Yes, and for that matter, why shouldn't Coke be able to make a product called "Pepsi" that they would sell in a bottle that looks just like the pepsi that we know now except that it tasted like rat feces and causes instant nausea? (predictable jokes to follow)
same principle. Society wins when trademarks are not unfairly diluted. Google can have whatever the heck business model it wants, but it should not be based on diluting trademarks and service marks - that's not fair (or legal, in general - it's not clear yet how this ruling fits into that puzzle).
I know (think) you were trying to be funny, but there will doubtlessly be a few readers who think that there is a real MBA conspiracy at play here.
In reality, it takes only a few moments thought to see that a strategy of keeping supply artificially low for such a product is foolish and doomed to failure.
In reality, the better strategy is to get people to *think* there is a shortage, and reinforce this notion by having a short-term shortage around now, but quietly slip market-clearing quantities into the market closer to christmas.
Meanwhile, other, shortsighted governments, including most European ones, still largely charge for basic weather information.
This leads to two perverse situations:
(small aircraft) Pilots and (small craft) boaters are put in the unfortunate place of balancing their personal safety against a few dollars in such a way that would never be tolerated if we were talking about automobiles and trains.
often, european users of weather data rely on US-taxpayer funded US weather info for their own countries. of course, since the emphasis is not so much, this info and forecasts are not as detailed or thought through as those that their own governments (or hastily privatized equivalents) produce daily.
It's one thing that the US is doing right.
Having lived in Ireland, England, Greece and America as well as been to numerous countries on holiday and working I can say he isn't wrong
And having lived in the USA, UK, Malaysia, China (Guangzhou), Japan, Singapore, France, Spain, Canada, and Pakistan for a year or more each I know you are full of shit.
Consider:
Question the US president the wrong way and your guaranteed you will never be able to again.
Tin foil hat fitting snugly? Please provide some evidence of the people who come to your house at night and take you away. If your idea was in the remotest correct, the authors of the following website would all be fugitives: www.nytimes. The USA has the free-est press in the world, full stop. You might not like the speed or tone of the "big" news producers in the USA, but there are literally millions of alternatives out there and at the end of the day you're welcome to start your own blog and report what you will.
IN CHINA YOU WILL BE THROWN IN PRISON IF YOU DO THIS
I repeat: PRISON.
Not "oh the USA is the same as the chinese press because they broke some iraq story a bit later than i would have liked."
I repeat: PRISON. Think about this: probably half the opinion articles in the new york times would be censored in china and their authors ruined. Bloggists in china saying the same sort of thing that bloggers say routinely in the west might simply vanish.
I am sorry but US hides news equally as much as China.
Suggestion for you: save up a few dollars and travel the world a bit. You will see how absolutely and completely not grounded in reality your post is.
At the risk of stating what is blatantly obvious to everybody else:
government censorship of news is completely different than editorial decisionmaking in a free press.
in china, if you want to write something critical of the government, then you best be prepared to spend some time in prison. in the USA, citizens do this daily.
yes, at the edges there are small issues here and there with US journalistic freedom: for example, the whole business about the US Air Force not releasing Iraq coffin photos. But to equate this with the totalitarian repressions on free speech in china is ABSOLUTE NONSENSE.
The business about Iraq prisoner abuse was thoroughly discussed in the US press. This would NEVER EVER be broadcast in the chinese media if it were the PLA involved. Get several clues.
The mods who modded you "insightful" need to be beaten with a clue stick.
while you're at it, learn a little bit about the history of hawaii. while the situations are of course different, there are quite a large number of parallels to Tibet. Unarguable is that the overthrow of Liliuokalani was illegal and unwanted by the native populace, and that hawaiian culture has become a tourist shell of its former self in the aftermath.
Don't let my talk about hawaii distract from the main point, though, which is that the free tibet movement is much sizzle, little steak. Look, I am no fan of the Chinese Communists, but to claim that Tibet was ideal or even significantly better before they moved in simply does not mesh with reality.
yes, you're right. the reality since 1950 is irrelevant to you. do you refuse to accept that hawaii is part of the USA, too?
