I imagine most gadgets have a very simple option to turn off DST, since not every state and/or country observes it.
Yep.
It's a problem we've been dealing with for quite awhile and haven't had too many problems other than confusing people that live next to a state that doesn't observe DST.
The problem isn't that one can disable DST switching, but that you are left with manual changes for every device.
Now, I have a large number of computers at work, most of which have certain tasks that they are expected to perform at a certain time. Which is better: a) the systems know when DST is and switch automatically, or b) I go into work at 2AM on Sunday morning and change all of them one at a time manually?
I pick (A). After the first switch, I suspect you'd pick A, too. Plus the fact that its not just a 'date' command to move an hour, its a complete change of timezone.
Oh, I forgot. I also have a dozen or so computers around the planet, some of which are in the US. I'd have to change those at 2AM, too. But that's 2AM on the east coast for east coast systems, 2AM central time, 2AM western, and THEN 2AM pacific.
And then what happens if I happen to be away from home when the DST changes? I can't reprogram my VCRs from a thousand miles away.
Ohhh, ntp? NTP operates on GMT. The GMT time isn't changing, only the local time. And not the time, the time ZONE.
This changing DST nonsense is going to cause headaches to a majority of people for the weeks when it is in effect. Missing appointments/trains/planes/movies/plays, showing up an extra hour early, etc. I can't believe the morons in Congress actually went through with it.
By the way, I have some idea of what this is going to do. The "freeware" (actually spyware, but disabled) NTP client I have for windows has the WRONG DST switching algorithm. I already have to change zones for each system I run it on four times a year. It is a waste of my time.
The main flaw in their "experiment" was that they used two different vehicles and did the run once. The difference between the two could have been entirely due to differences in the carburator setttings. They did nothing to rule that out.
Had they done the experiment ten times, swapping the "window open" and "AC on" between the two, I'd be more impressed with the results. Had they used real measurements (such as a fuel flow) I'd be convinced.
The only thing I can see in this new chart is that it makes painfully obvious that the atomic numbers are supposed to wrap from the right side of the left side of the old chart. As if anyone who understood the table to begin with didn't know this.
Oh, and it opens up a new gap to hold the actinides and lanthanides instead of putting them on separate rows at the bottom.
This has been going on for the last 10 years, and anyone who doesn't know about it more or less just doesn't care enough about TV to probably care when their reception goes away.
I think you will be surprised at the outcry from rural america when the deadline gets closer. At the point the broadcasters actually start advertising that their analog signals are going away, you'll have people who care NOTHING about the technology of TV but who care very deeply about watching it screaming very loudly.
You can buy a digital antenna, and be just fine.
A digital antenna connected to an analog TV gets you nothing if the analog signal isn't there anymore.
Of course, you'll get the improved reception and clarity as a bonus,
Until the analog signal goes away, and then you get nothing.
I think everybody is losing sight of the matter in the name of "just compensation". There is no price high enough for someone who does not want to move out of their home. Period.
This is the crux of the issue.
In a free-market society with real property rights, the price of an item depends on two things: the value the purchaser puts on it and the value the seller puts on it.
Emminent domain cannot, by definition, have "just compensation" under true property rights, since it forces one party to sell to another at a price lower than they feel fair. If both parties thought the price was just, they would have conducted the transaction without the use of emminent domain. Only by invoking emminent domain does the transaction take place, and thus, one party's property rights are always being violated.
It's one thing to take away commercial land from someone, but it's entirely different to take away residential land.
No, it's entirely the same. The only thing that differentiates "commercial" land from "residential" land is the arbitrary zoning status of the land at the present time. It is still "land", and it is still "property", and it is still covered by the 5th amendment.
I can understand the government buying someone's commercial land against their will at 100%, or maybe 110% cost, but under no circumstances should they be permitted to buy a piece of land that is 100% residential.
Hmmm. Suppose you live in a region of the country that has a limited water supply. Suppose there is a very nice river passing not too far away, but the river has normal variations in seasonal flow that keep you from getting enough water from it in the summer, but there's plenty in winter. Suppose that river flows through a nice valley that could be used as a reserviour behind a dam.
Further suppose that this river also tends to have large surges of flow in the spring, as the snow in the hills melts, which sometimes inundates the downstream farms and towns, causing lots of damage (and even killing a few people every so often) but that this only happens every few years.
Now, a nice dam would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, but unfortunately, a dozen people live in the valley that would dissappear. Should the government be precluded from buying the land from these dozen people, or should they just build the dam and say the heck with those who now own property that is completely underwater?
Emminent domain is an acceptable concept even in a free-market society; "tax revenue" is not an acceptable "public use" upon which to excuse it.
I move that whenever the topic of RBLs is brought up in an article, with the predictable result of this kind of long, religious flamefest, that/. simply link to the previous long drawn-out religious flame fest and save everyone the time of repeating their position.
Barring that, can we please use the following codes to save bandwidth, sort of like the prison inmates who numbered the jokes?
...you wouldn't choose their cell-phone frequency to do it in the first place. Duh!
