The article had some good kernels of truth, besides the more pedantic text formatting questions. For instance, adding comment hints where program flow is less obvious in a case statement.
For the most part, style choices are personal. Unfortunately, people have opinions on everything and are poor judges to recognize when they are simply promoting one arbitrary choice over another without a provable reason.
Consider this example. In C, I get annoyed by code that uses conditionals without braces when there is a single statement in the condition. That works for the first line, but makes it hard to catch errors when a second line is added that falls outside of the conditional. i.e. if(foo==bar)
doSomething(); I think this is very obviously bad, but I run across code like this, and people who are unapologetic about it. Am I unfairly judging this from my perspective, or is there merit to re-writing this style choice?
I agree, I looked at the actual form too and thought the same thing, totally laughable. They also want all sites past and present.... you mean like the pages full of jotted down passwords I have from 1998 for web sites that have been defunct for almost a decade?
On so many technical levels it fails too. Do they need all of the dumb-ass 'security questions' that I have to remember how I answered 3 years ago? Will my bank account get flagged and locked out if they try to log in from a different location and browser than I do? Will they suck messages off of a POP email server so I never see them? Do anonymous Slashdot postings count?
Maybe as a joke I would just give my Facebook login so that they can dig through 938 requests for 'lil green patch' and other pointless apps that I never even bother to delete.
If I had to fill out this form, I would simply leave those lines blank. If they ever came back and asked for more info, they would get a polite: 'I don't think so, you idiot' from me. I suppose they could later use that to dismiss an employee. Or this is some bizarre way to prevent anyone from getting hired..... If you don't put info down, you are a lair because everyone at least has an email account someplace. If you do put something down then I know the applicant is a security risk, and will end up giving out company secrets to the first lame phishing attempt that comes by.
I don't see how great lakes water levels tie into global warming at all, no matter which side of the issue you are on. This is because the lake levels are 100% regulated by human civil engineering authorities. Canadian-US treaties and agencies regulate exactly how much water flows out the dams and locks in the St. Lawrence river(the final exit from the Great Lakes into the Atlantic ocean.
I live in the Rochester, NY area which is on Lake Ontario. Lake Ontario is the final lake in the chain. Every few months, some news article pops up about what the lake level should be set at. Hydro power and shipping interests prefer a higher lake level, and waterfront property owners prefer lower levels to limit erosion. The lake has an elevation of 243 ft. (74 meters), so it isn't tied at all to ocean water levels.
I'm from New York. What is this magical automatic fuel lever holder clip thingy?
But anyway, your point about human apathy and convenience is really where the problem is. This is why I like Python 10x better than Java or.NET. Python's runtime is relatively small and simple, and doesn't require tens of megabytes of dlls in system folders. I can write a Python app, package it up with py2exe and distribute it without harassing the end user with installing any runtime stuff. Only the required dlls and lib code is wrapped up into a folder that can run without any system file installs or registry entries. The end user doesn't even need to install Python because py2exe wraps this up for me.
This has always been the downfall of interpreted/managed languages.
VB: does everyone remember the error messages 'missing vbrun50.dll' It took a long while before these applications and Windows co-ordinate this activity to make these issues seamless.
.NET: the few times I've tried to run a.NET app, I've been sadly disappointed. I apparently didn't have the right version of.NET, or no.NET at all. I don't enjoy downloading hundreds of megabytes of runtime code to run a simple app.
Java: Same issue. Plus Java updater takes over my system and occasionally breaks apps that used to work. Do I have java 2.0, SE/EE, JRE/JDK xyz... who cares, don't want to know, just want it to work.
People should be doing everything from measurement to arithmetic in hexidecimal (base 16) these days. SI is obsolete in the information age. Although it might be nice to replace the abcdef numerals with something non-alphabetic.
Seriously.
You can draw all the same arguments that were made for the metric system and apply then to why we should switch everything to base 16.
Floating-point operations are generally performed on a base-2 representation of a base 10 number, so conversion errors are common. Base-10 floats or decimal types are possible, but less commonly used and generally don't have CPU hardware support.
