I imagine that the prices are very carefully calculated to yield the maximum amount of profit (feel free to correct me if anyone has statistics to prove otherwise).
I couldn't have said it better myself. Of course, this ignores the concept of a "fair" price. But since the word fair is such a difficult word to pin down, I'll have to give it my best shot.
There is the model of competitive pricing, which is more or less built on the cost of selling. When you go the grocery store to buy your dozen eggs, you can see they're not very expensive; a dollar at most in most areas. I would say that is relatively in line with how much it costs to get the eggs there, with just enough left over to make the grocer 'feel like' putting them there, and the farmer to sell them.
Now there's the darker side. I feel like I first became aware of this concept at my local amusement park, with the obviously jacked up food prices. It's $2.50 for the cup of french fries, which after cost of goods and wages, probably set them back 45 cents at most. I use this example not only because it's the perfect example of monopoly pricing, but also because there's a (relatively) fair market price waiting outside at your local fast food joint. 99 cents for more or less the same product.
I think consumers subtly realize when they're getting screwed. Wendy's doesn't have access to a pricing model of "do you get your food or don't you", they're stuck with "get it here or get it elsewhere". The amusement park definitely realizes you can't get it elsewhere, and the prices show it. People buy, of course, because it's usually a pain to leave and come back, and a day with hungry->whiney kids is hardly 'amusing'.
Ok, so maybe I should be thankful that my local amusement park is offering me the choice to not go hungry, but I know I'm getting screwed. They're making their extra buck off of my back, and I'm well aware of it. The same goes with the record labels. They keep the copyrights for the works that 'their' artists produce, so they don't have to fight against someone else selling the same music. Thanks to their convenient cartels, they don't even have to compete with each other over similar genres. The result? You guessed it. Overinflated prices. Again, this concept of a "fair" price is a difficult one to pin down, but I would certainly say it's less than the $12.75 we're stuck with now. Even 99 cents per song for the ones I like is a tough sell. I've been on a farm before (well, at least visited one), and I have a small idea of what a pain in the ass it is to raise chickens. I feel like a dollar is a pretty modest price to pay for 12 of them, actually.
Now there's the RIAA. Of course, their model is based on a certain amount of uncertainty of whether or not an artist will succeed, so it's a bit harder to gett a spot price (as opposed to measuring the effort it takes to raise chickens for eggs). Well, they claim that it's a lot, but in my experience, whenever a company is being secretive about their pricing, I've found that something fishy is usually going on. Music consumers (and artists... the monopoly works both ways) have been getting screwed for a long time, and it's no secret. Now, somebody comes along with a way to screw them back, and they cry foul? Please. I don't want to hear it.
What the Napster era really produced wasn't a country full of pirates. It was a new fair price. Now, the music industry actually has to compete with something. And it sucks for them. Bye-bye amusement park profits. Hello market price. But back to this
This Federal ID idea is definitely rediculous. I'm glad someone is actively opposing it. I suppose it is good they are trying to push states to actually have good ID cards. Some of them (West Virginia, New Jersey until recently) are rediculously easy to fake. Not that I, ahem, would know anything about that.
But let's not give them too much credit. This is obviously another step toward removing already eroding privacy rights in this country. And of course the convenient excuse "war on terror" will be stamped all over this.
Let's get a run-down of what this will actually mean to the average consumer.
~ By "common machine readable technology", I'm assuming they mean RFID, which we all know has its drawbacks.
~ I doubt this will end up being a substitute for a Driver's License. What if you lose driving privilages and have to turn in your ID? Do you have to get a new "non-driver" card just to go to the bank? Bull shit. Inevitably, this will have to be carried around in addition to a driver's license. Great, another unnecessary card to carry in my wallet. Why don't they just make us all wear collars around our necks. Not like nobody's ever thought of that before.
~ It will obviously be scanned at every point of use. I forsee an amendment in the near future extending this to train/bus travel as well.
~ Inevitably, this will be part of a big government database. We all know those are generally bad ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if they link this up to your EZ-Pass so they can see where your car is going too. Remember (FTA) this is an $83 billion project. It is going to be BIG.
~ What if you lose this thing? It's bad enough getting the state to replace an ID... who do I complain to now? The FBI? Dept of Homeland Security?
I don't even want to think about this anymore. Go Maine.
Well, the pendulum could swing both ways. I really can't remember the last time any adware popped up child porn. I would say that kind of content is usually...deliberately searched for. The spyware/vulnerabilities situation could all just be a clever excuse.
Emphasis on clever. You really could get away with a whole lot by playing the dumb card. Busted for hacking into your school's computer to change grades? "Oops must have left it unprotected, I guess someone else broke in using my computer. Computers are so complicated and confusing." On that note, I wouldn't be surprised if the judge has the same standpoint, and would be unlikely to be able to call bullshit.
