it requires that everybody, from beginning to end, work for free in producing it.
No. I said double the cost of media. That leaves about half the income to be distributed among the artist, agent, etc. This is several times what they get from iTunes sales, according to TFA. (And the artists could easily get more than they do under current CD sales, which is often negligible, if they could cut out some of the middle men.) Much of the current income seems to go on advertising and payola to radio and TV broadcasters though. That would be have to be cut.
"There are always producers who will happily work for free"
I never said or implied that.
I know something about book publishing. There the rule of thumb is retail = 4 or 5 x printing cost. You'll notice that this leads to many more and cheaper books than CDs; but less extravagant lifestyles for authors than rock stars.
How low do you believe a CD can be sold for, profitably?
About double the cost of a blank CDR. Say 50 cents.
Manufacturing and distribution costs are about the same. The obvious method of cutting costs is to burn CDR on demand and print a nice insert at the point of sale. Actually, the printed insert would cost more these days than the actual CD, so retail for $1.00 to cover that and the handling.
The fact is there aren't that many countries capable of making nukes.
About a dozen,
Yes, a dozen is not many. (Germany hasn't had a nuclear weapons program since WWII, as far as I know; including France is frankly insane.) That's "means". But only one or two could be considered to have any motive. There are technical methods to determine what kind of bomb, which would rule out the "traditional" nuclear powers quickly regardless.
It took the U.S. about a month to go into Afghanistan and that was after YEARS of previous attacks (the '93 truck bombing of the WTC, the '98 embassy bombings in Africa.) I don't know where you got the idea that the U.S./Israel would nuke first, ask questions later.
Clinton bombed Afghanistan and Somalia two weeks after the embassy bombings. He targeted supposedly terrorist bases. In the case of a nuke, I think the reaction would be faster, and less temperate. Israel would surely act at least as fast. It's not "nuking first" if you've already been bombed. The point is that any country that supplied nukes that were later used in an attack on the US (or Israel) knows they would very likely suffer at least an invasion, if not annihilation. And considering Bush's personality, can you imagine him taking time to consider peaceful resolutions?
The thing with these people is that they're all about the purity of their particular interpretation of Islam, and are quite prepared to kill anyone who disagrees in the slightest. Osama bin Laden's genius was to persuade them to struggle together against the common enemy (THE JUDAEAN PEOPLE'S FRONT? No, no... the Americans!
Bin Laden got his start fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Back then of course the Americans were helping him and the Taleban fight the godless commies. And bin Laden hates secular leaders in the Middle East, like Saddam, just as much. That's why it was so ludicrous when Bush's people claimed that Saddam was supporting al Qaeda; they're fighting now in Iraq not to restore the Baathists but to install their own theocracy.
America created all its current enemies in the Middle East. They supported, or installed, dictators in Iran and Iraq after WWII to keep them from nationalising their oil. They support the very repressive Saudi royals for the same reason, and that could implode any day.
Similar cloud has been reported before, but this cloud is smaller.
No, it's the same cloud, same story. (One uses miles, one km for the size.) Note that the link in TODAY's story is to a Register story dated 6 April. They've been trolled.
The original press release is here, dated 4th April.
His inability to keep a civil tongue in his head is legendary: that might be excused as charmingly idealistic in a 20 year old, but its embarassing as a balding rocker with a pony tail in a man pushing 40.
If you're like that at 20, you'll very likely be even less temperate at 40. Once middle age sets in, you have new depths of vitriol and angst to add. If they can survive to their 70s without popping a valve or getting murdered, they may finally start to mellow.
try telling that to those that want to blow themselves up for the 72 virgins offered in the afterlife.
National leaders tend to be more cynical and cautious than that, no matter how much they rant and rave. They may sound like complete nutcases to us, but the rhetoric is calculated to appeal to their domestic audience. If you're actually a president, you don't have to become a martyr to get your virgins, (Clinton proved that), so they're in no hurry for the afterlife. That's assuming they keep control of their nukes; I'd be more worried about them being stolen than deliberately supplied.
