Better solution - hook up a phone to your requisite land-line and just turn off the ringer. If Verizon (or whoever) requires the local service, then you might as well set it up to your advantage. The way I see it, I installed the phone for *my* convenience, not the convenience of anyone else. I have no qualms about being terse and hanging up on the telemarketers. They're not paying for my phone service, and they're wasting my time. G'bye. I've got the local unlimited package service on my land-line, and I use it instead of the cell to talk to "chatty" folks. The wife will spend several hours talking to her mom several states away without incurring long distance charges, nor worrying about using up all the cell minutes. There aren't any batteries on the land-line to burn down, either. The land-line has it's place, and gets used accordingly.
PoE has tremendous value, especially when you're installing equipment in difficult locations. It wouldn't surprise me if the electrician's union reps got wind of this and sent their thugs out to do some re-education. "We can't have no non-union IT guys installin' power over *any* wires, cuz that's a union job. Got it?" Yes, they still have thugs.
PoE should have killed off USB. I hate the fact that the USB connector doesn't have a positive locking mechanism. The RJ-45 is amazingly well designed from a connector perspective - cheap, easy to use, reliable as all hell. I understand that one of USB's aims was to be "painless for the used to install," which is a noble goal. However, the protocol stack and other cruft associated with it makes it expensive to implement in embedded systems (where most of the target devices live.) I'd much rather have PoE with a proper network protocol than USB and it's... eh, don't get me started. Suffice it to say that "I don't like USB."
That's pretty much my point. The song has been purchased... sort of... with conditions. It's not really a purchase in the traditional sense. If Apple goes belly-up, what recourse does the "purchaser" of songs have regarding the disposition of the music he bought? Twenty years from now, will people be nursing Win2K machines just to keep their album collections alive?
Nope, you're instructed by your clueless and cheap-ass PHB to move it to the loading dock so it can be moved to off-site storage (i.e. the loading dock... see "cheap-ass" reference, above.) Your glorious leader has purchased a new machine from the company with best salespeople (i.e. short skirts, cleavage, and heels.)
Besides, you don't throw a mainframe computer... ever. You might tip it over by backing into it with a forklift, though.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Amy Greer of Lafayette, Indiana leased Faith Hill's Mississippi Girl to win?"
Not to be overly pedantic, but the music labels are horribly opposed to us "consumers" actually owning *anything.* The Sonny Bono Retroactive Indefinite Copyright Extension Act was brilliant. They're struggling to control the distribution channel. Pretty soon they'll be using DRM to control the end-user applications - {clippy}"Sorry, you only have the One Play per Day license on song 'GarbageOfTheWeek.' Would you like to upgrade to the Unlimited Per-Day license for only a few sheckels per month more?"{/clippy}
A PPT is a Pulsed Plasma Thruster. Usually a stick of somthing like Teflon is ablated by a big spark (i.e. the plasma part) and ejected out the back. The reaction force moves you in the opposite direction.
An MET is a Microwave Electric Thruster. You use microwaves to ionize a gas like Xenon and accelerate the ions out the back with a high-voltage electric field grid.
I think that the greatest failure of the Shuttle program was the mixing of human- and cargo-missions. I'll ignore the politics and outright lies for now. By requiring that humans be present on every launch, the Shuttle is horribly constrained in it's flight profile.
The Russian split of Soyuz for the humans and Progress for the cargo is a winning combination. They can fly a riskier payload with the Progress, and not have to worry about possibly killing the people. They also don't carry all the life-support baggage that limits the ultimate payload capacity. For reasons I can't explain, there was a mandate that the Shuttle would do everything for everybody - resulting in horribly sub-optimal performance all around. The Shuttle was doomed to fail all it's objectives before it ever got off the drawing board.
I disagree with the assertion that the Shuttle was "great progress," even measured by standards 20 years ago. The Saturn V was "great progress," and the Shuttle's capabilities are a huge step backwards - trapped in LEO, 1/2 the payload capacity (118,000kg versus 47,000kg,) etc. Here's a concise table of launch vehicle comparisons. Note that there aren't many GEO entries, and all that have that capability are the expendable-type. There's a technical reason for that... actually many.
Then there's the political aspect, which can't be ignored. Nixon pretty much crippled NASA. Here's a nice account the political climate - skip down to the "Coping with Change" part. Do you think that Nixon (or any other President) would be inclined to disassemble the programs of his predecessor? I think they'd roll their own grandmothers if they thought it'd get them re-elected.
