I've been told that in some states (including California), the power company is no longer obligated to purchase your surplus power. In that case, you'd be stuck paying for the any excess the ReNU system might generate.
What it really needs is to be adopted by small local and rural co-ops, the same way phone and electric service was brought to farm country in the first place. Also, maybe having real local people responsible for it would encourage better service.
It may not be practical to adapt an existing metro area, but would certainly be feasible as part of new housing developments.
(Crap, I just said something to encourage housing developments. I think I'll go wash my brain out with soap.)
Actually, I had the same thought -- I wonder if the fact that some Amish groups still don't consider buttons "plain" (thus allowed) might ultimately derive from their far ancestors attempting to distance themselves from a mundane dispute.
I haven't seen the original Weir. The current actress is okay; it's the character I dislike. I have no idea what Weir's doctorate is in, but she's a politician first and foremost -- and it really shows in her gaggy "inspirational speeches". Exactly true to the character, but annoying nonetheless.
There've been a couple of the John Wayne military types I've wanted to smack upside the head too, but otherwise as a group they're generally pretty sensible.
I have a friend who was obviously cloned to create Rodney:) Rodney is more overtly obnoxious, but otherwise their personalities are *identical*, and they even look somewhat alike! Both classic almost-schiz types. -- It's always a pleasant surprise when Rodney shows some balls, or when he thinks beyond what HE wants and what makes HIM look good... it's a nice break from wishing something bad would happen to him, just to prove him wrong:)
We won't get current eps on TV here for at least a year, maybe two, but I'll be snagging the DVDs as soon as they get to Sam's or Costco....!!
I first encountered Stargate somewhere in the middle of season 4 or 5 (I'm still not sure, having not worked that far thru the DVDs yet.. I bought the whole set). And what I could get on TV here was spotty at best; frex, the local syndication channel skipped the entire Jonas season. Anyway, I've seen all of seasons 1, 2, 3; parts of 4/5/6; most of 8 and 9. And I've likewise seen about 2/3rds of the first 2 Atlantis seasons (and haven't got to the S1 DVDs I just picked up). Enough for a fair overview of the SG universe.
Anyway... you're right, the show =has= changed -- because it's not afraid to shift gears depending on SG-current events. Sometimes we have a desperate struggle that needs a more militaristic approach; sometimes we just have small events that ordinary folks can cope with. IMO, they ALL work, because they fit whatever is happening NOW. And unlike some fans, I don't need my fictional universes set in stone.:)
As to the campy episodes, they've had one almost every season, and they are always my least-liked. I just don't care for camp SF. But the series has been good enough overall that I forgive the occasional lapse.
Like SG-1, Atlantis started off a little wobbly (sometimes a lot wobbly.. I still can't stand Weir, she reminds me of Barbara Boxer!) but has grown and changed as circumstances required. Not a problem in my book. After all, without change there'd be nothing new to do and explore.:)
Or better yet, an unencumbered copy in escrow should be a condition of having copyright issued (and protected) at all. So the logical escrow repository is the Copyright Office itself, along with the Library of Congress.
Of course this does nothing for people in other countries (unless they too initiate some similar scheme), but if it were a condition of copyright being *protected* in the U.S., U.S. escrow rules WOULD be followed, because for most content-owning industries, the U.S. is too large a market to blow off.
As to brute-forcing, yeah, it can usually be done, but we shouldn't COUNT on that; besides, it encourages the "nyah nyah, can't touch our DRM" types. An especially bad thing in light of Treach^H^H^H^H Trusted Computing.
I do a lot of consumer surveys, and you're absolutely right: It's no longer about quality and value, it's about the kewl factor. About how the product will make you FEEL empowered, or modern, or like a party animal, or whatever. But most no longer even have "good value" as a possible response.
I make a point of negative survey responses to such cool-factor criteria, and positive responses to those about quality and value, whenever possible. (Which is absolutely honest on my part. I don't give a shit about the kewl factor, I just want something that works and gives me my money's worth.)
But what people here forget, is that advertising agencies are about selling ads to companies, not about selling product to consumers. And it's in the best interest of ad agencies to get their customers (companies) to believe that consumers want COOL! and SHINY!, because that's a far larger advertising market. You only have to convince a consumer that you're top quality once, and after that there's no need to repeat yourself. But feelgood advertising needs to be endlessly repeated or it fades very quickly, so you need to masturbate their eyeballs forever.
