Bug, my ass. The ATM/slot machine analogy doesn't hold up.
An ATM is designed to give you the exact amount of money you ask for, provided you have that much in your account. If it gives you too much, you know it's broken, and taking advantage of it is dishonest.
On the other hand, a slot machine is expected to give you nothing usually, OR an unpredictable amount of money at an unpredictable time. A slot machine that pays off repeatedly might seem like it's obviously broken, but you can't rule out that it may be designed to let you win multiple times. The gambling industry encourages people to believe in good luck, lucky streaks, being "on a roll," etc. (even though they know that there are no such things). It seems perfectly plausible to me that they could configure a slot machine to give out an occasional burst of payoffs to simulate a streak of luck. The customer then goes home and brags about it to everybody, and more suckers come streaming in to the casino. The possibility does seem remote, but belief in remote possibilities is the foundation of the whole gambling industry.
One of the provisions of the Bono Act of 1998 was that all audio recordings made before 1972 were placed back under copyright until the year 2067. This extended the copyrights on Big Band era music to more than 120 years after they were recorded. Material that had already been in the public domain for many years -- the entire Golden Age of Radio for example, even wax cylinder recordings made by Edison in the 1890s -- will be under copyright until 2067. Way more than 95 years.
IANAL, but doesn't changing the terms of existing copyrights violate the whole basis of contracts? The public agrees to observe a copyright holder's exclusive rights, as well as paying for their enforcement, for a given period of time. The payoff is that at the end of that time the public gets free use of the material. Changing the law for new material is one thing, but extending the terms on existing works seems tantamount to declaring that all 30-year mortgages are 80-year mortgages. But hell, I'm just a citizen, what do I know?
If these senators really give a shit about young kids being exposed to sexuality, maybe they should start with the advertising industry's relentless campaign to get 11-year-olds to think and act 16. When I was a kid there were tons more tv ads for toys and games, but nowadays the business world seems to see childhood merely as an unnecessary delay before the onset of low-self-esteem compulsive spending.
I wonder what other enforcement issues federal money for universities is tied to. For example, are universities audited in their enforcement of alcohol laws? Might be considered at least as important, considering that a lot more people get killed via alcohol abuse than by copyright infringement.
The article mentions that Java apps are not targets for this exploit because Java has built-in garbage collection. Wouldn't this also be true for.Net apps?
Paintable solar cells using amorphous semiconductors were developed decades ago by Sanford Ovshinsky.
Ovshinsky went on to use his thin-film amorphous silicon to invent a manufacturing method that might do for solar energy what the assembly line did for automobiles. In 1983, he patented a system that allowed photovoltaic solar panels to be manufactured in continuous rolls 1000 feet in length. Ovshinsky's "Continuous Amorphous Solar Cell Production System" operates much like a newspaper rollpress, speedily imprinting a plasma of amorphous silicon semiconductors in a continuous web onto a thin, anodized metal sheet.
The high energy-conversion efficiency of the thin-film cells and the high throughput of the process make Ovshinsky's photovoltaic cells a revolutionary leap forward for solar energy. They have been installed at various sites around and above the globe, from Mexican mountain villages to the Mir space station. Ovshinsky's "Uni-Solar" roofing tiles, for residential buildings, have won Popular Science's "Best of What's New" Grand Award (1996) and Discover Magazine's Discover Award in the Environment category (1997). I keep wondering what the hell happens to the technology breakthroughs that I have been reading about since high school. Back then it was amorphous semiconductors, now apparently it's carbon nanotubes. It's fun stuff to read about on Slashdot, but will it ever be mass produced so people can actually use it?
NuclearSpace.com has an interesting series about nuclear powered rockets. This installment details a hypothetical design for a non-polluting, 100% reusable nuclear rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, that would be able to lift 2 million pounds of cargo into Earth orbit and return to a powered landing. With payload weight no longer an issue, such a vehicle could power a point-and-shoot mission to Mars and back in less than a year, hauling an incredible amount of equipment and supplies and returning with hundreds of tons of Martian samples.
