And, to answer your question - if I discard a CD and you pick it it up and listen to it, that's fine - but walking into a store and taking a copy isn't - which is what your newspaper example is equivalent.
Which was exactly my point. In your example, you've aquired a CD for nothing, the artist hasn't benefitted by you doing it, but yet you don't consider this to be stealing. Why not?
Because I no longer own the physical copy and won't use it while you do - just as I could sell it to you, under the doctrine of first sale.
So is it OK to use open source code in closed source projects, because no one loses any money as a result?
If the open source software was not available, would they have not put that functionality in the software? If they would have paid a developer to do it, or bought a third party library, then they are damaging the person/company that they would have paid. If the feature would not have been put in without the open source code, and the author is not aware that it is being used that way, then, no, I don't have a problem with it. No one has lost out.
Wether they would pay someone is irrelevent - since the opens ource developer isn't losing any money, by the original argument using their code is OK.
Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with someone pirating a copy of software, checking to see if it meets their needs, and then either buying it or deleting it.
This then totally invalidates your arguement about the cost to the companies for pursuing pirates. Does it somehow cost the companies to chase down people who use it but would never buy it, but not cost them to pursue people who are 'trying it out'?
Hardly. First off all, I didn't say it wasn't theft - it is, but I view the try before buy or delete as a defendable response to unreasonable EULA, different from someone pirating the software and continuing to use it for their benefit without paying, and rationalizing their actions by saying they wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
>>So is it OK to use open source code in closed source projects, because no one loses any money as a result?
>No, this is a different crime. This is the crime of fraud. You are defrauding the author by putting your name on their work.
The original poster made the claim that piracy was OK if the person doing it wasn't intending to purcahse the product in question - so teh copyright holder doesn't lose any money. Open source developers don't lose money if tehir code gets incorporated into someone's closed project, so by the "it's OK because X didn't lose money" argument, incorporating od code is OK as well.
>>Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with someone pirating a copy of software, checking to see if it meets their needs, and then either buying it or deleting it.
>But that is stealing! Why?
Sure, but I'm willing to accept the argument that someone who uses a copy of a piece of software just long enough to see if it meets their needs, and then either deletes or buys it, is different from some one who simply pirate s the software and continues to use it for their benefit while rationalizing it by claiming " I would bnever buy it."
By that view, it's ok to sneek into no sold out movies, concerts, etc because I wouldn't have paid the cover to get in.
If you had absolutely no intention of paying for it, then yes it would. Why not? Who's losing what? If you go into a bar and find a discarded newspaper there, do you feel it's theft to read the paper despite the fact that you haven't paid for it? Do you see how this would be different from walking into a newsagent, picking up the newspaper and walking out without paying? In both cases, you've ended up with a free newspaper.
So is it OK to use open source code in closed source projects, because no one loses any money as a result? After all, it's as free as the newspaper left lying on a table - neither owner expects any renumeration for it.
And, to answer your question - if I discard a CD and you pick it it up and listen to it, that's fine - but walking into a store and taking a copy isn't - which is what your newspaper example is equivalent.
I got 3 pieces of junk mail last night, which took time to download on my phone - time I could have spent reading the real messages I'd been sent.
How is that different from a company spending money to figure out who are the most serious pirates on Kazza? You spent what, all of a few minutes eliminating the spam? If you argue that the small cost of identifying and ignoring small fry pirates still makes it OK to copy stuff you wouldn't buy, then the small cost to you of eliminating spam is OK and not a reason to be against spam.
Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with someone pirating a copy of software, checking to see if it meets their needs, and then either buying it or deleting it. I think companies ought to have a way to let people try a product before they shell out money and find it doesn't live up to its hype. But if you pirate a copy, use it because you find it useful, and don't buy it, I don't buy the "I can't afford it so it's OK" argument.
If you can't afford it, go without or find a free alternative, instead of rationalizing theft by saying it didn't hurt anyone (a disputable point, IMHO.)
and the cpu only works when you've already decided to turn the PC on. Of course, you may say that their is some infitesimal cost associated with cpu use, the copyright holder alos spends money on copy protection and anti-piracy efforts as well - all because people pirate software. So even the pirate that never would buy still costs the copyright owner.
That's a bit of a fatuous arguement really, isn't it? If it was the 12 y/o boy's piracy that they were trying to prevent, and the copyright holder was aware that this would not cost him anything, then spending money on copy protection would be a stupid waste of money. The reason that they do spend vast amounts of money on copy protection is to stop pirates who would cost them money (in other words people that would have bought the product if they couldn't have stolen it - this is stealing, is bad, immoral, etc - see the difference?). The 12 y/o's actions are irrelevant to this, and therefore are still not costing money.
If you truly believe that taking something is stealing if you could or would have paid money for it, then you have a different view of stealing than I. By that view, it's ok to seneek into no sold out movies, concerts, etc because I wouldn't have paid the cover to get in.
It also means its ok for commercial companies to take open source code and incorporate it into closed projects because:
- doing so costs the original developer nothing because they aren't getting paid,
- the comercial company wouldn't or couldn't buy the code anyway
By that arguement, spam is OK because you may buy something - so stealing time from you is OK if you may eventually find something useful amongst the junk.
This would only be a valid comparison if the pirate was asking the copyright holder to spend time copying the disks himself. The problem with spam is that it's intrusive. It has an opportunity cost to me. It takes my time (admittedly usually a small amount per mail, but it all adds up) to delete this junk. The copyright holder has no knowledge of this 12 y/o's copying taking place. It doesn't affect him at all.
