I reckon the 70bn price tag is for building the tracks only. And that is based on current building cost. Since the only place of a commercial build so far is China they probably grossly underestimated labor cost for the NYC-LA stretch to start with. Never mind that the German test system and Shanghai airport service were built on flat land - not through the Sierra Nevada.
Secondly, they would need to spend money on (rights to) land to build it on - especially in cities this will be hugely expensive.
Then a service that can cary as many passengers between LA and NYC as airlines do with a schedule as flexible means lots of trains need to be built and they don't come cheap either.
Lastly, you probably want a couple of stops as well so that means a fair few stations along the way - all in expensive urban areas. These stations could be on spurs so you can still have your airline-beating non-stop service, but without these spurs the system would never become profitable.
The summary is misleading; it says sports bars are exempt. In fact, they are not, they have a special commercial agreement.
The reason for not allowing more than x-amount of people is that it is assumed that the only reason you get that many people together to watch something, you are making money on it and they can't have anyone making profit on their product without getting some of the action! In the case of sports bars that profit would be from selling food and drink. In the case of a church it must be the collection tray. The reason is the same as just buying a CD doesn't mean you can play it in a venue without paying further royalties.
The moral of the story is that if you get that many people in one room, you *should* be making profit and you not doing so is not the NFLs problem. Pay up or send all the folks to other venues that do make a profit on it and pay the NFL what is rightfully theirs.
The HP WAS more powerful if you maxed out the specs. It offered faster CPUs, a faster motherboard, faster memory, and faster hard drives. Of course, that system will cost over $10,000, but it's faster.
Both it and the Mac Pro offer the same CPUs; the Quad 3.2GHz 5460 as maximum. The Apple uses 800Mhz DDR2 vs. The HPs 667MHz, so the Mac's RAM is actually faster. The Mac Pro has a 1600MHz FSB vs. only 1333 for the HP. The drives are the same SATA2/7200RPM drives. The only advantage the HP has (under Windows only) is NCQ. Overall the Mac Pro will give better performance.
You can't choose lower quality components that make it only "about $500 more" expensive.
The Alienware is optimized for games, not workstation tasks like the Mac Pro is, so the comparison is a bit unfair (to the Mac Pro).
How is this unfair to the Mac Pro? Nobody buys a Mac Pro simply to play games. In fact, the vast majority of computer owners never play any games. I bought mine to run Photoshop, Aperture, Java development (my IDE runs many threads and uses all cores), Reason, Final Cut Express and other such software. All are optimized to make full use of all cores, as witnessed by the CPU meter. (4 in my case, I have the Quad 2.66 Mac Pro)
For this use, the Mac Pro would woop the Alienware's ass - at a grand less.
The Alienware might score better in games (I doubt it will if you make up the grand difference by upgrading the Mac Pro's graphics card) but that doesn't mean it is overall the most powerful machine.
A better comparison would be the HP xw8600 Workstation, which is priced fairly comparable to the Mac Pro.
"fairly comparable?" I just priced one with 2x 3GHz, 2GB, 500GB and stock graphics for $5,922. A similar Mac Pro retails for $3,699, making the HP 60% more expensive!
The point is: The Mac Pro is hardly the most powerful "off the shelf" PC you can buy.
The point is: you *still* have not shown me a more powerful machine, or one that has the same performance for less money.
Nah, Apple sells about 10 million Macs a year and 40 million iPods - all at a margin of about 30%. They can now also add a couple of million iPhones to those numbers which also bring in a lot of subscription revenue. Last year they made about 15 BILLION *net* profit. They sold about 2 billion songs last year at $0.99 each. Even if they get to keep $0.25 of that it is only a very small part of their earnings. Not selling any tracks on the iTunes store isn't likely to put them out of business.
And considering the seamless integration of the Amazon downloader with iTunes, why would the iPod become any less popular? I don't know anyone who ever said: "I chose the iPod so I could buy music from the iTunes Store." Rather people buy them to put the music they already own, only to maybe buy some more online later.
No need to be a "zealot", just look at the numbers...
