> If someone makes a million bucks, its usually because they deserve it.
Oh boy, theres the problem. Grab a psyche text book, look up "The Just World" syndrome.
You're assuming your system promotes and demotes people (based on wealth, I'm guessing you'd say) as they deserve it.
Problem being, kinda hard to know if the AIDS cure researcher deserves to be, say, twice as rich as the Cancer researcher.
In fact, all political or economical dissention would be useless if your charge that "People who deserve to be rich become rich, except for those who dont deserve it because they're corrupted." were true! We could always assume our system encourages the right kind of behaviour and rewards the right people/actions. Dangerous assumption.
> I guarentee you'll demand a royalty for your life's work...
I'd ask for a salary. But nobody forced me to do the work, so asking for a reward over the reward of actually doing it (and making some sort of living).. I'm not sure I understand why I inherently need to be able to charge royalties for my work.
Mind you, yes, when you're investing millions of dollars, I need _assurance_ that those millions of dollars will be returned to my organzation in order to justify the capital I used to discover something.
Yet again though, we find outselves nearing an event horizon. Theres no 'absolute' minimum or maximum amount of capital that I should have access to, to develop these drugs. If I figure I can probably find the cure for cancer faster, with another half a billion dollars, but my investors won't invest unless I am assured royalties for 150 years (ie, need more patent protection to justify investment and improve ROI), should I be able to lobby congress for stronger protection just because *I* want to invest more money/time into research?
I hope you can see the slipperly slope here. You sound like you assume things are the way they are because thats the most sane and just way, but I can assure you that history makes a mockery of that stance time and time again. When you strengthen patents, you weaken the efforts of other scientists other than the Self, so you're not inherently helping discover a cure simply by virtue of working towards it with the knowledge that you'll get paid the mad money when you make your discovery. At some point, you demanding royalty for your work taints the very reasearch community your working in, and the market who may or may not be able to afford your drug when you market it. And what good is promoting discovery when nobody can make use of it? To bring back the psychology, people suffer when life-bettering technology is available but they are unable to afford it. I know it would depress the shit out of me, that I was some 2nd class citizen not deserving of the fruits of humankinds labour..
> Provide me with proof that the majority of these patent applications come from public funds and I'll say you have an argument.
Oh, the patent applications come from companies. But X% of the research that leads to commercial produts are done by universities. (Did you miss that/. artcle a few weeks back about how universities frequently patent their work so that companies can use them, but never the other way around?) But companies can take this research, tinker with it, spend a shitload of trials (ah yes, the Hit and Miss approach of drug trials... *very* innovative!), and patent and market the trial winners. The shoulders of giants that companies stand on are the shoulders of public research.
Incidentally, I was aware patents have been around for centuries, but dont forget that technology has allowed the patent culture to be far more anal in terms of enforcability. Our very ability to adhere more closely to our perceived ideal systems is beginning to show the faults in those systems.
>I knew this test would determine my risk, I'd fork over the $3500
Because you _have_ $3500, dumbass. If you were a millionaire, I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem plunking down 500$ for toothpaste every night too.
> Who is going to develop new tests for hereditary diseases if the entire world can legitimately test for it without royalties?
Said it before, say it again. Most of the groundwork for these discoveries are done using your and my public tax money at universities. Companies research the last mile when they sniff money, and then lock the 'exclusivity' of the test/drug down with a patent. Its a joke. Patents didn't exist years ago, and that didn't prevent humans from discovering new things.
The way people like you talk, scientists and inventors never existed before pay cheques. What a load of hooey.
Or never alter them and assume its the best way. Equally moronic and myopic view.
What frusterates me is that the *most* amount of groundwork for drug research is done by universities. Pharmaceutical companies fund the commercialization and last mile research.
But yeah, I guess we'd be without viagra and zoloft without the generous, risky investments pharmaceutical companies do into research.
Seriously, the private sector is so full of itself, it frequently forgets where the real research comes from before its obvious that said research will turn into a mad phat money cow. Any industry which can be found guilty of price-fixing over and over and over again doesn't sound to me like an industry which needs (or for that matter, deserves) Fort-Knox like protection of its intellectual assets.
