When you do something for yourself, there are different motivations and expectations than there are for those viewing or otherwise using your art. At the very least, the number of producers and new works is likely to be so large that the user has no way to properly sample all of them. In this sense, there is no substitute for a critical press or other filtering mechanism to allow consumers to experience the things they generally want from art.
From this perspective, critics have a useful role for both communities - linking artist and like-minded consumers.
When a self-appointed elite of critics performs more than this relatively objective filtering function - i.e. determining which artists "belong" to a given genre or are allowed to control rewards to particular artists, then I'd question the underlying value of the genre or artists being discussed. True art will find its audience under phenomenally difficult conditions - independent music is the exemplar. Fanzines and sites reliably point consumers to sounds they'd likely enjoy - while labels funnel sheep to the sounds they can best market.
If you truly love your art, and the art it's a part of, I'd think being a critic comes along with the territory - you have to judge what you do for yourself, no? This inevitably results in comparison and explanation, even if it's for your own edification and improvement - guess what - that's criticism.
Average unemployment rate under Reagan was higher than under Carter. Average inflation rate under Reagan was higher than under Carter.
The average inflation rate under Carter (from 1/77 to 12/80) was 9.73%
The average inflation rate under Reagan (from 1/81 to 12/88) was 4.65%
source http://inflationdata.com
Carter definitely worse here, twice as bad.
The average unemployment rate under Carter (from 1/77 to 12/80) was 6.53%
The average unemployment rate under Reagan (from 1/81 to 12/88) was 7.53%
source http://www.neatideas.com/data/data/UNRATE.htm
Reagan incrementally worse here, about 15% different. More importantly, since I assume you're arguing that policies affect these numbers, are that Carter's unemployment rate was about as high when he left as it was when he entered, while Reagan's was consistently under 6% for the last 18 months of tenure
Additionally, the sum of these two (two thirds of the "misery index" - too lazy to remember/research the third - interest rates?) leads to 16.26% for Carter, and 12.19% for Reagan. Clear winner - Reagan.
Apology accepted.
Google's an amazing thing - you could have checked the numbers yourself in 2 min, rather than spouting nonsense. Note that I didn't make the comparison to Reagan, you did. I merely said that the numbers under Carter were miserable, which even most Democrats admit...
Your neighbor should read this book. Maybe he'll be able to keep a job by correctly delivering projects and managing interoffice politics, then...
...or is that hitting a little close to home??
For context, 500 dead/day with no sign of improvement = quagmire, as in Vietnam. Much less than 1 dead/day on avg, with locals starting to run things and the potential for a stable, free Iraq != quagmire, but == incremental success.
By the way, "record unemployment" is just plain ignorant. By any historical standard, we're awfully close to full employment. Not all that long ago (think "Carter"), the unemployment rate, inflation rate, and interest rates were all well over 10%. I suppose it's too much to ask AC's (or others) to actually check to see if what they're saying remotely resemble truth, but whaddayagonnado....
Don't even get me started on grammar/spelling (at least four obvious errors in a 25 word post, would that be "record illiteracy"?)
Prior Art (Score:1)
by mr.nicholas (219881) on Monday August 04, @04:53PM (#6609453)
(http://www.mrnick.binary9.net/)
They're acquiring a patent, huh? Hm. Do TV shows that demonstrate this technology count as Prior Art? They hope not, because "Earth: Final Conflict" had this type of input device since season one.
I personally disliked the show, but thought their UIs were right-on for a "futuristic" technology.
Note: I also thought their "Globals" (handheld computers/communications devices) were well designed, too. I had guessed that they accurated predicted what our technological/design curve would end up being.
Fictional prior art isn't prior art. These guys are claiming to be able to actually do this, not just imagine it on a SF show. It isn't that farfetched, either, just a merging of two disparate well understood technologies - holographic image generation and IR position detection. There's a good post earlier about the required size of the generator that makes this particular idea sound impractical for many obvious uses, but definitely within the achievable.
Clearly, that was not the intent of the original poster. His intent was more like "because I want this, although I have no legitimate ethical right to expect it" which makes your post irrelevant.
He even explicitly mentioned the fact that civil disobeience was VALID, further undermining your need to reply. This is why "ethical" above is not "legal", BTW.
