I pay my taxes - that should be all the vote buying I need to do!
It would be, if taxes paid for campaigns. The problem here is that it costs the money to reach lots of people and that money has to come from somewhere. Your one vote is great, but if your $1000 can reach 5 voters, well, guess which one I'd go for 1000 times over? Guess who I'm going to listen to more?
This is the way politics seems to work here. If you don't put money where your mouth is, people won't listen to you. Heck they'll barely hear you. If you're old enough to know you are a whiney brat, isn't time to stop being one? Play the game by the rules and not only can you play later, you might get to change them later on.
Something tells me that Intuit isn't going to see continued growth and profits next year, though.
You are right about that.
We ran into this piece of crap while I was trying to help my sister do her taxes. I installed the product on my machine and then went out of town. Since my family has a habit of farking up my machine every time they touch it, I told her to install it on the main family machine and then I'd walk her through it (I supported Turbo Tax in a crap-tech job the previous year). No dice there. We did fork out the extra cash, but it will be a number of years before they get anything else from me or anyone in my family.
While i'm not exactly sure how they figure it out, i did once get a phone call that asked which stations i listened to, and if i liked certain clips from songs.
The company you are looking for is called Arbitron. Most of the ratings information is compiled during 'books' which are roughly equivalent to 'sweeps' for television. Most of the information is compiled from written diaries where a listener is expected to write down each 15 minutes of radio they listen to. Last I heard (couple of years ago) they were working with a technology called 'People Meters' (IIRC), which would automate the process a bit more.
BTW, I learned this while working the databases of a company that attempted to exploit Arbitron's selection criteria (we roughly reverse engineered it) and marketing directly to the people most likely to have a diary. Ya know, as a simple reminder of what to write in the diaries.
It was a fairly successful business, right up until Clear Channel bought most of our clients and used their own marketing company to do what we did, leading to about a 30% reduction in staff at my employer. Two years after I was laid off the company I worked for crumbled and was sold.
Not sure what you mean by "blanket compulsory licensing for Internet media",
Something that would work more like this (hopefully).
Say I run a website and I want to have a song available for download. So I put it up, then 5,000 people download it. Then I cut a check for 5000 * [fee per song] to the owner of the copyright and everyone is happy.
The way it works now, someone has to negotiate rates for each and every work in existence, thus destroying a potential marketplace, as such negotiation is well beyond the means of any but the largest entities.
What you're describing is an Internet tax, fees pooled into some common pool administered by some central decisionmaking body, and a dole distributed by this body - essentially welfare.
This is not what I'm describing, so there is a disconnect someplace.
People get bored with crybabies moaning about the same thing, year after year. "Rights! Civil liberties!"
yes, so they change the rules and you shut up.
But since then we have seen a dramatic and fundamental shift both in public opinion and the behavior of law enforcement (especially the AG's office.) And people don't seem to care. They are incredibly concerned with security and their own personal safety, which they believe to be threatened. Liberty takes a back seat to safety, and Franklin can fuck himself.
I dunno, I tend to wander over to/. now and again and fight against the pessimism that is so rampant here. Yea, things suck, but these issues are so far removed from most people's lives (coming back to DMCA stuff), it is very difficult to grasp how they affect everyone. But people are getting it, and the ones that don't are dying faster. Patience and perseverence, and all that. Really, it works. (it just kinda sucks in the mean-time).
Your voice doesn't matter if you shout once and then shut up. But if you come back out, 8 months down the road, and yell the same thing, but louder, then people will start to listen. Do it for another 8, and another, and they will start to hear. The process takes years of steady action, not one one-night of balls-to-the-wall coding.
I have reached an age where I grow impatient in arguing semantics.
Not to be pedantic, but just posted a long comment that is arguing semantics.
I consider the argument that "making an infringing copy is exactly the same as stealing a CD" to be a fair argument.
It is fair, but also wrong. But to understand that, we have to get into semantics. I'm sure you've seen this before, but if someone shot your car with a ray gun you couldn't detect. Then pointed it at the air and created a copy of your car, you have just said that you would consider this stealing. That doesn't make sense to me, because you are not depriving someone of anything.