Before they start delaying DVD releases, they need to start making better movies again instead of simply trying to feed you the next big catchphrase to utter around the water cooler.
Cause lets face it.. how many of the folks that bought Austin Powers 2 on DVD would have bought it had they had to wait another year or two? Nobody gives a shit about most of these movies once they've faded from the pop culture venacular; a process that only takes 4 or 5 months after the movies runs in theatres.
Entertainment today is more expoitive than it ever has been. They ploy on your material and cultural associations, but rarely have anything to say that is applicable beyond the cultural microsecond in which they are released and promoted.
In fact, this is part of a bigger problem in the whole 'Business at the speed of light' goal we got caught up in.. the faster you get into the cultural conciouness (with exploitive or cheap advertising), the faster you fall out of it. The feedback loop between the producer and the consumer *can* get too tight, and the movie industry as it stands today is a very good example of this. Watch for the pendulum to start going the other way; hopefully with a neo-Hollywood instead of the one we're stuck with today.
I work in the advertising industry. Even non-tech 'working as advertised' is rare.. but this has more to do with the fact that its harder to verify advertising claims for bricks-n-mortar products (think "Removes 14% more plaque than our competitor!") or the claims are non quantitative (think "Removes stains with ease!").
With computers, its easier to benchmark and easier to stake specific claims (Think "Up and running to the internet in 5 minutes!") so you can hold these things up to the advertised claims much more easily than you can other types of products.
Heck, with cars is usually illigal to test most of the advertising claims;) (Think "Handles 180kph speeds with ease and does donughts like this!")
In my 6 or some odd years of using Macs, I dont think I ever spent more than 5 minutes wrestling or hating my box.
That shit happens normally on Wintel for me (cant get this or that going.)
I'm a C/C++ developer. I'm no moron. But I have a job, friends, family, and no desire to spend my time "fixing windows that shouldn't be broken in the first place."
I was always zealous about the Mac because it pretty much worked as advertised. If that ain't the kinda shit you preach from the mountain tops, I don't know what is.
To me, there was very little downside to temper the kind of excitement and satisfaction I got from fuckin around with my Mac.
hey, I couldn't agree with you more (+1 for including the User Interface Hall of Shame, a long standing favorite site of mine, nobody picks Windows apart like they do).. I was only trying to clarify what the Ask Slashdot poster was implying..
same effect can be achieved with blackbox or icewm.. I could never get sawfish happy on my box, but that was more due to my own laziness than any shortcoming in sawfish.
> - funding from big contributors (without commercial obligations), not likely to continue
This makes the best sense. Discovering alien life is the ultimate win in so far as opening up new markets to sell baby milk and croissant dought in for the big conglomerates.
Someone call up Pilsbury (got 20 million from the US government to advertise in south america, surely the US government can pay to help them open up The Great Market In the Sky) and Nesle!
> I've never found a site that doesn't work with Mozilla.
I use Mozilla, but claiming infailability.. lets just say that Mozilla is no more unbreakable than Oracle.;)
I've definately run into sites that break under Mozilla (my web banking interface, for one.)
At any rate, the user goes on perception, not truth. The user perceives popups are an unfortunate neccessity of life, and doesn't know whats going on under the hood (as reported by Adaware.)
So to them, a few more sites break under Mozilla than under IE, so IE wins. Thats not trolling, thats pointing out that people still are not educated enough to understand the difference.
People have been stung so many times by the RIAA that anything it does is construed as being bad.
It's a trust thing. The RIAA has lost any trust it had with webcasters (and many consumers), so anything they do, good or not, will be met with opposition. Its just deserts.
People and organizations have reputations, trust levels, etc. Once they breach that trust or act in underhanded or selfish ways, their well intentioned actions will go unnoticed or untrusted. Thats human nature.
That said, I don't know enough about this issue to judge their intentions either which way. Its just that you cant go from mean person to nice person and expect people to forget what they know about you and judge you only by your virtuous actions.
I sense a lot of mistrust regarding this issue, and the recent payola and MAPS (fixed price) scandals are good reasons why I think its a valid position.
> Most radio stations get their music FREE from the damn record companies
Actually, money goes from Label => 'Indie' => Station. Radio stations get paid to play songs. Read about it here
Of course, radio is a limited-shelf-space medium, so it should be no surprise that it costs to get access to the shelf space.