Base-16 can represent larger values in a shorter space.
Computer memory is based on address lines that follow the powers of 2, so that a 'kilo' byte is 1024... of course people are just starting to collectively address this issue with the use of KiB.
While we are at it, why do we still have 24-hour days, or worse 12-hour half-days where the 0 hour is actually 12 and proceeds to 1. Why are there 360 degrees in one rotation? Arc seconds, arc-minutes... Why is a dozen 12 units?
Of course I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I know most non-computer science people out there would have their head spinning if they tried to understand anything besides base-10.
I graduated from RIT also. Quite frankly, as a private school they make plenty of money from tuition alone... There aren't very many grad students doing paid research there anyway. MY personal opinion is that if you are an undergrad paying tuition then your work is your own. If you are a paid (graduate) student then you are an employee and the same rules apply that would at any corporation.
Interesting thought that even though the base station is close by, possibly a satellite could capture radiated signals from a distance concurrently. That could be legal maybe because the satellites are in international territory, I don't know. It is comparatively easy to do on the old AMPS and TDMA technologies vs modern CDMA. This is much less likely with modern CDMA/ digital spread spectrum communication since the transmitter and receiver must act in perfect concert in terms of timing, chip code, and power level. A remote evesdropper has a difficult time reconstructing the signal. It's possible though I suppose. I'll bet the NSA is simply breaking the law and has a tap in every telcom cabinet in America. I was actually quite impressed with how quickly some arrests were made after 9/11 based on cell phone communications, though I am still fairly outraged of the illegality of the whole thing. As a geek, I'd love to see how they collect, store, and process petabits of voice conversations going on in the country.
I'm sure most bank robbers know they are committing evil acts. So we don't need to be completely apologetic for Microsoft. Signing and submitting legal documents is something that isn't taken lightly, perjury is a big deal. As a corporation, they act as one legal entity as a person does. Just because the communication broke down between the engineering dept. and legal is no excuse.
That being said, Microsoft probably wasn't going out of its way to steal someone else's tech. It has probably just become the culture in big tech companies to wrap a patent around anything that moves. This is indicative of how badly broken the USPTO is and how devalued and poisonous patents have become. I'd just use this more as evidence against the patent environment than as a condemnation of Microsoft.
Low unemployment does not mean high numbers of people employed. People move to other geographic areas, other careers, retire early, or stop looking for work. I live in a city that has 'improving' unemployment numbers. But that is because tens of thousands of people have left the area. Actual employment numbers have not increased.
High-skill jobs do go unfilled because the requirements to fill the job are unrealistic. i.e. someone with 10 years experience in.Net with a master's degree who will work for under $40k per year. If the job really needed to be filled, the market would make it happen by paying the right price.
But yet we do agree. If you think the music industry is evil, then go ahead and listen to someone else's music. If you find the music of the evil music industry to be enjoyable, then by definition you are creating demand for the product. They have created a product you desire. That doesn't give you the right to take it free of charge just because you wouldn't have paid for it. Can you just go into a store and take what you want because you wouldn't have paid for it if you had to?
You are also making too many presumptions. I agree with you that people have every right to make backup copies. I also think DRM is generally a bad thing because it creates a de-facto 'planned obsolescence.' If I purchase a license for a song, it should be valid for any media format I want to put it on so long as I don't pass it off to other people.
I can easily take ethics and morality out of this argument, so it is not that I am in one religious camp or the other. In economics, there are simply equations and rules that are followed. If the citizens of this country decided to abolish copyright, then so be it. Just be ready for the market to change in a dramatic way, maybe for the best, maybe for the worst. Copyrights create a market where one couldn't exist without them. So if you wanted to break the law, then go ahead. The law supports the fact that you can be prosecuted for doing so. History is full of examples of civil disobedience. You just have to decide if you are willing to go to jail, or be sued for doing so.
As i stated, people will produce music for free, but it won't be the commercial type of music that the market seems to prefer. If the market preferred part-time musicians, live performances and teenage garage bands to mass printed recorded music, then mass printed recorded music wouldn't exist. No sane corporation would produce that type of music without some form of protection. There are real costs to doing business.
