But you must not ever forget - no movie ever breaks even, let alone shows a profit, regardless of the box office & DVD sales. Therefore, extending the "Studio Math" just a bit, any piracy whatsoever puts the studios even further below the break-even point...
If you spend a week writing a short story, and only sell the single, original copy, that would be a reasonable analogy to your table example. You sell the story, you sell the table.
Now, if you had a way of building the table and then churning out perfectly identical copies of that table, that's when you can compare it to publishing a story (or a song, or a movie).
I've got a few rips sitting on my laptop right now - ripped from DVDs I have at home and don't want to have to carry around with me all the time. I've got them transcoded down to CD-R size, as I don't plan to put them on a big screen anyway, and I can fit 5 or 6 to a DVD+RW if I need the space back. Yes, there is a difference in the quality, but I'm happy to put up with that for the convenience of having them on hand. Believe me, the quality reduction is nothing compared to the bitching from my kids if we don't have some in-car entertainment on road trips...
I'm inclined to believe that a principal reason is so that the old laws can be quietly updated/modified without all that tedious business of getting the original laws replaced or repealed... I mean, look at the DMCA - we've all been bitching about how "fair use" has been set aside, along with various other things. And we've seen a number of lawsuits invoking the DMCA in completely inappropriate ways.
But neither Bush nor Kerry was able to win over a significant proportion of the voters that bothered to show up. Bush may win, but the popular vote is still quite close, which means that roughly half the voters didn't want Bush.
CNN.com is still showing Ohio as "to close to call", so Kerry either knows something is going to push Ohio towards Bush, or he's a really dumb sonofabitch for conceding before the final tally.
Which reminds me - if Kerry wins Ohio, and therefore the Presidency, does his concession still stand?? Or does Bush have to suck it up and start packing up his stuff??
Sounds like they're finally catching on to Multics-type security from back in the 80s, where you could own a file, have read/write access, and still not be able to touch it if it was created in a different privilege level...
For me, an important issue is taxation without representation. I've been in the US since 1993, paying taxes, putting my kids through school and working my butt off for an employer that can fire me "at will" just because they feel like it. Providing the rules aren't changed, I can apply for citizenship in about 3 years. I don't know how long that application takes to process, but it's just possible I'd be able to vote in the next election.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not unhappy here, my kids love this country and we wouldn't go back even if we could afford to. All I'm bitching about is that I don't even get to vote on a local 1-penny sales tax that may directly affect my kids' schools, let alone take part in picking which of two weevils gets to run the country for the next 4 years.
If I was allowed to vote, I'd be inclined to look seriously at any candidate that didn't join in the mudslinging that seems to be so prevalent these days. And I'd tell that to any candidate that came to my door, just in case he/she might actually take notice.
What would prevent that half-baked Chinese knockoff from downloading firmware from the manufacturers website, or heck, even buying one of the wireless products and copying the firmware anyway??
What Theo is saying is that if the manufacturers would allow him (us?) to distribute the firmware, then *BSD, Linux, or any other OS, would work out of the box with any given piece of hardware. Theo's pointing out that any given user can already download the firmware in a Windows package, extract the relevant bits, then use it with a different OS. He wants to avoid the download/extraction steps to make Unix more accessible to non-geeky people.
This is what I had to do with my company-supplied laptop. It's a Dell, with a Broadcom-based WiFi card. To be able to use it with Gentoo I had to install ndiswrapper and then dig the Broadcom stuff out of the Windows directory. If an update comes out, I'll have to do that all over again. If Dell and/or Broadcom would provide the stuff I need in a tarball, it would be really easy to stay updated.
One thing which Groklaw missed in their analysis at the time - the ruling did not prevent him from doing similar things later on.
I don't think that's too surprising - who would think that he would do it all over again after a judge issues a ruling saying he's delusional?? On the other hand, maybe his delusions include a belief that the judge was talking about someone else...:)
Well, I was going for a +1 Funny on that, but oh well...
I don't know what kind of engine could move a mass like Titan - a month ago I didn't know SpaceShipOne was going to reach the edge of space powered by old tires and laughing gas... I do know that you wouldn't want to move it very quickly... I imagine that by the time anyone gets a manned mission together to reach out that far, there'll be some new kind of engine, possibly capable of moving a significant fraction of Titan's mass. If not, a linear accelerator should work for shipping payload shells out to Titan and back.
Homeland Security should immediately return the items to Pufferbelly Toys and apologize.
According to the article, the agents didn't take the cubes away, they merely watched while the store owner took the cubes off the shelves. And presumably warned her not to put them back on the shelves after they left...
Slightly off-topic - I used to know a guy who wouldn't have a Rubik Cube in the house, because they were also known as the "Magic Cube". Supposedly, being a moderately strict Roman Catholic, he took objection to the word "Magic"... Personally, I think he was embarrassed because he didn't understand how it worked.
Funny thing was, he had absolutely no objection to the kind of large felt-tip pens commonly known as "Magic Markers"...
