Changes for Season 2: - Starbuck and Boomer are re-cast as male characters, but stay in touch with their feminine side. - The Cylons turn out to be a race of sophisticated robots who were only pretending to be clones. To intimidate the humans they develop chromium armor and start speaking in metallic voices.
I don't think I made it sound like the government didn't want it, but certainly the public didn't ask for it. Many of our representatives should be in jail for taking bribes. But that would require too many people getting up off the couch and missing American Idol.
I think you hit it right on the head there. Nobody notices when even the President refers to the public as "consumers" rather than "citizens." But I don't think it's limited to senior citizens. The under-30 population isn't exactly showing a flash of intellectual speed by sucking down "reality" tv like cheap beer.
When this story broke a week or two ago, somebody here posed the question of how you know if you are one of the people whose information was stolen. I replied along the lines of, "You'll know because you'll get a letter from attorneys notifying you that you are part of a class action lawsuit against ChoicePoint." Looks like that might actually be the right answer! What do I win?
If the head of the ALA were a publisher, he would know that the overall quality of bloggers' work is no worse than the output of the vast majority of so-called "writers" who submit manuscripts. The fact that some people have talent and others don't is a trivial and uninteresting observation. His reaction sounds more like resentment that mediocre authors, whose work otherwise wouldn't be published, are able to attract large audiences on the web. Maybe he thinks they don't deserve it. Or maybe there's a crumpled up rejection slip in his wastebasket.
I agree, but whether the losses are real or not, the point is that movie companies were claiming these same losses long before any of this modern "piracy" technology existed. The MPAA wants a mandatory remote-controlled mute button installed on everybody's home media equipment, so they can make money from consumer activities that the courts have repeatedly said are free.
Interesting post. IANAL but I think I understand. It seems to me that the DMCA materially prohibits fair use, because it's impossible to play ITunes songs on non-ITunes players without somehow "getting access" to the music. Sort of saying drinking Pepsi out of a bottle is fair use, but "getting access" to the Pepsi by opening the bottle without a licensed Pepsi bottle opener is a crime. The distinction is nothing but a smokescreen.
The new generation of hoaxes that label real events as hoaxes and hoaxes as real. Perhaps the above post is a hoax too?
Side note from the MPAA's war-cry page: "By deeply cutting into revenues, movie piracy limits the choices for consumers at the box office. Sixty percent of all movies never recoup their production and marketing costs which average well over $100 million."
Sigh. The fact that most movies didn't recoup production costs in the decades before p2p, the Web or VCRs ever existed seems to have slipped under the radar.
Exactly. The issue isn't copyright per se but copy protection. It doesn't matter if the thing being protected is copyrighted or not, because the protection itself is protected. You could get in trouble for breaking DRM even if the content is public domain, because Congress says the imaginary box containing that individual copy is sacred.
If you think about it, DRM is like a privatized turbo version of copyright. Copyright infringement is a civil matter between two parties. DRM breakage is a federal crime involving fines and jail time. Pretty sweet deal to have the government investigate and prosecute your lawsuits for you for free! How did we let the entertainment industry get away with this?
I just looked at their site. A few subtitles on the products would sure be helpful for readers who aren't digital photography buffs but who might know one who needs a birthday gift. After reading the features list on this gadget I'm still not entirely sure what it's for. My first guess at a glance was a digital video camera with a nice display. I think it's actually a handheld mediaplayer. But that doesn't seem worth the price, so maybe it also does video editing. I really can't tell.
Putting a cute name on it may seem trite but it might make more developers aware that this exists and get them interested in using it. I only discovered xmlHttpRequest about 3 years ago, and was blow away by the ability to make a page essentially act like a true client-server app. The idea seemed to go by the wayside when Asp.Net appeared, as it stressed making the client side as dumb as possible and refreshing the page for every damn little thing. Now the MS pendulum seems to have swung back the other way;.Net features xmlHttpRequest functionality in object form. I really think the webpage-as-app is the way of the future, but you'd be surprised how few people actually use this technology.
The FCC's lawyer, Jacob Lewis, acknowledged the agency never had exercised such ancillary power but maintained it was permitted by Congress since lawmakers didn't explicitly outlaw it.
