I guess you are to be commended for re-encoding at a lower bit-rate rather than simply cloning the disk? It's sort of a self-flagellation I guess.
I wasn't addressing the morality of making back-ups of movies you rent though, I was addressing the lock-in of rental memberships. Sadly, it flew over some people's heads, or they hate me for even suggesting it, because I was modded down for it. How can lock-in even be an issue for digital rentals when the rental business is already designed around 'lock-in'? Sheesh.
A digression if you'll permit me though!
I'm glad you admit a little later on the the moral issue you see with uploading the rentals you've 'backed up'. Is it then moral to benefit from that immoral act by downloading torrents? It's another gray area. For the U.S. and assuming you're in the U.K. it's illegal for us, and for me downloading for free what you would typically be willing to pay some amount slightly immoral per instance, and rather outright immoral in the high degree. I don't see making 'back ups' of rented material as immoral, but for people in the U.S. it is dishonest. In other countries, it's expected behavior (e.g., Japan and China; you can pick up blanks while standing in line to check-out). In Canada they are taxed on a variety of 'piracy related goods' to permit unregulated downloading for personal use. (Weirdly, uploading is still illegal, so that freedom, as I understand it, relies on illegal activity inside Canada and the U.S. or uploaders from countries where it's legal to upload copyrighted material.)
One day someone here in the States will get sued for having a library of DVDs they've 'backed up' from rentals, when the case makes it to the supreme court it could probably be ruled a fair use even though it doesn't obviously pass the 17 USC's 4-point test for fair use. (IANAL, but it doesn't seem obviously 'fair' in light of the 4-point test.)
The four fair use factors (for copying rented material, without redistribution or intent to redistribute, sourced from Stanford's Fair Use Center):
What is the character of the use? Personal and non-profit (very likely fair).
What is the nature of the work to be used? Published yet creative. (This is the light-gray area of the test where white is fair. This would be black for not-yet-published works, and white for works of pure fact like phone directories. Movies aren't like either of these.)
How much of the work will you use? Every bit (this is a very dark gray area of this test, copies of more than small sections of long-form works aren't found fair use very often).
What effect would this use have on the market for the original or for permissions if the use were widespread? Some, in aggregate, after all this is why you do it, to save a few quid. Your personal, non-profit 'back ups' would prevent repeat rentals (might not matter) and in many cases prevent purchases of the product outright as well as possibly prevent purchases of later editions, thereby diminishing the market as a whole for a particular work. This wouldn't be an issue if copyright terms were sane -- but since they're like 200 years right now over most of the globe... the market of each work lasts at least 100 years and so covers many, many people for generations. For this factor the outcome isn't clearly "in the white" either: 'back ups' have some non-zero effect on the market, especially if 'back ups' are widespread. This factor gets darker in relation to how long copyright terms are and how many people are 'backing up'.
The four fair use factors here would be determined by our judges in aggregate, one clearly fair use factor does not make the infringement fair use. In aggregate these factors are on the 'dark' side of the spectrum, towards the unfair infringement. If this case were tried today, in our current supreme court with our current "treaty-length copyrights" it would fail. A couple dissenting opinions might mention the extreme terms of copyright as being exclusively pro-glob
So one needs to determine: am I carrying around 2 pounds or more of port-replicators and external drives? Do I have device incompatibilities? If no, you're still winning with the ultraportable. If yes, though, one needs to do some more fine grained calculus -- are there times when I can make do with less? Is the equal or greater weight in externals worth those situations? etc. -- Still worth it? If not this laptop is ruled out and you go back to the five-pounder and reevaluate what you have to carry around with it.
On the other end of the spectrum, I'm sure there's kitchen-sink, dual HD, dual proc, 17" display DELLs that don't justify their built-ins, and the interrogation is in the other direction (how often do I need 4 USB2.0 ports and RAID 10 on the road, is it worth 12 pounds?). It's probably been said 300 times in this thread now, "choose the right tool for the job."
Airbook looks about right if you want to spend a 2000 mile flight using xcode and your tray-table is broken/missing and your thighbones are too brittle to hold up a MBP (or your jewels can't take the heat! wink wink). Right there's a market niche to exploit!
