Insurance premiums are based on statistical probabilities of various events happening. And rates are set accordingly, with provision for profit. But when events happen that the system doesn't prepare for (juries awarding insane amounts of money), award large amounts for dubious claims (i.e. mold in the past couple of years) It's easy to see that the insurance business will collapse if they don't adjust rates up according to these new risks imposed by the tort system.
The problem with "Stock Market losses" is that insurance companies haven't been charging enough to policy holders, instead relying on investment income. That works great, until you have a bear market, like from 2000-2003. But beyond that, it doesn't take a genius to know that the cost of every large jury award is going to be passed around to other policy holders in increased premiums.
Sure people with legitimate claims deserve compenstation, but the current system there is little illusion of fairness. It is too much like a lottery, some deserving folk get nothing, while other less than deserving get lots, and all too often the plaintiff's lawyers get a bigger cut of the award or settlement than the plaintiff.
As for the RIAA and the DMCA. Did you see the Trial Lawyers opposed to the DMCA? Of course not, it opens new legal avenues. But the DMCA has nothing to do with the RIAAs actions. I won't say that there are no bad corporations, because there are plenty, but I also don't buy the crap "tort reform will hurt the little guy", because the little guy is getting screwed now. When the RIAA can say "pay $50,000 now, or get a lawyer you can't afford and pay $150,000 if you lose", how is the legal system on the side of the little guy?
Well, I can see the trial lawyers propaganda machine has been working overtime on you.
No lawsuit crisis? We're already the laughingstock of the world in this area. Doctors walking off the job because malpractice costs have gotten too high in some states, I suppose that's a fiction, Doctors have an unlimited supply of money they can cover their premiums with. Mostly bogus mold claims are causing insurance premiums to skyrocket, and people lose their insurance over a minor claim, but that's fiction because everyone knows insurance companies have mountains of money to pay whatever claim comes there way.
"tort reform" is just the corporations' attempt to close the court house doors to the citizens.
Of course, it's always the little guy that'll get hurt right? As a little guy, I'm being hurt by high medical costs, high insurance costs, ultimately all costs are passed on to the consumer.
High-priced lawyers have already closed the courthouse doors to most citizens. If lawyers were really out to help the little guy as opposed to themselves, they'd price themselves accordingly. (apologies to the minority of lawyers who actually do good work at cut rates)
If you have one or two illegal MP3 files, you can get nailed for $50,000 by the RIAA, because they know you're not likely to be able to cover the legal costs to fight, even though you likely did nowhere near $50,000 worth of damages. Does that sound like a system protecting the little guy?
If someone stole your TV set, you can get reimbursed by your insurance company for a new one (if your deductible is low enough). Try doing that with a tape.
By your logic, if your television got stolen, or if your television was "so scratched up as to be" unviewable, then you would steal another television because you don't want to pay a "tax" on something you already own.
But I thought we were licensing the music, rather than owning the media, which is why we can't make copies and give it to our friends?
Downloading music files for tracks that you already have on CD is a gray area. You, however, are in the red area. You are download music files for tracks on CDs that WERE STOLEN FROM YOU
I would say the person who stole the tape is in the red area here, but what do I know?
The RIAA found an MP3 on my hard drive from I major recording artist, that is basically SCO source code put to music. I swear I didn't even know I had it, and they won't tell me where on my hard drive it is unless I sign an NDA. All they'll tell me is I'm in "Big Twouble".
The problem with government is it's been taken over by lawyers, rampant lawsuits and other legal activity are in their best interest.
the Association of Trial Lawyers is one of the most powerful lobbying group in Washington. And they've been pretty successful at killing off any attempt at Tort-reform.
I don't think SCO is stupid enough to actually send invoices. That could get them in legal hot water.
I doubt most companies are going to blindly roll over and pay them. If one shows up, they'll ask their Linux salesperson, or inhouse Linux geek, who will most likely tell them not to pay it.
As another poster pointed out, if you do actually receive one, send copies to the Postal inspector, and Attorney General.
Who keeps track of what Forrester and Gartner predicted in the past? It would be pretty funny to see what they predicted the world would be like now five years ago. IIRC, Gartner said that we'd all be using NT now, and Linux would be nowhere.
I think the real value in these analysts are for companies who these trends favor. For example, a company who owns a piece of digital music sales can say "Forrester says 1/3 of all music sales will be digital." This helps attract customers and investors.
