What many people don't realize when they say this is how closely tied the US economy is to China and eastern Asias. Do people realize how much we actually import from there? If there was a trade restriction put in place, it would hurt you as much as it hurts them. Just look at your computer in front of you...how much of that is made in Taiwan or China, etc. How about the clothes that you are wearing (look at the tag now) where is that made? How about the food imports? etc...
What you say it true... BUT simply becuase we import so much from China doesn't mean that there aren't smaller countries ready to line up around the block waiting to get thier piece of the pie. Right now, we give huge concessions to China economically, but no becuase we have to. If China were suddenly out of the picture, it wouldn't be more than a week before all our little plastic American flags were stamped "Made in Chad" instead of "Made in China". Cheap labor is a easy to find in this world.
On the other hand, from China's point of view, we are absolutly vital. If they aren't sellin thier laptops and printer cables to the US, then who are they going to sell to? Uganda? Iraq? Not likely. The "free world" is the only place that can afford all that stuff.
What would be the gain of a world war or a surgical strike? They won't be conquering American soil, we'd nuke everything before that happened. They will be severly hurting themselves economically (The US economy is huge, and combined with it's allies, could make China a very unhappy camper). At best, they would get to act all smug and pat themselves on the back during the couple of days it takes to clear up the routers and bring back up the sites... but a pat on the back isn't particularly comfotring when you find your country engulfed in sanctions, frozen bank accounts, and global ill-will... not to mention the revenge cyber attacks!
In fact, the revenge attacks will be particularly devistating, becuase America wouldn't be simply DDoSing, they would be breaking down firewalls and disseminating pro-democracy propaganda. As highly as the Chinese leaders think of thier little dictatorship, there is no way in hell they think they could win over the rest of the world to their cause just by spouting "Down with the Capatalists", but the reverse is very true. The free countries of the world could deal a very heavy blow simply by allowing their propaganda to flow freely in China.
Yeah right, whatever. What possible reson would China have to do this? What do they get if they "win"? Is a few days (a week at the most) of clogger routers worth having trade restrictions imposed by the US and it's allies, decimating thier economy? Are a few delayed "joke of the day" emails worth having missles hurled at them evoporating thier cities? People don't start major international wars just to be mean, they do it when they can gain something. What can be gained from this?
"Big Bang" "Cosmic Crunch" "M Brains" Is it just me, or are many astrophysicists hanging out far too long in the candy aisle while trying to think up names for thier pet theroies.
Or, you can simply assume it was written in the "Yes means no and no means yes" language. It is exactly like english, except that every negation is actually the opposite. Since they didn't specify what langauge it was in, I don't see why it couldn't have been written in this one...
A EULA that says "Do you promise not to give this game to all your friends?" just won't do.
Any why not? Oh yeah, becuase our legal system is so dirtorted that it no longer takes the spirit of laws into account, only the letter, so such a EULA would be easily loop-holed around by not "giving" but "perpetually lending" the game to your friend.
He'll be spending 8 days upon the ISS in hopes to combat the spread of AIDs in Africa.
So, keeping him away from the population for 8 days will signifigantly reduce the spread of AIDS, eh? I *thought* those Russian medical standards forms looked a little dodgy.
Personally, I don't see the logic behind thinking one has a right to make money off of information beyond a single sale. It would be analagous to me trying to make money off of the air I exhale. I could use your same arguments, saying that since I did all the work in turning oxygen into carbondioxide you have no right to use my air to feed your plants. The problem is that the very nature of information is that a particular piece of information is always in a state of infinite supply.
In the past, it was possible to chain information like music to a particular medium which was too costly to reproduce for most people, thus allowing it to be sold as a kind of "value add" to selling the particular medium.
If I wanted to charge for my paper, just like if I wanted to charge for my air, it is MY perogative to find a way to do it. In reality, it can't be done, there is no possible way for it to be viable. It is my own fault for trying to make money off of such an absurd scheme.
As for those who would then argue that if it were impossible to profit off of music, then there would be no music, that logic simply does not hold. There is no economic value for me posting comments here on slashdot (especially since my karma was maxed a LOOONG time ago), in fact it could be argued that it actually costs me money that I could theoretically be getting by writing code or whatever. But I still do it becuase it makes me very happy. Ask any muscian worth his or her salt, and they will tell you that thier music is not about money, but about some intagible need to create art.