The internet features unlimited shelf space which is why they are just trying to price the small fish out of the water via licencing fees. Since they can't own all the real estate, its a supply and demand thing that doesn't play into the RIAA's members' hands.
A double standard is when you apply different values, reasoning or action to one thing.
I'll make it simple for you. The "one thing" is "what kids and see and watch". The context along which double standards are being applied are: 1) violent content 2) above-the-waist nudity
Its a double standard because there is a plethora of studies linking aggressive behaviour with what kids see or watch (*note: I do not believe that content creators should have culpability for influcing kids, so this isnt an argument for suing id software for columbine or anything asanine like that), but, as far as I know, there are no studies that I am aware of in which viewing the breasts of women can negatively impact the behaviour of a child/teen. (Note: Studies that are in any way connected to the religious right will be accpeted as soon as somebody turns my glass of water into wine.)
Thus, when a violent context exists, which reseach suggests (heres what google has to say) is a detrement to a childs development, we allow them access, yet when the context is of anything near sexual nature (we're talking nipples here), we go to great lengths to deny them access. But since you were unable to recognize the instance of the double standard in this scenario, my confidence is low that this post will help your state of confusion.
(As a related aside, I turned out alright despite watching my aunt breast feed my cousin quite often when I was youngish, but maybe I'm the only child that escaped scenes of nipples in childhood unscaythed. I even saw some playboys when I was 13.. I'm so glad no other kids ever see those things, or we'd be living in a country chalk full of sexually deviant predators, right?!)
Only topless nudity. The dialogue and such isn't anything worse than GTA3. No full frontals, definately no sex.. just alot of attitude. Really, if they dont sell this, they shouldn't sell GTA3.
[sarcasm] yeah, its way more moral to carjack and kill people in GTA3 than it is to ride a skateboard and look at women's boobs.... [/sarcasm]
This society has a rediculous double standard when it comes to what kids see and watch.. graphic violence is fine, easily found on their shelves, the heavens forbid we should see a nipple! For crying out loud...
>especially the Porn on the Gaming systems (maybe even the PC)
Despite the fact that porn games on PCs are old news (From Larry King to Virtual Valerie), unfortunately, even your console prediction is about a year late. Okay, theres no below the belt, but plenty of boobies.. and now that the barn doors are open, lets see how long it takes for PS2/GC/Xbox to realize that:
1.) Sell console game with sex in it. 2.) ??? 3.) Profit!
As an aside, I do believe that the increased competition will lead to companies thinking more about expoiting the groins of game players rather than caring about that old 'PR' thing (until two kids walk into a school and hump everybody one day, spawning a bultibillion dollar lawsuit claiming that BMX XXX leads kids down the immoral road to recreational procreation.)
> [Ever noticed how the national chains have been going bankrupt and consolidating over the past couple years? Used to be any city of 100k or so would have four or six independent duplex or quadplex theatres. Now such towns have four or six theatres owned by a single chain.]
Thats because the studios insist on bigger-louder-faster multi-million-dollar-weekend-then-to-DVD movies... they dont spend enough time in theatres for the theatres to make any money off.
Typically, a theatre doesn't start to see returns on a movie until the 3rd week or so. Since movies stay at threatres for *way* shorter time than they used to, theatres are having a very difficult time doing anything other than simply covering the cost of showing the movie. Making a profit today is way harder than it used to be, thanks to hollywood demanding more for movies and creating movies that lose the populations interest not long after its initial release.
Slashdot Mirror
> If someone makes a million bucks, its usually because they deserve it.
.. I'm not sure I understand why I inherently need to be able to charge royalties for my work.
..
/. artcle a few weeks back about how universities frequently patent their work so that companies can use them, but never the other way around?) But companies can take this research, tinker with it, spend a shitload of trials (ah yes, the Hit and Miss approach of drug trials ... *very* innovative!), and patent and market the trial winners. The shoulders of giants that companies stand on are the shoulders of public research.
Oh boy, theres the problem. Grab a psyche text book, look up "The Just World" syndrome.
You're assuming your system promotes and demotes people (based on wealth, I'm guessing you'd say) as they deserve it.
