I wouldn't blame the insurance companies either, the real problem is that people don't want to pay what insurance really costs; and get laws changed to reduce the amount they have to pay out in accidents.
I was hit by a transport truck while I was riding my bicycle. I was going straight down a two-lane road when the truck turned left into a driveway and T-boned me; it was 100% the truck driver's fault for not seeing me. I got a broken rib and bruises down the entire left side of my body; I couldn't sleep lying down for two months and I missed a week of work.
Now, where I live (Ontario), they instituted no-fault insurance a while back. Because the person who hit me was in a vehicle and I wasn't seriously hurt, I couldn't legally sue for pain and suffering so the insurance company only had to pay to repair my bike.
The no-fault laws screwed me out of any sort of reasonable compensation for my injuries. These laws don't help lawyers or insurance companies; they help drivers get cheaper insurance because people who are entitled to compensation don't get it.
A rear projection TV has a bulb too (if LCD or DLP based), otherwise it has three very bright CRTs that also burn out and are even more expensive to replace than bulbs.
The only difference between rear and front projection TV's is the side of the screen the light hits. The cost of replacing bulbs or CRT tubes depends on how bright they need to be. If you could buy a 100" rear projection set, it would have identical bulb (or CRT) replacement costs as an equally bright front projection setup. If you're happy with the size and brightness of a rear projection set, your bulb/CRT replacement costs will be lower, but those costs are not zero.
Look in the mirror before you call anyone a freak. I'm amazed you put someone down for thinking that wanting a bigger screen makes you a freak, and then call someone who wants a $30,000 system a freak.
You consider yourself rational because you save money by not going to the theater. Perhaps the freak needed to spend $30,000 before they were content to watch movies at home; a $30,000 system is still substantially cheaper than buying and running a 35 mm movie theater.
Let's hope they use some sort of copy protection on these viruses so that they can only reproduce with the permission of the owner. That's DRM I have no trouble with.
An additional factor is that politicians never talk about hypothetical situations. That is their favorite excuse for not giving an opinion and thereby letting all voters think the politician agrees with them.
Unfortunately, politicians are not rewarded for worrying about the future or telling the truth. "Societal discussions" will always be put off until the last minute, if not forever.
It is a sad truth of our society that the average person doesn't want to inform themself about an issue; they'd rather believe the politician that gives a comforting answer and then blame the politician if things don't work out as promised.
The problem with capitalism is that companies decide what is produced. If you as a consumer want something, you have to hope that some company will produce it. The only thing that encourages companies to produce what people want is competition. If there is no competition, companies can produce whatever makes the most money for them, and there is no reason to take the consumer into account. Sometimes a company will recognize that they'll make more money by making the customer happy, but you must depend on the company's management realizing that their long-term interests lie in pleasing the consumer.
If pin-makers had a patent on pins before the industrial revolution, it wouldn't have been possible to compare machine-made and hand-made pins; only hand-made pins would have been available for purchase. Eventually, the owners of the pin-making patents would realize that machine production was much cheaper, lay off all the pin-makers, sell pins for the same amount, and reap all the cost savings as increased profit. Fortunately, the pin-makers didn't have a monopoly, so consumers could choose between hand-made and less-expensive machine-made pins. The consumer can only benefit if there is competition, otherwise a monopolist can ensure that they alone get any benefits.
To see how this applies to video formats, consider the following scenario. Suppose you are a company that wants to distribute a video. Customers want an open format that gives them the maximum flexibility. Microsoft offers the company money to distribute the video in Microsoft's proprietary format (which is legal and even smart for Microsoft to do). The video company decides to maximize their revenue, takes Microsoft's money, and distributes in Microsoft's format. If a consumer wants that video, they must buy it from the copyright owner, who will only distribute it in Microsoft's format. There is no way for a consumer to show their preference for a different format because they have no option to buy it in a competing format; it is illegal to someone else to offer the video in a competing format. And if the consumer happens to succeed in converting the video to a format they do like, they can be thrown in jail for breaking the DMCA. Microsoft can offer an immediate cash inducement to the video company, and that inducement looks a whole lot better than some theoretically better sales you could get from pleasing your customers.
