Personally, I still prefer CDs and won't move to online sales unless they are priced unrealistically cheap. The reason: The CDs act as a reliable backup and master. When I buy a new CD it goes into my computer, gets ripped, then into a CD organizer to sit forgotten. But I know that if my drives crashes that I can recover the data without too much work. Pressed CDs kept is reasonable conditions have long shelf lives. If I decide to change music formats, I can do so without transcoding. If a new set of speakers reveals flaws in the encoding and I need a higher bitrate, I can re-rip at a higher bit rate.
If you buy music online, you're stuck with the format you get at the bitrate you get and you need to burn a backup copy. I prefer the flexibility. Assuming you want most of an album, the additional cost is minor.
The real question is how many people value these features as much as I do, and how many value the benefits of online distribution. Both options have their benefits and disadvantages.
I showed one of my relatives Firefox too, but he wasn't too interested - even though he had reformatted his HDD twice or thrice cuz of spyware and scum coming in thru IE.
That's the key. "I warned you that your system turned to crap because you were using IE. I suggested you use Firefox. You declined. Now your system has turned to crap again. I can't justify coming over every six months to rescue you from IE. I understand that LocalBusinessName has technicians available at reasonable rates. Call me when you're willing to switch."
Either way you spend less time repairing computers for free; you win either way.
Why is it harsh? If you crack the software, you pay the consequences. You're not owed anything at that point. As far as ethics is concerned, the app could do anything it wanted.
Bullshit. Active attempts to cause harm (likely financial in this case) are completely unethical and probably illegal. No, you're not owed anything (and you're certainly entitled to be able to use the software), but lashing out is dangerous. A legit customer might use a cracked code because they lost theirs (possibly illegal, but is it really worth trashing their data?). A potential customer might have been "sold" an illegal copy without realizing it (in which case you should disable the copy, explain the situation, and make it easy to buy a legit copy).
It's illegal to set traps in my house, even if they're intended for burglars. It's just as illegal to set traps in your products.
We've already seen game companies transitioning more and more to consoles (and the games suffering as a result). They're doing this because of the extra protection from piracy.
Perhaps they also like the fact that the system is stable in a way PCs simply aren't? Or that because consoles are so cheap that there is a larger target market? Yes, the increased difficulty in making illegal copies is something the companies like, but it's far from the only reason.
As more and more people pirate the fuck out of everything, the system will eventually completely crumble, and nobody will be able to make a living off of any software.
Inaccurate. If you were to completely destroy the off-the-shelf software market with piracy, most programmers would never notice. Most software never ends up in the shrinkwrapped box. Most software is either written in-house for large businesses or on a per-contract basis. This is the software running banks, brokerages, inventory systems and the like. Add in off-the-shelf software only ever sold to other businesses; they won't take the risk because it's too easy to get caught. This includes medical systems software and the like.
Yes, if piracy becomes too rampant, it will harm the software industry. But the industry won't disappear. Much of the industry won't notice. The remainder will deal. As you say, you want and demand Cubase and those cool plugins. The market will cope. Perhaps the new system will be something like
the Street Performer Protocol. Maybe something else. Ultimately, you want the product and will pay for it. The software developers can create the product and want your money. The end of off-the-shelf software will free up your money and the developers time. The market will figure something out. It might not be ideal, but something will happen. Even when governments try to stamp capitalism out, it manages to sneak back in in the form of black markets and secret trades. Speakeasies were capitalism working around Prohibition. The black markets in the USSR were capitalism working around any entire economic system. Like it or not, the various trades in illegal goods and services all represent capitalism refusing to bow down; the cost of evading the law is simply worked into the price of business.
Capitalism is a robust system; it will cope. It's a bit earlier to proclaim it's death.
Its their content. Its their business how they license that content to you.
Indeed, so long as the license is explicit and you explicitly agree. When I got my digital cable box with the ability to purchase pay-per-view, I got no notification about limited rights to record PPV shows. I've never signed any sort of agreement with my cable company. (To be fair, I did sign a few work orders, but those only confirm that the service was installed, appeared to work, and that I'd pay the installation fee.)
If content companies want to enforce restrictions beyond traditional copyright law on someone, they had better get people to agree in advance, with legally binding agreements. Absent such an agreement, they don't have any particular right to restrict my actions.
This is also the mayor that destroyed Meigs Field under cover of night and with police protection to keep people away while he did it.
My Chicago based friends have a different point of view. They suggested that Meigs Field was primarily a small, private airport. Primarily used by the rich, most people would have been happy to be rid of it. Daley had been trying to remove it for years, and this was a popular opinion, but had been thwarted the owners. So while the destruction was underhanded, many people viewed it as a clever way to beat the system and do what was right.