In other news, FCC lawyers say officials have ancillary power to enter your house at any time, nuke a burrito and watch MTV. Because Congress didn't explicitly outlaw it.
I wonder which will be the first country to be invaded for "Intellectual Property terrorism" ??
U.S. foreign trade moves continuously toward importing real goods and exporting IP. Eventually the stream of rights income from abroad will be as vital as wheat and steel, and the invisible fences we're building around our make-believe property will become as sacred as real ones around real land. We go to war for oil, we go to war to prove that one person's invisible friend is better another. It's just a matter of time before we go to war over IP.
I will second your praise of laser printers and add a gold star for the HP Laserjet 5p. I've had one for about 8 years; it has NEVER malfunctioned and rarely jams. It has seen periods of very heavy use, as my wife and I do large printings for our daughter's school. On occasion I have had that thing printing day and night, burning straight through entire toner cartridges and multiple cases of paper, without a hiccup. Super-reliable workhorse, probably the best money I ever spent.
If you're gonna keep score, at least stay awake! This was one point. Fritz and his team are still ahead by several runs, and they have the bases pretty well loaded.
One of the paradoxes of Intellectual Property is that the IP industry wants it to be treated like real property, exccept for the fact that you can't restrict how customers use real property once it's in their hands. At least not yet.
There is a small company that makes a template for routers -- the woodworking kind, not the networking kind -- for cutting dovetail joints. It's basically a piece of plastic that you clamp onto a piece of wood to guide the router. If you wanted to, you could use the template to make an identical template out of another piece of plastic. To guard against this possibility the manufacturer encloses a license agreement with the template, stating that the customer is specifically not allowed to do this. It further says you are authorized to use the template for personal woodworking projects only, not for business use.
This may be a silly example (although true), but I think there's a clear and present danger that the whacked logic of the IP world could spread like a fungus into the real world, and we could indeed wake up one day to find it illegal to use a Stanley hammer on non-Stanley nails. Frightening -- unless you are Mr. Stanley or his IP lawyer.
One more reason to find out who your representatives are and write them a short note periodically, once is good but once a month is better, urging them to consider the adverse impacts of IP issues on the public domain.
Have to admit I don't understand this story at all. Looks like they released a bunch of mp3s on vinyl, but is that "software"? I would call it the first release of "data" on vinyl. Maybe I'm missing the point. But then I don't even know what l337 means.
I would guess more like 1/10th of that. Most of the technology already exists. But suppose it did cost $100 billion. Complying with the U.S. income tax system costs between $100 and $500 billion per year, depending on whose estimates you believe. That takes into account the IRS's 100,000+ employees and the veritable army of non-govt people whose careers revolve around paying and avoiding income tax. Given that we throw away that kind of money each and every year just on bookkeeping overhead, you wouldn't think a space program that spanned many years would cause a big stir.
Maybe this is nitpicking, but could we please go back to saying "citizens" instead of "consumers?" Because consumers take whatever crap you give them. Citizens don't.
I think your idea is great. Basing sales tax on the business location would certainly simplify the tax collecting process. One drawback might be that companies that do a lot of online sales would naturally want to put their headquarters in a state with the lowest sales tax. States compete with each other to get businesses to locate there.
On a slight tangent, people don't think much about the cost of collecting taxes, but it's overhead just like any business has overhead. The cost of complying with the federal income tax system is estimated anywhere between $100-$500 Billion per year. That's to maintain the IRS with it's 100,000+ employees, plus the salaries of all the private sector bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, consultants, and all sorts of others whose careers revolve solely around paying or avoiding income taxes. 401Ks, IRAs and most other retirement plans and their complex rules exist not to provide for old age (a bank account will do that), but to do it in a way that reduces taxes. Then there's the maze of clauses and provisions regularly added to the 4000+ pages of the tax code by Congress as favors to their financial backers, essentially using everybody else's tax money to repay campaign contributions. Replacing this mess with a national sales tax would eliminate most of the collection cost, as well as the Congressional bribe-payback mechanism.
Slashdot Mirror
Changes for Season 2:
- Starbuck and Boomer are re-cast as male characters, but stay in touch with their feminine side.
- The Cylons turn out to be a race of sophisticated robots who were only pretending to be clones. To intimidate the humans they develop chromium armor and start speaking in metallic voices.
