That said, I don't think personal experiences should always be dismissed. I know if someone came to me and said corticosteroids did nothing for excema, or oxymetazoline did nothing to clear your nose, I'd laugh at them, no matter their credentials.
The substance in question contained non-homeopathic amounts of zinc gluconate. Zinc gluconate has been explored with RCTs as a means of suppressing colds, but in pill form. Some studies have said it worked (although reviews did not find sufficient evidence). It's not at all impossible that when applied in this more brutal way (sticking it up your nose) it should have some effect.
Don't go all bananas with an anti-homeopathy rant just because someone had good experience with this stuff. If you didn't dismiss personal experiences so easily, you might have learned something - in this case, that the remedy wasn't homeopathic after all.
At so-called homeopathic dilutions, there is literally no arsenic left in the "remedy". Dilution reaches a limit when you reach atoms, and homeopathy is beyond that limit.
The study encourages artists to use complements -- "speaking tours, concerts, t-shirts etc." to make income. Well, that only works for famous, top 5% artists. What about the remaining 95%? They are not famous enough to make any income from such "complements."
But they still are famous enough to make more than pocket change from royalties? I'd guess far more artists make money from tours, gigs etc. than royalties.
They will learn. They will learn, or they will die.
The recent Virgin/Universal deal that was covered here on slashdot is an example of things moving in the right direction. In case you don't remember: A UK ISP will offer something very close to Magnatune, for Virgin/Universal's music. You can make a monthly payment for an all-you-can-eat buffet. Yeah, there are still some minor issues (they still want to disconnect people without any trial, and they still won't let you give a friend a copy), but it's a huge step forward.
What's even more interesting, is that deals like these will give artists incentive to reduce copyright terms. The reason is that there is a pool of income (the subscription fees) that is divided among the artists according to popularity. New and current artists will not want to share with the old-timers forever. "Move over! While people still love your music, it's our new music that keeps them subscribing!", they might say. It will probably be true, too.
Interesting, I hadn't thought about these "gift" credit cards. You're right, they are kind of anonymous. I wonder if criminals use them much already.
But then again, cash exists too, even quite large bills. My guess is that these gift cards will go more or less at the same time large bills do, and maybe faster if it turns out they are popular with criminals.
A third party can be used as an anonymizing agent, no question about that. What the crypto-cash protocols overlook (as academics are allowed to) is that a third party (bank) that started providing such services would be struck down by government at once, as any other money laundering service foolish enough to advertise.
There still is no crypto protocol that can do without a third party. I feel confident that there never will be - it seems to run into too many absurdities. How can there be trust in a truly anonymous transaction? And what kind of transactions could you reasonably do, if you knew the other party was by definition completely unaccountable to you?
Why is trusting GLD better than trusting government? No, for all the crank theories about the innate value of gold to make the slightest bit of sense, you need to have physical control of it as well.
Anonymous cash cards aren't going to happen. Governments are getting rid of high-value bills precisely because they're mostly useful for criminals, and they will never accept the existence of an "instant money laundering card" unless they are extremely corrupt.
Really, people should get used to the idea that economic transactions will never be 100% anonymous. It's not like speech. Money is more like actions. Try to image what the world would look like if anyone could anonymously and securely buy any service they wanted, and tell me you want to live in that world.
Look, if I pay a fixed monthly fee for downloading stuff from Virgin's catalog, why should they care whether I get it from them, or a flac-encoded version from pirate bay? My guess is they won't. After all, to them it'd only mean that
1. They'd save some bandwith costs 2. The artist wouldn't get his cut from the monthly fee pool (looking at existing collective licensing schemes, I'm pretty sure Virgin won't shed any tears for that)
Anyway, if they're enlightened enough to adopt this distribution model, of non-mandatory unlimited download for a fee, then I suspect they'll soon be enlightened enough to understand that the best way to control your content is to be the best provider of it. We will see raw wavs at the very least.
While I rarely watch TV (usually only music shows that have music that is hard to find for me (old)), I record every show I watch, when a VHS tape is full, I put it in a box.
You're a squirrel. But that's OK, I don't think squirrels should be charged for the nuts they bury and never dig up again.
This is extremely uninformed and offensive. You obviously know very little of Iranian culture.