This story was featured as a link from CNN, and if you follow the link from CNN (actually money.cnn.com), you can access the whole story. But if you follow the link I posted, although it's identical to the CNN link, the site won't let you get past the first page unless you subscribe.
Anyway, here is the missing section of the article from the above post:
[excerpt from The Coming Job Boom, Business 2.0 Sept 2003 follows]
Every economic forecast has its critics, of course -- particularly one so at odds with the prevailing mood about employment. The projections assume, for instance, that the baby boomers will leave the workforce at roughly the same age as their predecessors, but how do we know that they won't delay retirement to make up for recent stock market losses and depressed 401(k)s? The answer is that the trend toward early retirement is a deeply entrenched pattern established during the past four decades, and neither bull nor bear markets have made a dent in it. Even the Social Security Administration, which would love nothing more than to make the case that the retirement age will soon rise dramatically -- the better to prove its own solvency -- has been unable to find any data to support that view.
Another loud objection is that the model expects far too much growth in the battered tech sector. John Sargent, a senior policy analyst in the Commerce Department's Office of Technology Policy, says he hears that all the time. "A lot of people say, 'Are you freaking crazy? Haven't you seen what's happened in the last year and a half?'" But Sargent, an authority on economic measurement, defends the BLS numbers, calling them the "closest you get to absolute objectivity." To assume that the sector's current weakness is permanent makes no more sense than believing in 1999 that the gravy train would never end. Several studies show that where the bureau has erred, it has traditionally underestimated demand for tech.
The tech sector usually leads the economy during periods of employment growth, and it's not clear what force would prevent it from doing so during the next bounce. Some skeptics argue that the culprit might be technological progress itself. They point out that a considerable amount of brainpower at software companies is now aimed at automating business data centers and, in effect, putting hordes of gainfully employed IT workers out on the street. IBM (IBM) calls the effort "on-demand" or "utility" computing. Oracle (ORCL), typically, calls it nothing but boasts that it has developed software that could soon make database administrators as obsolete as typesetters.
Not likely. Even if such breakthroughs ever made the leap from PowerPoint presentation to reality -- and they haven't yet -- they probably wouldn't shrink demand for tech overall. That's not how progress works. Whenever new technology eliminates less sophisticated jobs, it tends to create higher-level positions elsewhere. Cathleen Barton, U.S. education manager at Intel, points out that in 21 years of steady improvements in equipment and processes, Intel's workforce has only grown. "There's always the argument that the more technology you put in, the fewer and less-skilled workers you will need," she says. "But that's just not the case." In 1982, for example, Intel had about 20,000 U.S. employees, and an entry-level plant operator needed only a high-school education. That worker's skills would be obsolete today, it's true. But in its current 49,000-person U.S. workforce, Intel employs far more plant technicians than it did two decades ago. The difference is that entry-level applicants now need at least a two-year degree in applied science to handle the job.
If smarter software and increased automation won't derail a coming surge in demand for skilled American workers, how about competition from cheaper workers abroad? The double-digit growth in outsourcing of service jobs to low-wage countries, particularly India, has spawned more than its share of hand-wringing in the press and protectionist brimsto
My company tried outsourcing to India. We had trouble attracting truly qualified people, we had a hard time retaining the people we did attract, and at one point even though we supposedly had a dozen people on the payroll, it seemed like there were only 3 doing the actual work. It seems that India is experiencing a job boom similar to what we saw at the height of the dot-com boom. That means finding and keeping good workers will be a problem, and their pay will rise, so their competative advantage will disappear.
At any rate, as many economists point out, a job created in India does not necesarily equal a job lost here. Jobs that go overseas are jobs that have become commoditized, meaning it's relatively easy to find workers to do that particular. In the meantime the US has an innovation economy, meaning we are busy creating the next big while we are shipping the work for the last big thing abroad. The problem is, most of us can't see the next big thing, all we see are jobs disappearing because the economy hasn't really taken off yet, and we hear about jobs going to India.
If you look at the data, we have been shipping tech jobs overseas at a fairly steady rate for the past decade. It's not a trend that just started in 2001 when the recession hit, we just didn't care because jobs were also plentiful here. But recessions always destroy jobs, people always whine and look for a culprit, and things always improve.
Business 2.0 magazine is running an interesting article called The Coming Job Boom. Basically, because the baby boomers are getting ready to start retiring, and there just aren't enough workers to replace them, there is impending skills shortage similar that what occured in 1999/2000 just around the corner. According to the article, the article states that this will occur even if the US GDP growth rate is only 3% annually. (Latest reading is 3.1% BTW). Overseas outsourcing, importing workers, and people delaying retirement will not be enough to prevent this crunch. It claims the biggest shortages will be in tech, and has all kinds of data to back up these claims. We should start seeing this around 2005.
