So now we are having the government step in and tell people what they can and cannot buy based on a possible intangible benefit to the band?
Having those $15 tickets available benefits society. Bands having passionate fans is good for society. Having cultural activities available to those who don't have a lot of money benefits society. The band wants to do this, but they can't enforce the rules by themselves.
Ticket scalping happens because the market is demonstrating that tickets are under priced. If someone buys all the tickets up as you say and than tries to sell them there is a maximum price at which he can expect to move the units. This is the price people are willing to pay to see the show. Lets say I purchase all the $15 dollar tickets to see my favorite band. They are not harmed, they sold their entire inventory of tickets at a price they were willing to offer the service of performing for;
Unless, of course, there is an intangible benefit to the band of having people in the audience that cannot afford to pay more than $15 per ticket, but can afford to spend the time it takes to purchase them the moment they go on sale (after closely following the band's announcements to find out exactly when that will be).
Toner cartridges also are built to carry liquids. The explosive they tried to use was a liquid. See why hard drives just wouldn't work for that attack?
Um, toner isn't liquid, perhaps you're thinking of ink cartridges?
I'm just irritated that Internet Config went away with the switch to Mac OS X. Such a simple, powerful idea! It would show you (among other things) a list of protocols, and what helper applications were associated with them, and allow the user to easily make changes. It was one of those little gems that was such a good idea that applications started almost universally supporting it even before Apple got on board. Then Apple made their own UI and shipped it with the OS, and life was good... until Mac OS X came out and they decided users didn't need to be bothered by being able to configure their system the way they wanted.
You misunderstand. I'm not saying they'll be making a profit selling today's XBox360s 5 years from now, I'm saying they'll be selling some new gaming product 5 years from now, potentially making a lot of money on that, and it's their years of experience with the XBox and XBox360 (and their experiences with game development, working with game development studios, building XBox Live, etc. etc.) that will make this new profitable product possible. If they hadn't bothered making the XBox (and persisted even when things didn't go well), then that future product couldn't have happened.
Of course I could be wrong. Maybe this will go nowhere.
It has taken a very long time to turn that ship around, but Microsoft began actively working on IE again in about 2004 when they realized the competition was going to kick their ass. They're years behind, but working hard to catch up, and they're doing things right this time (decoupling IE from the OS, cooperating with other browser vendors, improving support for web standards such as CSS and HTML5, etc. etc.). I'd say in a few more years, they'll have a browser that some people will want to use by choice, even if it wasn't bundled in.
Even with Xbox Live subscriptions it will take 5-8 years before the platform breaks even. Financially, it's not a success story for the company.
Unless, of course, in 5-8 years it breaks even, and after that it turns into a large revenue stream. Remember, Microsoft can apply the lessons learned from their experimentation with the XBox to new technologies; they'll be coming out with products in the future that couldn't have happened without the XBox.
Consumption taxes hit those who spend their entire paycheck the hardest - ie the poorest members of society.
I've never understood the idea that anyone, poor or no, should not have to pay their fair share. If they need a leg up we can give them a leg up, but why shouldn't they pay their fair share? And for what it's worth, I'm not poor, but I'm at the very bottom of the middle class. It would be really nice if I could cut my tax burden by not buying anything. That would really help my situation out a lot.
Their fair share of what, exactly? Their fair share of the wages they earn? Their fair share of the money they spend? Their fair share of the discretionary money they spend excluding basic necessities like food and housing? These end up being very different numbers depending on who you're talking about.
Sales tax is a "regressive tax", because poor people pay a higher percentage of their incomes in sales tax than rich people do, because poor people spend a higher percentage of their income on taxed goods and services than rich people do. Is that "their fair share"?
It' not entirely unfair to assume that each member is a reader. In fact, we can safely assume that there are more readers than members, but there are also inactive members (i.e. people who used to read, but don't any more), but since you didn't exclude those (collective readers implies every single person who has ever read Slashdot), let's just go with the highest member number I can easily find - mine: 1,360,093.
