Why fly (even via a corporate jet) when you just walk into a Halo conference room
Because along with flying comes nice hotel rooms and expense accounts, not to mention frequent flyer miles you can use on your own trips. Don't underestimate the allure of physical travel to PHBs.
The smart geek will keep an emergency back up admin account around. While it may sound like he's planning something evil with it (AKA fuck with me and I fuck you over, which it could be used for). He could also be making sure theres always a back up if things goto hell and someone tries gains access and tries to take out all the admin accounts.
Perhaps, but is there any reason why the existence of such is kept a secret from your supervisor? Besides, presumably the real admin has physical access to the machine and can at least yank the network connection and regain control. Your excuse is rather tenuous.
Of course it does. The modified software can destroy recorded programs, stop working entirely, or in extreme circumstances even destroy hardware*. I don't think it's unreasonable at all for them to disclaim any responsibility when you do that.
The actual hackers probably know the chances they are taking, but somebody who just downloads the patched software will probably blame Dish if things break.
* One example was the IBM EGA, which had registers that can be reprogrammed to permanently damage your monitor.
A 2002 Small Business Administration study shows that 66 percent of new businesses survive for two years or more, 50 percent for 4 years or more, and 40 percent for six years or more. Earlier studies had very similar numbers.
Even the 50 percent that didn't survive for four years were not all failures. One-third of those closed successfully. They were sold, the owners retired or took other jobs, or the business was closed for other reasons besides failure.
Which reads to me like 44% doesn't survive two years, and 60% don't surivive six. Still a sobering number. Taking the second paragraph into consideration, we see that 33% of businesses die in failure within four years.
Also important is that fact that not all small businesses are created equal. That is, success or failure is not determined entirely by random chance. Somebody who has never taken a job is likely to fit in the "no-employee, $50,000 capital, no-previous-business" pattern of failure cited in your article.
Why do you think that sitting at a desk saying "yessir" is going to prepare you for the leadership, stamina, and adrenaline of running your own (startup) business?
Actually, I do think that having been a follower is a good basis to effective leadership. It can help you set realistic expectations for your eventual employees.
I'm 32 years old. My last job was at the age of 17. Depending on where you draw lines, I've run over a dozen business and enterprises over the years.
If my math is correct, then each of those ventures lasted an average of a year or so. What happened to them?
The majority came out profitable
So you generally achieve profitability, and either decide to close them (why?), or sell them to somebody willing, within a year? I don't doubt this to be true, but surely you understand this makes you exceptional?
You can play your "yessir" job, if you think it'll help. But, I have stuff to GET DONE!
Being condescending doesn't change the statistics I cited. You exhibit such disdain for "regular jobs" I really must wonder how you treat employees. Doesn't anybody get stuff done for you?
I think the idea behind the article was that undergraduates should start their own companies instead of seeking a ground level job.
According to the US Small Business Administration, 50% of small businesses fail within the first year, and 95% fail within five years. To start and run a business without ever having held a job is a sure path to disaster for all but the most talented, hardworking, and lucky.
I doubt that the large studio with that much bandwidth to spare would still exist in such a situation!
I don't know what scenario you're imagining, so if you explain what you think you read from my post, I can better understand your doubt.
But let's put it another way. Let's say the Bush campaign really hates a movie called Fahrenheit 9/11. Let's say it was legal for them to let people download it for free. Indeed, more people might be inclined to see it, but the filmmaker also gets no money at all to make the next film with.
In any case, it's not my job to show that it can be bad. It's the job of those pushing this change to show that it cannot be.
To what degree did [performing only for the rich] happen in the past?
Quite a bit, if you're talking about what we consider classical music today. Even today, there are art collectors who would rather keep a work for their private appreciation than to let just anybody see it. Some of them are even willing to buy stolen works.
MOST artists and musicians (even many with record deals) don't currently make enough to support themselves from their work.
That's right. But not having copyright would mean that they have even fewer chips in hand when dealing with a record label. Not being able to make a living doing art also means that the artist is deprived of the time to practice.
I'm don't think I would prefer a pure patronage system, but I'm not sure it would be very different from an artist's perspective.
Not very different for the artist in terms of fortune, perhaps, but certainly in terms of fame. But far more importantly, it makes a very big difference to us.
