So far, I can't blame 'em. That's a huge database to just let slip away for free.
To the extent that I can't blame a coyote for killing my pet rabbit that slipped out of the house, I suppose. But to the extent that the contents of their database was almost entirely donated by their customers for free (or in some cases, they were paid to add it), and they now want to have a monopoly on that donated information, it's decidedly douchey and against the spirit of libraries.
The Lego plastic is actually superior, and the quality of the molds must be better, too.
So why is it a mixed blessing? If Lego's products are better, they'll win on quality and be worth the price. Or perhaps the general public doesn't value the difference, in which case the public gets what it wants. This is capitalism working well: competition, with competitors competing on quality and price and consumers having options.
In 15 years we'll have have two or three more console generations. Microsoft will stop supporting logins for the Xbox 360. Why wouldn't they? It makes them no real new income, it costs them money. They're killing "PlaysForSure" (although it has a temporary reprieve).
So, it's 15 years from now and you want to play Gears of Band IV, and the last 10% of the game is only available as DLC. You have you Xbox Live login information, you backed up the DLC, and you still have the game. Your Xbox 360 died, so you bought a new one. And... you're fucked. You can't authenticate to use use the DLC. Part of gaming history has been lit on fire.
Okay, maybe you don't want to play 15 year old games. That's fine. You probably don't want 60 year old movies either. But people interested in making the great games of the future damn well better be able to replay the old games if you want to move forward. DRM (and DLC is essentially DRM) will destroy our past culture in the name of short term greed. It's pathetic.
Do you think that would-be child molesters might eventually catch on that no matter how hard they try, some coincidence interferes? How much freedom do you have if your evil actions never pan out? I'm guessing somewhere in childhood people would stop trying to be evil, since it never pans out.
Science in such a universe might be interesting. You could run experiments where you repeatedly try to steal toys from children and observe the increasingly improbable coincidences that stop you.
You're closing your mind. As a result, you're arguing poorly and being unnecessarily hostile. As a result, many religious people tend to stop listening to athiests, since the most outspoken atheists tend to make sloppy, ignorant arguments, nitpick minor details, and generally act like dicks. If you're sincere about wanting to eliminate religion, maybe you should actually listen to your opponents for a while to learn to better communicate with them. I assure you that mocking them is not going to help your cause.
As to the Bible, when someone says they believe the Bible or believe in the Bible, they (usually) mean they believe that it is the divinely inspired word of God. Exactly what this means varies from one Christian denomination to another, and even from person to person. Sure, some believe it absolutely literally. Others believe parts are "true" in that they are truly divinely inspired metaphorical stories (say, chunks of old testament), while other parts are true in a literal sense (say, the gospels of the New Testament). It was written over the span of hundreds of years by dozens of authors in multiple languages targeting wildly different initial audiences; expecting it to be a a singular thing seems a bit much.
The bit you quote doesn't critique Photoshop pricing at all. Perhaps from the author's perspective Photoshop is perfectly reasonably priced. Maybe deep down the author would happily pay for a copy Photoshop Elements for Linux and would dump the GIMP for it, but Linux PSE simply isn't available. Photoshop is not acceptable because it's not available "for GNU/Linux and UNIX in general." There are Photoshop-like raster editors available for Unix. And (last I checked, admittedly many years ago) they were insanely expensive because they targeted specialized clients like film and television; prices tended to be "Contact us for prices" and on up. (Interestingly, the GIMP has had lots of success here, via the Cinepaint fork.)
And they shouldn't even mention Photoshop? They're not saying they're equivalent to Photoshop, they're drawing examples of other raster editors to try and make it clear what they're talking about. Trying to explain what a raster editor is without mentioning the gorilla in the room would be like describing a word processor without mentioning Microsoft Word. It may not be equivalent, but it will explain things for lots of people who think they need Photoshop when they actually need a raster editor in general, in much the same way that some people think they need "The Internet" when they are actually looking for a web browser.
This is a very relevant point to this discussion as christians already know that the bible was invented and not holy writ.
Erm, huh? Christianity is indeed based on the idea that the Bible is a holy writ, divinely inspired by God. Different sects argue about which version of the Bible is accurate, with the others being human corruptions. Now many Christians do believe that the divine inspiration was filtered through flaw human writers and is filled with allegorical stories, so it's not always literally true. But many other Christians do in fact believe that the Bible is the Literal Truth, and to suggest that parts are imperfect, or are just allegorical is heresy. If the overwhelming majority of Christians accepted that the Bible wasn't holy writ, and was just a human invention, we wouldn't be having arguments about teaching creationism in public schools.
