Actually, one of the more common aspects to a price-fixing cartel is that they will aggressively lower prices below cost to kill their competition (relying on stockpiled cash and bank loans to survive themselves). Then, after they have knocked the competition out, they raise prices up to recoup their costs (and then some).
This scenario regularly gets played out in the airline industry, with discount airlines.
Of course, as the GPL makes it effectively impossible for the prices of GPL'd software to go up again, exactly how this is relevant is an interesting question.
(Dumping is slightly different; in a dumping scenario, you're still selling for profit in one market, usually a protected one, while selling under cost in another)
Don't you have to defend a trademark to keep it? And wouldn't the lack of a response to the well-publicised "Tiger" release of Java 5 by Sun be an issue?
Assuming you want at least 11 songs on the album (and that there are at least 11 songs), then the $9.90 figure represents a bulk discount on buying them individually.
So: why do you have a problem with the bulk price but not the single?
The point of a _digital_ ID is that the data is encrypted. The cop wouldn't be able to abuse it because the data wouldn't be available to them (abusing the centralised database is a different problem, bTW).
Your current ID has a lot more information than it needs to for most (but not all) purposes. A digital ID card would allow you to only hand out the relevant data on request.
(Oh, and _anyone_ can monitor your cordless and cellular phones without a warrant. If you're broadcasting, it's legally equivalent to eavesdropping when the person you're eavesdropping on is shouting using a megaphone. You can buy the necessary gear in RadioShack, and it's a standard tool for the sleazier type of journalist. Don't like it? Use encrypted phones)
First, buying age-sensitive things such as alcohol. Guess what, I don't care if kids get alcohol (I did as one, as did we all), and I passed my 21st birthday quite a good number of years ago. Unnecessary to show an ID. As an aside, I don't look even remotely under 21, but I consider that nearly irrelevant to the bigger issue - The law doesn't say a store needs to ID me, just that I can't buy before turning 21.
Actually, there's usually a law to the effect that the store can't sell you the alcohol if you're under age. It's not your burden to prove you are over age; it's the store's burden to prove that they knew.
By asking you for your ID, the store isn't enforcing a law stopping you buying alcohol without an ID; they're avoiding being in breach of a law that prevents them _selling_ alcohol to underage people. Asking you for ID is protection for the store owner.
Don't like it? Lobby for a "proof-of-age" card: it would contain some sort of "biometric" information (e.g. a picture), but wouldn't need to contain any other details; possession would prove you're over 21.
Actually, things like this is why we should introduce digital id cards with a whole HEAP of information on them. You would then be able to only reveal what ever is needed for a particular scenario (e.g. a cop could verify you have a valid driver's license, with no outstanding warrants, etc, without finding out your age or address).
I like the way the Creative Commons licenses work. Simple web-interface, you describe the attributes you want, they give you the legalese. Problem solved.
Repeat: "Very few get blocked". Some get blocked. Those ones, when you have enough, will kill you. Or fry a machine (which are much more sensitive to cosmic radiation than people). In any case, a computer in the middle of the moon doesn't count as the survival of the human race to me.
And yes, the colonies will be motivated by the same principles as Earth. Because both the drive to expand and the drive to explore are part of human nature.
Well, no, it doesn't. Yes, the radiation will be diminished, but it will still fry you. Cosmic rays, for example, go right through the Earth and out the other side - very few get blocked, but enough of them (such as from a major stellar explosion) will kill you.
Not to mention that the radiation front from the galactic core explosion is _not_ a narrow instance. It's the width of the galatic core - in other words, several _thousand_ light years across. I'm not an astrophysicist, but I believe that the Earth rotates both on its axis and around the Sun; I'm pretty sure you'll end up facing towards the radiation sometime during the several thousand years that it takes the wavefront to get through.
BTW: once you get _any_ expansion, you end up getting exponential. Sooner or later, the colonies start making colonies of their own, and you get an exponential growth curve.
Once we pass a certain technological threshold, our survival will be pretty much guaranteed. Pollution will be stopped as soon as we transition to nanomanufacturing. From then on the Earth will be as friendly and hospitable as we will want. And astronomical phenomena are actually rather predictable. We have a few billion years before Sun changes.