On intent..
The intent of people who use p2p networks to download mp3s is to get the songs without paying for them.
This is not true for all people. This might be true of some, but not all. Finding that particular ratio would be interesting, but already your argument is based on shaky premises. What about those who try to listen to songs that aren't is wide current distribution? Or if someone says, 'Hey, check out this band.'
The techology of the day allows for this to happen, with a minimum of effort and no damage. In this case you have a person making a copy in order to be exposed to a song. They have not taken anything, but copied. They have given their attention to an artist, using their own resources.
The big question is what this 'takes' from the artist.
Artists get paid for each copy of their work sold, and when people download the mp3's, they are denying the artists recompense that is rightly theirs. Is this stealing?
Artists also get paid for other actions. You say this recompense for my action of seeking out the work of an artist necessitates I pay for that priviledge, because they have recorded it. And that this recompense is 'rightly theirs'.
A question arises here about what 'rights' they deserve for their creation. These rights are defined by laws. These laws are given their real power through enforcement, as a law that nobody enforces is worth slightly more than the paper it is written on (plus the value of the ink). So a question comes about how to give the artist their 'rightful payment'. In order to enforce the law as it stands, this means putting a bunch of people with little or no assets in jail. It is essentially exposing individuals to rules and regulations that were designed to control publishing companies. Now that every person with a computer and a Net connection is, in fact, an multi-national publishing company, we have very strong rules for very weak entities.
This seems an imbalance. Now, if this balance were changed, and copying files that are not intended for sale were made legal (like it is in some countries) then you would have no problem. The artist would have no problem, since there are other ways to provide for ones sustenence by creating and performing music. This seems like a simple solution, since your only argument relies on the current law, and if that were changed, you would have no problem.
The people who would (and do) have a problem are those that sell recordings. The simple fact is that the value of these recording under a straight market analysis has dropped tremendously given the fact that any person with a computer and a net connection could provide enough supply for the entire world. This is a profound economic shift. The rules should come to reflect that shift, rather than try to make that shift illegal.
Many people do steal music because they don't want to pay for it. But this is completely rational since one can create their own copy for a minute fraction of the cost of an officially endorsed physical copy. A cost that includes, in large part, another service that one can do for themselves, which is finding music they enjoy.
So you have a major imbalance in the market of a free industrialized economy. How can you expect agents within that econo
I don't know if you can draw such a distinct line in this case. Especially based on your examples. A phone line is just as innovative with 2 people using it, as 1,000 sets of 2 people. The lightbulb is also an individual innovation.
The power of P2P networks is based in their users, the more there are the more powerful and, essentially, innovative they become. Yes, the software is doing the organizing, but without something to organize, it's useless.
The system is the people who use/create it. If the system is innovative, then it becomes a semantic question on whether or not the people who make up the network are also to be labeled as such.
The replacement manufacturers are simple filling a niche where there is an abnormal amount of difference between the cost to produce something and the price to buy it.
The cost of a drug isn't in the manufacturing, it's in the research, the trials, the FDA approval and so on.
Drugs are just like music in that they take a whole heck of a lot of marketing to be blockbusters. Look into "consulting" fees that drug co's pay doctors to prescribe the stuff, and you'll see some nasty ethics.
My belief is that after our first mistake of eatting of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Man that sentence uses "of" a lot) we can never go back to the blissful ignorant innocence of our childhood as a species.
What I don't really understand (well, I can see some of the argument but not the logic) is how the action that allowed for the rise of sentience and a knowledge of good and evil (the beginning of morality) can be considered a "mistake" or "original sin". Who thinks that being an ignorantly blissful child is a superior mode of existence?
Some societies have accepted the 'Let's have no killing of anyone at all' axiom, and it has tended to work out very badly for them (New Zealand provides some particularly good examples of this).
Can you provide some more information on this? I have no idea what you are talking about. What is New Zealand's policy and how has it hurt them?
Why is C14 not valid for dates past what you gave? Because there is no C14 present!!!