So the consumer must take it or leave it, the monopoly manufacturer will make all the decisions, and can do whatever makes the most money for them. This looks an awful lot like communism, where an elite makes all the decisions and consumers have no power. The elite usually isn't smart enough to make wise decisions on consumer's behalf, as the failures of communist societies has shown, so we are really being dumb when we let companies form monopolies and tell us what to buy. If we let our economy be controlled by monopolists, we are in the same boat as the victims of communism; the only difference is that businessmen are running the economy for their own benefit rather than politicians.
You should be more optimistic. You said: "if as many computers ran Linux as the various Win versions, we would also be seeing more problems than at present". Why not say if more people ran Linux, we'd see more problems being fixed than at present?
Everyone knows there is no such thing as bug-free code. All you can do is test the code and fix the bugs you find. More people using the code means more testing, and therefore more bugs exposed.
This is the point where open source and commercial development differ. When there are more open source users, there are also more open source programmers, so there are extra bug-fixing resources to go with the extra bugs. There is no compensating increase in programmers to go with an increase in users of commercial software. Yes, more users mean more revenues for a company, but you have to depend on the company owners to apply some of that extra revenue to fixing bugs, when they could just pocket the extra money.
Forget about how many bugs there are in an O/S, how good is the process for fixing them? O/S exploits are open source, and the entire world is free to examine the source and improve those exploits. Why should we tie our hands by limiting the number of programmers who can defend against those exploits? I think the number of good programmers far outweighs the number of evil programmers, we should use that fact to our advantage and not let a company limit the number of good programmers working on a proprietary O/S.
The misunderstanding has nothing to do with being "balanced"; you just didn't make it clear you were being sarcastic.
I think the message you were responding to was sarcastic. The phrases "You obviously haven't been swallowing the official line on this" and "No, don't think about it!" indicate that the author believes the opposite of what he is saying; i.e. that more than just France disagrees.
This response was in agreement with the sarcastic parent message: "As opposed to now, right? When you had all that support from the UN and all of those Arab countries." The "As opposed to now, right?" indicates that the author is arguing against the parent message, so I took the second sentence as sarcasm.
Your message had nothing to indicate that you knew your first sentence was false; so I had no way to know you were being sarcastic. I thought the sentence was support for your argument that "The coalition is more than just the US and the UK"; which is true, but not of the countries you give in your example.
Of course I could be wrong about which messages are sarcastic and which ones aren't. Sarcasm is a tricky tool, especially when both readers and writers are in a hurry and can miss subtle signs. At least I understand your position now, even if I didn't get it from your original post.
Why do I have to pay the price for other people stealing? These copy-protected disks come with no guarantee. If they don't work on a CD player it is my fault. If it doesn't work with a CD player I buy 5 years from now, will I get my money back? The only thing that would get me to buy one of these crippled disks is a substantially lower price.
I see the same issue, paying a price for other people's stealing, in other ways as well. I have to leave my bags at the front of some stores. I have to unwrap the damn DVD and pull off all the damn stickers on the side. Stealing is the store's problem, yet I am the one paying the price in extra effort to unwrap my purchase, or I am the one who can't make a backup copy of what I bought.
There seems to be a real blind spot in society today that considers only the company's side. Plants shutting down are bad, but paying less for imported stuff is good; which gets mentioned in the paper? I don't think consumers should be bearing all the costs of piracy, putting up with incredible restrictions so that the RIAA can keep on charging the same prices. I bet charging 50% less for CDs would make a huge difference to sales and piracy rates; yet we consumers are losing all our rights with new laws, and the RIAA carries on ripping off the consumers and the artists that create their wealth. Why do we put up with this?
They've only gotten a glancing blow from that cluebat:-)
I want cheaper CDs. I have been buying CDs for 10 years and own more than 1000. I stopped buying them 2 years ago because they cost too much compared to DVDs and other hobbies I can spend my money on.
I listen to those CDs on a stereo; listening to them on a computer or some other portable device using MP3 leads to a huge reduction in quality.
So how does Sony's scheme help me? The disks are going to cost the same, and I suspect the extra material is worth about the same as DVD extras, which is nearly zero. In exchange for these nearly worthless extras, I am getting a disk that is not even guaranteed to work in all the CD players I currently own, let alone one I might buy in 5 years. I don't see how charging the same for a disk that is much less useful is going to help their sales in any way.
