Albert N. Greco. a professor of marketing at Fordham University's Graduate School of Business... said that if the problem worsens, publishers may have to take other steps to prevent piracy, such as releasing a new version of most textbooks every semester. The versions could include slight modifications that could be changed easily--such as altering the numbers in math problems.
"They may compelled to," he said, "in order to stay one step ahead of the pirates."
So what he's saying is that current textbook publishing practices were developed to keep "one step ahead of the pirates" rather than to keep "one step ahead of the used book market?"
That's the kind of "spin" you'd expect from a professor of marketing.
In a world where car-duplicating equipment exists, it doesn't make any economic sense to build and sell cars. If my name were Mr. Ferrari and I made my living that way, I could either fight against technological progress by lobbying the government to make car-duplicating equipment illegal, or (my own personal preference) I could stop trying to make my living using an outdated economic model.
The question that this raises is how we as a society can best encourage people to design better cars than we now have while encouraging the widest adoption of improvements. The current system of patents and, outside this analogy, the current system of copyright, are one answer to this question, but not necessarily the best answer.
I would prefer an answer that makes the benefits of new technology more widely available to more people, discourages practices such as patent trolling and sitting on new technology so that others can't implement or build on it, and keeps more effort and resources focused on meeting people's needs and less on supporting an army of lawyers.
One interesting theory related to this is the Grandmother Hypothesis, which states that menopause was a trait that was selected through evolution because infant humans who had post-menopausal grandmothers to look after them had higher survival rates than those whose grandmothers were still reproducing, and therefore less available to help out with their grandchildren.
Last time I checked, China had a problem with overpopulation, not underpopulation. If they did have a problem with underpopulation, they could scale back their "one child per family" population-control policies and start propagandizing about how glorious it is to have a large family. I don't think that will happen any time soon.
It's a lot easier to solve an underpopulation problem (breed like rabbits or allow immigration) than it is to solve an overpopulation problem (try to limit reproduction and try to come up with enough food to feed everyone.)
I can see some benefit in being "not diseased" or even "less likely to be diseased" even if it is a long shot.
Since the alternative to embryo selection is literally a simple swimming race between sperm cells, I'd put my bet on embryo selection having a likelihood of a better outcome than the swimming race.
I'm sure in the future we'll have a better understanding of the markers and will do a better job of embryo selection, but even now it seems preferable to the alternative. At worst it's a waste of money and time; at best, it will improve the health of future generations of humans.
I can's see anything wrong with selecting for gestation the embryo which will turn into the healthiest human. This will result in a net gain in health for millions of real humans in future generations, at the expense of millions of potential (meaning "not") humans - the rejected embryos. Since the rejected embryos have no consciousness, and the real humans do, I think it's a worthwhile trade-off. If there was any evidence that the rejected embryos could feel pain or have any awareness of their situation, I'd go the other way. But as it is, it's a (bad pun alert) no-brainer.
Some say the hard disk is half full. Some say the hard disk is half empty. A group of monks posed this dilemma to the Buddha. "All hard disks are virtual," he responded, and at that moment, all those who were present were enlightened.
One can be negligent while sleeping. Say you're the captain of an oil tanker and you fall asleep, leaving someone less experienced in command, and they run it into the coastline. You could then be found guilty of criminal negligence for something that happened while you were asleep.
That's why Kucinich entered articles of impeachment for Cheney a year ago. If Congress had enough spine to impeach Bush, they'd probably also have enough spine to impeach Cheney first to keep the unthinkable from happening.
Impeachment without conviction is what the Republicans got out of Blowjobgate. It serves as a permanent reminder to the historical record that Clinton couldn't keep his pants on when he should have. Similarly, an impeachment of Bush even without a subsequent conviction would serve as a permanent reminder to the historical record that Bush committed war crimes and trampled on the constitution. That sounds like a good start to me.
If Bush is a mass murderer then so was Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton.
There's no reason to leave Carter off this list - he signed the check that paid for the massacres in East Timor.
The unfortunate truth here is that US Presidential candidates who are likely to refuse to commit mass murder to promote the interests of multinational corporations are dismissed as "unelectable" by the media owned by said corporations, leaving in the race only those who are willing to facilitate the dirty work.
This is a very interesting theory... Are his apparent ignorance and lack of verbal acuity also part of this gimmick? I'd feel like such a fool if he starts writing insightful books and giving eloquent speeches the minute he leaves office! It would be like when Anne answers the phone in this Little Britain sketch.