As for now, until there is a surefire way to distinguish between "yeah the... uh, spyware did it. yeah.", and actual cases of innocence, I say the benefit of the doubt goes to the accused. Clearly, having a vulnerable computer is an advantage to the user; plausible excuse. But oh well, Vista is coming out soon. Maybe we've seen the end of rediculously insecure operating systems (ahem).
And so do assholes talking on cell phones.
But in all seriousness, I very highly advocate the concept of the vehicle eventually disabling itself in the event of erratic driving.
I use all of these terms carefully. Especially concept, as any likely implementation would be likely to cause at least as many accidents/problems as it prevents. But still, given (given let's pretend) a workable implementation, not a terrible idea. I also say eventually, meaning that given a safe method of detecting an unsafe driver, the car must also be able to come safely to a stop. Maybe gradually cutting off fuel to the engine (ie, running out of gas)?
I use erratic driving exclusively here, because I specifically would like to include (a) asshole cell phone drivers, (b) terrible drivers, (c) good drivers falling asleep or not paying attention, and (d) drivers impaired by non-alcoholic drugs. Clearly, drunk drivers are not the only hazards on the road. Additionally, I would like to exclude drivers that are questionably over the limit, but driving safely. I mean, sure they are breaking the law, and probably less able to react to random obstructions (dogs/deer/kids in middle of street), but I certainly wouldn't call them "recklessly negligent". In a sense that they are driving safely and not extremely high over the limit, I think the end user should get the benefit of the doubt, for a system not proven to be feasible.
I would even suggest an alternative to shutting the car off. Even with a reckless driver, shutting the car off could (potentially) be more dangerous than, say, stranding the driver in a bad neighborhood after dark, or in the middle of nowhere on a cold night. I suggest programming in a phone number, and have the car automatically call the phone number upon recognizing reckless driving. A responsible adult could buy a car for their kid (or an irresponsible spouse/family member), and have a good warning system.
Now, instead of dealing with some serious consequences of false positives disabling a vehicle, the parent would simply get a phone call "your son/daughter/husband/wife is driving like a fucking moron". Now, in the case of a false positive, worst case scenario, a parent gets woken up inconveniently, and the kid simply says that the car is malfunctioning and not him/her self. Any takers?
Such a shame. Maybe if you're lucky, your ISP will offer an "upgraded" service to its end users, to get guaranteed fast access to sites that won't pay them. Let the free market reign!
FTA: The broader comment is that the architecture of the Internet is based on a thirty year-old technology, TCP/IP. If you talk to most technologists, they believe TCP/IP is now obsolete.
How is this fundamentally bad? It's 30 years old and therefore unusable and obsolete? If anything, I would praise such a technology for being so versatile as to last this many years. Take the bullet for example. I don't hear the military complaining that it sucks just because it's over 250 years old.
Oh yeah, wasn't banning the use of evoting supposed to be bad because it was tying them to "an old technology"?
compared to legal video sales. The largest target continues to be adult oriented content and TV shows,
Pirated TV shows, eh? Anyone surprised? It's the content provider's fault, and its their problem. No sympathy here. The reason it's pirated so much is that there's no viable alternative. VERY few shows, except a few tokens available on iTunes (The Office, etc), can't be bought legally until the season finishes and the DVD comes out. If it comes out. Months later.
So let's say the DVDs come out. Most shows are $40 a season!! The few episodes available for download cost a whopping $1.99. So however I buy it, chances are, I'm looking at $2 per episode, for something I'm probably only going to watch once. What a ripoff! I mean, I really like Lost, but once you find out what happens in the end, there really isn't much value in rewatching it (IMO). Therefore, it's not quite comparable in value to me purchasing one of my favorite movies on DVD that I'll likely watch over and over again. Sure I could rent it, but that's kind of a pain in the ass. And that doesn't even address technical issues.
I buy my favoritemusic online, I can buy it in a format that doesn't suck. With mp3, it Plays for Sure (tm) on my iPod, or God forbid off-brand mp3 player. Let's say I decide to buck up for a DVD of one of my favorite TV Shows. Now I have to deal with DVD player region crap. Can I just put it on my PSP/iPod Video, etc? Apparently not. That seems to be illegal under the DMCA. Well, maybe if I pay extra money for it at the time of purchase. Sounds like a crappy deal to me.
So let's recap. I'm a (relatively) honest consumer looking to watch my favorite show because I missed it on TV. It's overpriced, I have to wait as long as months to get it, it's overpriced, I'm probably only going to watch it once, it's overpriced, it comes in a crappy format, and I can't copy it (legally), and I can't put it on my mobile device. Piracy to the rescue! Any questions?