A company still has to sort out who is the casual copier and probably not worth chasing down vs teh serious pirate - which costs money. If only big time pirates existed, it would probably cost less to shut them down. So, just as with spam, their is a marginal cost to the copyright holder.
Of course, they could just as easily use Linux and some free alternative instead of pirating a copy. Then, if they really liked it, they could eventually convince their employer to use it instead of the commercial alternative.
And this helps the copyright holder how? Or are you claiming that piracy of commercial software actually damages open source? You have a point with that last one.
If pirated code results in wider use of commericial products (the key to the "piracy ultimately helps the copyright holder" arguement), then by extension it hurts open source by displacing them from the marketplace. SO yes, part of my argument is that it hurts os projects - the data version of collateral damage.
Except piracy deprives the copyright owners of money.
It does?
Explain how a 12 year old (assuming the minimum legal age for labour in the country is 14, and their allowance is $5 per week, starting when they were 7 years old, and that they spend $4.50 already on candy/lunch per week) pirating Photoshop deprives the author of money. I don't think you'll be successful without getting the 12 year old some kind of loan...
I'll ignore the obvious "either stealing is moral or immoral" for a bit.
If your arguement is that it the producer loses no money by your mythical 12 year old's actions, let's establish that as the standard for judging OK in the digital realm. By that argument, it's ok for Kazza or other companies to put sypware on your machine to serve up ads or use unused cpu cycles - which, for flat rate bandwidth pricing, costs you no money - and the cpu only works when you've already decided to turn the PC on. Of course, you may say that their is some infitesimal cost associated with cpu use, the copyright holder alos spends money on copy protection and anti-piracy efforts as well - all because people pirate software. So even the pirate that never would buy still costs the copyright owner.
In fact, the piracy is a benefit to the company in these cases. Now the pirate likes and knows the product they are much more likely to ask to use it at work, which will pay for it to avoid another illegal BSA search 'n siezure.
By that arguement, spam is OK because you may buy something - so stealing time from you is OK if you may eventually find something useful amongst the junk.
Of course, they could just as easily use Linux and some free alternative instead of pirating a copy. Then, if they really liked it, they could eventually convince their employer to use it instead of the commercial alternative.
Except when the "enemy combatant" is a natural born American citizen.
If a person is here on visa, here illegally or not a natural born citizen, then it is possible that they could have come to the states solely for combative purposes and as such, I feel they can rightly be held as enemy combatants.
A natural born American, no matter how vile, should be given the full rights of the Constitution, including legal counsel, speedy trial and criminal - not military - proceedings.
Except Constitutional protections apply to anyone in the US, not just 'natural born citizens.' In addition, many citizens were not 'natural born,' and they enjoy all the rights and privelages of citizenship (expect for being able to be elected President, but then again not all natural born citizens can be elected President either.)
That's why Gitmo is being used to hold prisoners, not US jails - it helps prevent the prisiners from asserting Constitutional protections.
one potential problem is the varying amounts of readings for class. A math class, with one etxt book, would be far more accessable, than say, a management or econ class with readings from a variety of journals.
Some journals are available on-line, and public libraries often have access to databases for fee-based articles, but pulling the articles togetehr will often be difficult. Compounding this is the use of case studies, which are cash cows for schools such as Harvard. What would be real helpful is the availability of inexpensive ecucational access (with limited d/ls per month to keep non-ed users out) to anyone so they could get the 50 or articles/cases they need.
Th etrade off is the potential loss of sales to traditional users (which can be as much as $20/student/qtr per class at BSchool) who get cases and articles online for less vs the addin sales potential as on-line use increases.
At issue here, in my humble non-lawyer opion, is not copyright but the license agreement between the video store and the copyright owner. If the license does not allow editing, then the store would be violating the license agreement - just as someone who buys the DVD then shows it in their studio would be violating the license agreement. Which is why I think the store should be prevented from making unapproved edits.
Why is that important - because the ability to enforce a license aggrement would potentially impact all software distributed under a license - whether it is by MS or the GPL. If the courts decide that licenses are not held to all terms of a license, that would weaken the ability to enforce the GPL. So while I may agree with why a video store may want to edit tapes, I don't think they should be allowed to do it without the copyright holder's agreement, thereby sticking to the license they agreed to when they bought the tape/DVD/etc.
As a side note, people have used blacking out parts of a book as an analogy - one i don't think apples because books aren't sold with a license.
No, you have a group of investors who want to get as much as possible for what they own - not an unreasonable desire. If they get the full $3.41, they can invest it in whatever they want, instead of getting less cash and shares in a non-publically traded company. They're not even getting the cash they could if the they dumped their holding at market price. They realize, no doubt, that selling for less than full liquidation value merely gives the buyer a cash infusion - and, as the saying goes, "Cash is king."
Look at it this way - if a company wanted LA's tech, they could buy it during the liquidation - sopmething the stockholders no doubt would like because they get even more money.
The LA stockholders are being asked to pay $1.91 for each share of A that they get - they may feel they can make a better investment elsewhere.
Given the current valuation of LA, the wave has already swamped them and the survivors are treading water until rescue.
when it's easier to go after a corporation that choses to install Linux, over say, a competing MS product? This gives MS (and others) a way to fight Linux w/o taking it on on its merits as an OS. A patent claim would be enough to convince companies to avoid Linux simply to avoid a potential lawsuit. What company wants to waste time and money in a lawsuit, when they can simply license an existing product - something they may have to do anyway, if they would lose a patent suit.