I don't think I made it sound like the government didn't want it, but certainly the public didn't ask for it. Many of our representatives should be in jail for taking bribes. But that would require too many people getting up off the couch and missing American Idol.
I think you hit it right on the head there. Nobody notices when even the President refers to the public as "consumers" rather than "citizens." But I don't think it's limited to senior citizens. The under-30 population isn't exactly showing a flash of intellectual speed by sucking down "reality" tv like cheap beer.
When this story broke a week or two ago, somebody here posed the question of how you know if you are one of the people whose information was stolen. I replied along the lines of, "You'll know because you'll get a letter from attorneys notifying you that you are part of a class action lawsuit against ChoicePoint." Looks like that might actually be the right answer! What do I win?
If the head of the ALA were a publisher, he would know that the overall quality of bloggers' work is no worse than the output of the vast majority of so-called "writers" who submit manuscripts. The fact that some people have talent and others don't is a trivial and uninteresting observation. His reaction sounds more like resentment that mediocre authors, whose work otherwise wouldn't be published, are able to attract large audiences on the web. Maybe he thinks they don't deserve it. Or maybe there's a crumpled up rejection slip in his wastebasket.
I agree, but whether the losses are real or not, the point is that movie companies were claiming these same losses long before any of this modern "piracy" technology existed. The MPAA wants a mandatory remote-controlled mute button installed on everybody's home media equipment, so they can make money from consumer activities that the courts have repeatedly said are free.
Interesting post. IANAL but I think I understand. It seems to me that the DMCA materially prohibits fair use, because it's impossible to play ITunes songs on non-ITunes players without somehow "getting access" to the music. Sort of saying drinking Pepsi out of a bottle is fair use, but "getting access" to the Pepsi by opening the bottle without a licensed Pepsi bottle opener is a crime. The distinction is nothing but a smokescreen.
The new generation of hoaxes that label real events as hoaxes and hoaxes as real. Perhaps the above post is a hoax too?
Side note from the MPAA's war-cry page: "By deeply cutting into revenues, movie piracy limits the choices for consumers at the box office. Sixty percent of all movies never recoup their production and marketing costs which average well over $100 million."
Sigh. The fact that most movies didn't recoup production costs in the decades before p2p, the Web or VCRs ever existed seems to have slipped under the radar.
Exactly. The issue isn't copyright per se but copy protection. It doesn't matter if the thing being protected is copyrighted or not, because the protection itself is protected. You could get in trouble for breaking DRM even if the content is public domain, because Congress says the imaginary box containing that individual copy is sacred.
If you think about it, DRM is like a privatized turbo version of copyright. Copyright infringement is a civil matter between two parties. DRM breakage is a federal crime involving fines and jail time. Pretty sweet deal to have the government investigate and prosecute your lawsuits for you for free! How did we let the entertainment industry get away with this?
I'm about to break the exercise video market wide open.
Six.
Minute.
Abs!
You have the right to remain silent.
I just looked at their site. A few subtitles on the products would sure be helpful for readers who aren't digital photography buffs but who might know one who needs a birthday gift.
After reading the features list on this gadget I'm still not entirely sure what it's for. My first guess at a glance was a digital video camera with a nice display. I think it's actually a handheld mediaplayer. But that doesn't seem worth the price, so maybe it also does video editing. I really can't tell.
Putting a cute name on it may seem trite but it might make more developers aware that this exists and get them interested in using it. I only discovered xmlHttpRequest about 3 years ago, and was blow away by the ability to make a page essentially act like a true client-server app. The idea seemed to go by the wayside when Asp.Net appeared, as it stressed making the client side as dumb as possible and refreshing the page for every damn little thing. Now the MS pendulum seems to have swung back the other way; .Net features xmlHttpRequest functionality in object form. I really think the webpage-as-app is the way of the future, but you'd be surprised how few people actually use this technology.
The FCC's lawyer, Jacob Lewis, acknowledged the agency never had exercised such ancillary power but maintained it was permitted by Congress since lawmakers didn't explicitly outlaw it.
In other news, FCC lawyers say officials have ancillary power to enter your house at any time, nuke a burrito and watch MTV. Because Congress didn't explicitly outlaw it.
I wonder which will be the first country to be invaded for "Intellectual Property terrorism" ??