All to the benefit of the advertising agencies who design this kark.
Both excellent escape routes, provided of course that cracking DRM isn't regarded as a felony in itself (whether there's a content-owner present or not), and if the escrow outfit itself doesn't go tits-up.
Trouble is, there's really no foolproof way to ensure that DRM both can and WILL be expired. Even so, it'd be better than DRM-forever.
IMO it's not preinstalling stuff that's the problem; indeed, that *could* be a very good thing if the OEMs made good and useful choices. But what they're doing is effectively.... spamming.
I suspect M$ views it similarly -- they've GOT to be aware of how much crapware the average OEM bogs down the system with, and how it's reflecting on the Windows franchise (since most users think it's WINDOWS at fault). If the OEMs hadn't made such bad choices, the issue might never have arisen.
But since the OEMs seem to make uniformly bad choices, M$ has little choice but to say "knock it off entirely". Which isn't the ideal solution any more than killing email is a great solution to spam, but the OEMs brought it on themselves.
Everyone else in the process of making and distributing music IS paid at the production step. Only the artist is paid later, sortof "on commission".
Which would be fine if all the costs (and then some) weren't then peeled out of said commission. As it stands, most artists would be better off to be paid on the spot, just like studio musicians, production techs, etc.
People took Lucas to task for that back in 1977. Lucas said it was to show that Han isn't as smart as he thinks he is. Truth was, Lucas was jargoning without a dictionary.
It may well be that Ford has seen a story treatment and decreed it "Crud". If a sufficiently good SW7 script existed, and he was offered sufficiently good terms (he's a smart businessman) I suspect he'd change his mind. As it was, the Han Solo character was getting progressively weaker and less interesting with each film, and you can't really blame Ford for not being interested in what he has every reason to believe would be a token appearance in SW7.
It would be fine if USEFUL apps came preinstalled, and if their use were OPTIONAL, and if they didn't *by their mere presence* impact the system's performance and stability. But that's not the case with the OEM craplets.
The last time I got called to fix such a machine, it was a brand new HP. It came with 6 GIGS of such crud, and it was not merely installed, a lot of it insisted on running "Wouldn't you like to buy me??" popups every time the machine was booted up, and some would hang and get stuck onscreen (worst of all was one that was set to be "always on top").
And not a one of them was anything worthwhile; they were mostly things like front ends for online games. AOL Free Trial was the most useful of the lot, possibly followed by Norton (already begging for payment if you wanted updates) and that's exceedingly faint praise to be damned by.
The net result of all this was that the system ran VERY slowly and crashed a lot. All of which was miraculously cured by removing all the craplets and crudware. ("VERY slowly": An average of 20 seconds to draw a dialog box. Up to FOUR MINUTES to acknowledge a mouse click. I shit you not; I timed it. And this was a P4-3GHz/512mb RAM.)
So yes, there is a *huge* difference between preinstalling useless craplets that fuck up the system and constantly beg for money, and preinstalling useful, well-behaved, NON-OBTRUSIVE software like Firefox and OpenOffice.
And while this payola lets the OEMs sell the consumer-level systems at a more-competitive price, the buyer soon pays out the difference, as they have to get a tech to come spend a couple hours uninstalling craplets and crudware.
At a guess, the OEMs make about $5 per pre-installed craplet, and about 20 craplets seems to be standard, so the system can be offered at a $100 "discount" without the OEM losing anything on the deal. If it takes two hours of a tech's time (at the typical $75/hr), the consumer winds up paying $50 MORE than they would have for the un-cluttered system. But sales are made on PERCEIVED shelf price, not on actual cost to the consumer, so this practice will continue, and more'n likely just get worse.
And if OEMs used first-quality components, instead of seconds and funky-firmware'd chips, they wouldn't have this problem, and the standard off-the-shelf drivers would work.
I've seen the problem most often with Gateways and Dells, not so much with HPs -- where only the OEM's incarnation of the driver will work (and then not nearly as well as when you have the same model in a standard chip and standard drivers). And mostly with video and NIC chips, not so much with sound chips. You'd think by now at least the venerable ATI RageII driver would be standardized, but noooooo, it's every OEM for themselves!!
Just for comparison, a few months ago I cleaned up a brand new HP store-bought system (P4-3GHz/512mb RAM)... I removed 6 GIGS worth of partner crap (all useless), plus Norton. Suddenly it ran like a P4, instead of like an overwhelmed 386.
