You spin up the disc, and then just read the data in serial.
So why not have redundant code blocks distributed throughout the disc, based on a predictive alogrithm as to when they will be accesse d together? I recall reading about games that did this early on when 1x and 2x CD rom drives were the norm.
If so, garage sales should be charging tax, right?
Depends on the jurisdiction. Some localities have laws that exempt garage sales (with strict definitions of what constitutes a garage sale to keep people from having year-round flea markets on their lawns.) At the very least, the seller is responsible for income taxes on the money they collect, and in some cases, yes, they owe sales tax.
You cannot achieve what you want without the reader understanding context. Since computers can't yet understand context, we can't yet build such a system.
I disagree. If computers can't understand context, then don't use the computer to provide the context. Instead, use humans to annotate text using emotional markers, in the same way that composers and conductors add accents and other notations to sheet music. Although you can sort of do this now by explicity indicating phonemes, a better system would allow you to "markup" plain text with emotional cues that would be interpreted by whatever speech engine is being used.
Something like what MIDI programs do that allow you to manipulate sequences and add attacks, change insturments, etc. This would allow you to still "perform" a text-to-speech, using the computer-synthesized voice as the instrument. A more advanced system would couple a speech recognition and pitch analysis system to automatically manipulate a speech output program, so an actor could perform a line using their own voice, but be able to "puppet" the line into someone else's voice.
Given that there is already a rudimentary text-to-speech package available for Linux, and now a speech-to-text package, perhaps the secret is to pipe one to the other in a closed loop until one learns how to enunciate and the other how to listen?
Actually, that's not a bad idea. Using such a feedback system (where output from one system is used in conjunction with a training set to score and modify the other system) you can iteratively attempt to train the output system to reproduce someone's vocal patterns (assuming that there are enough parameters that can be varied.)
Um... more populous states have, by definition, more people in them. Shouldn't the priority be to help the most people possible?
That's a true democracy in action - the mob rule kind. Tyranny of the majority is just as bad as tyranny of any other sort - imagine if the cities started dictating how much farmers were allowed to charge for food. Or highly urban areas started applying their gun laws to extremely rural areas. Or large populous states decided that they should get the majority of tax receipts, even if they might not be generating the lion's share of the tax base (due to illegal immigration, policies that encourage people with money to move elsewhere, etc.)
Or poor people decided that rich people ought to get taxed to hell just because they're rich...
Frankly, I'm mystified as to why everyone is putting so much emphasis on the presidential election, when most of the crap comes out of Congress and overly large state legislatures (like California's). The President has at most, 8 years to screw around with the country, and has a magnifying glass held to his (or her, eventually) every action. Some of these district and senate seats have been held for more than a decade, with corresponding senority in terms of committee and chair positions. Mind you, it isn't the President that has the control of the budget - it's the houses of Congress that control the purse strings.
Of course, I'm also puzzled as to why there's been no national debate on any issues of importance. Copyright law, for example. Or identity theft. Or the effects of excessive litigation on the right to speedy trial and economic development. Or America's place in the new world, both militarially, economically, and socially? Hell, someone at least mention nuclear power, either fission or fusion.
Instead, we get the same stuff about Iraq, and this is REALLY weird - stuff about Vietnam?!?
I guess this is what happens when everybody's Senate/Representative's seat is guaranteed by gerrymandering and the only hope to shift policy in a national debate is to capture the White House...
You have NO idea. I walked into the local Fry's the other day, and found that pretty much everything in the store had a tag reading "Warning: Handling this product will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, [etc]"
Holy crap! Was this Fry's once a firing range, and now contaminated with lead? Was everything they were selling made in some south-of-the-border factory that had a lead smelter under the roof? Were these items Chinese, and painted in lead-based paints?
Actually, it was none of the above. The notices were required because of lead content in the solder used in the cabling.
The legislators here have WAY too much time on their hands. Most of them are career politicians or career wannabees, and want to build up a "track record" of high-profile legislation (ie, crap that does nobody any good if you thought about it, but makes for a great photo op.) For example, this Yee fellow from San Francisco was slapped down multiple times - by his fellow legislators, and kept coming back by hollowing out other people's bills in order to put in his own ridiculous provisions. Then of course, there was the bill that banned.50 cal ammo, which was also rejected on multiple occasions, until some nameless legislators decided to "ghost vote" (ie, vote somebody else's button in addition to their own).
Fraud in an election would get both parties screaming about how people's rights were violated, but evidently it's ok if it's done on a regular basis by elected officials. Crazy doesn't even begin to describe the situation here...
I wonder how long it will be before some fan creates a "new master" based on combining audio and picture elements from both the newly released DVDs and the old Laserdiscs (tweaked to match the restored footage, of course.) There are only so many scenes that have been tampered with, and some of them can be "reverse tampered" (ie, by painting out picture elements and compositing the old footage in place).