Business, in the end, is about winning and losing - any doubt MS would use patents to hurt Linux?
OTH, IBM, with its embracing Linux, has the resources to fight MA as well as a stable of patents to use as weapons (everybody, everywhere, is probably using an IBM patent without a license). That would make an interetsing marketing ploy - "Why yes, you can buy Linux from redhat, since they use the same source as us, be sure to ask if they have the resources to fight a patent suit. bTW, here's our number in case you decide to go with us..."
The thing is, a phone and a Computer are the two things that everyone has on their desk. Judging by their past successes (keyboards, mice) maybe Microsoft should start making phones as well.
They did - it failed in the marketplace because it was expensive and offered no must-have features.
Look at it this way - if a backbone provider begins to block traffic based on content, then:
1. - they may put their common carrier status at risk; and,
2. - other illegal content should be blocked as well.
So, if you live in a state where spam is illegal, a natural extension would be for the backbone carriers to block spam sites (of course, the problem with open relays means all of the far east may be blocked, but hey, spam is spam.) Of course, when jurisdictions start forcing the blockage of legitimate (read RIAA member) music sites because of language or other content, cutting them off from their customers, the RIAA may wish they never went down this road.
Not that I really think forcing the pipe owners to block content is a good idea, but the law, like landminds, can harm friend and foe alike. It's all in how a weapon is used.
Programs like this one could lead to greater truthfulness in the answers people volunteer on the Web, she said, provided that they were willing to replace some of their native caution with a bit of good will toward a company and its need for data-mining.
Yes, they *need* to make even more money off your data.
Second, anyone find it interetsing that they assume a distribution and then work towards it:
"When people lie randomly -- and that is what they do now when they answer questions -- we get very poor results," he said. But by "adding random values to true values," he said, "we can reconstruct a distribution that is very close to the actual one."
Using this information, Dr. Srikant said, the researchers make a first guess at what the true distribution should be. Then the program crunches through the analysis and produces a slightly better guess. This guess is crunched again, and the process is repeated over and over again, getting closer and closer to the actual distribution.
My guess i sthat they hope people don't truely lie randomly, and then yuse their random additions or subtractions to bring people closer to the actual distribution - i.e. I may say I make $0 or %$50,000 (or what ever the low/high end is, but not pick one one away from my real income.) They are hoping that people, as a group, behave predictably even when any one individual doesn't. Which, if my org behavuior prof is to be beleived, is generally the case and the way people can shape other's responses and behaviors.
Interestingly enough, randomization is a useful tool in surveys. If you area sking about very private infromation that people may lie about if they fear the answer will be leaked, you can tell them to flip a coin - heads ask them to answer truthfully, tails put down no (for a yes no survey). With a large enough sample, you can back out the real results based on the 50/50 results of the coin toss, without knowing how anyone actually answered.
Of course, companies should probably ask themselves how many Josef Stalins live in Moscow Idaho and were born on Oct 24, 1917?
Actually, I wouldn't expect much in the way of black/brown outs in Canada do to a lessened production from the hydo-electric plants. at least not unless there was a very prolonged period of drought.
While there would be a reduced output, the first thing to go would be the rather large surplus that gets sold to the US.
I agree - much of the excess power has been sold to the US, especially in the PNW. While brownouts are unlikely, the provincial governments get used to the extra money as funding sources for other projects - which may feel budget crunches if drought conditions persist. Another impact is the ability to time shift the dam's power - i.e. buy power when it's not possible or economically desirable to use hydro to meet 100% of demand, and then replacing that power with sales made later or earlier.
The descision to deregulate power is a failed experiment yet our plucky leadership in Sac Town don't see it that way, they're rather spend billions dollars bailing out these failed and failing utility companies and their shit management. It is sad watching this all happen.
California never really deregulated the electric power industry, instead they screwed with the market under the guise of deregualtion. For exmple, they:
Capped prices to business users and mandated price cuts to rersidential users (10% - the pols loved to trumpet that), while,
Forbidding companies from entering into long term supply contracts, instead they were forced to by on the spot (right now) or day ahead markets, and,
Did this in a state where the reserve margin (power production capacity above demand) was shrinking and where the ability to move power ointo the state and from the north to the south was severely constrained, and finally,
Forced utilities to meet all demand, no matter what their cost of power was.
So , you've got a place where prices don't rise no matter how much I use and my supplier is forced to buy power at any cost, and its not easy to get more in so supply can keep up with demand at a reasonable price - and people are surprised at what happened? Any power generator in their right mind would look at the market and figure out how to get the highest price for its dollars, the state of CA's desires for cheap power be damned.
What I find funny about all this was people pointed this out before deregulation took hold - but the politicians/utilities/consumer activists all jumped on the bandwagon because they all thought they'd get what they wanted - votes/greater profits/lower prices.
Maybe someone should ask Sen Steve Peace (D- El Cajon) how he feels about being the "Father of deregulation" in CA? Free clue - he's already said it ain't his or the legislature's fault - it's those big bad other guys who are to blame for taking advantage of the rules the legislature created.
have come up with a system of genericized nuclear breeder facilities that provide clean, cheap power to their respective countries.
60% of Canada's electric power comes from hydro-electric dams. That's about as clean as it gets, though not perfectly "green" because of reservoir flooding. Nuke power: 12%.
Of course, the fish downstream of a dam may disagree on how green it is when they can't get to their spawning area or become fillets trying to get past a turbine.