There will always be people who want to buy the real thing because they've seen/heard a copy of it and like it.
I agree, but will there be enough of such people to sustain a business model? If so, is that enough money to encourage creativity?
the alternative would be me having to pay mechanical royalties just for driving down the street with my stereo up really really loud.
First of all, please don't drive down the street with your stereo turned up. It annoys people like me. Secondly, that's not the only alternative at all. Surely we can find a compromise point between giving a copy to two friends and putting it up on a website for two million?
Most small-time and "independent" content creators would kill to get one of the major content distributors to host and promote their stuff for free.
Promote? No, they'll be listed in a searchable directory, so you can watch their movie without paying for it. Among the major labels, they'll agree not to host each other's content.
The only way to counter that would be to host major label content, which nobody has the money to do, which means P2P (where everybody shares the cost). IOW, the proposal in question results in the majors killing the little ones by taking their content and giving it away, and we all try to kill the majors the same way.
I don't know; that seems to have been the way art and culture had worked for the past several thousand years of human history, and it worked pretty well.
Oh, you mean how Mozart died in poverty, despite having created some of the most enduring music known to humans? Good things have happened, but so has plenty of bad things.
I can pretty easily ignore bad interpretations, particularly if they aren't "official"
Yes, but can or will most readers and movie-goers? If not, then you've removed a big profit motive for content creation. Hollywood is already notorious for rehashing successes - what more if it was legal for anybody to produce Star Wars sequels?
It's the monopoly on source material permitted by copyright that permit someone like Lucas or Berman to "ruin" Star Wars or Star Trek.
They don't have a monopoly on sci-fi as a genre. Feel free to buy from another source, if you think the original author has sold out. What you're suggesting is some sort of right to get at the "original", which is achieved by a reasonable expiration of copyright. I don't see how the radical expansion of fair use as proposed is the only way.
Copyright isn't necessarily a bad tradeoff in other respects, but I don't think it should last longer than a generation or so.
I entirely agree, but that wasn't what I was arguing against.:)
I fear you may have completely missed the point. What happened to Star Wars or Star Trek is an example of how diluted the material can become, with the permission of the copyright owner. It is also what can happen to every single vaguely successful work, without permission, if fair use was expanded as proposed.
the ability of a media consumer, having paid for a legit copy of a movie or a cd, to manipulate it in any way he/she sees fit short of redistribution for profit.
So redistribution for no profit, no matter at what scale it occurs, should be legal? What if this means that a large studio (that can afford the bandwidth) could just host a copy of any indie film so that the makers see no profit?
The only 'fair use' clause should be, if you've ever heard it or seen it, its yours forever.
That means an endless stream of uncontrollable derivative works. Think of the Star Wars or Star Trek universe (which is already beaten to death), and imagine that literally anybody can (and will!) write a novel or make a movie based on the characters and situations. If you think Hollywood's obsession with sequels is insane, how do you think this would encourage innovation?
Yes, many authors succumb to commercial temptations and destroy an otherwise original work, but at least they chose to do that. Your proposal means they would have no such choice at all.
He has as much sway over what movie reviewers say as you do.
Uh, anybody who can control who gets to see the film before it is released has far more sway over reviewers than I do. You do understand that reviewers rely on this early access to do their jobs?
The problem is that a script is supposed to be a just a guideline.
Says who? While perhaps every film or stage play would differ slightly from its original script, the scripts are usually written to be dramatized exactly. Films are very expensive to make, and a great deal of required improvisation can easily impact the already tight schedules far more than what it would cost to hire a good dialogue writer.
To say that all around us was designed by an intelligent 'creator' is just as valid a theory as saying it 'just happened'.
Oh, you are so completely wrong. You might be familiar with the concept of the mathematical Pi constant. To say that Pi is 3.14159 is technically wrong, but to say that Pi is 16 is not "just as valid". Some theories and approximations are much better than others.
There is evidence that a God exists, but there isn't proof.
I find that every such "evidence" that the religious speak of are not scientifically acceptable. They tend to come from the absence of an alternative explanation, and almost can never be attributed to a particular being. (How do you know it wasn't Vishnu who was responsible?)
