No... I can pay $50 a month if I sign a contract for a year or $75 for one month. That is $600 for the challenged among you. For that price I could nearly buy the thing. Of course you get access to all sorts of other apps. I do not need access to the other apps. Allow me to chose and make the price reasonable for the poorer among us, and most will pay.
I will take a heavily pirated piece of software as an example here.
I love Photoshop. I know it well, and can do things in it far easier than I can in GIMP, largely because of experience, but I do not have the time to invest to learn GIMP well.
If I want to make a quick button for me website, or clean up a photo, or make a nice card from my girlfriend, it is the tool I go to.
I am not well off.
Graphic design is -not- my career, therefore I really only have need to use Photoshop once a month or less.
I am not going to pay $700 or more for software that I only use 6 or 8 times a year. That equates to about $100 per project/use.
If I could somehow rent it for less. Say, $25 for a week, then I would be more willing to pay for it.
Of course, adobe now has their creative cloud, which if you sign up for a whole year is $50 a month. For a single month it is $75.
However, I do not need the whole month when I have a project I want to complete. I may need 2 days to a week, so that $75 still feels an unfair price, and untenable on my budget.
Ergo, pirating as solution.
That is one scenario for pirating out of thousands. But the bottom line is, as long as people have things they desire--music, movies, software, designer clothing, etc--that are out of reach to them because of the price or the pathetic way in which it is delivered, there will always be some sort of black market. Some sort of theft, because there will always be people who see the reward as greater than the risk.
I am all for SETI, let me point that out now. I also believe that SETI has made scientific contributions. We have always been looking for a needle in a haystack, but the haystack is getting larger.
We are searching for radio signals. Using our history as a guide, with the spectrum getting dividd into smaller, lower power pieces, it appears there may only be a 100-200 year window of detectable signal from an intelligent civilization. That span is tiny compared to the possible time frame such a civilization could exist, and a molecule in the ocean of time range in the observable universe.
By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells as the precursor to other cell lines that match the patients genetic makeup. are you increasing the chances of cancer?
In my certainly uninformed view, skin cells are exposed to more radiation, thus more likely to have replication errors in their DNA, then adding the stress of modifying the cell to another form, I wonder what that does to it from a replication standpoint. It is nice to have fresh heat muscle I am sure, but to suddenly find yourself with melanoma in the heart would be a bummer.
From TFA, it is only 11% to 12% efficient nearly half, of conventional solar panels which are themselves woefully inefficient. If you want to be commercially viable, you have to meet or exceed that target, not what prior iterations of your own method produce.
Uh.. $100 a month? You can get decent DSL in my town for $21.99 a month. While that still could be a burden to someoneliving on minimum wage with a family, your argument still doesn't hold up. It is about prioritizing, and I have seen far, far too many poor family spend that 25 a month or more on things like HBO, or lottery tickets, or beer, or extra phone minutes so they con send 10 cent texts to everyone and their brother on their prepay phone.
Internet access is readily affordable for all but the very, very lowest income levels, bit unfortunately even more well off people do not often know how to prioritize and budget well. For many in stuck in poverty, with less education these skills are worse.
With this we could not have Valentine and Peter Wiggan posting on the nets as Demosthenes and Locke, becoming powerful demagogues and setting each other up as straw men for their arguments.
The thing is they have the ability to monitor now. It called going thru judicial channels and obtaining a warrant or subpoena. TThat is easy e.ough with friendly courts at least here in the US. Bills like this erode what little oversight there is is to the gove freely knowing about your proclivities for donkey porn and your google search to find out how many peanuts in your shit are too many.
You blinded me with science!
All jokes aside, few if any people can hear the difference between 44.1, 48, or 96khz sample rates. Under the Nyquist limit (half the given sample rate) all are equally precise in recording (an hence rendering the sound). What a higher sample rate does do is make for simpler ADC/DAC chips that sound good, at the expense of more bits. And it allows audio manipulating software (plugins and such) more accurate (but good software design can engineer around that). So aside from mixing and mastering (a little), it makes no difference at all to the ear in the final mixed down track.
A common sense idea made law that goes against the big oil and gas industries? Maybe there is hope after all!
Its a little old, but here is a good PBS report on the subject fot the lesser informed: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/613/index.html
My little cheapo LG LS670(posting from it now) won't run it or chrome. But.. I can surf, mail, youtube, IM, track my runs, track hours, run squareup, bank, and more. WTF do I need FF for?
The examples you claim are exceptions to the rule. I agree that you can mix and match those categories. You can find evil rich people (just look at the heads of the banks and most of congress).
But by and large, walk into any prison in America and take a census. You will find that at a minimum 70%-80% grew up in poor, broken homes with dysfunctional families.