You made a good point that the radio still creates a place that commercial music can be played without charge since it is ad supported. But then you still need the radio station to comply with some type of copyright even if you don't hold the consumer responsible.
I assume you are referring to patents being 17 year protection. Patents are an exclusive deal that prevents anyone from coincidentally developing and selling an invention. Copyrights protect things that have to be copied - not things that can be accidentally infringed as with a patent. This is why patent protection is weaker, because it is much broader and can effect everyone in an industry. A copyright only protects a specific instance of something for which there are infinite possibilities. You can string any 12 notes YOU feel like and call it your own work as well, so it is perfectly fair. People that are good at stringing 12 notes together deserve to set whatever price they want - customers still get to decide if they want to buy.
Either way, the big picture is that copyrights and patents are the least of your worries when it comes to actually developing a product or recording that is going to be profitable at all. So yes, companies deserve protection or they won't produce music. The market demonstrates that people are willing to pay more for well produced and marketed music. If copyrights didn't exist, music would be cheaper, but you wouldn't be happy with that either because there would only be bands willing to work for free in their spare time after work. You can easily do without music, or find a cheaper substitute. Compare this in contrast to patents on medicines, in which case it is something you do not have a choice over. That, I would agree is unethical to use exclusive legal protections to raise prices. But then again, nobody would produce medicines for free either.
From Wiki: "Theft of services is the legal term for a crime which is committed when a person obtains valuable services -- as opposed to goods -- by deception, force, threat or other unlawful means, i.e., without lawfully compensating the provider of said services.".. "Crimes of this sort are typically prosecuted as larceny, and may be either a misdemeanor or a felony, based upon the value of the services illegally obtained."
It varies by jurisdiction, but it would probably only be tresspassing if you are asked to leave and refuse to.
Either way, you can go to jail under crimal charges.
Sounds like a good business to start then. There is no law or regulation keeping you from starting your own label. Heck, the equipment needed is pretty cheap nowdays. The law even protects your work from theft! That's a way better proposition for a start-up than most businesses.
Now let's see... just need to discover and coach some world-class talent. Market the resulting album so that people will actually want to buy it. Get your product on the shelves. Compete with a bunch of other equally capable talented music producers.
There are thousands of small labels out there, but guess what? People don't bother buying from them because they desire the most famous acts only. That is a socialogical factor, not an issue of copyright law. If you belive that the record companies don't deserve your money, then buy from a local talent in your city. But don't cry that you have to pay high prices for a highly desirable national act.
Guess what would happen if we forced song prices to be $0.10 or $0.25? Nobody would produce music at those prices. There are many costs besides duplication cost, and they are unavoidable.
Stars do get hotter over time due to several mechanisms. Hydrogen fusion yields a buildup of helium in a star. Helium fusion 'burns' at a higher temperature due to its higher density. This can be measured by comparing a star's age with the spectral output of light to determine the star's composition and temperature. Science is about making a proposition and then supporting it with evidence, not estimations and assumptions. This is the fundamental rift between faith and science.
The really cool thing about organic compounds like DNA and amino acids is that you can put them together and they do amazing things with little outside help. That is how polymerase chain reaction (PCR) works in the lab to replicate DNA. Car parts are very immobile and only fit together in one engineered configuration. The fact that DNA and amino acid molocules floating in solution can autonomously perform their function is a good argument that they have been doing so on their own since the beginning of time as well.
DNA and evolution work sort of like the proverbial 'million monkeys on a million typewriters.' If you try enough combinations, eventually one will succeed. By contrast, building a car is absolutely about getting it right on the first or second try.
Here is a hypothetical question I've often asked myself... How does information originate? You state that nothing as complex as life could ever form spontanously. What is it about humans that allows us to create new information such as the design of a car in your example? Do we have some special ability that does not exist anyplace else?