This is a big issue for me. How do I know I am not buying a copy-protected CD? These copy protected CD's work in most CD players now; but a copy protected CD might play in every CD player you currently own and still fail to play on the next player you buy. Will you be able to get your money back when you can no longer play your CD 5 years later? That is the problem with buying non-standard disks that are "compatible" with CDs.
I hope all copy-protected CD's are marked; but it may not be safe to assume any CD is standard any more. Maybe the only protection is to make a copy of any CD you buy, then at least you know you have at least one standard-compliant copy of the CD:-)
It is news to me that there is a Canadian brigade in Iraq. Do you have any proof of this? Canadians are generally against the war in Iraq and our government has stated that other than a small number of soldiers on exchange with our allies, there are no Canadian troops in Iraq. If your claim is true, this is an incredible scandal.
The sound and seats at my home are better than what I find in all but a few special theatres. I cringed from the over boosted treble I heard when I saw the first Lord of the Rings; swords fights were excruciating and my ears were ringing at the end. It was a relief when the movie was over.
I like a big screen; but the downside of seeing a movie with people that won't shut up, on uncomfortable seats, at great expense, completely outweighs the upside of screen size.
And, in the case of Lord of the Rings, the extended DVD version is much better than what they showed in the theatre!
I've seen it, fast forward doesn't work either. In addition, my DVD player is supposed to be able to resume after stopping; it doesn't, but goes to the start of the chapter instead.
I can't think of any reason they would disable pause on purpose; so it is either a mistake or forced on them by the format in order to support all those useless infinifilm features (or whatever else they are called).
I think there is a difference between watching a show on TV and recording it on a VCR. I think the courts thought there was too, since there was a case deciding whether VCR recording was copyright infringement.
Storing on a hard drive seems closer to recording on a VCR than watching TV. However, the situations aren't identical, so who knows what a court would decide?
Maybe, by some definition, you didn't do any copying; but the fact remains that there is a copy of the file on your hard drive that you allowed to be there. I think you would at least be an accessory to copyright infringement.
When you download, you are making a copy on your computer. You might be OK if someone else has uploaded a file onto your computer (as opposed to making it available on their computer); but then the uploader is probably illegally distributing or broadcasting the file.
I've copied the legal definition of fair use in the U.S. below. I don't think downloading is a fair use by this definition, but admittedly, no court has decided yet, so who knows? In Canada (where I live) it is actually legal to make copies of music for yourself; but it isn't legal to distribute, so file sharing probably isn't legal here either (but I could probably hack into another computer and make a legal copy that way:-).
Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors
That's not quite true. You can regulate the base desires to be cruel to your fellow man without regulating base desires that affect only yourself. The problem laws are the ones that attempt to regulate private behaviour between consenting adults, like anti-sodomy laws or the selective drug laws. These laws restrict what people can to do without improving society.
I have no problem with rational laws that have a net benefit for society. The problem is the irrational laws that restrict freedoms without providing more benefit to society than they cost. I think the drug laws are the best examples of irrational laws, but I think there are more than a few anti-terrorism laws that do not have higher benefits than costs.
Microsoft hasn't needed to use patent law to defend their monopoly, but I bet they will if open source really starts to worry them. They are certainly using IP FUD to scare people away from using open source.
And before you fault me for suggesting Microsoft would do this without any evidence; I am just using the same type of argument as the Microsoft apologists who say that any company would act like Microsoft, so any legal sanctions against Microsoft just rewards loser companies that couldn't compete. Either all companies are the same, and we can expect Microsoft to do what other companies have attempted with patents; or we can assume that different companies act differently, and maybe Microsoft should be reigned-in a little. I am not willing to give Microsoft any brownie points for not abusing patents.
After reading many responses, I am finally convinced that pure battery powered cars will likely never be popular; and I think mainly for the weight reason. I still think there is plenty of scope for speeding up recharging, which hasn't been a big design goal for the small battery packs we use in computers or electric drills; where capacity and weight are more important.
But, I still have a problem with the idea that any new technology has to have exactly the same characteristics as gas-powered cars. Everyone wants the magic solution that will be just like the cars we have now, only with no pollution and much higher efficiency (and cheaper too!). I think this is giving car companies an excuse to do nothing but study for another decade while waiting for the magic solution to be developed, while ignoring the steps that improve things now. It is quite possible that no new technology will be able to duplicate what gas powered vehicles can do.