That'll piss people off, especially when they start playing DVDs and HD discs back to back and notice that the visual quality they paid $300 for isn't that dramatic after all. Oh, sure, 2001 and Blade Runner look awesome. But anything action based isn't, and who cares if a romantic comedy is high definition?
I have downloaded a fair few 4mbit x264 Blu-Ray/HDDVD rips and been playing them back on my Sharp 37" 720p via HDMI from my MacBook Pro and lately a HTPC. I also have a very nice $400 upscaling DVD player. Comparing the two, the (PAL) DVDs are no match for the downloaded files, the difference in detail is dramatic - especially action movies like Batman Begins and Casino Royale. But even a comedy like Death at a Funeral, which I watched in HD last night, is much nicer to look at. And don't get me started on the BBC's "Planet Earth" in HD! I can only imagine watching the original HD discs on a proper player will be even better - especially when you go 1080p on a larger screen.
Of course the content is the most important, but a very clear, detailed picture is a very nice thing to have. Unfortunately, it is not worth paying 50% more on the discs for. Luckily, I rarely buy movies anymore; I use rental-by-post and my service has an ever growing range of HD titles in both formats.
Now all I am waiting for is a clear winner in the wars and the manufacturers to stop ripping us of here in Australia by wanting us to pay 50% more for a first-gen player than they are asking for 2nd-gen players in the US...
As for you point 3 above, as long as there is DRM, you can not buy a movie or music, only rent. Sure iTunes says you can buy music, but really it is just a really long rental until the service is discontinued and there are no more servers to authorize your computer for playback. And don't think it unlikely; see Google Video "sales" as a prime example. (at least people got their money back) The best you can hope for is that just before shutting down the service they give you a utility to strip the files of DRM. Otherwise you'll be shafted.
Can you show me a link to an Alienware that "stops all over the Mac Pro"? I just configured what seems to be their top of the range "Area-51 ALX CrossFire" similar to a Mac Pro. (both 2GB, 2x500GB, Mac Pro with 2x quad 3.0 and NVidea 8800GT, Alien with ATI 3870)
The Alienware has 4 cores less, though a slightly higher CPU speed, but the Mac has XEON CPUs which are faster GHz for GHz. I recon the Mac will blow it away and it has the better video card. (just)
Funnily enough, the Alienware costs over a grand more, for a less powerful machine.
Macs are expensive yet aren't the fastest computers out there, despite the hype. But you couldn't get a mac user to switch to a PC just because it was cheaper or faster. Why? I think it's the experience. Any Mac-o-philes care to chime in?
The most important reason for many people buying - and loving - Macs is Mac OS X, which indeed is the experience. But it doesn't stop there, a great design case helps too. You won't find any ports on the back of any Mac laptop (so annoying on Dells I have worked with) and you'll find USB ports on *both* sides; a feature you wouldn't think of but it does make a difference. The multi-touch trackpads are fantastic. Apple displays have exactly one cable coming out of them - splitting up into DVI, power, USB and Firewire (there are hubs for both on the display) at the computer end; no bundle of cables on your desk. And for the most part, it really "just works(tm)". People are willing to pay a premium for that.
That said, the premium isn't that much and while you can get a dirt-cheap Dell, you get what you pay for. If you compare them like-for-like on specs and build quality - instead of just "what's the cheapest I can get" - Macs actually come out quite favorably and since the Intel switch they consistently get higher marks for performance than their Wintel counterparts. And if you have some serious dough, there is nothing that matches the Mac Pro's power available from anyone off the shelf. So I don't quite agree with you saying they are "not the fastest computers" or that "Macs are expensive"; It'll be hard to find a faster one that is quite as small as the Mac Mini. Or a faster all-in-one or similarly specced mini-tower at the price of an iMac, or a faster laptop than the MBP that is actually mobile (get out of here, Alienware) and doesn't cost a lot more and nobody beats the Mac Pro's performance at any price.
Now if only they would put something with the specs of the iMac into a small tower and sell it for a good price, that would be nice.