Of course you would, if you wanted to be able to talk to them. How else you gonna call them?
They're probably just waiting for the equivalent of the weekend on their planet so they get free long distance minutes. Heck, I won't call across country until my free weekends kick in, why would I call off-planet without them?
Only their weeks are as long as our centuries, so we didn't have cell phones the last time they tried calling. And just their luck, their word for "hello" probably sounds just like "would you like to buy some viagra" in english.
I remember seeing differences, IIRC, between the Sharp EL-520R and the CASIO fx-4200P in how they calculate standard deviations (with small differences in their end results).
This is an example that demonstrates the danger of handing someone a calculator and letting him "demonstrate his achievements."
There are two different formulas for calculating standard deviation. One is used for calculating the std. dev of a sample, the other for calculating the std. dev of a population. I.e., if you ask the next five people you see how much they weigh and calculate the std. dev of the answer, you use the formula for "sample". If you have 83 mice being used in an experiment and you weigh all 83, you use the "population" formula for std. dev.
Which formula does YOUR calculator use? Do you know WHY there is a difference, or which formula to use when? If you have a calculator with a "std.dev" button, will you simply press that to get the answer to any "what is the standard deviation of..." questions, and maybe get the wrong answer?
Will the plus sign become inconsistent next? I hope not.
If you want to have a hooting good time, make addition inconsistent for someone. A certain high-level scientific interpreted language that I shall not name has the ability for users to overload standard mathematical functions. I.e., you can write a "plus" function that includes a random number, so that every time a user executes "a+b" your function will be handed "a" and "b" and the return from your function will be used in the next operation. I suggest if you do this that you do it only on a small fraction of the calculations, and you return an integer result, since this language uses "plus" for calculating array indices and is very unhappy when you try to access the 1.23'rd element of the array.
I think it is perfectly acceptable to require students to have a level of mental arithmetic ability - it is the first check that you've done something stupid when using a calculator or computer or whatever.
But that wouldn't be fair to their tiny little senses of self worth to make them know something.
I TA'd in college, and one day a bright young fellow asked to borrow my calculator because he forgot his. I loaned it to him. He used TI. I used HP. He went to divide two numbers, and pressed ENTER after the second one before pressing '/'. He got the answer: "1.0000". The right answer was on the order of 1e-7. I gave him zero for the problem, since "1" was so clearly a wrong answer that even a calculator telling him it was right should have made him think. Even when it was the TAs calculator telling him.
When my sis was a baby, I was playing with her in the living room.
I used to play with my little sister, too. But no matter how hard I pushed her down the ramp, she would never make it around the Hot Wheels loop-de-loop. She'd get to the top and then PLOP! Boring.
Nope. My standard email client checks for new mail once a minute, and it is open on my desktop from when I log in until when I log out to go home. My personal account (offsite) biffs me when mail shows up there.
There's too many times my boss has come across the hall to say "I just mailed you" something I need to work on, and it is better for me to be able to say "read my reply" than "what mail?"
But on WEEKENDS, what email? Were I truly addicted, there would be withdrawal symptoms. Nope.
This is just another example of media hype. Stories don't sell if they are "things are normal, there's nothing to see here". They sell if there is some new danger to look out for. "Email addiction" is today's Chicken Little. ACM's 'Computer' carried an article about Internet addiction a while back; same deal. People were USING the internet, so they must be ADDICTED to it. Never mind that it was convenience, it was ADDICTION because they used it.
It is fallacy to claim that everthing that people do is because they are addicted to doing it. They put on their pants when they get up in the morning; not an addiction. They have a cup of coffee; still not an addiction. They wash their face; no addiction to be found. This morning, I moved a fallen tree branch out of the driveway; am I addicted to moving fallen tree branches, or was it simply more convenient to move it rather than drive over it and risk denting the car? And had I not moved the branch, would I be "addicted" to putting dents in the car? Phhhht.
So, you're saying that once the broadband network is built, the 25% that voted against it will never be using it?
It is likely that more than 25% of the people will not be using it, even if that 25% is the same as those who voted against it. It is likely that some of the 75% who voted for it did so even if they didn't plan on using it (falling for the "this is just like a street/water pipe/sewer" analogy), just as it is for some who know it isn't a function of the government to provide wireless networks to have voted against it but use it anyway.
You're right that the 25% who voted against it don't want the service now. But you're wrong in assuming they will never want it.
Just as you are wrong to assume that the 75% who voted for it will use it.
Oh yes they can.
Examples: local cable company (only one in town + need to buy (or pay for) basic cable if you want cable internet).
You are not forced to take cable service. You do so because you want an added service. Taxes showing up on your property tax bill (or on your water bill) are not so freely given.
Why do I have to be deprived of this service because I happen to live in a less populated area...
Why should everyone else who lives in your less populated area be forced to pay for your wireless acess, since they apparently don't want it badly enough themselves to make it profitable for any company to come do it? Why don't you ask your neighbors why they are "depriving" you of this "service" by not jumping on the wireless bandwagon with you? Why should they pay for YOUR access and their own wired access, too?