Information sales in an economy based on scarcity is untennable. Just imagine if I had a matter replicator and maybe the logic will become clearer. If I could relicate anything physical, then the economy of money would cease to exist. The only economic unit would be, for example, respect, or trading. If I were an artist in that economy, I could buy and sell based on what I had to share. My N'Synch for your B'Spears. I would have relative wealth based on what you and I had, and I could create new wealth out of my own head. And that wouldn't be a bad thing. I repeat, there is nothing wrong with having an economy based on pure information, it just works differently than the economy you were taught about in school. The only problems arise when you attempt to meld the two economic systems together.
And Elvis Costello doesn't mince words when he says, ''If you're a carpenter and you make a chair, and then somebody comes around your workshop and takes the chair away, you call the police. There isn't any gray area. It's just stealing.
''Why should it be any different with music?'' he asks. ''If music is all free, then why not go and make up your own songs? Music isn't just in the air. Somebody has to determine the order in which these tones and rhythms are played and arranged and recorded.The woolly idea that music should be for free is ridiculous.''
vs.
And Elvis Costello doesn't mince words when he says, ''If you're a carpenter and you make a chair, and then somebody comes around your workshop and looks at the chair and makes an identical chair, you call the police. There isn't any gray area. It's just stealing.
''Why should it be any different with music?'' he asks. ''If music is all free, then why not go and make up your own songs? Music isn't just in the air, floating around all over the place in the form of magic "electromagnetic waves" or anything like that. Somebody has to determine the order in which these tones and rhythms are played and arranged and recorded, and that person should get paid forever for making that up. The woolly idea that music should be for free is ridiculous.''
''It's in vogue to diss record companies. That gives fans the license to say, `Well, we're only hurting record companies. We're not hurting the artists,''' she says. ''People sometimes think `If an artist is well known enough and I've heard of them, they have a lot of money and I don't care. And if an artist is unknown, they ought to be grateful to me for spreading their name around.' So they create this sort of rationalization.''
Um, ok. Good. Perfectly true and valid thoughts. What exactly is your point? Here, let me show you what you just said to me:
It's in vogue to diss Aristotlean physics. That gives fans the license to say, "Well, we're only saying all that shit about the celestial spheres and the sun going round the Earth is garbage. We're not hurting the real scientists," she says. People sometimes think "If you let go of a rock and it falls down towards the Earth, then there must be gravity. On the other hand, if it doesn't fall, then it probably means you are in an orbital free-fall." So they create this sort of rationalization.
Tut tut, you are trolling. Why? Becuase it matters a GREAT DEAL to me if gains on my paper are financial or otherwise. If somone wanted to copy my paper becuase they thought it was really brilliant, or if they wanted to take my research and run with it to develop the next important bit of research, I say GO FOR IT! If, however, somone wants to take my paper, put thier name on it, and sell it to a company to publish for themselves, then I would cry foul.
See? MONEY MATTERS. If somone is using my paper either becuase they A) enjoy it or B) can use it to better the field, then I have no problems with taht whatsoever, even if I never see a red cent from that effort. However, if somone is going to try and intentionally cheat me out of something, then I would be upset. It's all about motivation. 99.9% of "copied" CDs are not sold for proft, and the ones that are, DESERVE to be shut down.
An interesting one from Hilary Rosen: "I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if your professor only gave you a 2, even though you made a 100? Would it upset you that the other 98 points went to his daughter? Would you like it if that professor could just take that paper and give it to anyone else who wanted to get an A too? What if he could do that, but you couldn't. What if you could no longer write papers for your other professors. In fact, what if you could no longer even sign your name in the presence of other professors? Would that bug you?' If not, then you understand exactly how the artists feel when working for us. So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people."
LAUNCH from the moon...
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The ONLY reason to use the moon is becuase it has cheap materials. Build your solar collectors (preferably solar lasers and whatnot) on the moon and lauch them towards mercury. The sun puts out more energy in a single week than has ever existed in ALL the reserves of wood, coal, gas, oil and nuclear fuel on the earth... combined. That is a frigging lot of free god damned power out there!
After all, what better things could a school district spend $500,000 dollars on than identical copies of software licenses? Teachers salaries? Teaching materials? Lab equipment? Naw, it'd all just go to waste, but those microsoft licenses will last a lifetime.... right?