Um, actually, in a truly free market, remember there are a relatively unlimited number of suppliers. This would mean that there would be a relatively infinite number of firms producing software identical to Visual Studio, and the buyers would be indifferent to the brand, because the PRODUCTS ARE ALL THE SAME.
However, the concept of the free market fails in certain situations (Adam Smith himself admitted it). This frequently occurs when there are large barriers to entry (ie, the millions of dollars you'd to dump on lawyers to settle your inevitable patent lawsuits), and when there are large startup and infrastructure costs compared to the unit costs (with software, 99.9% of the costs are up-front for marketing and writing the software, and the actual unit cost is negligible, save burning CDs and putting them into shrink-wrapped boxes.
Now, despite the tendency of such a market to be toward few suppliers, let's just assume there are at lets a bunch of companies writing development software. they would not write it for the platform that had the best chance of a high return on investment. Seems your freshman-level finance classes could use a bit of a brushing up. Actually, they would write software for every platform that had an *better* return on investment, than any other project in that risk range. Now, let's say a company like Microsoft didn't *happen* to have ~80% market share, and most operating systems were relatively interoperable (ie, FreeBSD and Linux). This is somewhat conceivable. In this case, writing the software for *any* operating system would be expensive, but porting it to other platforms would be extremely cheap, and you would likely see the software available for just about every operating system out there.
Don't be so hasty with you +1, Insightful points on parent. There is no +1, Shortsighted.
I very acutely disagree with one statement made in the article, perhaps on a choice of words more than anything. If we had previously heeded the concerns of the creative
community, we would have no radio, no TV, no VCR, no computer, no e-mail
and no Internet.
Hold on one moment here. The "creative community", as far as I'm concerned, would be the musicians, script writers, actors (to an extent), and all of the 'little guys' behind the scenes that the MPAA seems to care about so much as of late. AFAIK, those people were never complaining, or at least never complained loudly. The ones who did complain were the copyright owners, many of whom have no creative talent, and have never really been part of that "community", but instead have been dampening it for years.
As much as I usually rail on people that say "this new industry should be more like this old one because that's how it is" [1], I think the movie/music industry could stand to be a lot more like authoring books. If you write a book that gets published, you get to hold the copyrights in your hands. You don't have to turn them over to Kensington or John Wiley and Sons, you get to keep them. Conceptually, why should you have to dump your copyrights to some **AA giant just because you sing or videotape your artwork instead of write it down?
It's not like the movie execs are burning the midnight oil writing all the scripts they own the copyrights for. Why doesn't the artist have it? Authors of books have held theirs as long as that industry has been around, and that industry has been around for a LOT longer than selling records, CDs, or videos on VHS.
With any luck, maybe the gradually growing trend of independent music labels will start to catch on, and in however many years, we'll look back at the **AA's with a thought of 'good riddance'. Someday. Maybe.
[1] Example: on opposing 'net neutrality', saying that the postal system is good because you can pay extra for good service; therefore the internet would be better if it had that.
Or more likely, they'll probably just let them keep getting worse.
It's good to see a lot of those morons out of there, but the new guys are just as bad. The only hope is that they probably won't get a LOT worse. Bleh. Nothing worth cheering about for anyone.
PC makers will definitely feel the (lack of) heat this holiday season. Honestly, who would want to buy now? You get a computer installed with Windows XP, most likely with one of those "promise" certificates, that supposedly give you a free upgrade to Windows Vista. I remember when I got my own computer before moving into college. It was a disaster.
This was Fall 2001. Windows XP wasn't quite out yet, but was more or less supposed to be. I got a Dell with Windows ME installed. In polite terms, it blew dick. My only hope was this certificate for a free upgrade to Windows XP Home Edition (not that I wanted Home). Well, this wasn't a license for WinXP. It was a promise. That Dell would bestow it upon me if they so desired. I called the tech support dept to see if they could do that. Oh wait, thats sales' job. I called sales. They dole me it was tech support's job. I called tech support back and they told me it still wasn't their job. 2 hours of tech support later, you can guess how far I got.
After that much anguish, I still didn't get my copy of XP. For the record, my computer had coincidentally crashed during the time it took to get through to tech support. Worst purchase I ever made. I should have just waited. Good thing for Direct Connect/Kazaa getting me a real copy of what should have been on my computer when I got it.
Even giving Dell the benefit of the doubt here, the best I could have asked for would be a clean install of XP Home. But most of the software that came with my computer was designed for FAT32 windows and not NT. If I wasn't a relatively prudent computer user, I would have been completely stumped. In fact, I knew my shit decently well, and I still had a nightmare.