In addition, dams are very depended on the runoff from the snow pack - a dry winter can seriously impact their ability to produce power, which means you either buy it elsewhere or are looking at brownouts/blackouts, especially if you have several lower than normal annual rainfalls.
Advanced nuclear technology, such as the pebble bed reactor, offer greater safety and lower construction costs. The fuel is in cased in ceramic spheres, which, unlike current metal fuel rods, don't crack and release the fuel if coolant flow is lost. The plants are modular as well, so you can build a 500 MW plant and later add capacity as demand grows.
Finally, much of the cost of nuclear power is not from the technology, but from the added carrying costs when plants were delayed for years at a time due to political reasons, such as license challenges that had nothing to do with aplant's ability to operate safely. The US revamped its licensing rules to allow plants to operate while licensing issues not directly related to safety are resolved. By introducing some certainty into the licensing process, nukes become a better investment.
Not that they are the only solution, but each type of energy production has it negative environemental effects (even wind power kills birds, including endangered eagles - just look at CA), and those must be considered when deciding what type of plant to build. In the end, plentiful and inexpensive energy is what enables us to maintain or standard of living.
That is almost a good advice! Now, some interesting facts:
1) Relatively cheap (read: affordable) film scanners don't have ICE. You'd have to spend hours on removing ugly pieces of dust, scratches and other stuff from scanned pictures. It is really visible and really nasty. Of course, you can go for a $2000 scanner with ICE and stuff.
2) Almost all one-hour photo labs just ruin your negatives. Expect to find tons of dust melted into the film, heavy scratches and many other surprises that even ICE probably can't handle.
I agree - if your are serious about creating an electronic archive, then you need to spend the dollars to do it right. The serious hobbyist or pro is not going to use a cheap 1 hour place for the reasons you mentioned, in fact, they may very well be using slide film so many instant photo places probably can't even handle printing / developing.
If your doing a few scans here and there to email to friends/family, then an inexpensive scanner will do - just don't expect archival results.
That said, you'll of course burn your family photos on a CD, put it into a drawer, then, 20 years from now, none of you would be able to view it. Have fun! Family photos is probably the worst thing to store on a digital media. Not only it is possible to ruin ALL photos by damaging one disk / CD, but, unless regularly copied from one medium to another, the original medium will soon become obsolete.
Well, first of all you'll still have your original media, plus your digital copy. If your smart, you've made multiple CDs for backups, as well as saved in several file formats. (Altough most graphics programs handle many long gone file formats). A very real issue is will your OS file format still be readable in 10 or 20 years? You may have to transfer all the files if you all of a sudden machines stop reading ISO file formats, but if that happens you should still have a machine to read and copy the files from to your new machine. (i.e. if MS announced tommorrow all new disk file formats, you'd still have a legacy machine that can read the current ones and woul dneed to keep that until you did the transfer - sort of what happened with migrations of Office formats and NTFS/MSDos file structures) If you're really serious, you could buy server space and archive there as well. In the end, as long as you haven't lost the original image medium, you haven't lost anything but gained the added flexibility of digital copies. You could, for example, create your own "stock library" so when you want a picture of X at age Y, you could search your index and find one. If you cross reference with the original medium (say numbering sequentially), you could even reprint from the original as well as from the digital or send the digital to whomever wanted it fo their printing, without risking losing the original.
Is it easy to do? Nah, but you really don't lose anything by creating a digital archive.
One otehr thought - get a high quality dedicated slide/negative scanner if you plan to digitize a lot of images. The advantages include:
1. You get more of the information from the original medium - printing invariably loses some of the details, especially those done by instant photo places. Prints also fade in the light.
2. You get all of your images digitized - even ones for which you've lost prints.
3. You can continue to shoot slides, which offer better quality images that negatives. (Ultimately, its the eye behind the viewfinder that counts, not the equipment.)
There are several ways to do this, beyond the color inkjet/dye sub solutions. I've seen a number of photo shops that offer instant printing from disk/flas memeory/CDs. The results are satisfactory - it looks like a regular print, and cost competitive with color printers. I personally use a CF card and transfer the prints from my PC to it via a USB cardreader. A card and reader can be had for less than $50. I like it over CDRs because transfer times are faster, and with a $10 PCCard adpater, I can use it with my notebook as well.
There are online services that let you upload images and then order prints, I've used OFTO and liked the results, but its just as cheap and faster to run to my nearest chain camera shop.
Finally, Kinkos can make poster size copies on various media, including foamboard and canvas. They tend to be expensive, but offer some interesting printing options.
Actually, there was an article a while back about being able to dechiper modem trnsmission via the TX/RX lights falshing patterns. The short version is that since modems send serial data, the on-off tx light is a good proxy for whether the modem is sending a 1 or a 0. You can time the lights (LEDs quickly change state so optical delays are negligable), and reconstruct the waveform of the transmitted data. How useful that would be in the real world, who knows?
Re:Well, I read it, and I can't see any patterns..
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Ten Technology Disasters
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· Score: 5, Informative
So does anybody know of a good reference work out there which actually has some worthwhile analysis on stuff like this? Didn't Feynmann write something up after Challenger?
Yes, it appeared as an appendix to the Roger's Report. He also discussed it in his autobigraphy either "Surely your joking..." or "What do you care...", I can't remember which. The appendix is a good read, and can be found here: http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-re port.ht ml or any of a number of other googleable links.
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And, to answer your question - if I discard a CD and you pick it it up and listen to it, that's fine - but walking into a store and taking a copy isn't - which is what your newspaper example is equivalent.