What ads? Oh you mean those little empty boxes that say "Error 404, cannot load image"? Too bad advertisers don't think text ads are worthwhile, because on a hyper-techie site like slashdot, you HAVE to expect at least a good portion of those folks are going to be even halfway intelligent about blocking ads.
I'm sorry slashdot, but if your advertisers are too stupid to figure out that the demographic on this damn site is very unimpressed with large content-free ads, if they are too ignorant to comprehend that most of thier ads will pass unseen, and the ones that don't will be loathed, if they are so unfathomably clueless as to believe that I will, for a nanosecond, contemplate purchasing something from thier ad instead of, as is my usual wont, telling all of my friends and family NOT to purchase from them, then they deserve what they get... nada.
One forgets that when the computers hold sway over the people, those chosen few who program the computer are Gods. I REALLY can't wait, becuase this is where it all pays off...
"Gnovos, the computer has informed us that your progress in the 'QuakeSex Research Project' has been incredibly successful, and we are to give you another $100 million extension to the grant. Personally, I don't see how playing deathmatch games against your friends between sexual encounters with supermodels contributes to global peace, but it's not my place to dispute the wisdom of the computer. Machines are always right, after all. Oh, and another Nobel prize came today, should I put it in the box with the others?"
Poorly written, filled with chese, complete lack of pacing, the deaths of those characters for the SOLE PURPOSE of ending the fan mail campaign asking to brink back "The Long Gunman" spinoff, and plot holes you could shoot a Kennedy through... The more I watch, the more I think that the writers have begun to really hate and resent this show, so they want to make damn sure that when they end it, it stays ended. Like, piss off and disgust your fans enough right at the end that not a single person will care enough to write a letter asking for more. Either that, or the guys at FOX have finally decided that it's time to retire, so they are trying thier best to get dumped out on the street. Bye bye X-Files, bye bye Futurama... bye bye FOX!
Slashdot Mirror
What many people don't realize when they say this is how closely tied the US economy is to China and eastern Asias. Do people realize how much we actually import from there? If there was a trade restriction put in place, it would hurt you as much as it hurts them. Just look at your computer in front of you...how much of that is made in Taiwan or China, etc. How about the clothes that you are wearing (look at the tag now) where is that made? How about the food imports? etc...
What you say it true... BUT simply becuase we import so much from China doesn't mean that there aren't smaller countries ready to line up around the block waiting to get thier piece of the pie. Right now, we give huge concessions to China economically, but no becuase we have to. If China were suddenly out of the picture, it wouldn't be more than a week before all our little plastic American flags were stamped "Made in Chad" instead of "Made in China". Cheap labor is a easy to find in this world.
On the other hand, from China's point of view, we are absolutly vital. If they aren't sellin thier laptops and printer cables to the US, then who are they going to sell to? Uganda? Iraq? Not likely. The "free world" is the only place that can afford all that stuff.
What would be the gain of a world war or a surgical strike? They won't be conquering American soil, we'd nuke everything before that happened. They will be severly hurting themselves economically (The US economy is huge, and combined with it's allies, could make China a very unhappy camper). At best, they would get to act all smug and pat themselves on the back during the couple of days it takes to clear up the routers and bring back up the sites... but a pat on the back isn't particularly comfotring when you find your country engulfed in sanctions, frozen bank accounts, and global ill-will... not to mention the revenge cyber attacks!
In fact, the revenge attacks will be particularly devistating, becuase America wouldn't be simply DDoSing, they would be breaking down firewalls and disseminating pro-democracy propaganda. As highly as the Chinese leaders think of thier little dictatorship, there is no way in hell they think they could win over the rest of the world to their cause just by spouting "Down with the Capatalists", but the reverse is very true. The free countries of the world could deal a very heavy blow simply by allowing their propaganda to flow freely in China.
Yeah right, whatever. What possible reson would China have to do this? What do they get if they "win"? Is a few days (a week at the most) of clogger routers worth having trade restrictions imposed by the US and it's allies, decimating thier economy? Are a few delayed "joke of the day" emails worth having missles hurled at them evoporating thier cities? People don't start major international wars just to be mean, they do it when they can gain something. What can be gained from this?
"GET HERBAL VIAGLA"
"Big Bang" "Cosmic Crunch" "M Brains" Is it just me, or are many astrophysicists hanging out far too long in the candy aisle while trying to think up names for thier pet theroies.
... regardless of whether or not file sharing is WRONG. It's certainly illegal.
