No no. "The City" is quite clearly "The City of London". And no where near San Francisco. (I wonder if they use Cisco hardware though, which might make the San Fran - Cisco more apt)
Huh? London is only about 142 miles SE from San Francisco and with a population of about 2000 people barely qualifies as a city, let alone "The City" moniker.
1) I'm not sure why people seem to believe the cost of producing a good should determine the selling price...
I do. In a healthy, competitive environment this situation would not occur for long. Competition would squeeze the ridiculous margins out (because anyone could still make great money by undercutting you).
The fact that this is not happening, and price is being determined by something other than cost to deliver and operate, suggests that consumers are being abused.
Actually, once you factor in the investment costs and return the margins are not all that great in the cell phone business. Hell, Google has a bigger margin - are they abusing consumers?
There's no real competition in the cell phone world. This plus the lack of any real differentiation in services highlights it clearly.
Actually, there is a lot of competition - from various pay as you go companies to marketters such as MetroPCS and Cricket to VIOP such as Skype - depending on your phone needs any number of servicies can meet them. You are not stuck with Sprint/ATT/Verizon.
Not sure about swedish operators, but in finland, text remain the same price no matter where you are(ie. free if you have an unlimited plan).
The reason you pay for receiving calls in a foreign country is simply because the caller has no way of knowing where you are. The rule is that anything you cannot influence is uncharged. So receiving calls and messages inside the country is free.
The american texting system seems to me like the phone company saying: You are receiving a collect call, You will take the charges, if you want to or not. A bit backward I'd say.
Interesting and good points. I wouldn't say ours is backward as much as it is different. The US cell phone market evolved based on our market; much as the European one is the result of yours. We had far fewer regulatory / governmental hurdles to expanding across the entire US; unlike Europe with entrenched PTT's looking to protect their market. Our carriers consolidated to get economies of scale, which coupled with a relatively mobile population, gave rise to national carriers and the end of roaming and long-distance fees. It also gave rise to plans that essentially provide unlimited use for most subscribers - with "free" calling to anyone on my carrier and unlimited texting I'm never impacted by per call or per minute fees - even with business use and a relatively modest plan allowance.
Neither system (the US or European) is better per se - both have pluses and minuses but each is the product of the environment in which they sprung up.
By contrast: In Sweden, I get unlimited text and calls for ~$7.4/month.
Good deal - how much is it if you stayed with that plan, and went to say Portugal, Germany and France for a month and sent a 1000 texts and called for say 200 minutes?
conceded that Apple appeals to more and more consumers because the hardware is slick, the price is OK, and Apple doesn't annoy its customers (or allow third parties to)
Or maybe a showy issue that most americans can identify with, will help non-technical americans realize how badly monopolies are robbing them? You know, and I know, that the cost of sending a text message is so incredibly small charging any amount of money beyond voice service is essentially highway robbery. But many people think it's new, and thus must be a huge complicated thing.
A couple of comments:
1) I'm not sure why people seem to believe the cost of producing a good should determine the selling price. Demand and the manufacturer's desire to maximize profit does that. Simply becaasue something can be produced cheaply does not mean it should be sold cheaply as well.
2) I would not call US cellphone industry a monopoly - Not only have prices dropped considerably we have a variety of providers and plans to chose from. For example, I can get unlimited text and calls for $38/month with no contract;$35 if all you want is unlimited text with minimal minutes.
Yeah, text messages themselves are stupid secondary problems. But waking people up, and forcing them out of the idiocy of news tv talking heads, and forcing them into the cognitive dissonance caused when they realize businesses are hurting them because capitalism ISN'T working as designed... that helps a lot. Otherwise it sounds like a bunch of pompous academics in suits talkin fancy words and talkin smack about god and the president.
Let's see - companies compete; prices go down; new companies spring up in the market - it isn't perfect but it's better than the alternative.
your first raaction is to turn on the tv? wtf? I don't know about you, but the last thing I ever did in my entire life is try to get up-to-date information from tv. It's a great place to see what happened yesterday...
Yes. Whenever we have potentially severe weather we do - TV provides maps; scrolling alerts, etc in a manner that facilitates understanding of the threat and allows one to determine what to do; as well as follow progress. Radio has advantages but it provides nowhere near the information as does a visual display.