Hey, several people re-edited EP I, with the technology of the day, so you know that it's definitely doable now...
Re:Files they've just taken and not bought or dele
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The File Sharing Report
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You don't get a house built and then just pay the workers for the material. That would be stealing.
This is a singularly bad comparison when dealing with IP. To build a house, you need to hire workers and buy materials FOR EACH HOUSE. When selling copies of a book or record, you pay the author or songwriter/artist to create the work, and then per unit for duplication costs.
In the case of the house, once you get paid, that's the end of the contract between the workers and you. In the case of IP, once the initial costs of paying off the author/artist are recouped, YOU CAN STILL PROFIT FROM THE MATERIAL, assuming that there is still a market for it.
So why are the publishers and recording studios (not to mention the movie studios) complaining, and what exactly are they complaining about? They're complaining because they can no longer recoup their costs in the same amount of time that they used to, and that running up their advertising and promotion tab does not deliver the corresponding boost in sales that it once did.
To illustrate, in the movie industry, the rule of thumb is that a movie must gross 3 times its production cost at the box office, IN ORDER TO BREAK EVEN. If your movie cost $100 to make (not uncommon, if it is a large production with stars and directors pulling in $10-$15 million a piece, with special effects), P&A (prints and advertising) at $40-60 million, it will need to take in AT LEAST $300 at the box office to be considered a success (because the studios only get half of the box office - the theatres get the other half, nominally anyways.) Break-even is good because there's always the ancillary markets (paytv/cable/satellite/DVD/syndication) to deliver future profits.
So what is the solution to this? The model needs to change - either the market for their product isn't as big as they think it is (meaning they need to scale back promotions, increase per-unit pricing), or they need to relax their timeframe on ROI (return on investment) - something that is hard to do in cases where the producers are using borrowed money to to push an act, or sell a movie, they need to lower per-unit pricing in order to expand the market (I have no idea what the demand and supply curves are like for music/movies/books), and compete against alternatives, OR they need to find new ways of repackaging and reselling content to different markets.
To illustrate one way of selling old material, look at Baen Books. There's a lot of old paperbacks that came out years ago that Baen is repackaging into "Mega Book" or omnibus editions. Not only is Baen filling a market need (because a lot of this material has long since gone out of print), but they are providing e-book editions in addition to the dead-tree hardcover editions. The authors of these works got paid a long time ago, and now, they're getting paid again.
Contrast this to record companies, who agressively push new acts (which are expensive, bland, and short-lived), when they're sitting on a gold mine of existing material that can be repackaged (compilations, licensing), for both CD, radio (I cannot, for the life of me, understand why record companies didn't jump on the idea of broadcasting theme stations using streaming media, and start cutting the radio stations out of the loop), and digital (ie, iTunes.) This is bizzare, because record companies made money hand over fist repackaging their libraries first for tape during the transition from 33rpms to LP records, LPs to cassette tape, and cassette tape to CDs. Why stop now?
Going back to the house labor vs. materials argument, hiring somebody to build a house for you is completely different from buying a mass-produced good. You're not dealing on a one-to-one basis with the laborer, but buying something someone produced in mass quantities, speculatively relying on the market to buy them. If more goods are produced than there is want, is it stealing when people decide not to buy those goods at the same prices that the prior buyers
They have to be held accountable when they fuck up, or intentionall injure someone in some way.
This is the main argument that many lawyers have given for not forcing losing plaintiffs to compensate the defendant for the cost of the trial. The unfortunate result of this is a lottery mentality - if you have a case, no matter how flimsy it is, you can buy a lotto ticket to potential riches if you sue someone with pockets that are deep enough.
One consequence of this is that many businesses are so afraid of getting sued, they won't give honest references (ie, Joe is an abusive worker), which means that when you hire Joe, you and your employees suffer. Another real cost is the number of jurors* that need to be called up to fill all of the civil cases (in some areas, were talking a 3-4 month backlog until you get your first hearing) - that's a lot of productivity lost, not to mention all of the legitimate cases that have to queue for the limited court space.
I agree with you that capping awards is meaningless (especially when the lawyer is helping themselves to a giant portion of the award) - but instead of trying to identify frivolous lawsuits after the fact (good luck defining what is frivolous - if they lose, is it frivolous? what if they win?). Instead of trying to have a trial on the trial, what we need to do is to institute (re-institute?) loser pays. That way, if you're unsure of your case, you WON'T waste time in the courtroom, making things up as you go along (like SCO.)
