Simple. Just mandate them as part of the "smog inspection" and certification that you're forced to do every other year (without a smog cert, the DMV won't renew your tags). If you don't have a GPS, they'll retrofit you during your next smog check -- at your own expense.
They already do that for cars that need major repair to pass the smog check. You have a choice of either paying for the repairs (up to $500), or selling the car to the state for a nominal sum.
Presently a vehicle over 30 years old is not required to get a smog cert, but they've already changed that once (from 25 years old).
The loophole in Prop13 is that there is no cap on "special assessments" (MOST of which come into being without going thru any voting process, tho these idiots in California always vote for bonds anyway). Thanks to these special assessments, my annual tax bill comes to fully 2% of my property value, rather than the 1% mandated by Prop13.
In response to another post downstream a bit, I've read that the Los Angeles Unified School District personnel roster is 40% teachers, 60% administrators. Would someone explain to me how any school district, however large, could *possibly* need 1.5 admins for each 1.0 teacher?? In the olden days, there was a principal for each school, and a dozen people on the school board, and that was the *entire* admin for any given school district. And kids were better-educated, too.
(I don't even know what article this is attached to. I just wandered in from Gripe2Ed, having noticed your recent post there.:)
Now that you mention it, I'm not sure if the film in question is in the public domain or not -- it's the 1942 version of Jungle Book, starring Sabu (which is why I bought it; when I was a kid, I really liked Sabu).
After manufacturing, Walmart's cut, and other overhead, there's maybe 20 to 40 cents worth of profit in that $1.00 DVD. If you're not paying a big licensing fee to some studio, and can develop a steady mass-market presence, that can amount to pretty good money; profits should be in line with what you can make selling other hard goods. Which seems fair to me; after all, there's no rule that media sales HAVE to make obscene profits.
Walmart had a bunch of 1940s movies on DVD for a dollar apiece, from some company I never heard of ("DigiView"). I bought one that interested me, took it home, stuck it in the computer, and was presented with a simple menu (which ran some scenes from the movie in the background) that lets me either just run the movie or pick major scenes. No FBI warning, no previews, no ads, no bullshit. And in a nice slimline case with a pretty printed cover.
All this for only a buck.
At that price, and with no garbage to dispose of, why the hell even bother ripping/burning a backup copy? If I want a backup copy, I'll just go buy another one for a dollar.
You didn't backtrack the thread far enough -- by the time we got to my analogy, we were talking not about the original article, but about sensationalist journalism in general.
I don't know where it was... as to that sort of "copying" -- art (which I hereby use to mean "the superset that includes anything currently called IP") has always been largely about being inspired by one's peers. So if you saw a statue and were inspired to carve something similar, that was just how it was, and no one could tell you not to do it or charge you a fee for "stealing" the inspiration. NOW, you'd probably find yourself hauled into court for some sort of IP infringement.:(
I'm not sure what it is from a *technical* standpoint, but in the back-when world, they were usually called (and *factory labeled*) a "keyboard BIOS". However, "keyboard controller chip" may well be more accurate.
Wonder if there's any code for same floating around out there. Not that I have the slightest use for it if there is:)
Later I saw where someone (a lawyer IIRC) elsewhere in this discussion brought up that since some decision ca. 1990, one can indeed copyright the appearance of a building! Insanity....
I think you are right that ultimately, this sort of IP is untenable and unsustainable.
And one has to wonder about the attitudes (and perhaps viability) of a business that's so worried about every dime anyone else might make off them, that they'd forbid a photographer from making at most a few thousand bucks off photos of a multi-million dollar building -- the disparity of scale of their respective incomes is just too great to be meaningful, yet some such businesses still pursue it.
Is a work that was donated to the PUBLIC (that is to say, the people as a whole) then in the public domain?
Second, consider the implications: building blueprints are likely copyrighted; the building itself could be construed as a "derivative work". It follows that photographs of the resulting structure are themselves copyrighted by whomever drew up the blueprints.
Egads, I don't like the worms in this can at all. I think they may be parasitic.
As to the hippies.... I grew up during the hippie era, and the "hippie movement" wasn't about "freedom" AT ALL. It was about AVOIDING RESPONSIBILITY, and taking without having to give back -- the ultimate "something for nothing". Drugs in that context were simply another way to duck out of having to be responsible for ANYTHING.
The main thing it did was engender a generation that believes in entitlement -- "You owe me a living whether I'm willing to work for it or not, and if you don't agree, I'll just take YOUR stuff."
As to drugs, I've also known a number of people whose lives revolve around their next hit, and the main thing they have in common is that when they're using, you can't rely on them for ANYTHING. Creativity? Nope. If anything, they're LESS creative than other folk, because creativity takes work, and they can't be bothered.
Priesthoods (sober or stoned) have never been about leadership or creativity, either. They've always been about what boils down to thought-control of the masses, and keeping the common man ignorant enough that they don't know when they're being led by the nose. Creativity is the last thing a priesthood wants; it leads to New Thoughts, which are difficult to control.
As to drugs leading to creative thought, most people think they're really cool while they're stoned, but once they grow up, they realise they were just being stupid.
IBM would be hard to slap down that way, unless they had a monopoly on some particular type of F/OSS -- IBM's army of lawyers would trample such a suit into the dust. But it does raise a question about free software "undercutting" competing commercial products -- might small companies and individuals be vulnerable to such legal nonsense??
Nope, but in this case, it was a total of 6 or 7 crashes for all the hundreds of DC-n (I forget which model) over 30+ years of service. So yes, the second station was just sensationalizing (which was par for the course for them -- they do that with *everything*, which is why I stopped watching their news entirely).
If one pedestrian got accidentally hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been "People are being run down on the streets of Los Angeles!!"
The chips say "Keyboard BIOS" right on 'em. IIRC, this chip controls GateA20 and some other low-level functions too. -- Come to think of it, I remember seeing "GateA20" errors from dying 386 boards.
Back when a 386 or 486 was still worth something, I swapped a couple and brought a "dead" board back to life, but in general the damned things are soldered on.
In this case, the "raw materials" are pipe and chainlink fabric, prior to being made into fence panels, gates, and the like.
I haven't seen what goes in the door at the back (presumably scrap iron and zinc for plating), but that's what comes out into the yard, thence goes over to the fabrication area.
I haven't read it, but goes to show this sort of thing has been around for a looooong time... I'm sure one could find complaints from ancient Phoenician businessmen, both as the screwed and the screwer...
I find it highly ironic that the page-tagline on your post is this:
"Envy, n.: Wishing you'd been born with an unfair advantage, instead of having to try and acquire one."
As to the buzzphrase, "he hates our freedom" -- it has a sound root. In my observation, the motiviation of most extremists boils down to "He's doing X! How dare they let their [women|children|dogs] do X? We must put an end to this evil, before OUR [women|children|dogs] start thinking THEY can do X too!" And that justifies ANY action the extremist feels an urge for.
What the buzzphrase really means in that context is that they hate our freedom to DO or HAVE something that THEY think is evil (with the side note that definitions of "evil" often derive from envy). Which may be as simple as everyday life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
*** Many people do use theft in this way, ie "That store down the street is stealing my customers". It's a common, emotional way of reacting when you feel like you're owed something. It's also wrong, because nobody owes you anything, least of all thier money or patronage. ***
Some Los Angeles area courts disagree. Two businesses that I used to patronize were both hauled into court by their competitors, and forced to stop doing business with the public.
One was an individual who would sometimes provide medical services to homeless people for little or no money; his competitors took him to court for "not charging the going rate" and "depriving competitors of a chance to earn a living" (yes, the suit was worded something like that -- I saw the actual legal documents), and the upshot was that his license was suspended by the court. Right, like homeless people are going to pay anything regardless??
The other was a large vertical manufacturer who both made and sold their own raw materials and finished products, hence could sell either at a much lower price than any of the competing businesses -- who in fact usually bought their raw and finished inventory FROM this manufacturer (one of many in their field, tho they are the largest in this immediate area). Naturally word got around, and pretty soon everyone bought from the source instead of paying the small retailers' markup. So the retailers got together and dragged this manufacturer into court under some sort of "restraint of trade" charge -- and WON. This manufacturer can no longer sell to the public, by court order, SOLELY so their competitors can make money. (BTW this is why a few years ago, the local price of chainlink fence and chainlink prefabs abruptly tripled.)
"If copyright was 'actual property', then the expiration of copyright would mean the state was confiscating that property."
Damn, I never thought of that, but you're right. And the legal implications go on and on. Think of how the concept would affect, say, patents.
"It is a violation of government granted temporary exclusive rights. You're not taking any property, you're violating their exclusive right to make copies."
Given the two concepts, it follows that all such rights "belong" to the gov't (which in its purest form, means the People), having been temporarily licensed to whoever pulled them out of the air (the Public mind, if you will).
Hmm. I just had a horrid vision of the gov't owning our every thought. I think I'll go wash my brain out with soap.
Uh-oh... (USB ports are 24v??) Bright lights. Smoke. Funny smells. Dead rodents. Not good!
Methinks I'm glad I decided that never would a USB keyboard or mouse touch any system of mine, tho at the time it was because the stupid things tend to argue about the order they're plugged in, and sundry other follies.
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Simple. Just mandate them as part of the "smog inspection" and certification that you're forced to do every other year (without a smog cert, the DMV won't renew your tags). If you don't have a GPS, they'll retrofit you during your next smog check -- at your own expense.
They already do that for cars that need major repair to pass the smog check. You have a choice of either paying for the repairs (up to $500), or selling the car to the state for a nominal sum.
Presently a vehicle over 30 years old is not required to get a smog cert, but they've already changed that once (from 25 years old).
The loophole in Prop13 is that there is no cap on "special assessments" (MOST of which come into being without going thru any voting process, tho these idiots in California always vote for bonds anyway). Thanks to these special assessments, my annual tax bill comes to fully 2% of my property value, rather than the 1% mandated by Prop13.
:)
In response to another post downstream a bit, I've read that the Los Angeles Unified School District personnel roster is 40% teachers, 60% administrators. Would someone explain to me how any school district, however large, could *possibly* need 1.5 admins for each 1.0 teacher??
In the olden days, there was a principal for each school, and a dozen people on the school board, and that was the *entire* admin for any given school district. And kids were better-educated, too.
(I don't even know what article this is attached to. I just wandered in from Gripe2Ed, having noticed your recent post there.
Now that you mention it, I'm not sure if the film in question is in the public domain or not -- it's the 1942 version of Jungle Book, starring Sabu (which is why I bought it; when I was a kid, I really liked Sabu).
After manufacturing, Walmart's cut, and other overhead, there's maybe 20 to 40 cents worth of profit in that $1.00 DVD. If you're not paying a big licensing fee to some studio, and can develop a steady mass-market presence, that can amount to pretty good money; profits should be in line with what you can make selling other hard goods. Which seems fair to me; after all, there's no rule that media sales HAVE to make obscene profits.
Walmart had a bunch of 1940s movies on DVD for a dollar apiece, from some company I never heard of ("DigiView"). I bought one that interested me, took it home, stuck it in the computer, and was presented with a simple menu (which ran some scenes from the movie in the background) that lets me either just run the movie or pick major scenes. No FBI warning, no previews, no ads, no bullshit. And in a nice slimline case with a pretty printed cover.
All this for only a buck.
At that price, and with no garbage to dispose of, why the hell even bother ripping/burning a backup copy? If I want a backup copy, I'll just go buy another one for a dollar.
Let that be a lesson to the industry.
And much as with spammers, the preventive methods tend to be as bad as the disease -- frex, blocking entire domains and country codes.
See? Just goes to show your friends DO care... they'll save you from a nasty lawsuit. ;)
You didn't backtrack the thread far enough -- by the time we got to my analogy, we were talking not about the original article, but about sensationalist journalism in general.
So in the era of the brain-implanted DRM chip, the only way to "steal" music would be to sing what you just heard, piped into your brain.
And then the DRM Lords would cut your throat.
I don't know where it was... as to that sort of "copying" -- art (which I hereby use to mean "the superset that includes anything currently called IP") has always been largely about being inspired by one's peers. So if you saw a statue and were inspired to carve something similar, that was just how it was, and no one could tell you not to do it or charge you a fee for "stealing" the inspiration. NOW, you'd probably find yourself hauled into court for some sort of IP infringement. :(
I'm not sure what it is from a *technical* standpoint, but in the back-when world, they were usually called (and *factory labeled*) a "keyboard BIOS". However, "keyboard controller chip" may well be more accurate.
:)
Wonder if there's any code for same floating around out there. Not that I have the slightest use for it if there is
Later I saw where someone (a lawyer IIRC) elsewhere in this discussion brought up that since some decision ca. 1990, one can indeed copyright the appearance of a building! Insanity....
I think you are right that ultimately, this sort of IP is untenable and unsustainable.
And one has to wonder about the attitudes (and perhaps viability) of a business that's so worried about every dime anyone else might make off them, that they'd forbid a photographer from making at most a few thousand bucks off photos of a multi-million dollar building -- the disparity of scale of their respective incomes is just too great to be meaningful, yet some such businesses still pursue it.
Your post somehow brought to mind "Lincoln Park Pirates" ...
How the heck do you copyright a light display??
To simplify the question:
Is a work that was donated to the PUBLIC (that is to say, the people as a whole) then in the public domain?
Second, consider the implications: building blueprints are likely copyrighted; the building itself could be construed as a "derivative work". It follows that photographs of the resulting structure are themselves copyrighted by whomever drew up the blueprints.
Egads, I don't like the worms in this can at all. I think they may be parasitic.
That is ironic about the Chinese markets, eh?
As to the hippies.... I grew up during the hippie era, and the "hippie movement" wasn't about "freedom" AT ALL. It was about AVOIDING RESPONSIBILITY, and taking without having to give back -- the ultimate "something for nothing". Drugs in that context were simply another way to duck out of having to be responsible for ANYTHING.
The main thing it did was engender a generation that believes in entitlement -- "You owe me a living whether I'm willing to work for it or not, and if you don't agree, I'll just take YOUR stuff."
As to drugs, I've also known a number of people whose lives revolve around their next hit, and the main thing they have in common is that when they're using, you can't rely on them for ANYTHING. Creativity? Nope. If anything, they're LESS creative than other folk, because creativity takes work, and they can't be bothered.
Priesthoods (sober or stoned) have never been about leadership or creativity, either. They've always been about what boils down to thought-control of the masses, and keeping the common man ignorant enough that they don't know when they're being led by the nose. Creativity is the last thing a priesthood wants; it leads to New Thoughts, which are difficult to control.
As to drugs leading to creative thought, most people think they're really cool while they're stoned, but once they grow up, they realise they were just being stupid.
IBM would be hard to slap down that way, unless they had a monopoly on some particular type of F/OSS -- IBM's army of lawyers would trample such a suit into the dust. But it does raise a question about free software "undercutting" competing commercial products -- might small companies and individuals be vulnerable to such legal nonsense??
Nope, but in this case, it was a total of 6 or 7 crashes for all the hundreds of DC-n (I forget which model) over 30+ years of service. So yes, the second station was just sensationalizing (which was par for the course for them -- they do that with *everything*, which is why I stopped watching their news entirely).
If one pedestrian got accidentally hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been "People are being run down on the streets of Los Angeles!!"
The chips say "Keyboard BIOS" right on 'em. IIRC, this chip controls GateA20 and some other low-level functions too. -- Come to think of it, I remember seeing "GateA20" errors from dying 386 boards.
Back when a 386 or 486 was still worth something, I swapped a couple and brought a "dead" board back to life, but in general the damned things are soldered on.
In this case, the "raw materials" are pipe and chainlink fabric, prior to being made into fence panels, gates, and the like.
I haven't seen what goes in the door at the back (presumably scrap iron and zinc for plating), but that's what comes out into the yard, thence goes over to the fabrication area.
I haven't read it, but goes to show this sort of thing has been around for a looooong time... I'm sure one could find complaints from ancient Phoenician businessmen, both as the screwed and the screwer...
I'm reminded of how two local TV channels reported a commercial airliner crash:
ch.7: "In all its history, the DC-n has had only two crashes."
ch.9: "The DC-n has a history of crashes!!"
I find it highly ironic that the page-tagline on your post is this:
"Envy, n.: Wishing you'd been born with an unfair advantage, instead of having to try and acquire one."
As to the buzzphrase, "he hates our freedom" -- it has a sound root. In my observation, the motiviation of most extremists boils down to "He's doing X! How dare they let their [women|children|dogs] do X? We must put an end to this evil, before OUR [women|children|dogs] start thinking THEY can do X too!" And that justifies ANY action the extremist feels an urge for.
What the buzzphrase really means in that context is that they hate our freedom to DO or HAVE something that THEY think is evil (with the side note that definitions of "evil" often derive from envy). Which may be as simple as everyday life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
Osama is the Oliver Cromwell of our generation.
***
Many people do use theft in this way, ie "That store down the street is stealing my customers". It's a common, emotional way of reacting when you feel like you're owed something. It's also wrong, because nobody owes you anything, least of all thier money or patronage.
***
Some Los Angeles area courts disagree. Two businesses that I used to patronize were both hauled into court by their competitors, and forced to stop doing business with the public.
One was an individual who would sometimes provide medical services to homeless people for little or no money; his competitors took him to court for "not charging the going rate" and "depriving competitors of a chance to earn a living" (yes, the suit was worded something like that -- I saw the actual legal documents), and the upshot was that his license was suspended by the court. Right, like homeless people are going to pay anything regardless??
The other was a large vertical manufacturer who both made and sold their own raw materials and finished products, hence could sell either at a much lower price than any of the competing businesses -- who in fact usually bought their raw and finished inventory FROM this manufacturer (one of many in their field, tho they are the largest in this immediate area). Naturally word got around, and pretty soon everyone bought from the source instead of paying the small retailers' markup. So the retailers got together and dragged this manufacturer into court under some sort of "restraint of trade" charge -- and WON. This manufacturer can no longer sell to the public, by court order, SOLELY so their competitors can make money. (BTW this is why a few years ago, the local price of chainlink fence and chainlink prefabs abruptly tripled.)
"If copyright was 'actual property', then the expiration of copyright would mean the state was confiscating that property."
Damn, I never thought of that, but you're right. And the legal implications go on and on. Think of how the concept would affect, say, patents.
"It is a violation of government granted temporary exclusive rights. You're not taking any property, you're violating their exclusive right to make copies."
Given the two concepts, it follows that all such rights "belong" to the gov't (which in its purest form, means the People), having been temporarily licensed to whoever pulled them out of the air (the Public mind, if you will).
Hmm. I just had a horrid vision of the gov't owning our every thought. I think I'll go wash my brain out with soap.
Uh-oh... (USB ports are 24v??) Bright lights. Smoke. Funny smells. Dead rodents. Not good!
Methinks I'm glad I decided that never would a USB keyboard or mouse touch any system of mine, tho at the time it was because the stupid things tend to argue about the order they're plugged in, and sundry other follies.