I sooner get my info from the radio in such an occasion since the info is tossed out quickly and easily by voice without any problems, and life goes on. No need to worry about multi-sequenced data transmissions meshed together...
Once the siren sounds then the radio is used. Batteries beat wall plug at that point; although the TV is still left on.
If you use television as a warning mechanism for evacuations / shelter-seeking, and the storm that is going to hit you is so close that it's blowing your signal out... you're a touch too late.
Most people in those situations use radio waves, since units are smaller and can be carried around, and battery powered. Most times evacuations are broadcast by trucks going down your road anyway.
However, the lead up to evacuation and overall progress is much easier to track via TV.
As I pointed out, loss of analog eliminates that info source; an understandable reason for delaying a planned switch.
I volunteer in an NGO that helps blind people in various ways, and is also my passion, privately.
I am VERY happy this question appeared here on/. for once, because last time I mentioned MP3 players that would be just as functional for blind as for seeing people, I was derided. But the truth is, making MP3 players and mobile phones with a user interface that is usable for blind people does NOT detract anything from the usability for seeing people. In fact, I'd argue that it makes them more usable for the seeing people as well - allowing for a whole new area of use cases.
And now, to the point of the question, and related to voice feedback: there are plenty of Nokia phones with software designed to make it possible to be operated by a blind person. Such software would announce who is calling or whose call you just missed, who is the sender of an SMS and read the SMS to you, or give feedback on your commands. Nokia phones in general (especially the slightly older ones, say, 2006, 2007 generation) have a user interface that is more suitable for blind people than most other. I am just now trying to teach my visually impaired mother how to use a certain Panasonic mobile phone (only one extra phone in the house at the moment), and I notice how the UI emphasizes using the same button for several functions. Like, locking the phone requires two pushes on the same button. Unlocking it requires three pushes on that same button, and the only feedback you have is visual. WTF? Total rubbish.
You've made a good point - clean efficient interface design helps everyone. Unfortunately, it's not the norm amongst designers.
It's frustrating for a person to push 3 buttons whether or not they have 100% vision. Personally, I think UI designers should be forced to use their device for month while wearing gloves, eyeglasses with petroleum jelly smeared on them, and cotton balls in their ears.
I think you'll slowly see more devices designed with physical impairments in mind as the boomer generation ages while remaining an viable commercial market.
If you live near the coast, you have a weather radio. If you live in tornado alley, you have a weather radio. Most of them that have been made in the past 10 years or so have the EAS alert alarm.
If you don't, well, then maybe Darwin was on to something.
Yes, and after getting far too high a ratio of real to bogus warnings (even with localization); your first reaction is to turn on the TV and then go up to the radio and turn off the warning beep.
If you're getting a TV signal, you're going to get the EBS signal. If you're getting a radio signal, you're going to get the EBS signal.
-regardless if it's digital or analog.
Couple of things - TV is used for more than just EBS; for exmaple warning scrolls across regular programing.
So once analog goes off air those with analog only TVs pulling in a signal from local broadcast lose that information source. To your point - they are no longer getting a signal.
Even if EBS is still transmitting an analog signal (will it?) many people will probably have their TV off since tehy aren't getting programming and not get a warning at all.
As fro radio, it'd be nice if everyone had a working radio and maybe even a weather alert radio; but they are a less effective means of providing updates and warnings since they have to stop broadcasting to send updates; unlike a continuous scroll.
This is going to happen in February, why on earth should a tropical storm delay it if it's still September? For that matter, why would it be delayed at all? Is there something mystical and magical about tropical storms that we don't know here?
The use of TV as a warning mechanism for evacuations / seeking shelter. If you turn that off fro those still on analog you've added to the complexity of an evacuation.
is the potential to lower revenue for the ISP - most people, as the article pointed out, don't use anywhere near the cap and so would benefit from cheaper prices. If enough went to a lower tiered price, ISP's would reduce revenue and have little incentive to upgrade the infrastructure because:
a) they aren't getting as much money which reduces the return on a large capital investment; and b) the heavy users are paying more which means the either slow down their use or pay a lot each month.
At some point the economics of file sharing becomes bad - it's cheaper to buy the stuff on a tangible medium than get it via file sharing - whether it's a rented or purchased movie/song/file or a pirated one.