While I had troubles initially with Leopard, somehow they never occurred when I didn't have Parallels running Windows. (I am Java dev, but need to test on Windows too for work, as well as use SQL Server, I don't actually use it to run any apps for myself.) A couple of post-Leopard Parallels updates later I have none of the crash/hang issues anymore. Hmm, I wonder if it really was leopard that was being unstable. Granted, the OS should stop Parallels from being nasty, but virtualization will always be terribly invasive and deliberately hacking of the host OS.
I own a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro and my wife uses my old PowerBook G4 and while I will tell people why I like them and why I think they will too - I do not consider myself a fanboy and can certainly see Apple's flaws. The good simply outweighs the bad.
While the second sentence is funny, the first is wrong. (unless you were being Ironic there too, of course)
It would have been great for Sony had more companies adopted memory stick, but in the mean time Sony cried all the way to the bank because the millions of people that bought overpriced sony digicams also bought the overpriced memory sticks as accessories rather than cheap cards from other manufacturers. Memory Stick has made Sony a lot of money and was huge success for them.
As for MiniDisc, it was a great portable format and Americans were just too stupid to see it - sticking to their big portable CD players and tapes instead. In Europe and Japan it was a great success. They still sell the things and they wouldn't do that if they had been making a loss all these years.
How could Apple have an upgrade and "full" price? Every copy of OS X sold is an upgrade; you got your previous copy when you bought your Mac!
And just look at the pricing, OS X costs about the same as Windows upgrades, or (much) less depending on the version of Windows you compare to.
I find that pricing quite reasonable; $129 is quite reasonable every 2-3 years and the $199 family pack for up to 5 Macs (I have 3 in the house) is an absolute steal.
There are things wrong with Apple for sure, but their OS upgrade pricing isn't one of them.
Religion mocks non-believers constantly. Religious leaders constantly call Atheists the worst kind of scum - and worse things.
Compared to that, calling someone stupid, brainwashed or delusional because they are religious is pretty tame.
Add to that I don't know any atheist people who would shy away from social interaction with someone just because that person is religious. The same can certainly not be said for quite a few religious people.
Atheism is not believing there is no deity, rather it is the *absence* of belief in any deity.
There is a big difference between the former and the latter. Try to understand it and you will understand why Atheism is not - and can never be - a religion.
Also, 200 years ago probably more scientists were actually Atheists than you might think; it simply wasn't socially accepted not to be religious and instead of suffering the consequences they simply followed the other sheep. Similarly, there probably were as many homosexuals in those days as there are now - though you would not know it from the history books.
These are just bits; there is no reason *not* to offer HD and SD versions - people can can choose what they want. (good quality or quick downloads)
Build it and they will come...
If HBlueDVRayD players really were discount box shifted, I would buy one. Unfortunately, that is only the case in the US; the rest of the world still pays a premium for first-gen players! The low sales are probably primarily due to the fact that there are two competing standards; those who don't know or care don't buy as with any new tech, but those that do know and do care don't buy either because they will wait and see what comes out on top - and that includes a usual affluent early-adopter like myself. In fact, I have stopped buying DVDs in anticipation of having an HD player; buying an SD DVD seems like a waste now. And I know others with the same sentiment. So the industry loses on both fronts. Idiots.
I did some googling, and of all the ones you mention, it seems only XBox Live Video is HD (720p) and at a decent bitrate. The others are SD in 700-1.5Mbit, which simply is not good enough. (Amazon is 2500kbps average, but still SD)
At least the XBox service is evidence the studios are not totally opposed to HD at a decent bitrate, there may be hope yet.
Now all we need is a good box to play them on - I don't want a noisy '360 that I would not use for games anyway. A proper HD Apple TV 2 would be good - so long as it plays a few more file formats too.
iTunes DRM has not been cracked in ages. The only thing available is QTFairUse and that only works on Windows and doesn't actually break the encryption; it has merely found a hook where it can grab the stream after it has been decoded by Quicktime.
Maybe something like that can be done with the DRM on movies too, but I doubt that any time soon it will be easy and convenient enough for anybody to do to have any noticeable impact on their business. Even if some people crack and share their files, the majority won't.
And the nice thing about rentals vs. purchase is that they can very easily change their crypto methods at a moment's notice without having to be backwards compatible.