It also seems like it would be pretty handy as a satellite machine at university. You'd carrying it all day everyday, the form factor might be a win there. Maybe picking up some dates in lecture hall? I dunno. You don't need lots of ports and optical drives to IM your friends, I mean take notes and do homework. The cost you say? Put it on the student loan; worry about it when you're old!
I guess we have a failure to communicate here then. Let me serialize it, and editorialize for clarity:
Hand-wavery: what if the battery "dies"!
Me: No problem, that's free under Applecare. Or more exactly, quote, "it's free as part of your AppleCare." [You're noting this time that I didn't say AppleCare was free, and we're talking about a "dead" battery.]
Fonik: Applecare isn't free. [Never mind that I didn't state or dispute this.]
Me: That's right. It's not. It's twenty-five cents a day over its term. IMO a good bet considering the wear on laptops. Or more exactly, quote, "Buying expensive hardware without a warranty is [...] risky."
AC, You, presumably: Lol, David Rolfe's a zealot! Or more exactly, quote, "Calling something that comes in a service package add-on costing $249 'free' is the kind of bent zealot thinking that doesn't help." [Again, never mind THAT I DIDN'T.]
Me: Buying laptops without insurance is risky. You (presumably) agreed with that in your post. What was the point?
You: I'm going to misstate your position again. Also, people that buy insurance are suckers, even though I (presumably) said in a previous post that for this product it's advisable. Or more exactly, quote, "Calling a service that comes in an optional extended warranty package costing of $249 'free' is zealotry, but good job intentionally misinterpreting what I said." [Never mind that I didn't call it free. Nor did I intentionally misinterpret what you (presumably) said -- that it's advisable to buy an extended warranty: "I [presumably] have to admit that if there was a time to get insurance on Macs [...] the past two or three years is it."]
Is that not what you said? Which part was the misrepresentation? That all seems clear to me. I hope that clears up our misunderstanding. Cheers!
I use an older iBook for travel. It's one of the last ones with a built-in modem, which I occasionally find useful for faxing and enjoying the modem pool from rural areas:). Been a year or two I think, but it's handy when you need it. So, I can see your point about wanting some legacy ports.
I'm pretty close to an upgrade, and the one thing that impressed me in this new 'airbook' is the huge trackpad for the multi-touch gestures. I'm confident that feature will be included in the 'full-sized' Macbooks pretty soon. I'd imagine sometime this year even. When those come out, I'm upgrading.
I can't wait until we're all using multi-touch on our coffee tables, microwaves, and everything.
That's right. It also covers a lot more than battery replacement. Do you think in three years less a day that the Airbook's battery will cost more or less than $249 (let's throw in the cost of installation/disposal, out of warranty shipping, etc.)? There's a chance it won't, $130 is about average for Apple's spare laptop batteries. In my opinion the additional two years of AppleCare has always been worth the price.
Maybe you can get away with the default one year of Applecare if you intend to trade up quickly, or if you plan on leaving it on your desk (...an ultra portable?), I just didn't (and don't) consider extended warranties optional for thousand-dollar electronics that I'm going to carry around daily. If I break a hinge, or mark the display, or the drive goes out, or the battery, or worse blah blah blah.
Doesn't hurt that the additional cost of Applecare over three years is trivial bet (like $0.25 a day).
I don't know why I bothered replying though, you know all this crap, and everyone that buys a Mac sees that the extra warranty costs extra (duh). Where can this discussion possibly go?
Calling something that comes in a service package add-on costing $249 "free" is the kind of bent zealot thinking that doesn't help. [...] I have to admit that if there was a time to get insurance on Macs in the past ten years, the past two or three years is it. Zealot? Me? Hardly.
Buying expensive hardware without a warranty is pretty... what's the word... retarded? how about just risky. All Macs, as you apparently know, come with one year free warranty (first two weeks: not even a blink; first 90 days: no questions asked, from experience). I would never encourage anyone to buy a laptop without a warranty. You even say as much... so I have to ask -- did you have a point other than to insult me?
So let me ask, how many of you buy new laptops without extended warranties or insurance of any kind? Do you think you're normal?