Will that stifle commerce - to some extent but most people don't d/l that heavily so there is a lot of room for growth with the 95% that are way below the caps, and there are delivery mechanisms for high bandwidth things such as movies already in place (Video on Demand via cable for example) that can deliver the in a way that the product pays for bandwidth separate from internet access.
Finally, caps aren't a new idea - in the day of dial up they came via hourly costs or limits rather than bits n bytes but still metered usage.
I think that we need to go to more fiber, the question is how to pay for it. As for comparisons to Asia / Europe - one challenge in the US is the population density is a lot less, so each mile of fiber has less potential revenue associated with it.
4. Configure the Vista product with the ultimate version. That is roughly feature equivalent to Ubuntu.
Difficulty setting it up - check Random inconsistent eye candy - check Push their own browser - check Unable to access various online services - check Exchange server a pain to configure - check Technical support quality varies widely - check Not ready for prime time - check
Yes, I'd say they were roughly equivalent though I doubt you recognized the irony in your post
In the case of the code, they did deprive the owner of use of their property - they usurped the owner's control and profited from it.
If copyright is treated as a property rights, then the property itself is the code (or whatever) that the copyright covers. Your argument and copyright law are based on first variant, that use without permission is immoral. If one accepts the second view, however, then the concept of copyright is meaningless, because one cannot actually deprive the "owner" of anything copyright would cover.
Now, even in the second case the thief has deprived the owner of the right to control their property; something implicit in copyrights.
Merely because the property is reproducible without loss of the original does not mean a loss has not occurred.
People have certain inherent (some may say inalienable) rights that cannot be taken away; unlike inanimate objects.
That is your subjective, moral opinion. The fact that you feel that your moral views on slavery take precedence over the legal definition of property for the purpose of determining whether freeing them is, in fact, theft -- morally -- proves my point.
Your argument has gone from the stupid to the ridiculous at this point. If you believe that slavery can be argued as a moral action you really are out in left field.
BTW - sic is properly used to avoid confusion when quoting passages so the reader does not think you made the spelling or grammatical error.
That is exactly how I used it. The errors were, in order: (a) spelling; (b) missing comma; (c) sentence fragment; (d) singular possessive used in place of plural.
I suggest you refer to the Chicago Manual of Style to discover why your usage is wrong, and not just because it should be [sic].
Free clue: You'll notice I did not place [sic] after each of your [sic].
Both make chargers that use special tips to carge devices. One charger, multiple tips. I carry one on tripsand am generally satisfied. iGo also has a battery pack that uses 2 Aa and a tip as an emergency power source which is a handy thing to have as well.
First, there is some debate over whether the immoral act consists of "using other's [sic] property without permission" or depriving the owner of the use of his/her property. I would tend to side with the latter, and would moreover assert that it is impossible to avoid benefiting from (i.e. using) others' property whether you intend to or not; the simple fact that the property exists results in an external benefit.
In the case of the code, they did deprive the owner of use of their property - they usurped the owner's control and profited from it. While some argue taht code is different since you always have the code and so no taking accord; you have taken the owner's ability to control their property and hence a taking has occured.
While externalities exist that the owner has no control over, this is not such a case. I find the arguement - "since you still have the original code and can use it my making a copy without your permission is not theft"does not deprive you of anything and is not theft" to be a mere rationalization to make someone feel OK about their actions.
I also find some of those that make that argument hypocritical as they gladly take other's code but scream with indignation if someone even hints of doing so with GPL'd code.
Second, morality relating to property depends on the moral definition of property, which is not necessarily the same as the legal definition. To pick an obvious example from our past, the fact that many jurisdictions legally defined slaves as property of their masters did not make it incontestably immoral to assist in their escape. Whether an individual actually considered it immoral or not depended on whether their subjective, moral view of property coincided with the legal definition.
Yourobvious example is stupid (and I expected somone on/. to make it and once again was not dissapointed) and is irrelevant to the discussion. People have certain inherent (some may say inalienable) rights that cannot be taken away; unlike inanimate objects.
BTW - sic is properly used to avoid confusion when quoting passages so the reader does not think you made the spelling or grammatical error.
I agree. It also raises the very significant question of imposing criminal penalties in relation to what is in reality a civil offence.