You are correct that oxygen is a big part of the debate about the Miller-Urey experiment. The evidence that there was oxygen from day 1 of the Earth isn't totally solid, though. There is evidence for several different early atmospheres. Wikipedia has a pretty good article about where the scientific debate stands today. The answer isn't perfectly clear either. When oxygen existed on Earth and how it got there is still an active scientific debate. That does not support creationism, it merely gives us more interesting questions to answer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experimen t
"In 1953, Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey, working at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment which would change the approach of scientific investigation into the origin of life."
This is basic 10th grade biology class in a public school. Amino acids do form in natural circumstances. This is exactly why arguments for creationism are not scientifically valid. There is direct evidence to disprove creationist arguments and creationists refuse to accept them.
I agree that any reputable PC seller needs to include an OS for 98% of the units sold. The problem is that they are clearly selling 2 distinct products that are marketed separately by 2 distinct companies, which is what this law apparently prohibits. In the pen example, the refills are just an expected product produced by the OEM. Like getting a replacement belt for your car. It is technologically very easy for any number of 3rd parties to produce the replacement part, thus allowing for a fair market. Windows is a natural monopoly based on standardization of 1 and only one possible vendor. In my opinion, all that really matters is that consumers are free to buy the unit without the bundled product - without hassle and without unfair pricing contracts that often exist between the OEMs and MS.
Interesting to consider the Soviet communist state as a religion. At first I dismissed your argument completely, most people are pretty clear on the differences between politics and religion. However, since I wasn't there I didn't experience it. But I would still call the communist state a competitor to religion for people's mind-share. This is supported by the communists' rabid oppresion of religous practice. A religion promises a higher power outside the confines of physical reality. Politics promises a human or scientific utopia that is equally unachievable, but doesn't require the denial of physical reality - just the denial of practical reality.
While the differences between politics and religion are subtle, and may support your argument, I think it's important to see them as a system of two distinct forces.
In the USA, politics is equally divided based on people who support religion, and those who deny it.
In both religion and politics, dogmatic commitment to beliefs prevent people from making the optimum choices.
Anything you saw after rebates in the holiday season is a loss-leader. i.e. the store is losing money selling it to you and they only sell a limited number, so you can't count that in any actual price comparison.
Yes, the mass market PC hardware from HP is cheaper than a piecemeal system because of economies of scale. But, _it would be much cheaper_ if HP wasn't bound by Microsoft to price no-OS machines higher than windows boxes.
yeah, I totally agree. I've seen this idea every year for over 10 years; ignore it. These articles are written by people who never studied computer architecture. Every CPU needs a real operating system, not a virtual 'internet OS'. Maybe that OS will be very light and lack any application level code, but it will always be there. At the very least, you need the kernel, drivers, storage, memory management, process management, and communication software. That's most of what Windows does. Besides Internet Explorer, there isn't much application code provided with Windows.
It would be possible to stream application code from the network, even boot the PC from the network. This is all totally possible right now, and has been since ethernet cards with boot ROMs were invented. Not too many people bother since hard drives are cheaper, faster, more reliable and can stand-alone. People like owning their systems for the most common applications that don't explicitly require the internet. i.e. Word processing, corporate databases, etc. Internet-based applications are here now, but they are not an OS. That model doesn't make sense. Applications on the Internet are just fancy server-based applications.
To be honest, Google has a long way to go in the web-app business and they don't exist at all in the OS business. For all of their hype and capital, what do they have...? An e-mail application that is marginally better than what preceeded it for at least 5-7 years?? A map application with fancy scrolling, but still can't accurately locate a house within 500 ft (in my experience).. and has poor resolution satellite imagery for non-urban areas. Google spreadsheets are cool, but not revolutionary. I still use the old-fashioned spreadsheets on a daily basis. I'm not believing that Google is really even competing with any OS. Unless they have some major secret project to roll thier own OS from the ground up and compete head-to-head with a highly entrenched company like MS, why should we ever be thinking about a 'web OS.'
Slashdot Mirror
The article had some good kernels of truth, besides the more pedantic text formatting questions. For instance, adding comment hints where program flow is less obvious in a case statement.
For the most part, style choices are personal. Unfortunately, people have opinions on everything and are poor judges to recognize when they are simply promoting one arbitrary choice over another without a provable reason.