You want wireless? Buy your own NAP. Convince your neighbors how great it is, and maybe YOU can make the profit selling them what you want them to buy for you.
What I find annoying about them is that they are holding a CONVERSATION and the only other person present might be me. Some of them will look right at another person nearby and start saying "hey, how have you been?" as if they were greeting someone they know. They are, but not the person they are looking directly at.
I think a quick solution might be if everyone who is confronted by a twit discussing their personal life in public on a cell phone simply started responding to the conversation.
"Hey, how are you doing?" Fine. How are you?
"Did you get to that meeting with Richard?" Why no, I didn't remember I had a meeting with Richard. Which Richard did you mean?
(Dirty look from cell phone user.) "I gotta go, there's a twit on the train eavesdropping." Hangs up.
???
Profit! Oops, I mean, WIN!
Then we can deal with the remaining annoyance: ring tones loud enough to be heard in the next block.
That's the difference that makes all the difference here.
Mass market books will always sell because of people who like the feel, or because the cost of copying an entire book at 5 cents a page is more than the price of the book itself. They are also easier to take on vacation, to the beach, on the train to work, etc.
Academic books (not textbooks) cost more to buy than xerox. They are often important for only one chapter, or even just one section of a chapter. Journals typically have one or two papers of relevance per issue. Authors typically buy "reprints" -- single copies of their paper -- they can hand out to people who ask for them. For all of those reasons, academics are already used to dealing with xerox copies of things they want to read; downloading them from the web and printing them out is nothing new. If they can get them free from someone, there is zero reason to buy a copy -- with some exceptions of course, but not many.
So, when Cory says he'll always give his away for free because people will still pay to buy paper copies, he's talking about a completely different universe than academic authors and publishers.
Ummm, because now if there are 1,000,000 legal copies distributed, the artist will (unless he's got a pathetic lawyer or an unscrupulous distributor) be getting royalties on each copy.
If you allow "secondary distribution not for profit", then they sell 1 copy to the large studio and the other 999,999 legal copies get the artist nothing at all.
Do you think that a band gives their record company 100,000 pressed CD's to distribute? No, they give them ONE MASTER. And that's, technically, what they're paid for...
Almost everybody I know that downloads does the same thing I do. We download whatever we can, delete what we don't like, and buy what we do.
That's because what you download is an approximation of the original -- mp3 or whatever other lossy compression is used changes the content. You don't get the cover art or liner notes. You get whatever quality the ripper chose for you, in the format he chose.
I buy them because I want to support the artists, I want to have the liner notes and stickers and bonus DVD's or whatever that comes with the CD itself.
Of those reasons, the only one that is not met by "free promotion" as suggested by the parent comment is the "support the artist". Like I said, I'm giving away for free the liner notes and everything on the CD or DVD. You can get from me everything you can get from the copy in the record store. In fact, I'm giving you an electronic version of the liner, so you don't have to go to CDDB to get the track names and stuff, it's already in an electronic form.
I like having a CD collection, I can't stand the sight of a bunch of burned discs in slimline cases with no room on the spine for a label.
If you choose to use slim cases, that's your right, but you could just as easily use normal CD cases, or even DVD-style cases, and have plenty of room for labels on your CDs.
In other words, P2P is doing what ClearChannel refuses to do - expose the public to new music. This is why I say it's free promotion.
Yes, it's free, since the artists get paid nothing for a copy of their work, but it isn't promotion, because of all the reasons you gave for actually buying a copy from the artist, the only one that is valid is "support the artist". Yes, if you want to support the artist and you have the money, you'll do so. Most people don't.
There will always be a few unscrupulous bastards that will get off on getting something for nothing,
If the "secondary distribution without profit" kind of copyright is enacted, it won't be "unscrupulous bastards" downloading the free material, it will be law abiding citizens doing what the law allows them to do. And it won't be just a few of them.
Huh? Since when do you pay "rent" when you buy a book or a CD? You buy it, you own it.
Well, he's not hindered by HIS copyright. But basically, ok.
Nor is he hindered by anyone else's copyright, if his creation truly is his own. Yeah, people sue other people for all kinds of things. If "can be sued" becomes the basis for deciding who owns a copyright, nobody does.
Technically only with regards to existing copyrights; future copyrights would not be granted, and thus not taken away.
What is being taken is not the copyright but the work itself and the ability to charge a fair (or inflated) price for that work. With no copyright, there is nothing to stop someone from using your work without your permission and without paying you for it. Remember that those who say "no copyrights" are doing so in an environment where copyright does exist, so that change is, itself, an attempt at taking, along with the actual taking of someone else's work.
Investing in creative works is a high risk for high return.
Depends on how long you take to create the work, and how high you define "high" to be. Being able to feed one's family on the profits isn't considered "high" by many people.
That's what most of them do: spend their time trying to get the majors to pick them up, because the majors are where the money's at.