It seems ludicrous to think of $133 million as a big deal at the national level, but it reminds me of the charming British view that anything more than about an hour's drive away is an overnight trip.
The blackface/whiteface episode with Frank Gorshin in which the destruct sequence was used was on TVLand just last night, so I knew right off that "1A, 2B, 3C" wasn't quite right. The correct self-destruct sequence for the original Enterprise, according to Wikipedia, is Kirk: "1-1A," Spock: "1-1A-2B," Scott: "1B-2B-3," Kirk: "0-0-0-Destruct-0." The destruct-abort code was "1-2-3-Continuity."
Right on. This is actually a pretty ridiculous article.
"George wanted Harrison to play Indy but cleverly sounded him out about playing Hans Solo instead. Harrison was horrified. After that he was delighted to be playing Indy again. He told George he just couldn't face being stuck in a spaceship with Chewbacca again."
Yeah, as if multi-zillionaire Harrison Ford has to choose one role or the other and can't just tell Lucas to suck it. Somebody probably wrote this article because Paris Hilton didn't do anything fascinating that day.
Copyright is a contract between creators and society, where we give them a short term monopoly on distributor to encourage them to contribute to the public domain.
The idea that copyright is a contract is the central problem with the way Congress keeps extending copyright. Instead of changing the terms for new works only, they extend the terms for existing works. One-sidedly changing the terms of a contract voids the whole idea of what a contract means.
The most recent copyright extension was the Bono Act of 1998, under which all audio recordings made before 1972 became copyrighted until 2067. This applies to ALL audio, including old time radio shows that had already been in the public domain for many years, and even the wax cylinders recordings made by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. I have no problem with Congress changing the law -- that's their job -- but the changes shouldn't apply only to existing works. The Bono Act was like declaring that all 30-year mortgages are now 60-year mortgages. People who have been making house payments for 29 years have no moral obligation to continue paying for another 31 years just because Congress said so.
Thanks to dada21 for taking time to write up all this information! It's great to read about real musicians actually making the free distribution model work. A recording contract is a means, not an end. This article made my night.
Please explain your concept of "investing" and how one investment is more socially responsible than another. I don't mean by explaining why some company is bad, I mean by explaining how trading that companies stock with other investors actually helps that company.
If you are going to point the social irresponsibility finger, point it at the people who buy products from bad companies. Being an investor vs. being a customer is like betting on a football game vs. buying tickets to the game. The football team doesn't make money from the bets, but they do make money from the tickets. When you buy stock the transaction is between you, a stock broker, and another investor. The money you pay goes to the investor who sells you the shares, plus a commission to the broker. When you sell a stock at a profit, the profit comes from the investor who buys the shares from you. The company doesn't take part of either transaction.
On the other hand, when you are a customer buying products from an evil company, your money goes directly to the company and is used to pay for its operations and expand the scope of its evil. So please explain why investors like Bill are evil for betting that certain companies are going to do well, vs. customers like you and me who are the actual reason that those companies do well.
I wonder if the people who unquestioningly accept that investments are good or evil actually understands the whole concept of investment. Here's what I mean:
Joe Customer buys a product from an evil company. The company receives this money as income, and uses it to expand the scope of its evil work. Because Joe and others buy so much of the product, the company files an impressive quarterly report and the price of its stock goes up. Since the company owns a lot of its own stock, the value of the company itself increases.
Joe Investor buys stock in the evil company. After the stock price goes up because the company is doing so much business, Joe sells the stock and makes a profit. These stock transactions are between Joe Investor, a stock broker, and other anonymous investors. The company receives none of the money.
Who is contributing more to this company's evil? Joe Customer or Joe Investor? Who gets the blame for the evil? Joe Customer or Joe Investor?