I have no idea if it actually was right (I still have no idea where the field is), but I do know that the issue isn't entirely one sided.
I run a small company that has prospered only due to strong IP laws. I employ people only because of strong IP laws.
Indeed? I trust that the recent 20 year extension of copyright well beyond your expected lifespan did wonders for your business. I'm sure that when you learned that the DMCA passed that you revised your financial estimates upwards.
We do need trademark, copyright, trade secret, and patent laws. But more isn't necessarily better. There comes a point when further expansion of those laws have only minimal benefit and significant loss. We're past that point. We could significantly reduce the power of those laws without a real impact on existing businesses, while creating new business opportunities. Things like the DMCA and the proposed Induce Act actually threaten legit businesses. The DMCA has been used to challenge a company that made replacement garage door openers. They won, but it cost time and money to defend. The Induce Act will open seemingly safe business ventures up to attacks; something as simple as the iPod is arguably prohibited.
...one has to wonder whether airing such a controvercial movie on the eve of an election helps or hurts the political process by influencing the vote with last-minute emotions rather than thoroughly contemplation."
Yes, because as long as F9/11 doesn't air, there won't be anyone using emotional tricks to try and influence the vote.
By the most cynical of viewpoints, it's just a really long anti-Bush ad. There will be plenty of anti-The-Other-Guy ads either way. You'll will only see this particular one if you seek it out, and since it's much longer it can try to put togeher more compelling arguments (I have no idea if it succeeds). I'd certainly rather face a bunch of overtly biased 1.5 hour documentaries that have to at least pretend to have lots of useful facts than dozens of content-free 30-second ads.
I should be able to take ~my tax dollars~ and spend them in any way I like.
I agree. And I don't want my tax dollars raising your kids. You didn't have to have/adopt the kids. So let's be truly fair and eliminate public schools. If you want to have kids, I think it's reasonable for you to pay for their education.
Or perhaps sometimes we need to yield to the greater good instead of worrying about what's mine, mine, mine. I somehow manage to avoid calling up the air force and damanding that they let me fly a jet around since it's my tax dollars paying for it.
Vouchers don't take money away from the local schools... it puts the money in the hands of the parents.
Vouchers do take money away from public schools. The real question is, does it voucher take more or less money away from the school than expenses. Many pro-voucher folks point out things like "The average cost per student is $9,000, vouchers cost $3,000, so the school ends up with more money per student." Lies. The average cost per student is irrelevant. The typical cost is important. If you're in a school district where the average cost is $9,000, your kids would probably only cost the district about $2,000. The average is artificially high because the district is required to take on the problem students, the students with learning disabilities, the students with unsupportive families. They cost lots of money, and they're not going to use the vouchers. For a measely $3,000 a private school can't afford to take on a special needs student. So the typical kids leave (removing $2,000 in expenses and $3,000 in income) while the expensive kids stay. End result: the school ends up with an even tighter budget.
To be fair, voucher programs need to base their value on typical student costs. If that was done I think you'll find the programs don't offer nearly as much.
If a student takes a $3000 voucher and goes to a private school,
that is usually a net profit for the public school. In my state, the average
per-student spending is $9,454 per year.
The problem with this is we're not talking about average (mean)
students. We're talking about typical (mode) students. A typical student
costs a fraction of that. Locally the average cost per student is about $6,000, but the
typical student cost is $2,000. The reason for the difference? A small number of students
who are very expensive to teach. Kids with learning disabilities, mental
problems, whatever. The state is committed to teaching them. These student
can't take the voucher and go to a private school, the private schools
available for $3,000 won't be able to handle a problem student. Thus, the
typical kids ends up going to private schools. The school loses $3,000 in
income, but only $2,000 in expenses. End result: the school loses $1,000 for
each student that leaves.
I'm open to the idea of vouchers, but you need to price them based on the
cost of a typical student, not the average.
Private school teachers can send home piles of homework and simply expect it to get done, and private school teachers can depend on the child's parents for most of the discipline.
Which is to say, the key difference wasn't related to the teachers, or even the school, but to the parents. What the school did was effectively group parents with similar beliefs and goals for their children. Interesting.
That article was talking about vouchers and the 3000 (only half of what it costs the public district which means the district KEEPS HALF!)
It's a little more complicated. As my teacher friend explained, a local voucher proposal would have offered vouchers of about $3,000. Since the district spend, on average, about $6,000 per year per student, and kept half of that in theory everyone wins: The school district has $6,000 less expenses, but only loses $3,000 of funding.