Now, this isn't to say that science is even a good tool to use in the pursuit of God. I don't know why so many people keep trying.
Not even some of the most openly devout Christians believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God.
I'm referring to Lev 20:13, for example, which says that If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
People use the first half of that passage to argue against things like gay marriage, but not actually advocate the death penalty (or even a crime of any sort) for being gay. How is anybody supposed to know for sure which parts are the Word of God and which are just... decorative?
Oh, absolutely. Way before the Internet, there were underground newspapers and leaflets that were distributed the old-fashioned way. What I'm saying is that the Internet is an excellent medium, and losing it would be a big blow to how efficiently dissent can be heard.
The point is also that they don't have to shut it down entirely. As long as not enough people hear you, they've accomplished their purpose.
Look at file sharing as an example. The purpose of suing grandmothers and children is to scare people, so that there's no critical mass of file sharers that would be impossible to stop. If only the most "rebellious" ones continue to put up files to share, they can be hunted down individually. Even the dumbest record label executive would know that you can't shut it down entirely.
But we can always buy a giant spool of Cat 5 cabling and hook up to each other directly. Oh wait- I forgot about WiFi! We don't even need to run wires. [...] Yes, the reliability would SUCK. latency would be AWFUL. But we'd have our network.
The common purpose of censorship is not so much to prevent you from speaking as it is to prevent the masses from hearing. Unless your home-made network has the same reach as the Internet, the oppressor's objective is achieved.
I don't think people would whine as loudly if Lucas just admitted that he was creating a series of neat explosions and effects loosely tied together by a story, the way a pornographic film might be a series of sex scenes tied together.
But Lucas fancies himself to be a storyteller, and therefore that's how he will be judged. Why would you lower the bar against his stated wishes?
You program yourself every day. And so does everyone else. And you can program some pretty strange things into yourself if you're indiscriminant. That was the point I was trying to make.
Except you haven't proven in any way that people can actually program themselves into and out of homosexuality. Sure, we program ourselves, but is sexuality within the realm of the "pretty strange things" you speak of?
If it's a choice, perhaps you can find a person to switch to homosexuality and back. Let's define homosexuality, for this experiment, to be having a sexual response to another of your own gender, and having none for the opposite. It won't take more than a few such volunteers to poke through the "blanket statement", can it?
Typical.... guess they don't make nerds like they used to.
Indeed.
Your proof that people can choose to be gay consists of an example that women can be severely traumatized and actually enjoy prostitution, forgetting that the severe trauma negates choice entirely.
One more insult from you and you'll be speaking to yourself.
Don't let a bunch of loud mouths make you think all of Christiandom is a bad thing.
True, but on the flip side, Christians need to understand that unless they speak up, the loudmouths will speak for them. I'm not saying you have to be loud, but silence itself is a position.
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Because along with flying comes nice hotel rooms and expense accounts, not to mention frequent flyer miles you can use on your own trips. Don't underestimate the allure of physical travel to PHBs.
Perhaps, but is there any reason why the existence of such is kept a secret from your supervisor? Besides, presumably the real admin has physical access to the machine and can at least yank the network connection and regain control. Your excuse is rather tenuous.
Of course it does. The modified software can destroy recorded programs, stop working entirely, or in extreme circumstances even destroy hardware*. I don't think it's unreasonable at all for them to disclaim any responsibility when you do that.
The actual hackers probably know the chances they are taking, but somebody who just downloads the patched software will probably blame Dish if things break.
* One example was the IBM EGA, which had registers that can be reprogrammed to permanently damage your monitor.
The article you cited points out that:
A 2002 Small Business Administration study shows that 66 percent of new businesses survive for two years or more, 50 percent for 4 years or more, and 40 percent for six years or more. Earlier studies had very similar numbers.
Even the 50 percent that didn't survive for four years were not all failures. One-third of those closed successfully. They were sold, the owners retired or took other jobs, or the business was closed for other reasons besides failure.
Which reads to me like 44% doesn't survive two years, and 60% don't surivive six. Still a sobering number. Taking the second paragraph into consideration, we see that 33% of businesses die in failure within four years.