Islam, ironically, has an advantage here. The Bible was written over hundreds of years by a large number of people, few of whom we know anything concrete about. The Koran, however, was probably written by a single person over a single lifetime, a recent historical figure compared to the authors of the Bible. It seems far less likely that we'll see significant variant versions.
Why does this require deep packet inspection? From the description, the ISP is just replacing failed DNS responses with their own IP address. While scummy, my local cable internet provider did it two years ago, and my local DSL provider did it a few months ago. High speed internet is not available where I live without this "feature." (You can work around it by not using their DNS servers. Which is annoying as hell; I shouldn't have to use a third party's DNS server, or run my own, just to get proper service. I should be able to use my upstream provider; it's better for everyone involved.)
Copying software into RAM to use it isn't infringement at all, courtesy of section 117. Unfortunately an earlier decision ("Wall Data") ruled that since 117 refers to "owners", if you "licensed" the software you don't own it. Presumably section 117 was intended to protect the rights of magical fairies and invisible unicorns, since the license loophole pretty much captures all off-the-shelf software.
There is an exception for personal copies required to use software in section 117 of the copyright act. However, there is a mind bogglingly stupid earlier decision ("Wall Data") that ruled that 117 is technically limited to "owners" of software, and since all software is licensed, you own nothing and 117 never applies. Apparently Congress likes protecting the rights of invisible unicorns. This judge simply referred back to the Wall Data ruling.
"The derived project is wholly owned by whoever wrote it, even if it uses other people's code. This is similar to the property laws of the real world."
Except we're not talking about property laws in any way, shape, or form. We're talking about copyright law. Copyright law gets lumped in with other laws under the label of intellectual property, but still has nothing to do with physical property law. Analogies between the property law and copyright helps sustain the massive level of confusion and sloppy thinking about copyright law.
Under copyright law if you take my copyright protected work and incorporate it into your work, it is a derivative work. As a derivative work, I share the copyright on your work.*
Now, this is built on the assumption that I should get control over derivative works, but that's the law as it stands. That's also the assumption that many GPL fans have. It's the foundation of the GPL. As it's the same assumption that international laws and entire content industries are are built on, it seems a reasonable baseline to build from. You can disagree with it and believe it should be changed, but you should recognize it as the current situation.
Yes. Can you imagine the madness if millions of people were to abuse the web to make it their primary way or reading email, posting content online, listening to radio shows, watching television shows, or playing amusing little games? It would be the end times! Sheep would lie down with lions! Web browsers would lie down with email clients! No, I like my web nice and static, just like paper documents! We should not only do away with this newfangled Flash, we need to be rid of that JavaScript! And don't forget web forms; be rid of the demonic things! Right after I post this, I'm going to patch my version of Firefox to suppress display of input and submit tags!
Yes, Flash and Silverlight are problematic. But the web is a highly effective application deployment platform and has been for years. Hell, you're posting on a discussion group application; a regrettably crude replacement for Usenet and dedicated newsgroup readers. While you're yelling at the kids to get off your lawn, the rest of the world is communicating, getting work done, and having fun on the web.
Whatever system you use, it should be easy and unambiguous to pronounce. Want to name it after a service? samba, www, login, and the like are fine. But when you start coding things into the name, it all starts turning to mush in the brains of people who only erratically connect to the machine, or people who are communicating over the phone. Talking with someone about a pair of machines whose names are unpronounceable and vary by only one or two characters is confusing as hell. Having worked with a group that gave machines helpful names like fnabl3 and fnag13, I know this pain. Maybe the abbreviations made perfect sense and were unambiguous to them since they used them all the time, but as someone asked to briefly help with a problem it was frustrating and error prone. Sure, cheddar and swiss don't tell you anything about the service in question, but they are hard to mess up.
It's probably true that Profiles are only used by a vanishingly small portion of their customers. But who are those customers? I'm guessing that among customers with the more expensive accounts, the customers who gave up cable/satellite service for NetFlix, and most importantly the customers who tell their friends they should all get NetFlix that the usage rate is much higher. These are the users who actually fill the 500 title limit per queue, the users with multiple people with different queues. To an extent Profiles are an investment in your most dedicated customers, your cheerleaders, your free advertising. If you drive these people away, you're down to a straightup advertising war. Is supporting Profiles really more expensive than a direct advertising war with Blockbuster? Maybe, but I suspect it's not a clearcut decision.