*I know you can get a bench trial. But for lotto-style cases, you go for a stacked jury which can be swayed to produce really bizzare awards, especially against larger companies. I'm no supporter of corporate greed, but having sat through a 4-week trial (paid $5 a day, and not drawing salary during the duration) I'm very much against people filing lotto lawsuits trying for settlements.
I just wonder if you would be thinking "who is this guy", checking to make sure your shooter is handy. I wouldn't like to think like that myself.
Why not? I live in the city, and believe me, you want to maintain situational awareness at all times, ESPECIALLY if you're not armed. Instead of keeping your gunhand and holster clear (since you're not armed), you'd look for available escape routes, and maybe decide you'd rather cross the street than walk past that groups of punks spoiling for some entertainment.
Or, if some guy shows up at your doorstep at 10pm at night - is he just looking for a phone (because he left his cell at home), or is he looking for a target?
The police cannot protect you - they protect society, not necessarily individuals. This is a reasonable thing - elsewise you'd have lawsuits every time the police failed to show up quickly enough to prevent injury/death after a 911 call. In parts of the US, the authorities believe that the armed citizen is the best deterrent to crime and mayhem. In other parts, the authorities believe that citizens are too dangerous to entrust firearms to, and that force of any kind fails the test of a "civilized" society, and that you, as a lowly citizen, must refrain from doing anything to antagonize your attacker, and entrust all actions relating to protecting yourself and the community to authorized law enforcement.
In any case, being armed is a personal choice, and only part of a larger strategy for safeguarding your home. If you're interested in reading a good article that lays everything out (ie, secure the house, add an alarm, a dog, and if you feel you can handle it, a gun), Massad Ayoob is the man.
Wait. Are you telling me I can get hidef programming for $11 a month, after I buy a receiver and a dish? Or do I have to subscribe to the regular package on top of that?
Seems to me that it would be a symbiotic relationship. Tivo gets to save on bandwidth costs by putting "warehouse" servers in the provider's network. The provider gets to tout "fast Netflix transfers" without having to pay upstream transfer costs. Both Tivo and the provider would gain (or at least hold on to) subscribers.
If they cut people off, then end-users will have to choose: keep cable, but forgo Tivo/Netflix, or switch to DSL and get rid of cable. If I were a DSL provider, I'd be offering promo packages to capture cable subscribers that were put into that position - boosting my own subscriber numbers, and putting the hurt on my competition (the local cable monopoly.)
Personally, I'd drop cable - you get a fat pipe down, but it doesn't mean much if you're not allowed to max it out. And who actually watches all 500 channels of programming anyways? Not anyone employed that I know of, unless their job is to watch TV... This has been Tivo's biggest achilles' heel - the dependence on cable/satellite timeshifting for new customers. They've added the home media option, and now Netflix - which helps to break that dependence somewhat.
I'm watching less and less live TV these days - I've got 170 movies in my Netflix queue, about half of them TV series (ie, Stargate SG-1, Mr. Bean, Foyle's War), and the other half divided between documentaries (History Channel, Discover Channel, etc.) and movies.
If Tivo is smart, they'll keep building on this in order to offer other types of programming, and hopefully fight their way back into a position where the cable companies have to deal with them as equals, instead of trying to run them out of town with their own OEM DVRs.
Disclaimer - I own Tivo stock, but I don't have a Tivo unit. I'll be getting my Netflix movies the regular way - via mail.
Why should US tax payers subsidize scientific research for other countries to use? If the research is published on teh internet then what mechnisms are going to be put in place to ensure its protection?
Um, US tax payers subsidize scientific research for others to use... NOW. That's the whole idea of publication - you publish your results, so EVERYBODY can look at, reproduce, and weigh in. If this proposal disenfranchises the journals (expensive as they are), then the only people who lose are the journals - other countries can pay for the journals NOW, and the taxpayers don't get a cent of that (except for the taxes that are paid by the journals - the ones that are based in the US, at least.)
So the fiscal impact on US tax-payers is essentially nil - the system works the same way from the perspective of the collective US pocketbook. The only change is that it becomes easier to exchange ideas - especially for institutions that are strapped for cash, many of them state schools here in the US. At UCLA, they've had to cut down on the number of journal subscriptions, which makes it harder to keep on top of what is going on in your given field. If we can make sure that NIH funded research is easily searchable, for free, we can devote some of those funds to other things, like keeping the lights on.
One extension I've been looking for would allow you to search your open windows and tabs. I have the sessionsaver extension installed, so when I fire up FireFox, it brings up every window and tab that I had open during my last session. Over time, this means I have dozens of windows, and hundreds of tabs open, and it's a pain to click on every tab, looking for a bit of info that I've seen before.
Anyone know if such an extension exists, or what you'd have to do to write one like it?