What money? If anyone can do whatever they want with a copy of something they've bought, including duplicate it and give it away "not for profit", and a large studio buys one copy of an indie film and does precisely that, then the only "money" the indie film producer would see is what he makes on that one copy.
Notice that it's not even necessarily being given away free -- the studio can charge a fee to cover the costs of duplication and distribution, as long as they don't make a profit.
How many indie film producers could survive that kind of "promotion"?
Yup. It's free promotion. There will always be people who want to buy the real thing because they've seen/heard a copy of it and like it.
Exactly what is the difference between the "copy" and "the real thing" if I am distributing uncompressed ripped copies of, say, Metallica's latest CD? In a digital world, the difference between "copy" and "original" is often "zero". Ok, you want the album art, too? I'm distributing for free digital copies of the album art and liner notes. Take it to Kinkos or print it at home.
Will some people still go out and buy an "official copy" after getting a free "unofficial copy"? Perhaps. Not likely. And not as many as would have bought it originally.
NOTE CAREFULLY that I am being explicit in saying that the copy I am distributing is uncompressed and thus bit for bit identical to the original, and is complete. The argument that "the copy is poor quality" or "it isn't the whole album" doesn't apply. This isn't a case of someone getting a 32kbit mp3 of a track and deciding they want the good quality original. It's not "free promotion" in any sense of the phrase, since it doesn't promote any further action on the part of the consumer. He got everything he'd get when he buys the CD. And before you say "he'll go buy the next CD from the group because he likes this one", well, wait 24 hours after it's released, because I'll have THAT one available, too, for free.
Users should be able to do anything to what they legally acquired as long as they keep it to themselves.
I would put it slightly differently: users can do what they want with legally acquired copies as long as their actions do not attempt to duplicate the licence they got with that copy.
I.e., you can rip a CD and put it on your own IPOD. If you rip the CD and give the copies to your friends, then you are attempting to duplicate YOUR license to cover your friends.
Your version would prohibit selling the CD to someone else, since that isn't keeping it to themselves, but it does transfer the license to someone else. (Assuming, of course, that when you transfer the license to the material, you stop using the material you no longer have a license for.)
Also, I do not think that an artist should have total control how his work is distributed. I think that the society should decide how he should be able to control it.
Why? They didn't do the work of creating it, why should they have the say in how he controls it?
There are many groups who live from doing live-performances, and I do not see any reason that others should not.
There are many people who live by grubbing in the dirt picking potatoes or strawberries. I do not see any reason that musicians should not all be required to earn their livings that way. I hope the absurdity of that statement made the point.
...and I do not want any copyright to stop my music from spreading.
Then feel free to release all your music in the public domain. Do not take from others their right to make a living by selling what you do not want to. Your argument is the old "I don't want to do X, so I don't think anyone should be able to do X...". If you don't want to do X, don't do it, but don't tell anyone else they cannot.
Anyway, it's a valid position. There's no rule that says that we have to have these things. If someone is okay with the result of not having copyright, then what's the big deal?
The only people who are hindered in any way by copyrights are those who want to consume someone else's product.
The copyright owner is not hindered by copyrights, he can release his material to the public domain if he wants to. If he doesn't want to, he should have that option.
So, those who say "no copyrights" are in the position of trying to take things from other people.
Reasonable copyrights are fine. They exist to allow the creator of content to make a reasonable return on his investment. Reasonable copyrights, by definition, include limited time of protection and fair use.
...the only way people could ever bother themselves to contribute to society is by having a dollar waved in front of their faces.
We're talking about jobs, not altruism. If all you get paid is minimum wage, are you going to do maximum effort at anything not required for that job? Of course not. Not just get paid minimum wage, but be told "this is all you need, that's all you'll get", so a promotion to a higher paying job is out of the question.
Do people volunteer to do things they don't get paid for? Of course. Do they make a habit of doing it for an employer who they know won't pay them more for showing enthusiasm and initiative? For a while, perhaps, but not forever.
Really people, you must have a really poor opinion of humanity.
No, just the ability to see what happens when eno2001's concepts are applied to real societies. It's not like it hasn't been tried. Looks really "good" on paper, works really rotten in real life. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
The only thing I am sure of is that capitalism has pretty much failed consistently for a few thousand years to solve all of humanities problems.
Then it isn't a surprise to find out that capitalism isn't intended to solve all of humanities problems. I don't recall anyone ever saying it was. It just works better than other systems.
They can provide jobs and advance technology. The other thing they do is take a lot of money out of the hands of a large amount of people and put it into the hands of a small amount of people (shareholders).
So, in one sentence you admit that they provide jobs and technology improvements that benefit a lot of people, and then condemn them for paying back the people who took a chance by investing their money in the company to allow it to do those beneficial things.
Why should any stockholder risk anything on a company if they knew that the BEST they could do is just get their money back, and the worst is they lose everything they invested?
When some get super rich (read Bill Gates)...
I already said that there are outliers in the data. I mentioned explicitely Carly at HP, but I assumed people who read what I wrote would infer Bill and others are also outliers. Not every "rich person" who "makes too much" is a Bill or Carly. The VAST majority of them are not Bills or Carlys.