Not that I would ever be a customer unless the price is right (it won't be) and they serve up 720p h.264 files at at least 4mbit. (they won't do that either)
Not only that, but in some system (like Australia and the UK), members of parliament are chosen by constituency. So not only would they have to replace the MP in question, they would have to do it with someone who would be a vote winner for the party in that constituency to avoid losing the seat altogether in the next election.
In most multi-party parliamentary systems, the prime minister has much less power than the president in a system like in the US. (no veto!) On top of that, the prime minister can only pick from elected officials to create his cabinet, not his Yale friends and business buddies, making them far more accountable.
Also, that one party with 33% doesn't hold all the power, the entire parliament holds the power. Yes, the party that creates the cabinet has more opportunity to introduce bills, but it takes a majority vote of parliament to pass them.
Lastly, Australia uses "Preference Voting". To translate that to real US terms: you can safely vote for Nader without by doing do increasing the Repugnicans' chances to win the election.
The money you make on the market in this analogy is the "product". I.e: I can take $3000 and spend a month at home and end up with a song to sell, or I can put it in the stock market and make some money, which I can then use to make more money to live off.
I do not think IP laws exist for either reason you give. Looking at this from a chicken and egg thing, I doubt some government went: "Hey, how can we make sure there is more art? I know we can create a thing called copyright!". More likely, the creators of easily copied works came bitchin' to the man asking them for a law to stop people ripping off their hard work.
The ditch-digger analogy is absurd, by the way. They spent the value of $10K to dig your ditch and asked you to pay $10K for it, that is work for hire. The guitarists spent the equivalent of $500K recording his album and is selling it for $15 per copy. Maybe only 10,000 people buy it and he makes a loss, maybe 1M people buy it and he makes a lot of money on his risky investment.
IP may also not be directly taxed, but just like anything else you pay tax on any money you make on the investment. The only property that generally is taxed is real estate - it is the exception, not the rule and therefor gives no credibility to the argument that merely owning IP should be taxed.
Both people in this conversation were making predictions about what would happen if copyright terms were limited to only a few years. Let's emphasize "predictions". That means him nor me can be wrong as we are only making predictions.
I wrote that because I was being sarcastic. For pete's sake, we were making predictions and the guy calls me troll and an idiot simply because he didn't agree with me!
Yeah, it sucks because everybody misunderstands me!;-)
If you make a song, make $10M bucks on it and they take the song away, you still have $10M. In this case, the song you made is the product.
The nice thing about keeping copyright is that you make your $10M, buy the jet and then keep a steady income every year from back-catalog sales to put fuel in the jet too.
In my stock market example, the money you made, is the product, which can be likened to your song.
So yeah, that is confusing and that is why the example sucks. But you see what I mean now?
I agree this is true for "knowledge" work; I find it frustrating that when I try to find some more obscure research using Google I get many results behind for-pay site from the likes of Elsevier. It would be much better if the universities and research institutes of the world could simply get together and organize peer-reviews themselves publish under creative commons, rather than letting commercial publishers do it with whom the authors have to agree to an exclusive distribution license.
But that, again, is something the organizations have the power to do themselves, I do not believe intervention by the government to force free-distribution is the answer. (Except maybe in the case of heavily state-sponsored universities and hospitals, like most in Europe are)
We probably disagree on this, but I feel copyright is a natural right, not restriction by the government, but merely enforced by law. If I create something, I should be free to sell it, or give it away for free. I firmly believe in intellectual property and let the free market decide wether they want my content for pay, or someone else's content for free.
As for entertainment, I could not care less about who gets paid and for how long, if the price is too high or the burden to watch too great (commercial breaks, product placement, on at the wrong time on the wrong station, etc.) I'll go somewhere else. (including piracy, I have to admit) But it would be nice if publishers could get better at distributing old content. Many books are out of print and never will be in print again. They could easily be made available in electronic form and sold (without DRM please!) for a small fee. But it seems the publishers don't like this idea because 1) they are afraid of any online distribution, especially without DRM and 2) they would probably rather sell us newer books at greater profit.
I agree with what you say, really. The only thing that bugs me is how to implement it.
