Google finds what you want pretty well as it is. If there are ambiguities, you can use the minus character. EG: someone wants mythology about Morpheis the god of dreams they could type: Morpheus -Matrix -filesharing dreams and get what they want. If you let people rate the results of searches for relavance you will get people looking for greek mythology, people looking for Matrix stuff and people looking for the filesharing program all rating the results differently causing a war that damages the quality of the results. They are all relevant to the word Morpheus.
What google really needs is a Yahoo email style 'This is spam' button. People love to punish so they will press that button if a site is obnoxious enough to piss them off.
Protecting that button from abuse would be a challenge, but I do not think impossible. Slashdot's moderation system seems to work well.
Here is my idea:
Random mojo points ( mojo = credibility ) is distributed to a few thousand random users every day.
These users rate sites as spam like everyone else, but unlike slashdot moderators, they do not know they have been assigned mojo. Nobody knows how much mojo they have.
People can use up to half the mojo they have each day. A person given one point of mojo who rates 6 sites as spam in a day has given each site 1/12 of a spam point, and will have access to 1/2 of his remaining 1/2 of a mojo point = 1/4 mojo point the next day. This is so that the person will be encouraged to rate spam continuously, not just when they think they might have mojo. ( they aren't supposed to know they have mojo anyway )
If the person rates only one site as spam the first day, then that site gets 1/2 a spam point. The first person to rate that site as spam gets 1/4 of a mojo point for agreeing with the first person. He can use up to half that mojo tomorrow. The next person to rate that site as spam, gets nothing for agreeing with the first person, but half of the spam points the second person assigned to the site. The site accumulates spampoints, but mojo is like an olympic torch that grows half a s bright each time it is passed. The analogy holds perfectly if each person rates only one site a day, but if more than one site gets rated by each person, then it is more like a torch that gets dimmed by half and then divided up and passed to multiple runners. The total spampoints assigned to different sites as a result of giving one mojo-point to a random user is 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 +.. + 1/2^n = 2 mojo points.
Because each randomly assigned mojo-point results in 2 mojo points being assigned, forgiveness formulas can phase out 2 spampoints for every mojo-point given out randomly.
Slashdot uses metamoderation to moderate moderators. This prevents moderators from modding up GNAA and WIPO posts. My idea uses agreement to distribute mojo-points instead of metamoderation.
If you assign too many mojo-points, then you open the door for scripts that create accounts that sit and wait for mojo-points from heaven and then use those ( relatively powerful ) first hand points to attack a competitor's site's google listing.
You want to make these heaven-sent points rare, so that it is not worth the trouble of the raterbot kiddies. Mojo points should be rare enough that the number of accounts you would have to have running as scripts to get a decent number of points would make you an obvious spamraterbot purveyor, and your site could be blocked. Most times this would be unneccessary as they would be drowned out by people with legitimate accounts. It would be impossible to create scripts that gleaned mojo by rating known spam as such since known spam would not appear in google listings and so would not have new spampoints ready to be aggreed with. Scripts trading exponentially decaying mojo with each other on lists of known spam sites is harmless. If the scripts decided to rate random sites as spam, then they would not get any mojo for it
Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
on
Flavor vs. Flavour
·
· Score: 1
Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling -- Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spikingwerld.
Walking through the mall, soundwaves from different sources designed to sound like whitenoise individually converge on John Anderton's eardrums producing understandable speech.
Hello John Anderton, I see from the RFID devices in your stomach, that you ate a Super Combo Taco Deluxe combo meal with extra guacamole for breakfast. Come into CVS and buy some Pepto Bismol - CVS the only price you need.
Hello John Anderton, you've had those sneakers for a year. They're getting kinda ratty I bet. Come into SportShoe and get a new pair before someone faints.
Hello John Anderton, The RFID in your Hemmorhoid pad tells us that you are in pain. In 56% of all hemmorhoid cases the major irritant is toilet paper that is not soft enough. Let us interest you in Charmin Lotion Soft toilet paper. The soothing lotion makes wiping a joy. And it is much stronger than that no-name brand stuff that left it's RFID sticking to your ass hair..