Finally, there's the big pack-o-lies that the Shuttle program is founded upon. The program cost is probably the biggest one. They promised USD $20M launch costs, with the expectation of having one launch a week. The reality is they *knew* that was hideously optimistic and unsustainable. So we're stuck with USD $1B per-launch costs, and a somewhat-reusable orbiter that needs major overhauls between launches.
The Shuttle is an amazing piece of technology. It just isn't the right technology to use if we ever expect to get off this rock.
This is exactly the kind of behavior that leads to civil war, and is exactly the reason we have the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment isn't there so you can protect yourself from petty thieves, it's there so the people can rise up and replace the government when it becomes corrupt (note: that's "when" and not "if". The founders of this country knew it was inevitable...)
The owners of the soon-to-be-seized properties need to have it out with the local gub'ment folks. The messier the better - that'll get more attention for the real issue - subversion of your property rights in favor of big-corporate profits.
If you manufacture cars, and I purchase one, your authority to dictate how it's used ends when I sign on the dotted line. If I see fit to drive immediately to a junkyard and have it crushed into a small-but-expensive cube, that's my prerrogative. You can't say or do diddly-squat (legally,) no matter how much my behavior cheeses you off.
The console manufacturers are attempting to circumvent property ownership rights by implementing DRM in the name of "anti-piracy." While that is one aspect of what they're doing, the real issue is about control. The console manufacturers want to control the distribution channel, all the way up to your wallet. They want a piece of every game and accessory sold for the console, and DRM is a way of killing off the competition. Unauthorized applicaitons don't generate revenue for the parent company, so they're going to try to kill them off through draconian legislation.
If anything, these PSP hacks should be viewed as an act of civil disobedience. They're necessary to highlight the crummy laws that have been purchased by Big Corporations.
I believe you meant "1st gear". Here's a link to some SCCASports 2000s. They're wonderful to work on and drive. Hell, even the older Formula Fords have a first gear that'll do 70+.
Seriously, if you want to "go fast" and not worry about breaking the law, come play with the SCCA folks. If you're limited on funds, try autocrossing. It's very affordable and there's probably an SCCA group running an evnet near you (presuming you're in the US.)
I got a rude awakening the other day. My daughter was looking at a rack of comic books. I immediately thought "Dead tree comics... how quaint..." Then I saw the price - $3.25. I was appalled. At that price point, I think they're doomed. I can purchase a full paperback novel for a buck more. And no, I'm not missing the point. I'm making a simple value comparison - of two products located on adjacent shelves in the same store.
Damn that was such a stupid part of that movie. One of their co-workers is mowed down, yet they act like only some coffee got spilled on him. It would of been far better (and sorta funny) if started shooting, but of course with no rounds. Just an empty sound of the fun clicking at 100/rounds a sec. And the guy could of pissed his pants or something.
[click] [click] [click] The executives share a chuckle as the ED-209 fails to blast the junior exec into a fine pink froth. As soon as the ED-209 realizes it's out of ammo, it enters "physical pursuit mode," tearing the boardroom to pieces attempting to apprehend the "assailant." The smarty-pants technicians, while they knew there was no ammo, failed to consider how the ED-209 would react as the situation progressed and promptly tear into the control panel. (Apparently they don't put an easy-to-reach E-Stop button on the prototype units.)
Yes, there are better ways to deal with that scene than the "spilled coffee" reactions...
I can't believe someone modded that "Interesting. " Freedom of speech doesn't give you the right to threaten someone, any more than the right to bear arms gives you the right to discharge your firearm anywhere you please. Calling the President either "a patriot" or "an ignorant baboon", however, is just an expression of your opinion, and should be perfectly fine (note: there is no "threat" in either statement.) If you expect to exercise your Freedom of Speech, you should understand the concept (and the potential implications) before you do. Ignorance is not a good foundation for a political platform...
You make a good point. With a static link (as I was assuming,) the two pieces are bound together. With a dynamic link, you could distribute your proprietary code and have the end-user obtain the GPL library and do the final linkage. I would expect that you could distribute the dynamicaly-linked library along with the proprietary code, as long as the two pieces are distinct and separate. Hell, you could perform a sort of dynamic link using a shell script, and that structure doesn't propagate the GPL between programs.