O.k. so you don't understand what "half-life" means. Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the insigths of Zeno. Here's a quick refresher quiz and applet on half-life. The general idea is that by always taking half of something away, you will always have something left over.
Anyway, back to what I'm guessing is your point.
Why can't C14 be used for dates greater than about 5000 years? Because there is supposedly no C14 left!!!
From the information provided in the link your 5,000 years is missing a zero. It's used from samples up to 50-60K years old. There is sill C14 left at this point and there will be for a long time, such is the nature of half-life. It seems that it is not deemed accurate beyond this point.
So, if we take a sample that is supposedly 50,000,000 years old, then we would expect to find NO C14. Now, if we take this sample, and there is enough C14 to give us a date, then two things can be concluded:
It gives you a date, but it is not an accurate date.
1. The dates given by different methods do not agree with each other
Yes, especially after the useful period for C14 dating is passed.
2. The sample is perhaps much younger than previously thought
No, it is simply being measured by the wrong device. And so the nitpicking concludes.
Yes, stop thinking. Go back to reading your dogma. Or save yourself some time and learn how the science actually works and what it is saying. You'll realize that most of the contradictions you feel are due to your own misunderstanding of the words you've been trying to use.
and if you had read the link you would realize that this is why carbon-14 isn't used to date really old objects. You have no point, it what the nitpicking reveals.
Slashdot Mirror
I pay my taxes - that should be all the vote buying I need to do!
It would be, if taxes paid for campaigns. The problem here is that it costs the money to reach lots of people and that money has to come from somewhere. Your one vote is great, but if your $1000 can reach 5 voters, well, guess which one I'd go for 1000 times over? Guess who I'm going to listen to more?
This is the way politics seems to work here. If you don't put money where your mouth is, people won't listen to you. Heck they'll barely hear you. If you're old enough to know you are a whiney brat, isn't time to stop being one? Play the game by the rules and not only can you play later, you might get to change them later on.
To use this effectively.
I did get to watch a few Southpark episodes on the way home from work today. It was a fun flight.
Something tells me that Intuit isn't going to see continued growth and profits next year, though.
You are right about that.
We ran into this piece of crap while I was trying to help my sister do her taxes. I installed the product on my machine and then went out of town. Since my family has a habit of farking up my machine every time they touch it, I told her to install it on the main family machine and then I'd walk her through it (I supported Turbo Tax in a crap-tech job the previous year). No dice there. We did fork out the extra cash, but it will be a number of years before they get anything else from me or anyone in my family.
While i'm not exactly sure how they figure it out, i did once get a phone call that asked which stations i listened to, and if i liked certain clips from songs.
The company you are looking for is called Arbitron. Most of the ratings information is compiled during 'books' which are roughly equivalent to 'sweeps' for television. Most of the information is compiled from written diaries where a listener is expected to write down each 15 minutes of radio they listen to. Last I heard (couple of years ago) they were working with a technology called 'People Meters' (IIRC), which would automate the process a bit more.
BTW, I learned this while working the databases of a company that attempted to exploit Arbitron's selection criteria (we roughly reverse engineered it) and marketing directly to the people most likely to have a diary. Ya know, as a simple reminder of what to write in the diaries.
It was a fairly successful business, right up until Clear Channel bought most of our clients and used their own marketing company to do what we did, leading to about a 30% reduction in staff at my employer. Two years after I was laid off the company I worked for crumbled and was sold.
Not sure what you mean by "blanket compulsory licensing for Internet media",
Something that would work more like this (hopefully).
Say I run a website and I want to have a song available for download. So I put it up, then 5,000 people download it. Then I cut a check for 5000 * [fee per song] to the owner of the copyright and everyone is happy.
The way it works now, someone has to negotiate rates for each and every work in existence, thus destroying a potential marketplace, as such negotiation is well beyond the means of any but the largest entities.
What you're describing is an Internet tax, fees pooled into some common pool administered by some central decisionmaking body, and a dole distributed by this body - essentially welfare.
This is not what I'm describing, so there is a disconnect someplace.