Which was exactly my point. In your example, you've aquired a CD for nothing, the artist hasn't benefitted by you doing it, but yet you don't consider this to be stealing. Why not?
Because I no longer own the physical copy and won't use it while you do - just as I could sell it to you, under the doctrine of first sale.
So is it OK to use open source code in closed source projects, because no one loses any money as a result?
If the open source software was not available, would they have not put that functionality in the software? If they would have paid a developer to do it, or bought a third party library, then they are damaging the person/company that they would have paid. If the feature would not have been put in without the open source code, and the author is not aware that it is being used that way, then, no, I don't have a problem with it. No one has lost out.
Wether they would pay someone is irrelevent - since the opens ource developer isn't losing any money, by the original argument using their code is OK.
Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with someone pirating a copy of software, checking to see if it meets their needs, and then either buying it or deleting it.
This then totally invalidates your arguement about the cost to the companies for pursuing pirates. Does it somehow cost the companies to chase down people who use it but would never buy it, but not cost them to pursue people who are 'trying it out'?
Hardly. First off all, I didn't say it wasn't theft - it is, but I view the try before buy or delete as a defendable response to unreasonable EULA, different from someone pirating the software and continuing to use it for their benefit without paying, and rationalizing their actions by saying they wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
>>So is it OK to use open source code in closed source projects, because no one loses any money as a result?
>No, this is a different crime. This is the crime of fraud. You are defrauding the author by putting your name on their work.
The original poster made the claim that piracy was OK if the person doing it wasn't intending to purcahse the product in question - so teh copyright holder doesn't lose any money. Open source developers don't lose money if tehir code gets incorporated into someone's closed project, so by the "it's OK because X didn't lose money" argument, incorporating od code is OK as well.
>>Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with someone pirating a copy of software, checking to see if it meets their needs, and then either buying it or deleting it.
>But that is stealing! Why?
Sure, but I'm willing to accept the argument that someone who uses a copy of a piece of software just long enough to see if it meets their needs, and then either deletes or buys it, is different from some one who simply pirate s the software and continues to use it for their benefit while rationalizing it by claiming " I would bnever buy it."
By that view, it's ok to sneek into no sold out movies, concerts, etc because I wouldn't have paid the cover to get in.
If you had absolutely no intention of paying for it, then yes it would. Why not? Who's losing what? If you go into a bar and find a discarded newspaper there, do you feel it's theft to read the paper despite the fact that you haven't paid for it? Do you see how this would be different from walking into a newsagent, picking up the newspaper and walking out without paying? In both cases, you've ended up with a free newspaper.
So is it OK to use open source code in closed source projects, because no one loses any money as a result? After all, it's as free as the newspaper left lying on a table - neither owner expects any renumeration for it.
And, to answer your question - if I discard a CD and you pick it it up and listen to it, that's fine - but walking into a store and taking a copy isn't - which is what your newspaper example is equivalent.
I got 3 pieces of junk mail last night, which took time to download on my phone - time I could have spent reading the real messages I'd been sent.
How is that different from a company spending money to figure out who are the most serious pirates on Kazza? You spent what, all of a few minutes eliminating the spam? If you argue that the small cost of identifying and ignoring small fry pirates still makes it OK to copy stuff you wouldn't buy, then the small cost to you of eliminating spam is OK and not a reason to be against spam.
Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with someone pirating a copy of software, checking to see if it meets their needs, and then either buying it or deleting it. I think companies ought to have a way to let people try a product before they shell out money and find it doesn't live up to its hype. But if you pirate a copy, use it because you find it useful, and don't buy it, I don't buy the "I can't afford it so it's OK" argument.
If you can't afford it, go without or find a free alternative, instead of rationalizing theft by saying it didn't hurt anyone (a disputable point, IMHO.)
and the cpu only works when you've already decided to turn the PC on. Of course, you may say that their is some infitesimal cost associated with cpu use, the copyright holder alos spends money on copy protection and anti-piracy efforts as well - all because people pirate software. So even the pirate that never would buy still costs the copyright owner.
That's a bit of a fatuous arguement really, isn't it? If it was the 12 y/o boy's piracy that they were trying to prevent, and the copyright holder was aware that this would not cost him anything, then spending money on copy protection would be a stupid waste of money. The reason that they do spend vast amounts of money on copy protection is to stop pirates who would cost them money (in other words people that would have bought the product if they couldn't have stolen it - this is stealing, is bad, immoral, etc - see the difference?). The 12 y/o's actions are irrelevant to this, and therefore are still not costing money.
If you truly believe that taking something is stealing if you could or would have paid money for it, then you have a different view of stealing than I. By that view, it's ok to seneek into no sold out movies, concerts, etc because I wouldn't have paid the cover to get in.
It also means its ok for commercial companies to take open source code and incorporate it into closed projects because:
- doing so costs the original developer nothing because they aren't getting paid,
- the comercial company wouldn't or couldn't buy the code anyway
By that arguement, spam is OK because you may buy something - so stealing time from you is OK if you may eventually find something useful amongst the junk.
This would only be a valid comparison if the pirate was asking the copyright holder to spend time copying the disks himself. The problem with spam is that it's intrusive. It has an opportunity cost to me. It takes my time (admittedly usually a small amount per mail, but it all adds up) to delete this junk. The copyright holder has no knowledge of this 12 y/o's copying taking place. It doesn't affect him at all.
A company still has to sort out who is the casual copier and probably not worth chasing down vs teh serious pirate - which costs money. If only big time pirates existed, it would probably cost less to shut them down. So, just as with spam, their is a marginal cost to the copyright holder.