The problem is that the school district spends on average $6,000. Most students actually cost much less. If I recall correctly, it was around $2,000. The reason that the average is so large is a small number of very expensive students with learning disabilities, mental disorders, and the like. I was surprised to learn that in some exceptional cases there was basically someone assigned to assist a single student. When you have a portion of your students running $10,000+ per year the average creeps up. Those students won't be accepted by private schools (they simply can't handle them). So the cheap students are funneled out with more money than they cost. Actual result: The school district loses $3,000 of funding, but only cuts expenses by $2,000.
This is also why many private schools often look cheap compared to public schools: the private schools are typically unwilling and unable to accept problematic students. The public schools are required to take them.
I like the idea of vouchers, but voucher values should be based on how much the district spends on a typical student, which will result is much smaller vouchers. Those are the students that will actually leave. To take my local example, suddenly the 50% voucher is just $1,000, which won't get you into many private schools.
The old-line airlines are failing, while new line airlines like JetBlue and Southwest are stepping forward with simpler flight schedules and pricing models. They appear to be the wave of the future there.
Please! We need to stop propping up the old, out of control airlines. Let them go bankrupt. Smaller, more nimble airlines will snatch up the planes and run a sustainable system.
You don't remember that little 9-11 thing? Highjackings?
Yes, yes I do. I remember hijackings committed by people who presented ID. Most of those IDs were legit (some fraudulently acquired, but otherwise legit). Most of those IDs identified the hijackers by their correct names.
Sorry, you can't just sprinkle 9-11 on something to magically make it true. You still need to back up your claim with actual facts and arguments. "9-11 changed everything" and "Don't you remember 9-11" are as tired and meaningless as "Won't someone think about the chiiiiiiildren!"
Here, for example, is you you might argue for identification.
The US is now much better at cross referencing passenger records with databases of wanted and suspicious people. By requiring ID we can check with those databases and stop potentially wanted people from flying. Of course, the wanted people might use fake-IDs, but needing to get a good fake-ID will make things harder for criminals. Once the database checks are integrated with state databases with verify that the ID is legit (key feature: query state database for the photo, confirm that the photo matches the ID card), getting a fake ID will be very hard and likely to thwart many criminals.
As the above is basically my point of view, I might as well finish it off with the rest of be view on the subject: ID checking is something for security reasons. Airlines should only be allowed to retain someone's information as necessary for security reasons, must purge the information afterwards, and may not use the information for other purposes. If the airline wants to track people itself, it should encourage people to sign up for airline miles and other bonus programs. This will minimize the harm of ID checking.
(While we're at it, the reason airlines love the ID requirement is that it makes it nearly impossible to resell non-transferable airline tickets. This is bullshit. If the airline doesn't fill a flight, it can cancel the flight, causing me problems. If I don't want to take a flight, well, sucks to be me. The US airline system is a crock of shit. I look forward to several of the big carriers going bankrupt, they clearly aren't able to do their damn jobs. Hopefully the companies that buy out the bankrupt ones will do a better job, both for customer service and security.)
And so on and so forth with insane stereotyping throughout the whole thing.
It's a generalization. And label applied to people based on beliefs or behavior can only ever be, at best, a generalization.
The titles of the section
"A Portrait of J. Random Hacker" should make that clear. It's about as accurate as describing conservatives as Christian, pro-business, anti-abortion, anti-gay or describing liberals as atheist, anti-businesses, pro-abortion, pro-gay. It's a reasonable summary, but not a perfect one.
The problem is with the mere idea of patenting software. Software is protected by trade secrets and copyrights.
Indeed. As a general rule, things are protected by patent or copyright. Software is one of the rare exceptions. Being an exception, it deserves extra scrutiny. If both apply, perhaps they should both be more limited than usual to compensate.
In other words, Ted's pissed that the nasty evil conservative Fox News Channel is more popular and less vilified than CNN, so now it's time to change the rules.
Ad hominem attacks: when actual debate and logic are too hard.
In the future, consider actual rebutting his arguments.
(And anyone suggesting that CNN is more vilified that Fox must live in a strange land. Fox is popular, but widely vilified. CNN is just kinda ignored.)
I'm sure Big Media was perfectly fine to Ted back in the AOL-Time-Warner heyday, but now, his empire's receded, it's time to lop the winners off at the knees. Why should he care now -- after all, he's made his Big Media money.
Is reading the article that fscking hard? Turner built his network from a single struggling television station. He was small media. He's afraid that current big media prevents other people from building up just the way he did. He's standing up for the American dream!
I would suspect that camera developers chose JPG because it was a specification from the Joint Photographers Group (hence it's name).