As it came from the store, the poor thing took as long as 20 seconds to draw a dialog box, and as long as FOUR MINUTES to acknowledge a mouse click. No, I'm not exaggerating. Once I realized it wasn't hung, I timed it.
In light of that, gotta wonder how many such machines the inexperienced user thinks have crashed, but in fact are just struggling with OEM crapware (and Norton). Even an assload of spyware doesn't slow things down THAT much.
But wouldn't that "third arm" criterion also apply to a character who has new experiences, thus new thoughts in his virtual head? that's new material, after all.
As I remark to the parent poster -- if you continued to create NEW works based on a given character and/or venue, wouldn't the copyright on those NEW works continue to protect the *character* and/or *venue*, even when older works fall into public domain??
If so, I see two effects here: 1) authors have incentive to expand an existing character or venue, and 2) if the author fails to do so, others are free to continue; ISTM this would also get rid of some of the grey areas surrounding fanfic, by making it wholly legal rather than (as is the current situation) mostly being winked at but subject to squashing if the copyright holder objects.
IOW, I don't see that this is a problem under your copyright scheme is reasonable. Additionally, it rightly recalls that copyright used to only be issued for works intended for PUBLICATION; that is, intended to be MADE PUBLIC.
And I'm thinking that it's a mighty short hop from reasonable filtering for a specific criminal activity, to broader filtering for "antisocial behaviour" (such as buying "subversive" books).
I'll have to look for that one -- sounds interesting.
Also try IN SEARCH OF DRACULA by McNally and Florescu. It's an interesting read that effectively blends skepticism, historical facts/rumours, and a sense of mystery.
There's a photo of it in one of the McNally and Florescu books. It's on a steep mountainside and is in very rough shape -- pretty much just the main cylinder of the tower remains, and not all of that, and it wasn't very large to start with.
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I've been told that in some states (including California), the power company is no longer obligated to purchase your surplus power. In that case, you'd be stuck paying for the any excess the ReNU system might generate.
What it really needs is to be adopted by small local and rural co-ops, the same way phone and electric service was brought to farm country in the first place. Also, maybe having real local people responsible for it would encourage better service.
It may not be practical to adapt an existing metro area, but would certainly be feasible as part of new housing developments.
(Crap, I just said something to encourage housing developments. I think I'll go wash my brain out with soap.)
Actually, I had the same thought -- I wonder if the fact that some Amish groups still don't consider buttons "plain" (thus allowed) might ultimately derive from their far ancestors attempting to distance themselves from a mundane dispute.
I haven't seen the original Weir. The current actress is okay; it's the character I dislike. I have no idea what Weir's doctorate is in, but she's a politician first and foremost -- and it really shows in her gaggy "inspirational speeches". Exactly true to the character, but annoying nonetheless.
:) Rodney is more overtly obnoxious, but otherwise their personalities are *identical*, and they even look somewhat alike! Both classic almost-schiz types. -- It's always a pleasant surprise when Rodney shows some balls, or when he thinks beyond what HE wants and what makes HIM look good... it's a nice break from wishing something bad would happen to him, just to prove him wrong :)
There've been a couple of the John Wayne military types I've wanted to smack upside the head too, but otherwise as a group they're generally pretty sensible.
I have a friend who was obviously cloned to create Rodney
We won't get current eps on TV here for at least a year, maybe two, but I'll be snagging the DVDs as soon as they get to Sam's or Costco....!!
I first encountered Stargate somewhere in the middle of season 4 or 5 (I'm still not sure, having not worked that far thru the DVDs yet.. I bought the whole set). And what I could get on TV here was spotty at best; frex, the local syndication channel skipped the entire Jonas season. Anyway, I've seen all of seasons 1, 2, 3; parts of 4/5/6; most of 8 and 9. And I've likewise seen about 2/3rds of the first 2 Atlantis seasons (and haven't got to the S1 DVDs I just picked up). Enough for a fair overview of the SG universe.
:)
:)
Anyway... you're right, the show =has= changed -- because it's not afraid to shift gears depending on SG-current events. Sometimes we have a desperate struggle that needs a more militaristic approach; sometimes we just have small events that ordinary folks can cope with. IMO, they ALL work, because they fit whatever is happening NOW. And unlike some fans, I don't need my fictional universes set in stone.
As to the campy episodes, they've had one almost every season, and they are always my least-liked. I just don't care for camp SF. But the series has been good enough overall that I forgive the occasional lapse.