As somebody else pointed out, they're imported, not "Made In USA". So, Homeland Security can't really order the manufacturer to stop. What they could do would be to tell Dubya there's WMD's being made at the same plant...
Did you see "Mercury Rising"?? Bruce Willis as a government agent trying to protect an autistic boy who broke the government's latest super-secret code when some id10t published a puzzle encrypted using the Mercury Rising code.
Maybe the Rubik Cube is some kind of encryption engine?? There are 54 little squares on the cube - enough for the whole alphabet with some repeats, 10 digits and some special characters. Twist the cube every time you copy off a character, kinda like the Enigma machine rotated its dials... No, I'm probably not serious about it... Or am I??:)
With the cold temperature and higher atmospheric pressure wouldn't that turn all the ethane and methane into something not unlike diesel fuel when its really cold?
That gives me an interesting image - a manned mission to Titan sponsored by several oil companies in order to mine it for oil products... Or maybe simply to strap an engine to it and use some of the planetary mass to drive that sucker back to Earth orbit for easier access.
I think you're forgetting the recent stunning announcement from Micros~1 that the viruses &c are not their fault, it's the users that keep downloading shit from the Internet... You stop your pesky users from downloading all that nasty stuff, and obviously there won't be any cleanup costs...
Perhaps not, but Zelda is the name of a character in "Sabrina the teenage witch", which my kids spend altogether too much time watching. Wonder when they're gonna get their letter from Nintendo??
the foil used by Rutherford was of gold, beaten into leaf about 400 atoms thick.
Basically, just take a chunk of gold and pound on it until it's as thin as you want it... I imagine it's just a little more sophisticated than that, but that's the principal.
I really think much of this e-voting a solution looking for a problem.
I think you're right, but you need to go back a step or two. The old principal of "Follow the Money" applies here. Who benefits from pushing this solution that's looking for a problem?? A couple of companies with whiz-bang 1990's-style business plans - to "modernise" the voting system by using computers. This was the dot-com boom, remember?? IIRC, some states' voting machine budgets had a number of zeroes added, which puts those companies past "3)???" and into "4)profit!". They had ties (still do??) to members of the current government, who are eager to keep their positions of power.
The media are contributing to the problem by running up-to-the-minute polls and other hype, trying to make it seem necessary to have the counts complete within seconds of the polls closing - follow the money, again. Ratings, ratings, ratings... I'd be surprised if advertising spots on Election Day are priced much lower than other media-hype events.
There was then, and is now, absolutely nothing wrong with the pencil-and-paper solution. The only "wrongness" about reverting back to the old way is that certain companies and/or people might have to give up some of the money they've been looking forward to screwing out of the voters.
Did that other exception request get anywhere - the one where the election would be postponed "in case of terrorist activity"?? It was a couple of months ago, and I don't think I've heard it repeated since.
As someone else pointed out, the FDA approves or not based on if the food, drug or device is safe to use. I.e. it won't poison you, give you cancer, or make you glow in the dark. The tag just contains a very big number. The potential for Orwellian scenarios lies in the databases that the number is linked to. That's what the ACLU needs to worry about. There needs to be some kind of legislation regulating the use of the number as an identifying mark.
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But you must not ever forget - no movie ever breaks even, let alone shows a profit, regardless of the box office & DVD sales. Therefore, extending the "Studio Math" just a bit, any piracy whatsoever puts the studios even further below the break-even point...
Now, if you had a way of building the table and then churning out perfectly identical copies of that table, that's when you can compare it to publishing a story (or a song, or a movie).
I've got a few rips sitting on my laptop right now - ripped from DVDs I have at home and don't want to have to carry around with me all the time. I've got them transcoded down to CD-R size, as I don't plan to put them on a big screen anyway, and I can fit 5 or 6 to a DVD+RW if I need the space back. Yes, there is a difference in the quality, but I'm happy to put up with that for the convenience of having them on hand. Believe me, the quality reduction is nothing compared to the bitching from my kids if we don't have some in-car entertainment on road trips...
Puts a whole new spin on crop circles...
I'm inclined to believe that a principal reason is so that the old laws can be quietly updated/modified without all that tedious business of getting the original laws replaced or repealed... I mean, look at the DMCA - we've all been bitching about how "fair use" has been set aside, along with various other things. And we've seen a number of lawsuits invoking the DMCA in completely inappropriate ways.
CNN.com is still showing Ohio as "to close to call", so Kerry either knows something is going to push Ohio towards Bush, or he's a really dumb sonofabitch for conceding before the final tally.
Which reminds me - if Kerry wins Ohio, and therefore the Presidency, does his concession still stand?? Or does Bush have to suck it up and start packing up his stuff??
Sounds like they're finally catching on to Multics-type security from back in the 80s, where you could own a file, have read/write access, and still not be able to touch it if it was created in a different privilege level...