Headline: Intercontinental Balistic Executive Launcher Loaded With Stolen Warhead By Indonesian Terrorists And Explodes Over Logan International Airport. Bill Gates Has the Ride of His Life. News at 11
If there are suckers out there that pay this then SCO gets $700 for each one. It'll probably ammount to $1400 from the two dumbest people in the world.
But SCO doesn't want the end users to pay. It would cost SCO way to much to legally harass every end user into paying for one or two licenses on one of their production boxen, and anyone with a much larger number of boxen would fight them in court.
SCO may have to offer licenses to end users for some legal reason who knows, but more to the point, they picked a number that was way too high to be worth it so that the threat is high. If they were really interested in licensing code to end users as a source of revenue, they would massively overcharge for their supposed ten lines of stolen code and sell the licenses for $5.00. They would rather have $0.25 for every copy of linux than $5.00, from a bunch of suckers that payed for a license or even $699 each from the two stupidest people on earth.
We got the A-Bomb from Einstein, If we get something equally kewl ( from a comic book standpoint ) from this guy, then I will admit that this is an Einstein quality breakthrough...
The proof is in the technological pudding. MMMM solder flavored swirl with silicon jimmies! J.E.L.L.O.
Well Chief Quimby, my go go gadjet fingerprint DNA analyser has discovered the culprit. The killer was none other than a mister E. Coli.
Penny says to the dog: That's not a person, that's a bacteria! Let's stake out the restrooms. I'll get the ladies room and you get the men's room. Watch for people who don't remember to wash their hands after using the toilet.
Hoover Dam is unique by having multiple-level release capabilities, however, only cold (12Co ), hypolimnetic waters have been released since 1936.
Source = http://biology.usgs.gov/cro/98bor-4.htm
Hypolimnetic = The layer of water in a thermally stratified lake that lies below the thermocline, is noncirculating, and remains perpetually cold ( dictionary.com )
The river temperature has also changed: The cold water that is regularly released from deep reservoirs has replaced the Colorado's naturally warm waters. Within reservoirs, the silt and sediment that once gave the Colorado its red color settle out, which increases the transparency of downstream water. These changes, compounded by water withdrawals, have put native species at a disadvantage and have benefited exotic species, particularly coldwater gamefish, such as trout.
Everybody Litter For Petey's sake! It dont matter
on
Aral Sea Disappearing
·
· Score: 1
This is not meant to be flamebait, I really think this, but whatever..
The fact is that the human race will not stop raping the environment until it's unconsious or dead. Only when the environment is so badly damaged that human beings can not reproduce fast enough to replace all those that die of starvation and cancer will the environmental impact caused by humans really let up a little.
From then on, we'll still take as much as we can which will never be enough.
Why is this true? Because we can not help ourselves. We are alive. As such we are bound to do as best for ourselves as we can, and make as many offspring as we think we can raise to adulthood. If there are some humans who would be 'altruistic' and sacrifice time/energy for the environment's sake then that is just more resources for the rest. If there are some people who would limit their own reproduction - for any reason be it altruism or merely because they want to have enough time/money for each child, they will eventually be bred out of existance by the welfare queens and deadbeat dads that make babies with them.
Watch the Jerry Springer show. That is the future, past and present of the human race. Anybody with 'dignity' is not playing the game.
A mouse does not think about the environment. It accepts it and does it's mousely best. That not optional over generations. Nature demands it of the ancestors of any lifeform. No lifeform exists on earth now whose ancestors did not live up to that mandate and none ever will.
In short we'll never stop raping Mother Nature, because she's a whore who likes it, and She's in charge.
Though now, I bet if you lived next to the stinky rotten fish and brine shrimp salt lake, you couldn't wait for it to go away. I wonder who owns the land after a lake dries up?
Hoover dam is not a vacuum cleaner
on
Aral Sea Disappearing
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A dam can only delay the flow of water, not decrease it indefinately. If the Hoover dam actually decreased the flow of water in the Colorado River, it would eventually overflow. The lake behind it can only hold so much water. What the damn does do is screw up the movements of fish and decrease the temperature of the water.