Oh yes, it sure is nice to have all my existing video reencoded into x264 just by wishing it was. Oh, and that extra detail already lost (that I have been living with and been fine with) should just magically reappear, right? If only you hadn't pirated all that shit in Xvid, it wouldn't be a problem. If only you weren't "backing up" your rented and borrowed DVDs in Divx and 3ivx and whatever else, lol, it wouldn't be a problem. You could solve the whole issue just by getting out your spindle of originals re-ripping them -- time well spent -- because they'd take up less space and/or look better in h264.
No, the real issue you have with AppleTV's "lack of support" for Xvid is that you don't have originals/masters for your library: it doesn't support your vast library of torrented movies and pron.
To mock the Betamax decision, the Apple TV isn't popular with your set because the technology isn't capable of substantial infringing uses.
One USB, so you can use wired ethernet or an optical drive or a thumb drive or an external mouse. But only one at a time. Because one of these is just so damn expensive when you've already spent $1800 on the laptop and $20 bucks for the inflight-power adapter.
If you're going to expense it, you might as well expense all the goodies for your new road warrior kit.
You pay for expensive service to install a new one? This argument is often trotted out for the iPod, etc. It's specious. First, it's not expensive to install a new one -- it's free as part of your AppleCare. Second, in three to five years if you are still using the slow old Macbook Air you'll be able to self-replace or inexpensively (relative to other old laptop batteries) replace the battery in the same way you can painlessly and cheaply do it for old iPods and old Thinkpads (i.e., you've always been at the mercy of the part costs near end of life with any product).
Other posters with a need to work untethered for 5 or more hours have a legitimate complaint. For them this laptop is not an option and they will either spend more for a slower Sony (if they have a 3 lb. model with replaceable batteries), or carry more weight for a faster Macbook. That's life.
If renting is too scary (the 24 hour lock-in!!), you could buy the intended optical drive for $99 -- or save a couple hundred bucks and carry around a two-pound-heavier, faster, thicker Macbook. Sheesh.
Of course I know you're being facetious, as you undoubtably rip and transcode your DVDs for travel because you're too lazy to carry around all that extra plastic. You might even be one of those types that 'backs up' movies you rent from Blockbuster and/or Netflix, you know to prevent the lock-in of needing a membership.
One thing about PSP that is nice is the image rotate tool. You basically draw a line in the picture, and it will figure out how much to rotate the image to make the line horizontal. Photoshop does this also -- if you draw a line with the ruler tool it will use the angle of that line as the default in the image rotation dialog for straightening an image. (I use this all the time to rectify crooked scans.)
(I'm not the AC to which you responded. That said...)
GIMP was funny when Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis named it, haw haw. If they'd imagined even for a moment that their school project would ever reach the point where non-geeks would be using free software they would have called it 'the General Image Manipulator' (later 'GNU Image Manipulator') and pronounced it 'jim'. Then self-respecting professionals in the design industry wouldn't gag on their own vomit every time they said "I really wish I could use the gimp and free myself from adobe's shackles."
See, to most adults gimp has the admittedly slang meaning (and connotation) of either a cripple (a limping limper), or the object of a masochist's pleasure (i.e., they've at least seen Pulp Fiction).
"I'd rather not use gimped software 60 hours a weeks to do my job."
"Uh-oh, management is looking for a gimp to blame this death-march on."
Limping and ass-rape don't warrant serious consideration to professionals. If GIMP had a moniker that didn't embarrass CTOs, we might see the sort of progress that industrial adoption has brought us in the kernel, Apache, etc.
And besides... if a husband has sex with another man it's not adultery, right? Further, does infidelity in marriage even say anything about a man's fidelity in regards to his employment? I agree with you -- morality has no bearing on one's ability to do their job, especially if their job is representing a constituency in government.
On the other hand, if being a man of one's word without apparent conflicts of interest is a requirement to faithfully represent a constituency, maybe he shouldn't keep his job. I know that if I managed a bank, and one of my employees plead guilty to robbery I would probably fire him. If I was elected to legislate against gay people, i.e., represent my [nominally Republican] constituency, I would try very hard not to plead guilty to propositioning other men for sex.
In Craig's case, I imagine his employer-constituents would 'fire' him if they could have a special election for his seat. He's fortunate that he has the option to serve out his term.