Buying a computer right before a big software release is a disaster waiting to happen. Unless you're specifically not planning to upgrade, you know you're going to get a lack of proper support (Why are ou trying to run XP? It says here that your Dell came with Windows ME?).
Personally, I think you'd have to be stupid to buy a new computer at a time like this. With Vista's clusterf*ck, AMD's sluggish release of 65nm chips, and the Directx 10-related delays of the next-gen video cards from Nvidia and ATi (G80 and R600, respectively), why would you want to upgrade now? It would be stupid. If you want a Christmas present, get a gift certificate. If you want a *real* computer, wait till this crap get straightened out. Personally, I feel bad for the computer makers this season, but I can't recommend buying one for Christmas to anyone in their right minds.
but the 90s had things headed in the right direction
Don't forget, tthe 90s also had a lot of things headed in the wrong direction. I mean, yeah, when the nasdaq was floating in the 4000's, of course everyone was quick to praise whatever government was in place and whatever policies were in place at the time.
But that's just the shell of it. The 90s were full of bad and risky investments, (domestic and international) that saw massive returns because everyone was buying up stock and the prices were going up (because everyone was buying up stock). But many of these companies had no real assets, no management, and no, uh.... business models.
Keep in mind these were also the critical last few years of the (successful/unnoticed) corruption of Enron and Worldcom. In the 90s (on paper), they certainly appeared to be headed in the right direction. They weren't.
Generally speaking, I call into question the praise explicitly to the government/president, etc, for the booming economy of the 90s. Many people attribute it to Clinton's relatively conservative atmosphere, or Al Gore inventing the internet. But let's not forget what was really important. The 1990s saw unprecedented growth in computers. This was the first time that the average PC had a GUI that the average user could both understand/use (ie, Windows 95), and afford (ie, not Apple). The number of people that could now use spreadsheets to do useful work went up exponentially. And let's not forget email. Credit to the government for those things? I wouldn't go that far.
when you buy an Ipod, you're agreeing to use it the way Apple says you can.
No. No. No. And also, No. What am I agreeing to? Did I sign anything? I don't think so. Well, maybe a credit card statement, but then I'm only agreeing to pay for it. That's it.
If you would so desire to use Apple's iTunes interface to interact with this device, then you have to agree with the use of iTunes' EULA.
Well to that, iTunes can kiss my f*cking ass. You don't have to use iTunes by any means. There are alternatives to iTunes. Hell, some of them even have games that don't suck.
Remember, if you buy a piece of hardware, it's not licensed to you, you're not borrowing it, and you don't have to agree to jack shit. I am sure there are some issues about writing software to circumvent such (crappy/pointless) security measures as FairPlay. But those are unimportant to the end-user. You didn't sign anything saying you wouldn't install software that would hurt Steve Jobs' feelings (well at least I didn't). Exercise your rights. This is the best piece of software for the iPod I've seen in a long time. I'm downloading as we (I) speak.
Heh, good riddance. Of Acrobat anyway. M$ will never be able to touch the likes of Pagemaker, Photoshop, or Premiere. If Acrobat gradually slips from the scene over the next couple years? I sure as hell won't miss it. Maybe M$'s version won't run so goddamn slow.
quality costs more... spend less time maintaing...
Are you implying that Apple hardware is better? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it certainly seems so.
I'm a native PC user, but I've used macs a lot, particularly in recent years, and I own one myself. The Software is better. No questions asked. The hardware.... well it looks cool. And I have nothing else good to say about it.
Ironically, my 15" Ti powerbook is one of the worst designed computers (laptop or desktop) that I've ever owned. This is quite sad, because I was very impressed with it at first, but it had a massive amount of design flaws (I'll leave the one-button-ness out of this; I usually use a USB mouse anyway). I bought it in 2003, when about 99% of laptops sold had USB 2.0 (the other 1% or so being Apples), but no big loss. The first minor problem happened after about 3 months, when the latch to my Powerbook occasionally popped open. I didn't see this as a major problem at first, but it did start getting more frequent. It didn't perse affect the usability of the laptop, but a lot of times it would pop open and drain battery life, and one time it poppeed open and started running (very hot mind you) while in the case.
Just after a year passed (conveniently right after the warranty was up), my Superdrive jammed up and wouldn't accept any optical discs. Shame. There was nothing "super" about it in the first place. It was basically a DVD burner that costs $150 instead of $60 because it says Apple on it. Happens quite frequently so I hear, but Apple doesn't seem to care if it's past warranty.
