being paid for the first aid kits they said they were giving away.
I think you're looking at it too simplistically; the Red Cross's goal is not to give first aid kits, or any medical supplies for that matter, to just anyone. I think it is their goal to give those supplies to people who would not otherwise have them.
Put another way, if it's OK for me to buy a first aid kit rather than wait for the Red Cross to give me one for free, why isn't it OK for me to pay the Red Cross twice the regular price so they can give one to someone less fortunate?
Fake PS - I thought you might find this interesting. I got it from the FAQ list on the Gideon's website:
While Scriptures with the Gideon emblem are not available for purchase, we do have the following Scriptures available for purchase which we refer to as "plain" (the Gideon emblem is not on the cover):
Plain full Bible (brown only, King James Version only) for $8.75 each.
Plain large, soft cover New Testament with Psalms in medium bold print (dark blue only, King James Version only) for $4.00 each.
Plain pocket-sized New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs (brown only, King James Version or New King James Version) for $2.50 each.
Sending medical personnel into war and disaster zones is expensive. Selling medical kits for more than it costs to provide them (in other words, at a profit) makes it easier to afford this expensive activity. Why is this hard to understand? Lots of non-profits sell things at above cost to rich people in order to fund giving those same things away to poor people, or selling them to poor people below cost. Is this wrong?
Non-profits have to pay their own employees, their suppliers, landlords, utilities, etc. The "proceeds" are distributed to these accounts payable, and only what's left over (i.e., the "profits") are required to be folded back in.
Let's say they have a 6-figure-a-year director type running the licensing program along with a dozen or so lower-paid employees, that could get close to a million a year or so that they wouldn't be paying out if they didn't have the licensing program. ARC's overhead may not be a lot, but I can guarantee you it's more than nothing. It is precisely this sort of thing that requires the extra bookkeeping needed to preserve an organization's non-profit status.
Another way to put what I'm trying to say is that the people who are employed by non-profits, not to mention the other suppliers of goods and services to the non-profit, are for the most part operating on a for-profit basis. As an example, most churches are run as non-profits, and yet, somehow, many preachers manage to have decent houses and cars, etc.
I see. So these people should just not buy cars at all, even if there's no public transportation available? Better to go without a job than to buy an older, less-fuel-efficient car to get to a job? I suppose the poor should just all starve to death, thus saving persons like yourself the trouble of having to think about the sorts of crappy choices the poor are forced to make.
Agreed on your points about confidence in the voting system, the need for transparency, etc.
Regarding waiting a long time vs. voting quickly, though, it sounds as though you vote in precincts that are favored by the local election commissions. It is a time-honored tradition in election fixing to make voting time-consuming and difficult for people whom you'd like to disenfranchise. Electronic vs. paper voting should be considered mostly unrelated to the constriction of access to voting, except in that electronic systems, it may be slightly easier to mask the intent. In other words, I think it's likely that precincts likely to vote against the party in control of running a given election will see long lines no matter what technology is used for voting, especially if those precincts happen also to be predominately poor or non-white.
Good luck getting the rich folks from the part of the county that is shown by the Chamber of Commerce web site to pay for the debts of the other part of the county. Why do you think there are two school districts in the first place?
I agree, though, those poor school kids, their wage-slave parents, and the underpaid teachers (no COLA in over ten years, baby!) MUST PAY!
Where I come from, freedom of speech doesn't come with some nebulous rider about "some value to what is being said". I suppose that's why we don't put quotation marks around it. Sounds like "freedom of speech" is a lot like not having freedom of speech. The whole point of freedom of speech is that you are free to speak, regardless of whether others think what you have to say has any value.
Incitement and conspiracy are not covered by free speech laws because these are cases where the speech is intended to cause specific action, causing the act of speech to be considered an action and not (simply) a statement. As in many cases, a person's intent is an essential element in making a legal determination.
The doctrine of free speech is generally understood to make lawful any statement that cannot be shown to have specific illegal intent (e.g., incitement) or content (e.g., copyright, obscenity). The burden of proof in this way of seeing things is on the person wanting the speech to be stopped; it must be proven that there is illegal intent or content to the speech. In your way of seeing things, the burden of proof is on the speaker, who must prove that there is "some value". Next you'll be telling us that people are "innocent until proven guilty" provided they can prove their innocence first.