If this country spent as much effort and resources in helping to fix families, in making sure children had proper role models, in truly ending poverty as it does on punishment, then the number of new prisoners would drop by half or more in 18-20 years.
However this is not in the interest of the powers that be. Both federal prisons, and most state prisons have contracts with private corporations where prisoners are employed for extremely low wages, in often unsafe and unmonitored and unsanitary conditions, with almost non-existent medical care, and the government gets a cut of the profit. Look at models like Virginia Correctional Enterprises.
In addition, in many states, prisons are a boon for state legislators of poor districts. Build a prison in their district and create jobs, and business to support the prison and it employees, get tax dollars to improve infrastructure, and more. It also has the effect of lowering the welfare rolls in the district where it is built.
I know the prison industrial complex from two different sides, and it is a corrupt, stinking beast whose purpose is not about PRINCIPLE, and if you think it is, you need to take a closer look around you and stop living in fear.
It doesn't work at that either though. Many criminals would like a better life and a better chance, and don't want to make the same mistakes again. Not all, of course there are exceptions. But you take a man, put him in prison for 5 or 10 or 15 years at the prime of his life, give him some opportunities to learn, but most are bogus, and most of what is learned is -more- criminal mentality, and more hatred of -the system-. Then you put him out on the street with strict rules, little money, most of his family and friend have probably deserted him (if he had much to begin with) during his time in prison so he has little if any healthy support systems in place. No add to the fact that everywhere he turns he cannot get a job. If he owes court fines he may not even be able to get a drivers license until he can pay part of his fees, further limiting his chance of employment. Is it any wonder if he goes back to robbing stores or dealing drugs? It is what he knew and all he has left.
And even if you made him a ward of the state forever, now the state has weakened whatever family he had, and made it more likely for others in his family to follow the same path. And there will ALWAYS be more criminals to replace him.
So no, it is not about deterrence. It is not about accountability even. In the United States it is about making victims feel better, and about making money for the government. Bringing in tax dollars through fear.
Agree but the continued concentration of wealth and power in corporations is just one symptom of a far larger disease, and that is the human greeds.
Agree? But human greed is just one symptom of a far larger disease, and that is the built-in competitiveness of biological beings.
You would likely agree with that too, but the built-in competitiveness of biological beings is just a symptom of a far larger disease, and that is shortage of resources.
Now go fix those!
Now, back to the broken patent system, consider the flip side. If you are a little inventor, you are most likely wishing some giant corps violate your patent because then armies of commission-based lawyer will help you sue the rich guys for free and you will more likely become another rich guy from suing the large corps than productizing your patent with probably little real market value. I'm not saying that's good, but that's another side of the story.
The shortage of resources is a bullcrap reason. In a truly global economy, we -should- be able to distribute resources to where everyone got what was needed and a share of excess not saveable for hard times. I do agree that human greed is at the root, because of our largely poor ability to judge true risk, and poor ability to make real long term plans (both intertwined). This results in the "this is mine, I'm going to get mine attitude", that drives huge parts of the problem.
We punish drug dealers and users... they keep on pushing and using.
We punish robbers and gangsters... stores get robbed and people gangbanged every day.
We punish rapists and other sex offenders...new ones crop up.
We punish murderers and and wife beaters... people still get killed and wives beaten every day.
Punishment it little if any deterrent. In countries with far less harsh criminal penalties than the United States, the crime rate stays about even to all other industrialized countries, even given the lesser punishments.
And somehow Grimes thinks that punishing crackers (not hackers.. I am proudly one of those), is going to make a difference. Even if you did manage to snuff it out in one place (highly unlikely), the internet is worldwide and you will have places with less lax laws or corrupt officials where those of a criminal bent can launch whatever they choose.
Most crime (not all)is cause by real or perceived poverty or other social disparity. Spending billions to incarcerate the underprivileged does nothing but further this disparity and create -more- crime.
Try looking at the world with empathy instead of greed and anger and try to lift people up. You may be surprised what a difference it makes.
MS can power their data centers from the hot air put forth by Ballmer's mouth.
This is the second time I have posted this comment... the first mysteriously disappeared. I am really beginning to wonder who foots the bills at/.
Much obliged then sir. You can also delete my comment on your story at your site then! I posted there as well, not knowing you were watching/. Maybe we do have a chance after all (as long as crusty old cynics like me don't depress everyone too much).
Slashdot Mirror
No... I can pay $50 a month if I sign a contract for a year or $75 for one month. That is $600 for the challenged among you. For that price I could nearly buy the thing. Of course you get access to all sorts of other apps. I do not need access to the other apps. Allow me to chose and make the price reasonable for the poorer among us, and most will pay.