In a moving river, the water shallow and warmed by the sun, but in a large resevoir, it get's cold. The river water temp is therefore much colder downstream of the dam which screws with the wildlife.
Too bad Mexico can't sue the US over taking all the water before it gets to the ocean though...
You're 100% right about radio stations paying royalties. I looked it up on Howstuffworks.com. That sucks for say bar owners with a Juke Box. They have to pay royalties on an assumed rate of song playing ( they assume songs are played constantly ) even in the early afternoon when there are no customers shoving quarters in the machine. I looked up payola to disk jockeys too. That did happen - in fact that is where the word 'payola' came from and BMI too. Performers still don't generally get a cut of those royalties though. I think the rest of my argument holds up. It is in the performer's best interest to be played.
They would have to show a copy of the file in court that they actually downloaded from you. If they couldn't they would lose. You probably wouldn't even NEED a lawyer to defeat them.
I did what you are talking about with LimeWire when I first installed it. I noticed a setting - meant to prevent leaches - that let you set your node up to sometimes ignore requests from people who were not sharing many files. I figured some people might have that turned on, so I put a bunch of random text files in my shared folder to pump up my numbers.
files unless you have REALLY bad taste in music. The list of artists they chose to search for in order to sue makes me feel pretty safe with my collection. ( although I really don't go on those things much. I didn't happen to use file sharing for the three months prior to their round of suits ) The list had Michael Jackson among others. The RIAA is the least of the problems of people who like to listen to Michael Jackson IMO.. ( Although, I disapprove of his young boy fetish, and think his music stinks, I have to applaud him for telling the RIAA to go easy on downloaders. ) I think he must have been tipped off to the fact that his songs were being used to target downloaders and didn't want to piss off his fans. ) Most music artists realize that the file sharing services are like Radio airplay.
Back in the early days of radio, the FCC had to step in and prevent record companies from PAYING radio stations to play their songs, so that people could listen to more than the music the record companies wanted to promote. Nowadays, the radio stations do not pay a fee to broadcast copyrighted music, though they could in theory be charged for it. The record companies know it would not make business sence to charge the radio stations for free advertising.
Nowadays, most artist's contracts are set up so that they don't make much at all from CD sales. That is the record company's cut. The artists make money from concerts. The only reason the artists bother with signing with record companies is the advertising and promotion that they provide. Without this adveritsing and promotion, artists wouldn't be able to command such large crowds while on tour.
But file sharing services have the ability to promote artists without the need for a record company to send free CDs to a radio station or put up posters and ads, or produce videos for MTV2, or market songs to Clearchannel execs.
This is good for artists. File sharing services, like radio stations are a form of airplay which serves to promote the artists. It's free word of mouth adverising - the best kind.
The record companies are scared out of their pants because they realize that they won't be needed if people can download the music they want when they want it. Without the record companie's monopoly on promotion and distribution, record companies know artists won't need them. And neither will consumers, since most computers nowadays come with CD burners.
Now freely and easily tradable, songs will compete on merit. The really good ones will make their creators famous and they will get rich off their popularity by giving live performances. Music will go on, customers and artists will be happier, but the record companies will be cut out.
OH NO! They scream! File sharing is *destroying our business model* government, protect us from these thieves!
Society as a whole does not hold 'business models' sacred enough to protect, so they say that this thieving will hurt artists and consumers. Most artists and consumers know better. The fact that record companies are on the verge of becoming obsolete is obviously a good thing. But that means their continued existance, and continued profit taking - if it is allowed to continue through legislation to protect their business models - is parasitic on the music industry as a whole and decreases the amount of fundage available for making music for consumers.
The current litigations against file swappers will, if continued, only cause people to switch to more anonymous file sharing networks. As there is a tradeoff sometimes between security/privacy and speed, consumers will choose the least secure system that they think will keep safe from the RIAA. If the RIAA breaks into that one, a more secure one will be built and used.
The record companies are doomed, and they know it, unless radical legislation is put into place to protect their 'business models' i.e. their ability to keep parasitising the artists and consumers they deal with now that they are no longer needed.