Oh hey, someone else has already posted this -- that Napoleon uttered that quotation is likely apocryphal, the phrase is usually referred to as Hanlon's Razor and is more likely sourced as follows:
No new drugs means none of the new drugs that have changed the lives of millions, from Lipitor to Prozac to Viagra. Did you choose these examples ironically; a statin because we don't want to regulate our (poor, rich people) diet, an anti-depressant because we don't want to deal with our (rich, post-subsistence) lives, and a ERECTION ENHANCING blood pressure medication so we can keep having sex beyond our "reproductive stage" (possibly for recreation to fill our boring, rich, consumerist lives)?
Sheesh. Sorry for being a cynic. I'm sure there's gobs of first-world customers that have benefitted from these meds (like Lipitor, isn't that like the number one drug 'evar!'?) but these are still pretty bad examples (or again chosen for comedic effect). Or are you saying that these are the most profitable drugs and they wouldn't have been made (to sell to rich people) without the current patent system? Pharma companies aren't worried about patent infringement in the first-world, they know they can make their money here with marketing alone. Where they are worried about patent infringement is in the third-world were (poor) governments and (poor) people are not licensing their drugs to make an actual life or death difference in people's lives. For example, AIDS-combatting cocktails being produced out of generics in Africa and India probably does prevent Pfizer from making even more money (does Pfizer make AIDS drugs? I don't know), but the money it's not making is money it wouldn't have had any way -- as the people dying of AIDS in Africa can't afford their drugs!
It's really the same sort of argument that the RIAA makes against piracy with their specious math indicating that every infringement is a lost sale. It's obviously not. There's no way it can be. If some pre-teen downloads 1,000 songs from P2P du jour there is just no possible way they could have legitimately purchased those songs (maybe some tiny fraction, right, with their chore-money).
Anyhow, sorry for rambling. I think it's pretty likely that the pharmaceutical industry will still exist even after some patent reform. I know that's not your argument, but there's a pretty good chance that someone somewhere would still be doing disease research even in the scary 'no IP' world. It would just be a lot less friendly. Most research would be charitably or government funded (so arguably slower or less efficient), actual cures would produced as work-in-hostage with investment and pre-order recouping the majority of production up front, etc. Drug trials for many would be scary, last-ditch lotteries. That would be an unpleasant job to be in while people are dying. It's a tough business, profiting on who lives and who dies. (Good thing our government mediates some of that with its limited-time, state-granted monopolies!)
You complain about Firewire back in 2002, but when Apple released the iPod, there was no installed base of USB 2.0, so Firewire was important for making the iPod sync much faster than other systems. Apple has always owned the market because it innovated. Microsoft doesn't have to innovate anything, it can simply copy. Even so, its doing a really bad job of ripping Apple off. It can't compete even in a fairly mature market. Well, as an early ipod adopter I can tell you that "no installed base of usb 2.0" is a red herring because there was also virtually no installed base of firewire adaptors. Effectively tacking an extra 100 bucks on to the final price. Well, er, except for every existing Apple customer that bought a Mac in or after 1999 (i.e., every Mac since 24 months prior to the release of the iPod). As far as I can tell that would have included every early adopter of the 2001 Mac-only iPod.
(18 months later were the first Windows-supported iPods, and with them the first concerns about firewire-only connectivity. Lo and behold, 10 months later, USB support was added in the third generation model.)
There's also video of this or a similar statement on YouTube if you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. http://youtube.com/watch?v=nEgDIylwPlM and more.
Holy shit! I usually don't see anyone posting below mine!
My hat goes off to you sir. And further, sort of back on topic...
Currently the auction for the "low UID" is about $3k. I'm wondering if the auctioned UID is going to be low enough that I should bid to protect my smug sense of superiority. Wink wink. Will the "low" UID be lower than 38, or 16?!
I don't know how novel it would be to just put a 3" trackpad behind a 3" LCD and use it as a pointing device. You might even be able to do this as a 'garage project' with off the shelf stuff for cheap.
Anyhow, touch interfaces "on both sides" are probably on the way to ubiquity.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you are to be commended for re-encoding at a lower bit-rate rather than simply cloning the disk? It's sort of a self-flagellation I guess.
I wasn't addressing the morality of making back-ups of movies you rent though, I was addressing the lock-in of rental memberships. Sadly, it flew over some people's heads, or they hate me for even suggesting it, because I was modded down for it. How can lock-in even be an issue for digital rentals when the rental business is already designed around 'lock-in'? Sheesh.