Consider this example. In C, I get annoyed by code that uses conditionals without braces when there is a single statement in the condition. That works for the first line, but makes it hard to catch errors when a second line is added that falls outside of the conditional.
i.e.
if(foo==bar)
doSomething();
I think this is very obviously bad, but I run across code like this, and people who are unapologetic about it. Am I unfairly judging this from my perspective, or is there merit to re-writing this style choice?
I agree, I looked at the actual form too and thought the same thing, totally laughable.
They also want all sites past and present.... you mean like the pages full of jotted down passwords I have from 1998 for web sites that have been defunct for almost a decade?
On so many technical levels it fails too. Do they need all of the dumb-ass 'security questions' that I have to remember how I answered 3 years ago? Will my bank account get flagged and locked out if they try to log in from a different location and browser than I do? Will they suck messages off of a POP email server so I never see them? Do anonymous Slashdot postings count?
Maybe as a joke I would just give my Facebook login so that they can dig through 938 requests for 'lil green patch' and other pointless apps that I never even bother to delete.
If I had to fill out this form, I would simply leave those lines blank. If they ever came back and asked for more info, they would get a polite: 'I don't think so, you idiot' from me. I suppose they could later use that to dismiss an employee. Or this is some bizarre way to prevent anyone from getting hired..... If you don't put info down, you are a lair because everyone at least has an email account someplace. If you do put something down then I know the applicant is a security risk, and will end up giving out company secrets to the first lame phishing attempt that comes by.
I don't see how great lakes water levels tie into global warming at all, no matter which side of the issue you are on. This is because the lake levels are 100% regulated by human civil engineering authorities. Canadian-US treaties and agencies regulate exactly how much water flows out the dams and locks in the St. Lawrence river(the final exit from the Great Lakes into the Atlantic ocean.
I live in the Rochester, NY area which is on Lake Ontario. Lake Ontario is the final lake in the chain. Every few months, some news article pops up about what the lake level should be set at. Hydro power and shipping interests prefer a higher lake level, and waterfront property owners prefer lower levels to limit erosion. The lake has an elevation of 243 ft. (74 meters), so it isn't tied at all to ocean water levels.
I'm from New York. What is this magical automatic fuel lever holder clip thingy?
But anyway, your point about human apathy and convenience is really where the problem is. This is why I like Python 10x better than Java or .NET. Python's runtime is relatively small and simple, and doesn't require tens of megabytes of dlls in system folders. I can write a Python app, package it up with py2exe and distribute it without harassing the end user with installing any runtime stuff. Only the required dlls and lib code is wrapped up into a folder that can run without any system file installs or registry entries. The end user doesn't even need to install Python because py2exe wraps this up for me.
This has always been the downfall of interpreted/managed languages.
VB: does everyone remember the error messages 'missing vbrun50.dll' It took a long while before these applications and Windows co-ordinate this activity to make these issues seamless.
Java: Same issue. Plus Java updater takes over my system and occasionally breaks apps that used to work. Do I have java 2.0, SE/EE, JRE/JDK xyz... who cares, don't want to know, just want it to work.
People should be doing everything from measurement to arithmetic in hexidecimal (base 16) these days. SI is obsolete in the information age. Although it might be nice to replace the abcdef numerals with something non-alphabetic.
Seriously.
You can draw all the same arguments that were made for the metric system and apply then to why we should switch everything to base 16.
Floating-point operations are generally performed on a base-2 representation of a base 10 number, so conversion errors are common. Base-10 floats or decimal types are possible, but less commonly used and generally don't have CPU hardware support.
Base-16 can represent larger values in a shorter space.
Computer memory is based on address lines that follow the powers of 2, so that a 'kilo' byte is 1024... of course people are just starting to collectively address this issue with the use of KiB.
While we are at it, why do we still have 24-hour days, or worse 12-hour half-days where the 0 hour is actually 12 and proceeds to 1. Why are there 360 degrees in one rotation? Arc seconds, arc-minutes... Why is a dozen 12 units?
Of course I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I know most non-computer science people out there would have their head spinning if they tried to understand anything besides base-10.