To rule, you need a majority of power. People aren't equally powerful, so you do not necessarily need a majority of people to rule.
Minorities can and do keep majorities hostage. When some classes, like veterans, priests, businessmen or people of inherited wealth command more raw power than regular people, and differ significantly from regular people in their political preferences, this is the rule rather than the exception.
This is true even in democracies, because although voting power may be equal, it's far from the only power there is, or even the most important. If the Iranians rise up against this disenfranchisement, there will be bloodshed, because while the clerics and the revolutionary guard are in a minority, they have more than enough power to match the majority.
One of the things I love about tabletop gaming is that they have saner ideas about "intellectual property". Since games basically can't be copyrighted*, they've had to resort to building reputations for quality based on (trademarked) game lines, publisher names, or designer names.. This has succeeded beyond anything we could hope for, and we have lots and lots of high quality games, available at a price not terribly much higher than the cost of making them.
*a particular expression of the rules can, but not the rules themselves - that would be like copyrighting a book plot, and thankfully the courts have been clear on this for more than a generation.
Hell hath no fury like an artist who feels he doesn't get what he deserves. And now matter how much they get, they never seem to be content. You know, I don't really like "artists" anymore, I'm so disgusted at that extreme entitlement complex.
Madonna, you're an idiot. Damien Hirst, you're an ass. Mark Twain, you sucked.
But Tolkien's conception of elves are pretty much wholly his. Norse elves would are more like a cross between dwarves and leprechauns. All this stuff about immortality, being the "firstborn" and crossing over the ocean had nothing to do with elves until Tolkien came along. (Norse Dwarves on the other hand, are in many ways more interesting than Tolkien's - and far more than D&D's, at least)
Slashdot Mirror
Swear all you want, but a Cochrane review concluded there was no evidence they worked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_gluconate
That said, I don't think personal experiences should always be dismissed. I know if someone came to me and said corticosteroids did nothing for excema, or oxymetazoline did nothing to clear your nose, I'd laugh at them, no matter their credentials.
The substance in question contained non-homeopathic amounts of zinc gluconate. Zinc gluconate has been explored with RCTs as a means of suppressing colds, but in pill form. Some studies have said it worked (although reviews did not find sufficient evidence). It's not at all impossible that when applied in this more brutal way (sticking it up your nose) it should have some effect.
Don't go all bananas with an anti-homeopathy rant just because someone had good experience with this stuff. If you didn't dismiss personal experiences so easily, you might have learned something - in this case, that the remedy wasn't homeopathic after all.
At so-called homeopathic dilutions, there is literally no arsenic left in the "remedy". Dilution reaches a limit when you reach atoms, and homeopathy is beyond that limit.
The study encourages artists to use complements -- "speaking tours, concerts, t-shirts etc." to make income. Well, that only works for famous, top 5% artists. What about the remaining 95%? They are not famous enough to make any income from such "complements."
But they still are famous enough to make more than pocket change from royalties?
I'd guess far more artists make money from tours, gigs etc. than royalties.
They will learn. They will learn, or they will die.
The recent Virgin/Universal deal that was covered here on slashdot is an example of things moving in the right direction. In case you don't remember: A UK ISP will offer something very close to Magnatune, for Virgin/Universal's music. You can make a monthly payment for an all-you-can-eat buffet. Yeah, there are still some minor issues (they still want to disconnect people without any trial, and they still won't let you give a friend a copy), but it's a huge step forward.
What's even more interesting, is that deals like these will give artists incentive to reduce copyright terms. The reason is that there is a pool of income (the subscription fees) that is divided among the artists according to popularity. New and current artists will not want to share with the old-timers forever. "Move over! While people still love your music, it's our new music that keeps them subscribing!", they might say. It will probably be true, too.
Interesting, I hadn't thought about these "gift" credit cards. You're right, they are kind of anonymous. I wonder if criminals use them much already.
But then again, cash exists too, even quite large bills. My guess is that these gift cards will go more or less at the same time large bills do, and maybe faster if it turns out they are popular with criminals.
A third party can be used as an anonymizing agent, no question about that. What the crypto-cash protocols overlook (as academics are allowed to) is that a third party (bank) that started providing such services would be struck down by government at once, as any other money laundering service foolish enough to advertise.