So it's illegal to share the artwork I make with my friends?
If the RIAA had any brains at all, they would have figured this out and ... uhh ... wait a minute, maybe Yuri == RIAA?
No Yuri!=RIAA... Come on guy, you answered you own question right there when you put "RIAA" and "had any brains at all" in the same sentence.
Or, you can simply assume it was written in the "Yes means no and no means yes" language. It is exactly like english, except that every negation is actually the opposite. Since they didn't specify what langauge it was in, I don't see why it couldn't have been written in this one...
A EULA that says "Do you promise not to give this game to all your friends?" just won't do.
Any why not? Oh yeah, becuase our legal system is so dirtorted that it no longer takes the spirit of laws into account, only the letter, so such a EULA would be easily loop-holed around by not "giving" but "perpetually lending" the game to your friend.
He'll be spending 8 days upon the ISS in hopes to combat the spread of AIDs in Africa.
So, keeping him away from the population for 8 days will signifigantly reduce the spread of AIDS, eh? I *thought* those Russian medical standards forms looked a little dodgy.
...do you end up having to pull em apart with your teeth? I'd rather not, I'm sure they get really hot.
..."neuromancer" to it?
Personally, I don't see the logic behind thinking one has a right to make money off of information beyond a single sale. It would be analagous to me trying to make money off of the air I exhale. I could use your same arguments, saying that since I did all the work in turning oxygen into carbondioxide you have no right to use my air to feed your plants. The problem is that the very nature of information is that a particular piece of information is always in a state of infinite supply.
In the past, it was possible to chain information like music to a particular medium which was too costly to reproduce for most people, thus allowing it to be sold as a kind of "value add" to selling the particular medium.
If I wanted to charge for my paper, just like if I wanted to charge for my air, it is MY perogative to find a way to do it. In reality, it can't be done, there is no possible way for it to be viable. It is my own fault for trying to make money off of such an absurd scheme.
As for those who would then argue that if it were impossible to profit off of music, then there would be no music, that logic simply does not hold. There is no economic value for me posting comments here on slashdot (especially since my karma was maxed a LOOONG time ago), in fact it could be argued that it actually costs me money that I could theoretically be getting by writing code or whatever. But I still do it becuase it makes me very happy. Ask any muscian worth his or her salt, and they will tell you that thier music is not about money, but about some intagible need to create art.
Information sales in an economy based on scarcity is untennable. Just imagine if I had a matter replicator and maybe the logic will become clearer. If I could relicate anything physical, then the economy of money would cease to exist. The only economic unit would be, for example, respect, or trading. If I were an artist in that economy, I could buy and sell based on what I had to share. My N'Synch for your B'Spears. I would have relative wealth based on what you and I had, and I could create new wealth out of my own head. And that wouldn't be a bad thing. I repeat, there is nothing wrong with having an economy based on pure information, it just works differently than the economy you were taught about in school. The only problems arise when you attempt to meld the two economic systems together.
And Elvis Costello doesn't mince words when he says, ''If you're a carpenter and you make a chair, and then somebody comes around your workshop and takes the chair away, you call the police. There isn't any gray area. It's just stealing.
''Why should it be any different with music?'' he asks. ''If music is all free, then why not go and make up your own songs? Music isn't just in the air. Somebody has to determine the order in which these tones and rhythms are played and arranged and recorded.The woolly idea that music should be for free is ridiculous.''
vs.
And Elvis Costello doesn't mince words when he says, ''If you're a carpenter and you make a chair, and then somebody comes around your workshop and looks at the chair and makes an identical chair, you call the police. There isn't any gray area. It's just stealing.
''Why should it be any different with music?'' he asks. ''If music is all free, then why not go and make up your own songs? Music isn't just in the air, floating around all over the place in the form of magic "electromagnetic waves" or anything like that. Somebody has to determine the order in which these tones and rhythms are played and arranged and recorded, and that person should get paid forever for making that up. The woolly idea that music should be for free is ridiculous.''
''It's in vogue to diss record companies. That gives fans the license to say, `Well, we're only hurting record companies. We're not hurting the artists,''' she says. ''People sometimes think `If an artist is well known enough and I've heard of them, they have a lot of money and I don't care. And if an artist is unknown, they ought to be grateful to me for spreading their name around.' So they create this sort of rationalization.''