This is not the first article I've seen that makes this claim. Its just that this kind of article is not in vogue in the current environment. You have to dig through all kinds of doom and gloom about jobs lost overseas to find them.
The problem is independant webcasters threaten the music industry's control over music. Right now, the industry mostly controls what gets played on radio and what doesn't through their whole payola setup.
With Radio there are huge barriers to entry. With netcasters there isn't, so you can see a proliferation of independant-minded netcasters who play what they want, and aren't necessarily interested in taking money from so-called "indies", in exchange for getting certain songs played.
So the industry can't control what they play, so the danger is they could gain significant audience and start creating major stars on their own without the industry (gasp!). This would be the end for the music industry as we know it since artists will no longer have to sign their life away to the industry fatcats to become stars.
Obviously royalties are due, but they are deliberatly set unfairly (on a per audience member basis) compared to broadcast radio, to put most of the netcasters out of business,
but the SEC who's job is, presumably , to investigate this kind of thing is doing nothing.
How do you know they aren't/won't? They don't publically announce everything they are doing. And they won't announce charges based solely on an article in a trade rag. It takes time to build a case.
The Martha Stewart investigation took almost a year
I have already paid for your Linux license, yet I have erroniously received another invoice.
After some investigation, I think I figured out the mix up. Due to contractual obligations, I had to send the payment secretly. It's in a white unmarked envelope with no return address. Due to the circumstances, I was forced to send cash against the advice of the US postal service. Still I trust that it arrived safely. If you have any doubts, my accountant, whose name I cannot reveal, will vouch for me. He used to teach at MIT so his credibility is obviously impeccable.
Now that we've straightened out this matter, I will discard this invoice.
Also, if you are being attacked by dinosaurs, and you sit down at a computer running Unix, you will figure out the proper sequence of programs and commands to put the dinos back in their cages.
In the same movie, I learned that Unix has a 3D user interface
Just wanted to point out to the world that TV License paying Brits like myself pay for the BBC.
They also earn money by selling their programs to foreign stations, and I'm sure DVD and VHS sales of programs.
So it's not like we don't help pay for it;-)
Also, it's refreshing to see a company be happier to let people enjoy it's IP than to be obsessed with milking the consumer for every penny it can.
I remember back in the 80's, my local PBS station dropped Dr. Who. The reason given was that the BBC had started charging too much for the series. So I guess the BBC is not entirely immune to this.
1) When hacking into any computer system, the system will tell you that you are in by flashing "ACCESS GRANTED" or something similar in HUGE letters across your screen.
2) Any technical problem can be solved by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow (Dr. Who)
3) Any humanoid or machine that is devoid of emotion will always somehow develop emotion.
4) If you travel to a distant planet that you've never been to, (IE Dagobah) to see someone you've never met (Yoda), you will manage to land in just the right place. (Star Wars and others)
5) All planets other then Earth have just one climate type (Hoth - Ice, Tatooine - Desert, Dagobah - Swamp) (Star Wars)
6) Even if you don't have a protocol droid, you can communicate with an Alien slimeball in English, and he will understand you, and likewise you will understand his language. (Star Wars)
7) Space Ships can travel planet to planet and can easily escape gravity, and never have to worry about burning up upon reentry.
8) No matter unhumanlike your species, you will find Earth women attractive.
This is just a ploy to get us to buy more CD-Rs. The key to long CDR life is proper storage and handling.
For instance,
If you will be storing your CDRs in the hot sun, be sure to apply a layer of SPF 40 sunscreen.
If you will be using them as frisbees, be careful not to get fingerprints on the unlabeled side.
similarly, if they will be doubling as coasters, be sure the unlabeled side is down so that the coffee rings only form on the labeled side.
Sandpaper makes a poor choice of material for storage sleeve, unless the sandpaper has previously been use in a sanding operation.
If your CDR warps, use a hot iron to flatten it before attempting to use it. If there's one thing that's bad for a CDR, its spinning a warped disc at high velocity!
If you follow these simple steps, your CDR should last virtually forever. In next weeks lesson, we shall see how to protect the DATA on those discs.