Also important is that fact that not all small businesses are created equal. That is, success or failure is not determined entirely by random chance. Somebody who has never taken a job is likely to fit in the "no-employee, $50,000 capital, no-previous-business" pattern of failure cited in your article.
Actually, I do think that having been a follower is a good basis to effective leadership. It can help you set realistic expectations for your eventual employees.
I'm 32 years old. My last job was at the age of 17. Depending on where you draw lines, I've run over a dozen business and enterprises over the years.
If my math is correct, then each of those ventures lasted an average of a year or so. What happened to them?
The majority came out profitable
So you generally achieve profitability, and either decide to close them (why?), or sell them to somebody willing, within a year? I don't doubt this to be true, but surely you understand this makes you exceptional?
You can play your "yessir" job, if you think it'll help. But, I have stuff to GET DONE!
Being condescending doesn't change the statistics I cited. You exhibit such disdain for "regular jobs" I really must wonder how you treat employees. Doesn't anybody get stuff done for you?
According to the US Small Business Administration, 50% of small businesses fail within the first year, and 95% fail within five years. To start and run a business without ever having held a job is a sure path to disaster for all but the most talented, hardworking, and lucky.
So learn to do something that the Indians and Chinese and Filipinos can't. Or are you asking for exemption from competition?
I don't know what scenario you're imagining, so if you explain what you think you read from my post, I can better understand your doubt.
But let's put it another way. Let's say the Bush campaign really hates a movie called Fahrenheit 9/11. Let's say it was legal for them to let people download it for free. Indeed, more people might be inclined to see it, but the filmmaker also gets no money at all to make the next film with.
In any case, it's not my job to show that it can be bad. It's the job of those pushing this change to show that it cannot be.
Quite a bit, if you're talking about what we consider classical music today. Even today, there are art collectors who would rather keep a work for their private appreciation than to let just anybody see it. Some of them are even willing to buy stolen works.
MOST artists and musicians (even many with record deals) don't currently make enough to support themselves from their work.
That's right. But not having copyright would mean that they have even fewer chips in hand when dealing with a record label. Not being able to make a living doing art also means that the artist is deprived of the time to practice.
I'm don't think I would prefer a pure patronage system, but I'm not sure it would be very different from an artist's perspective.
Not very different for the artist in terms of fortune, perhaps, but certainly in terms of fame. But far more importantly, it makes a very big difference to us.
Sure. I was just tempering your rather rosy picture of how well things have worked for the past thousands of years.
You'd see a spike in Star Wars rehashings (most of them bad, a few good). After reaching saturation, it'd slowly burn itself out to background level,
To be replaced by the next mildly creative thing, followed by a slew of copycats beating it to death. Rinse, repeat.
Now, how long before artists tire of that, and reserve their art for private performances for the rich instead?
and in the span of a generation or two you'd see the best portions of them become well-integrated into the culture's folk mythology
Possibly. But the artists may still be living in the gutter.
I agree, but will there be enough of such people to sustain a business model? If so, is that enough money to encourage creativity?
the alternative would be me having to pay mechanical royalties just for driving down the street with my stereo up really really loud.
First of all, please don't drive down the street with your stereo turned up. It annoys people like me. Secondly, that's not the only alternative at all. Surely we can find a compromise point between giving a copy to two friends and putting it up on a website for two million?
Promote? No, they'll be listed in a searchable directory, so you can watch their movie without paying for it. Among the major labels, they'll agree not to host each other's content.
The only way to counter that would be to host major label content, which nobody has the money to do, which means P2P (where everybody shares the cost). IOW, the proposal in question results in the majors killing the little ones by taking their content and giving it away, and we all try to kill the majors the same way.
How would that help anybody in the long run?
Oh, you mean how Mozart died in poverty, despite having created some of the most enduring music known to humans? Good things have happened, but so has plenty of bad things.
I can pretty easily ignore bad interpretations, particularly if they aren't "official"
Yes, but can or will most readers and movie-goers? If not, then you've removed a big profit motive for content creation. Hollywood is already notorious for rehashing successes - what more if it was legal for anybody to produce Star Wars sequels?
It's the monopoly on source material permitted by copyright that permit someone like Lucas or Berman to "ruin" Star Wars or Star Trek.