However, the point remains. If you say "Bill has too much, take it away from him", then you've drawn a line that is easier to move than to create. Where does the line move tomorrow, after you find out that taking all of Bill's money away doesn't solve the world's problems? Well, Carly, yeah, let's take hers. And that CEO of Intel! And Nike. And Phil Helmuth, hell, he's just frittering those poker winnings away on other poker games, let's take his money. Where's the line tomorrow?
...in theory all they would have to do is team up and go loot Bill's fortune. That is the failing of unchecked capitalism right there.
Wrong. That's the failing of unchecked democracy. Alexis de Tocqueville is the name of the french guy I was trying to remember earlier. The ultimate failure of a democracy is when the voters realize it is easier to tax someone else to give themselves welfare than to work. Don't worry, we're getting there. Every time someone says "let's tax X to pay for Y" and they aren't part of X but benefit from Y, you're seeing that principle in action.
Capitalism says that Bill hires a few thousand guards for his money, and those 80 million you theorize about would have to decide who the first few thousand to die trying to take his money away will be. When the only answer they have is "not me", that's called "private security", and the people and company providing it get paid pretty well for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep.
It's a problem we've been dealing with for quite awhile and haven't had too many problems other than confusing people that live next to a state that doesn't observe DST.
The problem isn't that one can disable DST switching, but that you are left with manual changes for every device.
Now, I have a large number of computers at work, most of which have certain tasks that they are expected to perform at a certain time. Which is better: a) the systems know when DST is and switch automatically, or b) I go into work at 2AM on Sunday morning and change all of them one at a time manually?
I pick (A). After the first switch, I suspect you'd pick A, too. Plus the fact that its not just a 'date' command to move an hour, its a complete change of timezone.
Oh, I forgot. I also have a dozen or so computers around the planet, some of which are in the US. I'd have to change those at 2AM, too. But that's 2AM on the east coast for east coast systems, 2AM central time, 2AM western, and THEN 2AM pacific.
And then what happens if I happen to be away from home when the DST changes? I can't reprogram my VCRs from a thousand miles away.
Ohhh, ntp? NTP operates on GMT. The GMT time isn't changing, only the local time. And not the time, the time ZONE.
This changing DST nonsense is going to cause headaches to a majority of people for the weeks when it is in effect. Missing appointments/trains/planes/movies/plays, showing up an extra hour early, etc. I can't believe the morons in Congress actually went through with it.
By the way, I have some idea of what this is going to do. The "freeware" (actually spyware, but disabled) NTP client I have for windows has the WRONG DST switching algorithm. I already have to change zones for each system I run it on four times a year. It is a waste of my time.
Mythbusters is entertainment, not science.
The main flaw in their "experiment" was that they used two different vehicles and did the run once. The difference between the two could have been entirely due to differences in the carburator setttings. They did nothing to rule that out.
Had they done the experiment ten times, swapping the "window open" and "AC on" between the two, I'd be more impressed with the results. Had they used real measurements (such as a fuel flow) I'd be convinced.
Oh, and it opens up a new gap to hold the actinides and lanthanides instead of putting them on separate rows at the bottom.
Fancy, yes. New insights to old info? Hardly.
I think you will be surprised at the outcry from rural america when the deadline gets closer. At the point the broadcasters actually start advertising that their analog signals are going away, you'll have people who care NOTHING about the technology of TV but who care very deeply about watching it screaming very loudly.
You can buy a digital antenna, and be just fine.
A digital antenna connected to an analog TV gets you nothing if the analog signal isn't there anymore.
Of course, you'll get the improved reception and clarity as a bonus,
Until the analog signal goes away, and then you get nothing.
This is the crux of the issue.
In a free-market society with real property rights, the price of an item depends on two things: the value the purchaser puts on it and the value the seller puts on it.
Emminent domain cannot, by definition, have "just compensation" under true property rights, since it forces one party to sell to another at a price lower than they feel fair. If both parties thought the price was just, they would have conducted the transaction without the use of emminent domain. Only by invoking emminent domain does the transaction take place, and thus, one party's property rights are always being violated.
No, it's entirely the same. The only thing that differentiates "commercial" land from "residential" land is the arbitrary zoning status of the land at the present time. It is still "land", and it is still "property", and it is still covered by the 5th amendment.
I can understand the government buying someone's commercial land against their will at 100%, or maybe 110% cost, but under no circumstances should they be permitted to buy a piece of land that is 100% residential.
Hmmm. Suppose you live in a region of the country that has a limited water supply. Suppose there is a very nice river passing not too far away, but the river has normal variations in seasonal flow that keep you from getting enough water from it in the summer, but there's plenty in winter. Suppose that river flows through a nice valley that could be used as a reserviour behind a dam.
Further suppose that this river also tends to have large surges of flow in the spring, as the snow in the hills melts, which sometimes inundates the downstream farms and towns, causing lots of damage (and even killing a few people every so often) but that this only happens every few years.