I think we could make a very nice car right now, using current hybrid technology. I say increase the size of hybrid batteries by a factor of 3 or 4, and add a plug so that owners can recharge them at home overnight. The smaller battery pack might only have a range of 20-30 miles, but that is probably enough range to handle most commutes. Any further than that, and the gas engine provides the power. This would give us most of the benefits of electric cars right now, and also the same range capabilities we are used to in gas-powered cars. By charging at home, it might only be necessary to visit a gas station once a month, an improvement on the convenience of gas cars. Unfortunately, I think companies are wasting effort developing the "zero-emissions" options of pure battery or fuel cell, and neglecting easier intermediate steps that might achieve 95% of that goal. I really wish the car companies would act or the government would legislate with a little more intelligence and urgency; every car (or worse, truck) that is built now will be on the road, wasting gas, for the next 10 years. The earlier we act, the better off we will be.
I don't know whether a two-hour charge is the best you can do; hybrid batteries charge fast enough to make use of regenerative braking. If batteries were designed for fast recharges, maybe it would only take a minute. Maybe the batteries will be in a trailer, and you'll just switch to a new one at the "gas" station on long trips. Maybe people will drive their cars onto trains (like with the Chunnel) to go long distances, and thus eliminate the range problem. Switching to hydrogen will cost a lot of money. Maybe we should give a bit more thought to changing our lifestyles rather than continue with our current wasteful ways.
About hybrids: hopefully the day you'll find one is not far off. I just bought a 2004 Toyota Prius because it meets my needs (I hope, I haven't even seen one yet, let alone take a test drive). I am replacing a 1992 Honda Civic SI Hatchback (the gas-guzzling model that only gets about 25-30 mpg), and I wanted to buy another hatchback that got better mileage than the Civic; I thought it would be easy. I was shocked to discover that there was no such beast; all the conventional hatchbacks on the market have worse gas mileage or are too small. I might have settled for a Honda Insight, but a two-seater is not very versatile. I was overjoyed when Toyota brought out the new Prius, I certainly wouldn't have bought the old model. Hopefully, when your car needs replacing, there will be a choice for you (assuming the new Prius still isn't big enough for you).
I don't really know the exact trade-offs either. Maybe the extra weight from batteries is more inefficient than the losses involved in manufacturing and consuming hydrogen. The environmental trade-off also includes the pollution from worn-out batteries vs. the expense of creating a hydrogen infrastructure.
I think a transition to battery cars will be easier because we already have a pretty good electrical system. I think it is probably more important to do something now to reduce our use of oil than to wait another 20 years while the car companies work on hydrogen fuel cells and sell us SUVs that get 15 miles to the gallon. I think car companies are using the whole fuel cell thing to excuse the fact that they aren't building hybrids and improving the oil consumption situation right now.
How about a toxic battery recycling center? It is quite possible that we could develop a reasonable infrastructure to recycle old rechargeable batteries, especially if there are huge quantities of them. I don't think batteries are currently designed to be easy to recycle, but perhaps if that were a design goal, it would be possible.
I know hydrogen fuel cells have a big advantage over batteries in weight and refueling time; but they require a whole new fuel-delivery infrastructure. Maybe, the advantages of hydrogen in cars are outweighed by the disadvantages of building a whole hydrogen infrastructure. We already have an electric infrastructure (which just needs a little tweaking to improve its reliability:-)
Why do we have to replicate the current system? Do cars really need to go 400 miles between refuelings? I think the average driver refuels about once a week; I don't think it would be all that much harder to recharge once a day. Battery cars are not practical right now because of a lack of infrastructure to compensate for the short range. We could build that infrastructure.
If we build a hydrogen infrastructure, it will cost huge amounts of money and resources. If there is some sort of breakthrough in battery technology, all that will go to waste. The best decision in the long run might be to continue on with improving the efficiency of gas engines until we either create battery-powered cars that are acceptable, or we learn to live with the small inconvenience of limited driving range.
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I wouldn't blame the insurance companies either, the real problem is that people don't want to pay what insurance really costs; and get laws changed to reduce the amount they have to pay out in accidents.