U.S. foreign trade moves continuously toward importing real goods and exporting IP. Eventually the stream of rights income from abroad will be as vital as wheat and steel, and the invisible fences we're building around our make-believe property will become as sacred as real ones around real land. We go to war for oil, we go to war to prove that one person's invisible friend is better another. It's just a matter of time before we go to war over IP.
I will second your praise of laser printers and add a gold star for the HP Laserjet 5p. I've had one for about 8 years; it has NEVER malfunctioned and rarely jams. It has seen periods of very heavy use, as my wife and I do large printings for our daughter's school. On occasion I have had that thing printing day and night, burning straight through entire toner cartridges and multiple cases of paper, without a hiccup. Super-reliable workhorse, probably the best money I ever spent.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
That's redundant. Because I also work there too.
If you're gonna keep score, at least stay awake! This was one point. Fritz and his team are still ahead by several runs, and they have the bases pretty well loaded.
One of the paradoxes of Intellectual Property is that the IP industry wants it to be treated like real property, exccept for the fact that you can't restrict how customers use real property once it's in their hands. At least not yet.
There is a small company that makes a template for routers -- the woodworking kind, not the networking kind -- for cutting dovetail joints. It's basically a piece of plastic that you clamp onto a piece of wood to guide the router. If you wanted to, you could use the template to make an identical template out of another piece of plastic. To guard against this possibility the manufacturer encloses a license agreement with the template, stating that the customer is specifically not allowed to do this. It further says you are authorized to use the template for personal woodworking projects only, not for business use.
This may be a silly example (although true), but I think there's a clear and present danger that the whacked logic of the IP world could spread like a fungus into the real world, and we could indeed wake up one day to find it illegal to use a Stanley hammer on non-Stanley nails. Frightening -- unless you are Mr. Stanley or his IP lawyer.
One more reason to find out who your representatives are and write them a short note periodically, once is good but once a month is better, urging them to consider the adverse impacts of IP issues on the public domain.
Have to admit I don't understand this story at all. Looks like they released a bunch of mp3s on vinyl, but is that "software"? I would call it the first release of "data" on vinyl. Maybe I'm missing the point. But then I don't even know what l337 means.
"I'm guessing maybe $100 billion total"
I would guess more like 1/10th of that. Most of the technology already exists. But suppose it did cost $100 billion. Complying with the U.S. income tax system costs between $100 and $500 billion per year, depending on whose estimates you believe. That takes into account the IRS's 100,000+ employees and the veritable army of non-govt people whose careers revolve around paying and avoiding income tax. Given that we throw away that kind of money each and every year just on bookkeeping overhead, you wouldn't think a space program that spanned many years would cause a big stir.
Maybe this is nitpicking, but could we please go back to saying "citizens" instead of "consumers?" Because consumers take whatever crap you give them. Citizens don't.
Just wait for a letter from a law firm informing you that you are a member of the class action suit against ChoicePoint.
optional additional steps:
2. Do nothing.
3. Profit!!!
Reminds me of the first BlackAdder episode
Lord Percy: "The King is dead! L-"
Prince Harry [interrupting]: "Probably dead."
Lord Percy: "The King is probably dead!"
I think your idea is great. Basing sales tax on the business location would certainly simplify the tax collecting process. One drawback might be that companies that do a lot of online sales would naturally want to put their headquarters in a state with the lowest sales tax. States compete with each other to get businesses to locate there.
On a slight tangent, people don't think much about the cost of collecting taxes, but it's overhead just like any business has overhead. The cost of complying with the federal income tax system is estimated anywhere between $100-$500 Billion per year. That's to maintain the IRS with it's 100,000+ employees, plus the salaries of all the private sector bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, consultants, and all sorts of others whose careers revolve solely around paying or avoiding income taxes. 401Ks, IRAs and most other retirement plans and their complex rules exist not to provide for old age (a bank account will do that), but to do it in a way that reduces taxes. Then there's the maze of clauses and provisions regularly added to the 4000+ pages of the tax code by Congress as favors to their financial backers, essentially using everybody else's tax money to repay campaign contributions. Replacing this mess with a national sales tax would eliminate most of the collection cost, as well as the Congressional bribe-payback mechanism.