A digression if you'll permit me though!
I'm glad you admit a little later on the the moral issue you see with uploading the rentals you've 'backed up'. Is it then moral to benefit from that immoral act by downloading torrents? It's another gray area. For the U.S. and assuming you're in the U.K. it's illegal for us, and for me downloading for free what you would typically be willing to pay some amount slightly immoral per instance, and rather outright immoral in the high degree. I don't see making 'back ups' of rented material as immoral, but for people in the U.S. it is dishonest. In other countries, it's expected behavior (e.g., Japan and China; you can pick up blanks while standing in line to check-out). In Canada they are taxed on a variety of 'piracy related goods' to permit unregulated downloading for personal use. (Weirdly, uploading is still illegal, so that freedom, as I understand it, relies on illegal activity inside Canada and the U.S. or uploaders from countries where it's legal to upload copyrighted material.)
One day someone here in the States will get sued for having a library of DVDs they've 'backed up' from rentals, when the case makes it to the supreme court it could probably be ruled a fair use even though it doesn't obviously pass the 17 USC's 4-point test for fair use. (IANAL, but it doesn't seem obviously 'fair' in light of the 4-point test.)
The four fair use factors (for copying rented material, without redistribution or intent to redistribute, sourced from Stanford's Fair Use Center):
What is the character of the use? Personal and non-profit (very likely fair).
What is the nature of the work to be used? Published yet creative. (This is the light-gray area of the test where white is fair. This would be black for not-yet-published works, and white for works of pure fact like phone directories. Movies aren't like either of these.)
How much of the work will you use? Every bit (this is a very dark gray area of this test, copies of more than small sections of long-form works aren't found fair use very often).
What effect would this use have on the market for the original or for permissions if the use were widespread? Some, in aggregate, after all this is why you do it, to save a few quid. Your personal, non-profit 'back ups' would prevent repeat rentals (might not matter) and in many cases prevent purchases of the product outright as well as possibly prevent purchases of later editions, thereby diminishing the market as a whole for a particular work. This wouldn't be an issue if copyright terms were sane -- but since they're like 200 years right now over most of the globe... the market of each work lasts at least 100 years and so covers many, many people for generations. For this factor the outcome isn't clearly "in the white" either: 'back ups' have some non-zero effect on the market, especially if 'back ups' are widespread. This factor gets darker in relation to how long copyright terms are and how many people are 'backing up'.
The four fair use factors here would be determined by our judges in aggregate, one clearly fair use factor does not make the infringement fair use. In aggregate these factors are on the 'dark' side of the spectrum, towards the unfair infringement. If this case were tried today, in our current supreme court with our current "treaty-length copyrights" it would fail. A couple dissenting opinions might mention the extreme terms of copyright as being exclusively pro-glob
Granted.
So one needs to determine: am I carrying around 2 pounds or more of port-replicators and external drives? Do I have device incompatibilities? If no, you're still winning with the ultraportable. If yes, though, one needs to do some more fine grained calculus -- are there times when I can make do with less? Is the equal or greater weight in externals worth those situations? etc. -- Still worth it? If not this laptop is ruled out and you go back to the five-pounder and reevaluate what you have to carry around with it.
On the other end of the spectrum, I'm sure there's kitchen-sink, dual HD, dual proc, 17" display DELLs that don't justify their built-ins, and the interrogation is in the other direction (how often do I need 4 USB2.0 ports and RAID 10 on the road, is it worth 12 pounds?). It's probably been said 300 times in this thread now, "choose the right tool for the job."
Airbook looks about right if you want to spend a 2000 mile flight using xcode and your tray-table is broken/missing and your thighbones are too brittle to hold up a MBP (or your jewels can't take the heat! wink wink). Right there's a market niche to exploit!
It also seems like it would be pretty handy as a satellite machine at university. You'd carrying it all day everyday, the form factor might be a win there. Maybe picking up some dates in lecture hall? I dunno. You don't need lots of ports and optical drives to IM your friends, I mean take notes and do homework. The cost you say? Put it on the student loan; worry about it when you're old!
God I'm old.
Is that not what you said? Which part was the misrepresentation? That all seems clear to me. I hope that clears up our misunderstanding. Cheers!
Thanks for the reasoned reply.
