Considering Apple's history of using the i-prefix (iMac, iPod, etc.), it had just as much claim to the name "iPhone" as Cisco ever did, IMHO -- whether Cisco trademarked it or not! (Or, in other words, Cisco should never have been granted the trademark.)
It is cheaper from the polluters' perspective; they aren't fooling themselves. The costs will be paid by someone else. Whether it's more or less economically efficient for everyone put together is beside the point.
No, it's not beside the point; it is the point! Since the polluter is part of the economy, if it's less economically efficient for the economy as a whole it's ultimately also harmful to the polluter (again, in the long run). The reason these costs get ignored is that -- unlike in a classical "perfect competition" scenario -- everyone does not have perfect knowledge of the market. If the polluter -- and the polluter's customers -- were aware of these costs, they'd act accordingly and the market really would regulate itself (including being environmentally responsible). The purpose of government regulation is to compensate for the imperfect distribution of information.
That would be true if the fines for violating environmental regulations were exactly equal to the cost of cleaning up after the violations, and the money collected were used only for that. However, the fines are punitive, intended not just to make companies pay the true costs of their actions, but to artificially increase those costs so they don't pollute in the first place.
First of all, instead of talking about being equal to the cost of cleaning up the pollution, it would make better sense for the fines to be exactly equal to the cost of not polluting in the first place -- then the companies should, economically speaking, need no further "punitive" encouragement. Even "cost of not polluting" + $0.01 ought to be sufficient.
That said, the punitive fines can be justified in two ways. First, by the fact that there's imperfect enforcement: having a 50% chance of having to pay the "exactly equal" fine means that the true cost is only half of "exactly equal," so it would make more sense to pollute and risk it. To fix this, the fine would have to be "exactly equal" * 2. Second, higher fines are justified by the fact that it's most likely more expensive to clean up pollution after the fact than it would have been to not create it in the first place. Therefore, "exactly equal [to the cost of not polluting]" wouldn't cover the additional cost created by the polluter's initial stupidity.
For example, if dirty factories could save money by polluting less, we wouldn't need environmental regulations - but in fact polluting less tends to cost more, so we impose regulations to give them an incentive to do it.
No, polluting less really does actually cost less... in the long run. If it didn't, even environmentalists wouldn't complain about pollution (remember, destroying the environment is a cost!). The problem is that the costs of polluting are external to the company, so it doesn't see the savings and it therefore appears to be cheaper to pollute. Therefore, the government has to step in to impose the external costs on the company so that they become internal ones, included in the company's cost benefit analysis. Some people call this "regulation," but it really isn't.
There are different shades of libertarians just as there are with many things in life. Many libertarians are not complete anarchists, however; they see the role of government as being important for market failures, such as pollution. Charging a pollution tax on the marginal cost of pollution would, in my opinion, completely compatible with a libertarian outlook.
As a "different shade of libertarian myself," I agree completely. The key is to not think of it as "evil government regulation," but instead as "accounting for externalized costs so that the free market has accurate information."
You see great examples everywhere of major businesses consistently making this mistake. Look at Apple -- great PCs with strong user satisfaction, great image relative to Microsoft -- yet very few people are willing to pay the price Apple needs to ask to turn a profit per unit, so in the end it's not a very smart business strategy. Steve Jobs keeps making the stupid mistake of maximizing product quality over all else, when a smart business person understands that product quality is just one of many factors that must be balanced to maximize profits.
Yep, just like how Mercedes is making the stupid mistake of not competing with Kia!
We're migrating from VBA --> VB.NET and it's been an absolute nightmare.
Wow, so you still haven't learned? You'd think that, having been screwed over by Microsoft's lock-in once, you'd not want to repeat the experience and switch to Java (or at least C#) instead!
But what happens in Haskell when you try to pass an argument with no sort() method? The "extends Comparable" part in the Java code catches that at compile-time, but I don't see how the Haskell version could do the same.
I've seen environmentalists view a heavily-trafficked road and declare that building it was completely unnecessary. This seems like some of the same attitude.
The difference in that case is that at the time the road was built, there really wasn't much traffic, and the existence of the road allowed new stuff to be built which then caused the traffic. If there had been no road, the town would have simply remained more compact instead.
On the contrary, industry-wide disaster is the winning move! There are really only two choices: let the industry self-destruct temporarily, and get sane IP laws as a result; or don't and cause everyone to perpetually live in fear of patent trolls, stifling innovation for all time.
That could very well be, if you were driving something with less metal in it, like a Corvette or a motorcycle or a bicycle.
Further, driver skill is far from the only concern. What about the other drivers on the road? Road conditions? Animals and debris on road? Vehicle condition?
And how is the camera going to take those into account?