Don't get me wrong - I'm not unhappy here, my kids love this country and we wouldn't go back even if we could afford to. All I'm bitching about is that I don't even get to vote on a local 1-penny sales tax that may directly affect my kids' schools, let alone take part in picking which of two weevils gets to run the country for the next 4 years.
If I was allowed to vote, I'd be inclined to look seriously at any candidate that didn't join in the mudslinging that seems to be so prevalent these days. And I'd tell that to any candidate that came to my door, just in case he/she might actually take notice.
What Theo is saying is that if the manufacturers would allow him (us?) to distribute the firmware, then *BSD, Linux, or any other OS, would work out of the box with any given piece of hardware. Theo's pointing out that any given user can already download the firmware in a Windows package, extract the relevant bits, then use it with a different OS. He wants to avoid the download/extraction steps to make Unix more accessible to non-geeky people.
This is what I had to do with my company-supplied laptop. It's a Dell, with a Broadcom-based WiFi card. To be able to use it with Gentoo I had to install ndiswrapper and then dig the Broadcom stuff out of the Windows directory. If an update comes out, I'll have to do that all over again. If Dell and/or Broadcom would provide the stuff I need in a tarball, it would be really easy to stay updated.
I don't think that's too surprising - who would think that he would do it all over again after a judge issues a ruling saying he's delusional?? On the other hand, maybe his delusions include a belief that the judge was talking about someone else... :)
I don't know what kind of engine could move a mass like Titan - a month ago I didn't know SpaceShipOne was going to reach the edge of space powered by old tires and laughing gas... I do know that you wouldn't want to move it very quickly... I imagine that by the time anyone gets a manned mission together to reach out that far, there'll be some new kind of engine, possibly capable of moving a significant fraction of Titan's mass. If not, a linear accelerator should work for shipping payload shells out to Titan and back.
According to the article, the agents didn't take the cubes away, they merely watched while the store owner took the cubes off the shelves. And presumably warned her not to put them back on the shelves after they left...
Funny thing was, he had absolutely no objection to the kind of large felt-tip pens commonly known as "Magic Markers"...
As somebody else pointed out, they're imported, not "Made In USA". So, Homeland Security can't really order the manufacturer to stop. What they could do would be to tell Dubya there's WMD's being made at the same plant...
Maybe the Rubik Cube is some kind of encryption engine?? There are 54 little squares on the cube - enough for the whole alphabet with some repeats, 10 digits and some special characters. Twist the cube every time you copy off a character, kinda like the Enigma machine rotated its dials... No, I'm probably not serious about it... Or am I?? :)
That gives me an interesting image - a manned mission to Titan sponsored by several oil companies in order to mine it for oil products... Or maybe simply to strap an engine to it and use some of the planetary mass to drive that sucker back to Earth orbit for easier access.
Ballmer's seeing two governments about to defect to Linux (to some degree) and is beginning to sweat...
I think you're forgetting the recent stunning announcement from Micros~1 that the viruses &c are not their fault, it's the users that keep downloading shit from the Internet... You stop your pesky users from downloading all that nasty stuff, and obviously there won't be any cleanup costs...
Perhaps not, but Zelda is the name of a character in "Sabrina the teenage witch", which my kids spend altogether too much time watching. Wonder when they're gonna get their letter from Nintendo??
Why should prior art bother these Brits?? It sure as hell doesn't seem to mean anything to the USPTO...
Basically, just take a chunk of gold and pound on it until it's as thin as you want it... I imagine it's just a little more sophisticated than that, but that's the principal.
I think you're right, but you need to go back a step or two. The old principal of "Follow the Money" applies here. Who benefits from pushing this solution that's looking for a problem?? A couple of companies with whiz-bang 1990's-style business plans - to "modernise" the voting system by using computers. This was the dot-com boom, remember?? IIRC, some states' voting machine budgets had a number of zeroes added, which puts those companies past "3)???" and into "4)profit!". They had ties (still do??) to members of the current government, who are eager to keep their positions of power.
The media are contributing to the problem by running up-to-the-minute polls and other hype, trying to make it seem necessary to have the counts complete within seconds of the polls closing - follow the money, again. Ratings, ratings, ratings... I'd be surprised if advertising spots on Election Day are priced much lower than other media-hype events.
There was then, and is now, absolutely nothing wrong with the pencil-and-paper solution. The only "wrongness" about reverting back to the old way is that certain companies and/or people might have to give up some of the money they've been looking forward to screwing out of the voters.
My immediate thought was that he meant ignite as in burn to the ground...
Did that other exception request get anywhere - the one where the election would be postponed "in case of terrorist activity"?? It was a couple of months ago, and I don't think I've heard it repeated since.
As someone else pointed out, the FDA approves or not based on if the food, drug or device is safe to use. I.e. it won't poison you, give you cancer, or make you glow in the dark. The tag just contains a very big number. The potential for Orwellian scenarios lies in the databases that the number is linked to. That's what the ACLU needs to worry about. There needs to be some kind of legislation regulating the use of the number as an identifying mark.