Now, a nice dam would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, but unfortunately, a dozen people live in the valley that would dissappear. Should the government be precluded from buying the land from these dozen people, or should they just build the dam and say the heck with those who now own property that is completely underwater?
Emminent domain is an acceptable concept even in a free-market society; "tax revenue" is not an acceptable "public use" upon which to excuse it.
Barring that, can we please use the following codes to save bandwidth, sort of like the prison inmates who numbered the jokes?
Of course you would, if you wanted to be able to talk to them. How else you gonna call them?
They're probably just waiting for the equivalent of the weekend on their planet so they get free long distance minutes. Heck, I won't call across country until my free weekends kick in, why would I call off-planet without them?
Only their weeks are as long as our centuries, so we didn't have cell phones the last time they tried calling. And just their luck, their word for "hello" probably sounds just like "would you like to buy some viagra" in english.
This is an example that demonstrates the danger of handing someone a calculator and letting him "demonstrate his achievements."
There are two different formulas for calculating standard deviation. One is used for calculating the std. dev of a sample, the other for calculating the std. dev of a population. I.e., if you ask the next five people you see how much they weigh and calculate the std. dev of the answer, you use the formula for "sample". If you have 83 mice being used in an experiment and you weigh all 83, you use the "population" formula for std. dev.
Which formula does YOUR calculator use? Do you know WHY there is a difference, or which formula to use when? If you have a calculator with a "std.dev" button, will you simply press that to get the answer to any "what is the standard deviation of..." questions, and maybe get the wrong answer?
Will the plus sign become inconsistent next? I hope not.
If you want to have a hooting good time, make addition inconsistent for someone. A certain high-level scientific interpreted language that I shall not name has the ability for users to overload standard mathematical functions. I.e., you can write a "plus" function that includes a random number, so that every time a user executes "a+b" your function will be handed "a" and "b" and the return from your function will be used in the next operation. I suggest if you do this that you do it only on a small fraction of the calculations, and you return an integer result, since this language uses "plus" for calculating array indices and is very unhappy when you try to access the 1.23'rd element of the array.
But that wouldn't be fair to their tiny little senses of self worth to make them know something.
I TA'd in college, and one day a bright young fellow asked to borrow my calculator because he forgot his. I loaned it to him. He used TI. I used HP. He went to divide two numbers, and pressed ENTER after the second one before pressing '/'. He got the answer: "1.0000". The right answer was on the order of 1e-7. I gave him zero for the problem, since "1" was so clearly a wrong answer that even a calculator telling him it was right should have made him think. Even when it was the TAs calculator telling him.
I used to play with my little sister, too. But no matter how hard I pushed her down the ramp, she would never make it around the Hot Wheels loop-de-loop. She'd get to the top and then PLOP! Boring.
Nope. My standard email client checks for new mail once a minute, and it is open on my desktop from when I log in until when I log out to go home. My personal account (offsite) biffs me when mail shows up there.
There's too many times my boss has come across the hall to say "I just mailed you" something I need to work on, and it is better for me to be able to say "read my reply" than "what mail?"
But on WEEKENDS, what email? Were I truly addicted, there would be withdrawal symptoms. Nope.
This is just another example of media hype. Stories don't sell if they are "things are normal, there's nothing to see here". They sell if there is some new danger to look out for. "Email addiction" is today's Chicken Little. ACM's 'Computer' carried an article about Internet addiction a while back; same deal. People were USING the internet, so they must be ADDICTED to it. Never mind that it was convenience, it was ADDICTION because they used it.
It is fallacy to claim that everthing that people do is because they are addicted to doing it. They put on their pants when they get up in the morning; not an addiction. They have a cup of coffee; still not an addiction. They wash their face; no addiction to be found. This morning, I moved a fallen tree branch out of the driveway; am I addicted to moving fallen tree branches, or was it simply more convenient to move it rather than drive over it and risk denting the car? And had I not moved the branch, would I be "addicted" to putting dents in the car? Phhhht.
It is likely that more than 25% of the people will not be using it, even if that 25% is the same as those who voted against it. It is likely that some of the 75% who voted for it did so even if they didn't plan on using it (falling for the "this is just like a street/water pipe/sewer" analogy), just as it is for some who know it isn't a function of the government to provide wireless networks to have voted against it but use it anyway.
You're right that the 25% who voted against it don't want the service now. But you're wrong in assuming they will never want it.
Just as you are wrong to assume that the 75% who voted for it will use it.
Oh yes they can. Examples: local cable company (only one in town + need to buy (or pay for) basic cable if you want cable internet).
You are not forced to take cable service. You do so because you want an added service. Taxes showing up on your property tax bill (or on your water bill) are not so freely given.
Why should everyone else who lives in your less populated area be forced to pay for your wireless acess, since they apparently don't want it badly enough themselves to make it profitable for any company to come do it? Why don't you ask your neighbors why they are "depriving" you of this "service" by not jumping on the wireless bandwagon with you? Why should they pay for YOUR access and their own wired access, too?