Despite the sturdy Titanium shell, the frame on the side of the laptop is flimsy plastic, which ended up cracking in several places. Did I drop it? No. Just from picking it up occasionally with one hand (gasp). The weight of the laptop was enough to bend the plastic enough to fracture over time. Also, the cord started coming apart from the piece of plastic that I where the AC adapter plugs into the back of the laptop. I am not the only one that has had this problem (read the reviews).
As for price/performance, Apple has a very large history of being WAY behind the curb. When I got my powerbook (1 Ghz was the fastest), most P4 laptops at the time were around 2.0-2.2 Ghz. More efficient chip blah blah, there is no wsy, by any stretch of the imagnation that any 32-bit 1.0 ghz will beat any 32-bit 2.0 processor. In fact, the PowerPC isn't even that much faster even at a 1:1 ratio clock speed. And on top of being slow, still costs more? I am not particularly impressed.
I have to admit, Apple has made a LOT of progress moving over to the Intel platform; they have gotten a LOT faster (with considerably reduced power consumption too). Of course, now I fail to see how the mac hardware is fundamentally different from standard PC hardware. The architecture is the same now, and based on my experiences (and others'), it is certainly not better (Don't forget the passively cooled cube "supercomputer" either). I think Apple should suck it up and open up their platform a bit more, instead of suing the asses off of anyone that tries to do it for them. I'm certainly not saying they should phase out their hardware, but they (and their fanboys) really should stop putting it on such a pedestal.
This post is turning out to be a bit more of a troll than I intended, and I'm not certainly not anti-Apple, but I really feel like they should be making a few adjustments. In the future, I'd really like to see Apple focusing more on software (OS X is unquestionably the best OS out there), iPods, and services like iTunes.
1. I buy music on CD. // begin link
3. RIAA sends nasty letter to my ISP; sues one of my friends.
4. I realize how evil RIAA is. // end link
5. I buy many fewer CDs.
is gonna take one HUGE ass line, and is gonna pose huge dangers.
Good point. Now, imagine a line capable of delivering upwards of 10 GALLONS of gasoline per minute (keep in mind, this is ~100 MegaJoules/gallon), without a calculator on hand, we're looking at about 15 MegaWatts of potential energy being pumped into your car. Now, imagine several of these monstrous 15 MegaWatt 'Energy Pumps' in every tow, perhaps one every couple blocks. Hm.... seems that we did that about 50 years ago. Yes, they are potentially dangrous. But, with modern control systems, and a (semi-)intelligent person ready to immediately cut fuel to the pumps in light of a customer smoking a cigarette during fueling, we have managed to create an impressively safe system of these.
How could we do it without superconductors? F*cked if I know, but there's probably a way. Why not do it with semiconductors? Ever hear of an MRI? They're pretty common these days in hospitals, etc. Why not gas stations? Yes it's a considerable overhead cost, but there's a large potential benefit coming out of it. I do not see this problem as much of a roadblock. Sure there are logistics, but I would consider these trivial compared to simple market inertia (ie, how do you make customers 'feel like' buying one). I vote possible and feasible.
Actually, the students are not getting the students in trouble. The only way that would happen is if they turned themselves (or each other) in. The University, however, is using this service as a specific way to catch cheaters (ie, get students in trouble).
I obviously don't want students ripping off my work, but if the scope of that is a paper written in a bullshit English class, I could give two shits if (s)he rips off my work. Hell, if anybody bothered ripping off any crappy paper I wrote, I'd probably feel flattered more than anything.
If, perchance, I publish a work that I find to be important, I will call up the Copyright Office and have it registered. I do believe that a service such as Turnitin should search publicly available works (Creative Commons and registered copyrights, etc) for verification, but certainly not masses of public works of students who did not give permission for them to do so, and more importantly, students who don't even know about it. That, and make a profit on it? I don't like the idea at all.
probably weren't worried about Joe Sixpack discovering that Linux et al are just as simple as Windows XP when someone else installs it for him.
Aye, I agree with you in concept but I only wish it was that simple. Don't forget Joe Sixpack probably plays a lot of computer games. Unless those games happened to be limited to Doom and Unreal Tournament, Joe Sixpack probably isn't going to be very happy. Unfortunately, MS has practically the entire gaming industry in the clutches of DirectX, and that is crippling to gamers. I, not being Joe Sixpack have to use a lot of high-end programs with few subsitutes, namely AutoCAD, MathCAD, Aspen Plus, and others. Unfortunately, included in "others" is Microsoft Excel. Even as an avid fan of OpenOffice, I could not just dump such a user onto OOo and expect him/her to sort out the various quirks without help. Sure, most of those aren't 'flaws' because they're just differences (using semicolon for separating input parameters in functions instead of commas), but small incompatiblities in file formats are a pain as well. For the final hit-home, does the phrase "Display equation on chart" mean anything to you? If you use OOo Calc, you've probably been pissed enough to throw sh*t across the room over it.