For example, I have several friends who use NetFlix, but one is far and away the loudest supporter of NetFlix. He is a dedicated user of Profiles. He's been telling me for years how great it it, how it was a better value than cable or satellite service, how Profiles meant he and his spouse could have their own queues. After the Profiles cancellation announcement, he suddenly announced that this killed the value for him and he was going to switch to Blockbuster's service, which at least offered the local service option. Not a good sign. Our household does use NetFlix, in part because of my friend's recommendations. And if my friend tried Blockbuster's offering and liked it, we'd take a good long look at it.
That's why singling out one (Nike, Monsanto, Microsoft) and getting angry at it for making short-sighted moves in the name of profit is like getting angry at an alligator for eating meat. What did you expect? That's what it does.
Indeed. And like any stupid, wild animal, if it harms someone just minding their own business, it should be judged a public danger and killed. If it impacts someone's livelyhood, it should be judged a public nuisance and killed. We don't do that nearly often enough.
Come to think of it, I'd vote for a 10 day corporate hunting season. To protect the herd as a whole, maybe have a "no killing any corporation with a market value of less than a billion US dollars" rule.
OOP is more about how you think about and organize the problem than a specific language. Some languages make it easier to express the idea of an object than others, but you can do it any general purpose language. It's not fake or pretend, just less elegant. FILE* and the associated functions in the standard C library form a perfectly reasonable object oriented interface. That it's fprintf(p,...) instead of p.printf(...) is just syntax.
Java does thread-handling quite decently, it is just too difficult to grasp for most programmers.
That's like saying C and C++ do memory-handling quite decently, it is just too difficult to grasp for most programmers. It's arguably true, but it's not much of a defense of the language. A language really suited to multi-processor work is going to as much a step forward from Java in that area as Java was from C++ in memory management.
Random searches provide excellent security, provided the punishment for getting caught exceeds the benefits multiplied by the risk. Let's say I'm asked to smuggle weapons onto a plane. Not for a hijackings or anything, just as a black market delivery. I'm offered $10,000 to do it. I've got a great plan; assuming the security screeners don't hand search my bags, there is basically zero risk of getting caught. So now it's down to the random searches. If the punishment is 1 year in prison, and they only screen 1 in 10 people, the odds are pretty good; assuming that I value my freedom at less than $100,000 per year. Now if the punishment is 20 years in prison, now my freedom is worth less than $5,000 per year.
Let's hypothetically try to redo 9-11. (Yes, only a stupid terrorist would try that exact same attack again, but it's a good example with concrete numbers.) We're all expecting to die, so the threat of jail is irrelevant. However, if a single one of us gets caught with weapons, there is a good chance security will be stepped up and my 19 accomplices will be caught as well. That's very bad, from my terrorist point of view. Since 20 of us need to get past security, even if they only randomly screen 1 in 20 people, there is a 64% chance of at least one person getting searched and busted. 1 in 10? 87% chance of getting busted. Very bad odds.
Now obviously it's better to only search people who are bad guys. Unfortunately the entire point of searching people is to identify the bad guys, so that's unhelpful. We can try to be clever and profile people based on, say, their ethnicity. After all, statistically aren't Arab men more likely to hijack planes and crash them? Oddly, this makes the attack easier for the bad guys. Just start flying people around without weapons. See who gets searched. The people who run several flights without getting searched are ideal for your next attack. (A good article with further links on the complexities with profiling. As he points out, profiling based on suspicious behavior is good, although hard.)
Of course, I'm glossing over lots of details. We need to balance many other things, including civil rights. Random searches of homes would likely be a very effective way to stop many crimes. It's also a violation of the US constitution and the principles our country was founded on. Many relatively minor crimes would necessitate punishments that many people would describe as cruel and unusual to compensate for the low risk of getting caught. The benefit of stopping the bad thing may be very minor compared to the cost of the searches. (For example, random drug tests for most jobs hurts moral and costs money, with little benefit.) But fundamentally random searches do work.
And since they're a group of them, desperate enough to mangle or kill you, they certainly all have weapons. And given the situation, the weapons in question are certainly assault rifles. And they're not stupid, just desperate, so they'll rely on strength in numbers, attacking by the hundreds. At this point, having arranged a group of hundreds of heavily armed men, they pretty much have to murder you. This is why I feel much safer keeping a loaded M1 Abrams in my bedroom.