Removing any identifying information makes the file practically invisible to anyone looking for a brittany spears song. They would only find your song by searching for 'foo'. If the files are searchable by any other attribute then that attribute must by definition identify the file. Basically the RIAA doesn't care if you have a legal MP3 copy of brittany shpears song Y shared if nobody can find it to download. It's security through obscurity which is good enough to make you not as nice a target as someone who shares files under their right name.
Why buy airline options *before* 9/11? The share prices for airlines fell after 9/11 if I am not mistaken which means that the price of options would have fallen after that date. Anyone buying airling options before 9/11 would have lost money after the event.
I'm sure you could then explain your reasoning, and if it was not 'I am the terrorist that pulled it off' I'm sure you would be let go. If you were a terrorist, you would be better off betting against terrorism. It would A) keep you anonymous B) voice your world goals as the country you are going after is more likely to meet your demands if they think it will prevent terrorism.
This is good for the country involved because if say Hammas bets that there will be few suicide bombings in Israel if the soldiers leave, and then Israel does something else to piss Hammas off, they will have an incentive to refrain from bombing if the soldiers have left since they will lose their money. This is like a treaty with consequences and will be a force of stability, not chaos.
I hate to reply to my own post but it occured to me. Osama bin Laden could just as easily make money by betting that if Iran is NOT bombed then there will be LOW levels of terrorism. This is a promise of peace contingent on terms, almost a treaty with the terrorists.
Except that the questions bet upon would read like: What course of action would best prevent terrorism ( 'terrorism' would be defined by the terms of the bet ) bombing Iran, or leaving it alone? Betters would place bets on the measured terrorism level contingent on bombing Iran or not.
The answer would be the results of the opinions of experts in the know, and should be effective at preventing terrorism. A terrorist group from Iran could bet that if Iran is bombed, that there will be tons of bombings in the US. If Iran was bombed, the terrorist group could make money by carrying out the bombings. However, by making the threat upfront they may prevent both the bombing of Iran and the retaliatory bombings in the US. If the goal is to prevent terrorism then wouldn't the opinion of Osama bin Laden be valuable to have? Who else would be in a better position to know how to stop him from bombing anything?
I don't think the scary things you mentioned: i.e. having a government with no feeling and totally run by the numbers is possible.
This is because the available 'numbers' would be completely dependent on the questions asked. It is impossible to settle a question like 'Which candidate, A or B would be better for our country if they were elected?" without specifying a way that 'better' is to be measured.
You could come up with a list of numerical data to go by, but those data would not faithfully capture the meaning of the word 'better'. There would be much data not taken into account by the bet settlement terms so that another bet with the same title, which candidate would be 'better' might give a different result.
Having a lot of data would be useful. It might be interesting to know which candidate the books say would be better for the S&P500 or would raise student's SAT test scores, but there would really be no way to tell which candidate would be 'better' for the stock market or 'better' for education. Only measurable data would be bettable upon which limits the answers to questions from the books to well defined ones - a good thing.
In the end, things would still be decided according to values. There would be less argument about technical details that are better understood by the books than by the general public or even the candidate. The debates would have to center on values, and on which measures are most meaningful with respect to those values. Does the country want the stock market politician or the affordable housing one? If they are opposed, then the decision is which is more important to me, the stock market or housing?
I doubt a bamboo bike would be cheap, durable or easy to fix. It would also be very expensive as making it takes much labor of a skilled craftsman. Bamboo bikes are more like a decked out and stylin' street rod than an old reliable pickup truck.
Slashdot Mirror
Vegatarianarian: One who eats nothing but Vegitarians.
Espect My Author-it-tie!
What google really needs is a Yahoo email style 'This is spam' button. People love to punish so they will press that button if a site is obnoxious enough to piss them off.
Protecting that button from abuse would be a challenge, but I do not think impossible. Slashdot's moderation system seems to work well.
Here is my idea:
Random mojo points ( mojo = credibility ) is distributed to a few thousand random users every day.
These users rate sites as spam like everyone else, but unlike slashdot moderators, they do not know they have been assigned mojo. Nobody knows how much mojo they have.