:). Been a year or two I think, but it's handy when you need it. So, I can see your point about wanting some legacy ports.
I use an older iBook for travel. It's one of the last ones with a built-in modem, which I occasionally find useful for faxing and enjoying the modem pool from rural areas
I'm pretty close to an upgrade, and the one thing that impressed me in this new 'airbook' is the huge trackpad for the multi-touch gestures. I'm confident that feature will be included in the 'full-sized' Macbooks pretty soon. I'd imagine sometime this year even. When those come out, I'm upgrading.
I can't wait until we're all using multi-touch on our coffee tables, microwaves, and everything.
Cheers.
That's right. It also covers a lot more than battery replacement. Do you think in three years less a day that the Airbook's battery will cost more or less than $249 (let's throw in the cost of installation/disposal, out of warranty shipping, etc.)? There's a chance it won't, $130 is about average for Apple's spare laptop batteries. In my opinion the additional two years of AppleCare has always been worth the price.
Maybe you can get away with the default one year of Applecare if you intend to trade up quickly, or if you plan on leaving it on your desk (...an ultra portable?), I just didn't (and don't) consider extended warranties optional for thousand-dollar electronics that I'm going to carry around daily. If I break a hinge, or mark the display, or the drive goes out, or the battery, or worse blah blah blah.
Doesn't hurt that the additional cost of Applecare over three years is trivial bet (like $0.25 a day).
I don't know why I bothered replying though, you know all this crap, and everyone that buys a Mac sees that the extra warranty costs extra (duh). Where can this discussion possibly go?
Buying expensive hardware without a warranty is pretty... what's the word... retarded? how about just risky. All Macs, as you apparently know, come with one year free warranty (first two weeks: not even a blink; first 90 days: no questions asked, from experience). I would never encourage anyone to buy a laptop without a warranty. You even say as much... so I have to ask -- did you have a point other than to insult me?
So let me ask, how many of you buy new laptops without extended warranties or insurance of any kind? Do you think you're normal?
No, the real issue you have with AppleTV's "lack of support" for Xvid is that you don't have originals/masters for your library: it doesn't support your vast library of torrented movies and pron.
To mock the Betamax decision, the Apple TV isn't popular with your set because the technology isn't capable of substantial infringing uses.
If you're going to expense it, you might as well expense all the goodies for your new road warrior kit.
Other posters with a need to work untethered for 5 or more hours have a legitimate complaint. For them this laptop is not an option and they will either spend more for a slower Sony (if they have a 3 lb. model with replaceable batteries), or carry more weight for a faster Macbook. That's life.
It's funny, but also a troll! Touché!
If renting is too scary (the 24 hour lock-in!!), you could buy the intended optical drive for $99 -- or save a couple hundred bucks and carry around a two-pound-heavier, faster, thicker Macbook. Sheesh.
Of course I know you're being facetious, as you undoubtably rip and transcode your DVDs for travel because you're too lazy to carry around all that extra plastic. You might even be one of those types that 'backs up' movies you rent from Blockbuster and/or Netflix, you know to prevent the lock-in of needing a membership.
(I'm not the AC to which you responded. That said...)
GIMP was funny when Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis named it, haw haw. If they'd imagined even for a moment that their school project would ever reach the point where non-geeks would be using free software they would have called it 'the General Image Manipulator' (later 'GNU Image Manipulator') and pronounced it 'jim'. Then self-respecting professionals in the design industry wouldn't gag on their own vomit every time they said "I really wish I could use the gimp and free myself from adobe's shackles."
See, to most adults gimp has the admittedly slang meaning (and connotation) of either a cripple (a limping limper), or the object of a masochist's pleasure (i.e., they've at least seen Pulp Fiction).
"I'd rather not use gimped software 60 hours a weeks to do my job."
"Uh-oh, management is looking for a gimp to blame this death-march on."
Limping and ass-rape don't warrant serious consideration to professionals. If GIMP had a moniker that didn't embarrass CTOs, we might see the sort of progress that industrial adoption has brought us in the kernel, Apache, etc.
And besides ... if a husband has sex with another man it's not adultery, right? Further, does infidelity in marriage even say anything about a man's fidelity in regards to his employment? I agree with you -- morality has no bearing on one's ability to do their job, especially if their job is representing a constituency in government.