Slashdot Mirror
Insurance premiums are based on statistical probabilities of various events happening. And rates are set accordingly, with provision for profit. But when events happen that the system doesn't prepare for (juries awarding insane amounts of money), award large amounts for dubious claims (i.e. mold in the past couple of years) It's easy to see that the insurance business will collapse if they don't adjust rates up according to these new risks imposed by the tort system.
The problem with "Stock Market losses" is that insurance companies haven't been charging enough to policy holders, instead relying on investment income. That works great, until you have a bear market, like from 2000-2003. But beyond that, it doesn't take a genius to know that the cost of every large jury award is going to be passed around to other policy holders in increased premiums.
Sure people with legitimate claims deserve compenstation, but the current system there is little illusion of fairness. It is too much like a lottery, some deserving folk get nothing, while other less than deserving get lots, and all too often the plaintiff's lawyers get a bigger cut of the award or settlement than the plaintiff.
As for the RIAA and the DMCA. Did you see the Trial Lawyers opposed to the DMCA? Of course not, it opens new legal avenues. But the DMCA has nothing to do with the RIAAs actions. I won't say that there are no bad corporations, because there are plenty, but I also don't buy the crap "tort reform will hurt the little guy", because the little guy is getting screwed now. When the RIAA can say "pay $50,000 now, or get a lawyer you can't afford and pay $150,000 if you lose", how is the legal system on the side of the little guy?
Well, I can see the trial lawyers propaganda machine has been working overtime on you.
No lawsuit crisis? We're already the laughingstock of the world in this area. Doctors walking off the job because malpractice costs have gotten too high in some states, I suppose that's a fiction, Doctors have an unlimited supply of money they can cover their premiums with. Mostly bogus mold claims are causing insurance premiums to skyrocket, and people lose their insurance over a minor claim, but that's fiction because everyone knows insurance companies have mountains of money to pay whatever claim comes there way.
"tort reform" is just the corporations' attempt to close the court house doors to the citizens.Of course, it's always the little guy that'll get hurt right? As a little guy, I'm being hurt by high medical costs, high insurance costs, ultimately all costs are passed on to the consumer.
High-priced lawyers have already closed the courthouse doors to most citizens. If lawyers were really out to help the little guy as opposed to themselves, they'd price themselves accordingly. (apologies to the minority of lawyers who actually do good work at cut rates)
If you have one or two illegal MP3 files, you can get nailed for $50,000 by the RIAA, because they know you're not likely to be able to cover the legal costs to fight, even though you likely did nowhere near $50,000 worth of damages. Does that sound like a system protecting the little guy?
If someone stole your TV set, you can get reimbursed by your insurance company for a new one (if your deductible is low enough). Try doing that with a tape.
But I thought we were licensing the music, rather than owning the media, which is why we can't make copies and give it to our friends?
Downloading music files for tracks that you already have on CD is a gray area. You, however, are in the red area. You are download music files for tracks on CDs that WERE STOLEN FROM YOUI would say the person who stole the tape is in the red area here, but what do I know?
The RIAA found an MP3 on my hard drive from I major recording artist, that is basically SCO source code put to music. I swear I didn't even know I had it, and they won't tell me where on my hard drive it is unless I sign an NDA. All they'll tell me is I'm in "Big Twouble".
Anyone have any idea how much money I'll owe?
The problem with government is it's been taken over by lawyers, rampant lawsuits and other legal
activity are in their best interest.
the Association of Trial Lawyers is one of the most powerful lobbying group in Washington. And they've been pretty successful at killing off any attempt at Tort-reform.
I don't think SCO is stupid enough to actually send invoices. That could get them in legal hot water.
I doubt most companies are going to blindly roll over and pay them. If one shows up, they'll ask their Linux salesperson, or inhouse Linux geek, who will most likely tell them not to pay it.
As another poster pointed out, if you do actually receive one, send copies to the Postal inspector, and Attorney General.
Wine 1.0
The difference now is IT spending has been cut all over the place compared to the late 90s.
Back then, few questioned spending on MS-mandated upgrades. Now I think they would be much harder to swallow, and there could be some real backlash.
Pretty much.
Who keeps track of what Forrester and Gartner predicted in the past? It would be pretty funny to see what they predicted the world would be like now five years ago. IIRC, Gartner said that we'd all be using NT now, and Linux would be nowhere.
I think the real value in these analysts are for companies who these trends favor. For example, a company who owns a piece of digital music sales can say "Forrester says 1/3 of all music sales will be digital." This helps attract customers and investors.
This story was featured as a link from CNN, and if you follow the link from CNN (actually money.cnn.com), you can access the whole story. But if you follow the link I posted, although it's identical to the CNN link, the site won't let you get past the first page unless you subscribe.
