I wonder if there's a spike in the distribution of RFC's this time of year, or if everyone who is busy submitting normal RFC's just takes a break and works on fake RFC's for a few days. Anyone have enough free time to plot out the submission dates?
There is something very strange when you are in front of the judge who is doing the preliminary investigation: we do not speak the same language. I'm unable to understand law jargon, and the person in front of me does not understand anything about computer security and the internet. The lawyer is supposed to be the translator. But the lawyer in this case cannot speak during my declarations. It's kind of weird. You have to find a good argumentation, try to explain in simple words complex methods, how programs work, try to show that the accusations of the company are basically void.
Justice is supposed to be blind, but not the judges. I think that is the single biggest problem we face with existing computer crime legislation - neither the legislators nor the judges understand what it is that the law is actually saying.
BTW, I really enjoyed your steganography articles. It's comforting to realize just how difficult it is to implement stego correctly. It really puts mainstream media hand-waving about terrorist use of steganography into perspective.
Yes, that's being very conservative. I have read an estimate that suggests as many as 200,000 incidents where guns have prevented a crime go unreported every year. Just an estimate, but mind-boggling nonetheless.
No, the grandparent is right on point, too. The problem is that there isn't an accurate mainstream picture being painted that describes how all of these issues weigh against each other.
If you had to go on gut instinct and guess how many "family accidents" happen due to having guns in the house, you would be way off due to the media bias given to these horrible events. The actual percentage of these accidents when compared to all gun-related injuries and deaths is really quite low.
Similarly, cases where concealed weapons have prevented crime are almost universally unreported. If you are an attempted mugging victim, but you don't have a concealed weapon permit, are you really going to call the police about it when you yourself are the only one likely to get in trouble?
Our founding fathers agreed that the second amendment was not a provision for militia, but truly the right for American citizens to protect themselves. There are good arguments for Bill of Rights limitations (e.g. "fire" in a crowded theatre as a limitation of free speech), but the gun control lobby and the NRA are clouding the picture with noise.
I was countering your claim that quality can be gauged by how many people buy something. Nothing more or less was intended.
OK, fair enough. Quality can't be gauged by how many people buy something, but what I have been trying to say is that it can be gauged by how much people are willing to spend on something. In the case of van Gogh, obviously the supply of paintings is very short, so this increases price and demand. However, the supply of all artists' paintings are constricted this way, yet people aren't willing to pay millions of dollars for a Bob Ross.
Priorities and budgets. If you are choosing between a medicine that can cure a painful, contagious, stigmatizing disease and a subscription to a cable TV channel, which would you choose? I hope that you don't actually believe that every household has an unlimited budget with which to purchase everything that they deem to be of high quality.
Certainly not. But if every household is forced to buy the socialist-approved package at a higher price, that budget becomes artificially limited. In addition, competition (which lowers prices) is discouraged by the socialist model. The a la carte model is precisely about priorities and budgets. When consumers are forced to choose exactly how their money is spent, their priorities and budgets will be fairly represented by the content that survives.
Like you, most consumers are looking for a way to save money -- and those channels will go out of business.
By drawing this conclusion again (that quality, "high-priced" channels will go out of business), you recognize that consumers are looking for a way to save money, but still ignoring the fact that consumers are looking to get what they want for their money. If the only priority of content consumers was saving money, then no one would be spending $40 a month for cable when they can get broadcast channels for free.
It'w quality niche programming that has a hard time surviving. I don't watch A&E Biography, but I still recognize that it is a high-quality channel worthy of retaining a spot on the "dial."
I still don't understand why you think that high-quality niche programming has a hard time surviving as a rule. What makes you think A&E Bio is high-quality when you don't even consider it to be worth watching? Would you argue that Apple has a hard time surviving because it only has a tiny percentage of the computer market, yet still continue to ignore the fact that people are willing to pay more for its products?
Tell me honestly, do you really know how much value each of your cable channels provides? Could you even accurately rank the top 50%?
All I can tell you honestly is that the cable packages out there are not worth the prices at which they are offered to me. That is why I don't buy them. But if I could buy Comedy Central, even with ads, for $5 a month, I probably would. Maybe even $10. I know people that would buy a season subscription to HBO just for the Sopranos.
But this is precisely the point. The only way we can tell honestly what channels are worth is by letting the market decide. We can't get a fair picture under the bundling model. We can certainly start with a channel's profit, subtract out the advertising revenue, and divide by the number of viewers, but that only gives us the amount contributed by each lump subscription. These so-called high-quality stations could stand to make far more profit or eliminate ads if the fair-market price dictated. The current system commands consumer prices.