Of course, the real question is whether Ghost Pirates are pirates who died and became ghosts, or ghosts who became pirates after they were already dead.
Since the 9/11 attacks more than 100,000 Americans have been killed by drunk drivers, who have been causing a 9/11 death toll every 2 months since about 1960. But I've never heard of anyone high up in politics proposing a $300 billion War On Drunken Idiots. Penalties and counseling don't seem to have done the job. Maybe we could make a dent in the problem by spending a couple Smart-Bombs worth of money on technology such as this. I imagine an array of sensors -- sweat, vapor, maybe a reaction time test. Or how about a fingerprint scanner mounted under the far left side of the dashboard? Some governments are moving toward requiring GPS units in cars on the shaky premise of more accurate highway tax collection. If they want to impose surveillance technology on people, I would think that the potential to save thousands of lives every year would at least be more convincing.
The newly refurbished middle school in our neighborhood boasts a sophisticated lighting system that dims the lights when the natural light from outside gets brighter. No doubt this was sold to the school district on the premise of lowering the electric bill. I wonder if they realize that simply switching bulbs would save many times more electricity cost, without paying for a spiffy control system.
They will also have converted about 28% (nearly a third) of their yearly lightbulb sales to somthing that is 8 times as expensive. Given that profit margins normally work on percentages, that should roughly octuple 28% of their profit margin on lightbulbs. They should be making 2.96 times as much selling light bulbs, of course they want to push this.
Wrong, and certainly far from Insightful. Your calculation assumes that the profit margins on CFs and incandescent bulbs are the same. I don't know if they are or not, but because CFs last 10x longer their profit margin would have to be 10x higher just to break even for the manufacturer. I very much doubt that this is the case.
Anyway, who cares? The cost of the bulb is negligible compared to the cost of operating it. It costs about $23 to run one 100-watt equivalent CF bulb for 10000 hours, compared to $100 to run 10-13 standard bulbs for 700-1000 hours each. The CF bulb costs less than the armload of standard bulbs it replaces, and saves you many times that much in electricity.
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I was gonna say, "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of 386s running this!" but no.
Bug, my ass. The ATM/slot machine analogy doesn't hold up.
An ATM is designed to give you the exact amount of money you ask for, provided you have that much in your account. If it gives you too much, you know it's broken, and taking advantage of it is dishonest.
On the other hand, a slot machine is expected to give you nothing usually, OR an unpredictable amount of money at an unpredictable time. A slot machine that pays off repeatedly might seem like it's obviously broken, but you can't rule out that it may be designed to let you win multiple times. The gambling industry encourages people to believe in good luck, lucky streaks, being "on a roll," etc. (even though they know that there are no such things). It seems perfectly plausible to me that they could configure a slot machine to give out an occasional burst of payoffs to simulate a streak of luck. The customer then goes home and brags about it to everybody, and more suckers come streaming in to the casino. The possibility does seem remote, but belief in remote possibilities is the foundation of the whole gambling industry.
One of the provisions of the Bono Act of 1998 was that all audio recordings made before 1972 were placed back under copyright until the year 2067. This extended the copyrights on Big Band era music to more than 120 years after they were recorded. Material that had already been in the public domain for many years -- the entire Golden Age of Radio for example, even wax cylinder recordings made by Edison in the 1890s -- will be under copyright until 2067. Way more than 95 years.
IANAL, but doesn't changing the terms of existing copyrights violate the whole basis of contracts? The public agrees to observe a copyright holder's exclusive rights, as well as paying for their enforcement, for a given period of time. The payoff is that at the end of that time the public gets free use of the material. Changing the law for new material is one thing, but extending the terms on existing works seems tantamount to declaring that all 30-year mortgages are 80-year mortgages. But hell, I'm just a citizen, what do I know?
If these senators really give a shit about young kids being exposed to sexuality, maybe they should start with the advertising industry's relentless campaign to get 11-year-olds to think and act 16. When I was a kid there were tons more tv ads for toys and games, but nowadays the business world seems to see childhood merely as an unnecessary delay before the onset of low-self-esteem compulsive spending.