First of all, you have to define who is a "creator". It seem simple for a single author of a book, but even that poses problems as books are edited and is an editor shuffling content and re-writing parts to make it better also a "creator"? And what share should they get for that effort?
It also becomes much more complex when more people are involved. Say you and I write a book together, 50/50. Now I die in 10 years time and you live for another 50 years. During those 40 years after my death, do you get 100% of the royalties, or only 50% with my share going to my next of kin or whoever I nominate in my will until you also pass away and royalties stop completely. (not a very nice deal for your next of kin!)
Now imagine the dozen writers on your average TV show. And the set designers, and the director, and the graphics artists, the list goes on and on. Where do you draw the line between work for hire and creator?
Slashdot Mirror
http://iterm.sourceforge.net/ - tabbed terminals! \o/
Not the same as what you did, but I find it extremely useful - often having multiple terminals, some to do work, so to tail -f log files.
I reckon the 70bn price tag is for building the tracks only. And that is based on current building cost. Since the only place of a commercial build so far is China they probably grossly underestimated labor cost for the NYC-LA stretch to start with. Never mind that the German test system and Shanghai airport service were built on flat land - not through the Sierra Nevada.
Secondly, they would need to spend money on (rights to) land to build it on - especially in cities this will be hugely expensive.
Then a service that can cary as many passengers between LA and NYC as airlines do with a schedule as flexible means lots of trains need to be built and they don't come cheap either.
Lastly, you probably want a couple of stops as well so that means a fair few stations along the way - all in expensive urban areas. These stations could be on spurs so you can still have your airline-beating non-stop service, but without these spurs the system would never become profitable.
The summary is misleading; it says sports bars are exempt. In fact, they are not, they have a special commercial agreement.
The reason for not allowing more than x-amount of people is that it is assumed that the only reason you get that many people together to watch something, you are making money on it and they can't have anyone making profit on their product without getting some of the action! In the case of sports bars that profit would be from selling food and drink. In the case of a church it must be the collection tray. The reason is the same as just buying a CD doesn't mean you can play it in a venue without paying further royalties.
The moral of the story is that if you get that many people in one room, you *should* be making profit and you not doing so is not the NFLs problem. Pay up or send all the folks to other venues that do make a profit on it and pay the NFL what is rightfully theirs.
What a blood suckers.
Both it and the Mac Pro offer the same CPUs; the Quad 3.2GHz 5460 as maximum. The Apple uses 800Mhz DDR2 vs. The HPs 667MHz, so the Mac's RAM is actually faster. The Mac Pro has a 1600MHz FSB vs. only 1333 for the HP. The drives are the same SATA2/7200RPM drives. The only advantage the HP has (under Windows only) is NCQ. Overall the Mac Pro will give better performance.
You can't choose lower quality components that make it only "about $500 more" expensive.
We are talking about the same HP xw8600 Workstation as detailed here, right? http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/12454-12454-296719-307907-296721-3432827.html
Nah, Apple sells about 10 million Macs a year and 40 million iPods - all at a margin of about 30%. They can now also add a couple of million iPhones to those numbers which also bring in a lot of subscription revenue. Last year they made about 15 BILLION *net* profit. They sold about 2 billion songs last year at $0.99 each. Even if they get to keep $0.25 of that it is only a very small part of their earnings. Not selling any tracks on the iTunes store isn't likely to put them out of business.
And considering the seamless integration of the Amazon downloader with iTunes, why would the iPod become any less popular? I don't know anyone who ever said: "I chose the iPod so I could buy music from the iTunes Store." Rather people buy them to put the music they already own, only to maybe buy some more online later.
No need to be a "zealot", just look at the numbers...
I have downloaded a fair few 4mbit x264 Blu-Ray/HDDVD rips and been playing them back on my Sharp 37" 720p via HDMI from my MacBook Pro and lately a HTPC. I also have a very nice $400 upscaling DVD player. Comparing the two, the (PAL) DVDs are no match for the downloaded files, the difference in detail is dramatic - especially action movies like Batman Begins and Casino Royale. But even a comedy like Death at a Funeral, which I watched in HD last night, is much nicer to look at. And don't get me started on the BBC's "Planet Earth" in HD! I can only imagine watching the original HD discs on a proper player will be even better - especially when you go 1080p on a larger screen.