Close. The actual acronym is JPEG, for Joint Photographic Experts Group. The JPEG even has a web page. That JPEG was shortened to JPG has more to do with the "all extensions must be three letters long" mentality of DOS and Windows.
If you are going to sell something to photographers, you want to tie it to a standard that photographers are expected to approve of.
Interesting, but I bet most digital photographers don't really know much about the JPEG or why they matter. JPEG was effectively a standard for lossy true-color images long before digital cameras were common. When digital cameras became common, it was only natural to pick the most widely accepted lossy true-color format.
(For most users, it's not practical to store a lossless image. However, as storage gets cheaper and cheaper, it's becoming more common. However, high end cameras generally have their own custom "raw" format designed to preserve as much data as the camera can generate.)
Pedophiles do not get rehabilitated, and surfing for child porn is something they can do in the safety of their own home (or so they think).
If they really can't be rehabilitated, I suppose I'd rather have them surfing the web for child porn than actually wandering the streets looking for children.
The problem with using distributed computing for everything is that the number of people willing to let others use processing power on their computer is not infinite.
Off-topic. Teragrid is a dedicated distributed computing system. Various research centers are purchasing dedicated clusters to participate. For example, instead of three universities each purchasing a large cluster which will sometimes be idle; each will purchase a slightly smaller cluster and use each other's resources when available. In the particular case of high-energy physics, multiple sites were already collaborating to distribute the monstrous amounts of processing needed. Teragrid attempts to simplify this so that instead of human beings meeting and hand-distributing work, one person can simply run the "process-todays-events.sh" script and know that computers around the world are working on it.
The holy grail in grid computing is to be able to purchase compute time much like you purchase electricity. You don't build a power-plant next door just because you need power for your manufacturing company. Why should you purchase, maintain, and upgrade a cluster for your, say, DNA sequencing? Why not just purchase computing power from a dedicated company? Need several thousand hours of compute time in a rush (say, because you're up against a deadline)? Rent it! (That's an over simplification, there are obviously reasons you do many things in house. Don't take it as a complete argument, take it as the elevator summary.)
P2P "piracy" isn't theft, and you're right. It's worse than that--it's an usurption of another American's constitutionally guaranteed right.
Only on bizzaro-world.
I challenge you to find anything in the constitution granting you copyright. Go ahead. I'll wait. Or, we can jump right to the
relevant part:
The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
See the part where you have a right to copyrights? No? Neither do I. It's not there. The only right in question is the right of Congress to pass various intellectual property laws (notably, copyright and patents). That same section gives Congress the right to collect taxes; is paying taxes now your constitutional right? Nope. At the moment there is a copyright law. But it's not part of the constitution. The constitution simply allowed the law to exist, nothing more. Congress is free to create or abolish copyright law as it wishes.
To suggest that copyright infringement is worse than theft is crazy. I'd much rather have someone make an illegal copy of something I've created than deprive me of one of my copies. An illegal copy deprives me of potential gains, and that is a problem, but it's better than theft, where I lose something I already had.
It's completely different. Programming is NOT art.
But it is protected by copyright law. Copyright doesn't give a crap about art. If you want to hold programming as something completely different, than copyright law shouldn't apply.. Which, I'll admit, is an intriguing and simultaneously scary (as a professional programmer) idea...
...offers the idea that because something can be cheaply copied, it has somehow become worthless.
Were you reading the same article the rest of us are, or are you just looking for an opportunity to whine?
Doctorow's point is that DRM doesn't work, can't work, and that consumers don't want it. Given that, maybe Microsoft should consider serving it's customers and not bothering with the DRM. I see a distinct lack of "copyright protected works are worthless" claims in the article.
Cory makes some technical mistakes in his article, but I think the core arguments are quite compelling. Attacking a straw man instead of his actual words is a cheap trick.
Re:One example of why the tests are BS
on
Java Faster Than C++?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You would do it if you need a scrap object only sometimes (and didn't want to pay the overhead penalty of instantiating it every time the proc got called).
If it's C++, you can scope the variable to the block you need it in. The object should not be instantiated until (and if) the block is entered. C++ scoping fills me with more happiness than is probably healthy. The idiom "/* Read the file */; { FileLockObject thelock(filename); ReadFile(filename); }" is just so wonderfully clean. No matter how you exit the block (return, continue, break, throw), the lock is released immediately.
Of course, your point is still valid. In more complicated functions you might have an object that is optionally created and must visible throughout a larger block or function. In that case, yes, you'd do exactly what you suggest. I've certainly done it myself.
Yes, they could. It's better than forever, and as the creator of a lot of copyrighted material that is occasionally used without my permission, I can attest that it's useful. So far, no one has been willing to contest my takedown notices.