Unfortunately, 99% of these quirks are the fault of the evil giant M$ and a bunch of lazy-ass device manufacturers that don't release cross-platform drivers, and aren't the fault of Linux. But from the end user perspective, they are still disadvantages of using Linux as compared to Windows. And unless your entire school/office also uses Linux, they are some pretty heavy disadvantages.
I used Linux for a while, and I gave it a fair shot. More than a fair shot actually, because I was so eager to stick it to the Devil/Emporer Palpatine/Bill Gates (call him what you will). Eventually, I ended up switching back, but certainly not because I wanted to; I was stuck. Nightmares with wireless cards, lack of good USB support, an AIM client full of broken features (albeit AOL's fault), and lack of performance running windows apps in WINE just caused me to cave. Linux should be just as simple to use as Windows, and it's a better operating system from start to finish, but it is just not easy to use by any stretch of the imagination. Keep donating to Open Source projects, and support Linux whenever you can. It will be easier to use someday. Someday.
"the collective Slashdot response it just suck it up and deal with it, not to be so greedy, and an admonishment that information wants to be free."
Yes, this is the general response, and I personally would say the same. But I think there are two key issues here that really differentiate this comparison.
#1: When artists release songs/videos/movies, they are very conspicuously distributing them to a very large audience, of their own free will. When musicians release a song, they do that because they created a (presumably) great work of art, and they want the world to hear it (and also hopefully make some money off of it). I have several friends in bands, and when I ask them what got them into their music, they never reply "because I want to make a profit". They want the world to enjoy their music; I don't want the world to enjoy the paper I just wrote for my class. I do not want to distribute that paper. I wrote it probably because I had to, and I want to turn it in to the professor/TA and get it back.
#2: When people pirate music, they probably do it because they enjoy it (but don't want to pay for it). If I just wrote a song, and a million punk kids download it for free, at least they are doing so BECAUSE THEY WANT TO LISTEN TO MY SONG. Sure, I will be pissed that they undermined my work by not buying it. But not very pissed. At least they appreciate my art. Turnitin? They are not illegally making a copy of my paper because they want to read it, or enjoy it, or exercise the social value of it. They are taking it for the specific purpose of getting other students in trouble.
Perhaps if lucky, a couple slashdotters will open their eyes to IP and realize that they are not liberating the world by using bittorrent and kazaa, but this is clearly a different issue. At least Kazaa and similar are redistributing the artwork with the intent of end-user consumption. Turnitin is just a gigantic slap in the face to every author and artist in the world.
No, that's not half the problem at all. Or even close to it. The bulk of the problem is the lack of a better alternative. Ethanol is great in concept, but cannot be very efficiently produced in the US (it takes almost as much energy to produce it as you get out of it, etc). Solar and Wind power are very clean and cheap, but generally don't produce enough energy to power most devices (does your car look like this?).
When you say we are running out of oil, you are thinking in very, very long term. As of now, oil is the most plentiful, cheap, and standard fuel source available. We are not running out of it anytime soon, certainly not in the next ten or twenty years. Furthermore, it is available at every gas station in the country, and there are a lot of those.
Sure, we need to break or dependence on oil, but do you have any idea how much inertia is in the petroleum-power market? There is no way you can expect the whole industry to turn around overnight. Don't go around scolding scientists for coming out with great inventions like this. Instead, you should be applauding them for coming out with ways to use this fuel source more efficiently. Yes, it is unfortunate that the vast majority of our energy consumption comes from fossil fuels, but it's still the most economical way to use energy (What if your rental car company forced you to use an ethanol fueled car, and told you that you just had to find ethanol blend gas stations around an unfamiliar town?)
Let me summarize: petroleum is unfortunately the cheapest and most plentiful fuel source available. These guys just found a way to make it work better and cleaner. Now you criticize? F*ck you.
I don't exactly agree with your logic. However, your intentions are flawless. But you have to do better than that. Let me get my bias out of the way first. I generally lean toward free market, no restrictions, blah blah, but I care about the enviroment. I'm not going to tell you that global warming doesn't exist and that it's because we're just coming out of the last ice age, and I'm not going to tell you that global warming is good for the Earth either. I don't think very much of large corporations, nor do I think they are evil. With that said, I will propose a logical argument, and keep my personal opinions out of it as best I can.