There still is no crypto protocol that can do without a third party. I feel confident that there never will be - it seems to run into too many absurdities. How can there be trust in a truly anonymous transaction? And what kind of transactions could you reasonably do, if you knew the other party was by definition completely unaccountable to you?
Why is trusting GLD better than trusting government? No, for all the crank theories about the innate value of gold to make the slightest bit of sense, you need to have physical control of it as well.
Anonymous cash cards aren't going to happen. Governments are getting rid of high-value bills precisely because they're mostly useful for criminals, and they will never accept the existence of an "instant money laundering card" unless they are extremely corrupt.
Really, people should get used to the idea that economic transactions will never be 100% anonymous. It's not like speech. Money is more like actions. Try to image what the world would look like if anyone could anonymously and securely buy any service they wanted, and tell me you want to live in that world.
Or aloC-acoC.
Look, if I pay a fixed monthly fee for downloading stuff from Virgin's catalog, why should they care whether I get it from them, or a flac-encoded version from pirate bay? My guess is they won't. After all, to them it'd only mean that
1. They'd save some bandwith costs
2. The artist wouldn't get his cut from the monthly fee pool (looking at existing collective licensing schemes, I'm pretty sure Virgin won't shed any tears for that)
Anyway, if they're enlightened enough to adopt this distribution model, of non-mandatory unlimited download for a fee, then I suspect they'll soon be enlightened enough to understand that the best way to control your content is to be the best provider of it. We will see raw wavs at the very least.
Well, that takes a nice and admirably corageous approach and makes it stupid and evil.
While I rarely watch TV (usually only music shows that have music that is hard to find for me (old)), I record every show I watch, when a VHS tape is full, I put it in a box.
You're a squirrel. But that's OK, I don't think squirrels should be charged for the nuts they bury and never dig up again.
And what do /regular expressions/ have to do with anything?
Still, he's the official authority, and official authorities always should have the benefit of doubt, no matter how much their hands stink.
Or that's at least what some people feel.
This is extremely uninformed and offensive. You obviously know very little of Iranian culture.
To rule, you need a majority of power. People aren't equally powerful, so you do not necessarily need a majority of people to rule.
Minorities can and do keep majorities hostage. When some classes, like veterans, priests, businessmen or people of inherited wealth command more raw power than regular people, and differ significantly from regular people in their political preferences, this is the rule rather than the exception.
This is true even in democracies, because although voting power may be equal, it's far from the only power there is, or even the most important. If the Iranians rise up against this disenfranchisement, there will be bloodshed, because while the clerics and the revolutionary guard are in a minority, they have more than enough power to match the majority.
That explains a lot, but it's stupid. I'm maxed out on karma. So are you and the person you are replying to. Karma isn't really hard to get.
It's just embarrassing to get an insightful mod when you try to make a joke. You feel like you're on Youtube or something.
They're about even.
Mark Twain wanted copyright to last for eternity.
I don't think you're in the early stages of Alzheimer's, though I'd worry more about that eventually happening that Sirius going boom in my lifetime.
One of the things I love about tabletop gaming is that they have saner ideas about "intellectual property". Since games basically can't be copyrighted*, they've had to resort to building reputations for quality based on (trademarked) game lines, publisher names, or designer names.. This has succeeded beyond anything we could hope for, and we have lots and lots of high quality games, available at a price not terribly much higher than the cost of making them.
*a particular expression of the rules can, but not the rules themselves - that would be like copyrighting a book plot, and thankfully the courts have been clear on this for more than a generation.
I wish I hadn't posted to this thread, so I could mod you funny.
Hell hath no fury like an artist who feels he doesn't get what he deserves. And now matter how much they get, they never seem to be content. You know, I don't really like "artists" anymore, I'm so disgusted at that extreme entitlement complex.
Madonna, you're an idiot. Damien Hirst, you're an ass. Mark Twain, you sucked.
"I want original content."
So, you want Anarchy Online?
But Tolkien's conception of elves are pretty much wholly his. Norse elves would are more like a cross between dwarves and leprechauns. All this stuff about immortality, being the "firstborn" and crossing over the ocean had nothing to do with elves until Tolkien came along.
(Norse Dwarves on the other hand, are in many ways more interesting than Tolkien's - and far more than D&D's, at least)