You can certainly see this in a place like Slashdot, which is filled especially with anti-Sony/MS detractors and pro-Nintendo fans. Despite the arguably pro-Nintendo skew to a lot of postings (some good, some way too overzealous), I'm pleasantly surprised by a lot of the on-point analysis and observations on all "sides", or by folks who haven't really chosen any side in particular.
What you, and many others who write posts like this, seem to forget is that there's a reason behind what otherwise appears to be bias among the Slashdot crowd. Remember that, and these kinds of things become much less surprising.
I said the constitution only says that copyright can be applied.
Right, but more specifically you said that it does not say how it can be applied. As I pointed out, that's what's incorrect. By explicitly stating its only legitimate purpose, the Constitution limits how it's applied.
I completely agree with you that the Constitution does not require copyright; I'm disagreeing with your assertion that copyright can be applied for any purpose.
Sure, we can kick and scream and claim that copyright law as is does little to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, but to what end, exactly? If your end is copyright reform, then we agree.
Indeed, copyright reform would be great. But failing to acknowledge a big part of the reason why reform is necessary -- by denying that copyright has a specific, stated purpose which it is now failing to uphold -- does not help promote reform!
Oh, and BTW, it is relatively common for economists to push for "strong intellectual property law" precisely because they feel that it efficiently promotes science and the useful arts by creating financial incentive for these things.
I don't know about you, but I haven't seen any economists pushing for "strong intellectual property law." The only entities I see pushing for that are publishers, and that's because they have a vested, selfish interest in it.
You may find it difficult, in a court of law, to argue that copyright law fails to achieve these goals when so many people clearly feel it does.
Except there aren't really so many "people" that feel that it does. There are corporations (e.g. publishing companies) and trade organizations (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, BSA) that "feel" that way, but even the actual people who create stuff are realizing that copyright law has become completely excessive.
We want to remind the MPAA that "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." If the MPAA wasn't complaining about other people's copyright infringment, then I wouldn't complain about its. But it is, so I will. Get it?
I want a faster Mac. I want more memory, higher LCD resolution, a backlit keyboard, and the ability to run Parallels or Boot Camp. I'd be willing to pay an absurd amount for these features (are you hearing me, Steve?), but I absolutely will not take a size trade-off. Not even a marginal one. 13" MacBook? Nope. Too big. I'll stick with my G4, thanks.
Ditto for me when replacing my 12" iBook, but I wanted a tablet also. Therefore, I bought a Thinkpad x60 tablet and intend to try to run OS X on it (once it's finally delivered -- it's in Kentucky right now). Would Apple approve? No, but who cares? I don't approve of Apple refusing to make the computer I need! Besides, when 10.5 comes out I'll just get a family pack for it, my iBook, and my iMac.
Incidentally, the regular x60 is 12", lighter than even the old Powerbook was, and has almost identical components to a MacBook except without the optical drive -- and almost everything works in OS X! Maybe you should just get one of those instead of plodding along with your G4...
Personally, I hope Apple does not come out with a tablet until at least two or three years from now, because I just gave up on waiting and bought a Thinkpad tablet instead (which I hope to run OS X on).
Incidentally, do you know of any Mac equivalent to OneNote?
And you know how CPU intensive compressions and decompression is when compared with just simple scanning?
OMG! It's taking 0.001% of my processor to open this ODF file because I have to decompress it, instead of the 0.0005% it would take with RTF! NOOOOOOOO!
Can you visualise the impact this might have on a document storage and retrieval system such as , oh I dunno , a database?
Yes, I can, and it's not a whole heck of a lot. Linear increases in computation aren't significant, because technology increases at a faster rate. Now, if ODF took 2^n more time to open compared to a different format, then you'd have cause to complain.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering Apple's history of using the i-prefix (iMac, iPod, etc.), it had just as much claim to the name "iPhone" as Cisco ever did, IMHO -- whether Cisco trademarked it or not! (Or, in other words, Cisco should never have been granted the trademark.)
No, it's not beside the point; it is the point! Since the polluter is part of the economy, if it's less economically efficient for the economy as a whole it's ultimately also harmful to the polluter (again, in the long run). The reason these costs get ignored is that -- unlike in a classical "perfect competition" scenario -- everyone does not have perfect knowledge of the market. If the polluter -- and the polluter's customers -- were aware of these costs, they'd act accordingly and the market really would regulate itself (including being environmentally responsible). The purpose of government regulation is to compensate for the imperfect distribution of information.
First of all, instead of talking about being equal to the cost of cleaning up the pollution, it would make better sense for the fines to be exactly equal to the cost of not polluting in the first place -- then the companies should, economically speaking, need no further "punitive" encouragement. Even "cost of not polluting" + $0.01 ought to be sufficient.