If somebody distributes a binary program with no source, how is anyone supposed to tell if they just linked to a library versus incorporated the original GPL'd source into theirs? If all you have is the executable machine code, I'm not sure you could tell the difference.
Similarly, allowing library linkage to be a valid way to bypass the GPL would just result in everybody putting existing GPL sources into a "library structure" and linking in. Congrats, you'd have a way to completely de-tooth the GPL.
Using a library is just an organizational technique that keeps an individual source file from becoming too large. You can pre-compile a library to keep your compile times down. The net effect is that you're bolting the library onto your project, and you're deriving benefit from that linkage. If you don't want the GPL baggage, don't expect to get any free benefit from GPL'd works, either. You're perfectly welcome to develop the code yourself. Nobody requires you to use GPL'd code.
For $3M, I'd be demanding some measure of control. The Trek franchise isn't a charity... it's a business. They should consider this an infusion of capital, and as such, it has strings attached.
The economics go well beyond just dumping in money to fund the creation of episodes. The studio has to arrange for a timeslot on someone's cable or broadcast network. The network execs have an expectation that they'll be able to draw N-million viewers to justify the advertising rates. Advertisers have to believe that folks will actually watch, or they'll put their money elsewhere. Sure, the studios could release stuff direct to DVD, but that doesn't support the recurring revenue model they want. The opportunity cost is too high - for a given amount of effort and expense, they want to maximize the return. Trek is a relatively expensive series to produce, so they have to expect that it'll have greater returns than something cheaper.
Enterprise may be doomed by the economics. Simply shoring it up with contributions probably won't save it. They'd need to make a serious set of changes to be successful, and I'm not convinced that the folks in control of the creative aspects are prepared to be told "sorry, but what you're doing now sucks."
We had a couple of ringtone abusers when I worked at the cube farm. They'd come in, drop the phone on the desk, then head to a meeting or the lab. Invariably, one of the managers would keep calling evey 5 minutes. Since the phones were company issued, we figured we could get in trouble for swiping or damaging them. Instead, we'd just reprogram the ringtone to "none" or just vector all incoming calls to voicemail. Usually it took a day or two for the miscreant to realize that the crazy cellphone changed it's settings all by itself.
Since all the phones were basically the same, we had a couple of spare batteries and a special "discharge rig." For the more persistent offenders (who usually didn't give us enough alone-time to reprogram the phone,) we'd just swap in a freshly discharged battery. Thankfully, the IT guy in charge of replacement batteries was sympathetic, and just swapped our discharged one for the original.
Perhaps it's the subtlety... how many times has my computer annoyed you today?
If I'm on a computer/technical forum, I have a certain expectation that people will talk about the computers they own, how they're modded or enhanced, etc. Similarly, on a forum (or in a park) a group of people talking about ringtones will expect others to play them. At a custom car show, everyone has the hood up and the sound system blaring. It's expected.
It's when the ringtones are placed in an out-of-context environment that they're annoying. Similarly, the guy with the straightpipe on his Camaro is annoying when it's on the street in front of my home instead of at the track.
Some folks are defined by the things they do. Others are defined by the things they have. In either case, paying for ringtones is absurd. I saw a TV ad for $1.95/mo subscription for some ringtone service. Unbelievable...
On Maryland's Eastern Shore, chicken farming is probably the biggest industry. They've got waaaayy too much offal as a result. They already use it to grow the feed for the chickens, but there's a huge amount that just washes into the Chesapeake Bay. It's uneconomical to truck it elsewhere - transportation costs too much. Having a TD plant locally would fix a number of problems, and would probably pay for itself. Granted, that won't be the case everywhere.
I have yet to see a commercial EULA that says "you own your copy of the software." Usually, the first thing they state is "you are purchasing a license to use one copy on one machine... you don't own squat." Part of the "licensing" process involves tethering the software operation to a specific machine (i.e. using a key that uses the ethernet MAC address as a seed.) Transferring ownership of software is impossible in many situations, and may be prohibited by the license. Similarly, they impose restrictions on the use of the software - there's a different license/price/restriction for "personal use" versus "corporate use."
To go back to the book analogy, do you think the book publisher could prohibit a company from purchasing a book for inclusion in the corporate technical library? Clearly, that's a "non personal use" application, and the book license costs an additional $15k per copy, with an annual maintenance requirement of $1500. Non-payment of the annual manintenance fee results in termination of your book reading priveledges, as outlined in the book's EULA clearly printed on pages iii through xxvii. Oh, and highlighting sections of the book constitutes a modificaiton of the work (per the EULA,) and is considered a violation of the license.