Of course the content is the most important, but a very clear, detailed picture is a very nice thing to have. Unfortunately, it is not worth paying 50% more on the discs for. Luckily, I rarely buy movies anymore; I use rental-by-post and my service has an ever growing range of HD titles in both formats.
Now all I am waiting for is a clear winner in the wars and the manufacturers to stop ripping us of here in Australia by wanting us to pay 50% more for a first-gen player than they are asking for 2nd-gen players in the US...
As for you point 3 above, as long as there is DRM, you can not buy a movie or music, only rent. Sure iTunes says you can buy music, but really it is just a really long rental until the service is discontinued and there are no more servers to authorize your computer for playback. And don't think it unlikely; see Google Video "sales" as a prime example. (at least people got their money back) The best you can hope for is that just before shutting down the service they give you a utility to strip the files of DRM. Otherwise you'll be shafted.
Can you show me a link to an Alienware that "stops all over the Mac Pro"? I just configured what seems to be their top of the range "Area-51 ALX CrossFire" similar to a Mac Pro. (both 2GB, 2x500GB, Mac Pro with 2x quad 3.0 and NVidea 8800GT, Alien with ATI 3870)
The Alienware has 4 cores less, though a slightly higher CPU speed, but the Mac has XEON CPUs which are faster GHz for GHz. I recon the Mac will blow it away and it has the better video card. (just)
Funnily enough, the Alienware costs over a grand more, for a less powerful machine.
The most important reason for many people buying - and loving - Macs is Mac OS X, which indeed is the experience. But it doesn't stop there, a great design case helps too. You won't find any ports on the back of any Mac laptop (so annoying on Dells I have worked with) and you'll find USB ports on *both* sides; a feature you wouldn't think of but it does make a difference. The multi-touch trackpads are fantastic. Apple displays have exactly one cable coming out of them - splitting up into DVI, power, USB and Firewire (there are hubs for both on the display) at the computer end; no bundle of cables on your desk. And for the most part, it really "just works(tm)". People are willing to pay a premium for that.
That said, the premium isn't that much and while you can get a dirt-cheap Dell, you get what you pay for. If you compare them like-for-like on specs and build quality - instead of just "what's the cheapest I can get" - Macs actually come out quite favorably and since the Intel switch they consistently get higher marks for performance than their Wintel counterparts. And if you have some serious dough, there is nothing that matches the Mac Pro's power available from anyone off the shelf. So I don't quite agree with you saying they are "not the fastest computers" or that "Macs are expensive"; It'll be hard to find a faster one that is quite as small as the Mac Mini. Or a faster all-in-one or similarly specced mini-tower at the price of an iMac, or a faster laptop than the MBP that is actually mobile (get out of here, Alienware) and doesn't cost a lot more and nobody beats the Mac Pro's performance at any price.
Now if only they would put something with the specs of the iMac into a small tower and sell it for a good price, that would be nice.
While I had troubles initially with Leopard, somehow they never occurred when I didn't have Parallels running Windows. (I am Java dev, but need to test on Windows too for work, as well as use SQL Server, I don't actually use it to run any apps for myself.) A couple of post-Leopard Parallels updates later I have none of the crash/hang issues anymore. Hmm, I wonder if it really was leopard that was being unstable. Granted, the OS should stop Parallels from being nasty, but virtualization will always be terribly invasive and deliberately hacking of the host OS.
I own a MacBook Pro, Mac Pro and my wife uses my old PowerBook G4 and while I will tell people why I like them and why I think they will too - I do not consider myself a fanboy and can certainly see Apple's flaws. The good simply outweighs the bad.
While the second sentence is funny, the first is wrong. (unless you were being Ironic there too, of course)
It would have been great for Sony had more companies adopted memory stick, but in the mean time Sony cried all the way to the bank because the millions of people that bought overpriced sony digicams also bought the overpriced memory sticks as accessories rather than cheap cards from other manufacturers. Memory Stick has made Sony a lot of money and was huge success for them.