Exception Relating to Security- Nothing in this Act shall apply to--
(1) any monitoring of, or interaction with, a subscriber's Internet or other network connection or service, or a protected computer, by a telecommunications carrier, cable operator, computer hardware or software provider, or provider of information service or interactive computer service, to the extent that such monitoring or interaction is for network or computer security purposes, diagnostics, technical support, or repair, or for the detection or prevention of fraudulent activities. ....
OK, then. All that's needed is for a "software provider" (read: anyone with an account on sourceforge or freshmeat) to start "deploying" (read: deliver via trojan or other backdoor) a "poorly-written" (read: amazingly resource intensive) program to check for "fraudulent activities". My understanding is that this would be perfectly legal; the campaign could be accompanied by public statements (anonymous or attributed) explaining the situation.
Naturally, this idea wouldn't really work... The brave soul(s) undertaking this might or might not escape prison, but it's doubtful the law would be repealed. Oh well.
That study only covers mitochondrial DNA and therefore only establishes that modern humans' mitochondria are distinct from Neanderthals'. Other genes may have been exchanged between Neanderthals and modern humans; I think this study is suggesting that MCPH1 is a candidate for this. Also, the difference in mtDNA only tells us is that there isn't conclusive evidence that we did interbreed with Neanderthals, not that there is conclusive evidence we didn't. We could still have interbred with Neanderthals, it's just that every chain of heredity leading from a Neanderthal-modern hybrid included a woman with the non-Neanderthal mtDNA.
Indeed, genetic evidence isn't necessary to support a theory of Neanderthal-modern interbreeding; it's altogether possible that interbreeding could have taken place and the Neanderthal genes were simply "washed out" by selection or random drift. Because of the way sexual reproduction shuffles our genes in each generation, it's possible (though not terribly likely) that any one us doesn't carry any genes at all from one or several of our own great-grandparents. The further back you go, the more likely that a given ancestor has not contributed any genes to a given descendant.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, let's be realistic:
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=custom+linux+kernel+development+services&aq=f&aqi=g-v6g-j1g-b2&aql=&oq=#q=custom+linux+development+services&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&bih=632&biw=1012&fp=560fefca0938c389&hl=en
I bet you could find that one of these companies would be willing to help you with your RedHat 2 problems, for the right price. I also bet that it would be several orders of magnitude less than it would cost you to convince Microsoft to fix bugs in Windows 95, especially the pre-service pack 1 version that was contemporary with RedHat 2. You need to face up, it is not possible for the typical business, for any amount of money, to get fixes to old versions of Microsoft software, while it is possible, both in theory and in practice, to get fixes to old versions of most open-source software.
Perhaps to handle shared business, like the kids, the divorce settlement, etc., etc.? Perhaps because she interacted with him so much before he was her ex-husband that he's still one of her top three most contacted contacts, and she can't or hasn't yet cut all contact with him due to remaining shared business? Also, abusive much yourself? Why in the hell would you feel a need to resort to such offensive characterizations?
Also, Segways require you to stand upright. Do you really think the scooter jockeys would be willing to stand up, even if the Segway cost the same as their nice comfy electric armchairs on wheels?
I can only assume that one or more of the following is true:
That would be stealing, not copyright infringement, and it certainly causes more damages to more the store, manufacturer, and designer than downloading an mp3 causes to the artists.
Good for you! If you let me listen to 128k MP3s off the album for free, maybe I'd give you some money for a DRM-free 256k MP3, if I like your music.
Happy to pay the artists, just not so much the studios; I know the studios don't pay the artists very well. In the video industry, the creative types (screenwriters and actors) have been suing / striking because they're tired of being screwed by the studios.
OK. Good luck with that. I've never considered gatecrashing and I don't know anyone who has.
Supply and demand keep the prices high. There's limited space in an arena, and taking up space makes it impossible for others to occupy the same space. This is one of the differences between IP and other kinds of property.