I graduated from RIT also. Quite frankly, as a private school they make plenty of money from tuition alone... There aren't very many grad students doing paid research there anyway. MY personal opinion is that if you are an undergrad paying tuition then your work is your own. If you are a paid (graduate) student then you are an employee and the same rules apply that would at any corporation.
Interesting thought that even though the base station is close by, possibly a satellite could capture radiated signals from a distance concurrently. That could be legal maybe because the satellites are in international territory, I don't know. It is comparatively easy to do on the old AMPS and TDMA technologies vs modern CDMA. This is much less likely with modern CDMA/ digital spread spectrum communication since the transmitter and receiver must act in perfect concert in terms of timing, chip code, and power level. A remote evesdropper has a difficult time reconstructing the signal. It's possible though I suppose. I'll bet the NSA is simply breaking the law and has a tap in every telcom cabinet in America. I was actually quite impressed with how quickly some arrests were made after 9/11 based on cell phone communications, though I am still fairly outraged of the illegality of the whole thing. As a geek, I'd love to see how they collect, store, and process petabits of voice conversations going on in the country.
FYI to everyone in this thread, do at least 30 seconds of research before spouting off about something you are not an expert in.
u sc_sec_18_00002319----000-.html
Google "US Code copyright" (United States Code)
This will settle the argument that copyright infringment is, in fact, a crimal offense that can result in jail time.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/
I'm sure most bank robbers know they are committing evil acts. So we don't need to be completely apologetic for Microsoft. Signing and submitting legal documents is something that isn't taken lightly, perjury is a big deal. As a corporation, they act as one legal entity as a person does. Just because the communication broke down between the engineering dept. and legal is no excuse.
That being said, Microsoft probably wasn't going out of its way to steal someone else's tech. It has probably just become the culture in big tech companies to wrap a patent around anything that moves. This is indicative of how badly broken the USPTO is and how devalued and poisonous patents have become. I'd just use this more as evidence against the patent environment than as a condemnation of Microsoft.
yeah, exactly.
Low unemployment does not mean high numbers of people employed. People move to other geographic areas, other careers, retire early, or stop looking for work. I live in a city that has 'improving' unemployment numbers. But that is because tens of thousands of people have left the area. Actual employment numbers have not increased.
.Net with a master's degree who will work for under $40k per year. If the job really needed to be filled, the market would make it happen by paying the right price.
High-skill jobs do go unfilled because the requirements to fill the job are unrealistic. i.e. someone with 10 years experience in
But yet we do agree. If you think the music industry is evil, then go ahead and listen to someone else's music. If you find the music of the evil music industry to be enjoyable, then by definition you are creating demand for the product. They have created a product you desire. That doesn't give you the right to take it free of charge just because you wouldn't have paid for it. Can you just go into a store and take what you want because you wouldn't have paid for it if you had to?
You are also making too many presumptions. I agree with you that people have every right to make backup copies. I also think DRM is generally a bad thing because it creates a de-facto 'planned obsolescence.' If I purchase a license for a song, it should be valid for any media format I want to put it on so long as I don't pass it off to other people.
I can easily take ethics and morality out of this argument, so it is not that I am in one religious camp or the other. In economics, there are simply equations and rules that are followed. If the citizens of this country decided to abolish copyright, then so be it. Just be ready for the market to change in a dramatic way, maybe for the best, maybe for the worst. Copyrights create a market where one couldn't exist without them. So if you wanted to break the law, then go ahead. The law supports the fact that you can be prosecuted for doing so. History is full of examples of civil disobedience. You just have to decide if you are willing to go to jail, or be sued for doing so.
As i stated, people will produce music for free, but it won't be the commercial type of music that the market seems to prefer. If the market preferred part-time musicians, live performances and teenage garage bands to mass printed recorded music, then mass printed recorded music wouldn't exist. No sane corporation would produce that type of music without some form of protection. There are real costs to doing business.
You made a good point that the radio still creates a place that commercial music can be played without charge since it is ad supported. But then you still need the radio station to comply with some type of copyright even if you don't hold the consumer responsible.