Anyway, here is the missing section of the article from the above post:
[excerpt from The Coming Job Boom, Business 2.0 Sept 2003 follows]
Every economic forecast has its critics, of course -- particularly one so at odds with the prevailing mood about employment. The projections assume, for instance, that the baby boomers will leave the workforce at roughly the same age as their predecessors, but how do we know that they won't delay retirement to make up for recent stock market losses and depressed 401(k)s? The answer is that the trend toward early retirement is a deeply entrenched pattern established during the past four decades, and neither bull nor bear markets have made a dent in it. Even the Social Security Administration, which would love nothing more than to make the case that the retirement age will soon rise dramatically -- the better to prove its own solvency -- has been unable to find any data to support that view.
Another loud objection is that the model expects far too much growth in the battered tech sector. John Sargent, a senior policy analyst in the Commerce Department's Office of Technology Policy, says he hears that all the time. "A lot of people say, 'Are you freaking crazy? Haven't you seen what's happened in the last year and a half?'" But Sargent, an authority on economic measurement, defends the BLS numbers, calling them the "closest you get to absolute objectivity." To assume that the sector's current weakness is permanent makes no more sense than believing in 1999 that the gravy train would never end. Several studies show that where the bureau has erred, it has traditionally underestimated demand for tech.
The tech sector usually leads the economy during periods of employment growth, and it's not clear what force would prevent it from doing so during the next bounce. Some skeptics argue that the culprit might be technological progress itself. They point out that a considerable amount of brainpower at software companies is now aimed at automating business data centers and, in effect, putting hordes of gainfully employed IT workers out on the street. IBM (IBM) calls the effort "on-demand" or "utility" computing. Oracle (ORCL), typically, calls it nothing but boasts that it has developed software that could soon make database administrators as obsolete as typesetters.
Not likely. Even if such breakthroughs ever made the leap from PowerPoint presentation to reality -- and they haven't yet -- they probably wouldn't shrink demand for tech overall. That's not how progress works. Whenever new technology eliminates less sophisticated jobs, it tends to create higher-level positions elsewhere. Cathleen Barton, U.S. education manager at Intel, points out that in 21 years of steady improvements in equipment and processes, Intel's workforce has only grown. "There's always the argument that the more technology you put in, the fewer and less-skilled workers you will need," she says. "But that's just not the case." In 1982, for example, Intel had about 20,000 U.S. employees, and an entry-level plant operator needed only a high-school education. That worker's skills would be obsolete today, it's true. But in its current 49,000-person U.S. workforce, Intel employs far more plant technicians than it did two decades ago. The difference is that entry-level applicants now need at least a two-year degree in applied science to handle the job.
If smarter software and increased automation won't derail a coming surge in demand for skilled American workers, how about competition from cheaper workers abroad? The double-digit growth in outsourcing of service jobs to low-wage countries, particularly India, has spawned more than its share of hand-wringing in the press and protectionist brimsto
But Dell customer support is American! I saw it for myself in all those "intern" ads!
Just wanted to say.. It's always great to see a post from someone who actually has a clue about economics on ./
My company tried outsourcing to India. We had trouble attracting truly qualified people, we had a hard time retaining the people we did attract, and at one point even though we supposedly had a dozen people on the payroll, it seemed like there were only 3 doing the actual work. It seems that India is experiencing a job boom similar to what we saw at the height of the dot-com boom. That means finding and keeping good workers will be a problem, and their pay will rise, so their competative advantage will disappear.
At any rate, as many economists point out, a job created in India does not necesarily equal a job lost here. Jobs that go overseas are jobs that have become commoditized, meaning it's relatively easy to find workers to do that particular. In the meantime the US has an innovation economy, meaning we are busy creating the next big while we are shipping the work for the last big thing abroad. The problem is, most of us can't see the next big thing, all we see are jobs disappearing because the economy hasn't really taken off yet, and we hear about jobs going to India.
If you look at the data, we have been shipping tech jobs overseas at a fairly steady rate for the past decade. It's not a trend that just started in 2001 when the recession hit, we just didn't care because jobs were also plentiful here. But recessions always destroy jobs, people always whine and look for a culprit, and things always improve.