That's a great summary of the situation. I'd like to spread the word, but I'd like to be extremely certain about the numbers before I do so. The $200k is easy (and in fact looks a little low). 6% was easy as well, but it sounds like it's closer to 5% today. The 7 years average stay in a home is harder to find details for. Where did you find it?
Right now the only realistic way to get a new apartment in NYC is to pay a fee equivalent to 15% of the annual rent to a broker for the privilege of renting from the landlord who has given them the exclusive right to make the public aware of the apartment's availability.
I'm befuddled that such a system would exist.
Can you explain why this system is in the landlord's interest? It sounds like a tenant is handing a middleman $3,600 in exchange for... what, exactly? At best, I'm guessing the broker pay the landlord something up front, maybe 90% of that ($3,240). Instead of this complexity, the landlord could just charge a $3,500 signing fee. The landlord makes $260 more, you pay $100 less, and we cut deadweight out of the middle.
Perhaps New York forbids signing fees? In which case the broker is providing value to the landlord: he lets him charge a signing fee where previously he couldn't. In which case isn't not the broker's fault; he's just stepping in to work around an ill-considered law.
My figuring isn't working out, so can you explain what's going on?
The argument usually goes something like, "IP theft isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement". I always like to counter this with something like, "would you rather I steal $50,000 from you or embezzle it?". It is readily apparent that the effect is the same.
It's like you're reading the words, but not understanding them. Your comparison is utterly wrong. Copyright infringement is not theft or stealing. It's copyright infringement. Let's say you've written a novel. You leave your car unlocked, and there is a copy of your novel inside. Aha, I say, free book! So I grab it. I have stolen your book. When you return to your car, it's gone. You really wanted to give it to a reviewer, and now you can't. We can very clearly determine the value of your lose. You're going to have to pop over to a bookstore and buy a replacement at $6 (it's out in paperback). If I get caught, I'm going to be charged with having stolen $6 worth of property.
Now let's say that a friend of mine has bought your book. She likes and, decides to make an illegal copy for me. Maybe she photocopies it, or scans it, whatever. Either way, she gives me a copy. Now, have you been deprived of any copies of your book? Well, no, not in the slightest. You have nothing to replace. What's the value of your loss? How much should I (or her?) be charged? $6? $5.40, because there is only a 90% chance I would have bought the book? $3, because that's the wholesale price? $1, because that's what you actually get per copy? What has been "stolen" isn't a thing in any sense of the word, it's a government granted monopoly that has been infringed.
How does this compare to stealing and embezzling? Well, if you steal a suitcase with $50,000 from me, I'm out $50,000. To the extent I can replace it, I'd replace it by getting $50,000. If you embezzle $50,000 from me, I'm still out $50,000, and I'd replace it by getting $50,000. They are very similar crimes, and indeed embezzlement may be a specific type of theft (I'm regrettably not as well versed in financial crimes, so can't say for sure).
These are different in important ways. Period. You might as well compare breaking a contract to vandalism. Comparing them is at best lazy; a tool used because explaining the facts seems too hard. At worst, people are intentionally trying to confuse the two because they don't believe that they can win a debate on the merits.
To be clear: copyright infringement is wrong. It is a crime and should continue to be one. But it's not theft. We should consider and treat it differently. Instead of helping to confuse the situation, spend your time educating people about why copyright infringement is wrong.
"I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and a huge supporter of property rights, both physical and intellectual."
I do not think that word means what you think it does.
"Intellectual property" (by which I'm assuming you're talking about copyright, patent, and trademark law) is nothing less than a state created and enforced monopoly. I'm curious how you can reconcile being an anarcho-capitalist with being a "huge supporter" of a state created and enforced monopoly.
Are you really an anarcho-capitalist, or are you just looking for something more edgy sounding than "moderate libertarian?"
If you really want to be an anarcho-capitalist, the answer should be obvious: there is no state sanctioned intellectual property law. If you want to protect your ideas, you force people who buy copies to sign a contract in which they promise to not make further copies. Retalion for breaking the contract is built in. Of course, too many contracts would be a mess, so likely standardized contracts would be created, and private companies could handle them in bulk.