The problem with paper gift certs is that, like coupons, they can be counterfieited fairly easily. If you start tracking gift certs via a centralized database, then you essentially have the same system that they have in place for stored value cards. This is a big issue for larger retailers, because having a stored value card system that can be deployed over an existing card-processing infrastructure saves them money, and allows for faster reconciling of accounts. It also saves them from having to give out cash in change for the remainder of the balance on a paper gift certificate.
Re:Helium is not exactly common either.
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China Goes Nuclear
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· Score: 1
Eventually we will have a helium shortage.
This is why the US has a Strategic Helium Reserve (and has had one, for almost 80 yrs, I think). Remember to tell that to your Senators and Representatives - some of them think that holding on to that helium is a stupid idea. Well, looks like it will soon become a VERY strategic material to hold on to...
There's a broad selection of musician's earplugs that preserve a select set of frequencies to aid in pitch transmission, while blocking the majority of the energy in the soundwaves.
I always keep a pair of regular hearos with me - you never know when you'll need em (for example, you end up having to spend more than a few hours servicing equipment in a noisy server room, you want to catch a nap and want to block out noise, you decide to take a trip out to the range and need hearing protection.)
Also, you can use the same types of stamping and fabrication equipment, with a few extra steps thrown in. Having them small enough to fit in a drive that can go into a 5.25 bay also helps...
Eventually they'll probably come out with smaller versions, just as they have those mini-cds and business-card sized cds today.
The reason they've been quiet about the arrests is that they're not done yet. Thankfully, there aren't any politicians who need to score brownie points with the public who are going to leak specific intel data (like they've done before with terrorist arrests). And who says Homeland Security isn't doing their job?:)
As for scientific research, I don't think knowledge is destructive. I agree that the fruits of scientific research can be very destructive (atomic weapons, bio weapons, drugs, etc.) That's why there are things like the nuclear non-proliferation treaties, and the FDA. If you think that knowledge itself is dangerous, then I guess we have a major difference of opinion
Merely testing how far you think a restriction ought to go. There are some who WOULD consider the mere posession of certain types of knowledge too dangerous for "regular people" to have.
Cars are useful though, so I don't think they should be banned. It's not like the only purpose of a car is to run someone down, that's just something that occasionally happens. For that reason, the benefits of cars outweigh the risks. That doesn't hold true for guns.
That's actually where I would disagree with you. If I understand correctly, to your mind, having guns = increased likelyhood of something going wrong. This presupposes that of the legal users of firearms, some of them will be involved in incidents where the negative consequences of having a firearm will outweigh any positive benefit, and that there really isn't any positive benefit for having a firearm, hence your argument that firearms be restricted. However, I believe that there are positive benefits for firearms training, firearms usage, and ownership (for those who choose to do so), AND I believe that even if some might misuse firearms, to restrict the rights of many in advance, for the actions of a few, is a form of control with troubling implications.
For example - I target shoot infrequently with rifle and pistol. This is a form of recreation, just the same as people shooting targets using bow and arrow (with many of the same range rules, I might add), and a sport that has a place in the Olympics, in the form of the biathlon, and distance shooting competitions. Firearms training is often taught by those with a love of sport shooting or hunting, much in the same way that hams with a love of technology and communications teach ham radio. These people shoot on a recreational basis - eliminating private ownership of firearms would deprive these individuals of an enjoyable hobby, and effectively restrict training to law enforcement and military only. This would seem to run contrary to efforts such as the Civilian Marksmanship Program, which seeks to promote youth development and civilian marksmanship skills.
I agree that if guns were completely illegal, serious criminals would still have them.
But wouldn't that include criminal organizations that tend to commit the "intra-criminal crime", that might result in innocent casualties that you alluded to earlier?
But if only criminals had guns, then merely possessing a gun would be enough to throw someone in jail. You wouldn't need to wait for them to misuse it.
But what about areas where guns are illegal right now, and yet there is gun violence (ie, Washington D.C.)? Or where guns are illegal for criminals to own in the first place (ie, convicted felons). By your argument, wouldn't the police have already descended in mass raids and arrested everyone for weapons posession?
From your argument, it sounds like you believe that guns are the only thing keeping things from descending into anarchy.
My main reasons for being "pro-gun", as it were, are:
1. Every law-abiding citizen has the right to self-defense, especially since the police have no legal responsibility to ensure or safeguard your personal safety. (This makes sense if you think about it - otherwise police departments everywhere would be buried under lawsuits for not getting to a crime on time, etc.) The JPFO has a rather interesting take on this. Mind you, the right of self defense does not necessa
Slashdot Mirror
You spin up the disc, and then just read the data in serial.
So why not have redundant code blocks distributed throughout the disc, based on a predictive alogrithm as to when they will be accesse d together? I recall reading about games that did this early on when 1x and 2x CD rom drives were the norm.
If so, garage sales should be charging tax, right?
Depends on the jurisdiction. Some localities have laws that exempt garage sales (with strict definitions of what constitutes a garage sale to keep people from having year-round flea markets on their lawns.) At the very least, the seller is responsible for income taxes on the money they collect, and in some cases, yes, they owe sales tax.
You cannot achieve what you want without the reader understanding context. Since computers can't yet understand context, we can't yet build such a system.
I disagree. If computers can't understand context, then don't use the computer to provide the context. Instead, use humans to annotate text using emotional markers, in the same way that composers and conductors add accents and other notations to sheet music. Although you can sort of do this now by explicity indicating phonemes, a better system would allow you to "markup" plain text with emotional cues that would be interpreted by whatever speech engine is being used.
Something like what MIDI programs do that allow you to manipulate sequences and add attacks, change insturments, etc. This would allow you to still "perform" a text-to-speech, using the computer-synthesized voice as the instrument. A more advanced system would couple a speech recognition and pitch analysis system to automatically manipulate a speech output program, so an actor could perform a line using their own voice, but be able to "puppet" the line into someone else's voice.
Given that there is already a rudimentary text-to-speech package available for Linux, and now a speech-to-text package, perhaps the secret is to pipe one to the other in a closed loop until one learns how to enunciate and the other how to listen?
Actually, that's not a bad idea. Using such a feedback system (where output from one system is used in conjunction with a training set to score and modify the other system) you can iteratively attempt to train the output system to reproduce someone's vocal patterns (assuming that there are enough parameters that can be varied.)
Um... more populous states have, by definition, more people in them. Shouldn't the priority be to help the most people possible?
That's a true democracy in action - the mob rule kind. Tyranny of the majority is just as bad as tyranny of any other sort - imagine if the cities started dictating how much farmers were allowed to charge for food. Or highly urban areas started applying their gun laws to extremely rural areas. Or large populous states decided that they should get the majority of tax receipts, even if they might not be generating the lion's share of the tax base (due to illegal immigration, policies that encourage people with money to move elsewhere, etc.)
Or poor people decided that rich people ought to get taxed to hell just because they're rich...
Frankly, I'm mystified as to why everyone is putting so much emphasis on the presidential election, when most of the crap comes out of Congress and overly large state legislatures (like California's). The President has at most, 8 years to screw around with the country, and has a magnifying glass held to his (or her, eventually) every action. Some of these district and senate seats have been held for more than a decade, with corresponding senority in terms of committee and chair positions. Mind you, it isn't the President that has the control of the budget - it's the houses of Congress that control the purse strings.
Of course, I'm also puzzled as to why there's been no national debate on any issues of importance. Copyright law, for example. Or identity theft. Or the effects of excessive litigation on the right to speedy trial and economic development. Or America's place in the new world, both militarially, economically, and socially? Hell, someone at least mention nuclear power, either fission or fusion.
Instead, we get the same stuff about Iraq, and this is REALLY weird - stuff about Vietnam?!?
I guess this is what happens when everybody's Senate/Representative's seat is guaranteed by gerrymandering and the only hope to shift policy in a national debate is to capture the White House...
I haven't laughed this hard for years. Kudos for the link man!
The extinguishment of knowledge, and works of art, is not a good thing. Artificial scarcity is flat out bad.
Best words on the subject yet. Now, how to get a public debate going so we can air some of the music/movie industry's dirty laundry?
batshit crazy freaks
.50 cal ammo, which was also rejected on multiple occasions, until some nameless legislators decided to "ghost vote" (ie, vote somebody else's button in addition to their own).
You have NO idea. I walked into the local Fry's the other day, and found that pretty much everything in the store had a tag reading "Warning: Handling this product will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, [etc]"
Holy crap! Was this Fry's once a firing range, and now contaminated with lead? Was everything they were selling made in some south-of-the-border factory that had a lead smelter under the roof? Were these items Chinese, and painted in lead-based paints?
Actually, it was none of the above. The notices were required because of lead content in the solder used in the cabling.
The legislators here have WAY too much time on their hands. Most of them are career politicians or career wannabees, and want to build up a "track record" of high-profile legislation (ie, crap that does nobody any good if you thought about it, but makes for a great photo op.) For example, this Yee fellow from San Francisco was slapped down multiple times - by his fellow legislators, and kept coming back by hollowing out other people's bills in order to put in his own ridiculous provisions. Then of course, there was the bill that banned
Fraud in an election would get both parties screaming about how people's rights were violated, but evidently it's ok if it's done on a regular basis by elected officials. Crazy doesn't even begin to describe the situation here...
I wonder how long it will be before some fan creates a "new master" based on combining audio and picture elements from both the newly released DVDs and the old Laserdiscs (tweaked to match the restored footage, of course.) There are only so many scenes that have been tampered with, and some of them can be "reverse tampered" (ie, by painting out picture elements and compositing the old footage in place).
Hey, several people re-edited EP I, with the technology of the day, so you know that it's definitely doable now...
You don't get a house built and then just pay the workers for the material. That would be stealing.
This is a singularly bad comparison when dealing with IP. To build a house, you need to hire workers and buy materials FOR EACH HOUSE. When selling copies of a book or record, you pay the author or songwriter/artist to create the work, and then per unit for duplication costs.
In the case of the house, once you get paid, that's the end of the contract between the workers and you. In the case of IP, once the initial costs of paying off the author/artist are recouped, YOU CAN STILL PROFIT FROM THE MATERIAL, assuming that there is still a market for it.
So why are the publishers and recording studios (not to mention the movie studios) complaining, and what exactly are they complaining about? They're complaining because they can no longer recoup their costs in the same amount of time that they used to, and that running up their advertising and promotion tab does not deliver the corresponding boost in sales that it once did.
To illustrate, in the movie industry, the rule of thumb is that a movie must gross 3 times its production cost at the box office, IN ORDER TO BREAK EVEN. If your movie cost $100 to make (not uncommon, if it is a large production with stars and directors pulling in $10-$15 million a piece, with special effects), P&A (prints and advertising) at $40-60 million, it will need to take in AT LEAST $300 at the box office to be considered a success (because the studios only get half of the box office - the theatres get the other half, nominally anyways.) Break-even is good because there's always the ancillary markets (paytv/cable/satellite/DVD/syndication) to deliver future profits.
So what is the solution to this? The model needs to change - either the market for their product isn't as big as they think it is (meaning they need to scale back promotions, increase per-unit pricing), or they need to relax their timeframe on ROI (return on investment) - something that is hard to do in cases where the producers are using borrowed money to to push an act, or sell a movie, they need to lower per-unit pricing in order to expand the market (I have no idea what the demand and supply curves are like for music/movies/books), and compete against alternatives, OR they need to find new ways of repackaging and reselling content to different markets.
To illustrate one way of selling old material, look at Baen Books. There's a lot of old paperbacks that came out years ago that Baen is repackaging into "Mega Book" or omnibus editions. Not only is Baen filling a market need (because a lot of this material has long since gone out of print), but they are providing e-book editions in addition to the dead-tree hardcover editions. The authors of these works got paid a long time ago, and now, they're getting paid again.
Contrast this to record companies, who agressively push new acts (which are expensive, bland, and short-lived), when they're sitting on a gold mine of existing material that can be repackaged (compilations, licensing), for both CD, radio (I cannot, for the life of me, understand why record companies didn't jump on the idea of broadcasting theme stations using streaming media, and start cutting the radio stations out of the loop), and digital (ie, iTunes.) This is bizzare, because record companies made money hand over fist repackaging their libraries first for tape during the transition from 33rpms to LP records, LPs to cassette tape, and cassette tape to CDs. Why stop now?
Going back to the house labor vs. materials argument, hiring somebody to build a house for you is completely different from buying a mass-produced good. You're not dealing on a one-to-one basis with the laborer, but buying something someone produced in mass quantities, speculatively relying on the market to buy them. If more goods are produced than there is want, is it stealing when people decide not to buy those goods at the same prices that the prior buyers
They have to be held accountable when they fuck up, or intentionall injure someone in some way.
This is the main argument that many lawyers have given for not forcing losing plaintiffs to compensate the defendant for the cost of the trial. The unfortunate result of this is a lottery mentality - if you have a case, no matter how flimsy it is, you can buy a lotto ticket to potential riches if you sue someone with pockets that are deep enough.
One consequence of this is that many businesses are so afraid of getting sued, they won't give honest references (ie, Joe is an abusive worker), which means that when you hire Joe, you and your employees suffer. Another real cost is the number of jurors* that need to be called up to fill all of the civil cases (in some areas, were talking a 3-4 month backlog until you get your first hearing) - that's a lot of productivity lost, not to mention all of the legitimate cases that have to queue for the limited court space.
I agree with you that capping awards is meaningless (especially when the lawyer is helping themselves to a giant portion of the award) - but instead of trying to identify frivolous lawsuits after the fact (good luck defining what is frivolous - if they lose, is it frivolous? what if they win?). Instead of trying to have a trial on the trial, what we need to do is to institute (re-institute?) loser pays. That way, if you're unsure of your case, you WON'T waste time in the courtroom, making things up as you go along (like SCO.)
*I know you can get a bench trial. But for lotto-style cases, you go for a stacked jury which can be swayed to produce really bizzare awards, especially against larger companies. I'm no supporter of corporate greed, but having sat through a 4-week trial (paid $5 a day, and not drawing salary during the duration) I'm very much against people filing lotto lawsuits trying for settlements.
I just wonder if you would be thinking "who is this guy", checking to make sure your shooter is handy. I wouldn't like to think like that myself.
Why not? I live in the city, and believe me, you want to maintain situational awareness at all times, ESPECIALLY if you're not armed. Instead of keeping your gunhand and holster clear (since you're not armed), you'd look for available escape routes, and maybe decide you'd rather cross the street than walk past that groups of punks spoiling for some entertainment.
Or, if some guy shows up at your doorstep at 10pm at night - is he just looking for a phone (because he left his cell at home), or is he looking for a target?
The police cannot protect you - they protect society, not necessarily individuals. This is a reasonable thing - elsewise you'd have lawsuits every time the police failed to show up quickly enough to prevent injury/death after a 911 call. In parts of the US, the authorities believe that the armed citizen is the best deterrent to crime and mayhem. In other parts, the authorities believe that citizens are too dangerous to entrust firearms to, and that force of any kind fails the test of a "civilized" society, and that you, as a lowly citizen, must refrain from doing anything to antagonize your attacker, and entrust all actions relating to protecting yourself and the community to authorized law enforcement.
In any case, being armed is a personal choice, and only part of a larger strategy for safeguarding your home. If you're interested in reading a good article that lays everything out (ie, secure the house, add an alarm, a dog, and if you feel you can handle it, a gun), Massad Ayoob is the man.
Basis HD is 10.95 a month.
Wait. Are you telling me I can get hidef programming for $11 a month, after I buy a receiver and a dish? Or do I have to subscribe to the regular package on top of that?
Seems to me that it would be a symbiotic relationship. Tivo gets to save on bandwidth costs by putting "warehouse" servers in the provider's network. The provider gets to tout "fast Netflix transfers" without having to pay upstream transfer costs. Both Tivo and the provider would gain (or at least hold on to) subscribers.
If they cut people off, then end-users will have to choose: keep cable, but forgo Tivo/Netflix, or switch to DSL and get rid of cable. If I were a DSL provider, I'd be offering promo packages to capture cable subscribers that were put into that position - boosting my own subscriber numbers, and putting the hurt on my competition (the local cable monopoly.)
Personally, I'd drop cable - you get a fat pipe down, but it doesn't mean much if you're not allowed to max it out. And who actually watches all 500 channels of programming anyways? Not anyone employed that I know of, unless their job is to watch TV... This has been Tivo's biggest achilles' heel - the dependence on cable/satellite timeshifting for new customers. They've added the home media option, and now Netflix - which helps to break that dependence somewhat.
I'm watching less and less live TV these days - I've got 170 movies in my Netflix queue, about half of them TV series (ie, Stargate SG-1, Mr. Bean, Foyle's War), and the other half divided between documentaries (History Channel, Discover Channel, etc.) and movies.
If Tivo is smart, they'll keep building on this in order to offer other types of programming, and hopefully fight their way back into a position where the cable companies have to deal with them as equals, instead of trying to run them out of town with their own OEM DVRs.
Disclaimer - I own Tivo stock, but I don't have a Tivo unit. I'll be getting my Netflix movies the regular way - via mail.
Why should US tax payers subsidize scientific research for other countries to use? If the research is published on teh internet then what mechnisms are going to be put in place to ensure its protection?
Um, US tax payers subsidize scientific research for others to use... NOW. That's the whole idea of publication - you publish your results, so EVERYBODY can look at, reproduce, and weigh in. If this proposal disenfranchises the journals (expensive as they are), then the only people who lose are the journals - other countries can pay for the journals NOW, and the taxpayers don't get a cent of that (except for the taxes that are paid by the journals - the ones that are based in the US, at least.)
So the fiscal impact on US tax-payers is essentially nil - the system works the same way from the perspective of the collective US pocketbook. The only change is that it becomes easier to exchange ideas - especially for institutions that are strapped for cash, many of them state schools here in the US. At UCLA, they've had to cut down on the number of journal subscriptions, which makes it harder to keep on top of what is going on in your given field. If we can make sure that NIH funded research is easily searchable, for free, we can devote some of those funds to other things, like keeping the lights on.
One extension I've been looking for would allow you to search your open windows and tabs. I have the sessionsaver extension installed, so when I fire up FireFox, it brings up every window and tab that I had open during my last session. Over time, this means I have dozens of windows, and hundreds of tabs open, and it's a pain to click on every tab, looking for a bit of info that I've seen before.
Anyone know if such an extension exists, or what you'd have to do to write one like it?
The problem with paper gift certs is that, like coupons, they can be counterfieited fairly easily. If you start tracking gift certs via a centralized database, then you essentially have the same system that they have in place for stored value cards. This is a big issue for larger retailers, because having a stored value card system that can be deployed over an existing card-processing infrastructure saves them money, and allows for faster reconciling of accounts. It also saves them from having to give out cash in change for the remainder of the balance on a paper gift certificate.
Eventually we will have a helium shortage.
This is why the US has a Strategic Helium Reserve (and has had one, for almost 80 yrs, I think). Remember to tell that to your Senators and Representatives - some of them think that holding on to that helium is a stupid idea. Well, looks like it will soon become a VERY strategic material to hold on to...
There's a broad selection of musician's earplugs that preserve a select set of frequencies to aid in pitch transmission, while blocking the majority of the energy in the soundwaves.
I always keep a pair of regular hearos with me - you never know when you'll need em (for example, you end up having to spend more than a few hours servicing equipment in a noisy server room, you want to catch a nap and want to block out noise, you decide to take a trip out to the range and need hearing protection.)
The tax isn't about selling gas, it's about charging people for the services provided by the government.
Isn't that the same argument the established telecos are using to "encourage" state governments to tax VOIP?
Which state is this? In some places, you can actually get a tax credit on using alternative fuels...
Also, you can use the same types of stamping and fabrication equipment, with a few extra steps thrown in. Having them small enough to fit in a drive that can go into a 5.25 bay also helps...
Eventually they'll probably come out with smaller versions, just as they have those mini-cds and business-card sized cds today.
The reason they've been quiet about the arrests is that they're not done yet. Thankfully, there aren't any politicians who need to score brownie points with the public who are going to leak specific intel data (like they've done before with terrorist arrests). And who says Homeland Security isn't doing their job? :)
As for scientific research, I don't think knowledge is destructive. I agree that the fruits of scientific research can be very destructive (atomic weapons, bio weapons, drugs, etc.) That's why there are things like the nuclear non-proliferation treaties, and the FDA. If you think that knowledge itself is dangerous, then I guess we have a major difference of opinion
Merely testing how far you think a restriction ought to go. There are some who WOULD consider the mere posession of certain types of knowledge too dangerous for "regular people" to have.
Cars are useful though, so I don't think they should be banned. It's not like the only purpose of a car is to run someone down, that's just something that occasionally happens. For that reason, the benefits of cars outweigh the risks. That doesn't hold true for guns.
That's actually where I would disagree with you. If I understand correctly, to your mind, having guns = increased likelyhood of something going wrong. This presupposes that of the legal users of firearms, some of them will be involved in incidents where the negative consequences of having a firearm will outweigh any positive benefit, and that there really isn't any positive benefit for having a firearm, hence your argument that firearms be restricted. However, I believe that there are positive benefits for firearms training, firearms usage, and ownership (for those who choose to do so), AND I believe that even if some might misuse firearms, to restrict the rights of many in advance, for the actions of a few, is a form of control with troubling implications.
For example - I target shoot infrequently with rifle and pistol. This is a form of recreation, just the same as people shooting targets using bow and arrow (with many of the same range rules, I might add), and a sport that has a place in the Olympics, in the form of the biathlon, and distance shooting competitions. Firearms training is often taught by those with a love of sport shooting or hunting, much in the same way that hams with a love of technology and communications teach ham radio. These people shoot on a recreational basis - eliminating private ownership of firearms would deprive these individuals of an enjoyable hobby, and effectively restrict training to law enforcement and military only. This would seem to run contrary to efforts such as the Civilian Marksmanship Program, which seeks to promote youth development and civilian marksmanship skills.
I agree that if guns were completely illegal, serious criminals would still have them.
But wouldn't that include criminal organizations that tend to commit the "intra-criminal crime", that might result in innocent casualties that you alluded to earlier?
But if only criminals had guns, then merely possessing a gun would be enough to throw someone in jail. You wouldn't need to wait for them to misuse it.
But what about areas where guns are illegal right now, and yet there is gun violence (ie, Washington D.C.)? Or where guns are illegal for criminals to own in the first place (ie, convicted felons). By your argument, wouldn't the police have already descended in mass raids and arrested everyone for weapons posession?
From your argument, it sounds like you believe that guns are the only thing keeping things from descending into anarchy.
My main reasons for being "pro-gun", as it were, are:
1. Every law-abiding citizen has the right to self-defense, especially since the police have no legal responsibility to ensure or safeguard your personal safety. (This makes sense if you think about it - otherwise police departments everywhere would be buried under lawsuits for not getting to a crime on time, etc.) The JPFO has a rather interesting take on this. Mind you, the right of self defense does not necessa