Of course, they could just as easily use Linux and some free alternative instead of pirating a copy. Then, if they really liked it, they could eventually convince their employer to use it instead of the commercial alternative.
And this helps the copyright holder how? Or are you claiming that piracy of commercial software actually damages open source? You have a point with that last one.
If pirated code results in wider use of commericial products (the key to the "piracy ultimately helps the copyright holder" arguement), then by extension it hurts open source by displacing them from the marketplace. SO yes, part of my argument is that it hurts os projects - the data version of collateral damage.
Except piracy deprives the copyright owners of money.
It does?
Explain how a 12 year old (assuming the minimum legal age for labour in the country is 14, and their allowance is $5 per week, starting when they were 7 years old, and that they spend $4.50 already on candy/lunch per week) pirating Photoshop deprives the author of money. I don't think you'll be successful without getting the 12 year old some kind of loan...
I'll ignore the obvious "either stealing is moral or immoral" for a bit.
If your arguement is that it the producer loses no money by your mythical 12 year old's actions, let's establish that as the standard for judging OK in the digital realm. By that argument, it's ok for Kazza or other companies to put sypware on your machine to serve up ads or use unused cpu cycles - which, for flat rate bandwidth pricing, costs you no money - and the cpu only works when you've already decided to turn the PC on. Of course, you may say that their is some infitesimal cost associated with cpu use, the copyright holder alos spends money on copy protection and anti-piracy efforts as well - all because people pirate software. So even the pirate that never would buy still costs the copyright owner.
In fact, the piracy is a benefit to the company in these cases. Now the pirate likes and knows the product they are much more likely to ask to use it at work, which will pay for it to avoid another illegal BSA search 'n siezure.
By that arguement, spam is OK because you may buy something - so stealing time from you is OK if you may eventually find something useful amongst the junk.
Of course, they could just as easily use Linux and some free alternative instead of pirating a copy. Then, if they really liked it, they could eventually convince their employer to use it instead of the commercial alternative.
Except when the "enemy combatant" is a natural born American citizen.
If a person is here on visa, here illegally or not a natural born citizen, then it is possible that they could have come to the states solely for combative purposes and as such, I feel they can rightly be held as enemy combatants.
A natural born American, no matter how vile, should be given the full rights of the Constitution, including legal counsel, speedy trial and criminal - not military - proceedings.
Except Constitutional protections apply to anyone in the US, not just 'natural born citizens.' In addition, many citizens were not 'natural born,' and they enjoy all the rights and privelages of citizenship (expect for being able to be elected President, but then again not all natural born citizens can be elected President either.)
That's why Gitmo is being used to hold prisoners, not US jails - it helps prevent the prisiners from asserting Constitutional protections.
one potential problem is the varying amounts of readings for class. A math class, with one etxt book, would be far more accessable, than say, a management or econ class with readings from a variety of journals.
Some journals are available on-line, and public libraries often have access to databases for fee-based articles, but pulling the articles togetehr will often be difficult. Compounding this is the use of case studies, which are cash cows for schools such as Harvard. What would be real helpful is the availability of inexpensive ecucational access (with limited d/ls per month to keep non-ed users out) to anyone so they could get the 50 or articles/cases they need.
Th etrade off is the potential loss of sales to traditional users (which can be as much as $20/student/qtr per class at BSchool) who get cases and articles online for less vs the addin sales potential as on-line use increases.
At least MIT is pushing in the right direction.
of Rodney Joffe, who had been interrupted during a performance of "Riverdance" by a text message advertising new mortgage rates."
Sounds like good targeted marketing - anyone watching Riverdance probably has the right IQ to fall for a spammer's pitch.
this is probably just my naive common sense interpretation, everybody with a law degree probably has a different opinion.
/., afterall
yes, this is naive - you should have said:
everybody has a different opinion.
This is
only have to lose 1 remote
At issue here, in my humble non-lawyer opion, is not copyright but the license agreement between the video store and the copyright owner. If the license does not allow editing, then the store would be violating the license agreement - just as someone who buys the DVD then shows it in their studio would be violating the license agreement. Which is why I think the store should be prevented from making unapproved edits.
Why is that important - because the ability to enforce a license aggrement would potentially impact all software distributed under a license - whether it is by MS or the GPL. If the courts decide that licenses are not held to all terms of a license, that would weaken the ability to enforce the GPL. So while I may agree with why a video store may want to edit tapes, I don't think they should be allowed to do it without the copyright holder's agreement, thereby sticking to the license they agreed to when they bought the tape/DVD/etc.
As a side note, people have used blacking out parts of a book as an analogy - one i don't think apples because books aren't sold with a license.
No, you have a group of investors who want to get as much as possible for what they own - not an unreasonable desire. If they get the full $3.41, they can invest it in whatever they want, instead of getting less cash and shares in a non-publically traded company. They're not even getting the cash they could if the they dumped their holding at market price. They realize, no doubt, that selling for less than full liquidation value merely gives the buyer a cash infusion - and, as the saying goes, "Cash is king."
Look at it this way - if a company wanted LA's tech, they could buy it during the liquidation - sopmething the stockholders no doubt would like because they get even more money.
The LA stockholders are being asked to pay $1.91 for each share of A that they get - they may feel they can make a better investment elsewhere.