BMI is a useful medical tool. Like all tools, it has strengths and weaknesses. Should you blindly use it? Of course not. You shouldn't blindly use any tool. But for the overwhelming number of Americans, BMI is a reasonable guideline. Obsessing about the edges cases; the extremely atheletic people, is foolish. As another poster commented, anyone with a working pair of eyes, or even hands, can identify those unusual cases. BMI is basically free to calculate, and for the vast majority of Americans is a good indicator. As a general purpose tool it's quite useful. Calling it quackery is just a cop out. Americans are, as a whole, overweight. Americans would be healthier if in general, they lost weight.
Slashdot Mirror
To the extent that I can't blame a coyote for killing my pet rabbit that slipped out of the house, I suppose. But to the extent that the contents of their database was almost entirely donated by their customers for free (or in some cases, they were paid to add it), and they now want to have a monopoly on that donated information, it's decidedly douchey and against the spirit of libraries.
So why is it a mixed blessing? If Lego's products are better, they'll win on quality and be worth the price. Or perhaps the general public doesn't value the difference, in which case the public gets what it wants. This is capitalism working well: competition, with competitors competing on quality and price and consumers having options.
In 15 years we'll have have two or three more console generations. Microsoft will stop supporting logins for the Xbox 360. Why wouldn't they? It makes them no real new income, it costs them money. They're killing "PlaysForSure" (although it has a temporary reprieve).
So, it's 15 years from now and you want to play Gears of Band IV, and the last 10% of the game is only available as DLC. You have you Xbox Live login information, you backed up the DLC, and you still have the game. Your Xbox 360 died, so you bought a new one. And... you're fucked. You can't authenticate to use use the DLC. Part of gaming history has been lit on fire.
Okay, maybe you don't want to play 15 year old games. That's fine. You probably don't want 60 year old movies either. But people interested in making the great games of the future damn well better be able to replay the old games if you want to move forward. DRM (and DLC is essentially DRM) will destroy our past culture in the name of short term greed. It's pathetic.
Do you think that would-be child molesters might eventually catch on that no matter how hard they try, some coincidence interferes? How much freedom do you have if your evil actions never pan out? I'm guessing somewhere in childhood people would stop trying to be evil, since it never pans out.
Science in such a universe might be interesting. You could run experiments where you repeatedly try to steal toys from children and observe the increasingly improbable coincidences that stop you.
You're closing your mind. As a result, you're arguing poorly and being unnecessarily hostile. As a result, many religious people tend to stop listening to athiests, since the most outspoken atheists tend to make sloppy, ignorant arguments, nitpick minor details, and generally act like dicks. If you're sincere about wanting to eliminate religion, maybe you should actually listen to your opponents for a while to learn to better communicate with them. I assure you that mocking them is not going to help your cause.
As to the Bible, when someone says they believe the Bible or believe in the Bible, they (usually) mean they believe that it is the divinely inspired word of God. Exactly what this means varies from one Christian denomination to another, and even from person to person. Sure, some believe it absolutely literally. Others believe parts are "true" in that they are truly divinely inspired metaphorical stories (say, chunks of old testament), while other parts are true in a literal sense (say, the gospels of the New Testament). It was written over the span of hundreds of years by dozens of authors in multiple languages targeting wildly different initial audiences; expecting it to be a a singular thing seems a bit much.
The bit you quote doesn't critique Photoshop pricing at all. Perhaps from the author's perspective Photoshop is perfectly reasonably priced. Maybe deep down the author would happily pay for a copy Photoshop Elements for Linux and would dump the GIMP for it, but Linux PSE simply isn't available. Photoshop is not acceptable because it's not available "for GNU/Linux and UNIX in general." There are Photoshop-like raster editors available for Unix. And (last I checked, admittedly many years ago) they were insanely expensive because they targeted specialized clients like film and television; prices tended to be "Contact us for prices" and on up. (Interestingly, the GIMP has had lots of success here, via the Cinepaint fork.)
And they shouldn't even mention Photoshop? They're not saying they're equivalent to Photoshop, they're drawing examples of other raster editors to try and make it clear what they're talking about. Trying to explain what a raster editor is without mentioning the gorilla in the room would be like describing a word processor without mentioning Microsoft Word. It may not be equivalent, but it will explain things for lots of people who think they need Photoshop when they actually need a raster editor in general, in much the same way that some people think they need "The Internet" when they are actually looking for a web browser.
Erm, huh? Christianity is indeed based on the idea that the Bible is a holy writ, divinely inspired by God. Different sects argue about which version of the Bible is accurate, with the others being human corruptions. Now many Christians do believe that the divine inspiration was filtered through flaw human writers and is filled with allegorical stories, so it's not always literally true. But many other Christians do in fact believe that the Bible is the Literal Truth, and to suggest that parts are imperfect, or are just allegorical is heresy. If the overwhelming majority of Christians accepted that the Bible wasn't holy writ, and was just a human invention, we wouldn't be having arguments about teaching creationism in public schools.