Frankly, that is BS. There are a number of astronomical events that could occur that we couldn't do anything about.
For the biggest and baddest: galactic core explosion. We'll have about 20,000 years, max, from the first symptoms to a humongous wave of radiation coming through. Should this occur, the _only_ possible defence is to get out about another 35,000 light years out, to give the radiation time to weaken.
Go to the source and stop the explosion? No luck, kiddo... the explosions would have finished about 10,000 years before you saw the symptoms.
For less dramatic events: massive supernovas would do the trick. A nasty solar flare could do the trick, too, and there is no certainty that we could stop it if we detected it.
We don't need enemy aliens to threaten us; the universe does a good enough job by itself.
Um, if you know X has made plans to bring a bomb, get X's photo distributed to the airport guards. They can then look for someone matching the description, and just get them to prove who they are.
As long as the description isn't "short, swarthy, and wearing a turban", this wouldn't be a problem.
Making them have to forge a few more papers shouldn't be that hard.
What's this forge BS? Every foreign national suspected of having been involved in a terrorist incident in the US ever has entered with their own legit passport. This includes the WTC bombers (from the first attack) as well as the hijackers.
Ironically, the highways are where you don't have to show ID.
However, the privately owned and operated air transport network is required by the US government to ask passengers to show ID. And the equally privately owned and operated rail network is likely to be required soon.
They've already got a suitable plot device. The Master reset his regeneration count using the Star of Rasillon - presumably any sufficently high-energy source would do the trick.
It's a case of the law not catching up with technology.
From other comments, it appears that the law in question (the "convenience of the employer" rule) is mostly used in states where a number of workers live outside of the state. Many of these would commute in physically (not telecommuting), and would use roads, public transport, possibly schools (drop the kids off near work), and so forth. No doubt the states started applying the rule to avoid this form of interstate ripoff.
Telecommuting is relatively new. The law hasn't caught up. A new, clearer law needs to be written up. End of story.
We don't know what technology the Greeks had; we know very little about them. What we do know indicates that this was possible.
They certainly knew geometry and optics. What they didn't know was glass. Crystal lenses have been discovered all over the Mediterranean.
Discovering how a parabolic array (lots of flat mirrors lined up along the curve of a parabola) focuses light is something that Archimedes could have confirmed - all it takes is an inquistive mind and observation. Getting a few hundred soldiers to position shields correctly would have been fairly trivial.
Why wouldn't it have become a popular weapon? It's not reliable enough. You need to have lots of mirrors, room to set them up in a parabolic curve, lots of bright sunlight, and a relatively slow moving target that will cross a known point at the right time. It's not easy but it would be possible.
Consider that triremes didn't usually sail at night - an invading fleet might well have pulled up not far from the harbor for the night, with intent to sail in an hour or two after dawn.
I would suggest that a clause restricting how you conduct commerce (e.g. forcing you to use a particular browser, which is what iTunes is here) would be subject to restraint of trade laws.
The PyMusique tool is not altering the song in any way - the download is the same.
RTFA: the "back door" doesn't strip out the DRM. It merely lets you play it on Linux - if you want to get it, you need to buy it.
As iTunes already allows you burn purchased tracks to CD (allowing them to be ripped into MP3s according to the article), all this does is allow you to play music you purchase. After all, what are the odds that the music you steal is DRM'd when there's so much un-DRM'd music to steal instead?
All this is doing, as far as I can see, is filling a hole in the market by producing a player that works under Linux. Heck, they're not even releasing a Windows version - Windows already has a free-as-in-beer player in iTunes.
You are required to respect their right to _hold_ that belief.
You, in turn, are permitted to have the belief that their belief is an indication of idiocy. And if they have a problem with that, tell them they're not respecting your beliefs.
More to the point: laws against such behaviour as fraud and false advertising have evolved from those cultures for reasons above and beyond the purely economic ones.
It is, of course, your responsibility to prove that the upgrade didn't damage the mini... But that's the same for any other warranty.
Some people have been talking about lifetime RAM warranties. Bought some defective RAM that didn't work when you installed it? Want to return it? Gee, I hope you can prove you used an anti-static wrist strap when you installed it, otherwise the manufacturer can say it was your fault. (A reseller probably won't say this, BTW)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, one of the more common aspects to a price-fixing cartel is that they will aggressively lower prices below cost to kill their competition (relying on stockpiled cash and bank loans to survive themselves). Then, after they have knocked the competition out, they raise prices up to recoup their costs (and then some).