I was hit by a transport truck while I was riding my bicycle. I was going straight down a two-lane road when the truck turned left into a driveway and T-boned me; it was 100% the truck driver's fault for not seeing me. I got a broken rib and bruises down the entire left side of my body; I couldn't sleep lying down for two months and I missed a week of work.
Now, where I live (Ontario), they instituted no-fault insurance a while back. Because the person who hit me was in a vehicle and I wasn't seriously hurt, I couldn't legally sue for pain and suffering so the insurance company only had to pay to repair my bike.
The no-fault laws screwed me out of any sort of reasonable compensation for my injuries. These laws don't help lawyers or insurance companies; they help drivers get cheaper insurance because people who are entitled to compensation don't get it.
Don't forget the price of the projector. If the projector lasts 6000 hours before becoming obsolete, that's about an additional $0.25 / hr.
And what about the cost of the porn? Say $5 to rent a 2 hour DVD that you watch 3 times; that's $0.83 / hr.
The bulbs cost money, but that cost is only one among many.
Are they enhanced? I've seen letterboxed porn, but not anamorphic widescreen. I don't care about the aspect ratio, I want the higher resolution!
A rear projection TV has a bulb too (if LCD or DLP based), otherwise it has three very bright CRTs that also burn out and are even more expensive to replace than bulbs.
The only difference between rear and front projection TV's is the side of the screen the light hits. The cost of replacing bulbs or CRT tubes depends on how bright they need to be. If you could buy a 100" rear projection set, it would have identical bulb (or CRT) replacement costs as an equally bright front projection setup. If you're happy with the size and brightness of a rear projection set, your bulb/CRT replacement costs will be lower, but those costs are not zero.
Look in the mirror before you call anyone a freak. I'm amazed you put someone down for thinking that wanting a bigger screen makes you a freak, and then call someone who wants a $30,000 system a freak.
You consider yourself rational because you save money by not going to the theater. Perhaps the freak needed to spend $30,000 before they were content to watch movies at home; a $30,000 system is still substantially cheaper than buying and running a 35 mm movie theater.
Let's hope they use some sort of copy protection on these viruses so that they can only reproduce with the permission of the owner. That's DRM I have no trouble with.
An additional factor is that politicians never talk about hypothetical situations. That is their favorite excuse for not giving an opinion and thereby letting all voters think the politician agrees with them.
Unfortunately, politicians are not rewarded for worrying about the future or telling the truth. "Societal discussions" will always be put off until the last minute, if not forever.
It is a sad truth of our society that the average person doesn't want to inform themself about an issue; they'd rather believe the politician that gives a comforting answer and then blame the politician if things don't work out as promised.
The problem with capitalism is that companies decide what is produced. If you as a consumer want something, you have to hope that some company will produce it. The only thing that encourages companies to produce what people want is competition. If there is no competition, companies can produce whatever makes the most money for them, and there is no reason to take the consumer into account. Sometimes a company will recognize that they'll make more money by making the customer happy, but you must depend on the company's management realizing that their long-term interests lie in pleasing the consumer.
If pin-makers had a patent on pins before the industrial revolution, it wouldn't have been possible to compare machine-made and hand-made pins; only hand-made pins would have been available for purchase. Eventually, the owners of the pin-making patents would realize that machine production was much cheaper, lay off all the pin-makers, sell pins for the same amount, and reap all the cost savings as increased profit. Fortunately, the pin-makers didn't have a monopoly, so consumers could choose between hand-made and less-expensive machine-made pins. The consumer can only benefit if there is competition, otherwise a monopolist can ensure that they alone get any benefits.
To see how this applies to video formats, consider the following scenario. Suppose you are a company that wants to distribute a video. Customers want an open format that gives them the maximum flexibility. Microsoft offers the company money to distribute the video in Microsoft's proprietary format (which is legal and even smart for Microsoft to do). The video company decides to maximize their revenue, takes Microsoft's money, and distributes in Microsoft's format. If a consumer wants that video, they must buy it from the copyright owner, who will only distribute it in Microsoft's format. There is no way for a consumer to show their preference for a different format because they have no option to buy it in a competing format; it is illegal to someone else to offer the video in a competing format. And if the consumer happens to succeed in converting the video to a format they do like, they can be thrown in jail for breaking the DMCA. Microsoft can offer an immediate cash inducement to the video company, and that inducement looks a whole lot better than some theoretically better sales you could get from pleasing your customers.