Islam, ironically, has an advantage here. The Bible was written over hundreds of years by a large number of people, few of whom we know anything concrete about. The Koran, however, was probably written by a single person over a single lifetime, a recent historical figure compared to the authors of the Bible. It seems far less likely that we'll see significant variant versions.
Why does this require deep packet inspection? From the description, the ISP is just replacing failed DNS responses with their own IP address. While scummy, my local cable internet provider did it two years ago, and my local DSL provider did it a few months ago. High speed internet is not available where I live without this "feature." (You can work around it by not using their DNS servers. Which is annoying as hell; I shouldn't have to use a third party's DNS server, or run my own, just to get proper service. I should be able to use my upstream provider; it's better for everyone involved.)
Copying software into RAM to use it isn't infringement at all, courtesy of section 117. Unfortunately an earlier decision ("Wall Data") ruled that since 117 refers to "owners", if you "licensed" the software you don't own it. Presumably section 117 was intended to protect the rights of magical fairies and invisible unicorns, since the license loophole pretty much captures all off-the-shelf software.
There is an exception for personal copies required to use software in section 117 of the copyright act. However, there is a mind bogglingly stupid earlier decision ("Wall Data") that ruled that 117 is technically limited to "owners" of software, and since all software is licensed, you own nothing and 117 never applies. Apparently Congress likes protecting the rights of invisible unicorns. This judge simply referred back to the Wall Data ruling.
"The derived project is wholly owned by whoever wrote it, even if it uses other people's code. This is similar to the property laws of the real world."
Except we're not talking about property laws in any way, shape, or form. We're talking about copyright law. Copyright law gets lumped in with other laws under the label of intellectual property, but still has nothing to do with physical property law. Analogies between the property law and copyright helps sustain the massive level of confusion and sloppy thinking about copyright law.
Under copyright law if you take my copyright protected work and incorporate it into your work, it is a derivative work. As a derivative work, I share the copyright on your work.*
Now, this is built on the assumption that I should get control over derivative works, but that's the law as it stands. That's also the assumption that many GPL fans have. It's the foundation of the GPL. As it's the same assumption that international laws and entire content industries are are built on, it seems a reasonable baseline to build from. You can disagree with it and believe it should be changed, but you should recognize it as the current situation.
(*Excepting fair use, obviously.)
Yes. Can you imagine the madness if millions of people were to abuse the web to make it their primary way or reading email, posting content online, listening to radio shows, watching television shows, or playing amusing little games? It would be the end times! Sheep would lie down with lions! Web browsers would lie down with email clients! No, I like my web nice and static, just like paper documents! We should not only do away with this newfangled Flash, we need to be rid of that JavaScript! And don't forget web forms; be rid of the demonic things! Right after I post this, I'm going to patch my version of Firefox to suppress display of input and submit tags!
Yes, Flash and Silverlight are problematic. But the web is a highly effective application deployment platform and has been for years. Hell, you're posting on a discussion group application; a regrettably crude replacement for Usenet and dedicated newsgroup readers. While you're yelling at the kids to get off your lawn, the rest of the world is communicating, getting work done, and having fun on the web.
Whatever system you use, it should be easy and unambiguous to pronounce. Want to name it after a service? samba, www, login, and the like are fine. But when you start coding things into the name, it all starts turning to mush in the brains of people who only erratically connect to the machine, or people who are communicating over the phone. Talking with someone about a pair of machines whose names are unpronounceable and vary by only one or two characters is confusing as hell. Having worked with a group that gave machines helpful names like fnabl3 and fnag13, I know this pain. Maybe the abbreviations made perfect sense and were unambiguous to them since they used them all the time, but as someone asked to briefly help with a problem it was frustrating and error prone. Sure, cheddar and swiss don't tell you anything about the service in question, but they are hard to mess up.
It's probably true that Profiles are only used by a vanishingly small portion of their customers. But who are those customers? I'm guessing that among customers with the more expensive accounts, the customers who gave up cable/satellite service for NetFlix, and most importantly the customers who tell their friends they should all get NetFlix that the usage rate is much higher. These are the users who actually fill the 500 title limit per queue, the users with multiple people with different queues. To an extent Profiles are an investment in your most dedicated customers, your cheerleaders, your free advertising. If you drive these people away, you're down to a straightup advertising war. Is supporting Profiles really more expensive than a direct advertising war with Blockbuster? Maybe, but I suspect it's not a clearcut decision.