People can use up to half the mojo they have each day. A person given one point of mojo who rates 6 sites as spam in a day has given each site 1/12 of a spam point, and will have access to 1/2 of his remaining 1/2 of a mojo point = 1/4 mojo point the next day. This is so that the person will be encouraged to rate spam continuously, not just when they think they might have mojo. ( they aren't supposed to know they have mojo anyway )
If the person rates only one site as spam the first day, then that site gets 1/2 a spam point. The first person to rate that site as spam gets 1/4 of a mojo point for agreeing with the first person. He can use up to half that mojo tomorrow. The next person to rate that site as spam, gets nothing for agreeing with the first person, but half of the spam points the second person assigned to the site. The site accumulates spampoints, but mojo is like an olympic torch that grows half a s bright each time it is passed. The analogy holds perfectly if each person rates only one site a day, but if more than one site gets rated by each person, then it is more like a torch that gets dimmed by half and then divided up and passed to multiple runners. The total spampoints assigned to different sites as a result of giving one mojo-point to a random user is 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + .. + 1/2^n = 2 mojo points.
Because each randomly assigned mojo-point results in 2 mojo points being assigned, forgiveness formulas can phase out 2 spampoints for every mojo-point given out randomly.
Slashdot uses metamoderation to moderate moderators. This prevents moderators from modding up GNAA and WIPO posts. My idea uses agreement to distribute mojo-points instead of metamoderation.
If you assign too many mojo-points, then you open the door for scripts that create accounts that sit and wait for mojo-points from heaven and then use those ( relatively powerful ) first hand points to attack a competitor's site's google listing.
You want to make these heaven-sent points rare, so that it is not worth the trouble of the raterbot kiddies. Mojo points should be rare enough that the number of accounts you would have to have running as scripts to get a decent number of points would make you an obvious spamraterbot purveyor, and your site could be blocked. Most times this would be unneccessary as they would be drowned out by people with legitimate accounts. It would be impossible to create scripts that gleaned mojo by rating known spam as such since known spam would not appear in google listings and so would not have new spampoints ready to be aggreed with. Scripts trading exponentially decaying mojo with each other on lists of known spam sites is harmless. If the scripts decided to rate random sites as spam, then they would not get any mojo for it
Fathers BigFoot
Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling -- Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be
replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be
part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with
Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so
modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai
Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant
letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould
doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a
lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spikingwerld.
Hello John Anderton, I see from the RFID devices in your stomach, that you ate a Super Combo Taco Deluxe combo meal with extra guacamole for breakfast. Come into CVS and buy some Pepto Bismol - CVS the only price you need.
Hello John Anderton, you've had those sneakers for a year. They're getting kinda ratty I bet. Come into SportShoe and get a new pair before someone faints.
Hello John Anderton, The RFID in your Hemmorhoid pad tells us that you are in pain. In 56% of all hemmorhoid cases the major irritant is toilet paper that is not soft enough. Let us interest you in Charmin Lotion Soft toilet paper. The soothing lotion makes wiping a joy. And it is much stronger than that no-name brand stuff that left it's RFID sticking to your ass hair..
Headline: Intercontinental Balistic Executive Launcher Loaded With Stolen Warhead By Indonesian Terrorists And Explodes Over Logan International Airport. Bill Gates Has the Ride of His Life. News at 11
But SCO doesn't want the end users to pay. It would cost SCO way to much to legally harass every end user into paying for one or two licenses on one of their production boxen, and anyone with a much larger number of boxen would fight them in court.
SCO may have to offer licenses to end users for some legal reason who knows, but more to the point, they picked a number that was way too high to be worth it so that the threat is high. If they were really interested in licensing code to end users as a source of revenue, they would massively overcharge for their supposed ten lines of stolen code and sell the licenses for $5.00. They would rather have $0.25 for every copy of linux than $5.00, from a bunch of suckers that payed for a license or even $699 each from the two stupidest people on earth.
The proof is in the technological pudding. MMMM solder flavored swirl with silicon jimmies! J.E.L.L.O.
Penny says to the dog: That's not a person, that's a bacteria! Let's stake out the restrooms. I'll get the ladies room and you get the men's room. Watch for people who don't remember to wash their hands after using the toilet.