Look.. Tibet has nice photogenic monks that come off as worm-protecting good guys in disney movies. but the fact of the matter is that tibet was not some idyllic neverland - it was an autocratic theocracy of monks that ruled an impoverished peasant class and had infighting and murder galore.
that said, even if the above web page were all BS (and it is NOT), the fact of the matter is that the chinese have ruled tibet for nearly 50 years now. tibet is effectively part of china. you may fight for independence for tibet just like you can fight for indepence of hawaii now (a state for roughly the same amount of time). more power to you if that's your thing (but i do suggest that you read the Tibet Myth web page first). but don't try to pretend like it's not one country now.
"and then selling music which they say you are not allowed to copy to their MP3 players"
This would seem to be inconsistent.. unless, you know, you actually took a moment to think about it.
Sony has some online music service where they do not allow you (vis a vis the linked to licensing agreemnet) to copy the songs to other players. Fine. If you dont like that, DONT USE THE SERVICE. The consequences of this licensing proviso has been factored in to the "supply and demand" equation for the service offering.
On the other hand, it has been shown that you are welcome to take your purchased sony CD-ROMs and make Mp3s for them for your personal use on your sony MP3 players or whatnot. It has been pretty much universally acknowledged that as long as its for your own personal use, this is a privilege that you get with your physical CD purchase and this has likewise been "supply / demanded" in to the price offering.
Why is it so hard to understand that one company might offer two different levels of service / product at different prices?
THIS IS THE SAME THING THAT WAS SAID WITH MUSIC.
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 1
During napster-era:
"If only the Music companies sold tracks online for, say, 99c"
Yeah, people who are cracking your CDs are being stupid but that doesn't mean that you have to act like a bunch of assholes about it.
People who are cracking your CDs have made a conscious decision that a) you made something of value b) they want it c) they would rather steal it than pay for it. The rebuke that takes simply takes it away is a gentle one and shows restraint. The thieves (or "infringers" - the technicalities of the language are not important) probably deserve punishmnet. Given that Valve is acting with restraint, they certainly have the right to be as preachy as they want.
The difference is that the interests of Linux and MySql happen to coincide with the public interest, all they want is the freedom to innovate without threat of litigation, this is good for almost everyone. Microsoft and IBM want to stifle competition, and that is against the public interest.
See, that's the problem. What you wrote MAY be true, but it's not certainly true. If it were so clear cut, then there would be no argument.
Do you remember the laffer curve? This was the idea popularized in the reagan years that basically went like this: imagine that you are the emperor and can set the tax rate for your country. If you set it at 0%, then you would get no revenue and you could not govern. If you set it at 100%, then nobody would produce anything since it would all be taxed. Therefore, you should set your tax rate at some point "T*" where people would have maximal incentive to work but government would likewise get its necesary revenue. Therefore (the puzzling reagan-era logic went), the tax rate should be lower as this will stimulate economic growth.
Notice that the laffer curve idea doesn't actually tell you where T* is, and yet reaganites jumped on the idea that they should lower taxes. You've basically made the same leap - anybody who is not an idiot realizes that both 0% and 100% IP regulation would be stupidity. The "socially optimal" or "public interest" level of regulation is somewhere in between. Where exactly this is - well.. like a reaganite who just says "therefore taxes should be lower" without actually working through the intermediate logic, much less econometric studies, you just say that IPR should be lower.
Again, you may be right, but you haven't shown this. While "stifling competition" may not be in the public interest, giving just rewards to inventors certainly is. Unless you're prepared to actually make a reasoned argument why you think the current situation is to one side or the other of the IPR T*, then you are really just talking out of your ass.
Linux and and MySQL have much to lose if strong european software patents become a reality since both are technologies that, for whatever their pluses, rely heavily on imitating prior art.