Irrelevant. In fact, I agree, the vast majority of takedown notices are probably quite legit. My prior point about how you treat the edge cases stands; the measure of freedom isn't the common case, it's the unusual case. The 10 day window is completely irrelevant in your case, since as you say, no one has contested any of your takedowns. So having sites immediately restored on counter-claim wouldn't hurt you in the slightest.
The penalty for filing false takedown notices... for starters, ISPs will ignore your requests if you are a luser with a penchant for crying wolf...
1. Only after successfully taking down pages for a while, and 2. it's not like new identities are hard to make on the internet. True, it would be difficult to keep something off of the internet permentantly. But taking something off the internet for ten days would be relatively easy. In some cases ten days is plenty of time to effectively destroy the value of someone's free speech rights. Easiest example I can pull up? Wal-Mart (and others) silencing Fat Wallet from discussing discounts. The ten day window was plenty to destroy discussion prior to the actual sales day. After the sale day had passed Wal-Mart just said, "Oops, I guess we were wrong" and walked away.
I'm not fond of the takedown policy, but if we must have it, then there are a few minor changes that would dramatically improve it. First, upon receiving a takedown request an ISP should be required to promptly take reasonable measures to contact the person who is paying for the site (odd how the ISP has a responsibility to a third party, but none to me, the person paying them). Second, the ISP should be required to repost the content after I file a counter-claim, and must do so as promptly as the original takedown. The ten day window is too easily abused and serves no public good.
There is a formal procedure that ISPs follow, and considerable protection for both the copyright owner and the page owner.
Really? For the page owner, huh? The party claiming copyright sends notice and the page is taken down promptly. But when I send counter-notice that the other party is wrong, the promise:
Promptly send a copy of any substantially conforming counter-notice to the complainer indicating that we will restore access in 10 business days; and
Restore access to the allegedly infringing work within 10 to 14 business days after the day we receive the counter-notice, unless we first receive a notice from the complainer that he or she has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the page owner.
So in essence the even if the other side is wrong, my page is down for 10 days, minimum. Wow, what great protection; someone else with a plausible enough lie can take down arbitrary pages on my site for 10 days. In practice there is no penalty for filing a false
DCMA takedown request ("Oops, our mistake, you're right"), but there is a penalty for failing to take down an innocent page.
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If you buy music online, you're stuck with the format you get at the bitrate you get and you need to burn a backup copy. I prefer the flexibility. Assuming you want most of an album, the additional cost is minor.
The real question is how many people value these features as much as I do, and how many value the benefits of online distribution. Both options have their benefits and disadvantages.
That's the key. "I warned you that your system turned to crap because you were using IE. I suggested you use Firefox. You declined. Now your system has turned to crap again. I can't justify coming over every six months to rescue you from IE. I understand that LocalBusinessName has technicians available at reasonable rates. Call me when you're willing to switch."
Either way you spend less time repairing computers for free; you win either way.
Bullshit. Active attempts to cause harm (likely financial in this case) are completely unethical and probably illegal. No, you're not owed anything (and you're certainly entitled to be able to use the software), but lashing out is dangerous. A legit customer might use a cracked code because they lost theirs (possibly illegal, but is it really worth trashing their data?). A potential customer might have been "sold" an illegal copy without realizing it (in which case you should disable the copy, explain the situation, and make it easy to buy a legit copy).
It's illegal to set traps in my house, even if they're intended for burglars. It's just as illegal to set traps in your products.
Perhaps they also like the fact that the system is stable in a way PCs simply aren't? Or that because consoles are so cheap that there is a larger target market? Yes, the increased difficulty in making illegal copies is something the companies like, but it's far from the only reason.
Inaccurate. If you were to completely destroy the off-the-shelf software market with piracy, most programmers would never notice. Most software never ends up in the shrinkwrapped box. Most software is either written in-house for large businesses or on a per-contract basis. This is the software running banks, brokerages, inventory systems and the like. Add in off-the-shelf software only ever sold to other businesses; they won't take the risk because it's too easy to get caught. This includes medical systems software and the like.
Yes, if piracy becomes too rampant, it will harm the software industry. But the industry won't disappear. Much of the industry won't notice. The remainder will deal. As you say, you want and demand Cubase and those cool plugins. The market will cope. Perhaps the new system will be something like the Street Performer Protocol. Maybe something else. Ultimately, you want the product and will pay for it. The software developers can create the product and want your money. The end of off-the-shelf software will free up your money and the developers time. The market will figure something out. It might not be ideal, but something will happen. Even when governments try to stamp capitalism out, it manages to sneak back in in the form of black markets and secret trades. Speakeasies were capitalism working around Prohibition. The black markets in the USSR were capitalism working around any entire economic system. Like it or not, the various trades in illegal goods and services all represent capitalism refusing to bow down; the cost of evading the law is simply worked into the price of business.