Patents, on the other hand, prohibit you from making a patented device. Patents require disclosure of the invention, and thus place the design information in the public domain. If I go to the USPTO and copy the patent info, which I'm allowed to do, the patent owner can pursue me with legal means if I violate the patent. The software folks want the legal enforcement of a patent, but without the public disclosure part. And they want to maintain the current indefinite-length of a copyright, because a patent expires too soon. The software and entertainment industries are trying to build a hybrid copyright-patent mechanism that gives them all the force of law, but requires none of the contribution back into the public pool. It's a very bad thing.
Physical property ownership carries certain rights. If you build me a computer, and sell it to me, I may do with it as I see fit. I can use it to run a business. I can serve up church gospel content, or porn. I can also do case mods to my heart's content. Alternatively, I could take the purchased computer and smash it to bits right in front of you. Any of these actions is perfectly legal, and you don't have any say in the matter... no matter how badly my actions cheese you off.
Now with software, I don't have ownership rights. I own the physical piece of plastic the software is distributed on, but not the software itself. I don't own an original, nor do I have access to the original. Modifying the software is prohibited. If the license is key-based, I lose access to the product after the key expires. If you believe I'm violating the terms of the license, you can terminate the license and bring legal action against me. Licensing software is more like a lease than a sale. You may dictate how I use the software.
The software folks are trying to reach out of the copyright arena and expand their reach into the realm of real property. They covet the protections granted to property, but want to retain the license structures provided under copyright.
Copyright and patent laws were created to encourage people to be creative, and to invest in the creative process. In exchange, they receive a limited-time monopoly on the work or item. After that, it's supposed to fall into the public domain. Treating a copyrighted item as real property only benefits the copyright owner. There's no benefit to the public. It's a bad thing to allow. If software is to be considered real property, it needs to abandon the copyright protections. That ain't gonna happen.
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"Life from the marketer's perspective" goes something like this, perhaps?
... ... ... ... ... ...
Exploit others
Exploit others
Exploit others
Gotta pee
Exploit others
Oooh! Something shiny!
Better solution - hook up a phone to your requisite land-line and just turn off the ringer. If Verizon (or whoever) requires the local service, then you might as well set it up to your advantage. The way I see it, I installed the phone for *my* convenience, not the convenience of anyone else. I have no qualms about being terse and hanging up on the telemarketers. They're not paying for my phone service, and they're wasting my time. G'bye. I've got the local unlimited package service on my land-line, and I use it instead of the cell to talk to "chatty" folks. The wife will spend several hours talking to her mom several states away without incurring long distance charges, nor worrying about using up all the cell minutes. There aren't any batteries on the land-line to burn down, either. The land-line has it's place, and gets used accordingly.
PoE has tremendous value, especially when you're installing equipment in difficult locations. It wouldn't surprise me if the electrician's union reps got wind of this and sent their thugs out to do some re-education. "We can't have no non-union IT guys installin' power over *any* wires, cuz that's a union job. Got it?" Yes, they still have thugs.
... eh, don't get me started. Suffice it to say that "I don't like USB."
PoE should have killed off USB. I hate the fact that the USB connector doesn't have a positive locking mechanism. The RJ-45 is amazingly well designed from a connector perspective - cheap, easy to use, reliable as all hell. I understand that one of USB's aims was to be "painless for the used to install," which is a noble goal. However, the protocol stack and other cruft associated with it makes it expensive to implement in embedded systems (where most of the target devices live.) I'd much rather have PoE with a proper network protocol than USB and it's
That's pretty much my point. The song has been purchased ... sort of ... with conditions. It's not really a purchase in the traditional sense. If Apple goes belly-up, what recourse does the "purchaser" of songs have regarding the disposition of the music he bought? Twenty years from now, will people be nursing Win2K machines just to keep their album collections alive?
Nope, you're instructed by your clueless and cheap-ass PHB to move it to the loading dock so it can be moved to off-site storage (i.e. the loading dock ... see "cheap-ass" reference, above.) Your glorious leader has purchased a new machine from the company with best salespeople (i.e. short skirts, cleavage, and heels.)
... ever. You might tip it over by backing into it with a forklift, though.
Besides, you don't throw a mainframe computer
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Amy Greer of Lafayette, Indiana leased Faith Hill's Mississippi Girl to win?"
...