You might want to sharpen your pencil. A roadshow like Madonna's is expensive to put on. Also, a live concert isn't something that can be canned or reproduced or downloaded.
Gatecrashing and shoplifting are not the same as copyright infringement. For one thing, far fewer people think either of them is socially acceptable than think that downloading MP3s is socially acceptable. There's a reason for that that has to do with people's perception of what's fair. Seems more people agree with me than with you about this, and that's dangerous to the major studios and labels, who can tell they're losing their grip on this market. Anyway, I think it may be time for you to get back to that briefing with the lawyers about how the anti-customer litigation campaign is going, Mr. Valenti.
It's not the stars or the writers whose livelihoods are at risk. That's why it's the MPAA, the RIAA, and their ilk fighting piracy and not the screenwriters or actors or musicians (except for Lemmy, who noone ever thought was mentally stable). In fact, the actors and screenwriters have been in legal battles with the studios trying to get paid. Both the actual creators of the music and video and the actual consumers of it want to do the same thing, which is to cut the fat out of this market and thus reap the benefits of all the wonderful technology that made the major studios and labels unnecessary.
On what do you base this assertion?
More than what?
It looks like your sentence is crumbling upon itself.
It is about prices being unfair and it will continue to be about prices being unfair no matter how many times you or anyone says it isn't about prices being unfair. Millions of dollars of equipment and a specially-designed studio are no longer necessary to produce professional-looking or -sounding media. Most creative personnel signed by major labels / studios aren't being paid well. Social networking and not expensive advertising is driving sales. Lots of people know this stuff. Older folks know that prices haven't come down since all the expenses associated with producing and distributing music and video dropped. Put all of this together and it's clear to anyone who thinks about it for a moment that the pricing is unfair. Some people (like me) have cut way back on acquiring new music rather than pay the inflated prices. Others are settling for the decidedly inferior product available through filesharing and torrent sites. "Piracy" is what happens when markets are distorted the way the market for music and video are distorted.
Nuts to this argument. The packaging, extras, quality, and convenience that are offered as part of non-pirated media will keep the honest artists and publishers going strong.
The music industry as it exists today is horrifically ineffecient and has had to settle price-fixing litigation as a result. Even after this wake-up call, they refuse to lower their prices signficantly. Do you honestly believe that it costs more to produce a 45 minute CD than it does to produce a 90 minute DVD?
Finding decent quality rips and downloading them takes time and effort. A lot of people would rather not go through the hassle and instead just buy the product from a legitimate retailer if the prices weren't artificially twice as high as they ought to be. This is not a case of people not wanting professionally produced works or of people not being willing to buy them for a fair price. It is a case of the media industry refusing to sell things for a fair price.
When CDs came out, they were fifty to a hundred percent more expensive than vinyl, but we were all told that the prices would come down because CDs are cheaper to make than vinyl or cassettes. Guess what - that didn't happen. Instead, the music industry just decided to charge as much as they wanted to charge and dare us to find a way around them. We found a way around them, and now they're trying to lobby and sue the entire world into submission. This guy is not the first one to tell them there's no way it works and that they'd better just start making the adjustment now to a less-lavish lifestyle now that large parts of the contribution they used to make to music production and distribution are no longer needed.
link
The contrast between the earnest old dude and the smarmy kid couldn't be a lot starker. You can tell the old guy wants to just cry, until the kid blows it off, and then the old guy wants to kill himself or the kid, but can't decide.
I never heard that the children's families were expected to pay for these. My understanding has been that, other than the "Give One" part of G1G1, most of the buying is done by governments, charities, and NGO's.
That doesn't mean the keyboards shouldn't work, but it's not as though the whole family is eating nothing but shoe leather in order to get an XO.
So, according to you, there are only two ways to parent a child. The old way involved watching what your child was doing, correcting them if they did wrong, and, most importantly, instilling violently racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs. The new way that you seem to advocate mostly involves, from what I'm able to tell, providing for basic needs while just letting them figure out for themselves what's right and wrong.