You want wireless? Buy your own NAP. Convince your neighbors how great it is, and maybe YOU can make the profit selling them what you want them to buy for you.
I think a quick solution might be if everyone who is confronted by a twit discussing their personal life in public on a cell phone simply started responding to the conversation.
- "Hey, how are you doing?" Fine. How are you?
- "Did you get to that meeting with Richard?" Why no, I didn't remember I had a meeting with Richard. Which Richard did you mean?
- (Dirty look from cell phone user.) "I gotta go, there's a twit on the train eavesdropping." Hangs up.
- ???
- Profit! Oops, I mean, WIN!
Then we can deal with the remaining annoyance: ring tones loud enough to be heard in the next block.Mass market books will always sell because of people who like the feel, or because the cost of copying an entire book at 5 cents a page is more than the price of the book itself. They are also easier to take on vacation, to the beach, on the train to work, etc.
Academic books (not textbooks) cost more to buy than xerox. They are often important for only one chapter, or even just one section of a chapter. Journals typically have one or two papers of relevance per issue. Authors typically buy "reprints" -- single copies of their paper -- they can hand out to people who ask for them. For all of those reasons, academics are already used to dealing with xerox copies of things they want to read; downloading them from the web and printing them out is nothing new. If they can get them free from someone, there is zero reason to buy a copy -- with some exceptions of course, but not many.
So, when Cory says he'll always give his away for free because people will still pay to buy paper copies, he's talking about a completely different universe than academic authors and publishers.
Ummm, because now if there are 1,000,000 legal copies distributed, the artist will (unless he's got a pathetic lawyer or an unscrupulous distributor) be getting royalties on each copy.
If you allow "secondary distribution not for profit", then they sell 1 copy to the large studio and the other 999,999 legal copies get the artist nothing at all.
Do you think that a band gives their record company 100,000 pressed CD's to distribute? No, they give them ONE MASTER. And that's, technically, what they're paid for...
No, that is not all of what they're paid for.
That's because what you download is an approximation of the original -- mp3 or whatever other lossy compression is used changes the content. You don't get the cover art or liner notes. You get whatever quality the ripper chose for you, in the format he chose.
I buy them because I want to support the artists, I want to have the liner notes and stickers and bonus DVD's or whatever that comes with the CD itself.
Of those reasons, the only one that is not met by "free promotion" as suggested by the parent comment is the "support the artist". Like I said, I'm giving away for free the liner notes and everything on the CD or DVD. You can get from me everything you can get from the copy in the record store. In fact, I'm giving you an electronic version of the liner, so you don't have to go to CDDB to get the track names and stuff, it's already in an electronic form.
I like having a CD collection, I can't stand the sight of a bunch of burned discs in slimline cases with no room on the spine for a label.
If you choose to use slim cases, that's your right, but you could just as easily use normal CD cases, or even DVD-style cases, and have plenty of room for labels on your CDs.
In other words, P2P is doing what ClearChannel refuses to do - expose the public to new music. This is why I say it's free promotion.
Yes, it's free, since the artists get paid nothing for a copy of their work, but it isn't promotion, because of all the reasons you gave for actually buying a copy from the artist, the only one that is valid is "support the artist". Yes, if you want to support the artist and you have the money, you'll do so. Most people don't.
There will always be a few unscrupulous bastards that will get off on getting something for nothing,
If the "secondary distribution without profit" kind of copyright is enacted, it won't be "unscrupulous bastards" downloading the free material, it will be law abiding citizens doing what the law allows them to do. And it won't be just a few of them.
Huh? Since when do you pay "rent" when you buy a book or a CD? You buy it, you own it.
Well, he's not hindered by HIS copyright. But basically, ok.
Nor is he hindered by anyone else's copyright, if his creation truly is his own. Yeah, people sue other people for all kinds of things. If "can be sued" becomes the basis for deciding who owns a copyright, nobody does.
Technically only with regards to existing copyrights; future copyrights would not be granted, and thus not taken away.
What is being taken is not the copyright but the work itself and the ability to charge a fair (or inflated) price for that work. With no copyright, there is nothing to stop someone from using your work without your permission and without paying you for it. Remember that those who say "no copyrights" are doing so in an environment where copyright does exist, so that change is, itself, an attempt at taking, along with the actual taking of someone else's work.
Investing in creative works is a high risk for high return.
Depends on how long you take to create the work, and how high you define "high" to be. Being able to feed one's family on the profits isn't considered "high" by many people.
What money? If anyone can do whatever they want with a copy of something they've bought, including duplicate it and give it away "not for profit", and a large studio buys one copy of an indie film and does precisely that, then the only "money" the indie film producer would see is what he makes on that one copy.
Notice that it's not even necessarily being given away free -- the studio can charge a fee to cover the costs of duplication and distribution, as long as they don't make a profit.
How many indie film producers could survive that kind of "promotion"?
Exactly what is the difference between the "copy" and "the real thing" if I am distributing uncompressed ripped copies of, say, Metallica's latest CD? In a digital world, the difference between "copy" and "original" is often "zero". Ok, you want the album art, too? I'm distributing for free digital copies of the album art and liner notes. Take it to Kinkos or print it at home.