Given the current valuation of LA, the wave has already swamped them and the survivors are treading water until rescue.
when it's easier to go after a corporation that choses to install Linux, over say, a competing MS product? This gives MS (and others) a way to fight Linux w/o taking it on on its merits as an OS. A patent claim would be enough to convince companies to avoid Linux simply to avoid a potential lawsuit. What company wants to waste time and money in a lawsuit, when they can simply license an existing product - something they may have to do anyway, if they would lose a patent suit.
Business, in the end, is about winning and losing - any doubt MS would use patents to hurt Linux?
OTH, IBM, with its embracing Linux, has the resources to fight MA as well as a stable of patents to use as weapons (everybody, everywhere, is probably using an IBM patent without a license). That would make an interetsing marketing ploy - "Why yes, you can buy Linux from redhat, since they use the same source as us, be sure to ask if they have the resources to fight a patent suit. bTW, here's our number in case you decide to go with us..."
The thing is, a phone and a Computer are the two things that everyone has on their desk. Judging by their past successes (keyboards, mice) maybe Microsoft should start making phones as well.
They did - it failed in the marketplace because it was expensive and offered no must-have features.
Look at it this way - if a backbone provider begins to block traffic based on content, then:
1. - they may put their common carrier status at risk; and,
2. - other illegal content should be blocked as well.
So, if you live in a state where spam is illegal, a natural extension would be for the backbone carriers to block spam sites (of course, the problem with open relays means all of the far east may be blocked, but hey, spam is spam.) Of course, when jurisdictions start forcing the blockage of legitimate (read RIAA member) music sites because of language or other content, cutting them off from their customers, the RIAA may wish they never went down this road.
Not that I really think forcing the pipe owners to block content is a good idea, but the law, like landminds, can harm friend and foe alike. It's all in how a weapon is used.
A couple of thoughts.
First, I found this funny:
Programs like this one could lead to greater truthfulness in the answers people volunteer on the Web, she said, provided that they were willing to replace some of their native caution with a bit of good will toward a company and its need for data-mining.
Yes, they *need* to make even more money off your data.
Second, anyone find it interetsing that they assume a distribution and then work towards it:
"When people lie randomly -- and that is what they do now when they answer questions -- we get very poor results," he said. But by "adding random values to true values," he said, "we can reconstruct a distribution that is very close to the actual one."
Using this information, Dr. Srikant said, the researchers make a first guess at what the true distribution should be. Then the program crunches through the analysis and produces a slightly better guess. This guess is crunched again, and the process is repeated over and over again, getting closer and closer to the actual distribution.
My guess i sthat they hope people don't truely lie randomly, and then yuse their random additions or subtractions to bring people closer to the actual distribution - i.e. I may say I make $0 or %$50,000 (or what ever the low/high end is, but not pick one one away from my real income.) They are hoping that people, as a group, behave predictably even when any one individual doesn't. Which, if my org behavuior prof is to be beleived, is generally the case and the way people can shape other's responses and behaviors.
Interestingly enough, randomization is a useful tool in surveys. If you area sking about very private infromation that people may lie about if they fear the answer will be leaked, you can tell them to flip a coin - heads ask them to answer truthfully, tails put down no (for a yes no survey). With a large enough sample, you can back out the real results based on the 50/50 results of the coin toss, without knowing how anyone actually answered.
Of course, companies should probably ask themselves how many Josef Stalins live in Moscow Idaho and were born on Oct 24, 1917?
Most readers here have received their elementary school degrees.
Not that it's always obvious from the level of discourse on
Actually, I wouldn't expect much in the way of black/brown outs in Canada do to a lessened production from the hydo-electric plants. at least not unless there was a very prolonged period of drought.
While there would be a reduced output, the first thing to go would be the rather large surplus that gets sold to the US.
I agree - much of the excess power has been sold to the US, especially in the PNW. While brownouts are unlikely, the provincial governments get used to the extra money as funding sources for other projects - which may feel budget crunches if drought conditions persist. Another impact is the ability to time shift the dam's power - i.e. buy power when it's not possible or economically desirable to use hydro to meet 100% of demand, and then replacing that power with sales made later or earlier.
The descision to deregulate power is a failed experiment yet our plucky leadership in Sac Town don't see it that way, they're rather spend billions dollars bailing out these failed and failing utility companies and their shit management. It is sad watching this all happen.
California never really deregulated the electric power industry, instead they screwed with the market under the guise of deregualtion. For exmple, they:
Capped prices to business users and mandated price cuts to rersidential users (10% - the pols loved to trumpet that), while,
Forbidding companies from entering into long term supply contracts, instead they were forced to by on the spot (right now) or day ahead markets, and,
Did this in a state where the reserve margin (power production capacity above demand) was shrinking and where the ability to move power ointo the state and from the north to the south was severely constrained, and finally,
Forced utilities to meet all demand, no matter what their cost of power was.
So , you've got a place where prices don't rise no matter how much I use and my supplier is forced to buy power at any cost, and its not easy to get more in so supply can keep up with demand at a reasonable price - and people are surprised at what happened? Any power generator in their right mind would look at the market and figure out how to get the highest price for its dollars, the state of CA's desires for cheap power be damned.
What I find funny about all this was people pointed this out before deregulation took hold - but the politicians/utilities/consumer activists all jumped on the bandwagon because they all thought they'd get what they wanted - votes/greater profits/lower prices.
Maybe someone should ask Sen Steve Peace (D- El Cajon) how he feels about being the "Father of deregulation" in CA? Free clue - he's already said it ain't his or the legislature's fault - it's those big bad other guys who are to blame for taking advantage of the rules the legislature created.
have come up with a system of genericized nuclear breeder facilities that provide clean, cheap power to their respective countries.