This type of penalty is the direct result of the sustained campaign to impose extraordinarily severe penalties in relation to 'crimes' which in reality carry few of the hallmarks of what is traditionally regarded as criminal activity.
It is a criminal matter becasue he converted someone else's property to his own use without there permission - just as if he had taken a piece of tangible property and sold it. It clearly had value - based on what he made in profits from the sale and he did not have the right to sell it.
He could have negotiated a licensing deal; but did not. This is not a contractual dispute; it's conversion; which has traditionally been considered a crime. Penalties are not only punishment but deterences as well - 15 months in jail will probably not only make him think twice before he does this again but deter others as well.
When you send someone to prison for that long for a crime which is trivially easy to commit, is of debatable morality, and which has a tenuous impact, at best, on anyone or on "society", then I think there is something very wrong.
Easy of commision has never really been a factor in deciding penalties for crimes; just becasue it is easy to con someone out of cash doesn't make it any less of crime than if you simply lift their wallet while they aren't looking.
As for "debatable morality" - the law as it stands says the copyright holders control how it is used. You cna disagree with the law, and think it needs to be changed (as I do) but as the law currently defines software programs as property. Property rights are pretty well viewed as important in our society, and using other's property without permission is generally not viewed as a moral act.
If you really think it has minimal impact; then you should have no problem with soemone taking OSS, modifying it, and releasing it as a commercial product without following the GPL requirements to relase the source. After all, you have lost nothing since you still have the orignal program so their actions have had no impact on you.
My biggest complaint is against cell towers with blinding strobe lights on top. So bright that you can see them from ten miles away on a sunny day. Two or three of those can kind of ruin an otherwise scenic vista. (I'm looking at you, Michigan.)
The best solution I've seen is to disguise the towers as pine trees. It just takes a few branches, and the technology has been perfected since the 1950's.
Unfortunately, lighting and paint schemes are often US Government mandated - they need to be visible to aviators as they pose potential hazards to navigation. Tower companies get fined if the lights go out for too long, so they often have automated monitoring and warning systems to let them know one is out.
There needs to be better priority allocation such that those who abuse IT services stop getting a free ride.
There are those who would argue that the _purpose_ of an IT team is to help users who have installed a malicious toolbar or need to print a specific font.
And then there is me who says they should ask up front if they don't have a clue. As in "Organizing my files with Windows Explorer is troublesome, can you recommend an alternative file manager?" instead of installing some random software from the internet.
Now I would not crucify someone for a one-time slip in that department, but a user who crashes his machine every two months needs to have his admin rights revoked.
Printing a certain font, however, can be a legitimate need. As in "you have already published stuff in that font and you want more of the same for consistency".
IT is a service organization - it exists to support the users of the technology.
That means helping fix problems - even if they are user generated.
IT should play a role in deciding what technology is used and what is deployed; but the users need to be the ones that say if it meets their needs.
IT shouldn't decide if you can use a font or not, OTOH limiting what can be installed makes sense from a reliability and license compliance standpoint.
The problem for IT shops that are viewed as a block rather than a helper is that they have no friends once outsourcing gets bought up. They are viewed strictly as a cost center; and cheaper generally wins the battle once that viewpoint takes hold.
Another major source of income was in servicing the controls.
Out of curiosity: were the service engineers included in your 10% figure of "production workers"? I can't wrap my head around the inefficiency of a company in which only 10% of the salaried personnel is responsible for generating all revenue.
I would guess the OP was referring to those actually constructing the devices.
One of the problems with percentages is you don't know the size of the pie - 10% of 1000 is a very different structure than 10% of 50. A small shop, with a lot of R&D and service staff; as well as a sales staff might only have 5% of its staff actually making the device. Highly skilled workers, technology, and high margins means you can pay well and support the sales infrastructure you need.
All it takes is a cohort in another country to pickup the wire transfer.
Another solution is positive spam - if they got enough responses, many of which are fake the time they take to read and reply would cut down their take. Alternatively, hey may just skip real responses so you wold help potential victims as well.
I'm calling bullshit on this one. 42%? yeah right. Maybe parents checking up on their kid's habits but even then I can't see almost _half_ of the world's internet users using another person's account.
But that's the thing, the poll doesn't infer that it's all web users, just people that visit that website. The write up is incorrect.