Problem being, kinda hard to know if the AIDS cure researcher deserves to be, say, twice as rich as the Cancer researcher.
In fact, all political or economical dissention would be useless if your charge that "People who deserve to be rich become rich, except for those who dont deserve it because they're corrupted." were true! We could always assume our system encourages the right kind of behaviour and rewards the right people/actions. Dangerous assumption.
> I guarentee you'll demand a royalty for your life's work...
I'd ask for a salary. But nobody forced me to do the work, so asking for a reward over the reward of actually doing it (and making some sort of living)
Mind you, yes, when you're investing millions of dollars, I need _assurance_ that those millions of dollars will be returned to my organzation in order to justify the capital I used to discover something.
Yet again though, we find outselves nearing an event horizon. Theres no 'absolute' minimum or maximum amount of capital that I should have access to, to develop these drugs. If I figure I can probably find the cure for cancer faster, with another half a billion dollars, but my investors won't invest unless I am assured royalties for 150 years (ie, need more patent protection to justify investment and improve ROI), should I be able to lobby congress for stronger protection just because *I* want to invest more money/time into research?
I hope you can see the slipperly slope here. You sound like you assume things are the way they are because thats the most sane and just way, but I can assure you that history makes a mockery of that stance time and time again. When you strengthen patents, you weaken the efforts of other scientists other than the Self, so you're not inherently helping discover a cure simply by virtue of working towards it with the knowledge that you'll get paid the mad money when you make your discovery. At some point, you demanding royalty for your work taints the very reasearch community your working in, and the market who may or may not be able to afford your drug when you market it. And what good is promoting discovery when nobody can make use of it? To bring back the psychology, people suffer when life-bettering technology is available but they are unable to afford it. I know it would depress the shit out of me, that I was some 2nd class citizen not deserving of the fruits of humankinds labour
> Provide me with proof that the majority of these patent applications come from public funds and I'll say you have an argument.
Oh, the patent applications come from companies. But X% of the research that leads to commercial produts are done by universities. (Did you miss that
Incidentally, I was aware patents have been around for centuries, but dont forget that technology has allowed the patent culture to be far more anal in terms of enforcability. Our very ability to adhere more closely to our perceived ideal systems is beginning to show the faults in those systems.
>I knew this test would determine my risk, I'd fork over the $3500
Because you _have_ $3500, dumbass. If you were a millionaire, I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem plunking down 500$ for toothpaste every night too.
> Who is going to develop new tests for hereditary diseases if the entire world can legitimately test for it without royalties?
Said it before, say it again. Most of the groundwork for these discoveries are done using your and my public tax money at universities. Companies research the last mile when they sniff money, and then lock the 'exclusivity' of the test/drug down with a patent. Its a joke. Patents didn't exist years ago, and that didn't prevent humans from discovering new things.
The way people like you talk, scientists and inventors never existed before pay cheques. What a load of hooey.
Or never alter them and assume its the best way. Equally moronic and myopic view.
What frusterates me is that the *most* amount of groundwork for drug research is done by universities. Pharmaceutical companies fund the commercialization and last mile research.
But yeah, I guess we'd be without viagra and zoloft without the generous, risky investments pharmaceutical companies do into research.
Seriously, the private sector is so full of itself, it frequently forgets where the real research comes from before its obvious that said research will turn into a mad phat money cow. Any industry which can be found guilty of price-fixing over and over and over again doesn't sound to me like an industry which needs (or for that matter, deserves) Fort-Knox like protection of its intellectual assets.
I think Valenti would say:
;)
America is to English what "embrace and extend" is to software.
Yeah, 5 years ago I started a campaign to get Websters to change the defition of exlusive:
"Exclusive: (adj) Belonging to one entity. Or many more. Or none. Or whatever defition would lead you to purchase this product."
Well, we know one thing.
Apple apparently wasn't referring to ones sexual lifestyle when it came up with the slogan "Think Different."
Before they start delaying DVD releases, they need to start making better movies again instead of simply trying to feed you the next big catchphrase to utter around the water cooler.
.. how many of the folks that bought Austin Powers 2 on DVD would have bought it had they had to wait another year or two? Nobody gives a shit about most of these movies once they've faded from the pop culture venacular; a process that only takes 4 or 5 months after the movies runs in theatres.