So the consumer must take it or leave it, the monopoly manufacturer will make all the decisions, and can do whatever makes the most money for them. This looks an awful lot like communism, where an elite makes all the decisions and consumers have no power. The elite usually isn't smart enough to make wise decisions on consumer's behalf, as the failures of communist societies has shown, so we are really being dumb when we let companies form monopolies and tell us what to buy. If we let our economy be controlled by monopolists, we are in the same boat as the victims of communism; the only difference is that businessmen are running the economy for their own benefit rather than politicians.
You should be more optimistic. You said: "if as many computers ran Linux as the various Win versions, we would also be seeing more problems than at present". Why not say if more people ran Linux, we'd see more problems being fixed than at present?
Everyone knows there is no such thing as bug-free code. All you can do is test the code and fix the bugs you find. More people using the code means more testing, and therefore more bugs exposed.
This is the point where open source and commercial development differ. When there are more open source users, there are also more open source programmers, so there are extra bug-fixing resources to go with the extra bugs. There is no compensating increase in programmers to go with an increase in users of commercial software. Yes, more users mean more revenues for a company, but you have to depend on the company owners to apply some of that extra revenue to fixing bugs, when they could just pocket the extra money.
Forget about how many bugs there are in an O/S, how good is the process for fixing them? O/S exploits are open source, and the entire world is free to examine the source and improve those exploits. Why should we tie our hands by limiting the number of programmers who can defend against those exploits? I think the number of good programmers far outweighs the number of evil programmers, we should use that fact to our advantage and not let a company limit the number of good programmers working on a proprietary O/S.
The misunderstanding has nothing to do with being "balanced"; you just didn't make it clear you were being sarcastic.
I think the message you were responding to was sarcastic. The phrases "You obviously haven't been swallowing the official line on this" and "No, don't think about it!" indicate that the author believes the opposite of what he is saying; i.e. that more than just France disagrees.
This response was in agreement with the sarcastic parent message: "As opposed to now, right? When you had all that support from the UN and all of those Arab countries." The "As opposed to now, right?" indicates that the author is arguing against the parent message, so I took the second sentence as sarcasm.
Your message had nothing to indicate that you knew your first sentence was false; so I had no way to know you were being sarcastic. I thought the sentence was support for your argument that "The coalition is more than just the US and the UK"; which is true, but not of the countries you give in your example.
Of course I could be wrong about which messages are sarcastic and which ones aren't. Sarcasm is a tricky tool, especially when both readers and writers are in a hurry and can miss subtle signs. At least I understand your position now, even if I didn't get it from your original post.
Why do I have to pay the price for other people stealing? These copy-protected disks come with no guarantee. If they don't work on a CD player it is my fault. If it doesn't work with a CD player I buy 5 years from now, will I get my money back? The only thing that would get me to buy one of these crippled disks is a substantially lower price.
I see the same issue, paying a price for other people's stealing, in other ways as well. I have to leave my bags at the front of some stores. I have to unwrap the damn DVD and pull off all the damn stickers on the side. Stealing is the store's problem, yet I am the one paying the price in extra effort to unwrap my purchase, or I am the one who can't make a backup copy of what I bought.
There seems to be a real blind spot in society today that considers only the company's side. Plants shutting down are bad, but paying less for imported stuff is good; which gets mentioned in the paper? I don't think consumers should be bearing all the costs of piracy, putting up with incredible restrictions so that the RIAA can keep on charging the same prices. I bet charging 50% less for CDs would make a huge difference to sales and piracy rates; yet we consumers are losing all our rights with new laws, and the RIAA carries on ripping off the consumers and the artists that create their wealth. Why do we put up with this?
They've only gotten a glancing blow from that cluebat :-)
I want cheaper CDs. I have been buying CDs for 10 years and own more than 1000. I stopped buying them 2 years ago because they cost too much compared to DVDs and other hobbies I can spend my money on.
I listen to those CDs on a stereo; listening to them on a computer or some other portable device using MP3 leads to a huge reduction in quality.
So how does Sony's scheme help me? The disks are going to cost the same, and I suspect the extra material is worth about the same as DVD extras, which is nearly zero. In exchange for these nearly worthless extras, I am getting a disk that is not even guaranteed to work in all the CD players I currently own, let alone one I might buy in 5 years. I don't see how charging the same for a disk that is much less useful is going to help their sales in any way.