Will some people still go out and buy an "official copy" after getting a free "unofficial copy"? Perhaps. Not likely. And not as many as would have bought it originally.
NOTE CAREFULLY that I am being explicit in saying that the copy I am distributing is uncompressed and thus bit for bit identical to the original, and is complete. The argument that "the copy is poor quality" or "it isn't the whole album" doesn't apply. This isn't a case of someone getting a 32kbit mp3 of a track and deciding they want the good quality original. It's not "free promotion" in any sense of the phrase, since it doesn't promote any further action on the part of the consumer. He got everything he'd get when he buys the CD. And before you say "he'll go buy the next CD from the group because he likes this one", well, wait 24 hours after it's released, because I'll have THAT one available, too, for free.
I would put it slightly differently: users can do what they want with legally acquired copies as long as their actions do not attempt to duplicate the licence they got with that copy.
I.e., you can rip a CD and put it on your own IPOD. If you rip the CD and give the copies to your friends, then you are attempting to duplicate YOUR license to cover your friends.
Your version would prohibit selling the CD to someone else, since that isn't keeping it to themselves, but it does transfer the license to someone else. (Assuming, of course, that when you transfer the license to the material, you stop using the material you no longer have a license for.)
Why? They didn't do the work of creating it, why should they have the say in how he controls it?
There are many groups who live from doing live-performances, and I do not see any reason that others should not.
There are many people who live by grubbing in the dirt picking potatoes or strawberries. I do not see any reason that musicians should not all be required to earn their livings that way. I hope the absurdity of that statement made the point.
Then feel free to release all your music in the public domain. Do not take from others their right to make a living by selling what you do not want to. Your argument is the old "I don't want to do X, so I don't think anyone should be able to do X...". If you don't want to do X, don't do it, but don't tell anyone else they cannot.
The only people who are hindered in any way by copyrights are those who want to consume someone else's product.
The copyright owner is not hindered by copyrights, he can release his material to the public domain if he wants to. If he doesn't want to, he should have that option.
So, those who say "no copyrights" are in the position of trying to take things from other people.
Reasonable copyrights are fine. They exist to allow the creator of content to make a reasonable return on his investment. Reasonable copyrights, by definition, include limited time of protection and fair use.
We're talking about jobs, not altruism. If all you get paid is minimum wage, are you going to do maximum effort at anything not required for that job? Of course not. Not just get paid minimum wage, but be told "this is all you need, that's all you'll get", so a promotion to a higher paying job is out of the question.
Do people volunteer to do things they don't get paid for? Of course. Do they make a habit of doing it for an employer who they know won't pay them more for showing enthusiasm and initiative? For a while, perhaps, but not forever.
Really people, you must have a really poor opinion of humanity.
No, just the ability to see what happens when eno2001's concepts are applied to real societies. It's not like it hasn't been tried. Looks really "good" on paper, works really rotten in real life. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
The only thing I am sure of is that capitalism has pretty much failed consistently for a few thousand years to solve all of humanities problems.
Then it isn't a surprise to find out that capitalism isn't intended to solve all of humanities problems. I don't recall anyone ever saying it was. It just works better than other systems.
They can provide jobs and advance technology. The other thing they do is take a lot of money out of the hands of a large amount of people and put it into the hands of a small amount of people (shareholders).
So, in one sentence you admit that they provide jobs and technology improvements that benefit a lot of people, and then condemn them for paying back the people who took a chance by investing their money in the company to allow it to do those beneficial things. Why should any stockholder risk anything on a company if they knew that the BEST they could do is just get their money back, and the worst is they lose everything they invested?
When some get super rich (read Bill Gates)...
I already said that there are outliers in the data. I mentioned explicitely Carly at HP, but I assumed people who read what I wrote would infer Bill and others are also outliers. Not every "rich person" who "makes too much" is a Bill or Carly. The VAST majority of them are not Bills or Carlys.
However, the point remains. If you say "Bill has too much, take it away from him", then you've drawn a line that is easier to move than to create. Where does the line move tomorrow, after you find out that taking all of Bill's money away doesn't solve the world's problems? Well, Carly, yeah, let's take hers. And that CEO of Intel! And Nike. And Phil Helmuth, hell, he's just frittering those poker winnings away on other poker games, let's take his money. Where's the line tomorrow?
Wrong. That's the failing of unchecked democracy. Alexis de Tocqueville is the name of the french guy I was trying to remember earlier. The ultimate failure of a democracy is when the voters realize it is easier to tax someone else to give themselves welfare than to work. Don't worry, we're getting there. Every time someone says "let's tax X to pay for Y" and they aren't part of X but benefit from Y, you're seeing that principle in action.
Capitalism says that Bill hires a few thousand guards for his money, and those 80 million you theorize about would have to decide who the first few thousand to die trying to take his money away will be. When the only answer they have is "not me", that's called "private security", and the people and company providing it get paid pretty well for it.