Not to be overly pedantic, but the music labels are horribly opposed to us "consumers" actually owning *anything.* The Sonny Bono Retroactive Indefinite Copyright Extension Act was brilliant. They're struggling to control the distribution channel. Pretty soon they'll be using DRM to control the end-user applications - {clippy}"Sorry, you only have the One Play per Day license on song 'GarbageOfTheWeek.' Would you like to upgrade to the Unlimited Per-Day license for only a few sheckels per month more?"{/clippy}
Yeah, I'm done now
A PPT is a Pulsed Plasma Thruster. Usually a stick of somthing like Teflon is ablated by a big spark (i.e. the plasma part) and ejected out the back. The reaction force moves you in the opposite direction.
An MET is a Microwave Electric Thruster. You use microwaves to ionize a gas like Xenon and accelerate the ions out the back with a high-voltage electric field grid.
Here's a nice table of thruster technologies with specific impulse characteristics.
I think that the greatest failure of the Shuttle program was the mixing of human- and cargo-missions. I'll ignore the politics and outright lies for now. By requiring that humans be present on every launch, the Shuttle is horribly constrained in it's flight profile.
The Russian split of Soyuz for the humans and Progress for the cargo is a winning combination. They can fly a riskier payload with the Progress, and not have to worry about possibly killing the people. They also don't carry all the life-support baggage that limits the ultimate payload capacity. For reasons I can't explain, there was a mandate that the Shuttle would do everything for everybody - resulting in horribly sub-optimal performance all around. The Shuttle was doomed to fail all it's objectives before it ever got off the drawing board.
I disagree with the assertion that the Shuttle was "great progress," even measured by standards 20 years ago. The Saturn V was "great progress," and the Shuttle's capabilities are a huge step backwards - trapped in LEO, 1/2 the payload capacity (118,000kg versus 47,000kg,) etc. Here's a concise table of launch vehicle comparisons. Note that there aren't many GEO entries, and all that have that capability are the expendable-type. There's a technical reason for that ... actually many.
Then there's the political aspect, which can't be ignored. Nixon pretty much crippled NASA. Here's a nice account the political climate - skip down to the "Coping with Change" part. Do you think that Nixon (or any other President) would be inclined to disassemble the programs of his predecessor? I think they'd roll their own grandmothers if they thought it'd get them re-elected.
Finally, there's the big pack-o-lies that the Shuttle program is founded upon. The program cost is probably the biggest one. They promised USD $20M launch costs, with the expectation of having one launch a week. The reality is they *knew* that was hideously optimistic and unsustainable. So we're stuck with USD $1B per-launch costs, and a somewhat-reusable orbiter that needs major overhauls between launches.
The Shuttle is an amazing piece of technology. It just isn't the right technology to use if we ever expect to get off this rock.
This is exactly the kind of behavior that leads to civil war, and is exactly the reason we have the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment isn't there so you can protect yourself from petty thieves, it's there so the people can rise up and replace the government when it becomes corrupt (note: that's "when" and not "if". The founders of this country knew it was inevitable ...)
The owners of the soon-to-be-seized properties need to have it out with the local gub'ment folks. The messier the better - that'll get more attention for the real issue - subversion of your property rights in favor of big-corporate profits.
Zero comments and the linked site is toast. Perhaps "Castle Not-Quite-Infinity ..."
If you manufacture cars, and I purchase one, your authority to dictate how it's used ends when I sign on the dotted line. If I see fit to drive immediately to a junkyard and have it crushed into a small-but-expensive cube, that's my prerrogative. You can't say or do diddly-squat (legally,) no matter how much my behavior cheeses you off.
The console manufacturers are attempting to circumvent property ownership rights by implementing DRM in the name of "anti-piracy." While that is one aspect of what they're doing, the real issue is about control. The console manufacturers want to control the distribution channel, all the way up to your wallet. They want a piece of every game and accessory sold for the console, and DRM is a way of killing off the competition. Unauthorized applicaitons don't generate revenue for the parent company, so they're going to try to kill them off through draconian legislation.
If anything, these PSP hacks should be viewed as an act of civil disobedience. They're necessary to highlight the crummy laws that have been purchased by Big Corporations.
I believe you meant "1st gear". Here's a link to some SCCA Sports 2000s. They're wonderful to work on and drive. Hell, even the older Formula Fords have a first gear that'll do 70+.