As for MiniDisc, it was a great portable format and Americans were just too stupid to see it - sticking to their big portable CD players and tapes instead. In Europe and Japan it was a great success. They still sell the things and they wouldn't do that if they had been making a loss all these years.
How could Apple have an upgrade and "full" price? Every copy of OS X sold is an upgrade; you got your previous copy when you bought your Mac!
And just look at the pricing, OS X costs about the same as Windows upgrades, or (much) less depending on the version of Windows you compare to.
I find that pricing quite reasonable; $129 is quite reasonable every 2-3 years and the $199 family pack for up to 5 Macs (I have 3 in the house) is an absolute steal.
There are things wrong with Apple for sure, but their OS upgrade pricing isn't one of them.
Religion mocks non-believers constantly. Religious leaders constantly call Atheists the worst kind of scum - and worse things.
Compared to that, calling someone stupid, brainwashed or delusional because they are religious is pretty tame.
Add to that I don't know any atheist people who would shy away from social interaction with someone just because that person is religious. The same can certainly not be said for quite a few religious people.
So who really are the ignorant bigots?
Atheism is not believing there is no deity, rather it is the *absence* of belief in any deity.
There is a big difference between the former and the latter. Try to understand it and you will understand why Atheism is not - and can never be - a religion.
Also, 200 years ago probably more scientists were actually Atheists than you might think; it simply wasn't socially accepted not to be religious and instead of suffering the consequences they simply followed the other sheep. Similarly, there probably were as many homosexuals in those days as there are now - though you would not know it from the history books.
These are just bits; there is no reason *not* to offer HD and SD versions - people can can choose what they want. (good quality or quick downloads)
Build it and they will come...
If HBlueDVRayD players really were discount box shifted, I would buy one. Unfortunately, that is only the case in the US; the rest of the world still pays a premium for first-gen players! The low sales are probably primarily due to the fact that there are two competing standards; those who don't know or care don't buy as with any new tech, but those that do know and do care don't buy either because they will wait and see what comes out on top - and that includes a usual affluent early-adopter like myself. In fact, I have stopped buying DVDs in anticipation of having an HD player; buying an SD DVD seems like a waste now. And I know others with the same sentiment. So the industry loses on both fronts. Idiots.
I did some googling, and of all the ones you mention, it seems only XBox Live Video is HD (720p) and at a decent bitrate. The others are SD in 700-1.5Mbit, which simply is not good enough. (Amazon is 2500kbps average, but still SD)
At least the XBox service is evidence the studios are not totally opposed to HD at a decent bitrate, there may be hope yet.
Now all we need is a good box to play them on - I don't want a noisy '360 that I would not use for games anyway. A proper HD Apple TV 2 would be good - so long as it plays a few more file formats too.
iTunes DRM has not been cracked in ages. The only thing available is QTFairUse and that only works on Windows and doesn't actually break the encryption; it has merely found a hook where it can grab the stream after it has been decoded by Quicktime.
Maybe something like that can be done with the DRM on movies too, but I doubt that any time soon it will be easy and convenient enough for anybody to do to have any noticeable impact on their business. Even if some people crack and share their files, the majority won't.
And the nice thing about rentals vs. purchase is that they can very easily change their crypto methods at a moment's notice without having to be backwards compatible.
Not that I would ever be a customer unless the price is right (it won't be) and they serve up 720p h.264 files at at least 4mbit. (they won't do that either)
That was very informative, thank you for taking the time to explain all this.
I shall have to do some more reading up on this.
Not only that, but in some system (like Australia and the UK), members of parliament are chosen by constituency. So not only would they have to replace the MP in question, they would have to do it with someone who would be a vote winner for the party in that constituency to avoid losing the seat altogether in the next election.
In most multi-party parliamentary systems, the prime minister has much less power than the president in a system like in the US. (no veto!) On top of that, the prime minister can only pick from elected officials to create his cabinet, not his Yale friends and business buddies, making them far more accountable.
Also, that one party with 33% doesn't hold all the power, the entire parliament holds the power. Yes, the party that creates the cabinet has more opportunity to introduce bills, but it takes a majority vote of parliament to pass them.
Lastly, Australia uses "Preference Voting". To translate that to real US terms: you can safely vote for Nader without by doing do increasing the Repugnicans' chances to win the election.