People get bored with crybabies moaning about the same thing, year after year. "Rights! Civil liberties!"
/. now and again and fight against the pessimism that is so rampant here. Yea, things suck, but these issues are so far removed from most people's lives (coming back to DMCA stuff), it is very difficult to grasp how they affect everyone. But people are getting it, and the ones that don't are dying faster. Patience and perseverence, and all that. Really, it works. (it just kinda sucks in the mean-time).
yes, so they change the rules and you shut up.
But since then we have seen a dramatic and fundamental shift both in public opinion and the behavior of law enforcement (especially the AG's office.) And people don't seem to care. They are incredibly concerned with security and their own personal safety, which they believe to be threatened. Liberty takes a back seat to safety, and Franklin can fuck himself.
I dunno about that. I saw a story about this on CNN today. And don't forget these folks. So people are working on the issue, and fighting against the tide.
I dunno, I tend to wander over to
Your voice doesn't matter.
Your voice doesn't matter if you shout once and then shut up. But if you come back out, 8 months down the road, and yell the same thing, but louder, then people will start to listen. Do it for another 8, and another, and they will start to hear. The process takes years of steady action, not one one-night of balls-to-the-wall coding.
I have reached an age where I grow impatient in arguing semantics.
Not to be pedantic, but just posted a long comment that is arguing semantics.
I consider the argument that "making an infringing copy is exactly the same as stealing a CD" to be a fair argument.
It is fair, but also wrong. But to understand that, we have to get into semantics. I'm sure you've seen this before, but if someone shot your car with a ray gun you couldn't detect. Then pointed it at the air and created a copy of your car, you have just said that you would consider this stealing. That doesn't make sense to me, because you are not depriving someone of anything.
On intent..
The intent of people who use p2p networks to download mp3s is to get the songs without paying for them.
This is not true for all people. This might be true of some, but not all. Finding that particular ratio would be interesting, but already your argument is based on shaky premises. What about those who try to listen to songs that aren't is wide current distribution? Or if someone says, 'Hey, check out this band.'
The techology of the day allows for this to happen, with a minimum of effort and no damage. In this case you have a person making a copy in order to be exposed to a song. They have not taken anything, but copied. They have given their attention to an artist, using their own resources.
The big question is what this 'takes' from the artist.
Artists get paid for each copy of their work sold, and when people download the mp3's, they are denying the artists recompense that is rightly theirs. Is this stealing?
Artists also get paid for other actions. You say this recompense for my action of seeking out the work of an artist necessitates I pay for that priviledge, because they have recorded it. And that this recompense is 'rightly theirs'.
A question arises here about what 'rights' they deserve for their creation. These rights are defined by laws. These laws are given their real power through enforcement, as a law that nobody enforces is worth slightly more than the paper it is written on (plus the value of the ink). So a question comes about how to give the artist their 'rightful payment'. In order to enforce the law as it stands, this means putting a bunch of people with little or no assets in jail. It is essentially exposing individuals to rules and regulations that were designed to control publishing companies. Now that every person with a computer and a Net connection is, in fact, an multi-national publishing company, we have very strong rules for very weak entities.
This seems an imbalance. Now, if this balance were changed, and copying files that are not intended for sale were made legal (like it is in some countries) then you would have no problem. The artist would have no problem, since there are other ways to provide for ones sustenence by creating and performing music. This seems like a simple solution, since your only argument relies on the current law, and if that were changed, you would have no problem.
The people who would (and do) have a problem are those that sell recordings. The simple fact is that the value of these recording under a straight market analysis has dropped tremendously given the fact that any person with a computer and a net connection could provide enough supply for the entire world. This is a profound economic shift. The rules should come to reflect that shift, rather than try to make that shift illegal.
Many people do steal music because they don't want to pay for it. But this is completely rational since one can create their own copy for a minute fraction of the cost of an officially endorsed physical copy. A cost that includes, in large part, another service that one can do for themselves, which is finding music they enjoy.