Seriously, if you want to "go fast" and not worry about breaking the law, come play with the SCCA folks. If you're limited on funds, try autocrossing. It's very affordable and there's probably an SCCA group running an evnet near you (presuming you're in the US.)
I got a rude awakening the other day. My daughter was looking at a rack of comic books. I immediately thought "Dead tree comics ... how quaint ..." Then I saw the price - $3.25. I was appalled. At that price point, I think they're doomed. I can purchase a full paperback novel for a buck more. And no, I'm not missing the point. I'm making a simple value comparison - of two products located on adjacent shelves in the same store.
Damn that was such a stupid part of that movie. One of their co-workers is mowed down, yet they act like only some coffee got spilled on him. It would of been far better (and sorta funny) if started shooting, but of course with no rounds. Just an empty sound of the fun clicking at 100/rounds a sec. And the guy could of pissed his pants or something.
...
[click] [click] [click] The executives share a chuckle as the ED-209 fails to blast the junior exec into a fine pink froth. As soon as the ED-209 realizes it's out of ammo, it enters "physical pursuit mode," tearing the boardroom to pieces attempting to apprehend the "assailant." The smarty-pants technicians, while they knew there was no ammo, failed to consider how the ED-209 would react as the situation progressed and promptly tear into the control panel. (Apparently they don't put an easy-to-reach E-Stop button on the prototype units.)
Yes, there are better ways to deal with that scene than the "spilled coffee" reactions
Well, we should've learned something from the first Robocop movie - don't demo your product with a full load of live ammo.
I can't believe someone modded that "Interesting. " Freedom of speech doesn't give you the right to threaten someone, any more than the right to bear arms gives you the right to discharge your firearm anywhere you please. Calling the President either "a patriot" or "an ignorant baboon", however, is just an expression of your opinion, and should be perfectly fine (note: there is no "threat" in either statement.) If you expect to exercise your Freedom of Speech, you should understand the concept (and the potential implications) before you do. Ignorance is not a good foundation for a political platform ...
You make a good point. With a static link (as I was assuming,) the two pieces are bound together. With a dynamic link, you could distribute your proprietary code and have the end-user obtain the GPL library and do the final linkage. I would expect that you could distribute the dynamicaly-linked library along with the proprietary code, as long as the two pieces are distinct and separate. Hell, you could perform a sort of dynamic link using a shell script, and that structure doesn't propagate the GPL between programs.
If somebody distributes a binary program with no source, how is anyone supposed to tell if they just linked to a library versus incorporated the original GPL'd source into theirs? If all you have is the executable machine code, I'm not sure you could tell the difference.
Similarly, allowing library linkage to be a valid way to bypass the GPL would just result in everybody putting existing GPL sources into a "library structure" and linking in. Congrats, you'd have a way to completely de-tooth the GPL.
Using a library is just an organizational technique that keeps an individual source file from becoming too large. You can pre-compile a library to keep your compile times down. The net effect is that you're bolting the library onto your project, and you're deriving benefit from that linkage. If you don't want the GPL baggage, don't expect to get any free benefit from GPL'd works, either. You're perfectly welcome to develop the code yourself. Nobody requires you to use GPL'd code.
For $3M, I'd be demanding some measure of control. The Trek franchise isn't a charity ... it's a business. They should consider this an infusion of capital, and as such, it has strings attached.
The economics go well beyond just dumping in money to fund the creation of episodes. The studio has to arrange for a timeslot on someone's cable or broadcast network. The network execs have an expectation that they'll be able to draw N-million viewers to justify the advertising rates. Advertisers have to believe that folks will actually watch, or they'll put their money elsewhere. Sure, the studios could release stuff direct to DVD, but that doesn't support the recurring revenue model they want. The opportunity cost is too high - for a given amount of effort and expense, they want to maximize the return. Trek is a relatively expensive series to produce, so they have to expect that it'll have greater returns than something cheaper.
Enterprise may be doomed by the economics. Simply shoring it up with contributions probably won't save it. They'd need to make a serious set of changes to be successful, and I'm not convinced that the folks in control of the creative aspects are prepared to be told "sorry, but what you're doing now sucks."
We had a couple of ringtone abusers when I worked at the cube farm. They'd come in, drop the phone on the desk, then head to a meeting or the lab. Invariably, one of the managers would keep calling evey 5 minutes. Since the phones were company issued, we figured we could get in trouble for swiping or damaging them. Instead, we'd just reprogram the ringtone to "none" or just vector all incoming calls to voicemail. Usually it took a day or two for the miscreant to realize that the crazy cellphone changed it's settings all by itself.