Source = http://biology.usgs.gov/cro/98bor-4.htm
Hypolimnetic = The layer of water in a thermally stratified lake that lies below the thermocline, is noncirculating, and remains perpetually cold ( dictionary.com )
Source = http://www.worldwildlife.org/wildworld/profiles/g2 00/g145.html
This is not meant to be flamebait, I really think this, but whatever..
The fact is that the human race will not stop raping the environment until it's unconsious or dead. Only when the environment is so badly damaged that human beings can not reproduce fast enough to replace all those that die of starvation and cancer will the environmental impact caused by humans really let up a little.
From then on, we'll still take as much as we can which will never be enough.
Why is this true? Because we can not help ourselves. We are alive. As such we are bound to do as best for ourselves as we can, and make as many offspring as we think we can raise to adulthood. If there are some humans who would be 'altruistic' and sacrifice time/energy for the environment's sake then that is just more resources for the rest. If there are some people who would limit their own reproduction - for any reason be it altruism or merely because they want to have enough time/money for each child, they will eventually be bred out of existance by the welfare queens and deadbeat dads that make babies with them.
Watch the Jerry Springer show. That is the future, past and present of the human race. Anybody with 'dignity' is not playing the game.
A mouse does not think about the environment. It accepts it and does it's mousely best. That not optional over generations. Nature demands it of the ancestors of any lifeform. No lifeform exists on earth now whose ancestors did not live up to that mandate and none ever will.
In short we'll never stop raping Mother Nature, because she's a whore who likes it, and She's in charge.
Though now, I bet if you lived next to the stinky rotten fish and brine shrimp salt lake, you couldn't wait for it to go away. I wonder who owns the land after a lake dries up?
In a moving river, the water shallow and warmed by the sun, but in a large resevoir, it get's cold. The river water temp is therefore much colder downstream of the dam which screws with the wildlife.
Too bad Mexico can't sue the US over taking all the water before it gets to the ocean though...
You're 100% right about radio stations paying royalties. I looked it up on Howstuffworks.com. That sucks for say bar owners with a Juke Box. They have to pay royalties on an assumed rate of song playing ( they assume songs are played constantly ) even in the early afternoon when there are no customers shoving quarters in the machine. I looked up payola to disk jockeys too. That did happen - in fact that is where the word 'payola' came from and BMI too. Performers still don't generally get a cut of those royalties though. I think the rest of my argument holds up. It is in the performer's best interest to be played.
I did what you are talking about with LimeWire when I first installed it. I noticed a setting - meant to prevent leaches - that let you set your node up to sometimes ignore requests from people who were not sharing many files. I figured some people might have that turned on, so I put a bunch of random text files in my shared folder to pump up my numbers.
Back in the early days of radio, the FCC had to step in and prevent record companies from PAYING radio stations to play their songs, so that people could listen to more than the music the record companies wanted to promote. Nowadays, the radio stations do not pay a fee to broadcast copyrighted music, though they could in theory be charged for it. The record companies know it would not make business sence to charge the radio stations for free advertising.
Nowadays, most artist's contracts are set up so that they don't make much at all from CD sales. That is the record company's cut. The artists make money from concerts. The only reason the artists bother with signing with record companies is the advertising and promotion that they provide. Without this adveritsing and promotion, artists wouldn't be able to command such large crowds while on tour.
But file sharing services have the ability to promote artists without the need for a record company to send free CDs to a radio station or put up posters and ads, or produce videos for MTV2, or market songs to Clearchannel execs.
This is good for artists. File sharing services, like radio stations are a form of airplay which serves to promote the artists. It's free word of mouth adverising - the best kind.
The record companies are scared out of their pants because they realize that they won't be needed if people can download the music they want when they want it. Without the record companie's monopoly on promotion and distribution, record companies know artists won't need them. And neither will consumers, since most computers nowadays come with CD burners.
Now freely and easily tradable, songs will compete on merit. The really good ones will make their creators famous and they will get rich off their popularity by giving live performances. Music will go on, customers and artists will be happier, but the record companies will be cut out.