The fact is there aren't that many countries capable of making nukes. If either the US or Israel were nuked, they would have a very short list of suspects and be inclined to bomb the most likely first and do the paperwork later. Iran knows they would be right at the top of that list.
the only thing Iran has to worry about from the US is caused directly by their nuclear weapon ambitions in the first place
If you wonder why Iran mistrusts the US, look up the US's role in the ouster of Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah. How would the US feel about a foreign country that had supported a coup to replace your elected president with a dictatorial monarch? (Not that there's much difference at the moment, but that's a different flame war).
With Iran, you can be damn sure the ayatollahs will *GIVE* them away for free to all would-be jihadist.
That would be idiotic. If an Iranian bomb went off in Tel Aviv or New York, they know they'd be toast within a week. The real world is not like a Tom Clancy novel.
I have a yahoo mail address that I have used actively for years, and only receive a few spam a week.
Mine was the same, till about three months ago, when I started getting Japanese spam promoting porn sites. Now I get about 20 a day like that, and recently Pakistani stock market "tips" and Nigerian 419s. Occasionally I get a blank message; presumably some bastard has bought my address and is testing it before sending more spam. So I activated Yahoo's spam filters, which gets most of it. But it occasionally there are false positive so I have to review them before deleting (pretty quick, the subjects are blatant ads or gibberish).
Right. They can NOW, but the gist of my post is that energy costs are generally rising, and they are unstable...
Maybe; but bulk sea transport will always be much cheaper than any other form. For instance, a while ago I had to get some goods from Hong Kong to the US. It cost much more to get it from the port in New York to New Jersey than to get it across the entire world. The US exports lots of corn, wheat, for instance, at very low unit costs, only possible because of this. If gas proces doubled local transport charges would probably go up more proportionately.
As for thinking how other countries should be run - well, not so much. We suggest capitalist democracy
You've got a century of installing and propping up dictators to live down. Recall Pinochet? Diem? Marcos? The Shah? Against that you've got Japan and Germany, but it's a mixed bag.
A physicist once said that the universe doesn't care whether or not you believe it works the way it does. Law's much the same. I'm real sorry you don't like IP law, but that's not going to change the facts.
I don't want to be too aggressive here, but 1)I have studied Physics and worked with IP law professionally; 2) The application of laws are never facts, they are always a matter of interpretation. 3) If you want to convince me, cite the legislation or case law. You're under no obligation to spend your time on this, but it's the only thing that would change my opinion. Actions aren't illegal until legitimised by a corporation; by default actions are legal unless determined by a court to be illegal.
There is no grey area.
The very fact this is being argued means there is.
I am sure that this will ultimately be resolved neither on the merits, or the ethics, but on the economic and political power of the opponents.
I have seen a man lose both of his hands to a paper cutting press (the kind that is used to cut a foot thick stack of paper.)
I've seen these machines in printing plants. They have two separate buttons you have to depress simultaneously to make it cut, so your hands can't be anywhere near the blade. You would have to work hard to defeat the safety.
If the sex robot could pass the Turing Test, at least within the boundaries of its design I would argue that it should be treated as human.
I'd be wary of a Turing sex test.
In 1952, Alan Turing was convicted of acts of gross indecency after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man in Manchester. He was placed on probation and required to undergo hormone therapy. When he died in 1954, an inquest found that he had committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide.
Tahoma's is the shit for sans with Georgia coming up a distance second. Verdana doesn't even place.
Verdana is best at very small sizes. Georgia is serif, Tahoma is sans, so they're just different beasts. After trying everything from Comic sans to Garamond. I've settled on Georgia as my screen reading font (for print I'm more eclectic, but generally choose a Garamond).
t takes a lot more energy to ship something from China than it does to manufacture it here
Not really. Ocean freight is very efficient and cheap. Look at the foodstuffs in your supermarket. Packets of food that sell for less than a dollar can be economically shipped across the planet.
The real problem is the horrible horrible font (Verdana, IIRC) that Slashdot asks for specifically now. I haven't been able to fix this through stylesheet overrides yet...
Changing homepage preferences to "Simple Design" gives me a decent serif font (Times on my setup); perhaps a bit small but I can bump it up in the browser. Some of the graphic elements are a bit off, but that's an acceptable tradeoff.
Verdana is actually an excellent sans screen font; but for body text a serif is much more pleasant, Georgia is about the best IMHO.