Therefore, it is little surprise that they'd come out against software patents. It's like hearing exactly one side of the argument. I don't see any reason to take their views as somehow more correct or enlightened than microsoft's or IBM's might be from the other side. each actor is acting in his economic self interest in a pretty blatant way.
I thought it was proved when the home movie was finally released showing the driver getting hit, that there was a 2nd gunman.
Any moderator who marked such ignorant nonsense up as "insightful" deserves to have his/her moderator priviliges revoked permanently.
In case there is any question:
There was only one shooter. This is the only explanation that has stood the test of time and reasoned analysis.
The "magic bullet" is only preposterous sounding if you accept the premises as they were laid out in Oliver Stone's JFK movie. The problem is that such premises were bullshit.
For details, read this page. There are few if any better on the internet on the JFK assassination.
First, the USA (and I say this as a semi-estranged USA-ian), are a bunch of asshats for not ratifying this. Sure, there are excuses and apologetics, but, at the end of the day, they (we) could have done it.
However, those of you who think that the whole Kyoto debate is about the USA should not lose sight of the more important fact:
Global Temperatures Will Continue To Rise as a result of CO2 emissions even if 100% of the world wholeheartedly adopted Kyoto TODAY.
All Kyoto does (and it is a big step, but nevertheless) is slow the RATE of growth. Politicians and other know-nothings will be patting themselves on the back saying "well, that fixed it!" It did no such thing--at most, it bought us a little time.. and a little is the operative word. Kyoto's significance is not so much that it has somehow lessened the problem - for all practical purposes, it has not. It's significance is that it works to effectively keep the problem from getting much, much worse.
/ I have lived in over 12 countries (5 continents) for more than a year each. I'm interested in hearing your views. Frankly, I think you're full of shit.
But your statement is complete tinfoil hat, even if you don't see it. Your "intuition" is not a fact, even if you confidently say "without a doubt."
In fact, the fundamental problem that this article is highlighting, that an autocratic, antidemocratic, and abusive regime in China is using satellites to spy on its own citizens may not even be true in China in 10-20 years as China may (though it is of course by no means a certainty) evolve into a democratic, accountable state by that time.
For those of you just itching to get in your 2 cents about how the USA is likewise an autocratic blah blah state.. zip it. While I hate GWB, the Patriot Act, etc as much as the next guy, such things are in an absolute sense truly insignificant compared to what still goes on in China where many citizens still lack basic freedom of movement inside the country to say nothing of the extreme repression of information and speech.
I agree with your assessment that it's a good thing and I also share your dread at the predictable tin foil hat replies. However, "in you're not in a position to be affected by this.." is exactly the wrong attitude.
blah blah blah blah blah... editing" the content of their PURCHASED media...
Bzzt. Try "licensed" media. Deal with it and grow up. Copyright is a compromise between what's (strictly) good for the rightsholders and what's (strictly) good for users that is intended to foster innovation and creativity in society over the long term.
One of the fundamental characteristics of this compromise is that you can not simply do anything you want with that DVD you bought at best buy. You might have legitimate disagreement with the nature of what it has been decided you can or can not do, but to argue that you have unlimited rights to something like this is as naive and outside reality as creationism or flat-earth ism. In short, grow up, intellectually, and join the real discussion on such things.
I dare you to find a single article on Wikipedia that warrants a "perfect" flag.
Note to you: it can't be done.
In fact, I dare you so much as to propose a TOPIC on which you can IMAGINE that a "perfect" tag could be applied. I am not suggesting that the article itself would be perfect, but that some topic on which a reasonable human could conclude that an article is good enough _and the underlying information will forever be good enough_.
Can't be done.
Even something as "The Numbers 1 through 10" could always be improved in a myriad of ways that I could think of be it through addition of historical perspective, evolution through the ages, some mathematical aspects, or so on.
You missed the whole point of his article, didn't you? In fact, you are the very embodiment of the problem that he paints - you go on proclaiming in revolutionary tones "woe to dinosaurs" without actually addressing his fundamental objection:
In brief, at the end of the day after 100+ edits, the Alexander Hamilton piece is NOT a rich tapestry of nuance and expertise. It's a high-school quality wallpaper job.