They don't have a monopoly on sci-fi as a genre. Feel free to buy from another source, if you think the original author has sold out. What you're suggesting is some sort of right to get at the "original", which is achieved by a reasonable expiration of copyright. I don't see how the radical expansion of fair use as proposed is the only way.
Copyright isn't necessarily a bad tradeoff in other respects, but I don't think it should last longer than a generation or so.
I entirely agree, but that wasn't what I was arguing against. :)
I fear you may have completely missed the point. What happened to Star Wars or Star Trek is an example of how diluted the material can become, with the permission of the copyright owner. It is also what can happen to every single vaguely successful work, without permission, if fair use was expanded as proposed.
So redistribution for no profit, no matter at what scale it occurs, should be legal? What if this means that a large studio (that can afford the bandwidth) could just host a copy of any indie film so that the makers see no profit?
That means an endless stream of uncontrollable derivative works. Think of the Star Wars or Star Trek universe (which is already beaten to death), and imagine that literally anybody can (and will!) write a novel or make a movie based on the characters and situations. If you think Hollywood's obsession with sequels is insane, how do you think this would encourage innovation?
Yes, many authors succumb to commercial temptations and destroy an otherwise original work, but at least they chose to do that. Your proposal means they would have no such choice at all.
Uh, anybody who can control who gets to see the film before it is released has far more sway over reviewers than I do. You do understand that reviewers rely on this early access to do their jobs?
Says who? While perhaps every film or stage play would differ slightly from its original script, the scripts are usually written to be dramatized exactly. Films are very expensive to make, and a great deal of required improvisation can easily impact the already tight schedules far more than what it would cost to hire a good dialogue writer.
Oh, you are so completely wrong. You might be familiar with the concept of the mathematical Pi constant. To say that Pi is 3.14159 is technically wrong, but to say that Pi is 16 is not "just as valid". Some theories and approximations are much better than others.
There is evidence that a God exists, but there isn't proof.
I find that every such "evidence" that the religious speak of are not scientifically acceptable. They tend to come from the absence of an alternative explanation, and almost can never be attributed to a particular being. (How do you know it wasn't Vishnu who was responsible?)
Now, this isn't to say that science is even a good tool to use in the pursuit of God. I don't know why so many people keep trying.
I'm referring to Lev 20:13, for example, which says that If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
People use the first half of that passage to argue against things like gay marriage, but not actually advocate the death penalty (or even a crime of any sort) for being gay. How is anybody supposed to know for sure which parts are the Word of God and which are just... decorative?
Oh, absolutely. Way before the Internet, there were underground newspapers and leaflets that were distributed the old-fashioned way. What I'm saying is that the Internet is an excellent medium, and losing it would be a big blow to how efficiently dissent can be heard.
The point is also that they don't have to shut it down entirely. As long as not enough people hear you, they've accomplished their purpose.
Look at file sharing as an example. The purpose of suing grandmothers and children is to scare people, so that there's no critical mass of file sharers that would be impossible to stop. If only the most "rebellious" ones continue to put up files to share, they can be hunted down individually. Even the dumbest record label executive would know that you can't shut it down entirely.
The common purpose of censorship is not so much to prevent you from speaking as it is to prevent the masses from hearing. Unless your home-made network has the same reach as the Internet, the oppressor's objective is achieved.
But Lucas fancies himself to be a storyteller, and therefore that's how he will be judged. Why would you lower the bar against his stated wishes?
Except you haven't proven in any way that people can actually program themselves into and out of homosexuality. Sure, we program ourselves, but is sexuality within the realm of the "pretty strange things" you speak of?
If it's a choice, perhaps you can find a person to switch to homosexuality and back. Let's define homosexuality, for this experiment, to be having a sexual response to another of your own gender, and having none for the opposite. It won't take more than a few such volunteers to poke through the "blanket statement", can it?
Typical.... guess they don't make nerds like they used to.
Indeed.
Your proof that people can choose to be gay consists of an example that women can be severely traumatized and actually enjoy prostitution, forgetting that the severe trauma negates choice entirely.
One more insult from you and you'll be speaking to yourself.
True, but on the flip side, Christians need to understand that unless they speak up, the loudmouths will speak for them. I'm not saying you have to be loud, but silence itself is a position.