For example, I have several friends who use NetFlix, but one is far and away the loudest supporter of NetFlix. He is a dedicated user of Profiles. He's been telling me for years how great it it, how it was a better value than cable or satellite service, how Profiles meant he and his spouse could have their own queues. After the Profiles cancellation announcement, he suddenly announced that this killed the value for him and he was going to switch to Blockbuster's service, which at least offered the local service option. Not a good sign. Our household does use NetFlix, in part because of my friend's recommendations. And if my friend tried Blockbuster's offering and liked it, we'd take a good long look at it.
Indeed. And like any stupid, wild animal, if it harms someone just minding their own business, it should be judged a public danger and killed. If it impacts someone's livelyhood, it should be judged a public nuisance and killed. We don't do that nearly often enough.
Come to think of it, I'd vote for a 10 day corporate hunting season. To protect the herd as a whole, maybe have a "no killing any corporation with a market value of less than a billion US dollars" rule.
OOP is more about how you think about and organize the problem than a specific language. Some languages make it easier to express the idea of an object than others, but you can do it any general purpose language. It's not fake or pretend, just less elegant. FILE* and the associated functions in the standard C library form a perfectly reasonable object oriented interface. That it's fprintf(p,...) instead of p.printf(...) is just syntax.
That's like saying C and C++ do memory-handling quite decently, it is just too difficult to grasp for most programmers. It's arguably true, but it's not much of a defense of the language. A language really suited to multi-processor work is going to as much a step forward from Java in that area as Java was from C++ in memory management.
Random searches provide excellent security, provided the punishment for getting caught exceeds the benefits multiplied by the risk. Let's say I'm asked to smuggle weapons onto a plane. Not for a hijackings or anything, just as a black market delivery. I'm offered $10,000 to do it. I've got a great plan; assuming the security screeners don't hand search my bags, there is basically zero risk of getting caught. So now it's down to the random searches. If the punishment is 1 year in prison, and they only screen 1 in 10 people, the odds are pretty good; assuming that I value my freedom at less than $100,000 per year. Now if the punishment is 20 years in prison, now my freedom is worth less than $5,000 per year.
Let's hypothetically try to redo 9-11. (Yes, only a stupid terrorist would try that exact same attack again, but it's a good example with concrete numbers.) We're all expecting to die, so the threat of jail is irrelevant. However, if a single one of us gets caught with weapons, there is a good chance security will be stepped up and my 19 accomplices will be caught as well. That's very bad, from my terrorist point of view. Since 20 of us need to get past security, even if they only randomly screen 1 in 20 people, there is a 64% chance of at least one person getting searched and busted. 1 in 10? 87% chance of getting busted. Very bad odds.
Now obviously it's better to only search people who are bad guys. Unfortunately the entire point of searching people is to identify the bad guys, so that's unhelpful. We can try to be clever and profile people based on, say, their ethnicity. After all, statistically aren't Arab men more likely to hijack planes and crash them? Oddly, this makes the attack easier for the bad guys. Just start flying people around without weapons. See who gets searched. The people who run several flights without getting searched are ideal for your next attack. (A good article with further links on the complexities with profiling. As he points out, profiling based on suspicious behavior is good, although hard.)
Of course, I'm glossing over lots of details. We need to balance many other things, including civil rights. Random searches of homes would likely be a very effective way to stop many crimes. It's also a violation of the US constitution and the principles our country was founded on. Many relatively minor crimes would necessitate punishments that many people would describe as cruel and unusual to compensate for the low risk of getting caught. The benefit of stopping the bad thing may be very minor compared to the cost of the searches. (For example, random drug tests for most jobs hurts moral and costs money, with little benefit.) But fundamentally random searches do work.
And since they're a group of them, desperate enough to mangle or kill you, they certainly all have weapons. And given the situation, the weapons in question are certainly assault rifles. And they're not stupid, just desperate, so they'll rely on strength in numbers, attacking by the hundreds. At this point, having arranged a group of hundreds of heavily armed men, they pretty much have to murder you. This is why I feel much safer keeping a loaded M1 Abrams in my bedroom.