OH NO! They scream! File sharing is *destroying our business model* government, protect us from these thieves!
Society as a whole does not hold 'business models' sacred enough to protect, so they say that this thieving will hurt artists and consumers. Most artists and consumers know better. The fact that record companies are on the verge of becoming obsolete is obviously a good thing. But that means their continued existance, and continued profit taking - if it is allowed to continue through legislation to protect their business models - is parasitic on the music industry as a whole and decreases the amount of fundage available for making music for consumers.
The current litigations against file swappers will, if continued, only cause people to switch to more anonymous file sharing networks. As there is a tradeoff sometimes between security/privacy and speed, consumers will choose the least secure system that they think will keep safe from the RIAA. If the RIAA breaks into that one, a more secure one will be built and used.
The record companies are doomed, and they know it, unless radical legislation is put into place to protect their 'business models' i.e. their ability to keep parasitising the artists and consumers they deal with now that they are no longer needed.
Removing any identifying information makes the file practically invisible to anyone looking for a brittany spears song. They would only find your song by searching for 'foo'. If the files are searchable by any other attribute then that attribute must by definition identify the file. Basically the RIAA doesn't care if you have a legal MP3 copy of brittany shpears song Y shared if nobody can find it to download. It's security through obscurity which is good enough to make you not as nice a target as someone who shares files under their right name.
Why buy airline options *before* 9/11? The share prices for airlines fell after 9/11 if I am not mistaken which means that the price of options would have fallen after that date. Anyone buying airling options before 9/11 would have lost money after the event.
This is good for the country involved because if say Hammas bets that there will be few suicide bombings in Israel if the soldiers leave, and then Israel does something else to piss Hammas off, they will have an incentive to refrain from bombing if the soldiers have left since they will lose their money. This is like a treaty with consequences and will be a force of stability, not chaos.
I hate to reply to my own post but it occured to me. Osama bin Laden could just as easily make money by betting that if Iran is NOT bombed then there will be LOW levels of terrorism. This is a promise of peace contingent on terms, almost a treaty with the terrorists.
Except that the questions bet upon would read like: What course of action would best prevent terrorism ( 'terrorism' would be defined by the terms of the bet ) bombing Iran, or leaving it alone? Betters would place bets on the measured terrorism level contingent on bombing Iran or not. The answer would be the results of the opinions of experts in the know, and should be effective at preventing terrorism. A terrorist group from Iran could bet that if Iran is bombed, that there will be tons of bombings in the US. If Iran was bombed, the terrorist group could make money by carrying out the bombings. However, by making the threat upfront they may prevent both the bombing of Iran and the retaliatory bombings in the US. If the goal is to prevent terrorism then wouldn't the opinion of Osama bin Laden be valuable to have? Who else would be in a better position to know how to stop him from bombing anything?
This is because the available 'numbers' would be completely dependent on the questions asked. It is impossible to settle a question like 'Which candidate, A or B would be better for our country if they were elected?" without specifying a way that 'better' is to be measured.
You could come up with a list of numerical data to go by, but those data would not faithfully capture the meaning of the word 'better'. There would be much data not taken into account by the bet settlement terms so that another bet with the same title, which candidate would be 'better' might give a different result.
Having a lot of data would be useful. It might be interesting to know which candidate the books say would be better for the S&P500 or would raise student's SAT test scores, but there would really be no way to tell which candidate would be 'better' for the stock market or 'better' for education. Only measurable data would be bettable upon which limits the answers to questions from the books to well defined ones - a good thing.
In the end, things would still be decided according to values. There would be less argument about technical details that are better understood by the books than by the general public or even the candidate. The debates would have to center on values, and on which measures are most meaningful with respect to those values. Does the country want the stock market politician or the affordable housing one? If they are opposed, then the decision is which is more important to me, the stock market or housing?
I doubt a bamboo bike would be cheap, durable or easy to fix. It would also be very expensive as making it takes much labor of a skilled craftsman. Bamboo bikes are more like a decked out and stylin' street rod than an old reliable pickup truck.
FAKE glue holds it's airframe together.