Capitalism is a robust system; it will cope. It's a bit earlier to proclaim it's death.
Indeed, so long as the license is explicit and you explicitly agree. When I got my digital cable box with the ability to purchase pay-per-view, I got no notification about limited rights to record PPV shows. I've never signed any sort of agreement with my cable company. (To be fair, I did sign a few work orders, but those only confirm that the service was installed, appeared to work, and that I'd pay the installation fee.)
If content companies want to enforce restrictions beyond traditional copyright law on someone, they had better get people to agree in advance, with legally binding agreements. Absent such an agreement, they don't have any particular right to restrict my actions.
My Chicago based friends have a different point of view. They suggested that Meigs Field was primarily a small, private airport. Primarily used by the rich, most people would have been happy to be rid of it. Daley had been trying to remove it for years, and this was a popular opinion, but had been thwarted the owners. So while the destruction was underhanded, many people viewed it as a clever way to beat the system and do what was right.
I have no idea if it actually was right (I still have no idea where the field is), but I do know that the issue isn't entirely one sided.
Indeed? I trust that the recent 20 year extension of copyright well beyond your expected lifespan did wonders for your business. I'm sure that when you learned that the DMCA passed that you revised your financial estimates upwards.
We do need trademark, copyright, trade secret, and patent laws. But more isn't necessarily better. There comes a point when further expansion of those laws have only minimal benefit and significant loss. We're past that point. We could significantly reduce the power of those laws without a real impact on existing businesses, while creating new business opportunities. Things like the DMCA and the proposed Induce Act actually threaten legit businesses. The DMCA has been used to challenge a company that made replacement garage door openers. They won, but it cost time and money to defend. The Induce Act will open seemingly safe business ventures up to attacks; something as simple as the iPod is arguably prohibited.
Yes, because as long as F9/11 doesn't air, there won't be anyone using emotional tricks to try and influence the vote.
By the most cynical of viewpoints, it's just a really long anti-Bush ad. There will be plenty of anti-The-Other-Guy ads either way. You'll will only see this particular one if you seek it out, and since it's much longer it can try to put togeher more compelling arguments (I have no idea if it succeeds). I'd certainly rather face a bunch of overtly biased 1.5 hour documentaries that have to at least pretend to have lots of useful facts than dozens of content-free 30-second ads.
I agree. And I don't want my tax dollars raising your kids. You didn't have to have/adopt the kids. So let's be truly fair and eliminate public schools. If you want to have kids, I think it's reasonable for you to pay for their education.
Or perhaps sometimes we need to yield to the greater good instead of worrying about what's mine, mine, mine. I somehow manage to avoid calling up the air force and damanding that they let me fly a jet around since it's my tax dollars paying for it.
Vouchers do take money away from public schools. The real question is, does it voucher take more or less money away from the school than expenses. Many pro-voucher folks point out things like "The average cost per student is $9,000, vouchers cost $3,000, so the school ends up with more money per student." Lies. The average cost per student is irrelevant. The typical cost is important. If you're in a school district where the average cost is $9,000, your kids would probably only cost the district about $2,000. The average is artificially high because the district is required to take on the problem students, the students with learning disabilities, the students with unsupportive families. They cost lots of money, and they're not going to use the vouchers. For a measely $3,000 a private school can't afford to take on a special needs student. So the typical kids leave (removing $2,000 in expenses and $3,000 in income) while the expensive kids stay. End result: the school ends up with an even tighter budget.
To be fair, voucher programs need to base their value on typical student costs. If that was done I think you'll find the programs don't offer nearly as much.
The problem with this is we're not talking about average (mean) students. We're talking about typical (mode) students. A typical student costs a fraction of that. Locally the average cost per student is about $6,000, but the typical student cost is $2,000. The reason for the difference? A small number of students who are very expensive to teach. Kids with learning disabilities, mental problems, whatever. The state is committed to teaching them. These student can't take the voucher and go to a private school, the private schools available for $3,000 won't be able to handle a problem student. Thus, the typical kids ends up going to private schools. The school loses $3,000 in income, but only $2,000 in expenses. End result: the school loses $1,000 for each student that leaves.
I'm open to the idea of vouchers, but you need to price them based on the cost of a typical student, not the average.
Which is to say, the key difference wasn't related to the teachers, or even the school, but to the parents. What the school did was effectively group parents with similar beliefs and goals for their children. Interesting.