That said, the punitive fines can be justified in two ways. First, by the fact that there's imperfect enforcement: having a 50% chance of having to pay the "exactly equal" fine means that the true cost is only half of "exactly equal," so it would make more sense to pollute and risk it. To fix this, the fine would have to be "exactly equal" * 2. Second, higher fines are justified by the fact that it's most likely more expensive to clean up pollution after the fact than it would have been to not create it in the first place. Therefore, "exactly equal [to the cost of not polluting]" wouldn't cover the additional cost created by the polluter's initial stupidity.
Only old overlords are clueless in Korea!
You forgot one:
As a "different shade of libertarian myself," I agree completely. The key is to not think of it as "evil government regulation," but instead as "accounting for externalized costs so that the free market has accurate information."
Yep, just like how Mercedes is making the stupid mistake of not competing with Kia!
I don't know, but somehow most people managed during the interval between when OS X became capable of it (2003 or earlier) and when Vista came out!
Wow, so you still haven't learned? You'd think that, having been screwed over by Microsoft's lock-in once, you'd not want to repeat the experience and switch to Java (or at least C#) instead!
But what happens in Haskell when you try to pass an argument with no sort() method? The "extends Comparable" part in the Java code catches that at compile-time, but I don't see how the Haskell version could do the same.
The difference in that case is that at the time the road was built, there really wasn't much traffic, and the existence of the road allowed new stuff to be built which then caused the traffic. If there had been no road, the town would have simply remained more compact instead.
On the contrary, industry-wide disaster is the winning move! There are really only two choices: let the industry self-destruct temporarily, and get sane IP laws as a result; or don't and cause everyone to perpetually live in fear of patent trolls, stifling innovation for all time.
I, for one, prefer the former!
You forget we're talking about Atlanta, here -- it is an airport!
(Disclaimer: I'm a native, so I'm allowed to make fun of Atlanta. The rest of you, on the other hand, are not.)
That could very well be, if you were driving something with less metal in it, like a Corvette or a motorcycle or a bicycle.
And how is the camera going to take those into account?
What you, and many others who write posts like this, seem to forget is that there's a reason behind what otherwise appears to be bias among the Slashdot crowd. Remember that, and these kinds of things become much less surprising.
Right, but more specifically you said that it does not say how it can be applied. As I pointed out, that's what's incorrect. By explicitly stating its only legitimate purpose, the Constitution limits how it's applied.
I completely agree with you that the Constitution does not require copyright; I'm disagreeing with your assertion that copyright can be applied for any purpose.
Indeed, copyright reform would be great. But failing to acknowledge a big part of the reason why reform is necessary -- by denying that copyright has a specific, stated purpose which it is now failing to uphold -- does not help promote reform!
I don't know about you, but I haven't seen any economists pushing for "strong intellectual property law." The only entities I see pushing for that are publishers, and that's because they have a vested, selfish interest in it.
Except there aren't really so many "people" that feel that it does. There are corporations (e.g. publishing companies) and trade organizations (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, BSA) that "feel" that way, but even the actual people who create stuff are realizing that copyright law has become completely excessive.
We want to remind the MPAA that "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." If the MPAA wasn't complaining about other people's copyright infringment, then I wouldn't complain about its. But it is, so I will. Get it?
Of course not! However, one could argue that Tetris or (2D) Mario might be...
Sorry, you must mean "all three systems + Windows." As a Mac and Linux user, I can assure you that most games do not come out for the "PC!"
Ditto for me when replacing my 12" iBook, but I wanted a tablet also. Therefore, I bought a Thinkpad x60 tablet and intend to try to run OS X on it (once it's finally delivered -- it's in Kentucky right now). Would Apple approve? No, but who cares? I don't approve of Apple refusing to make the computer I need! Besides, when 10.5 comes out I'll just get a family pack for it, my iBook, and my iMac.
Incidentally, the regular x60 is 12", lighter than even the old Powerbook was, and has almost identical components to a MacBook except without the optical drive -- and almost everything works in OS X! Maybe you should just get one of those instead of plodding along with your G4...
I have one too, but it's still about 2 lbs. too heavy and 1/2" too thick to be considered a "sub-notebook."
Who says handwriting interfaces are still unacceptably poor?
They do offer that; it's called a MacBook (what, is it that important that it be aluminum?).
Personally, I hope Apple does not come out with a tablet until at least two or three years from now, because I just gave up on waiting and bought a Thinkpad tablet instead (which I hope to run OS X on).
Incidentally, do you know of any Mac equivalent to OneNote?
OMG! It's taking 0.001% of my processor to open this ODF file because I have to decompress it, instead of the 0.0005% it would take with RTF! NOOOOOOOO!
Yes, I can, and it's not a whole heck of a lot. Linear increases in computation aren't significant, because technology increases at a faster rate. Now, if ODF took 2^n more time to open compared to a different format, then you'd have cause to complain.