You are very correct there - most people don't understand statistics; let alone what constitutes a statistically valid sample.
The again, the press, in general, never let that stand in the way of an interesting headline.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a quick question: why, exactly, do MBAs need to know calculus?
Please, I'm not following.
Uh, why do you think the are called financial derivatives?
No no. "The City" is quite clearly "The City of London". And no where near San Francisco. (I wonder if they use Cisco hardware though, which might make the San Fran - Cisco more apt)
Huh? London is only about 142 miles SE from San Francisco and with a population of about 2000 people barely qualifies as a city, let alone "The City" moniker.
1) I'm not sure why people seem to believe the cost of producing a good should determine the selling price...
I do. In a healthy, competitive environment this situation would not occur for long. Competition would squeeze the ridiculous margins out (because anyone could still make great money by undercutting you).
The fact that this is not happening, and price is being determined by something other than cost to deliver and operate, suggests that consumers are being abused.
Actually, once you factor in the investment costs and return the margins are not all that great in the cell phone business. Hell, Google has a bigger margin - are they abusing consumers?
There's no real competition in the cell phone world. This plus the lack of any real differentiation in services highlights it clearly.
Actually, there is a lot of competition - from various pay as you go companies to marketters such as MetroPCS and Cricket to VIOP such as Skype - depending on your phone needs any number of servicies can meet them. You are not stuck with Sprint/ATT/Verizon.
Tourists...
Not sure about swedish operators, but in finland, text remain the same price no matter where you are(ie. free if you have an unlimited plan).
The reason you pay for receiving calls in a foreign country is simply because the caller has no way of knowing where you are. The rule is that anything you cannot influence is uncharged. So receiving calls and messages inside the country is free.
The american texting system seems to me like the phone company saying: You are receiving a collect call, You will take the charges, if you want to or not. A bit backward I'd say.
Interesting and good points. I wouldn't say ours is backward as much as it is different. The US cell phone market evolved based on our market; much as the European one is the result of yours. We had far fewer regulatory / governmental hurdles to expanding across the entire US; unlike Europe with entrenched PTT's looking to protect their market. Our carriers consolidated to get economies of scale, which coupled with a relatively mobile population, gave rise to national carriers and the end of roaming and long-distance fees. It also gave rise to plans that essentially provide unlimited use for most subscribers - with "free" calling to anyone on my carrier and unlimited texting I'm never impacted by per call or per minute fees - even with business use and a relatively modest plan allowance.
Neither system (the US or European) is better per se - both have pluses and minuses but each is the product of the environment in which they sprung up.
If only we could combine the best of both...
By contrast: In Sweden, I get unlimited text and calls for ~$7.4/month.
Good deal - how much is it if you stayed with that plan, and went to say Portugal, Germany and France for a month and sent a 1000 texts and called for say 200 minutes?
conceded that Apple appeals to more and more consumers because the hardware is slick, the price is OK, and Apple doesn't annoy its customers (or allow third parties to)
He obviously does not use an iPhone...
Or maybe a showy issue that most americans can identify with, will help non-technical americans realize how badly monopolies are robbing them? You know, and I know, that the cost of sending a text message is so incredibly small charging any amount of money beyond voice service is essentially highway robbery. But many people think it's new, and thus must be a huge complicated thing.
A couple of comments:
1) I'm not sure why people seem to believe the cost of producing a good should determine the selling price. Demand and the manufacturer's desire to maximize profit does that. Simply becaasue something can be produced cheaply does not mean it should be sold cheaply as well.
2) I would not call US cellphone industry a monopoly - Not only have prices dropped considerably we have a variety of providers and plans to chose from. For example, I can get unlimited text and calls for $38/month with no contract;$35 if all you want is unlimited text with minimal minutes.
Yeah, text messages themselves are stupid secondary problems. But waking people up, and forcing them out of the idiocy of news tv talking heads, and forcing them into the cognitive dissonance caused when they realize businesses are hurting them because capitalism ISN'T working as designed... that helps a lot. Otherwise it sounds like a bunch of pompous academics in suits talkin fancy words and talkin smack about god and the president.
Let's see - companies compete; prices go down; new companies spring up in the market - it isn't perfect but it's better than the alternative.
your first raaction is to turn on the tv?
wtf?