This was obvious from his context. I hate when guys nitpick semantically, and still manage to get it wrong...
- John
>but "because I want this" is not a valid reason to break the law.
There are lots of things which can be classified as "I want" such as
"I want the right to vote for representation"
"I want the ability to get married to someone of a different race or culture"
"I want my child to live in a place where he can worship the religon he wants to"
Thanks for clarifying what you meant. Your original post was easily misread (by me, at least) into thinking that the original PC could have been a '386, which we both agree was not the case.
Your timeline of IBM's later releases is more accurate, but the time gap between Compaq and IBMs releases wasn't really that great - 9 months. It was ultimately the incompatibility of the MicroChannel, compared to the commoditized hardware available for use with the Compaq, that killed IBMs PS/2 line more than anything else...
while the IBM=Microsoft angle is reasonably accurate in terms of relative monopoly, the "ibm hobbles pc with bad processor" paranoia is just fabricated out of whole cloth.
The original PC shipped with the 8088 because that was all that was the best that available from Intel at the time (discussion of the 8/16 bit data bus that distinguished it from the 8086 aside...). The AT had a '286 because (again) that was the best available from Intel at the time. The '386 came even later than that.
I'd look up the actual timeline, but slack prevents me, because it's such an obvious case. It was a few years between processor releases, so this can't really resemble their actual business thinking...
Yes, I'm old. Old enough to remember this firsthand.
In your examples, the carpenters or construction workers don't get royalties, being paid fairly for their labor according to their appropriate contract, but the OWNERS of the property being discussed (home developer/builder through purchase price, and gov't for roads through taxes - this is actually more complex, but sufficient for this discussion) who you likely meant to reference, absolutely get paid for their capital investments and risks of allocation.
There's a fundamental difference between IP and real property. The ownership of real property can be managed and transferred easily through the use of titles, physical possession, etc. The ownership of IP, control and use of which belogs to the original owner - just like in the cases you cite - cannot be managed this way. Copyright law (in this sense, of ownership and use) for IP is a perfect analog to contract law for real property.
In this light, your statement is equal to "Why not get rid of contract law, and let everyone own everything they want?" and is just as ridiculous.
Actually, your case is fully included in my third option above. It's clear that piracy can generate legit sales (especially when the purchased product is of higher quality than the pirated app). It's also clear that in many cases, such as lower volume niche products, giving away samples of product can also increase sales. As I'm sure you're aware, books CDs for many reasons, making your example irrelevant, even if your intended point is less so.
The question I was answering (not sure if you actually understood...) was that it was ridiculous to state that (paraphrasing) "it's impossible to state that piracy could have an effect on revenue without having parallel sales data available."
I answered that question.
You've added nothing of value to the discussion, by stating the obvious but not refuting anything I actually said, and can also be safely dismissed.
If I own a gas station, and someone moves in across the street with another gas station (at the same prices, let's say), and my revenue is cut in half, and his are about the same as mine, then I have a pretty solid claim that the total gas revenues on that corner are about the same, and he took half.
Without having to show results from the same time without him being there.
On to the real question at hand, however. Napster (and all the P2P's) moved in, with a zero price product. In the above analysis, the pricing model was picked to show that revenue movement is not due to price or other factors, just likely convenience. Therefore the analysis above must be slightly changed to reflect that. There are now three classes of consumer, rather than one. 1) The consumer who gets music from the P2P's INSTEAD of from shrink-wrap CDs - some percentage of this group would have bought some of their music by CD if P2P was not an option, 2) The consumer who only gets music from shrink-wrap CDs, and 3) The consumer who gets some music from P2P, and some from shrink-wrap.
There's no way to deny two statements: a) Any downloaded music that would have been purchased IS lost revenue, b) Not all of the revenue claimed lost by the labels is valid because at least some of that music would never have been purchased anyway.
NOTE THAT EVEN IN THAT LAST CASE, while it's not strictly lost revenue, it IS a copyright infringement because the legit CD owner that held a fair use license exceeded his rights by sharing it.
Since there's no coherent way to claim that absolutely NONE of the downloads represent lost revenue, your statement can be safely dismissed...
actually, there are so many individual choices that happen to a design before it becomes binary code (algorithm, data structure, language, platform, compiler, etc), that the odds of similar code for any non-trivial task are pretty low.