This discussion reminded me of an experience with Radio Shack.
This is an excellent example. Let's compare it fairly to the cable market. Suppose RS and some other electronics store are the only games in town (cable and satellite). RS was granted a monopoly by the government, and the electronics supply companies have been consolidating and forcing RS to buy packages of electronics or none at all. They can do this because th
He was doing it for art's sake, not for money. Commercial ventures don't work that way.
I don't understand what your point was in the van Gogh example, then. I thought you were trying to demonstrate that a cable channel can exist for art's sake, not for the money. Now you're saying cable channels are commercial ventures so they only exist to make money. Which is it?
I said that something can appeal to a tiny percentage of people and still be high quality -- such as a drug. Of course people with Herpes would pay a lot for such a drug. But what does that have to do with discretionary spending on television programming?
To paraphrase: Something can appeal to a tiny percentage of people and still be high quality -- such as a television channel. Of course people that watch this channel would pay a lot for such a channel!
Television and a cure for herpes both scratch an itch (if you pardon the pun). What makes one itch so fundamentally different that people would be willing to pay a premium for one but not the other?
My premise is as follows...the availability of niche channels will lead to some consumers subscribing and give a higher perceived value to the service.
OK, you are now saying that people are willing to subsidize niche channels (let's not forget this also includes the crap) because they see the whole as greater than the sum of its parts. This seems to make intuitive sense, but like I said before, what sounds good in theory falls down in practice.
Let's take some hypothetical channel distribution and begin to examine the two systems. Suppose under the bundled model we pay $40 for 10 mainstream channels, 5 niche channels that we consider "good quality" and 5 niche channels that we consider crap. Using an extremely conservative model, each of these channels gets an equal percentage of revenue from subscriptions ($1 each, $1 kept by the cable company). I believe the 5 and 5 argument is also extremely conservative, because I see a much larger percentage of channels as being crap compared to those of good quality. But suppose for a moment that they are equal.
Under the a la carte system, let's again take the conservative estimate that these prices hold fast and each channel still costs $2. Let's assume conservatively that each subscriber wants all of the mainstream channels. Let's assume that subscribers also only watch a couple of the niche channels often enough to justify the $2/month. Our new cable package costs us $20 for the mainstream that we want, plus $4 for the two niche channels. Our cable bill has dropped from $40 to $24. So far we are better off, but the cable company is losing $8/month per subscriber.
Suppose we learn that those three channels that we decided not to support are going out of business. According to your theory, we believed that the $40 we were paying before was justified because we were supporting these other channels we didn't watch or barely watched. So if $40 was justifiable, we should be willing to pay up to $16 to support those remaining channels to keep them alive, even though we're barely watching them or not watching them at all. That's over $5/channel! Even if we decide to let the cable company have a cut unstead of donating the entire $5 directly to the channel to support it (which would give the channel $4 instead of $1), more than 16 consumers paying under the old system would have to give up the channel for every three that keep it in the lineup. So if these niche channels are valued by even as little as a fifth of the subscribers, they will still stay alive, and those that don't have the same altruistic sensibilities are saving themselves 40% of their cable bill.
Obviously, a channel valued by a fifth of the population is a pretty loose definition of "niche", and the cable company will not be willing to throw away so much revenue, so let's continue to a more realistic pricing model. Assume that the pricing will be some flat fee (to cover infrastructure, hardware, service,
You are correct, issues are always more complicated than one-to-one relationships. In addition to the points you mention, I would also stress the fact that there is a difference between the size of a government and the power of the government, as well as a difference between corruption and waste (and not just in the Sid Meier Civilization sense). However, overall I think the power of the government is the most significant factor in corrupt behavior since power attracts those that would subvert it for their purposes.
Ultimately the only weapon we have against these ills is full disclosure. Cultural acceptance aside, if we are not willing to tolerate abuse we must have accountability and that is always lacking in these situations.
Slashdot Mirror
Or the more appropriate for slashdot:
grittney spears
You think the quality has gone down today? You must be new here.
I hear they have free pretzels there.
I'm Hen3ry the eighth I am
Hen3ry the eighth I am, I am
I got married to the widow next door
She's been married seven times before...
I wonder if there's a spike in the distribution of RFC's this time of year, or if everyone who is busy submitting normal RFC's just takes a break and works on fake RFC's for a few days. Anyone have enough free time to plot out the submission dates?
Google: "Hahah, YHBT, suckers."