Let's start here: I do not believe corporations are morally responsible to believe in anythign that hurts their bottom line. Exxon/Mobil, GM, Ford, and all the others exist to maximize their profits. It's what they do. All cars have catallytic converters (CCs) in them, don't they? This is a BIG cost burden to auto manufacturers. They're loaded with Platinum, a rather expensive and rare metal, and the increased demand for CC's REALLY drives the cost up. From an individual consumer's point of view, it doesn't really add value to the car, so customers won't be willing to pay (much) more for them. What results from this is higher manufacturer cost, for negligible increase in selling price. And auto manufacturers have to eat this.
On comes a new law that says you have to have a CC in every car. Are auto manufacturer's going to be against it? Of course. It hurts their profits, why wouldn't they? I don't believe they should be morally responsible for polluting the environment, it's not their job. Before I go any further, let me make this clear: EVERY car should have to have a CC, no questions asked. But enforcing that is the job of an effective government, not the producer.
So, automotive manufacturers have "repeatedly sued... to keep those laws from getting enforced". Have they? I'm not sure, but I'll take your word for it. NO SHIT THEY'RE GOING TO TRY TO NOT HAVE THEM ENFORCED. IT MAKES THEM LOSE MONEY. This is at least a rational reason for being opposed to LEV/ULEV/whatever laws. It's not a very GOOD reason, but it at least has some rational basis. Now, justifying California's lawsuit because it's "returning the favor"? Where's the basis for that? It may be well intended, but it makes no sense. If CA thinks that LEV/ULEV requirements are necessary, then they should say "ok, you lose money, which sucks for you, but your products are hurting our city, so you can't do that anymore". Now, after saying that (ie, making a law), if they violate that, than they are clearly in the wrong, and should owe punitive damages.
What CA is doing now, is just illogical. For years, they were allowing manufacturers to pollute. Now, years later, they are saying "that hurt you need to pay me back". No, they don't need to pay you back. The auto manufacturers, although pressing against them, have been following all rules and regulations. If that is in detriment to CA, TOUGH SHIT. Pass some new laws to prevent further damage, dismiss their lawsuits against whatever pollution control they're complaining about, and pick up the pieces.
Whew. Now, for my personal views, which I'm not going to back up with any thought-out logic. The automotive industry is a bunch of snakes. And the oil industry is worse. A lot worse, and I'm sure they're behind the auto industry here. But being a snake isn't illegal, and they shouldn't be punished. Big corporations maximize their profits. And they'll act like snakes to make those profits. And that should be expected. When they oppose Catalyttic Converters, the state of CA needs to say "The damage you are doing to the environment outweighs your cost burden. Sucks for you, put them in anyway."
But back to the immediate problem. They are going to get sued for trying to pass these laws, but that needs to be overseen by an
Slashdot Mirror
How long before the magic 16-hex-pairs number shows up in a comment here?
I think it till take approximately 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
seconds. Conversion from hex to decimal necessary.
I imagine that the prices are very carefully calculated to yield the maximum amount of profit (feel free to correct me if anyone has statistics to prove otherwise).
I couldn't have said it better myself. Of course, this ignores the concept of a "fair" price. But since the word fair is such a difficult word to pin down, I'll have to give it my best shot.
There is the model of competitive pricing, which is more or less built on the cost of selling. When you go the grocery store to buy your dozen eggs, you can see they're not very expensive; a dollar at most in most areas. I would say that is relatively in line with how much it costs to get the eggs there, with just enough left over to make the grocer 'feel like' putting them there, and the farmer to sell them.
Now there's the darker side. I feel like I first became aware of this concept at my local amusement park, with the obviously jacked up food prices. It's $2.50 for the cup of french fries, which after cost of goods and wages, probably set them back 45 cents at most. I use this example not only because it's the perfect example of monopoly pricing, but also because there's a (relatively) fair market price waiting outside at your local fast food joint. 99 cents for more or less the same product.
I think consumers subtly realize when they're getting screwed. Wendy's doesn't have access to a pricing model of "do you get your food or don't you", they're stuck with "get it here or get it elsewhere". The amusement park definitely realizes you can't get it elsewhere, and the prices show it. People buy, of course, because it's usually a pain to leave and come back, and a day with hungry->whiney kids is hardly 'amusing'.
Ok, so maybe I should be thankful that my local amusement park is offering me the choice to not go hungry, but I know I'm getting screwed. They're making their extra buck off of my back, and I'm well aware of it. The same goes with the record labels. They keep the copyrights for the works that 'their' artists produce, so they don't have to fight against someone else selling the same music. Thanks to their convenient cartels, they don't even have to compete with each other over similar genres. The result? You guessed it. Overinflated prices. Again, this concept of a "fair" price is a difficult one to pin down, but I would certainly say it's less than the $12.75 we're stuck with now. Even 99 cents per song for the ones I like is a tough sell. I've been on a farm before (well, at least visited one), and I have a small idea of what a pain in the ass it is to raise chickens. I feel like a dollar is a pretty modest price to pay for 12 of them, actually.