The author has proposed mechanism as to why such articles are, in effect, wallpaper jobs and does, in my opinion, a good bit to evidence the "emperor has no clothes" nature of those such as yourself who have a faith-based view of collaboration - the well meaning, but certainly not proven and possibly quite wrong idea that groups of humans "quasi Darwinially" converge upon optimal solutions.
The probem may not be that the author doesn't understand the spirit of Wiki - it may be that he understands it too well.
/ full disclosure: I have contributed articles to Wiki, though I am under no illusions as to its potential and, frankly, share the author's views. When I do serious work, I don't use Wiki as a reference.
Slashdot Mirror
same principle. Society wins when trademarks are not unfairly diluted. Google can have whatever the heck business model it wants, but it should not be based on diluting trademarks and service marks - that's not fair (or legal, in general - it's not clear yet how this ruling fits into that puzzle).
In reality, it takes only a few moments thought to see that a strategy of keeping supply artificially low for such a product is foolish and doomed to failure.
In reality, the better strategy is to get people to *think* there is a shortage, and reinforce this notion by having a short-term shortage around now, but quietly slip market-clearing quantities into the market closer to christmas.
AC, your understanding of basic physics is amazing. Wait.. did I say amazing? I meant shocking.
This leads to two perverse situations:
And having lived in the USA, UK, Malaysia, China (Guangzhou), Japan, Singapore, France, Spain, Canada, and Pakistan for a year or more each I know you are full of shit.
Consider:
Question the US president the wrong way and your guaranteed you will never be able to again.
Tin foil hat fitting snugly? Please provide some evidence of the people who come to your house at night and take you away. If your idea was in the remotest correct, the authors of the following website would all be fugitives: www.nytimes. The USA has the free-est press in the world, full stop. You might not like the speed or tone of the "big" news producers in the USA, but there are literally millions of alternatives out there and at the end of the day you're welcome to start your own blog and report what you will.
IN CHINA YOU WILL BE THROWN IN PRISON IF YOU DO THIS
I repeat: PRISON.
Not "oh the USA is the same as the chinese press because they broke some iraq story a bit later than i would have liked."
I repeat: PRISON. Think about this: probably half the opinion articles in the new york times would be censored in china and their authors ruined. Bloggists in china saying the same sort of thing that bloggers say routinely in the west might simply vanish.
Yay, Chamberlain!
Suggestion for you: save up a few dollars and travel the world a bit. You will see how absolutely and completely not grounded in reality your post is.
At the risk of stating what is blatantly obvious to everybody else:
In other words, 10,000 fit into one square meter.
In other words, all the mobile phones in the UK will fit into a small number of trucks. with compacting, that number might be as small as one.
in other words, this is a marketing ploy.
while you're at it, learn a little bit about the history of hawaii. while the situations are of course different, there are quite a large number of parallels to Tibet. Unarguable is that the overthrow of Liliuokalani was illegal and unwanted by the native populace, and that hawaiian culture has become a tourist shell of its former self in the aftermath.
Don't let my talk about hawaii distract from the main point, though, which is that the free tibet movement is much sizzle, little steak. Look, I am no fan of the Chinese Communists, but to claim that Tibet was ideal or even significantly better before they moved in simply does not mesh with reality.
Look.. Tibet has nice photogenic monks that come off as worm-protecting good guys in disney movies. but the fact of the matter is that tibet was not some idyllic neverland - it was an autocratic theocracy of monks that ruled an impoverished peasant class and had infighting and murder galore.
Read http://www.american-buddha.com/friend.feud.1.htm (the Tibet Myth - sorry about the font - it is not my doing!).
get over your myths.
that said, even if the above web page were all BS (and it is NOT), the fact of the matter is that the chinese have ruled tibet for nearly 50 years now. tibet is effectively part of china. you may fight for independence for tibet just like you can fight for indepence of hawaii now (a state for roughly the same amount of time). more power to you if that's your thing (but i do suggest that you read the Tibet Myth web page first). but don't try to pretend like it's not one country now.