On the other hand, if being a man of one's word without apparent conflicts of interest is a requirement to faithfully represent a constituency, maybe he shouldn't keep his job. I know that if I managed a bank, and one of my employees plead guilty to robbery I would probably fire him. If I was elected to legislate against gay people, i.e., represent my [nominally Republican] constituency, I would try very hard not to plead guilty to propositioning other men for sex.
In Craig's case, I imagine his employer-constituents would 'fire' him if they could have a special election for his seat. He's fortunate that he has the option to serve out his term.
Oh hey, someone else has already posted this -- that Napoleon uttered that quotation is likely apocryphal, the phrase is usually referred to as Hanlon's Razor and is more likely sourced as follows:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon
For the reason there are many people willing to post about this one line on Slashdot, see here:
http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_23.html#TAG856
I.e., we're all nerds.
Sheesh. Sorry for being a cynic. I'm sure there's gobs of first-world customers that have benefitted from these meds (like Lipitor, isn't that like the number one drug 'evar!'?) but these are still pretty bad examples (or again chosen for comedic effect). Or are you saying that these are the most profitable drugs and they wouldn't have been made (to sell to rich people) without the current patent system? Pharma companies aren't worried about patent infringement in the first-world, they know they can make their money here with marketing alone. Where they are worried about patent infringement is in the third-world were (poor) governments and (poor) people are not licensing their drugs to make an actual life or death difference in people's lives. For example, AIDS-combatting cocktails being produced out of generics in Africa and India probably does prevent Pfizer from making even more money (does Pfizer make AIDS drugs? I don't know), but the money it's not making is money it wouldn't have had any way -- as the people dying of AIDS in Africa can't afford their drugs!
It's really the same sort of argument that the RIAA makes against piracy with their specious math indicating that every infringement is a lost sale. It's obviously not. There's no way it can be. If some pre-teen downloads 1,000 songs from P2P du jour there is just no possible way they could have legitimately purchased those songs (maybe some tiny fraction, right, with their chore-money).
Anyhow, sorry for rambling. I think it's pretty likely that the pharmaceutical industry will still exist even after some patent reform. I know that's not your argument, but there's a pretty good chance that someone somewhere would still be doing disease research even in the scary 'no IP' world. It would just be a lot less friendly. Most research would be charitably or government funded (so arguably slower or less efficient), actual cures would produced as work-in-hostage with investment and pre-order recouping the majority of production up front, etc. Drug trials for many would be scary, last-ditch lotteries. That would be an unpleasant job to be in while people are dying. It's a tough business, profiting on who lives and who dies. (Good thing our government mediates some of that with its limited-time, state-granted monopolies!)
Cheers.
(18 months later were the first Windows-supported iPods, and with them the first concerns about firewire-only connectivity. Lo and behold, 10 months later, USB support was added in the third generation model.)
There's also video of this or a similar statement on YouTube if you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. http://youtube.com/watch?v=nEgDIylwPlM and more.
Captcha for this post is "crises".
I swear I'm only doing this once in this discussion. Booya!
You and Mr. 16 up there are the only two 2-digit-club members I've seen thus far.
Holy shit! I usually don't see anyone posting below mine!
My hat goes off to you sir. And further, sort of back on topic...
Currently the auction for the "low UID" is about $3k. I'm wondering if the auctioned UID is going to be low enough that I should bid to protect my smug sense of superiority. Wink wink. Will the "low" UID be lower than 38, or 16?!
"Shit yeah, ladies. I bring those blue sparks ." --Jesus Christ
Controls on the back aren't new, touch interfaces aren't new, etc.
When I read the blurb, I immediately thought of this:
http://www.commodore-gravel.com/gravel/Homepage.aspx
http://www.commodore-gravel.com/gravel/Products/Gravel+in+Pocket.aspx -- Commodore media player, controls on back.
I don't know how novel it would be to just put a 3" trackpad behind a 3" LCD and use it as a pointing device. You might even be able to do this as a 'garage project' with off the shelf stuff for cheap.
Anyhow, touch interfaces "on both sides" are probably on the way to ubiquity.
Yeah, um, some how we always find these threads. Then we're compelled to post in them.
That's closer... but isn't it:
;p
"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
The Internets/tubes never fail us, I've found it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9qVUUIDhWc
Get it while it's still there