.. the faster you get into the cultural conciouness (with exploitive or cheap advertising), the faster you fall out of it. The feedback loop between the producer and the consumer *can* get too tight, and the movie industry as it stands today is a very good example of this. Watch for the pendulum to start going the other way; hopefully with a neo-Hollywood instead of the one we're stuck with today.
Cause lets face it
Entertainment today is more expoitive than it ever has been. They ploy on your material and cultural associations, but rarely have anything to say that is applicable beyond the cultural microsecond in which they are released and promoted.
In fact, this is part of a bigger problem in the whole 'Business at the speed of light' goal we got caught up in
I work in the advertising industry. Even non-tech 'working as advertised' is rare .. but this has more to do with the fact that its harder to verify advertising claims for bricks-n-mortar products (think "Removes 14% more plaque than our competitor!") or the claims are non quantitative (think "Removes stains with ease!").
;) (Think "Handles 180kph speeds with ease and does donughts like this!")
With computers, its easier to benchmark and easier to stake specific claims (Think "Up and running to the internet in 5 minutes!") so you can hold these things up to the advertised claims much more easily than you can other types of products.
Heck, with cars is usually illigal to test most of the advertising claims
In my 6 or some odd years of using Macs, I dont think I ever spent more than 5 minutes wrestling or hating my box.
That shit happens normally on Wintel for me (cant get this or that going.)
I'm a C/C++ developer. I'm no moron. But I have a job, friends, family, and no desire to spend my time "fixing windows that shouldn't be broken in the first place."
I was always zealous about the Mac because it pretty much worked as advertised. If that ain't the kinda shit you preach from the mountain tops, I don't know what is.
To me, there was very little downside to temper the kind of excitement and satisfaction I got from fuckin around with my Mac.
> as the delta in weight between a jet turbine and a diesel engine has to be a small fraction of a percent of the overall weight of the train
On freight trains, sure, but on passenger trains, I'd be surprised if that reasoning held up. Experts?
Faster more fuel efficient railway transportation?! Blame Canada! :)
hey, I couldn't agree with you more (+1 for including the User Interface Hall of Shame, a long standing favorite site of mine, nobody picks Windows apart like they do) .. I was only trying to clarify what the Ask Slashdot poster was implying ..
> .. complex GUIs. Something on the level of ..
.. just that it was complex.
He wasn't saying autoCADs interface was good
I'm not sure why he'd be asking about how to design a _good_ complex GUI unless the apps with complex GUIs that he knew were not so good, right?
same effect can be achieved with blackbox or icewm .. I could never get sawfish happy on my box, but that was more due to my own laziness than any shortcoming in sawfish.
> - funding from big contributors (without commercial obligations), not likely to continue
This makes the best sense. Discovering alien life is the ultimate win in so far as opening up new markets to sell baby milk and croissant dought in for the big conglomerates.
Someone call up Pilsbury (got 20 million from the US government to advertise in south america, surely the US government can pay to help them open up The Great Market In the Sky) and Nesle!
> I've never found a site that doesn't work with Mozilla.
.. lets just say that Mozilla is no more unbreakable than Oracle. ;)
I use Mozilla, but claiming infailability
I've definately run into sites that break under Mozilla (my web banking interface, for one.)
At any rate, the user goes on perception, not truth. The user perceives popups are an unfortunate neccessity of life, and doesn't know whats going on under the hood (as reported by Adaware.)
So to them, a few more sites break under Mozilla than under IE, so IE wins. Thats not trolling, thats pointing out that people still are not educated enough to understand the difference.
People have been stung so many times by the RIAA that anything it does is construed as being bad.
It's a trust thing. The RIAA has lost any trust it had with webcasters (and many consumers), so anything they do, good or not, will be met with opposition. Its just deserts.
People and organizations have reputations, trust levels, etc. Once they breach that trust or act in underhanded or selfish ways, their well intentioned actions will go unnoticed or untrusted. Thats human nature.
That said, I don't know enough about this issue to judge their intentions either which way. Its just that you cant go from mean person to nice person and expect people to forget what they know about you and judge you only by your virtuous actions.