Business 2.0 magazine is running an interesting article called The Coming Job Boom. Basically, because the baby boomers are getting ready to start retiring, and there just aren't enough workers to replace them, there is impending skills shortage similar that what occured in 1999/2000 just around the corner. According to the article, the article states that this will occur even if the US GDP growth rate is only 3% annually. (Latest reading is 3.1% BTW). Overseas outsourcing, importing workers, and people delaying retirement will not be enough to prevent this crunch. It claims the biggest shortages will be in tech, and has all kinds of data to back up these claims. We should start seeing this around 2005.
This is not the first article I've seen that makes this claim. Its just that this kind of article is not in vogue in the current environment. You have to dig through all kinds of doom and gloom about jobs lost overseas to find them.
The problem is independant webcasters threaten the music industry's control over music. Right now, the industry mostly controls what gets played on radio and what doesn't through their whole payola setup.
With Radio there are huge barriers to entry. With netcasters there isn't, so you can see a proliferation of independant-minded netcasters who play what they want, and aren't necessarily interested in taking money from so-called "indies", in exchange for getting certain songs played.
So the industry can't control what they play, so the danger is they could gain significant audience and start creating major stars on their own without the industry (gasp!). This would be the end for the music industry as we know it since artists will no longer have to sign their life away to the industry fatcats to become stars.
Obviously royalties are due, but they are deliberatly set unfairly (on a per audience member basis) compared to broadcast radio, to put most of the netcasters out of business,
How do you know they aren't/won't? They don't publically announce everything they are doing. And they won't announce charges based solely on an article in a trade rag. It takes time to build a case.
The Martha Stewart investigation took almost a year
But, how would SCO know to take me off their "Who's naughty" list unless they knew who I was? ;-)
Dear SCO,
I have already paid for your Linux license, yet I have erroniously received another invoice.
After some investigation, I think I figured out the mix up. Due to contractual obligations, I had to send the payment secretly. It's in a white unmarked envelope with no return address. Due to the circumstances, I was forced to send cash against the advice of the US postal service. Still I trust that it arrived safely. If you have any doubts, my accountant, whose name I cannot reveal, will vouch for me. He used to teach at MIT so his credibility is obviously impeccable.
Now that we've straightened out this matter, I will discard this invoice.
Thank you,
The side effects disclaimer at the end of headache medication ad:
"Side effects were generally mild, and include headache...."
True, but in the movies, ships never slow very much when approaching a planet either, they simply zoom towards the planet, nose first.
In the same movie, I learned that Unix has a 3D user interface
They also earn money by selling their programs to foreign stations, and I'm sure DVD and VHS sales of programs.
So it's not like we don't help pay for it ;-)
Also, it's refreshing to see a company be happier to let people enjoy it's IP than to be obsessed with milking the consumer for every penny it can.I remember back in the 80's, my local PBS station dropped Dr. Who. The reason given was that the BBC had started charging too much for the series. So I guess the BBC is not entirely immune to this.
Things I learned by watching SCI-FI
1) When hacking into any computer system, the system will tell you that you are in by flashing "ACCESS GRANTED" or something similar in HUGE letters across your screen.
2) Any technical problem can be solved by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow (Dr. Who)
3) Any humanoid or machine that is devoid of emotion will always somehow develop emotion.
4) If you travel to a distant planet that you've never been to, (IE Dagobah) to see someone you've never met (Yoda), you will manage to land in just the right place. (Star Wars and others)
5) All planets other then Earth have just one climate type (Hoth - Ice, Tatooine - Desert, Dagobah - Swamp) (Star Wars)
6) Even if you don't have a protocol droid, you can communicate with an Alien slimeball in English, and he will understand you, and likewise you will understand his language. (Star Wars)
7) Space Ships can travel planet to planet and can easily escape gravity, and never have to worry about burning up upon reentry.
8) No matter unhumanlike your species, you will find Earth women attractive.
This is just a ploy to get us to buy more CD-Rs. The key to long CDR life is proper storage and
handling.
For instance,
If you will be storing your CDRs in the hot sun, be sure to apply a layer of SPF 40 sunscreen.
If you will be using them as frisbees, be careful not to get fingerprints on the unlabeled side.
similarly, if they will be doubling as coasters, be sure the unlabeled side is down so that the coffee rings only form on the labeled side.
Sandpaper makes a poor choice of material for storage sleeve, unless the sandpaper has previously been use in a sanding operation.
If your CDR warps, use a hot iron to flatten it before attempting to use it. If there's one thing that's bad for a CDR, its spinning a warped disc at high velocity!
If you follow these simple steps, your CDR should last virtually forever. In next weeks lesson, we shall see how to protect the DATA on those discs.