Augh! I still have nightmares about that side-quest.
So, katamari translates roughly to "lump", "cluster", or "ball", but does anyone have any idea what Damacy means?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but often suggesting how the moderators should moderate comments persuades the moderators to moderate comments. So is this +1, Funny, +1 Insightful, or +1 Interesting?
That's John Deere, Mr. Foxworthy.
I saw this ad for the first time this weekend and laughed at it. Then I discovered it was a Microsoft ad.
*shudder*
Justice is supposed to be blind, but not the judges. I think that is the single biggest problem we face with existing computer crime legislation - neither the legislators nor the judges understand what it is that the law is actually saying.
BTW, I really enjoyed your steganography articles. It's comforting to realize just how difficult it is to implement stego correctly. It really puts mainstream media hand-waving about terrorist use of steganography into perspective.
I send you this file to have your advice.
Attachment: maginot.jpg.pif
Yes, but how did you get your bike to fly? Are you the Wicked Witch of the West or something?
But at least the grandparent spelled "definitely" correctly. It's a misspelling paradigm shift!
You know an article has jumped the shark when it has a subsection entitled: "The idea: Flying Cars". Ooops, did I just admit to reading the article?
Yes, that's being very conservative. I have read an estimate that suggests as many as 200,000 incidents where guns have prevented a crime go unreported every year. Just an estimate, but mind-boggling nonetheless.
No, the grandparent is right on point, too. The problem is that there isn't an accurate mainstream picture being painted that describes how all of these issues weigh against each other.
If you had to go on gut instinct and guess how many "family accidents" happen due to having guns in the house, you would be way off due to the media bias given to these horrible events. The actual percentage of these accidents when compared to all gun-related injuries and deaths is really quite low.
Similarly, cases where concealed weapons have prevented crime are almost universally unreported. If you are an attempted mugging victim, but you don't have a concealed weapon permit, are you really going to call the police about it when you yourself are the only one likely to get in trouble?
Our founding fathers agreed that the second amendment was not a provision for militia, but truly the right for American citizens to protect themselves. There are good arguments for Bill of Rights limitations (e.g. "fire" in a crowded theatre as a limitation of free speech), but the gun control lobby and the NRA are clouding the picture with noise.
LMAO! This thread is classic! I think I might even put it in my sig!
I was countering your claim that quality can be gauged by how many people buy something. Nothing more or less was intended.
OK, fair enough. Quality can't be gauged by how many people buy something, but what I have been trying to say is that it can be gauged by how much people are willing to spend on something. In the case of van Gogh, obviously the supply of paintings is very short, so this increases price and demand. However, the supply of all artists' paintings are constricted this way, yet people aren't willing to pay millions of dollars for a Bob Ross.
Priorities and budgets. If you are choosing between a medicine that can cure a painful, contagious, stigmatizing disease and a subscription to a cable TV channel, which would you choose? I hope that you don't actually believe that every household has an unlimited budget with which to purchase everything that they deem to be of high quality.
Certainly not. But if every household is forced to buy the socialist-approved package at a higher price, that budget becomes artificially limited. In addition, competition (which lowers prices) is discouraged by the socialist model. The a la carte model is precisely about priorities and budgets. When consumers are forced to choose exactly how their money is spent, their priorities and budgets will be fairly represented by the content that survives.
Like you, most consumers are looking for a way to save money -- and those channels will go out of business.
By drawing this conclusion again (that quality, "high-priced" channels will go out of business), you recognize that consumers are looking for a way to save money, but still ignoring the fact that consumers are looking to get what they want for their money. If the only priority of content consumers was saving money, then no one would be spending $40 a month for cable when they can get broadcast channels for free.
It'w quality niche programming that has a hard time surviving. I don't watch A&E Biography, but I still recognize that it is a high-quality channel worthy of retaining a spot on the "dial."
I still don't understand why you think that high-quality niche programming has a hard time surviving as a rule. What makes you think A&E Bio is high-quality when you don't even consider it to be worth watching? Would you argue that Apple has a hard time surviving because it only has a tiny percentage of the computer market, yet still continue to ignore the fact that people are willing to pay more for its products?
Tell me honestly, do you really know how much value each of your cable channels provides? Could you even accurately rank the top 50%?
All I can tell you honestly is that the cable packages out there are not worth the prices at which they are offered to me. That is why I don't buy them. But if I could buy Comedy Central, even with ads, for $5 a month, I probably would. Maybe even $10. I know people that would buy a season subscription to HBO just for the Sopranos.