Like SG-1, Atlantis started off a little wobbly (sometimes a lot wobbly.. I still can't stand Weir, she reminds me of Barbara Boxer!) but has grown and changed as circumstances required. Not a problem in my book. After all, without change there'd be nothing new to do and explore.
Or better yet, an unencumbered copy in escrow should be a condition of having copyright issued (and protected) at all. So the logical escrow repository is the Copyright Office itself, along with the Library of Congress.
Of course this does nothing for people in other countries (unless they too initiate some similar scheme), but if it were a condition of copyright being *protected* in the U.S., U.S. escrow rules WOULD be followed, because for most content-owning industries, the U.S. is too large a market to blow off.
As to brute-forcing, yeah, it can usually be done, but we shouldn't COUNT on that; besides, it encourages the "nyah nyah, can't touch our DRM" types. An especially bad thing in light of Treach^H^H^H^H Trusted Computing.
I do a lot of consumer surveys, and you're absolutely right: It's no longer about quality and value, it's about the kewl factor. About how the product will make you FEEL empowered, or modern, or like a party animal, or whatever. But most no longer even have "good value" as a possible response.
I make a point of negative survey responses to such cool-factor criteria, and positive responses to those about quality and value, whenever possible. (Which is absolutely honest on my part. I don't give a shit about the kewl factor, I just want something that works and gives me my money's worth.)
But what people here forget, is that advertising agencies are about selling ads to companies, not about selling product to consumers. And it's in the best interest of ad agencies to get their customers (companies) to believe that consumers want COOL! and SHINY!, because that's a far larger advertising market. You only have to convince a consumer that you're top quality once, and after that there's no need to repeat yourself. But feelgood advertising needs to be endlessly repeated or it fades very quickly, so you need to masturbate their eyeballs forever.
All to the benefit of the advertising agencies who design this kark.
Both excellent escape routes, provided of course that cracking DRM isn't regarded as a felony in itself (whether there's a content-owner present or not), and if the escrow outfit itself doesn't go tits-up.
Trouble is, there's really no foolproof way to ensure that DRM both can and WILL be expired. Even so, it'd be better than DRM-forever.
I think we're completely in agreement here.
.... spamming.
IMO it's not preinstalling stuff that's the problem; indeed, that *could* be a very good thing if the OEMs made good and useful choices. But what they're doing is effectively
I suspect M$ views it similarly -- they've GOT to be aware of how much crapware the average OEM bogs down the system with, and how it's reflecting on the Windows franchise (since most users think it's WINDOWS at fault). If the OEMs hadn't made such bad choices, the issue might never have arisen.
But since the OEMs seem to make uniformly bad choices, M$ has little choice but to say "knock it off entirely". Which isn't the ideal solution any more than killing email is a great solution to spam, but the OEMs brought it on themselves.
Everyone else in the process of making and distributing music IS paid at the production step. Only the artist is paid later, sortof "on commission".
Which would be fine if all the costs (and then some) weren't then peeled out of said commission. As it stands, most artists would be better off to be paid on the spot, just like studio musicians, production techs, etc.
People took Lucas to task for that back in 1977. Lucas said it was to show that Han isn't as smart as he thinks he is. Truth was, Lucas was jargoning without a dictionary.
In 1977, Lucas said that "sequels are for losers" (that's an exact quote) and that he would NEVER make a Star Wars sequel.
Then the money came rolling in, and Lucas changed his mind.
It may well be that Ford has seen a story treatment and decreed it "Crud". If a sufficiently good SW7 script existed, and he was offered sufficiently good terms (he's a smart businessman) I suspect he'd change his mind. As it was, the Han Solo character was getting progressively weaker and less interesting with each film, and you can't really blame Ford for not being interested in what he has every reason to believe would be a token appearance in SW7.
I like your idea in principle; now how would one implement it, without requiring a special player?
Or perhaps for a very nominal fee (say, 10% of the cost of the original), you could just re-download an unencumbered version later on?
The problem there is... what if the provider goes tits-up, and fails to release a DRM-freeing utility for its wares first??
That's going in my BBS tagline file :)
It would be fine if USEFUL apps came preinstalled, and if their use were OPTIONAL, and if they didn't *by their mere presence* impact the system's performance and stability. But that's not the case with the OEM craplets.