However, as a responder, do you not feel at all any obligation to be coherent, much less logical?
Forever time with this "If you don't like it, don't buy it" argument.
Does not parse.
If they don't like it, they don't have to sell it.
Makes zero logical sense.
I am tired of being an unpaid enforcer of their policies
What made up world are you living in, again?
Fact of the mater is they are introducing a product with an immature technology for protecting their interests.
What size tin foil hat do you wear, again?
So they impose upon mine.
Hooked on phonics.
Licensing be damned: I don't tell them how to spend the money used to purchase their product, so quit telling me how to use the product
Old and busted: that argument.
Why should the onus be strictly upon me?
Sigh. For the billionth time. If you dont like the agreement, DONT BUY THE PRODUCT.
The rest of your argument is the same nonsense. For the life of me, I can't imagine what your point is, but you do sure make for a great rant!
This would seem to be inconsistent.. unless, you know, you actually took a moment to think about it.
Sony has some online music service where they do not allow you (vis a vis the linked to licensing agreemnet) to copy the songs to other players. Fine. If you dont like that, DONT USE THE SERVICE. The consequences of this licensing proviso has been factored in to the "supply and demand" equation for the service offering.
On the other hand, it has been shown that you are welcome to take your purchased sony CD-ROMs and make Mp3s for them for your personal use on your sony MP3 players or whatnot. It has been pretty much universally acknowledged that as long as its for your own personal use, this is a privilege that you get with your physical CD purchase and this has likewise been "supply / demanded" in to the price offering.
Why is it so hard to understand that one company might offer two different levels of service / product at different prices?
"If only the Music companies sold tracks online for, say, 99c"
Now:
"99c is a rip-off!"
I'm sorry. Your argument has no credibility.
People who are cracking your CDs have made a conscious decision that a) you made something of value b) they want it c) they would rather steal it than pay for it. The rebuke that takes simply takes it away is a gentle one and shows restraint. The thieves (or "infringers" - the technicalities of the language are not important) probably deserve punishmnet. Given that Valve is acting with restraint, they certainly have the right to be as preachy as they want.
See, that's the problem. What you wrote MAY be true, but it's not certainly true. If it were so clear cut, then there would be no argument.
Do you remember the laffer curve? This was the idea popularized in the reagan years that basically went like this: imagine that you are the emperor and can set the tax rate for your country. If you set it at 0%, then you would get no revenue and you could not govern. If you set it at 100%, then nobody would produce anything since it would all be taxed. Therefore, you should set your tax rate at some point "T*" where people would have maximal incentive to work but government would likewise get its necesary revenue. Therefore (the puzzling reagan-era logic went), the tax rate should be lower as this will stimulate economic growth.
Notice that the laffer curve idea doesn't actually tell you where T* is, and yet reaganites jumped on the idea that they should lower taxes. You've basically made the same leap - anybody who is not an idiot realizes that both 0% and 100% IP regulation would be stupidity. The "socially optimal" or "public interest" level of regulation is somewhere in between. Where exactly this is - well.. like a reaganite who just says "therefore taxes should be lower" without actually working through the intermediate logic, much less econometric studies, you just say that IPR should be lower.
Again, you may be right, but you haven't shown this. While "stifling competition" may not be in the public interest, giving just rewards to inventors certainly is. Unless you're prepared to actually make a reasoned argument why you think the current situation is to one side or the other of the IPR T*, then you are really just talking out of your ass.
Linux and and MySQL have much to lose if strong european software patents become a reality since both are technologies that, for whatever their pluses, rely heavily on imitating prior art.
Therefore, it is little surprise that they'd come out against software patents. It's like hearing exactly one side of the argument. I don't see any reason to take their views as somehow more correct or enlightened than microsoft's or IBM's might be from the other side. each actor is acting in his economic self interest in a pretty blatant way.