Actually Singapore and previously Hong Kong are much more capitalist than the US
"Previously" Hong Kong? If you imagine that HK has somehow turned communist because China took it over, you haven't been there. True, it isn't a very free market; much local industry is dominated by monopolists, but that as it always was. That unfortunately is capitalism in the raw.
When you download from allofmp3.com, your computer is making a copy and you are causing it to do so. This is a clear copyright violation, and it's a criminal offence if the user knows this.
I don't believe the law could be so stupid. As I said earlier, if it were true, you couldn't use a computer or the Internet at all. Copies are created all over the place every time you access a file. If the file is created legally, and transferred to one person, it should be irrelevant if it was on physical media or down a wire.
it doesn't have the right to licence downloads in the UK
Why is one needed? Does a Russian shortwave station need a UK licence if someone in the UK is listening? Is there actually a "licence to download"? Where would one apply for such? The Ministry of Housinge?
Bascially, I see this a a grey market at worst. No one's copyrights are being violated. The record companies can claim their fees in Moscow, but fail to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
No. I said double the cost of media. That leaves about half the income to be distributed among the artist, agent, etc. This is several times what they get from iTunes sales, according to TFA. (And the artists could easily get more than they do under current CD sales, which is often negligible, if they could cut out some of the middle men.) Much of the current income seems to go on advertising and payola to radio and TV broadcasters though. That would be have to be cut.
"There are always producers who will happily work for free"
I never said or implied that.
I know something about book publishing. There the rule of thumb is retail = 4 or 5 x printing cost. You'll notice that this leads to many more and cheaper books than CDs; but less extravagant lifestyles for authors than rock stars.
!!!
About double the cost of a blank CDR. Say 50 cents.
Manufacturing and distribution costs are about the same. The obvious method of cutting costs is to burn CDR on demand and print a nice insert at the point of sale. Actually, the printed insert would cost more these days than the actual CD, so retail for $1.00 to cover that and the handling.
About a dozen,
Yes, a dozen is not many. (Germany hasn't had a nuclear weapons program since WWII, as far as I know; including France is frankly insane.) That's "means". But only one or two could be considered to have any motive. There are technical methods to determine what kind of bomb, which would rule out the "traditional" nuclear powers quickly regardless.
It took the U.S. about a month to go into Afghanistan and that was after YEARS of previous attacks (the '93 truck bombing of the WTC, the '98 embassy bombings in Africa.) I don't know where you got the idea that the U.S./Israel would nuke first, ask questions later.
Clinton bombed Afghanistan and Somalia two weeks after the embassy bombings. He targeted supposedly terrorist bases. In the case of a nuke, I think the reaction would be faster, and less temperate. Israel would surely act at least as fast. It's not "nuking first" if you've already been bombed. The point is that any country that supplied nukes that were later used in an attack on the US (or Israel) knows they would very likely suffer at least an invasion, if not annihilation. And considering Bush's personality, can you imagine him taking time to consider peaceful resolutions?
Bin Laden got his start fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Back then of course the Americans were helping him and the Taleban fight the godless commies. And bin Laden hates secular leaders in the Middle East, like Saddam, just as much. That's why it was so ludicrous when Bush's people claimed that Saddam was supporting al Qaeda; they're fighting now in Iraq not to restore the Baathists but to install their own theocracy.
America created all its current enemies in the Middle East. They supported, or installed, dictators in Iran and Iraq after WWII to keep them from nationalising their oil. They support the very repressive Saudi royals for the same reason, and that could implode any day.
No, it's the same cloud, same story. (One uses miles, one km for the size.) Note that the link in TODAY's story is to a Register story dated 6 April. They've been trolled.
The original press release is here, dated 4th April.
If you're like that at 20, you'll very likely be even less temperate at 40. Once middle age sets in, you have new depths of vitriol and angst to add. If they can survive to their 70s without popping a valve or getting murdered, they may finally start to mellow.
National leaders tend to be more cynical and cautious than that, no matter how much they rant and rave. They may sound like complete nutcases to us, but the rhetoric is calculated to appeal to their domestic audience. If you're actually a president, you don't have to become a martyr to get your virgins, (Clinton proved that), so they're in no hurry for the afterlife. That's assuming they keep control of their nukes; I'd be more worried about them being stolen than deliberately supplied.
Yeah, the same way Saddam denied having WMD.