I don't know about you, but the last thing I ever did in my entire life is try to get up-to-date information from tv. It's a great place to see what happened yesterday...
Yes. Whenever we have potentially severe weather we do - TV provides maps; scrolling alerts, etc in a manner that facilitates understanding of the threat and allows one to determine what to do; as well as follow progress. Radio has advantages but it provides nowhere near the information as does a visual display.
I sooner get my info from the radio in such an occasion since the info is tossed out quickly and easily by voice without any problems, and life goes on. No need to worry about multi-sequenced data transmissions meshed together...
Once the siren sounds then the radio is used. Batteries beat wall plug at that point; although the TV is still left on.
If you use television as a warning mechanism for evacuations / shelter-seeking, and the storm that is going to hit you is so close that it's blowing your signal out... you're a touch too late.
Most people in those situations use radio waves, since units are smaller and can be carried around, and battery powered.
Most times evacuations are broadcast by trucks going down your road anyway.
However, the lead up to evacuation and overall progress is much easier to track via TV.
As I pointed out, loss of analog eliminates that info source; an understandable reason for delaying a planned switch.
I volunteer in an NGO that helps blind people in various ways, and is also my passion, privately.
I am VERY happy this question appeared here on /. for once, because last time I mentioned MP3 players that would be just as functional for blind as for seeing people, I was derided. But the truth is, making MP3 players and mobile phones with a user interface that is usable for blind people does NOT detract anything from the usability for seeing people. In fact, I'd argue that it makes them more usable for the seeing people as well - allowing for a whole new area of use cases.
And now, to the point of the question, and related to voice feedback: there are plenty of Nokia phones with software designed to make it possible to be operated by a blind person. Such software would announce who is calling or whose call you just missed, who is the sender of an SMS and read the SMS to you, or give feedback on your commands. Nokia phones in general (especially the slightly older ones, say, 2006, 2007 generation) have a user interface that is more suitable for blind people than most other. I am just now trying to teach my visually impaired mother how to use a certain Panasonic mobile phone (only one extra phone in the house at the moment), and I notice how the UI emphasizes using the same button for several functions. Like, locking the phone requires two pushes on the same button. Unlocking it requires three pushes on that same button, and the only feedback you have is visual. WTF? Total rubbish.
You've made a good point - clean efficient interface design helps everyone. Unfortunately, it's not the norm amongst designers.
It's frustrating for a person to push 3 buttons whether or not they have 100% vision. Personally, I think UI designers should be forced to use their device for month while wearing gloves, eyeglasses with petroleum jelly smeared on them, and cotton balls in their ears.
I think you'll slowly see more devices designed with physical impairments in mind as the boomer generation ages while remaining an viable commercial market.
If you live near the coast, you have a weather radio. If you live in tornado alley, you have a weather radio. Most of them that have been made in the past 10 years or so have the EAS alert alarm.
If you don't, well, then maybe Darwin was on to something.
Yes, and after getting far too high a ratio of real to bogus warnings (even with localization); your first reaction is to turn on the TV and then go up to the radio and turn off the warning beep.
If you're getting a TV signal, you're going to get the EBS signal.
If you're getting a radio signal, you're going to get the EBS signal.
-regardless if it's digital or analog.
Couple of things - TV is used for more than just EBS; for exmaple warning scrolls across regular programing.
So once analog goes off air those with analog only TVs pulling in a signal from local broadcast lose that information source. To your point - they are no longer getting a signal.
Even if EBS is still transmitting an analog signal (will it?) many people will probably have their TV off since tehy aren't getting programming and not get a warning at all.
As fro radio, it'd be nice if everyone had a working radio and maybe even a weather alert radio; but they are a less effective means of providing updates and warnings since they have to stop broadcasting to send updates; unlike a continuous scroll.
This is going to happen in February, why on earth should a tropical storm delay it if it's still September? For that matter, why would it be delayed at all? Is there something mystical and magical about tropical storms that we don't know here?
The use of TV as a warning mechanism for evacuations / seeking shelter. If you turn that off fro those still on analog you've added to the complexity of an evacuation.
is the potential to lower revenue for the ISP - most people, as the article pointed out, don't use anywhere near the cap and so would benefit from cheaper prices. If enough went to a lower tiered price, ISP's would reduce revenue and have little incentive to upgrade the infrastructure because:
a) they aren't getting as much money which reduces the return on a large capital investment; and
b) the heavy users are paying more which means the either slow down their use or pay a lot each month.