I assume you are referring to patents being 17 year protection. Patents are an exclusive deal that prevents anyone from coincidentally developing and selling an invention. Copyrights protect things that have to be copied - not things that can be accidentally infringed as with a patent. This is why patent protection is weaker, because it is much broader and can effect everyone in an industry. A copyright only protects a specific instance of something for which there are infinite possibilities. You can string any 12 notes YOU feel like and call it your own work as well, so it is perfectly fair. People that are good at stringing 12 notes together deserve to set whatever price they want - customers still get to decide if they want to buy.
Either way, the big picture is that copyrights and patents are the least of your worries when it comes to actually developing a product or recording that is going to be profitable at all. So yes, companies deserve protection or they won't produce music. The market demonstrates that people are willing to pay more for well produced and marketed music. If copyrights didn't exist, music would be cheaper, but you wouldn't be happy with that either because there would only be bands willing to work for free in their spare time after work. You can easily do without music, or find a cheaper substitute. Compare this in contrast to patents on medicines, in which case it is something you do not have a choice over. That, I would agree is unethical to use exclusive legal protections to raise prices. But then again, nobody would produce medicines for free either.
Yeah, I doubt they would waste a jail cell on some kid that ripped of an $8 movie ticket. Best not to find out though.
From Wiki: "Theft of services is the legal term for a crime which is committed when a person obtains valuable services -- as opposed to goods -- by deception, force, threat or other unlawful means, i.e., without lawfully compensating the provider of said services." .. "Crimes of this sort are typically prosecuted as larceny, and may be either a misdemeanor or a felony, based upon the value of the services illegally obtained."
It varies by jurisdiction, but it would probably only be tresspassing if you are asked to leave and refuse to.
Either way, you can go to jail under crimal charges.
Sounds like a good business to start then. There is no law or regulation keeping you from starting your own label. Heck, the equipment needed is pretty cheap nowdays. The law even protects your work from theft! That's a way better proposition for a start-up than most businesses.
Now let's see... just need to discover and coach some world-class talent. Market the resulting album so that people will actually want to buy it. Get your product on the shelves. Compete with a bunch of other equally capable talented music producers.
There are thousands of small labels out there, but guess what? People don't bother buying from them because they desire the most famous acts only. That is a socialogical factor, not an issue of copyright law. If you belive that the record companies don't deserve your money, then buy from a local talent in your city. But don't cry that you have to pay high prices for a highly desirable national act.
Guess what would happen if we forced song prices to be $0.10 or $0.25? Nobody would produce music at those prices. There are many costs besides duplication cost, and they are unavoidable.
Then write your congressman. The law currently disagrees with you.
If enough citizens decide that they want to weaken copyrights, then the laws should change.
Your example of deciding not to see a movie is not theft because you did not receive any goods or services. No transaction took place.
Going into a theater without paying is absolutely theft. Copying music you have not paid for is a crime.
Stars do get hotter over time due to several mechanisms. Hydrogen fusion yields a buildup of helium in a star. Helium fusion 'burns' at a higher temperature due to its higher density. This can be measured by comparing a star's age with the spectral output of light to determine the star's composition and temperature. Science is about making a proposition and then supporting it with evidence, not estimations and assumptions. This is the fundamental rift between faith and science.
The really cool thing about organic compounds like DNA and amino acids is that you can put them together and they do amazing things with little outside help. That is how polymerase chain reaction (PCR) works in the lab to replicate DNA. Car parts are very immobile and only fit together in one engineered configuration. The fact that DNA and amino acid molocules floating in solution can autonomously perform their function is a good argument that they have been doing so on their own since the beginning of time as well.
DNA and evolution work sort of like the proverbial 'million monkeys on a million typewriters.' If you try enough combinations, eventually one will succeed. By contrast, building a car is absolutely about getting it right on the first or second try.
Here is a hypothetical question I've often asked myself... How does information originate? You state that nothing as complex as life could ever form spontanously. What is it about humans that allows us to create new information such as the design of a car in your example? Do we have some special ability that does not exist anyplace else?