This is a big issue for me. How do I know I am not buying a copy-protected CD? These copy protected CD's work in most CD players now; but a copy protected CD might play in every CD player you currently own and still fail to play on the next player you buy. Will you be able to get your money back when you can no longer play your CD 5 years later? That is the problem with buying non-standard disks that are "compatible" with CDs.
:-)
I hope all copy-protected CD's are marked; but it may not be safe to assume any CD is standard any more. Maybe the only protection is to make a copy of any CD you buy, then at least you know you have at least one standard-compliant copy of the CD
It is news to me that there is a Canadian brigade in Iraq. Do you have any proof of this? Canadians are generally against the war in Iraq and our government has stated that other than a small number of soldiers on exchange with our allies, there are no Canadian troops in Iraq. If your claim is true, this is an incredible scandal.
The sound and seats at my home are better than what I find in all but a few special theatres. I cringed from the over boosted treble I heard when I saw the first Lord of the Rings; swords fights were excruciating and my ears were ringing at the end. It was a relief when the movie was over.
I like a big screen; but the downside of seeing a movie with people that won't shut up, on uncomfortable seats, at great expense, completely outweighs the upside of screen size.
And, in the case of Lord of the Rings, the extended DVD version is much better than what they showed in the theatre!
I've seen it, fast forward doesn't work either. In addition, my DVD player is supposed to be able to resume after stopping; it doesn't, but goes to the start of the chapter instead.
I can't think of any reason they would disable pause on purpose; so it is either a mistake or forced on them by the format in order to support all those useless infinifilm features (or whatever else they are called).
I think there is a difference between watching a show on TV and recording it on a VCR. I think the courts thought there was too, since there was a case deciding whether VCR recording was copyright infringement.
Storing on a hard drive seems closer to recording on a VCR than watching TV. However, the situations aren't identical, so who knows what a court would decide?
Maybe, by some definition, you didn't do any copying; but the fact remains that there is a copy of the file on your hard drive that you allowed to be there. I think you would at least be an accessory to copyright infringement.
When you download, you are making a copy on your computer. You might be OK if someone else has uploaded a file onto your computer (as opposed to making it available on their computer); but then the uploader is probably illegally distributing or broadcasting the file.
:-).
I've copied the legal definition of fair use in the U.S. below. I don't think downloading is a fair use by this definition, but admittedly, no court has decided yet, so who knows? In Canada (where I live) it is actually legal to make copies of music for yourself; but it isn't legal to distribute, so file sharing probably isn't legal here either (but I could probably hack into another computer and make a legal copy that way
Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors
That's not quite true. You can regulate the base desires to be cruel to your fellow man without regulating base desires that affect only yourself. The problem laws are the ones that attempt to regulate private behaviour between consenting adults, like anti-sodomy laws or the selective drug laws. These laws restrict what people can to do without improving society.
I have no problem with rational laws that have a net benefit for society. The problem is the irrational laws that restrict freedoms without providing more benefit to society than they cost. I think the drug laws are the best examples of irrational laws, but I think there are more than a few anti-terrorism laws that do not have higher benefits than costs.
Microsoft hasn't needed to use patent law to defend their monopoly, but I bet they will if open source really starts to worry them. They are certainly using IP FUD to scare people away from using open source.
And before you fault me for suggesting Microsoft would do this without any evidence; I am just using the same type of argument as the Microsoft apologists who say that any company would act like Microsoft, so any legal sanctions against Microsoft just rewards loser companies that couldn't compete. Either all companies are the same, and we can expect Microsoft to do what other companies have attempted with patents; or we can assume that different companies act differently, and maybe Microsoft should be reigned-in a little. I am not willing to give Microsoft any brownie points for not abusing patents.
After reading many responses, I am finally convinced that pure battery powered cars will likely never be popular; and I think mainly for the weight reason. I still think there is plenty of scope for speeding up recharging, which hasn't been a big design goal for the small battery packs we use in computers or electric drills; where capacity and weight are more important.