This scenario regularly gets played out in the airline industry, with discount airlines.
Of course, as the GPL makes it effectively impossible for the prices of GPL'd software to go up again, exactly how this is relevant is an interesting question.
(Dumping is slightly different; in a dumping scenario, you're still selling for profit in one market, usually a protected one, while selling under cost in another)
Don't you have to defend a trademark to keep it? And wouldn't the lack of a response to the well-publicised "Tiger" release of Java 5 by Sun be an issue?
Assuming you want at least 11 songs on the album (and that there are at least 11 songs), then the $9.90 figure represents a bulk discount on buying them individually.
So: why do you have a problem with the bulk price but not the single?
The point of a _digital_ ID is that the data is encrypted. The cop wouldn't be able to abuse it because the data wouldn't be available to them (abusing the centralised database is a different problem, bTW).
Your current ID has a lot more information than it needs to for most (but not all) purposes. A digital ID card would allow you to only hand out the relevant data on request.
(Oh, and _anyone_ can monitor your cordless and cellular phones without a warrant. If you're broadcasting, it's legally equivalent to eavesdropping when the person you're eavesdropping on is shouting using a megaphone. You can buy the necessary gear in RadioShack, and it's a standard tool for the sleazier type of journalist. Don't like it? Use encrypted phones)
Actually, there's usually a law to the effect that the store can't sell you the alcohol if you're under age. It's not your burden to prove you are over age; it's the store's burden to prove that they knew.
By asking you for your ID, the store isn't enforcing a law stopping you buying alcohol without an ID; they're avoiding being in breach of a law that prevents them _selling_ alcohol to underage people. Asking you for ID is protection for the store owner.
Don't like it? Lobby for a "proof-of-age" card: it would contain some sort of "biometric" information (e.g. a picture), but wouldn't need to contain any other details; possession would prove you're over 21.
Actually, things like this is why we should introduce digital id cards with a whole HEAP of information on them. You would then be able to only reveal what ever is needed for a particular scenario (e.g. a cop could verify you have a valid driver's license, with no outstanding warrants, etc, without finding out your age or address).
I like the way the Creative Commons licenses work. Simple web-interface, you describe the attributes you want, they give you the legalese. Problem solved.
Repeat: "Very few get blocked". Some get blocked. Those ones, when you have enough, will kill you. Or fry a machine (which are much more sensitive to cosmic radiation than people). In any case, a computer in the middle of the moon doesn't count as the survival of the human race to me.
And yes, the colonies will be motivated by the same principles as Earth. Because both the drive to expand and the drive to explore are part of human nature.
Well, no, it doesn't. Yes, the radiation will be diminished, but it will still fry you. Cosmic rays, for example, go right through the Earth and out the other side - very few get blocked, but enough of them (such as from a major stellar explosion) will kill you.
Not to mention that the radiation front from the galactic core explosion is _not_ a narrow instance. It's the width of the galatic core - in other words, several _thousand_ light years across. I'm not an astrophysicist, but I believe that the Earth rotates both on its axis and around the Sun; I'm pretty sure you'll end up facing towards the radiation sometime during the several thousand years that it takes the wavefront to get through.
BTW: once you get _any_ expansion, you end up getting exponential. Sooner or later, the colonies start making colonies of their own, and you get an exponential growth curve.
Frankly, that is BS. There are a number of astronomical events that could occur that we couldn't do anything about.
For the biggest and baddest: galactic core explosion. We'll have about 20,000 years, max, from the first symptoms to a humongous wave of radiation coming through. Should this occur, the _only_ possible defence is to get out about another 35,000 light years out, to give the radiation time to weaken.
Go to the source and stop the explosion? No luck, kiddo... the explosions would have finished about 10,000 years before you saw the symptoms.
For less dramatic events: massive supernovas would do the trick. A nasty solar flare could do the trick, too, and there is no certainty that we could stop it if we detected it.
We don't need enemy aliens to threaten us; the universe does a good enough job by itself.