The money you make on the market in this analogy is the "product". I.e: I can take $3000 and spend a month at home and end up with a song to sell, or I can put it in the stock market and make some money, which I can then use to make more money to live off.
I do not think IP laws exist for either reason you give. Looking at this from a chicken and egg thing, I doubt some government went: "Hey, how can we make sure there is more art? I know we can create a thing called copyright!". More likely, the creators of easily copied works came bitchin' to the man asking them for a law to stop people ripping off their hard work.
The ditch-digger analogy is absurd, by the way. They spent the value of $10K to dig your ditch and asked you to pay $10K for it, that is work for hire. The guitarists spent the equivalent of $500K recording his album and is selling it for $15 per copy. Maybe only 10,000 people buy it and he makes a loss, maybe 1M people buy it and he makes a lot of money on his risky investment.
IP may also not be directly taxed, but just like anything else you pay tax on any money you make on the investment. The only property that generally is taxed is real estate - it is the exception, not the rule and therefor gives no credibility to the argument that merely owning IP should be taxed.
Both people in this conversation were making predictions about what would happen if copyright terms were limited to only a few years. Let's emphasize "predictions". That means him nor me can be wrong as we are only making predictions.
I wrote that because I was being sarcastic. For pete's sake, we were making predictions and the guy calls me troll and an idiot simply because he didn't agree with me!
Yeah, it sucks because everybody misunderstands me! ;-)
If you make a song, make $10M bucks on it and they take the song away, you still have $10M. In this case, the song you made is the product.
The nice thing about keeping copyright is that you make your $10M, buy the jet and then keep a steady income every year from back-catalog sales to put fuel in the jet too.
In my stock market example, the money you made, is the product, which can be likened to your song.
So yeah, that is confusing and that is why the example sucks. But you see what I mean now?
I agree this is true for "knowledge" work; I find it frustrating that when I try to find some more obscure research using Google I get many results behind for-pay site from the likes of Elsevier. It would be much better if the universities and research institutes of the world could simply get together and organize peer-reviews themselves publish under creative commons, rather than letting commercial publishers do it with whom the authors have to agree to an exclusive distribution license.
But that, again, is something the organizations have the power to do themselves, I do not believe intervention by the government to force free-distribution is the answer. (Except maybe in the case of heavily state-sponsored universities and hospitals, like most in Europe are)
We probably disagree on this, but I feel copyright is a natural right, not restriction by the government, but merely enforced by law. If I create something, I should be free to sell it, or give it away for free. I firmly believe in intellectual property and let the free market decide wether they want my content for pay, or someone else's content for free.
As for entertainment, I could not care less about who gets paid and for how long, if the price is too high or the burden to watch too great (commercial breaks, product placement, on at the wrong time on the wrong station, etc.) I'll go somewhere else. (including piracy, I have to admit) But it would be nice if publishers could get better at distributing old content. Many books are out of print and never will be in print again. They could easily be made available in electronic form and sold (without DRM please!) for a small fee. But it seems the publishers don't like this idea because 1) they are afraid of any online distribution, especially without DRM and 2) they would probably rather sell us newer books at greater profit.
LOL, you made my day. Thanks. My trolling worked and I got you all worked up!
I admire your ability to take arguments and spin them around 180 degrees, all the while sounding very nasty. You should apply for a job at Fox News.
I agree with what you say, really. The only thing that bugs me is how to implement it.
First of all, you have to define who is a "creator". It seem simple for a single author of a book, but even that poses problems as books are edited and is an editor shuffling content and re-writing parts to make it better also a "creator"? And what share should they get for that effort?
It also becomes much more complex when more people are involved. Say you and I write a book together, 50/50. Now I die in 10 years time and you live for another 50 years. During those 40 years after my death, do you get 100% of the royalties, or only 50% with my share going to my next of kin or whoever I nominate in my will until you also pass away and royalties stop completely. (not a very nice deal for your next of kin!)
Now imagine the dozen writers on your average TV show. And the set designers, and the director, and the graphics artists, the list goes on and on. Where do you draw the line between work for hire and creator?
Interesting problem!