I don't see how a vote failing in the democratically-controlled congress could be blamed on the minority Republican party. This is Congress's last chance to say that a President unconstitutionally usurping Congressional war powers is unacceptable, and will lead to impeachment. If they sit on their hands as Pelosi intends, the message to all future Presidents will be loud and clear: you can do whatever you want with the military, and Congress won't stop you. The message to the current President will also be loud and clear: we let you get away with invading Iraq, so go ahead and get our country into another mess in Iran and you'll get away with that, too.
As requested, a correction: A full T1 gives you 1.544 (1.536 after the overhead is taken out) megabits, not megabytes, per second. So it is in fact measured in the same units as consumer internet connections.
I gave up my Epson LQ-500 dot-matrix printer long after everyone else had, when I finally got tired of having to go for a long walk to save my hearing every time I wanted to print a long document. It was rock solid and produced pretty good text, but it could wake the dead with its infernal screeching, and it would take forever to finish a job. It was a wonderful machine for its time, but I can't say I miss it now.
Despite Microsoft's claims about leveraging 3D accelerator technology to offload the GUI workload, Aero still chews-up more CPU cycles (an average of 22%) with desktop composition enabled (i.e. 3D accelerated mode) than with it disabled (i.e. non-accelerated "legacy" mode). In other words, turn on the "bling" and you toss nearly a quarter of your CPU bandwidth out the window.
Hollywood accounting doesn't necessarily imply tax evasion because although the first corporation, which "doesn't make any profits" because it gave all the money to the second corporation, doesn't pay any taxes, the second corporation does make a profit and can pay taxes.
Although it could be one step in an international tax-evasion scheme, by itself it doesn't take any money out of the reach of the IRS.
Re:Recognize the error and wait for Win7
on
The Death of Windows XP
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Since there have been a number of reports of people using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation and getting better performance than Vista, it's clear that Vista's days are numbered.
I've never cared for XP's eye candy or Vista's eye candy... all I want in a Windows-compatible OS is a Windows 2000-like GUI, support for the latest hardware, updated security patches, and a minimum of bloat. XP can do it, Server 2008 can do it, and any future OS (or OS emulation like WINE) that can do it will be fine with me, too.
I don't use a computer to look at pretty transparent windows. I use a computer to run applications. Any OS "feature" that steals CPU cycles away from my applications does not give me warm fuzzy feelings. Such "features" send me on a search for the method to turn them off and get back to the stripped-down, efficient GUI of Windows 2000. My hardware and my apps are where it's at for me. If the OS wants to be the star, it can take a hike. That is where MS went wrong with Vista.
"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. (Atlas Shrugged, 1957)
Slashdot Mirror
So what he's saying is that current textbook publishing practices were developed to keep "one step ahead of the pirates" rather than to keep "one step ahead of the used book market?"
That's the kind of "spin" you'd expect from a professor of marketing.
In a world where car-duplicating equipment exists, it doesn't make any economic sense to build and sell cars. If my name were Mr. Ferrari and I made my living that way, I could either fight against technological progress by lobbying the government to make car-duplicating equipment illegal, or (my own personal preference) I could stop trying to make my living using an outdated economic model.
The question that this raises is how we as a society can best encourage people to design better cars than we now have while encouraging the widest adoption of improvements. The current system of patents and, outside this analogy, the current system of copyright, are one answer to this question, but not necessarily the best answer.
I would prefer an answer that makes the benefits of new technology more widely available to more people, discourages practices such as patent trolling and sitting on new technology so that others can't implement or build on it, and keeps more effort and resources focused on meeting people's needs and less on supporting an army of lawyers.
One interesting theory related to this is the Grandmother Hypothesis, which states that menopause was a trait that was selected through evolution because infant humans who had post-menopausal grandmothers to look after them had higher survival rates than those whose grandmothers were still reproducing, and therefore less available to help out with their grandchildren.
To clarify: Animals have rights by virtue of their consciousness and ability to suffer. There is no evidence that embryos have either of these traits.
Last time I checked, China had a problem with overpopulation, not underpopulation. If they did have a problem with underpopulation, they could scale back their "one child per family" population-control policies and start propagandizing about how glorious it is to have a large family. I don't think that will happen any time soon.
It's a lot easier to solve an underpopulation problem (breed like rabbits or allow immigration) than it is to solve an overpopulation problem (try to limit reproduction and try to come up with enough food to feed everyone.)
I can see some benefit in being "not diseased" or even "less likely to be diseased" even if it is a long shot.
Since the alternative to embryo selection is literally a simple swimming race between sperm cells, I'd put my bet on embryo selection having a likelihood of a better outcome than the swimming race.
I'm sure in the future we'll have a better understanding of the markers and will do a better job of embryo selection, but even now it seems preferable to the alternative. At worst it's a waste of money and time; at best, it will improve the health of future generations of humans.