Um, if you know X has made plans to bring a bomb, get X's photo distributed to the airport guards. They can then look for someone matching the description, and just get them to prove who they are.
As long as the description isn't "short, swarthy, and wearing a turban", this wouldn't be a problem.
Making them have to forge a few more papers shouldn't be that hard.
What's this forge BS? Every foreign national suspected of having been involved in a terrorist incident in the US ever has entered with their own legit passport. This includes the WTC bombers (from the first attack) as well as the hijackers.
Ironically, the highways are where you don't have to show ID.
However, the privately owned and operated air transport network is required by the US government to ask passengers to show ID. And the equally privately owned and operated rail network is likely to be required soon.
Heck, McDonalds, 7/11, and gas stations are 24/7/365 jobs.
What's your point again?
They've already got a suitable plot device. The Master reset his regeneration count using the Star of Rasillon - presumably any sufficently high-energy source would do the trick.
It's a case of the law not catching up with technology.
From other comments, it appears that the law in question (the "convenience of the employer" rule) is mostly used in states where a number of workers live outside of the state. Many of these would commute in physically (not telecommuting), and would use roads, public transport, possibly schools (drop the kids off near work), and so forth. No doubt the states started applying the rule to avoid this form of interstate ripoff.
Telecommuting is relatively new. The law hasn't caught up. A new, clearer law needs to be written up. End of story.
What's bad is the double-dipping.
They had mirrors. They weren't glass - they were bronze. What's your point?
We don't know what technology the Greeks had; we know very little about them. What we do know indicates that this was possible.
: //www.trmkt.com/902manu.html
They certainly knew geometry and optics. What they didn't know was glass. Crystal lenses have been discovered all over the Mediterranean.
Discovering how a parabolic array (lots of flat mirrors lined up along the curve of a parabola) focuses light is something that Archimedes could have confirmed - all it takes is an inquistive mind and observation. Getting a few hundred soldiers to position shields correctly would have been fairly trivial.
Why wouldn't it have become a popular weapon? It's not reliable enough. You need to have lots of mirrors, room to set them up in a parabolic curve, lots of bright sunlight, and a relatively slow moving target that will cross a known point at the right time. It's not easy but it would be possible.
Consider that triremes didn't usually sail at night - an invading fleet might well have pulled up not far from the harbor for the night, with intent to sail in an hour or two after dawn.
See:
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mirrors.htm
http
And google for "ancient greek lens"
I would suggest that a clause restricting how you conduct commerce (e.g. forcing you to use a particular browser, which is what iTunes is here) would be subject to restraint of trade laws.
The PyMusique tool is not altering the song in any way - the download is the same.
Um, wrong...
RTFA: the "back door" doesn't strip out the DRM. It merely lets you play it on Linux - if you want to get it, you need to buy it.
As iTunes already allows you burn purchased tracks to CD (allowing them to be ripped into MP3s according to the article), all this does is allow you to play music you purchase. After all, what are the odds that the music you steal is DRM'd when there's so much un-DRM'd music to steal instead?
All this is doing, as far as I can see, is filling a hole in the market by producing a player that works under Linux. Heck, they're not even releasing a Windows version - Windows already has a free-as-in-beer player in iTunes.
This is not a story about how a minority group is being upset.
This is a story about how that reaction is affecting other people (in this case, by preventing accurate educational cinema being screened).
You may not care about it, but it's certainly valid news.
You are not required to respect their belief.
You are required to respect their right to _hold_ that belief.
You, in turn, are permitted to have the belief that their belief is an indication of idiocy. And if they have a problem with that, tell them they're not respecting your beliefs.
You need to fool people? Hah! 70% of people would give away their password for a block of chocolate!
The evidence isn't admissible, but it is sufficient to obtain a warrant in order to find admissible evidence.
More to the point: laws against such behaviour as fraud and false advertising have evolved from those cultures for reasons above and beyond the purely economic ones.
It is, of course, your responsibility to prove that the upgrade didn't damage the mini... But that's the same for any other warranty.
Some people have been talking about lifetime RAM warranties. Bought some defective RAM that didn't work when you installed it? Want to return it? Gee, I hope you can prove you used an anti-static wrist strap when you installed it, otherwise the manufacturer can say it was your fault. (A reseller probably won't say this, BTW)