One way to think of it is that code is the expression of an idea. Give two people the same task, and even if they solve the problem in similar ways, the manner they use to describe the solution is likely to be SIGNIFICANTLY different.
...unless, of course, one simply cribs the other's work...
Only if they suspect you of a crime, and then its only a one shot deal. If they followed you every day (as in the records of the tolls) its an invasion of privacy.
Data is not information.
Having raw location data in a db somewhere is not inherently an invasion of privacy - noone is viewing that data, therefore noone acts based on that data. Now - doing a query against that information ("give me a list of everyone who averaged 80 mph traveling from Chicago to Milwaukee" - or "what's the average number of cars on I80 between 8 and 10 am") turns that data into information. Now comes the interesting question:
Is there an invasion of privacy?
There's an invasion of privacy only if information about you can be singled out for lawful actions. In the first query above, single driver stats come up, but for illegal acts - no expectation of privacy, therefore no invasion. In the second query, useful demographic info is returned, but no individual info - again, no invasion.
Your argument is analogous to saying that convenience stores can't run security cameras because not everyone's a thief. It makes no sense. In fact, it makes everyone who's not a thief potentially more secure.
...you must expect to give up some privacy in order to protect the public.
From what? Potholes?
follow the logical thought:
From those who abuse the privilege.
Because we have plates (a minimal privacy invasion for law abiding citizens), if you go on a Sat night drunken rampage in your car, hit someone, and their friend catches your plate number, you'll likely be toast.
It's kinda the same thing with these transponders. I'm a privacy advocate, but I have a hard time saying no to a system that keeps individual traffic patterns and locations private (no human operator can ever see them without a warrant, or similar), but is set to flag particular dangerous conditions - such as a speeding violation of 140 mph (as mentioned elsewhere in this article's comments). That's just common sense...I don't want that person driving anywhere near where my wife and kids are, and if there's a means to prevent it without curbing ANY civil liberties for law-abiding citizens, then fine.
Which news reports are you reading? No one at Enron has been arrested yet. It's somewhat doubtful that anyone will even be charged.
What news account have you been reading? There is already at least one high-profile conviction (Duncan) in the wake if the Enron debacle. Last week there were several accounts of ML and Citigroup being called on the investigative carpet both congressionally and prosecutorially for their seeming intentional fraudulent actions.
Also, the laying low of an entire accounting firm (and a fresh look at new accountability regulation) that was willing to trade its integrity for profit in the Enron case is exactly the kind of proof I'm talking about.
This thing is far from over. Building an adequate case to bring to trial takes time. I would be surprised if there aren't more explicit fraud charges against some large players.
I take the lack of comment on the other relevant 98% of my post means you agree with the intent of the post, and were just looking to (inaccurately) nitpick the other 2%. Glad we agree!
There's something to be said that this is actually being reported on and discussed BEFORE there are defaults on the loans, and more corporate money is thrown away.
This and the fact that there are Enron, WorldCom, etc. executives carted away in handcuffs and facing what appears to be serious JAIL TIME means that the capital systems are WORKING.
Did people lose money? Of course they did.
Is that a bad thing? Of course it is.
But, WHENEVER crime is perpetrated, there are people who are damaged. (Crackhead steals and totals your car, he goes to jail, you have to fight with your insurance, which you supplied, to replace your car...) A major job of regulatory and enforcement folks is to detect and catch criminals whenever laws are broken. Restitution would be nice, but the primary focus is to make the penalties severe enough to prevent future occurences of law-breaking, without constraining the system so much that lawful commerce is impossible.
Sounds like that process is well underway...
So what's the big deal? Really??
- John
Re:...isn't this type of thing still legal in the
on
Shake-up At SonicBlue
·
· Score: 1
For whatever criticism the CEO may have endured in the past, right or wrong, he was definitely right to call in those loans and when they fired him, he was definitely right to call "shenanigans" and inform the press.
The only problem was that he didn't wait until after they fired him to go to the press with it. There are usually standard clauses that allow a board to remove a chair (or another member) if they reveal internal board communications to the press outside of normal channels.
That appears to be what happened - He gave them a valid reason to fire him by talking to the press rather than working internally to get this completely resolved first.