The last time I got called to fix such a machine, it was a brand new HP. It came with 6 GIGS of such crud, and it was not merely installed, a lot of it insisted on running "Wouldn't you like to buy me??" popups every time the machine was booted up, and some would hang and get stuck onscreen (worst of all was one that was set to be "always on top").
And not a one of them was anything worthwhile; they were mostly things like front ends for online games. AOL Free Trial was the most useful of the lot, possibly followed by Norton (already begging for payment if you wanted updates) and that's exceedingly faint praise to be damned by.
The net result of all this was that the system ran VERY slowly and crashed a lot. All of which was miraculously cured by removing all the craplets and crudware. ("VERY slowly": An average of 20 seconds to draw a dialog box. Up to FOUR MINUTES to acknowledge a mouse click. I shit you not; I timed it. And this was a P4-3GHz/512mb RAM.)
So yes, there is a *huge* difference between preinstalling useless craplets that fuck up the system and constantly beg for money, and preinstalling useful, well-behaved, NON-OBTRUSIVE software like Firefox and OpenOffice.
And while this payola lets the OEMs sell the consumer-level systems at a more-competitive price, the buyer soon pays out the difference, as they have to get a tech to come spend a couple hours uninstalling craplets and crudware.
At a guess, the OEMs make about $5 per pre-installed craplet, and about 20 craplets seems to be standard, so the system can be offered at a $100 "discount" without the OEM losing anything on the deal. If it takes two hours of a tech's time (at the typical $75/hr), the consumer winds up paying $50 MORE than they would have for the un-cluttered system. But sales are made on PERCEIVED shelf price, not on actual cost to the consumer, so this practice will continue, and more'n likely just get worse.
And if OEMs used first-quality components, instead of seconds and funky-firmware'd chips, they wouldn't have this problem, and the standard off-the-shelf drivers would work.
I've seen the problem most often with Gateways and Dells, not so much with HPs -- where only the OEM's incarnation of the driver will work (and then not nearly as well as when you have the same model in a standard chip and standard drivers). And mostly with video and NIC chips, not so much with sound chips. You'd think by now at least the venerable ATI RageII driver would be standardized, but noooooo, it's every OEM for themselves!!
Just for comparison, a few months ago I cleaned up a brand new HP store-bought system (P4-3GHz/512mb RAM) ... I removed 6 GIGS worth of partner crap (all useless), plus Norton. Suddenly it ran like a P4, instead of like an overwhelmed 386.
As it came from the store, the poor thing took as long as 20 seconds to draw a dialog box, and as long as FOUR MINUTES to acknowledge a mouse click. No, I'm not exaggerating. Once I realized it wasn't hung, I timed it.
In light of that, gotta wonder how many such machines the inexperienced user thinks have crashed, but in fact are just struggling with OEM crapware (and Norton). Even an assload of spyware doesn't slow things down THAT much.
But wouldn't that "third arm" criterion also apply to a character who has new experiences, thus new thoughts in his virtual head? that's new material, after all.
As I remark to the parent poster -- if you continued to create NEW works based on a given character and/or venue, wouldn't the copyright on those NEW works continue to protect the *character* and/or *venue*, even when older works fall into public domain??
If so, I see two effects here: 1) authors have incentive to expand an existing character or venue, and 2) if the author fails to do so, others are free to continue; ISTM this would also get rid of some of the grey areas surrounding fanfic, by making it wholly legal rather than (as is the current situation) mostly being winked at but subject to squashing if the copyright holder objects.
IOW, I don't see that this is a problem under your copyright scheme is reasonable. Additionally, it rightly recalls that copyright used to only be issued for works intended for PUBLICATION; that is, intended to be MADE PUBLIC.
But if you continue to use those characters in NEW works, they should continue to be copyrighted, yes?
And I'm thinking that it's a mighty short hop from reasonable filtering for a specific criminal activity, to broader filtering for "antisocial behaviour" (such as buying "subversive" books).
I'll have to look for that one -- sounds interesting.
Also try IN SEARCH OF DRACULA by McNally and Florescu. It's an interesting read that effectively blends skepticism, historical facts/rumours, and a sense of mystery.
I think he's referring to the original fortress, used by Vlad Dracul (and others) in defense of Wallachia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poienari_Castle
There's a photo of it in one of the McNally and Florescu books. It's on a steep mountainside and is in very rough shape -- pretty much just the main cylinder of the tower remains, and not all of that, and it wasn't very large to start with.