Call me (and my wife) crazy, but we've got this totally out-there idea that we'll raise our child by watching what she does, correcting her when she does wrong, and (this is the truly insane part) instilling our generally peace-loving, non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic values. I know, I know, just totally bonkers, but we've got a hunch that, this way, we might be able to raise a child that doesn't graduate high school as a morally bankrupt illiterate with an insatiable appetite for celebrity news, "reality" tv, and fast food. Probably we got this crazy idea from our parents, who apparently missed the part of the mandatory pre-1980 parenting classes that said they had to turn us into KKK members.
What does being American have to do with this? Are you saying that Royal Philips Electronics operates differently because they're Dutch? How about Lenovo? Are they a bunch of dope-smoking hippies trying to change the world and going broke while they do it? I'm sure Gazprom wouldn't dream of screwing someone for a bit of cash, no, no, they *really* care.
Short version: languages change in ways that cannot be controlled. Methinks that he that dost not realize the truth of this will be considered a pedant anon.
Ever read the Book of Joshua? Something about taking the land of Canaan from the previous inhabitants by, ah, non-peaceful means. I'm excited to find out what hair you will split to get out of this...
Rabbinical Judaism is about as close to the Temple- and Blood-sacrifice-based old Israelite religion as Christianity. Rabbinical Judaism is maybe a hundred or so years older than Christianity, and wasn't a dominant factor in Judaea or elsewhere until the destruction of the Temple in CE 70, 30-something years after the end of Jesus's ministry. I think it's a lot more accurate to say that Rabbinical Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are basically the Israelite prophets with some bits added on top. Christianity is certainly not a descendant of Rabbinical Judaism, but a (very slightly younger) sibling to it. Islam arose too far away in time and space from all three (Temple Israelite, Rabbinical Judaism, Christianity) for its relationship to the others to be either clear or simple. I think it's fair to say that Rabbinical Judaism and early Christianity influenced each other's development in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The claim of Rabbinical Judaism to be the sole legitimate descendant of the Temple relies more on people's foggy notions of the differences between the Priests and the Rabbis than on any historical or theological argument. Either way, what we know of today as Judaism was brandy-spanking new when Christianity got started; characterizing Christianity (or Islam) simply as an offshoot of the Judaism we know today is a gross and irresponsible oversimplification.
- I don't believe that the availability of readily available first aid supplies to middle and upper class persons in industrialized countries is the primary goal of the Red Cross.
- I think it's perfectly OK for an organization to charge those who can afford to pay enough money to both cover the item and subsidize the donation of that item to someone less fortunate.
Certainly, if the Red Cross were to say that their mission is to give first aid kits away to rich people, it would be really strange for them to then insist on being paid for the first aid kits they said they were giving away.I think you're looking at it too simplistically; the Red Cross's goal is not to give first aid kits, or any medical supplies for that matter, to just anyone. I think it is their goal to give those supplies to people who would not otherwise have them.
Put another way, if it's OK for me to buy a first aid kit rather than wait for the Red Cross to give me one for free, why isn't it OK for me to pay the Red Cross twice the regular price so they can give one to someone less fortunate?
Fake PS - I thought you might find this interesting. I got it from the FAQ list on the Gideon's website: Those damned Gideons! (pun intended)
Sending medical personnel into war and disaster zones is expensive. Selling medical kits for more than it costs to provide them (in other words, at a profit) makes it easier to afford this expensive activity. Why is this hard to understand? Lots of non-profits sell things at above cost to rich people in order to fund giving those same things away to poor people, or selling them to poor people below cost. Is this wrong?
Non-profits have to pay their own employees, their suppliers, landlords, utilities, etc. The "proceeds" are distributed to these accounts payable, and only what's left over (i.e., the "profits") are required to be folded back in.
Let's say they have a 6-figure-a-year director type running the licensing program along with a dozen or so lower-paid employees, that could get close to a million a year or so that they wouldn't be paying out if they didn't have the licensing program. ARC's overhead may not be a lot, but I can guarantee you it's more than nothing. It is precisely this sort of thing that requires the extra bookkeeping needed to preserve an organization's non-profit status.