It's a little more complicated. As my teacher friend explained, a local voucher proposal would have offered vouchers of about $3,000. Since the district spend, on average, about $6,000 per year per student, and kept half of that in theory everyone wins: The school district has $6,000 less expenses, but only loses $3,000 of funding.
The problem is that the school district spends on average $6,000. Most students actually cost much less. If I recall correctly, it was around $2,000. The reason that the average is so large is a small number of very expensive students with learning disabilities, mental disorders, and the like. I was surprised to learn that in some exceptional cases there was basically someone assigned to assist a single student. When you have a portion of your students running $10,000+ per year the average creeps up. Those students won't be accepted by private schools (they simply can't handle them). So the cheap students are funneled out with more money than they cost. Actual result: The school district loses $3,000 of funding, but only cuts expenses by $2,000.
This is also why many private schools often look cheap compared to public schools: the private schools are typically unwilling and unable to accept problematic students. The public schools are required to take them.
I like the idea of vouchers, but voucher values should be based on how much the district spends on a typical student, which will result is much smaller vouchers. Those are the students that will actually leave. To take my local example, suddenly the 50% voucher is just $1,000, which won't get you into many private schools.
Please! We need to stop propping up the old, out of control airlines. Let them go bankrupt. Smaller, more nimble airlines will snatch up the planes and run a sustainable system.
Yes, yes I do. I remember hijackings committed by people who presented ID. Most of those IDs were legit (some fraudulently acquired, but otherwise legit). Most of those IDs identified the hijackers by their correct names.
Sorry, you can't just sprinkle 9-11 on something to magically make it true. You still need to back up your claim with actual facts and arguments. "9-11 changed everything" and "Don't you remember 9-11" are as tired and meaningless as "Won't someone think about the chiiiiiiildren!"
Here, for example, is you you might argue for identification.
The US is now much better at cross referencing passenger records with databases of wanted and suspicious people. By requiring ID we can check with those databases and stop potentially wanted people from flying. Of course, the wanted people might use fake-IDs, but needing to get a good fake-ID will make things harder for criminals. Once the database checks are integrated with state databases with verify that the ID is legit (key feature: query state database for the photo, confirm that the photo matches the ID card), getting a fake ID will be very hard and likely to thwart many criminals.
As the above is basically my point of view, I might as well finish it off with the rest of be view on the subject: ID checking is something for security reasons. Airlines should only be allowed to retain someone's information as necessary for security reasons, must purge the information afterwards, and may not use the information for other purposes. If the airline wants to track people itself, it should encourage people to sign up for airline miles and other bonus programs. This will minimize the harm of ID checking.
(While we're at it, the reason airlines love the ID requirement is that it makes it nearly impossible to resell non-transferable airline tickets. This is bullshit. If the airline doesn't fill a flight, it can cancel the flight, causing me problems. If I don't want to take a flight, well, sucks to be me. The US airline system is a crock of shit. I look forward to several of the big carriers going bankrupt, they clearly aren't able to do their damn jobs. Hopefully the companies that buy out the bankrupt ones will do a better job, both for customer service and security.)
It's a generalization. And label applied to people based on beliefs or behavior can only ever be, at best, a generalization. The titles of the section "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker" should make that clear. It's about as accurate as describing conservatives as Christian, pro-business, anti-abortion, anti-gay or describing liberals as atheist, anti-businesses, pro-abortion, pro-gay. It's a reasonable summary, but not a perfect one.
Indeed. As a general rule, things are protected by patent or copyright. Software is one of the rare exceptions. Being an exception, it deserves extra scrutiny. If both apply, perhaps they should both be more limited than usual to compensate.
Ad hominem attacks: when actual debate and logic are too hard.
In the future, consider actual rebutting his arguments.
(And anyone suggesting that CNN is more vilified that Fox must live in a strange land. Fox is popular, but widely vilified. CNN is just kinda ignored.)
Is reading the article that fscking hard? Turner built his network from a single struggling television station. He was small media. He's afraid that current big media prevents other people from building up just the way he did. He's standing up for the American dream!
Interesting, but I bet most digital photographers don't really know much about the JPEG or why they matter. JPEG was effectively a standard for lossy true-color images long before digital cameras were common. When digital cameras became common, it was only natural to pick the most widely accepted lossy true-color format.
(For most users, it's not practical to store a lossless image. However, as storage gets cheaper and cheaper, it's becoming more common. However, high end cameras generally have their own custom "raw" format designed to preserve as much data as the camera can generate.)