I agree with you 100%. I don't think that my post (rant?) implied that bandwidth should be free. I was commenting on the editorial style of the article.
The last paragraph (which you quoted) was in response to the other/. posts that were stating "FBI should stick to terrorism, or conspiracy". I was justifying why the FBI might be on the case.
Looks like I misread the tone of your note - glad we agree! Sorry for any confusion...
IMO, no amount of bandwidth is excessive. Since the FBI was invovled, I doubt this is a breach of contract (read: Civil) case. They probably are pressing charges for the *theft* of bandwidth. The clueless reporter decided to treat bandwidth as a controlled substance.
They treated it like a controlled substance because it effectively IS. By definition, using more than you're legally allowed to is excessive. The quantity you're legally allowed to use is limited and the company took active steps to control your access by capping the modems...
In the real world, things like IP and bandwidth have value and BELONG TO PEOPLE. Trading things of value for money is how people feed their families. Stealing things of value is theft - whether it's a tangible asset, like a car, or relatively intangible, like IP or bandwidth.
Look - it's not that hard. I'm so tired of these rants by people who expect everything free. I can't wait for some of them to actually DO something with their lives and watch while everyone else tries to take THEIR property...
Re:True story
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Actually, the true VB bug is turning incompetent weenies into programmers...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure you get it, fully.
When you do something for yourself, there are different motivations and expectations than there are for those viewing or otherwise using your art. At the very least, the number of producers and new works is likely to be so large that the user has no way to properly sample all of them. In this sense, there is no substitute for a critical press or other filtering mechanism to allow consumers to experience the things they generally want from art.
From this perspective, critics have a useful role for both communities - linking artist and like-minded consumers.
When a self-appointed elite of critics performs more than this relatively objective filtering function - i.e. determining which artists "belong" to a given genre or are allowed to control rewards to particular artists, then I'd question the underlying value of the genre or artists being discussed. True art will find its audience under phenomenally difficult conditions - independent music is the exemplar. Fanzines and sites reliably point consumers to sounds they'd likely enjoy - while labels funnel sheep to the sounds they can best market.
If you truly love your art, and the art it's a part of, I'd think being a critic comes along with the territory - you have to judge what you do for yourself, no? This inevitably results in comparison and explanation, even if it's for your own edification and improvement - guess what - that's criticism.
- John
The average inflation rate under Reagan (from 1/81 to 12/88) was 4.65%
source http://inflationdata.com
Carter definitely worse here, twice as bad.
The average unemployment rate under Carter (from 1/77 to 12/80) was 6.53%
The average unemployment rate under Reagan (from 1/81 to 12/88) was 7.53%
source http://www.neatideas.com/data/data/UNRATE.htm
Reagan incrementally worse here, about 15% different. More importantly, since I assume you're arguing that policies affect these numbers, are that Carter's unemployment rate was about as high when he left as it was when he entered, while Reagan's was consistently under 6% for the last 18 months of tenure
Additionally, the sum of these two (two thirds of the "misery index" - too lazy to remember/research the third - interest rates?) leads to 16.26% for Carter, and 12.19% for Reagan. Clear winner - Reagan.
Apology accepted.
Google's an amazing thing - you could have checked the numbers yourself in 2 min, rather than spouting nonsense. Note that I didn't make the comparison to Reagan, you did. I merely said that the numbers under Carter were miserable, which even most Democrats admit...
Your neighbor should read this book. Maybe he'll be able to keep a job by correctly delivering projects and managing interoffice politics, then...
...or is that hitting a little close to home??
For context, 500 dead/day with no sign of improvement = quagmire, as in Vietnam. Much less than 1 dead/day on avg, with locals starting to run things and the potential for a stable, free Iraq != quagmire, but == incremental success.
By the way, "record unemployment" is just plain ignorant. By any historical standard, we're awfully close to full employment. Not all that long ago (think "Carter"), the unemployment rate, inflation rate, and interest rates were all well over 10%. I suppose it's too much to ask AC's (or others) to actually check to see if what they're saying remotely resemble truth, but whaddayagonnado....
Don't even get me started on grammar/spelling (at least four obvious errors in a 25 word post, would that be "record illiteracy"?)