I wonder what other enforcement issues federal money for universities is tied to. For example, are universities audited in their enforcement of alcohol laws? Might be considered at least as important, considering that a lot more people get killed via alcohol abuse than by copyright infringement.
The article mentions that Java apps are not targets for this exploit because Java has built-in garbage collection. Wouldn't this also be true for .Net apps?
The high energy-conversion efficiency of the thin-film cells and the high throughput of the process make Ovshinsky's photovoltaic cells a revolutionary leap forward for solar energy. They have been installed at various sites around and above the globe, from Mexican mountain villages to the Mir space station. Ovshinsky's "Uni-Solar" roofing tiles, for residential buildings, have won Popular Science's "Best of What's New" Grand Award (1996) and Discover Magazine's Discover Award in the Environment category (1997). I keep wondering what the hell happens to the technology breakthroughs that I have been reading about since high school. Back then it was amorphous semiconductors, now apparently it's carbon nanotubes. It's fun stuff to read about on Slashdot, but will it ever be mass produced so people can actually use it?
NuclearSpace.com has an interesting series about nuclear powered rockets.
This installment details a hypothetical design for a non-polluting, 100% reusable nuclear rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, that would be able to lift 2 million pounds of cargo into Earth orbit and return to a powered landing. With payload weight no longer an issue, such a vehicle could power a point-and-shoot mission to Mars and back in less than a year, hauling an incredible amount of equipment and supplies and returning with hundreds of tons of Martian samples.
Their new term for "infringement lawsuit" will be "compliance enablement incentive."
Can we sue Microsoft for that?
Because if punk rockers use soap, the terrists have won.
It seems ludicrous to think of $133 million as a big deal at the national level, but it reminds me of the charming British view that anything more than about an hour's drive away is an overnight trip.
The blackface/whiteface episode with Frank Gorshin in which the destruct sequence was used was on TVLand just last night, so I knew right off that "1A, 2B, 3C" wasn't quite right. The correct self-destruct sequence for the original Enterprise, according to Wikipedia, is Kirk: "1-1A," Spock: "1-1A-2B," Scott: "1B-2B-3," Kirk: "0-0-0-Destruct-0." The destruct-abort code was "1-2-3-Continuity."
Uh-oh, trafficking in circumvention technology. You're under arrest!
If only the railroads had invented this same concept back in the 1800s. Imagine how much better off everyone would be today!
I wish a judge would rule that SCO is a whining nuisance that should dry up and blow away. But that's just me. IANASCOfan
Right on. This is actually a pretty ridiculous article.
"George wanted Harrison to play Indy but cleverly sounded him out about playing Hans Solo instead. Harrison was horrified. After that he was delighted to be playing Indy again. He told George he just couldn't face being stuck in a spaceship with Chewbacca again."
Yeah, as if multi-zillionaire Harrison Ford has to choose one role or the other and can't just tell Lucas to suck it. Somebody probably wrote this article because Paris Hilton didn't do anything fascinating that day.
Copyright is a contract between creators and society, where we give them a short term monopoly on distributor to encourage them to contribute to the public domain.
The idea that copyright is a contract is the central problem with the way Congress keeps extending copyright. Instead of changing the terms for new works only, they extend the terms for existing works. One-sidedly changing the terms of a contract voids the whole idea of what a contract means.
The most recent copyright extension was the Bono Act of 1998, under which all audio recordings made before 1972 became copyrighted until 2067. This applies to ALL audio, including old time radio shows that had already been in the public domain for many years, and even the wax cylinders recordings made by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. I have no problem with Congress changing the law -- that's their job -- but the changes shouldn't apply only to existing works. The Bono Act was like declaring that all 30-year mortgages are now 60-year mortgages. People who have been making house payments for 29 years have no moral obligation to continue paying for another 31 years just because Congress said so.