She is only imaginary when I am off my meds.
I love Photoshop. I know it well, and can do things in it far easier than I can in GIMP, largely because of experience, but I do not have the time to invest to learn GIMP well.
If I want to make a quick button for me website, or clean up a photo, or make a nice card from my girlfriend, it is the tool I go to.
I am not well off.
Graphic design is -not- my career, therefore I really only have need to use Photoshop once a month or less.
I am not going to pay $700 or more for software that I only use 6 or 8 times a year. That equates to about $100 per project/use.
If I could somehow rent it for less. Say, $25 for a week, then I would be more willing to pay for it.
Of course, adobe now has their creative cloud, which if you sign up for a whole year is $50 a month. For a single month it is $75.
However, I do not need the whole month when I have a project I want to complete. I may need 2 days to a week, so that $75 still feels an unfair price, and untenable on my budget.
Ergo, pirating as solution.
That is one scenario for pirating out of thousands. But the bottom line is, as long as people have things they desire--music, movies, software, designer clothing, etc--that are out of reach to them because of the price or the pathetic way in which it is delivered, there will always be some sort of black market. Some sort of theft, because there will always be people who see the reward as greater than the risk.
But being a lawyer makes more money and you get to decide who you screw.
Yeah but prostitutes have better access to drugs.
I am all for SETI, let me point that out now. I also believe that SETI has made scientific contributions. We have always been looking for a needle in a haystack, but the haystack is getting larger.
We are searching for radio signals. Using our history as a guide, with the spectrum getting dividd into smaller, lower power pieces, it appears there may only be a 100-200 year window of detectable signal from an intelligent civilization. That span is tiny compared to the possible time frame such a civilization could exist, and a molecule in the ocean of time range in the observable universe.
By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells as the precursor to other cell lines that match the patients genetic makeup. are you increasing the chances of cancer?
In my certainly uninformed view, skin cells are exposed to more radiation, thus more likely to have replication errors in their DNA, then adding the stress of modifying the cell to another form, I wonder what that does to it from a replication standpoint. It is nice to have fresh heat muscle I am sure, but to suddenly find yourself with melanoma in the heart would be a bummer.
From TFA, it is only 11% to 12% efficient nearly half, of conventional solar panels which are themselves woefully inefficient. If you want to be commercially viable, you have to meet or exceed that target, not what prior iterations of your own method produce.
Yeah, and the government murders people too, to say that murder is wrong.
Looking for sanity in all the wrong places my friend.
Uh.. $100 a month? You can get decent DSL in my town for $21.99 a month. While that still could be a burden to someoneliving on minimum wage with a family, your argument still doesn't hold up. It is about prioritizing, and I have seen far, far too many poor family spend that 25 a month or more on things like HBO, or lottery tickets, or beer, or extra phone minutes so they con send 10 cent texts to everyone and their brother on their prepay phone.
Internet access is readily affordable for all but the very, very lowest income levels, bit unfortunately even more well off people do not often know how to prioritize and budget well. For many in stuck in poverty, with less education these skills are worse.
With this we could not have Valentine and Peter Wiggan posting on the nets as Demosthenes and Locke, becoming powerful demagogues and setting each other up as straw men for their arguments.
The thing is they have the ability to monitor now. It called going thru judicial channels and obtaining a warrant or subpoena. TThat is easy e.ough with friendly courts at least here in the US. Bills like this erode what little oversight there is is to the gove freely knowing about your proclivities for donkey porn and your google search to find out how many peanuts in your shit are too many.
GM announced that all new cars would be sold with holes in the tires and a low fuel mileage ECM program until you purchase GM select service.
You blinded me with science!
All jokes aside, few if any people can hear the difference between 44.1, 48, or 96khz sample rates. Under the Nyquist limit (half the given sample rate) all are equally precise in recording (an hence rendering the sound). What a higher sample rate does do is make for simpler ADC/DAC chips that sound good, at the expense of more bits. And it allows audio manipulating software (plugins and such) more accurate (but good software design can engineer around that). So aside from mixing and mastering (a little), it makes no difference at all to the ear in the final mixed down track.
If Monsanto and Cargill keep messing with GM corn, there may be Chilean Sea Bass growing on corn stalks in Nebraska!
A common sense idea made law that goes against the big oil and gas industries? Maybe there is hope after all!
Its a little old, but here is a good PBS report on the subject fot the lesser informed:
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/613/index.html
Hacking causes a lot more damage than terrorists ever did.
[Citation needed]
My little cheapo LG LS670(posting from it now) won't run it or chrome. But.. I can surf, mail, youtube, IM, track my runs, track hours, run squareup, bank, and more. WTF do I need FF for?
...norton.secure and mcafee.secure found to be hosting ransomware and malware.
I agree.. look at my reply to What? below
The examples you claim are exceptions to the rule. I agree that you can mix and match those categories. You can find evil rich people (just look at the heads of the banks and most of congress).
But by and large, walk into any prison in America and take a census. You will find that at a minimum 70%-80% grew up in poor, broken homes with dysfunctional families.
If this country spent as much effort and resources in helping to fix families, in making sure children had proper role models, in truly ending poverty as it does on punishment, then the number of new prisoners would drop by half or more in 18-20 years.
However this is not in the interest of the powers that be. Both federal prisons, and most state prisons have contracts with private corporations where prisoners are employed for extremely low wages, in often unsafe and unmonitored and unsanitary conditions, with almost non-existent medical care, and the government gets a cut of the profit. Look at models like Virginia Correctional Enterprises.
In addition, in many states, prisons are a boon for state legislators of poor districts. Build a prison in their district and create jobs, and business to support the prison and it employees, get tax dollars to improve infrastructure, and more. It also has the effect of lowering the welfare rolls in the district where it is built.
I know the prison industrial complex from two different sides, and it is a corrupt, stinking beast whose purpose is not about PRINCIPLE, and if you think it is, you need to take a closer look around you and stop living in fear.
It doesn't work at that either though. Many criminals would like a better life and a better chance, and don't want to make the same mistakes again. Not all, of course there are exceptions. But you take a man, put him in prison for 5 or 10 or 15 years at the prime of his life, give him some opportunities to learn, but most are bogus, and most of what is learned is -more- criminal mentality, and more hatred of -the system-. Then you put him out on the street with strict rules, little money, most of his family and friend have probably deserted him (if he had much to begin with) during his time in prison so he has little if any healthy support systems in place. No add to the fact that everywhere he turns he cannot get a job. If he owes court fines he may not even be able to get a drivers license until he can pay part of his fees, further limiting his chance of employment. Is it any wonder if he goes back to robbing stores or dealing drugs? It is what he knew and all he has left.
And even if you made him a ward of the state forever, now the state has weakened whatever family he had, and made it more likely for others in his family to follow the same path. And there will ALWAYS be more criminals to replace him.
So no, it is not about deterrence. It is not about accountability even. In the United States it is about making victims feel better, and about making money for the government. Bringing in tax dollars through fear.
Agree but the continued concentration of wealth and power in corporations is just one symptom of a far larger disease, and that is the human greeds.
Agree? But human greed is just one symptom of a far larger disease, and that is the built-in competitiveness of biological beings.
You would likely agree with that too, but the built-in competitiveness of biological beings is just a symptom of a far larger disease, and that is shortage of resources.
Now go fix those!
Now, back to the broken patent system, consider the flip side. If you are a little inventor, you are most likely wishing some giant corps violate your patent because then armies of commission-based lawyer will help you sue the rich guys for free and you will more likely become another rich guy from suing the large corps than productizing your patent with probably little real market value. I'm not saying that's good, but that's another side of the story.
The shortage of resources is a bullcrap reason. In a truly global economy, we -should- be able to distribute resources to where everyone got what was needed and a share of excess not saveable for hard times. I do agree that human greed is at the root, because of our largely poor ability to judge true risk, and poor ability to make real long term plans (both intertwined). This results in the "this is mine, I'm going to get mine attitude", that drives huge parts of the problem.
We punish drug dealers and users... they keep on pushing and using.
We punish robbers and gangsters... stores get robbed and people gangbanged every day.
We punish rapists and other sex offenders...new ones crop up.
We punish murderers and and wife beaters... people still get killed and wives beaten every day.
Punishment it little if any deterrent. In countries with far less harsh criminal penalties than the United States, the crime rate stays about even to all other industrialized countries, even given the lesser punishments.
And somehow Grimes thinks that punishing crackers (not hackers.. I am proudly one of those), is going to make a difference. Even if you did manage to snuff it out in one place (highly unlikely), the internet is worldwide and you will have places with less lax laws or corrupt officials where those of a criminal bent can launch whatever they choose.
Most crime (not all)is cause by real or perceived poverty or other social disparity. Spending billions to incarcerate the underprivileged does nothing but further this disparity and create -more- crime.
Try looking at the world with empathy instead of greed and anger and try to lift people up. You may be surprised what a difference it makes.
MS can power their data centers from the hot air put forth by Ballmer's mouth. /.
This is the second time I have posted this comment... the first mysteriously disappeared. I am really beginning to wonder who foots the bills at
Much obliged then sir. You can also delete my comment on your story at your site then! I posted there as well, not knowing you were watching /. Maybe we do have a chance after all (as long as crusty old cynics like me don't depress everyone too much).