I sense a lot of mistrust regarding this issue, and the recent payola and MAPS (fixed price) scandals are good reasons why I think its a valid position.
> Most radio stations get their music FREE from the damn record companies
Actually, money goes from Label => 'Indie' => Station. Radio stations get paid to play songs. Read about it here
Of course, radio is a limited-shelf-space medium, so it should be no surprise that it costs to get access to the shelf space.
The internet features unlimited shelf space which is why they are just trying to price the small fish out of the water via licencing fees. Since they can't own all the real estate, its a supply and demand thing that doesn't play into the RIAA's members' hands.
yeah but I provided the violence studies, its your job to proove me wrong in the light nudity
A double standard is when you apply different values, reasoning or action to one thing.
.. I'm so glad no other kids ever see those things, or we'd be living in a country chalk full of sexually deviant predators, right?!)
I'll make it simple for you. The "one thing" is "what kids and see and watch". The context along which double standards are being applied are: 1) violent content 2) above-the-waist nudity
Its a double standard because there is a plethora of studies linking aggressive behaviour with what kids see or watch (*note: I do not believe that content creators should have culpability for influcing kids, so this isnt an argument for suing id software for columbine or anything asanine like that), but, as far as I know, there are no studies that I am aware of in which viewing the breasts of women can negatively impact the behaviour of a child/teen. (Note: Studies that are in any way connected to the religious right will be accpeted as soon as somebody turns my glass of water into wine.)
Thus, when a violent context exists, which reseach suggests (heres what google has to say) is a detrement to a childs development, we allow them access, yet when the context is of anything near sexual nature (we're talking nipples here), we go to great lengths to deny them access. But since you were unable to recognize the instance of the double standard in this scenario, my confidence is low that this post will help your state of confusion.
(As a related aside, I turned out alright despite watching my aunt breast feed my cousin quite often when I was youngish, but maybe I'm the only child that escaped scenes of nipples in childhood unscaythed. I even saw some playboys when I was 13
Only topless nudity. The dialogue and such isn't anything worse than GTA3. No full frontals, definately no sex .. just alot of attitude. Really, if they dont sell this, they shouldn't sell GTA3.
....
.. graphic violence is fine, easily found on their shelves, the heavens forbid we should see a nipple! For crying out loud ...
[sarcasm]
yeah, its way more moral to carjack and kill people in GTA3 than it is to ride a skateboard and look at women's boobs
[/sarcasm]
This society has a rediculous double standard when it comes to what kids see and watch
>especially the Porn on the Gaming systems (maybe even the PC)
.. and now that the barn doors are open, lets see how long it takes for PS2/GC/Xbox to realize that:
Despite the fact that porn games on PCs are old news (From Larry King to Virtual Valerie), unfortunately, even your console prediction is about a year late. Okay, theres no below the belt, but plenty of boobies
1.) Sell console game with sex in it.
2.) ???
3.) Profit!
As an aside, I do believe that the increased competition will lead to companies thinking more about expoiting the groins of game players rather than caring about that old 'PR' thing (until two kids walk into a school and hump everybody one day, spawning a bultibillion dollar lawsuit claiming that BMX XXX leads kids down the immoral road to recreational procreation.)
> I think someone evil is finally going to notice that Usenet is 95% warez/moviez
.. but clearly the Usenet is 86% pr0n .. somethings not adding up here.
Hrm, 95% warez/movies
> [Ever noticed how the national chains have been going bankrupt and consolidating over the past couple years? Used to be any city of 100k or so would have four or six independent duplex or quadplex theatres. Now such towns have four or six theatres owned by a single chain.]
... they dont spend enough time in theatres for the theatres to make any money off.
Thats because the studios insist on bigger-louder-faster multi-million-dollar-weekend-then-to-DVD movies
Typically, a theatre doesn't start to see returns on a movie until the 3rd week or so. Since movies stay at threatres for *way* shorter time than they used to, theatres are having a very difficult time doing anything other than simply covering the cost of showing the movie. Making a profit today is way harder than it used to be, thanks to hollywood demanding more for movies and creating movies that lose the populations interest not long after its initial release.
Let me steal your TV and copy all the software that you paid for on your computer .. and then we'll see which one you want back.