There may be that number of active readers, but he specified readers of this story, which will be significantly less than the number of active readers of Slashdot in general. Most people don't read every single article. Some only read at work M-F, and by Monday this will be gone from the front page. Further, I think an entirely reasonable interpretation would be to include only those who are reading these comments, not just the Slashdot story at the top - specifically, those who have or will read the grandparent post itself.
Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, written by men in their own voices but essentially writing what God wanted them to write. The Bible says that God created all life on earth, including the two original humans, which were created directly by God and did not evolve from lower animals. Although the Bible doesn't provide a precise timeline, there are genealogies you can piece together to put the time of creation at somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 BC.
Does God command us to turn off our brains? (you would hope not...)
Absolutely not. Christians are encouraged to think for themselves, to question what they are told, and be wary of those who might be trying to lead them away from the truth.
Does this concept, if proven true, contradict something in the bible so directly that it would prove Christianity is false? What's the deal? Why are they so scared of this?
There are many Christians who believe the account of Creation as described in the Bible is not intended to be taken literally, but as an illustration that paints a picture of the intent of God's design rather than describing the way in which that design was really implemented. This is the official position of the Catholic church, for example. They believe that God used evolution to eventually bring about human life over millions of years, and that since God is timeless, when the Bible says it happened in "a day", it doesn't really mean a literal day but just some arbitrary period of time.
However, nothing in the text indicates that the story of Creation is not meant to be taken literally. The Hebrew word for "day" is never used anywhere else in the Bible to mean anything other than a literal day. The Bible describes Adam being created from dust, and after awhile he realized that he was alone and had no suitable companion. God took a part of Adam's side (maybe a rib, although the word used has multiple meanings) and used that to create Eve. While you might take this to be a metaphore, it's difficult to see what the metaphorical significance could be of Eve being created from Adam's side if Eve was really just one of many available early humans.
Also, if Adam and Eve didn't realty exist, then how did the original sin happen? Did death exist before sin? If the world was already populated with mostly-human beings that evolved alongside Adam and Eve, then what was so special about those two? Or is the concept of Adam and Eve metaphorical too? If that part of the Bible wasn't meant to be taken literally, why is it not clear from the text how it was supposed to be understood? What other parts of the Bible are also not meant to be taken literally?
Different people have different interpretations, but many Christians don't see that evolution fits. Also, Christian scientists have found some interesting evidence that seems to support what the Bible describes; I suggest Answers in Genesis if you're curious (unfortunately a lot of their articles are dumbed down quite a bit, but they do have some more technical stuff too).
Ah, yes of course! At the time, there weren't any online stores selling non-DRM'd music in the US, as far as I'm aware, but I should have been more specific! There was (and still is) a fair amount of confusion about this point - the iPod has always been able to play non-DRM'd music from any source....As long as it's not in Ogg format, of course.
If you're talking about the security warning you get when browsing to an HTTPS site with an invalid certificate, apparently you missed the checkbox labeled "Permanently store exception" or something to that effect. It's checked by default, but you can certainly uncheck it.
That's not what we're talking about here though...
His refusal to adopt WMA or license FairPlay killed DRM in the music industry
I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the fact that WMA and FairPlay sucked, nor a little out-of-bottle genie called Napster.
It definitely had nothing to do with FairPlay sucking. FairPlay does suck a little bit, but all other implementations of DRM suck a lot more. What Apple did was 1) create the #1 best selling portable digital music player of all time, and 2) refuse to allow music purchased from any online store but theirs to play on it. This had the effect of motivating everyone else who wanted to compete with the iTunes Store to convince the record labels to allow THEM (not Apple) to sell DRM-free music, since there was no other way for them to meet customers' demands of something that's compatible with an iPod. Once this happened, it wasn't too much of a stretch for the record labels to allow Apple to sell DRM-free music too (although Apple did have to compromise in the negotiations, and allow the record companies to set different prices for some songs).
Your out-of-bottle genie is part of the reason the record labels insisted on DRM in the first place.