I can's see anything wrong with selecting for gestation the embryo which will turn into the healthiest human. This will result in a net gain in health for millions of real humans in future generations, at the expense of millions of potential (meaning "not") humans - the rejected embryos. Since the rejected embryos have no consciousness, and the real humans do, I think it's a worthwhile trade-off. If there was any evidence that the rejected embryos could feel pain or have any awareness of their situation, I'd go the other way. But as it is, it's a (bad pun alert) no-brainer.
If you'd like to come over with your car-duplicating equipment and make an exact copy of my Ferrari without damaging it, you're welcome to do so.
:-)
Some say the hard disk is half full. Some say the hard disk is half empty. A group of monks posed this dilemma to the Buddha.
"All hard disks are virtual," he responded, and at that moment, all those who were present were enlightened.
One can be negligent while sleeping. Say you're the captain of an oil tanker and you fall asleep, leaving someone less experienced in command, and they run it into the coastline. You could then be found guilty of criminal negligence for something that happened while you were asleep.
So for the Slashdot community, prurient interests == case mods and overclocking?
That's why Kucinich entered articles of impeachment for Cheney a year ago. If Congress had enough spine to impeach Bush, they'd probably also have enough spine to impeach Cheney first to keep the unthinkable from happening.
Impeachment without conviction is what the Republicans got out of Blowjobgate. It serves as a permanent reminder to the historical record that Clinton couldn't keep his pants on when he should have. Similarly, an impeachment of Bush even without a subsequent conviction would serve as a permanent reminder to the historical record that Bush committed war crimes and trampled on the constitution. That sounds like a good start to me.
GP's grammar may be non-standard, but if you read it with a Jamaican accent, "because a lying about a BJ" does flow pretty well...
The unfortunate truth here is that US Presidential candidates who are likely to refuse to commit mass murder to promote the interests of multinational corporations are dismissed as "unelectable" by the media owned by said corporations, leaving in the race only those who are willing to facilitate the dirty work.
This is a very interesting theory... Are his apparent ignorance and lack of verbal acuity also part of this gimmick? I'd feel like such a fool if he starts writing insightful books and giving eloquent speeches the minute he leaves office! It would be like when Anne answers the phone in this Little Britain sketch.
I don't see how a vote failing in the democratically-controlled congress could be blamed on the minority Republican party. This is Congress's last chance to say that a President unconstitutionally usurping Congressional war powers is unacceptable, and will lead to impeachment. If they sit on their hands as Pelosi intends, the message to all future Presidents will be loud and clear: you can do whatever you want with the military, and Congress won't stop you. The message to the current President will also be loud and clear: we let you get away with invading Iraq, so go ahead and get our country into another mess in Iran and you'll get away with that, too.
It's too bad that Nancy Pelosi is one of those "republicans" - otherwise, this item might come to a vote.
As requested, a correction: A full T1 gives you 1.544 (1.536 after the overhead is taken out) megabits, not megabytes, per second. So it is in fact measured in the same units as consumer internet connections.
Or, to paraphrase Sex Panther Cologne:
.001% of the time.
100% of the time, it works
I gave up my Epson LQ-500 dot-matrix printer long after everyone else had, when I finally got tired of having to go for a long walk to save my hearing every time I wanted to print a long document. It was rock solid and produced pretty good text, but it could wake the dead with its infernal screeching, and it would take forever to finish a job. It was a wonderful machine for its time, but I can't say I miss it now.
Hollywood accounting doesn't necessarily imply tax evasion because although the first corporation, which "doesn't make any profits" because it gave all the money to the second corporation, doesn't pay any taxes, the second corporation does make a profit and can pay taxes.
Although it could be one step in an international tax-evasion scheme, by itself it doesn't take any money out of the reach of the IRS.
Since there have been a number of reports of people using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation and getting better performance than Vista, it's clear that Vista's days are numbered.
I've never cared for XP's eye candy or Vista's eye candy... all I want in a Windows-compatible OS is a Windows 2000-like GUI, support for the latest hardware, updated security patches, and a minimum of bloat. XP can do it, Server 2008 can do it, and any future OS (or OS emulation like WINE) that can do it will be fine with me, too.
I don't use a computer to look at pretty transparent windows. I use a computer to run applications. Any OS "feature" that steals CPU cycles away from my applications does not give me warm fuzzy feelings. Such "features" send me on a search for the method to turn them off and get back to the stripped-down, efficient GUI of Windows 2000. My hardware and my apps are where it's at for me. If the OS wants to be the star, it can take a hike. That is where MS went wrong with Vista.
Obligatory Ayn Rand quote:
"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. (Atlas Shrugged, 1957)