Any evidence gathering would take years to prove
The fact is there aren't that many countries capable of making nukes. If either the US or Israel were nuked, they would have a very short list of suspects and be inclined to bomb the most likely first and do the paperwork later. Iran knows they would be right at the top of that list.
If you wonder why Iran mistrusts the US, look up the US's role in the ouster of Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah. How would the US feel about a foreign country that had supported a coup to replace your elected president with a dictatorial monarch? (Not that there's much difference at the moment, but that's a different flame war).
That would be idiotic. If an Iranian bomb went off in Tel Aviv or New York, they know they'd be toast within a week. The real world is not like a Tom Clancy novel.
Mine was the same, till about three months ago, when I started getting Japanese spam promoting porn sites. Now I get about 20 a day like that, and recently Pakistani stock market "tips" and Nigerian 419s. Occasionally I get a blank message; presumably some bastard has bought my address and is testing it before sending more spam. So I activated Yahoo's spam filters, which gets most of it. But it occasionally there are false positive so I have to review them before deleting (pretty quick, the subjects are blatant ads or gibberish).
This virus uses Javascript. So unless your email clinet automatically runs Javascript, you're safe. I don't think even OE does that any more.
Maybe; but bulk sea transport will always be much cheaper than any other form. For instance, a while ago I had to get some goods from Hong Kong to the US. It cost much more to get it from the port in New York to New Jersey than to get it across the entire world. The US exports lots of corn, wheat, for instance, at very low unit costs, only possible because of this. If gas proces doubled local transport charges would probably go up more proportionately.
Since you just keep asserting I'm wrong, without any "cites", I think we're done here.
You've got a century of installing and propping up dictators to live down. Recall Pinochet? Diem? Marcos? The Shah? Against that you've got Japan and Germany, but it's a mixed bag.
I don't want to be too aggressive here, but 1)I have studied Physics and worked with IP law professionally; 2) The application of laws are never facts, they are always a matter of interpretation. 3) If you want to convince me, cite the legislation or case law. You're under no obligation to spend your time on this, but it's the only thing that would change my opinion. Actions aren't illegal until legitimised by a corporation; by default actions are legal unless determined by a court to be illegal.
There is no grey area.
The very fact this is being argued means there is.
I am sure that this will ultimately be resolved neither on the merits, or the ethics, but on the economic and political power of the opponents.
I've seen these machines in printing plants. They have two separate buttons you have to depress simultaneously to make it cut, so your hands can't be anywhere near the blade. You would have to work hard to defeat the safety.
I'd be wary of a Turing sex test.
Verdana is best at very small sizes. Georgia is serif, Tahoma is sans, so they're just different beasts. After trying everything from Comic sans to Garamond. I've settled on Georgia as my screen reading font (for print I'm more eclectic, but generally choose a Garamond).
Too bad it's only available from M$ :(
You can get them free, quite legally from Corefonts.
Not really. Ocean freight is very efficient and cheap. Look at the foodstuffs in your supermarket. Packets of food that sell for less than a dollar can be economically shipped across the planet.
Works fine in Opera 8.5. However, I changed my /. preference to "Simple Design" to ger a serif font instead of Verdana for body text.
Changing homepage preferences to "Simple Design" gives me a decent serif font (Times on my setup); perhaps a bit small but I can bump it up in the browser. Some of the graphic elements are a bit off, but that's an acceptable tradeoff.
Verdana is actually an excellent sans screen font; but for body text a serif is much more pleasant, Georgia is about the best IMHO.
"Previously" Hong Kong? If you imagine that HK has somehow turned communist because China took it over, you haven't been there. True, it isn't a very free market; much local industry is dominated by monopolists, but that as it always was. That unfortunately is capitalism in the raw.
I don't believe the law could be so stupid. As I said earlier, if it were true, you couldn't use a computer or the Internet at all. Copies are created all over the place every time you access a file. If the file is created legally, and transferred to one person, it should be irrelevant if it was on physical media or down a wire.
it doesn't have the right to licence downloads in the UK
Why is one needed? Does a Russian shortwave station need a UK licence if someone in the UK is listening? Is there actually a "licence to download"? Where would one apply for such? The Ministry of Housinge?
Bascially, I see this a a grey market at worst. No one's copyrights are being violated. The record companies can claim their fees in Moscow, but fail to do so.