But, I still have a problem with the idea that any new technology has to have exactly the same characteristics as gas-powered cars. Everyone wants the magic solution that will be just like the cars we have now, only with no pollution and much higher efficiency (and cheaper too!). I think this is giving car companies an excuse to do nothing but study for another decade while waiting for the magic solution to be developed, while ignoring the steps that improve things now. It is quite possible that no new technology will be able to duplicate what gas powered vehicles can do.
I think we could make a very nice car right now, using current hybrid technology. I say increase the size of hybrid batteries by a factor of 3 or 4, and add a plug so that owners can recharge them at home overnight. The smaller battery pack might only have a range of 20-30 miles, but that is probably enough range to handle most commutes. Any further than that, and the gas engine provides the power. This would give us most of the benefits of electric cars right now, and also the same range capabilities we are used to in gas-powered cars. By charging at home, it might only be necessary to visit a gas station once a month, an improvement on the convenience of gas cars. Unfortunately, I think companies are wasting effort developing the "zero-emissions" options of pure battery or fuel cell, and neglecting easier intermediate steps that might achieve 95% of that goal. I really wish the car companies would act or the government would legislate with a little more intelligence and urgency; every car (or worse, truck) that is built now will be on the road, wasting gas, for the next 10 years. The earlier we act, the better off we will be.
I don't know whether a two-hour charge is the best you can do; hybrid batteries charge fast enough to make use of regenerative braking. If batteries were designed for fast recharges, maybe it would only take a minute. Maybe the batteries will be in a trailer, and you'll just switch to a new one at the "gas" station on long trips. Maybe people will drive their cars onto trains (like with the Chunnel) to go long distances, and thus eliminate the range problem. Switching to hydrogen will cost a lot of money. Maybe we should give a bit more thought to changing our lifestyles rather than continue with our current wasteful ways.
About hybrids: hopefully the day you'll find one is not far off. I just bought a 2004 Toyota Prius because it meets my needs (I hope, I haven't even seen one yet, let alone take a test drive). I am replacing a 1992 Honda Civic SI Hatchback (the gas-guzzling model that only gets about 25-30 mpg), and I wanted to buy another hatchback that got better mileage than the Civic; I thought it would be easy. I was shocked to discover that there was no such beast; all the conventional hatchbacks on the market have worse gas mileage or are too small. I might have settled for a Honda Insight, but a two-seater is not very versatile. I was overjoyed when Toyota brought out the new Prius, I certainly wouldn't have bought the old model. Hopefully, when your car needs replacing, there will be a choice for you (assuming the new Prius still isn't big enough for you).
I don't really know the exact trade-offs either. Maybe the extra weight from batteries is more inefficient than the losses involved in manufacturing and consuming hydrogen. The environmental trade-off also includes the pollution from worn-out batteries vs. the expense of creating a hydrogen infrastructure.
I think a transition to battery cars will be easier because we already have a pretty good electrical system. I think it is probably more important to do something now to reduce our use of oil than to wait another 20 years while the car companies work on hydrogen fuel cells and sell us SUVs that get 15 miles to the gallon. I think car companies are using the whole fuel cell thing to excuse the fact that they aren't building hybrids and improving the oil consumption situation right now.
How about a toxic battery recycling center? It is quite possible that we could develop a reasonable infrastructure to recycle old rechargeable batteries, especially if there are huge quantities of them. I don't think batteries are currently designed to be easy to recycle, but perhaps if that were a design goal, it would be possible.
:-)
I know hydrogen fuel cells have a big advantage over batteries in weight and refueling time; but they require a whole new fuel-delivery infrastructure. Maybe, the advantages of hydrogen in cars are outweighed by the disadvantages of building a whole hydrogen infrastructure. We already have an electric infrastructure (which just needs a little tweaking to improve its reliability
Why do we have to replicate the current system? Do cars really need to go 400 miles between refuelings? I think the average driver refuels about once a week; I don't think it would be all that much harder to recharge once a day. Battery cars are not practical right now because of a lack of infrastructure to compensate for the short range. We could build that infrastructure.
If we build a hydrogen infrastructure, it will cost huge amounts of money and resources. If there is some sort of breakthrough in battery technology, all that will go to waste. The best decision in the long run might be to continue on with improving the efficiency of gas engines until we either create battery-powered cars that are acceptable, or we learn to live with the small inconvenience of limited driving range.
By the way, what's toxic in a NiMH battery?