Um, ok. Good. Perfectly true and valid thoughts. What exactly is your point? Here, let me show you what you just said to me:
It's in vogue to diss Aristotlean physics. That gives fans the license to say, "Well, we're only saying all that shit about the celestial spheres and the sun going round the Earth is garbage. We're not hurting the real scientists," she says. People sometimes think "If you let go of a rock and it falls down towards the Earth, then there must be gravity. On the other hand, if it doesn't fall, then it probably means you are in an orbital free-fall." So they create this sort of rationalization.
Tut tut, you are trolling. Why? Becuase it matters a GREAT DEAL to me if gains on my paper are financial or otherwise. If somone wanted to copy my paper becuase they thought it was really brilliant, or if they wanted to take my research and run with it to develop the next important bit of research, I say GO FOR IT! If, however, somone wants to take my paper, put thier name on it, and sell it to a company to publish for themselves, then I would cry foul.
See? MONEY MATTERS. If somone is using my paper either becuase they A) enjoy it or B) can use it to better the field, then I have no problems with taht whatsoever, even if I never see a red cent from that effort. However, if somone is going to try and intentionally cheat me out of something, then I would be upset. It's all about motivation. 99.9% of "copied" CDs are not sold for proft, and the ones that are, DESERVE to be shut down.
An interesting one from Hilary Rosen: "I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if your professor only gave you a 2, even though you made a 100? Would it upset you that the other 98 points went to his daughter? Would you like it if that professor could just take that paper and give it to anyone else who wanted to get an A too? What if he could do that, but you couldn't. What if you could no longer write papers for your other professors. In fact, what if you could no longer even sign your name in the presence of other professors? Would that bug you?' If not, then you understand exactly how the artists feel when working for us. So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people."
The ONLY reason to use the moon is becuase it has cheap materials. Build your solar collectors (preferably solar lasers and whatnot) on the moon and lauch them towards mercury. The sun puts out more energy in a single week than has ever existed in ALL the reserves of wood, coal, gas, oil and nuclear fuel on the earth... combined. That is a frigging lot of free god damned power out there!
After all, what better things could a school district spend $500,000 dollars on than identical copies of software licenses? Teachers salaries? Teaching materials? Lab equipment? Naw, it'd all just go to waste, but those microsoft licenses will last a lifetime.... right?
What ads? Oh you mean those little empty boxes that say "Error 404, cannot load image"? Too bad advertisers don't think text ads are worthwhile, because on a hyper-techie site like slashdot, you HAVE to expect at least a good portion of those folks are going to be even halfway intelligent about blocking ads.
I'm sorry slashdot, but if your advertisers are too stupid to figure out that the demographic on this damn site is very unimpressed with large content-free ads, if they are too ignorant to comprehend that most of thier ads will pass unseen, and the ones that don't will be loathed, if they are so unfathomably clueless as to believe that I will, for a nanosecond, contemplate purchasing something from thier ad instead of, as is my usual wont, telling all of my friends and family NOT to purchase from them, then they deserve what they get... nada.
Or do you make it a habit to look like a criminal?
No, but I will now! Oh, what fun to be had...
One forgets that when the computers hold sway over the people, those chosen few who program the computer are Gods. I REALLY can't wait, becuase this is where it all pays off...
"Gnovos, the computer has informed us that your progress in the 'QuakeSex Research Project' has been incredibly successful, and we are to give you another $100 million extension to the grant. Personally, I don't see how playing deathmatch games against your friends between sexual encounters with supermodels contributes to global peace, but it's not my place to dispute the wisdom of the computer. Machines are always right, after all. Oh, and another Nobel prize came today, should I put it in the box with the others?"
He fids out right before he and Scully get killed by the big..... oh wait, no, I won't spoil it for you.
Living in South America with Hitler, Elvis and JFK.
Poorly written, filled with chese, complete lack of pacing, the deaths of those characters for the SOLE PURPOSE of ending the fan mail campaign asking to brink back "The Long Gunman" spinoff, and plot holes you could shoot a Kennedy through... The more I watch, the more I think that the writers have begun to really hate and resent this show, so they want to make damn sure that when they end it, it stays ended. Like, piss off and disgust your fans enough right at the end that not a single person will care enough to write a letter asking for more. Either that, or the guys at FOX have finally decided that it's time to retire, so they are trying thier best to get dumped out on the street. Bye bye X-Files, bye bye Futurama... bye bye FOX!