You are correct that oxygen is a big part of the debate about the Miller-Urey experiment. The evidence that there was oxygen from day 1 of the Earth isn't totally solid, though. There is evidence for several different early atmospheres. Wikipedia has a pretty good article about where the scientific debate stands today. The answer isn't perfectly clear either. When oxygen existed on Earth and how it got there is still an active scientific debate. That does not support creationism, it merely gives us more interesting questions to answer.n t
a d&name=News&file=article&sid=1676
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experime
and also:
http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modlo
"In 1953, Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey, working at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment which would change the approach of scientific investigation into the origin of life."
o gy/miller.html
http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiol
This is basic 10th grade biology class in a public school. Amino acids do form in natural circumstances. This is exactly why arguments for creationism are not scientifically valid. There is direct evidence to disprove creationist arguments and creationists refuse to accept them.
I agree that any reputable PC seller needs to include an OS for 98% of the units sold. The problem is that they are clearly selling 2 distinct products that are marketed separately by 2 distinct companies, which is what this law apparently prohibits. In the pen example, the refills are just an expected product produced by the OEM. Like getting a replacement belt for your car. It is technologically very easy for any number of 3rd parties to produce the replacement part, thus allowing for a fair market. Windows is a natural monopoly based on standardization of 1 and only one possible vendor. In my opinion, all that really matters is that consumers are free to buy the unit without the bundled product - without hassle and without unfair pricing contracts that often exist between the OEMs and MS.
Interesting to consider the Soviet communist state as a religion. At first I dismissed your argument completely, most people are pretty clear on the differences between politics and religion. However, since I wasn't there I didn't experience it. But I would still call the communist state a competitor to religion for people's mind-share. This is supported by the communists' rabid oppresion of religous practice. A religion promises a higher power outside the confines of physical reality. Politics promises a human or scientific utopia that is equally unachievable, but doesn't require the denial of physical reality - just the denial of practical reality.
While the differences between politics and religion are subtle, and may support your argument, I think it's important to see them as a system of two distinct forces.
In the USA, politics is equally divided based on people who support religion, and those who deny it.
In both religion and politics, dogmatic commitment to beliefs prevent people from making the optimum choices.
Anything you saw after rebates in the holiday season is a loss-leader. i.e. the store is losing money selling it to you and they only sell a limited number, so you can't count that in any actual price comparison.
Yes, the mass market PC hardware from HP is cheaper than a piecemeal system because of economies of scale. But, _it would be much cheaper_ if HP wasn't bound by Microsoft to price no-OS machines higher than windows boxes.
This is the definition of monopoly power abuse.
yeah, I totally agree. I've seen this idea every year for over 10 years; ignore it. These articles are written by people who never studied computer architecture. Every CPU needs a real operating system, not a virtual 'internet OS'. Maybe that OS will be very light and lack any application level code, but it will always be there. At the very least, you need the kernel, drivers, storage, memory management, process management, and communication software. That's most of what Windows does. Besides Internet Explorer, there isn't much application code provided with Windows.
It would be possible to stream application code from the network, even boot the PC from the network. This is all totally possible right now, and has been since ethernet cards with boot ROMs were invented. Not too many people bother since hard drives are cheaper, faster, more reliable and can stand-alone. People like owning their systems for the most common applications that don't explicitly require the internet. i.e. Word processing, corporate databases, etc. Internet-based applications are here now, but they are not an OS. That model doesn't make sense. Applications on the Internet are just fancy server-based applications.
To be honest, Google has a long way to go in the web-app business and they don't exist at all in the OS business. For all of their hype and capital, what do they have...? An e-mail application that is marginally better than what preceeded it for at least 5-7 years?? A map application with fancy scrolling, but still can't accurately locate a house within 500 ft (in my experience).. and has poor resolution satellite imagery for non-urban areas. Google spreadsheets are cool, but not revolutionary. I still use the old-fashioned spreadsheets on a daily basis. I'm not believing that Google is really even competing with any OS. Unless they have some major secret project to roll thier own OS from the ground up and compete head-to-head with a highly entrenched company like MS, why should we ever be thinking about a 'web OS.'