Thanks to dada21 for taking time to write up all this information! It's great to read about real musicians actually making the free distribution model work. A recording contract is a means, not an end. This article made my night.
Please explain your concept of "investing" and how one investment is more socially responsible than another. I don't mean by explaining why some company is bad, I mean by explaining how trading that companies stock with other investors actually helps that company.
If you are going to point the social irresponsibility finger, point it at the people who buy products from bad companies. Being an investor vs. being a customer is like betting on a football game vs. buying tickets to the game. The football team doesn't make money from the bets, but they do make money from the tickets. When you buy stock the transaction is between you, a stock broker, and another investor. The money you pay goes to the investor who sells you the shares, plus a commission to the broker. When you sell a stock at a profit, the profit comes from the investor who buys the shares from you. The company doesn't take part of either transaction.
On the other hand, when you are a customer buying products from an evil company, your money goes directly to the company and is used to pay for its operations and expand the scope of its evil. So please explain why investors like Bill are evil for betting that certain companies are going to do well, vs. customers like you and me who are the actual reason that those companies do well.
I wonder if the people who unquestioningly accept that investments are good or evil actually understands the whole concept of investment. Here's what I mean:
Joe Customer buys a product from an evil company. The company receives this money as income, and uses it to expand the scope of its evil work. Because Joe and others buy so much of the product, the company files an impressive quarterly report and the price of its stock goes up. Since the company owns a lot of its own stock, the value of the company itself increases.
Joe Investor buys stock in the evil company. After the stock price goes up because the company is doing so much business, Joe sells the stock and makes a profit. These stock transactions are between Joe Investor, a stock broker, and other anonymous investors. The company receives none of the money.
Who is contributing more to this company's evil? Joe Customer or Joe Investor?
Who gets the blame for the evil? Joe Customer or Joe Investor?
Of course, the real question is whether Ghost Pirates are pirates who died and became ghosts, or ghosts who became pirates after they were already dead.
Since the 9/11 attacks more than 100,000 Americans have been killed by drunk drivers, who have been causing a 9/11 death toll every 2 months since about 1960. But I've never heard of anyone high up in politics proposing a $300 billion War On Drunken Idiots. Penalties and counseling don't seem to have done the job. Maybe we could make a dent in the problem by spending a couple Smart-Bombs worth of money on technology such as this. I imagine an array of sensors -- sweat, vapor, maybe a reaction time test. Or how about a fingerprint scanner mounted under the far left side of the dashboard? Some governments are moving toward requiring GPS units in cars on the shaky premise of more accurate highway tax collection. If they want to impose surveillance technology on people, I would think that the potential to save thousands of lives every year would at least be more convincing.
The newly refurbished middle school in our neighborhood boasts a sophisticated lighting system that dims the lights when the natural light from outside gets brighter. No doubt this was sold to the school district on the premise of lowering the electric bill. I wonder if they realize that simply switching bulbs would save many times more electricity cost, without paying for a spiffy control system.
They will also have converted about 28% (nearly a third) of their yearly lightbulb sales to somthing that is 8 times as expensive.
Given that profit margins normally work on percentages, that should roughly octuple 28% of their profit margin on lightbulbs.
They should be making 2.96 times as much selling light bulbs, of course they want to push this.
Wrong, and certainly far from Insightful. Your calculation assumes that the profit margins on CFs and incandescent bulbs are the same. I don't know if they are or not, but because CFs last 10x longer their profit margin would have to be 10x higher just to break even for the manufacturer. I very much doubt that this is the case.
Anyway, who cares? The cost of the bulb is negligible compared to the cost of operating it. It costs about $23 to run one 100-watt equivalent CF bulb for 10000 hours, compared to $100 to run 10-13 standard bulbs for 700-1000 hours each. The CF bulb costs less than the armload of standard bulbs it replaces, and saves you many times that much in electricity.