Since all the phones were basically the same, we had a couple of spare batteries and a special "discharge rig." For the more persistent offenders (who usually didn't give us enough alone-time to reprogram the phone,) we'd just swap in a freshly discharged battery. Thankfully, the IT guy in charge of replacement batteries was sympathetic, and just swapped our discharged one for the original.
Perhaps it's the subtlety ... how many times has my computer annoyed you today?
...
If I'm on a computer/technical forum, I have a certain expectation that people will talk about the computers they own, how they're modded or enhanced, etc. Similarly, on a forum (or in a park) a group of people talking about ringtones will expect others to play them. At a custom car show, everyone has the hood up and the sound system blaring. It's expected.
It's when the ringtones are placed in an out-of-context environment that they're annoying. Similarly, the guy with the straightpipe on his Camaro is annoying when it's on the street in front of my home instead of at the track.
Some folks are defined by the things they do. Others are defined by the things they have. In either case, paying for ringtones is absurd. I saw a TV ad for $1.95/mo subscription for some ringtone service. Unbelievable
On Maryland's Eastern Shore, chicken farming is probably the biggest industry. They've got waaaayy too much offal as a result. They already use it to grow the feed for the chickens, but there's a huge amount that just washes into the Chesapeake Bay. It's uneconomical to truck it elsewhere - transportation costs too much. Having a TD plant locally would fix a number of problems, and would probably pay for itself. Granted, that won't be the case everywhere.
I have yet to see a commercial EULA that says "you own your copy of the software." Usually, the first thing they state is "you are purchasing a license to use one copy on one machine ... you don't own squat." Part of the "licensing" process involves tethering the software operation to a specific machine (i.e. using a key that uses the ethernet MAC address as a seed.) Transferring ownership of software is impossible in many situations, and may be prohibited by the license. Similarly, they impose restrictions on the use of the software - there's a different license/price/restriction for "personal use" versus "corporate use."
To go back to the book analogy, do you think the book publisher could prohibit a company from purchasing a book for inclusion in the corporate technical library? Clearly, that's a "non personal use" application, and the book license costs an additional $15k per copy, with an annual maintenance requirement of $1500. Non-payment of the annual manintenance fee results in termination of your book reading priveledges, as outlined in the book's EULA clearly printed on pages iii through xxvii. Oh, and highlighting sections of the book constitutes a modificaiton of the work (per the EULA,) and is considered a violation of the license.
Patents, on the other hand, prohibit you from making a patented device. Patents require disclosure of the invention, and thus place the design information in the public domain. If I go to the USPTO and copy the patent info, which I'm allowed to do, the patent owner can pursue me with legal means if I violate the patent. The software folks want the legal enforcement of a patent, but without the public disclosure part. And they want to maintain the current indefinite-length of a copyright, because a patent expires too soon. The software and entertainment industries are trying to build a hybrid copyright-patent mechanism that gives them all the force of law, but requires none of the contribution back into the public pool. It's a very bad thing.
Physical property ownership carries certain rights. If you build me a computer, and sell it to me, I may do with it as I see fit. I can use it to run a business. I can serve up church gospel content, or porn. I can also do case mods to my heart's content. Alternatively, I could take the purchased computer and smash it to bits right in front of you. Any of these actions is perfectly legal, and you don't have any say in the matter ... no matter how badly my actions cheese you off.
Now with software, I don't have ownership rights. I own the physical piece of plastic the software is distributed on, but not the software itself. I don't own an original, nor do I have access to the original. Modifying the software is prohibited. If the license is key-based, I lose access to the product after the key expires. If you believe I'm violating the terms of the license, you can terminate the license and bring legal action against me. Licensing software is more like a lease than a sale. You may dictate how I use the software.
The software folks are trying to reach out of the copyright arena and expand their reach into the realm of real property. They covet the protections granted to property, but want to retain the license structures provided under copyright.
Copyright and patent laws were created to encourage people to be creative, and to invest in the creative process. In exchange, they receive a limited-time monopoly on the work or item. After that, it's supposed to fall into the public domain. Treating a copyrighted item as real property only benefits the copyright owner. There's no benefit to the public. It's a bad thing to allow. If software is to be considered real property, it needs to abandon the copyright protections. That ain't gonna happen.