If they really can't be rehabilitated, I suppose I'd rather have them surfing the web for child porn than actually wandering the streets looking for children.
Off-topic. Teragrid is a dedicated distributed computing system. Various research centers are purchasing dedicated clusters to participate. For example, instead of three universities each purchasing a large cluster which will sometimes be idle; each will purchase a slightly smaller cluster and use each other's resources when available. In the particular case of high-energy physics, multiple sites were already collaborating to distribute the monstrous amounts of processing needed. Teragrid attempts to simplify this so that instead of human beings meeting and hand-distributing work, one person can simply run the "process-todays-events.sh" script and know that computers around the world are working on it.
The holy grail in grid computing is to be able to purchase compute time much like you purchase electricity. You don't build a power-plant next door just because you need power for your manufacturing company. Why should you purchase, maintain, and upgrade a cluster for your, say, DNA sequencing? Why not just purchase computing power from a dedicated company? Need several thousand hours of compute time in a rush (say, because you're up against a deadline)? Rent it! (That's an over simplification, there are obviously reasons you do many things in house. Don't take it as a complete argument, take it as the elevator summary.)
Only on bizzaro-world.
I challenge you to find anything in the constitution granting you copyright. Go ahead. I'll wait. Or, we can jump right to the relevant part:
See the part where you have a right to copyrights? No? Neither do I. It's not there. The only right in question is the right of Congress to pass various intellectual property laws (notably, copyright and patents). That same section gives Congress the right to collect taxes; is paying taxes now your constitutional right? Nope. At the moment there is a copyright law. But it's not part of the constitution. The constitution simply allowed the law to exist, nothing more. Congress is free to create or abolish copyright law as it wishes.
To suggest that copyright infringement is worse than theft is crazy. I'd much rather have someone make an illegal copy of something I've created than deprive me of one of my copies. An illegal copy deprives me of potential gains, and that is a problem, but it's better than theft, where I lose something I already had.
But it is protected by copyright law. Copyright doesn't give a crap about art. If you want to hold programming as something completely different, than copyright law shouldn't apply.. Which, I'll admit, is an intriguing and simultaneously scary (as a professional programmer) idea...
Were you reading the same article the rest of us are, or are you just looking for an opportunity to whine?
Doctorow's point is that DRM doesn't work, can't work, and that consumers don't want it. Given that, maybe Microsoft should consider serving it's customers and not bothering with the DRM. I see a distinct lack of "copyright protected works are worthless" claims in the article.
Cory makes some technical mistakes in his article, but I think the core arguments are quite compelling. Attacking a straw man instead of his actual words is a cheap trick.
If it's C++, you can scope the variable to the block you need it in. The object should not be instantiated until (and if) the block is entered. C++ scoping fills me with more happiness than is probably healthy. The idiom "/* Read the file */; { FileLockObject thelock(filename); ReadFile(filename); }" is just so wonderfully clean. No matter how you exit the block (return, continue, break, throw), the lock is released immediately.
Of course, your point is still valid. In more complicated functions you might have an object that is optionally created and must visible throughout a larger block or function. In that case, yes, you'd do exactly what you suggest. I've certainly done it myself.
BigObject * tmp = 0;
}if(RareCondition()) {
Irrelevant. In fact, I agree, the vast majority of takedown notices are probably quite legit. My prior point about how you treat the edge cases stands; the measure of freedom isn't the common case, it's the unusual case. The 10 day window is completely irrelevant in your case, since as you say, no one has contested any of your takedowns. So having sites immediately restored on counter-claim wouldn't hurt you in the slightest.
1. Only after successfully taking down pages for a while, and 2. it's not like new identities are hard to make on the internet. True, it would be difficult to keep something off of the internet permentantly. But taking something off the internet for ten days would be relatively easy. In some cases ten days is plenty of time to effectively destroy the value of someone's free speech rights. Easiest example I can pull up? Wal-Mart (and others) silencing Fat Wallet from discussing discounts. The ten day window was plenty to destroy discussion prior to the actual sales day. After the sale day had passed Wal-Mart just said, "Oops, I guess we were wrong" and walked away.
I'm not fond of the takedown policy, but if we must have it, then there are a few minor changes that would dramatically improve it. First, upon receiving a takedown request an ISP should be required to promptly take reasonable measures to contact the person who is paying for the site (odd how the ISP has a responsibility to a third party, but none to me, the person paying them). Second, the ISP should be required to repost the content after I file a counter-claim, and must do so as promptly as the original takedown. The ten day window is too easily abused and serves no public good.
Really? For the page owner, huh? The party claiming copyright sends notice and the page is taken down promptly. But when I send counter-notice that the other party is wrong, the promise: