The sources include links to legal scholars make the case that corporate law requires shareholder equity to be the primary corporate duty, as well as to those that argue for ethics to be considered as well.
Exactly. And the first doctor who tries to play a video of an MRI scan or somesuch, and has the resolution downgraded, would be able to sue the company into oblivion (if the offending company was small like PowerDVD) or pay off his college loans immediately (if the offending company was Microsoft).
You can play an unencrypted movie wherever you want; an update of the encryption-scheme will not magicalle re-encrypt the movie. DUH! An unprotected movie does not require HDCP; HDCP has _NOTHING_ to do with this.
I don't think you read these questions the same way muslix64 did. You are incorrect, because the content industry could force future versions of PowerDVD to automatically downgrade the video quality of any unencrypted video it played. This would be a "Hollywood counterattack" that does not re-encrypt the video like you assumed. Likewise, because an unprotected movie does not require HDCP, Microsoft could force all video played on its operating system to be downgraded unless HDCP is enabled.
I know, neither PowerDVD nor Microsoft would ever actually do this. Even if they did, there are alternative open-source players, and alternative open-source operating systems, to which these changes would never be made. This is exactly what muslix64 says when he replies "Or you can use open-source player, like VideoLan, if a player like PowerDVD become more restrictive about playing decrypted movies."
No, but from his analogy, we are all dependent on the earth, and when it goes, everything is gone. Even the skills I got while pursuing my career will be useless.
At some level, everyone who works for someone else has to make trade-offs in their employer's interest.
For example, I personally try to buy products made locally from local retailers, or, failing that, buy products made in my country. This helps subsidize the industry of my own country, even if I could have purchased alternatives from elsewhere for less.
When making purchase decisions for my employer, I look for whatever is most reliable and cost effective. If we are confident that a supplier from country X produces a quality product, can provide support when needed, and will deliver what we want on time, my first choice is to use them over the local guy that costs more. I could never justify any other decision to my boss, and neither could he to his boss, all the way to the board of directors. If they made such a decision, and it got out, shareholders would sue.
Somewhere, deep inside the twisted corridors in Redmond, some person must have actually thought of the idea to hire third parties to edit Wikipedia. He must also have presented it to his boss (unless it was some boss who thought of the idea himself), who in turn must have ordered someone to carry out the plan.
Not many people these days think buying internationally is unethical. Still, my example shows how someone who has made personal decisions about ethics and morality can make different choices in a corporate setting.
I would love to see companies chartered as not not-for-profit but not solely for-profit, but somewhere in between. Let companies be chartered to make a product, compete in markets, and make a profit, but then let them state that they will never give dividents, instead donating all that money to save the rainforests or something.* Maybe no one would invest in them and they would die off, but maybe there would be enough people willing to invest in such a company (and buy its products) that it could compete.
* Yes, I know companies donate to charities now. However, they only do so to the extent that the PR yields a net increase in shareholder value, by law. I'm talking about companies donating more than is necessary for just PR, to causes that might not generate periodic good press releases.
Well, that's each rail gun that can fire just 10 times a day. Even if they cost $100 million each, there's little stopping the military from buying 50 of them for each coast.
(I'm ignoring whether they are practical or not, or if they cost too much, compared to alternatives. I'm just pointing out that the military can solve many limitations by throwing money at them, and no one in the government is embracing plans to limit military spending at this time.)
While waiting around until midnight at a GameStop last night for the WoW expansion, we talked a little with the employees about PS3/Wii/etc. They said that, so far, they have had TWO people return PS3s for trade in. (Not for full value return like with eBayers who were screwed, but trade in for people who bought it and didn't like it.)
This is why I do crossword puzzles. I have problems remembering words when I'm speaking; the word I want just isn't there to use. I think crossword puzzles, which I've gotten better at over the years I've been doing them, help me keep my vocabulary active and keep those synapses firing. Assuming I'm predisposed to Alhzeimer's (and I might be; one great-grandparent had it), this should help keep those particular synapses from turning to mush.
The original title of this submission, when I saw it on the firehose this morning, was something like "Democrats Want Mandatory DRM" or something similar. The poster was clearly trying to slant the article against Democrats.
The Slashdot editors correctly fixed the title, but left the submission text alone.
There's no chance that one of these three companies will fail in the hardware market this round, in the way that Sega did a few rounds ago.
But, I think there'll be a shift in the leadership, for those people who want to "rank" the leaders in the console market. The ingredients for this ranking draw on units sold, profit, and critical success, but isn't directly tied to any one of them.
My prediction for current generation: 1. Nintendo 2. Microsoft 3. Sony
For argument's sake, I'm going to claim that last generation was: 1. Sony 2. Microsoft 3. Nintendo I know, I know, Microsoft lost money on every sale, while Nintendo made a healthy profit. Nintendo, though, had trouble finding and capitalizing on breakout games, and their console had difficulty penetrating the adult market.
Now, next round, what do you think the odds are that one of these three companies will fail, or that a newcomer will push one of them out of the top three? Is the next Nokia going to "N Gage" gamers and knock off Sony? Will Nintendo's "It's the gameplay, stupid" philosophy wear out? Will Microsoft decide to stop hemorraging cash, or *gasp* manage to make a profit? Turn in 2009 to find out!
Well, yeah, that's obvious. But "fair trade" as a definition exists whether you agree on the value of "fair" or not. That's no different than the defition of "organic" in terms of produce, or of "open source" in terms of software.
You can argue that "fair trade" somehow hurts rich folks choosing to buy expensive coffee to fund those overpaid farmers in Ethiopia, or you can argue that "organic" produce is a croc because few people are ever going to be hurt by the build up of pesticides in their body, or you can argue that Microsoft software is "open source" because, if you sign your soul away, you can look at their source code. But don't try to claim that the term "fair trade" doesn't exist or have a defition, just because you disagree with its application.
Well, yeah, let's boost them to $7.50 or whatever and get everyone who works a 40 hour week above the poverty line. We agree!
I disagree that it would be better to have lots of people earn $3 an hour working away, versus fewer people earning $5.15 an hour and some people earning $0 an hour. People who can barely affording renting one room on their salary are going to be subsisting on handouts anyway, either of the charitable, government, or five-fingered kind. And the folks earning nothing have an opportunity to retrain while unemployed, compared to those who have to work two 40-hour jobs and have no chance to ever better themselves.
I design test and measurement hardware, and it is all done in PCB software based on the old English system. That implies nothing about accuracy, however; PCBs are designed in mils, 1/1000ths of an inch, which is plenty precise.
I wouldn't have any complaints about a steady transition to dual/metric; I can and must use both and translate between them for my job, as many parts are designed in metric and must have their footprints translated to English for placement.
On the other hand, I'm probably too old to want to change everything to metric all at once. Growing up with the English system, I can feel the difference between the 40s, 50s, or 60s in temperature. I can gauge distances well in inches and feet, and I have a feel for when my car is going 40, 45, or 50. Being able to do that without thought is much more comfortable that having to translate in my head to something foreign, in the same was as with a foreign language.
So start the translation by putting up kilometer markers on roads, and by teaching metric first to children. Then over time increase the use of metric as a greater percent of the population grew up with it.
"We have no Wiis in, we aren't sure when we'll get more. But we have these PS3's , wouldn't you like one of those?"
Absolutely. The employees at several stores here in Austin were trying to push the same thing on me. "Sorry, no Wii. But would you like a PS3? We have a lot of them!" They seemed so sad to not have Wii for me, and looked depressed that I wasn't interested in their "consolation prize".
(Finally got a Wii last Tuesday, tracking dates and times for UPS shipments.)
That puts it into the public domain, where it can be used by anyone, yes.
I think the parent poster wants a GPL-like requirement, so that anyone who develops a drug based on the medical advance would be forced to license their own improvements in the same way.
Just like how the GPL relies on copyright, such a system can easily be made using patents. Patent something, then grant a free license to anyone who is willing to freely license their improvments in the same way. Odds are, though, since this would allow generic drug makers to copy the drugs immediately, no pharmacutical company would bother.
I didn't see anything about wages at all in the OP post.
Did you read the article? The article summary? Do you know what fair-trade products means in terms of wages? Hint: Fair-trade products are ones where those along the supply chain are paid living wages.
Now do you see the reference to wages in the OP? Hint: It's in the subject.
As near as I can tell, the minimum wage makes my hamburgers a bit more expensive, and teenagers a bit richer.
So, without the minimum wage, poor people in the US would be as poor as they are in Ethiopia?
No, that's not what I said. A poor person in the US, because of the minimum wage, earns $10712. That represents 100 times the average national income, and I agree it would qualify as "living like a king", as you originally suggested.
Without the minimum wage, there would be competition that would keep wages above $0, of course, but the low level would be something between $0 and $5.15. How low? I don't know. But I argue that they wouldn't be earning enough to "live like a king".
This whole thing is silly, anyway. It's not possible to compare someone earning any amount of money in the US with someone paying the costs of living in Ethiopia. What can be compared is the income of the dirt poor in Ethiopia compared to their own costs of living, and that same income compared to the value of the goods they produce when they are resold in the US. In this case, paying them a little more substantially improves their standard of living, while having little effect on the final value of the goods.
Your example of the car franchises better illustrates your point, yes. I see no reason why that should be enforced by law. The spacing between car franchises should be enforced by contract between the car makers and the dealers, if necessary at all.
$0.45 per song sounds high, but if you think about all that they take care of (advertising, risk of producing your album (which if it's your first could be a total loser bringing in no money), etc.), it doesn't sound too rediculous.
As I understand it, the production and advertising costs are usually recouped from the artists before they get a cut. In other words, those costs come out of the artists' $0.25, not out of the label's $0.45.
They own the copyright to all code they accept into the source, so they can change it in any way they want at any time. They could change it to BSD, or close the source entirely, if they so wish, and the original authors have no authority to stop them because the copyright was assigned to MySQL, not retained by those authors.*
* This assumes there was no agreement between the author and MySQL at the time the copyright was assigned, which specified that the code could only ever be licensed under GPL vX. If that is the case, the original author can claim breach of contract and sue to have his or her code pulled from the product. If the author assigned his or her code to MySQL with no strings, MySQL can use it as they wish.
Because regulated capitalism includes minimum wage guarantees. The OP was claiming that capitalism was a fairer system that capitalism with minimum wage guarantees, and thus that capitalism was fairer that regulated capitalism. I countered that point.
But, in several states, parts of the licensing exam ask stuff like "how do you clean a tophat?" Clearly this is just a gratuitous barrier that would be better imposed by the market.
Actually, I'm incredibly happy that the government also regulates business speech to protect against fraud. I don't like people claiming that they are selling a product or providing a service that they cannot perform, and I am not an expert in all fields to properly judge by myself.
A poor person in the US would live like a king in Ethiopia.
Yes, and that is precisely because the US has a minimum wage - the exact kind of fair price regulation that is story is about. Thanks for proving my point!
why do you feel the need to mention it in an article where Wal-Mart is doing something good?
If that had not been included, I would have at least considered the possibility that the submitter was a Wal-Mart shill. With that line, I knew it was a third-party genuinely interested in the story.
Slashdot Mirror
There's still research going into Integrated Drive Electronics? I thought SATA had replaced that.
/joking. Seriously, throwing an acronym into the summary doesn't make it any more clear.
Here's a good article on the theories behind corporate law and duty. In fact, it makes a case that the law is more ambiguous that I stated.
e =2238&context=expresso
http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl
The sources include links to legal scholars make the case that corporate law requires shareholder equity to be the primary corporate duty, as well as to those that argue for ethics to be considered as well.
Exactly. And the first doctor who tries to play a video of an MRI scan or somesuch, and has the resolution downgraded, would be able to sue the company into oblivion (if the offending company was small like PowerDVD) or pay off his college loans immediately (if the offending company was Microsoft).
You can play an unencrypted movie wherever you want; an update of the encryption-scheme will not magicalle re-encrypt the movie. DUH!
An unprotected movie does not require HDCP; HDCP has _NOTHING_ to do with this.
I don't think you read these questions the same way muslix64 did. You are incorrect, because the content industry could force future versions of PowerDVD to automatically downgrade the video quality of any unencrypted video it played. This would be a "Hollywood counterattack" that does not re-encrypt the video like you assumed. Likewise, because an unprotected movie does not require HDCP, Microsoft could force all video played on its operating system to be downgraded unless HDCP is enabled.
I know, neither PowerDVD nor Microsoft would ever actually do this. Even if they did, there are alternative open-source players, and alternative open-source operating systems, to which these changes would never be made. This is exactly what muslix64 says when he replies "Or you can use open-source player, like VideoLan, if a player like PowerDVD become more restrictive about playing decrypted movies."
Show my a state that allows for-profit corporations to incorporate without requiring that they place shareholder equity as their number one goal.
No, but from his analogy, we are all dependent on the earth, and when it goes, everything is gone. Even the skills I got while pursuing my career will be useless.
At some level, everyone who works for someone else has to make trade-offs in their employer's interest.
For example, I personally try to buy products made locally from local retailers, or, failing that, buy products made in my country. This helps subsidize the industry of my own country, even if I could have purchased alternatives from elsewhere for less.
When making purchase decisions for my employer, I look for whatever is most reliable and cost effective. If we are confident that a supplier from country X produces a quality product, can provide support when needed, and will deliver what we want on time, my first choice is to use them over the local guy that costs more. I could never justify any other decision to my boss, and neither could he to his boss, all the way to the board of directors. If they made such a decision, and it got out, shareholders would sue.
Somewhere, deep inside the twisted corridors in Redmond, some person must have actually thought of the idea to hire third parties to edit Wikipedia. He must also have presented it to his boss (unless it was some boss who thought of the idea himself), who in turn must have ordered someone to carry out the plan.
Not many people these days think buying internationally is unethical. Still, my example shows how someone who has made personal decisions about ethics and morality can make different choices in a corporate setting.
I would love to see companies chartered as not not-for-profit but not solely for-profit, but somewhere in between. Let companies be chartered to make a product, compete in markets, and make a profit, but then let them state that they will never give dividents, instead donating all that money to save the rainforests or something.* Maybe no one would invest in them and they would die off, but maybe there would be enough people willing to invest in such a company (and buy its products) that it could compete.
* Yes, I know companies donate to charities now. However, they only do so to the extent that the PR yields a net increase in shareholder value, by law. I'm talking about companies donating more than is necessary for just PR, to causes that might not generate periodic good press releases.
Well, that's each rail gun that can fire just 10 times a day. Even if they cost $100 million each, there's little stopping the military from buying 50 of them for each coast.
(I'm ignoring whether they are practical or not, or if they cost too much, compared to alternatives. I'm just pointing out that the military can solve many limitations by throwing money at them, and no one in the government is embracing plans to limit military spending at this time.)
While waiting around until midnight at a GameStop last night for the WoW expansion, we talked a little with the employees about PS3/Wii/etc. They said that, so far, they have had TWO people return PS3s for trade in. (Not for full value return like with eBayers who were screwed, but trade in for people who bought it and didn't like it.)
Sad, that.
This is why I do crossword puzzles. I have problems remembering words when I'm speaking; the word I want just isn't there to use. I think crossword puzzles, which I've gotten better at over the years I've been doing them, help me keep my vocabulary active and keep those synapses firing. Assuming I'm predisposed to Alhzeimer's (and I might be; one great-grandparent had it), this should help keep those particular synapses from turning to mush.
The original title of this submission, when I saw it on the firehose this morning, was something like "Democrats Want Mandatory DRM" or something similar. The poster was clearly trying to slant the article against Democrats.
The Slashdot editors correctly fixed the title, but left the submission text alone.
i for one welcome our Giant Rabbit Overlords
You mean this guy, right?
(I can't believe how well this picture works with this post!)
There's no chance that one of these three companies will fail in the hardware market this round, in the way that Sega did a few rounds ago.
But, I think there'll be a shift in the leadership, for those people who want to "rank" the leaders in the console market. The ingredients for this ranking draw on units sold, profit, and critical success, but isn't directly tied to any one of them.
My prediction for current generation:
1. Nintendo
2. Microsoft
3. Sony
For argument's sake, I'm going to claim that last generation was:
1. Sony
2. Microsoft
3. Nintendo
I know, I know, Microsoft lost money on every sale, while Nintendo made a healthy profit. Nintendo, though, had trouble finding and capitalizing on breakout games, and their console had difficulty penetrating the adult market.
Now, next round, what do you think the odds are that one of these three companies will fail, or that a newcomer will push one of them out of the top three? Is the next Nokia going to "N Gage" gamers and knock off Sony? Will Nintendo's "It's the gameplay, stupid" philosophy wear out? Will Microsoft decide to stop hemorraging cash, or *gasp* manage to make a profit? Turn in 2009 to find out!
Well, yeah, that's obvious. But "fair trade" as a definition exists whether you agree on the value of "fair" or not. That's no different than the defition of "organic" in terms of produce, or of "open source" in terms of software.
You can argue that "fair trade" somehow hurts rich folks choosing to buy expensive coffee to fund those overpaid farmers in Ethiopia, or you can argue that "organic" produce is a croc because few people are ever going to be hurt by the build up of pesticides in their body, or you can argue that Microsoft software is "open source" because, if you sign your soul away, you can look at their source code. But don't try to claim that the term "fair trade" doesn't exist or have a defition, just because you disagree with its application.
Well, yeah, let's boost them to $7.50 or whatever and get everyone who works a 40 hour week above the poverty line. We agree!
I disagree that it would be better to have lots of people earn $3 an hour working away, versus fewer people earning $5.15 an hour and some people earning $0 an hour. People who can barely affording renting one room on their salary are going to be subsisting on handouts anyway, either of the charitable, government, or five-fingered kind. And the folks earning nothing have an opportunity to retrain while unemployed, compared to those who have to work two 40-hour jobs and have no chance to ever better themselves.
I design test and measurement hardware, and it is all done in PCB software based on the old English system. That implies nothing about accuracy, however; PCBs are designed in mils, 1/1000ths of an inch, which is plenty precise.
I wouldn't have any complaints about a steady transition to dual/metric; I can and must use both and translate between them for my job, as many parts are designed in metric and must have their footprints translated to English for placement.
On the other hand, I'm probably too old to want to change everything to metric all at once. Growing up with the English system, I can feel the difference between the 40s, 50s, or 60s in temperature. I can gauge distances well in inches and feet, and I have a feel for when my car is going 40, 45, or 50. Being able to do that without thought is much more comfortable that having to translate in my head to something foreign, in the same was as with a foreign language.
So start the translation by putting up kilometer markers on roads, and by teaching metric first to children. Then over time increase the use of metric as a greater percent of the population grew up with it.
"We have no Wiis in, we aren't sure when we'll get more. But we have these PS3's , wouldn't you like one of those?"
Absolutely. The employees at several stores here in Austin were trying to push the same thing on me. "Sorry, no Wii. But would you like a PS3? We have a lot of them!" They seemed so sad to not have Wii for me, and looked depressed that I wasn't interested in their "consolation prize".
(Finally got a Wii last Tuesday, tracking dates and times for UPS shipments.)
That puts it into the public domain, where it can be used by anyone, yes.
I think the parent poster wants a GPL-like requirement, so that anyone who develops a drug based on the medical advance would be forced to license their own improvements in the same way.
Just like how the GPL relies on copyright, such a system can easily be made using patents. Patent something, then grant a free license to anyone who is willing to freely license their improvments in the same way. Odds are, though, since this would allow generic drug makers to copy the drugs immediately, no pharmacutical company would bother.
I didn't see anything about wages at all in the OP post.
w age_minwagefacts
Did you read the article? The article summary? Do you know what fair-trade products means in terms of wages? Hint: Fair-trade products are ones where those along the supply chain are paid living wages.
Now do you see the reference to wages in the OP? Hint: It's in the subject.
As near as I can tell, the minimum wage makes my hamburgers a bit more expensive, and teenagers a bit richer.
That's because you only see the teenagers earning minimum wage. You didn't notice that 80% of minimum wage earners are adults age 20 or over.
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_min
So, without the minimum wage, poor people in the US would be as poor as they are in Ethiopia?
No, that's not what I said. A poor person in the US, because of the minimum wage, earns $10712. That represents 100 times the average national income, and I agree it would qualify as "living like a king", as you originally suggested.
Without the minimum wage, there would be competition that would keep wages above $0, of course, but the low level would be something between $0 and $5.15. How low? I don't know. But I argue that they wouldn't be earning enough to "live like a king".
This whole thing is silly, anyway. It's not possible to compare someone earning any amount of money in the US with someone paying the costs of living in Ethiopia. What can be compared is the income of the dirt poor in Ethiopia compared to their own costs of living, and that same income compared to the value of the goods they produce when they are resold in the US. In this case, paying them a little more substantially improves their standard of living, while having little effect on the final value of the goods.
Your example of the car franchises better illustrates your point, yes. I see no reason why that should be enforced by law. The spacing between car franchises should be enforced by contract between the car makers and the dealers, if necessary at all.
$0.45 per song sounds high, but if you think about all that they take care of (advertising, risk of producing your album (which if it's your first could be a total loser bringing in no money), etc.), it doesn't sound too rediculous.
As I understand it, the production and advertising costs are usually recouped from the artists before they get a cut. In other words, those costs come out of the artists' $0.25, not out of the label's $0.45.
They own the copyright to all code they accept into the source, so they can change it in any way they want at any time. They could change it to BSD, or close the source entirely, if they so wish, and the original authors have no authority to stop them because the copyright was assigned to MySQL, not retained by those authors.*
* This assumes there was no agreement between the author and MySQL at the time the copyright was assigned, which specified that the code could only ever be licensed under GPL vX. If that is the case, the original author can claim breach of contract and sue to have his or her code pulled from the product. If the author assigned his or her code to MySQL with no strings, MySQL can use it as they wish.
Because regulated capitalism includes minimum wage guarantees. The OP was claiming that capitalism was a fairer system that capitalism with minimum wage guarantees, and thus that capitalism was fairer that regulated capitalism. I countered that point.
But, in several states, parts of the licensing exam ask stuff like "how do you clean a tophat?" Clearly this is just a gratuitous barrier that would be better imposed by the market.
Actually, I'm incredibly happy that the government also regulates business speech to protect against fraud. I don't like people claiming that they are selling a product or providing a service that they cannot perform, and I am not an expert in all fields to properly judge by myself.
A poor person in the US would live like a king in Ethiopia.
Yes, and that is precisely because the US has a minimum wage - the exact kind of fair price regulation that is story is about. Thanks for proving my point!
why do you feel the need to mention it in an article where Wal-Mart is doing something good?
If that had not been included, I would have at least considered the possibility that the submitter was a Wal-Mart shill. With that line, I knew it was a third-party genuinely interested in the story.