That's a great summary of the situation. I'd like to spread the word, but I'd like to be extremely certain about the numbers before I do so. The $200k is easy (and in fact looks a little low). 6% was easy as well, but it sounds like it's closer to 5% today. The 7 years average stay in a home is harder to find details for. Where did you find it?
I'm befuddled that such a system would exist. Can you explain why this system is in the landlord's interest? It sounds like a tenant is handing a middleman $3,600 in exchange for... what, exactly? At best, I'm guessing the broker pay the landlord something up front, maybe 90% of that ($3,240). Instead of this complexity, the landlord could just charge a $3,500 signing fee. The landlord makes $260 more, you pay $100 less, and we cut deadweight out of the middle.
Perhaps New York forbids signing fees? In which case the broker is providing value to the landlord: he lets him charge a signing fee where previously he couldn't. In which case isn't not the broker's fault; he's just stepping in to work around an ill-considered law.
My figuring isn't working out, so can you explain what's going on?
It's like you're reading the words, but not understanding them. Your comparison is utterly wrong. Copyright infringement is not theft or stealing. It's copyright infringement. Let's say you've written a novel. You leave your car unlocked, and there is a copy of your novel inside. Aha, I say, free book! So I grab it. I have stolen your book. When you return to your car, it's gone. You really wanted to give it to a reviewer, and now you can't. We can very clearly determine the value of your lose. You're going to have to pop over to a bookstore and buy a replacement at $6 (it's out in paperback). If I get caught, I'm going to be charged with having stolen $6 worth of property.
Now let's say that a friend of mine has bought your book. She likes and, decides to make an illegal copy for me. Maybe she photocopies it, or scans it, whatever. Either way, she gives me a copy. Now, have you been deprived of any copies of your book? Well, no, not in the slightest. You have nothing to replace. What's the value of your loss? How much should I (or her?) be charged? $6? $5.40, because there is only a 90% chance I would have bought the book? $3, because that's the wholesale price? $1, because that's what you actually get per copy? What has been "stolen" isn't a thing in any sense of the word, it's a government granted monopoly that has been infringed.
How does this compare to stealing and embezzling? Well, if you steal a suitcase with $50,000 from me, I'm out $50,000. To the extent I can replace it, I'd replace it by getting $50,000. If you embezzle $50,000 from me, I'm still out $50,000, and I'd replace it by getting $50,000. They are very similar crimes, and indeed embezzlement may be a specific type of theft (I'm regrettably not as well versed in financial crimes, so can't say for sure).
These are different in important ways. Period. You might as well compare breaking a contract to vandalism. Comparing them is at best lazy; a tool used because explaining the facts seems too hard. At worst, people are intentionally trying to confuse the two because they don't believe that they can win a debate on the merits.
To be clear: copyright infringement is wrong. It is a crime and should continue to be one. But it's not theft. We should consider and treat it differently. Instead of helping to confuse the situation, spend your time educating people about why copyright infringement is wrong.
"I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and a huge supporter of property rights, both physical and intellectual."
I do not think that word means what you think it does.
"Intellectual property" (by which I'm assuming you're talking about copyright, patent, and trademark law) is nothing less than a state created and enforced monopoly. I'm curious how you can reconcile being an anarcho-capitalist with being a "huge supporter" of a state created and enforced monopoly.
Are you really an anarcho-capitalist, or are you just looking for something more edgy sounding than "moderate libertarian?"
If you really want to be an anarcho-capitalist, the answer should be obvious: there is no state sanctioned intellectual property law. If you want to protect your ideas, you force people who buy copies to sign a contract in which they promise to not make further copies. Retalion for breaking the contract is built in. Of course, too many contracts would be a mess, so likely standardized contracts would be created, and private companies could handle them in bulk.
BMI is a useful medical tool. Like all tools, it has strengths and weaknesses. Should you blindly use it? Of course not. You shouldn't blindly use any tool. But for the overwhelming number of Americans, BMI is a reasonable guideline. Obsessing about the edges cases; the extremely atheletic people, is foolish. As another poster commented, anyone with a working pair of eyes, or even hands, can identify those unusual cases. BMI is basically free to calculate, and for the vast majority of Americans is a good indicator. As a general purpose tool it's quite useful. Calling it quackery is just a cop out. Americans are, as a whole, overweight. Americans would be healthier if in general, they lost weight.
Bahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahahaha. Hahahahahaha. Hehehehehe. *snicker*
It's a shame that the "Funny (+1)" rating no longer earns karma, because you deserve it.