In a way, it almost makes perfect sense that if you build an app on a locked down platform (foo) it should be much easier to port to a more open platform (bar) since you are "practically" guaranteed that bar will have all of the functionality of foo and then some....no?
You seem to believe that a locked down platform must necessarily have fewer features than an open platform. I don't see any reason why that should be true. I'm not a developer, so I don't know how iOS and Android compare, but I would bet iOS has quite a few features that Android doesn't offer. Whether or not these are more useful to the average developer than the features I'm sure Android has that iOS doesn't offer, I can't say...
Yamaha makes everything from motorcycles to violins, and is generally known for consistently decent (though not spectacular) quality on pretty much all of it. I've always found that fascinating.
Then there are rumors about hidden APIs that Apple won't share with other developers, which is something that Microsoft was also accused of doing.
This is no secret, and certainly nothing new. When Apple is developing a new application, and they need support for some new technology in the operating system, they often build the two pieces side-by-side, and until they feel confident that they've gotten it right, they don't always publicize the APIs. They freely acknowledge that these private APIs exist, and warn developers not to use them, because private APIs are subject to change in incompatible ways without warning or documentation. Once the bugs have been worked out, Apple stabilizes the API and publishes documentation. This might sound unfair to third-party developers, but the only alternatives are to 1) delay release of the technology until they've had a chance to do a lot more under-the-hood refinements to the code, 2) publish an immature API that they then have to maintain, even though it's terrible, because third-party developers are depending on it, or 3) publish the immature API but then drop support when revisions are needed, breaking everybody's third-party apps and pissing off their users.
Apple is not known for keeping private APIs a secret indefinitely. They actively encourage third-party developers to build on the technology made available in the Mac OS, because this makes for a better user experience, which is what helps them sell Macs.
>>>When all companies in a market have an arbitration clause in their contracts, the people can't choose an alternative
Bullshit.
You always have a right to drag the father-fuckers at Comcast or Verizon or Sprint into a US court room. Stop spreading misinformation that you don't have that right.
I never said you can't sue them, I said you can't choose a competing product. You have the right to sue anybody for any reason. Of course, they have much better funded lawyers than I can afford, but if you think you can win, go for it!
One is never obligated to enter into a contract requiring arbitration. I solve the problems you mention by not supporting companies that require it in the terms for their services.
That may be technically true, but when one wants to be a normal functioning member of society, sometimes one needs the services provided by companies that have an arbitration clause in their contracts (and there is usually no competitive offer available from another company that does not include a similar clause in their contracts). Furthermore, since most of the public is generally unaware of arbitration and its implications, they're likely to skip over the fine print and just assume that it must be OK, since these contracts are "normal" and everyone else they know has already agreed to something similar.
Free market capitalism depends on an educated and informed populace, and government intervention to prevent anticompetitive practices. When all companies in a market have an arbitration clause in their contracts, the people can't choose an alternative, and they're unaware that they should. It is wholly appropriate for the government to step in.
When people troll on about "Faux News" and Murdock I simply point to the problems with other "news" organizations that don't report certain news stories because it doesn't fit the narrative of the left.
This is true to an extent, but the popular left-wing media outlets generally don't LIE about what's going on. They have a liberal bias, but while they may try to lead their audience in a particular direction, they don't deliberately try to deceive their audience. I've seen several examples of Fox News doing just that.
Please, show me where Democrats are lying this blatantly. Am I just not aware of it because I only get my news from liberal biased sources? If that's the case, then show me.
Slashdot Mirror
So now we are having the government step in and tell people what they can and cannot buy based on a possible intangible benefit to the band?
Having those $15 tickets available benefits society. Bands having passionate fans is good for society. Having cultural activities available to those who don't have a lot of money benefits society. The band wants to do this, but they can't enforce the rules by themselves.
Ticket scalping happens because the market is demonstrating that tickets are under priced. If someone buys all the tickets up as you say and than tries to sell them there is a maximum price at which he can expect to move the units. This is the price people are willing to pay to see the show. Lets say I purchase all the $15 dollar tickets to see my favorite band. They are not harmed, they sold their entire inventory of tickets at a price they were willing to offer the service of performing for;
Unless, of course, there is an intangible benefit to the band of having people in the audience that cannot afford to pay more than $15 per ticket, but can afford to spend the time it takes to purchase them the moment they go on sale (after closely following the band's announcements to find out exactly when that will be).
Toner cartridges also are built to carry liquids. The explosive they tried to use was a liquid. See why hard drives just wouldn't work for that attack?
Um, toner isn't liquid, perhaps you're thinking of ink cartridges?
I'm just irritated that Internet Config went away with the switch to Mac OS X. Such a simple, powerful idea! It would show you (among other things) a list of protocols, and what helper applications were associated with them, and allow the user to easily make changes. It was one of those little gems that was such a good idea that applications started almost universally supporting it even before Apple got on board. Then Apple made their own UI and shipped it with the OS, and life was good... until Mac OS X came out and they decided users didn't need to be bothered by being able to configure their system the way they wanted.
Hmm, perhaps "never" was too strong a word. That is distressing.
You misunderstand. I'm not saying they'll be making a profit selling today's XBox360s 5 years from now, I'm saying they'll be selling some new gaming product 5 years from now, potentially making a lot of money on that, and it's their years of experience with the XBox and XBox360 (and their experiences with game development, working with game development studios, building XBox Live, etc. etc.) that will make this new profitable product possible. If they hadn't bothered making the XBox (and persisted even when things didn't go well), then that future product couldn't have happened.
Of course I could be wrong. Maybe this will go nowhere.
IE's stagnation and market-share shrinkage
It has taken a very long time to turn that ship around, but Microsoft began actively working on IE again in about 2004 when they realized the competition was going to kick their ass. They're years behind, but working hard to catch up, and they're doing things right this time (decoupling IE from the OS, cooperating with other browser vendors, improving support for web standards such as CSS and HTML5, etc. etc.). I'd say in a few more years, they'll have a browser that some people will want to use by choice, even if it wasn't bundled in.
Even with Xbox Live subscriptions it will take 5-8 years before the platform breaks even. Financially, it's not a success story for the company.
Unless, of course, in 5-8 years it breaks even, and after that it turns into a large revenue stream. Remember, Microsoft can apply the lessons learned from their experimentation with the XBox to new technologies; they'll be coming out with products in the future that couldn't have happened without the XBox.
Consumption taxes hit those who spend their entire paycheck the hardest - ie the poorest members of society.
I've never understood the idea that anyone, poor or no, should not have to pay their fair share. If they need a leg up we can give them a leg up, but why shouldn't they pay their fair share? And for what it's worth, I'm not poor, but I'm at the very bottom of the middle class. It would be really nice if I could cut my tax burden by not buying anything. That would really help my situation out a lot.
Their fair share of what, exactly? Their fair share of the wages they earn? Their fair share of the money they spend? Their fair share of the discretionary money they spend excluding basic necessities like food and housing? These end up being very different numbers depending on who you're talking about.
Sales tax is a "regressive tax", because poor people pay a higher percentage of their incomes in sales tax than rich people do, because poor people spend a higher percentage of their income on taxed goods and services than rich people do. Is that "their fair share"?
It' not entirely unfair to assume that each member is a reader. In fact, we can safely assume that there are more readers than members, but there are also inactive members (i.e. people who used to read, but don't any more), but since you didn't exclude those (collective readers implies every single person who has ever read Slashdot), let's just go with the highest member number I can easily find - mine: 1,360,093.
There may be that number of active readers, but he specified readers of this story, which will be significantly less than the number of active readers of Slashdot in general. Most people don't read every single article. Some only read at work M-F, and by Monday this will be gone from the front page. Further, I think an entirely reasonable interpretation would be to include only those who are reading these comments, not just the Slashdot story at the top - specifically, those who have or will read the grandparent post itself.
But yes, you're right, he was using hyperbole.
Is DC Comics getting royalties from this film?
...why Christians deny evolution?
Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, written by men in their own voices but essentially writing what God wanted them to write. The Bible says that God created all life on earth, including the two original humans, which were created directly by God and did not evolve from lower animals. Although the Bible doesn't provide a precise timeline, there are genealogies you can piece together to put the time of creation at somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 BC.
Does God command us to turn off our brains? (you would hope not...)
Absolutely not. Christians are encouraged to think for themselves, to question what they are told, and be wary of those who might be trying to lead them away from the truth.
Does this concept, if proven true, contradict something in the bible so directly that it would prove Christianity is false? What's the deal? Why are they so scared of this?
There are many Christians who believe the account of Creation as described in the Bible is not intended to be taken literally, but as an illustration that paints a picture of the intent of God's design rather than describing the way in which that design was really implemented. This is the official position of the Catholic church, for example. They believe that God used evolution to eventually bring about human life over millions of years, and that since God is timeless, when the Bible says it happened in "a day", it doesn't really mean a literal day but just some arbitrary period of time.
However, nothing in the text indicates that the story of Creation is not meant to be taken literally. The Hebrew word for "day" is never used anywhere else in the Bible to mean anything other than a literal day. The Bible describes Adam being created from dust, and after awhile he realized that he was alone and had no suitable companion. God took a part of Adam's side (maybe a rib, although the word used has multiple meanings) and used that to create Eve. While you might take this to be a metaphore, it's difficult to see what the metaphorical significance could be of Eve being created from Adam's side if Eve was really just one of many available early humans.
Also, if Adam and Eve didn't realty exist, then how did the original sin happen? Did death exist before sin? If the world was already populated with mostly-human beings that evolved alongside Adam and Eve, then what was so special about those two? Or is the concept of Adam and Eve metaphorical too? If that part of the Bible wasn't meant to be taken literally, why is it not clear from the text how it was supposed to be understood? What other parts of the Bible are also not meant to be taken literally?
Different people have different interpretations, but many Christians don't see that evolution fits. Also, Christian scientists have found some interesting evidence that seems to support what the Bible describes; I suggest Answers in Genesis if you're curious (unfortunately a lot of their articles are dumbed down quite a bit, but they do have some more technical stuff too).
Well, yeah... Creationists have never disputed that this kind of thing happens.
I wonder if this data would change anyone's mind about the benefits of health care reform...
No. Facts and data don't seem to be playing any role at all when it comes to that topic.
Ah, yes of course! At the time, there weren't any online stores selling non-DRM'd music in the US, as far as I'm aware, but I should have been more specific! There was (and still is) a fair amount of confusion about this point - the iPod has always been able to play non-DRM'd music from any source. ...As long as it's not in Ogg format, of course.
But the 3G iPad is only compatible with AT&T's network in the United States. If you want to use Sprint, you'll need extra hardware.
And since when are overly technical options not desirable on Slashdot? :-P
If you're talking about the security warning you get when browsing to an HTTPS site with an invalid certificate, apparently you missed the checkbox labeled "Permanently store exception" or something to that effect. It's checked by default, but you can certainly uncheck it.
That's not what we're talking about here though...
His refusal to adopt WMA or license FairPlay killed DRM in the music industry
I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with the fact that WMA and FairPlay sucked, nor a little out-of-bottle genie called Napster.
It definitely had nothing to do with FairPlay sucking. FairPlay does suck a little bit, but all other implementations of DRM suck a lot more. What Apple did was 1) create the #1 best selling portable digital music player of all time, and 2) refuse to allow music purchased from any online store but theirs to play on it. This had the effect of motivating everyone else who wanted to compete with the iTunes Store to convince the record labels to allow THEM (not Apple) to sell DRM-free music, since there was no other way for them to meet customers' demands of something that's compatible with an iPod. Once this happened, it wasn't too much of a stretch for the record labels to allow Apple to sell DRM-free music too (although Apple did have to compromise in the negotiations, and allow the record companies to set different prices for some songs).
Your out-of-bottle genie is part of the reason the record labels insisted on DRM in the first place.
In a way, it almost makes perfect sense that if you build an app on a locked down platform (foo) it should be much easier to port to a more open platform (bar) since you are "practically" guaranteed that bar will have all of the functionality of foo and then some....no?
You seem to believe that a locked down platform must necessarily have fewer features than an open platform. I don't see any reason why that should be true. I'm not a developer, so I don't know how iOS and Android compare, but I would bet iOS has quite a few features that Android doesn't offer. Whether or not these are more useful to the average developer than the features I'm sure Android has that iOS doesn't offer, I can't say...
Yamaha makes everything from motorcycles to violins, and is generally known for consistently decent (though not spectacular) quality on pretty much all of it. I've always found that fascinating.
Then there are rumors about hidden APIs that Apple won't share with other developers, which is something that Microsoft was also accused of doing.
This is no secret, and certainly nothing new. When Apple is developing a new application, and they need support for some new technology in the operating system, they often build the two pieces side-by-side, and until they feel confident that they've gotten it right, they don't always publicize the APIs. They freely acknowledge that these private APIs exist, and warn developers not to use them, because private APIs are subject to change in incompatible ways without warning or documentation. Once the bugs have been worked out, Apple stabilizes the API and publishes documentation. This might sound unfair to third-party developers, but the only alternatives are to 1) delay release of the technology until they've had a chance to do a lot more under-the-hood refinements to the code, 2) publish an immature API that they then have to maintain, even though it's terrible, because third-party developers are depending on it, or 3) publish the immature API but then drop support when revisions are needed, breaking everybody's third-party apps and pissing off their users.
Apple is not known for keeping private APIs a secret indefinitely. They actively encourage third-party developers to build on the technology made available in the Mac OS, because this makes for a better user experience, which is what helps them sell Macs.
Have you been to live.com lately?
No.
>>>When all companies in a market have an arbitration clause in their contracts, the people can't choose an alternative
Bullshit.
You always have a right to drag the father-fuckers at Comcast or Verizon or Sprint into a US court room. Stop spreading misinformation that you don't have that right.
I never said you can't sue them, I said you can't choose a competing product. You have the right to sue anybody for any reason. Of course, they have much better funded lawyers than I can afford, but if you think you can win, go for it!
One is never obligated to enter into a contract requiring arbitration. I solve the problems you mention by not supporting companies that require it in the terms for their services.
That may be technically true, but when one wants to be a normal functioning member of society, sometimes one needs the services provided by companies that have an arbitration clause in their contracts (and there is usually no competitive offer available from another company that does not include a similar clause in their contracts). Furthermore, since most of the public is generally unaware of arbitration and its implications, they're likely to skip over the fine print and just assume that it must be OK, since these contracts are "normal" and everyone else they know has already agreed to something similar.
Free market capitalism depends on an educated and informed populace, and government intervention to prevent anticompetitive practices. When all companies in a market have an arbitration clause in their contracts, the people can't choose an alternative, and they're unaware that they should. It is wholly appropriate for the government to step in.
When people troll on about "Faux News" and Murdock I simply point to the problems with other "news" organizations that don't report certain news stories because it doesn't fit the narrative of the left.
This is true to an extent, but the popular left-wing media outlets generally don't LIE about what's going on. They have a liberal bias, but while they may try to lead their audience in a particular direction, they don't deliberately try to deceive their audience. I've seen several examples of Fox News doing just that.
Obama on taxes
Nuclear proliferation treaty
Video footage of protest
Ground Zero mosque funding
Then of course there's this:
Funding the GOP
And then there are other Republicans lying, not necessarily through Fox News:
Alan Grayson lying about his opponent (more)
Jan Brewer lying about decapitated bodies
Andrew Breitbart quotes Shirley Sharrod out of context
Please, show me where Democrats are lying this blatantly. Am I just not aware of it because I only get my news from liberal biased sources? If that's the case, then show me.