But this is precisely the point. The only way we can tell honestly what channels are worth is by letting the market decide. We can't get a fair picture under the bundling model. We can certainly start with a channel's profit, subtract out the advertising revenue, and divide by the number of viewers, but that only gives us the amount contributed by each lump subscription. These so-called high-quality stations could stand to make far more profit or eliminate ads if the fair-market price dictated. The current system commands consumer prices.
This discussion reminded me of an experience with Radio Shack.
This is an excellent example. Let's compare it fairly to the cable market. Suppose RS and some other electronics store are the only games in town (cable and satellite). RS was granted a monopoly by the government, and the electronics supply companies have been consolidating and forcing RS to buy packages of electronics or none at all. They can do this because th
Wow, all you have to do to get Insightful mods is ask for them? Don't forget to say please.
Now will someone please mode me Funny.
You just made the case against rabid gun control.
Once you have the car, you can research the ownership history using the VIN and get his address. Happy hunting.
He was doing it for art's sake, not for money. Commercial ventures don't work that way.
I don't understand what your point was in the van Gogh example, then. I thought you were trying to demonstrate that a cable channel can exist for art's sake, not for the money. Now you're saying cable channels are commercial ventures so they only exist to make money. Which is it?
I said that something can appeal to a tiny percentage of people and still be high quality -- such as a drug. Of course people with Herpes would pay a lot for such a drug. But what does that have to do with discretionary spending on television programming?
To paraphrase:
Something can appeal to a tiny percentage of people and still be high quality -- such as a television channel. Of course people that watch this channel would pay a lot for such a channel!
Television and a cure for herpes both scratch an itch (if you pardon the pun). What makes one itch so fundamentally different that people would be willing to pay a premium for one but not the other?
My premise is as follows...the availability of niche channels will lead to some consumers subscribing and give a higher perceived value to the service.
OK, you are now saying that people are willing to subsidize niche channels (let's not forget this also includes the crap) because they see the whole as greater than the sum of its parts. This seems to make intuitive sense, but like I said before, what sounds good in theory falls down in practice.
Let's take some hypothetical channel distribution and begin to examine the two systems. Suppose under the bundled model we pay $40 for 10 mainstream channels, 5 niche channels that we consider "good quality" and 5 niche channels that we consider crap. Using an extremely conservative model, each of these channels gets an equal percentage of revenue from subscriptions ($1 each, $1 kept by the cable company). I believe the 5 and 5 argument is also extremely conservative, because I see a much larger percentage of channels as being crap compared to those of good quality. But suppose for a moment that they are equal.
Under the a la carte system, let's again take the conservative estimate that these prices hold fast and each channel still costs $2. Let's assume conservatively that each subscriber wants all of the mainstream channels. Let's assume that subscribers also only watch a couple of the niche channels often enough to justify the $2/month. Our new cable package costs us $20 for the mainstream that we want, plus $4 for the two niche channels. Our cable bill has dropped from $40 to $24. So far we are better off, but the cable company is losing $8/month per subscriber.
Suppose we learn that those three channels that we decided not to support are going out of business. According to your theory, we believed that the $40 we were paying before was justified because we were supporting these other channels we didn't watch or barely watched. So if $40 was justifiable, we should be willing to pay up to $16 to support those remaining channels to keep them alive, even though we're barely watching them or not watching them at all. That's over $5/channel! Even if we decide to let the cable company have a cut unstead of donating the entire $5 directly to the channel to support it (which would give the channel $4 instead of $1), more than 16 consumers paying under the old system would have to give up the channel for every three that keep it in the lineup. So if these niche channels are valued by even as little as a fifth of the subscribers, they will still stay alive, and those that don't have the same altruistic sensibilities are saving themselves 40% of their cable bill.
Obviously, a channel valued by a fifth of the population is a pretty loose definition of "niche", and the cable company will not be willing to throw away so much revenue, so let's continue to a more realistic pricing model. Assume that the pricing will be some flat fee (to cover infrastructure, hardware, service,
You are correct, issues are always more complicated than one-to-one relationships. In addition to the points you mention, I would also stress the fact that there is a difference between the size of a government and the power of the government, as well as a difference between corruption and waste (and not just in the Sid Meier Civilization sense). However, overall I think the power of the government is the most significant factor in corrupt behavior since power attracts those that would subvert it for their purposes.
Ultimately the only weapon we have against these ills is full disclosure. Cultural acceptance aside, if we are not willing to tolerate abuse we must have accountability and that is always lacking in these situations.