60% of Canada's electric power comes from hydro-electric dams. That's about as clean as it gets, though not perfectly "green" because of reservoir flooding. Nuke power: 12%.
Of course, the fish downstream of a dam may disagree on how green it is when they can't get to their spawning area or become fillets trying to get past a turbine.
In addition, dams are very depended on the runoff from the snow pack - a dry winter can seriously impact their ability to produce power, which means you either buy it elsewhere or are looking at brownouts/blackouts, especially if you have several lower than normal annual rainfalls.
Advanced nuclear technology, such as the pebble bed reactor, offer greater safety and lower construction costs. The fuel is in cased in ceramic spheres, which, unlike current metal fuel rods, don't crack and release the fuel if coolant flow is lost. The plants are modular as well, so you can build a 500 MW plant and later add capacity as demand grows.
Finally, much of the cost of nuclear power is not from the technology, but from the added carrying costs when plants were delayed for years at a time due to political reasons, such as license challenges that had nothing to do with aplant's ability to operate safely. The US revamped its licensing rules to allow plants to operate while licensing issues not directly related to safety are resolved. By introducing some certainty into the licensing process, nukes become a better investment.
Not that they are the only solution, but each type of energy production has it negative environemental effects (even wind power kills birds, including endangered eagles - just look at CA), and those must be considered when deciding what type of plant to build. In the end, plentiful and inexpensive energy is what enables us to maintain or standard of living.
That is almost a good advice! Now, some interesting facts:
1) Relatively cheap (read: affordable) film scanners don't have ICE. You'd have to spend hours on removing ugly pieces of dust, scratches and other stuff from scanned pictures. It is really visible and really nasty. Of course, you can go for a $2000 scanner with ICE and stuff.
2) Almost all one-hour photo labs just ruin your negatives. Expect to find tons of dust melted into the film, heavy scratches and many other surprises that even ICE probably can't handle.
I agree - if your are serious about creating an electronic archive, then you need to spend the dollars to do it right. The serious hobbyist or pro is not going to use a cheap 1 hour place for the reasons you mentioned, in fact, they may very well be using slide film so many instant photo places probably can't even handle printing / developing.
If your doing a few scans here and there to email to friends/family, then an inexpensive scanner will do - just don't expect archival results.
That said, you'll of course burn your family photos on a CD, put it into a drawer, then, 20 years from now, none of you would be able to view it. Have fun! Family photos is probably the worst thing to store on a digital media. Not only it is possible to ruin ALL photos by damaging one disk / CD, but, unless regularly copied from one medium to another, the original medium will soon become obsolete.
Well, first of all you'll still have your original media, plus your digital copy. If your smart, you've made multiple CDs for backups, as well as saved in several file formats. (Altough most graphics programs handle many long gone file formats). A very real issue is will your OS file format still be readable in 10 or 20 years? You may have to transfer all the files if you all of a sudden machines stop reading ISO file formats, but if that happens you should still have a machine to read and copy the files from to your new machine. (i.e. if MS announced tommorrow all new disk file formats, you'd still have a legacy machine that can read the current ones and woul dneed to keep that until you did the transfer - sort of what happened with migrations of Office formats and NTFS/MSDos file structures) If you're really serious, you could buy server space and archive there as well. In the end, as long as you haven't lost the original image medium, you haven't lost anything but gained the added flexibility of digital copies. You could, for example, create your own "stock library" so when you want a picture of X at age Y, you could search your index and find one. If you cross reference with the original medium (say numbering sequentially), you could even reprint from the original as well as from the digital or send the digital to whomever wanted it fo their printing, without risking losing the original.
Is it easy to do? Nah, but you really don't lose anything by creating a digital archive.
One otehr thought - get a high quality dedicated slide/negative scanner if you plan to digitize a lot of images. The advantages include:
1. You get more of the information from the original medium - printing invariably loses some of the details, especially those done by instant photo places. Prints also fade in the light.
2. You get all of your images digitized - even ones for which you've lost prints.
3. You can continue to shoot slides, which offer better quality images that negatives. (Ultimately, its the eye behind the viewfinder that counts, not the equipment.)
There are several ways to do this, beyond the color inkjet/dye sub solutions. I've seen a number of photo shops that offer instant printing from disk/flas memeory/CDs. The results are satisfactory - it looks like a regular print, and cost competitive with color printers. I personally use a CF card and transfer the prints from my PC to it via a USB cardreader. A card and reader can be had for less than $50. I like it over CDRs because transfer times are faster, and with a $10 PCCard adpater, I can use it with my notebook as well.
There are online services that let you upload images and then order prints, I've used OFTO and liked the results, but its just as cheap and faster to run to my nearest chain camera shop.
Finally, Kinkos can make poster size copies on various media, including foamboard and canvas. They tend to be expensive, but offer some interesting printing options.
Actually, there was an article a while back about being able to dechiper modem trnsmission via the TX/RX lights falshing patterns. The short version is that since modems send serial data, the on-off tx light is a good proxy for whether the modem is sending a 1 or a 0. You can time the lights (LEDs quickly change state so optical delays are negligable), and reconstruct the waveform of the transmitted data. How useful that would be in the real world, who knows?
h tm l?tid=172
Links:
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/06/1221224.s
http://applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf
Yes, it appeared as an appendix to the Roger's Report. He also discussed it in his autobigraphy either "Surely your joking..." or "What do you care...", I can't remember which. The appendix is a good read, and can be found here:
http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-r
or any of a number of other googleable links.