So you have a major imbalance in the market of a free industrialized economy. How can you expect agents within that econo
I don't know if you can draw such a distinct line in this case. Especially based on your examples. A phone line is just as innovative with 2 people using it, as 1,000 sets of 2 people. The lightbulb is also an individual innovation.
The power of P2P networks is based in their users, the more there are the more powerful and, essentially, innovative they become. Yes, the software is doing the organizing, but without something to organize, it's useless.
The system is the people who use/create it. If the system is innovative, then it becomes a semantic question on whether or not the people who make up the network are also to be labeled as such.
"Reproduction in any form is explicitly illegal".
I can't wait until we can prove that remembering a movie is copyright infringement. What, maybe 10-15 years?
Remind me again about what is not 'innovative' about a global media network that is neither controlled or owned by any one entity?
Remind me again about what is not 'innovative' about being able to type in a band's name, anywhere in the world, and hear their music within minutes?
because there would have to be some universe out there where slashdot isn't a tech news site, but a daily orgy.
Printers don't say that, the free market does.
The replacement manufacturers are simple filling a niche where there is an abnormal amount of difference between the cost to produce something and the price to buy it.
The cost of a drug isn't in the manufacturing, it's in the research, the trials, the FDA approval and so on.
Drugs are just like music in that they take a whole heck of a lot of marketing to be blockbusters. Look into "consulting" fees that drug co's pay doctors to prescribe the stuff, and you'll see some nasty ethics.
...pictures of Calvin pissing on an Apple.
given the ratings that tech TV garners, I'd say /. is the number 1 tech show.
My belief is that after our first mistake of eatting of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Man that sentence uses "of" a lot) we can never go back to the blissful ignorant innocence of our childhood as a species.
What I don't really understand (well, I can see some of the argument but not the logic) is how the action that allowed for the rise of sentience and a knowledge of good and evil (the beginning of morality) can be considered a "mistake" or "original sin". Who thinks that being an ignorantly blissful child is a superior mode of existence?
But as they say, you know what assumeing gets you.
:-)
Remedial spelling classes?
Some societies have accepted the 'Let's have no killing of anyone at all' axiom, and it has tended to work out very badly for them (New Zealand provides some particularly good examples of this).
Can you provide some more information on this? I have no idea what you are talking about. What is New Zealand's policy and how has it hurt them?
only smaller
how about "only lighter"? (and this concludes today's message from the AIS [Analogy Improvement Service])
And Congressmen you should support.
/.
Read about 'em here. Previously covered on
Anyway, there is progress being made. We learn fast. And the Net makes it that much faster.
since that was the only point I saw you try and make. If you'd like to re-iterate your point, I'd be glad to wear it down to a nub, yet again.
Why is C14 not valid for dates past what you gave? Because there is no C14 present!!!
O.k. so you don't understand what "half-life" means. Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the insigths of Zeno. Here's a quick refresher quiz and applet on half-life. The general idea is that by always taking half of something away, you will always have something left over.
Anyway, back to what I'm guessing is your point.
Why can't C14 be used for dates greater than about 5000 years? Because there is supposedly no C14 left!!!
From the information provided in the link your 5,000 years is missing a zero. It's used from samples up to 50-60K years old. There is sill C14 left at this point and there will be for a long time, such is the nature of half-life. It seems that it is not deemed accurate beyond this point.
So, if we take a sample that is supposedly 50,000,000 years old, then we would expect to find NO C14. Now, if we take this sample, and there is enough C14 to give us a date, then two things can be concluded:
It gives you a date, but it is not an accurate date.
1. The dates given by different methods do not agree with each other
Yes, especially after the useful period for C14 dating is passed.
2. The sample is perhaps much younger than previously thought
No, it is simply being measured by the wrong device. And so the nitpicking concludes.
Yes, stop thinking. Go back to reading your dogma. Or save yourself some time and learn how the science actually works and what it is saying. You'll realize that most of the contradictions you feel are due to your own misunderstanding of the words you've been trying to use.
and if you had read the link you would realize that this is why carbon-14 isn't used to date really old objects. You have no point, it what the nitpicking reveals.