At some point the economics of file sharing becomes bad - it's cheaper to buy the stuff on a tangible medium than get it via file sharing - whether it's a rented or purchased movie/song/file or a pirated one.
Will that stifle commerce - to some extent but most people don't d/l that heavily so there is a lot of room for growth with the 95% that are way below the caps, and there are delivery mechanisms for high bandwidth things such as movies already in place (Video on Demand via cable for example) that can deliver the in a way that the product pays for bandwidth separate from internet access.
Finally, caps aren't a new idea - in the day of dial up they came via hourly costs or limits rather than bits n bytes but still metered usage.
I think that we need to go to more fiber, the question is how to pay for it. As for comparisons to Asia / Europe - one challenge in the US is the population density is a lot less, so each mile of fiber has less potential revenue associated with it.
4. Configure the Vista product with the ultimate version. That is roughly feature equivalent to Ubuntu.
Difficulty setting it up - check
Random inconsistent eye candy - check
Push their own browser - check
Unable to access various online services - check
Exchange server a pain to configure - check
Technical support quality varies widely - check
Not ready for prime time - check
Yes, I'd say they were roughly equivalent though I doubt you recognized the irony in your post
If copyright is treated as a property rights, then the property itself is the code (or whatever) that the copyright covers. Your argument and copyright law are based on first variant, that use without permission is immoral. If one accepts the second view, however, then the concept of copyright is meaningless, because one cannot actually deprive the "owner" of anything copyright would cover.
Now, even in the second case the thief has deprived the owner of the right to control their property; something implicit in copyrights.
Merely because the property is reproducible without loss of the original does not mean a loss has not occurred.
That is your subjective, moral opinion. The fact that you feel that your moral views on slavery take precedence over the legal definition of property for the purpose of determining whether freeing them is, in fact, theft -- morally -- proves my point.
Your argument has gone from the stupid to the ridiculous at this point. If you believe that slavery can be argued as a moral action you really are out in left field.
That is exactly how I used it. The errors were, in order: (a) spelling; (b) missing comma; (c) sentence fragment; (d) singular possessive used in place of plural.
I suggest you refer to the Chicago Manual of Style to discover why your usage is wrong, and not just because it should be [sic].
Free clue: You'll notice I did not place [sic] after each of your [sic].
Both make chargers that use special tips to carge devices. One charger, multiple tips. I carry one on tripsand am generally satisfied. iGo also has a battery pack that uses 2 Aa and a tip as an emergency power source which is a handy thing to have as well.
First, there is some debate over whether the immoral act consists of "using other's [sic] property without permission" or depriving the owner of the use of his/her property. I would tend to side with the latter, and would moreover assert that it is impossible to avoid benefiting from (i.e. using) others' property whether you intend to or not; the simple fact that the property exists results in an external benefit.
In the case of the code, they did deprive the owner of use of their property - they usurped the owner's control and profited from it. While some argue taht code is different since you always have the code and so no taking accord; you have taken the owner's ability to control their property and hence a taking has occured.
While externalities exist that the owner has no control over, this is not such a case. I find the arguement - "since you still have the original code and can use it my making a copy without your permission is not theft"does not deprive you of anything and is not theft" to be a mere rationalization to make someone feel OK about their actions.
I also find some of those that make that argument
hypocritical as they gladly take other's code but scream with indignation if someone even hints of doing so with GPL'd code.
Second, morality relating to property depends on the moral definition of property, which is not necessarily the same as the legal definition. To pick an obvious example from our past, the fact that many jurisdictions legally defined slaves as property of their masters did not make it incontestably immoral to assist in their escape. Whether an individual actually considered it immoral or not depended on whether their subjective, moral view of property coincided with the legal definition.
Your obvious example is stupid (and I expected somone on /. to make it and once again was not dissapointed) and is irrelevant to the discussion. People have certain inherent (some may say inalienable) rights that cannot be taken away; unlike inanimate objects.
BTW - sic is properly used to avoid confusion when quoting passages so the reader does not think you made the spelling or grammatical error.
I agree. It also raises the very significant question of imposing criminal penalties in relation to what is in reality a civil offence.