Another way to put what I'm trying to say is that the people who are employed by non-profits, not to mention the other suppliers of goods and services to the non-profit, are for the most part operating on a for-profit basis. As an example, most churches are run as non-profits, and yet, somehow, many preachers manage to have decent houses and cars, etc.
Does anybody have any right to complain about anything, in your estimation? I mean, besides you complaining about other people complaining?
I see. So these people should just not buy cars at all, even if there's no public transportation available? Better to go without a job than to buy an older, less-fuel-efficient car to get to a job? I suppose the poor should just all starve to death, thus saving persons like yourself the trouble of having to think about the sorts of crappy choices the poor are forced to make.
Agreed on your points about confidence in the voting system, the need for transparency, etc.
Regarding waiting a long time vs. voting quickly, though, it sounds as though you vote in precincts that are favored by the local election commissions. It is a time-honored tradition in election fixing to make voting time-consuming and difficult for people whom you'd like to disenfranchise. Electronic vs. paper voting should be considered mostly unrelated to the constriction of access to voting, except in that electronic systems, it may be slightly easier to mask the intent. In other words, I think it's likely that precincts likely to vote against the party in control of running a given election will see long lines no matter what technology is used for voting, especially if those precincts happen also to be predominately poor or non-white.
Good luck getting the rich folks from the part of the county that is shown by the Chamber of Commerce web site to pay for the debts of the other part of the county. Why do you think there are two school districts in the first place?
I agree, though, those poor school kids, their wage-slave parents, and the underpaid teachers (no COLA in over ten years, baby!) MUST PAY!
Where I come from, freedom of speech doesn't come with some nebulous rider about "some value to what is being said". I suppose that's why we don't put quotation marks around it. Sounds like "freedom of speech" is a lot like not having freedom of speech. The whole point of freedom of speech is that you are free to speak, regardless of whether others think what you have to say has any value.
Incitement and conspiracy are not covered by free speech laws because these are cases where the speech is intended to cause specific action, causing the act of speech to be considered an action and not (simply) a statement. As in many cases, a person's intent is an essential element in making a legal determination.
The doctrine of free speech is generally understood to make lawful any statement that cannot be shown to have specific illegal intent (e.g., incitement) or content (e.g., copyright, obscenity). The burden of proof in this way of seeing things is on the person wanting the speech to be stopped; it must be proven that there is illegal intent or content to the speech. In your way of seeing things, the burden of proof is on the speaker, who must prove that there is "some value". Next you'll be telling us that people are "innocent until proven guilty" provided they can prove their innocence first.
OK, then. All that's needed is for a "software provider" (read: anyone with an account on sourceforge or freshmeat) to start "deploying" (read: deliver via trojan or other backdoor) a "poorly-written" (read: amazingly resource intensive) program to check for "fraudulent activities". My understanding is that this would be perfectly legal; the campaign could be accompanied by public statements (anonymous or attributed) explaining the situation.
Naturally, this idea wouldn't really work... The brave soul(s) undertaking this might or might not escape prison, but it's doubtful the law would be repealed. Oh well.
That study only covers mitochondrial DNA and therefore only establishes that modern humans' mitochondria are distinct from Neanderthals'. Other genes may have been exchanged between Neanderthals and modern humans; I think this study is suggesting that MCPH1 is a candidate for this. Also, the difference in mtDNA only tells us is that there isn't conclusive evidence that we did interbreed with Neanderthals, not that there is conclusive evidence we didn't. We could still have interbred with Neanderthals, it's just that every chain of heredity leading from a Neanderthal-modern hybrid included a woman with the non-Neanderthal mtDNA.
Indeed, genetic evidence isn't necessary to support a theory of Neanderthal-modern interbreeding; it's altogether possible that interbreeding could have taken place and the Neanderthal genes were simply "washed out" by selection or random drift. Because of the way sexual reproduction shuffles our genes in each generation, it's possible (though not terribly likely) that any one us doesn't carry any genes at all from one or several of our own great-grandparents. The further back you go, the more likely that a given ancestor has not contributed any genes to a given descendant.