Any moderator who marked such ignorant nonsense up as "insightful" deserves to have his/her moderator priviliges revoked permanently.
In case there is any question:
- There was only one shooter. This is the only explanation that has stood the test of time and reasoned analysis.
- The "magic bullet" is only preposterous sounding if you accept the premises as they were laid out in Oliver Stone's JFK movie. The problem is that such premises were bullshit.
For details, read this page. There are few if any better on the internet on the JFK assassination.However, those of you who think that the whole Kyoto debate is about the USA should not lose sight of the more important fact:
Global Temperatures Will Continue To Rise as a result of CO2 emissions even if 100% of the world wholeheartedly adopted Kyoto TODAY.
All Kyoto does (and it is a big step, but nevertheless) is slow the RATE of growth. Politicians and other know-nothings will be patting themselves on the back saying "well, that fixed it!" It did no such thing--at most, it bought us a little time.. and a little is the operative word. Kyoto's significance is not so much that it has somehow lessened the problem - for all practical purposes, it has not. It's significance is that it works to effectively keep the problem from getting much, much worse.
/ I have lived in over 12 countries (5 continents) for more than a year each. I'm interested in hearing your views. Frankly, I think you're full of shit.
In fact, the fundamental problem that this article is highlighting, that an autocratic, antidemocratic, and abusive regime in China is using satellites to spy on its own citizens may not even be true in China in 10-20 years as China may (though it is of course by no means a certainty) evolve into a democratic, accountable state by that time.
For those of you just itching to get in your 2 cents about how the USA is likewise an autocratic blah blah state.. zip it. While I hate GWB, the Patriot Act, etc as much as the next guy, such things are in an absolute sense truly insignificant compared to what still goes on in China where many citizens still lack basic freedom of movement inside the country to say nothing of the extreme repression of information and speech.
This would be potentially insightful if EVEN ONE example were given rather than just revolutionary hand waving.
I agree with your assessment that it's a good thing and I also share your dread at the predictable tin foil hat replies. However, "in you're not in a position to be affected by this.." is exactly the wrong attitude.
Bzzt. Try "licensed" media. Deal with it and grow up. Copyright is a compromise between what's (strictly) good for the rightsholders and what's (strictly) good for users that is intended to foster innovation and creativity in society over the long term.
One of the fundamental characteristics of this compromise is that you can not simply do anything you want with that DVD you bought at best buy. You might have legitimate disagreement with the nature of what it has been decided you can or can not do, but to argue that you have unlimited rights to something like this is as naive and outside reality as creationism or flat-earth ism. In short, grow up, intellectually, and join the real discussion on such things.
Note to you: it can't be done.
In fact, I dare you so much as to propose a TOPIC on which you can IMAGINE that a "perfect" tag could be applied. I am not suggesting that the article itself would be perfect, but that some topic on which a reasonable human could conclude that an article is good enough _and the underlying information will forever be good enough_.
Can't be done.
Even something as "The Numbers 1 through 10" could always be improved in a myriad of ways that I could think of be it through addition of historical perspective, evolution through the ages, some mathematical aspects, or so on.
In brief, at the end of the day after 100+ edits, the Alexander Hamilton piece is NOT a rich tapestry of nuance and expertise. It's a high-school quality wallpaper job.
The author has proposed mechanism as to why such articles are, in effect, wallpaper jobs and does, in my opinion, a good bit to evidence the "emperor has no clothes" nature of those such as yourself who have a faith-based view of collaboration - the well meaning, but certainly not proven and possibly quite wrong idea that groups of humans "quasi Darwinially" converge upon optimal solutions.
The probem may not be that the author doesn't understand the spirit of Wiki - it may be that he understands it too well.
/ full disclosure: I have contributed articles to Wiki, though I am under no illusions as to its potential and, frankly, share the author's views. When I do serious work, I don't use Wiki as a reference.