This type of penalty is the direct result of the sustained campaign to impose extraordinarily severe penalties in relation to 'crimes' which in reality carry few of the hallmarks of what is traditionally regarded as criminal activity.
It is a criminal matter becasue he converted someone else's property to his own use without there permission - just as if he had taken a piece of tangible property and sold it. It clearly had value - based on what he made in profits from the sale and he did not have the right to sell it.
He could have negotiated a licensing deal; but did not. This is not a contractual dispute; it's conversion; which has traditionally been considered a crime. Penalties are not only punishment but deterences as well - 15 months in jail will probably not only make him think twice before he does this again but deter others as well.
When you send someone to prison for that long for a crime which is trivially easy to commit, is of debatable morality, and which has a tenuous impact, at best, on anyone or on "society", then I think there is something very wrong.
Easy of commision has never really been a factor in deciding penalties for crimes; just becasue it is easy to con someone out of cash doesn't make it any less of crime than if you simply lift their wallet while they aren't looking.
As for "debatable morality" - the law as it stands says the copyright holders control how it is used. You cna disagree with the law, and think it needs to be changed (as I do) but as the law currently defines software programs as property. Property rights are pretty well viewed as important in our society, and using other's property without permission is generally not viewed as a moral act.
If you really think it has minimal impact; then you should have no problem with soemone taking OSS, modifying it, and releasing it as a commercial product without following the GPL requirements to relase the source. After all, you have lost nothing since you still have the orignal program so their actions have had no impact on you.
My biggest complaint is against cell towers with blinding strobe lights on top. So bright that you can see them from ten miles away on a sunny day. Two or three of those can kind of ruin an otherwise scenic vista. (I'm looking at you, Michigan.)
The best solution I've seen is to disguise the towers as pine trees. It just takes a few branches, and the technology has been perfected since the 1950's.
Unfortunately, lighting and paint schemes are often US Government mandated - they need to be visible to aviators as they pose potential hazards to navigation. Tower companies get fined if the lights go out for too long, so they often have automated monitoring and warning systems to let them know one is out.
And then there is me who says they should ask up front if they don't have a clue. As in "Organizing my files with Windows Explorer is troublesome, can you recommend an alternative file manager?" instead of installing some random software from the internet.
Now I would not crucify someone for a one-time slip in that department, but a user who crashes his machine every two months needs to have his admin rights revoked.
Printing a certain font, however, can be a legitimate need. As in "you have already published stuff in that font and you want more of the same for consistency".
IT is a service organization - it exists to support the users of the technology.
That means helping fix problems - even if they are user generated.
IT should play a role in deciding what technology is used and what is deployed; but the users need to be the ones that say if it meets their needs.
IT shouldn't decide if you can use a font or not, OTOH limiting what can be installed makes sense from a reliability and license compliance standpoint.
The problem for IT shops that are viewed as a block rather than a helper is that they have no friends once outsourcing gets bought up. They are viewed strictly as a cost center; and cheaper generally wins the battle once that viewpoint takes hold.
Another major source of income was in servicing the controls.
Out of curiosity: were the service engineers included in your 10% figure of "production workers"? I can't wrap my head around the inefficiency of a company in which only 10% of the salaried personnel is responsible for generating all revenue.
I would guess the OP was referring to those actually constructing the devices.
One of the problems with percentages is you don't know the size of the pie - 10% of 1000 is a very different structure than 10% of 50. A small shop, with a lot of R&D and service staff; as well as a sales staff might only have 5% of its staff actually making the device. Highly skilled workers, technology, and high margins means you can pay well and support the sales infrastructure you need.
All it takes is a cohort in another country to pickup the wire transfer.
Another solution is positive spam - if they got enough responses, many of which are fake the time they take to read and reply would cut down their take. Alternatively, hey may just skip real responses so you wold help potential victims as well.
I'm calling bullshit on this one. 42%? yeah right. Maybe parents checking up on their kid's habits but even then I can't see almost _half_ of the world's internet users using another person's account.
But that's the thing, the poll doesn't infer that it's all web users, just people that visit that website. The write up is incorrect.
You are very correct there - most people don't understand statistics; let alone what constitutes a statistically valid sample.
The again, the press, in general, never let that stand in the way of an interesting headline.