He even explicitly mentioned the fact that civil disobeience was VALID, further undermining your need to reply. This is why "ethical" above is not "legal", BTW.
This was obvious from his context. I hate when guys nitpick semantically, and still manage to get it wrong...
- John
Thanks for clarifying what you meant. Your original post was easily misread (by me, at least) into thinking that the original PC could have been a '386, which we both agree was not the case.
Your timeline of IBM's later releases is more accurate, but the time gap between Compaq and IBMs releases wasn't really that great - 9 months. It was ultimately the incompatibility of the MicroChannel, compared to the commoditized hardware available for use with the Compaq, that killed IBMs PS/2 line more than anything else...
- John
while the IBM=Microsoft angle is reasonably accurate in terms of relative monopoly, the "ibm hobbles pc with bad processor" paranoia is just fabricated out of whole cloth.
The original PC shipped with the 8088 because that was all that was the best that available from Intel at the time (discussion of the 8/16 bit data bus that distinguished it from the 8086 aside...). The AT had a '286 because (again) that was the best available from Intel at the time. The '386 came even later than that.
I'd look up the actual timeline, but slack prevents me, because it's such an obvious case. It was a few years between processor releases, so this can't really resemble their actual business thinking...
Yes, I'm old. Old enough to remember this firsthand.
- John
This is ridiculous.
In your examples, the carpenters or construction workers don't get royalties, being paid fairly for their labor according to their appropriate contract, but the OWNERS of the property being discussed (home developer/builder through purchase price, and gov't for roads through taxes - this is actually more complex, but sufficient for this discussion) who you likely meant to reference, absolutely get paid for their capital investments and risks of allocation.
There's a fundamental difference between IP and real property. The ownership of real property can be managed and transferred easily through the use of titles, physical possession, etc. The ownership of IP, control and use of which belogs to the original owner - just like in the cases you cite - cannot be managed this way. Copyright law (in this sense, of ownership and use) for IP is a perfect analog to contract law for real property.
In this light, your statement is equal to "Why not get rid of contract law, and let everyone own everything they want?" and is just as ridiculous.
- John
edit above comment "... books are NOT EQUAL to CDs for many reasons ..."
- John
Actually, your case is fully included in my third option above. It's clear that piracy can generate legit sales (especially when the purchased product is of higher quality than the pirated app). It's also clear that in many cases, such as lower volume niche products, giving away samples of product can also increase sales. As I'm sure you're aware, books CDs for many reasons, making your example irrelevant, even if your intended point is less so.
The question I was answering (not sure if you actually understood...) was that it was ridiculous to state that (paraphrasing) "it's impossible to state that piracy could have an effect on revenue without having parallel sales data available."
I answered that question.
You've added nothing of value to the discussion, by stating the obvious but not refuting anything I actually said, and can also be safely dismissed.
- John
I can't imagine a more ridiculous statement.
If I own a gas station, and someone moves in across the street with another gas station (at the same prices, let's say), and my revenue is cut in half, and his are about the same as mine, then I have a pretty solid claim that the total gas revenues on that corner are about the same, and he took half.
Without having to show results from the same time without him being there.
On to the real question at hand, however. Napster (and all the P2P's) moved in, with a zero price product. In the above analysis, the pricing model was picked to show that revenue movement is not due to price or other factors, just likely convenience. Therefore the analysis above must be slightly changed to reflect that. There are now three classes of consumer, rather than one. 1) The consumer who gets music from the P2P's INSTEAD of from shrink-wrap CDs - some percentage of this group would have bought some of their music by CD if P2P was not an option, 2) The consumer who only gets music from shrink-wrap CDs, and 3) The consumer who gets some music from P2P, and some from shrink-wrap.
There's no way to deny two statements:
a) Any downloaded music that would have been purchased IS lost revenue,
b) Not all of the revenue claimed lost by the labels is valid because at least some of that music would never have been purchased anyway.
NOTE THAT EVEN IN THAT LAST CASE, while it's not strictly lost revenue, it IS a copyright infringement because the legit CD owner that held a fair use license exceeded his rights by sharing it.
Since there's no coherent way to claim that absolutely NONE of the downloads represent lost revenue, your statement can be safely dismissed...
- John
actually, there are so many individual choices that happen to a design before it becomes binary code (algorithm, data structure, language, platform, compiler, etc), that the odds of similar code for any non-trivial task are pretty low.
...unless, of course, one simply cribs the other's work...
One way to think of it is that code is the expression of an idea. Give two people the same task, and even if they solve the problem in similar ways, the manner they use to describe the solution is likely to be SIGNIFICANTLY different.
- John
Having raw location data in a db somewhere is not inherently an invasion of privacy - noone is viewing that data, therefore noone acts based on that data. Now - doing a query against that information ("give me a list of everyone who averaged 80 mph traveling from Chicago to Milwaukee" - or "what's the average number of cars on I80 between 8 and 10 am") turns that data into information. Now comes the interesting question:
Is there an invasion of privacy?
There's an invasion of privacy only if information about you can be singled out for lawful actions. In the first query above, single driver stats come up, but for illegal acts - no expectation of privacy, therefore no invasion. In the second query, useful demographic info is returned, but no individual info - again, no invasion.
Your argument is analogous to saying that convenience stores can't run security cameras because not everyone's a thief. It makes no sense. In fact, it makes everyone who's not a thief potentially more secure.
- John
From those who abuse the privilege.
Because we have plates (a minimal privacy invasion for law abiding citizens), if you go on a Sat night drunken rampage in your car, hit someone, and their friend catches your plate number, you'll likely be toast.
It's kinda the same thing with these transponders. I'm a privacy advocate, but I have a hard time saying no to a system that keeps individual traffic patterns and locations private (no human operator can ever see them without a warrant, or similar), but is set to flag particular dangerous conditions - such as a speeding violation of 140 mph (as mentioned elsewhere in this article's comments). That's just common sense...I don't want that person driving anywhere near where my wife and kids are, and if there's a means to prevent it without curbing ANY civil liberties for law-abiding citizens, then fine.
It's a social CONTRACT, not a manifesto.
- John
What news account have you been reading? There is already at least one high-profile conviction (Duncan) in the wake if the Enron debacle. Last week there were several accounts of ML and Citigroup being called on the investigative carpet both congressionally and prosecutorially for their seeming intentional fraudulent actions.
Also, the laying low of an entire accounting firm (and a fresh look at new accountability regulation) that was willing to trade its integrity for profit in the Enron case is exactly the kind of proof I'm talking about.
This thing is far from over. Building an adequate case to bring to trial takes time. I would be surprised if there aren't more explicit fraud charges against some large players.
I take the lack of comment on the other relevant 98% of my post means you agree with the intent of the post, and were just looking to (inaccurately) nitpick the other 2%. Glad we agree!
- John
There's something to be said that this is actually being reported on and discussed BEFORE there are defaults on the loans, and more corporate money is thrown away.
This and the fact that there are Enron, WorldCom, etc. executives carted away in handcuffs and facing what appears to be serious JAIL TIME means that the capital systems are WORKING.
Did people lose money? Of course they did.
Is that a bad thing? Of course it is.
But, WHENEVER crime is perpetrated, there are people who are damaged. (Crackhead steals and totals your car, he goes to jail, you have to fight with your insurance, which you supplied, to replace your car...) A major job of regulatory and enforcement folks is to detect and catch criminals whenever laws are broken. Restitution would be nice, but the primary focus is to make the penalties severe enough to prevent future occurences of law-breaking, without constraining the system so much that lawful commerce is impossible.
Sounds like that process is well underway...
So what's the big deal? Really??
- John
That appears to be what happened - He gave them a valid reason to fire him by talking to the press rather than working internally to get this completely resolved first.
- John
It's Kirsty, you anonymous f-tard. "Kirsty" by her parents...
Looks like I misread the tone of your note - glad we agree! Sorry for any confusion...
In the real world, things like IP and bandwidth have value and BELONG TO PEOPLE. Trading things of value for money is how people feed their families. Stealing things of value is theft - whether it's a tangible asset, like a car, or relatively intangible, like IP or bandwidth.
Look - it's not that hard. I'm so tired of these rants by people who expect everything free. I can't wait for some of them to actually DO something with their lives and watch while everyone else tries to take THEIR property...
Actually, the true VB bug is turning incompetent weenies into programmers...