Now there's the RIAA. Of course, their model is based on a certain amount of uncertainty of whether or not an artist will succeed, so it's a bit harder to gett a spot price (as opposed to measuring the effort it takes to raise chickens for eggs). Well, they claim that it's a lot, but in my experience, whenever a company is being secretive about their pricing, I've found that something fishy is usually going on. Music consumers (and artists... the monopoly works both ways) have been getting screwed for a long time, and it's no secret. Now, somebody comes along with a way to screw them back, and they cry foul? Please. I don't want to hear it.
What the Napster era really produced wasn't a country full of pirates. It was a new fair price. Now, the music industry actually has to compete with something. And it sucks for them. Bye-bye amusement park profits. Hello market price. But back to this
This Federal ID idea is definitely rediculous. I'm glad someone is actively opposing it. I suppose it is good they are trying to push states to actually have good ID cards. Some of them (West Virginia, New Jersey until recently) are rediculously easy to fake. Not that I, ahem, would know anything about that.
But let's not give them too much credit. This is obviously another step toward removing already eroding privacy rights in this country. And of course the convenient excuse "war on terror" will be stamped all over this.
Let's get a run-down of what this will actually mean to the average consumer.
~ By "common machine readable technology", I'm assuming they mean RFID, which we all know has its drawbacks.
~ I doubt this will end up being a substitute for a Driver's License. What if you lose driving privilages and have to turn in your ID? Do you have to get a new "non-driver" card just to go to the bank? Bull shit. Inevitably, this will have to be carried around in addition to a driver's license. Great, another unnecessary card to carry in my wallet. Why don't they just make us all wear collars around our necks. Not like nobody's ever thought of that before.
~ It will obviously be scanned at every point of use. I forsee an amendment in the near future extending this to train/bus travel as well.
~ Inevitably, this will be part of a big government database. We all know those are generally bad ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if they link this up to your EZ-Pass so they can see where your car is going too. Remember (FTA) this is an $83 billion project. It is going to be BIG. ~ What if you lose this thing? It's bad enough getting the state to replace an ID... who do I complain to now? The FBI? Dept of Homeland Security?
I don't even want to think about this anymore. Go Maine.
Well, the pendulum could swing both ways. I really can't remember the last time any adware popped up child porn. I would say that kind of content is usually ...deliberately searched for. The spyware/vulnerabilities situation could all just be a clever excuse.
Emphasis on clever. You really could get away with a whole lot by playing the dumb card. Busted for hacking into your school's computer to change grades? "Oops must have left it unprotected, I guess someone else broke in using my computer. Computers are so complicated and confusing." On that note, I wouldn't be surprised if the judge has the same standpoint, and would be unlikely to be able to call bullshit.
As for now, until there is a surefire way to distinguish between "yeah the... uh, spyware did it. yeah.", and actual cases of innocence, I say the benefit of the doubt goes to the accused. Clearly, having a vulnerable computer is an advantage to the user; plausible excuse. But oh well, Vista is coming out soon. Maybe we've seen the end of rediculously insecure operating systems (ahem).
And hell, slow drivers cause accidents too.
And so do assholes talking on cell phones.
But in all seriousness, I very highly advocate the concept of the vehicle eventually disabling itself in the event of erratic driving.
I use all of these terms carefully. Especially concept, as any likely implementation would be likely to cause at least as many accidents/problems as it prevents. But still, given (given let's pretend) a workable implementation, not a terrible idea. I also say eventually, meaning that given a safe method of detecting an unsafe driver, the car must also be able to come safely to a stop. Maybe gradually cutting off fuel to the engine (ie, running out of gas)?
I use erratic driving exclusively here, because I specifically would like to include (a) asshole cell phone drivers, (b) terrible drivers, (c) good drivers falling asleep or not paying attention, and (d) drivers impaired by non-alcoholic drugs. Clearly, drunk drivers are not the only hazards on the road. Additionally, I would like to exclude drivers that are questionably over the limit, but driving safely. I mean, sure they are breaking the law, and probably less able to react to random obstructions (dogs/deer/kids in middle of street), but I certainly wouldn't call them "recklessly negligent". In a sense that they are driving safely and not extremely high over the limit, I think the end user should get the benefit of the doubt, for a system not proven to be feasible.
I would even suggest an alternative to shutting the car off. Even with a reckless driver, shutting the car off could (potentially) be more dangerous than, say, stranding the driver in a bad neighborhood after dark, or in the middle of nowhere on a cold night. I suggest programming in a phone number, and have the car automatically call the phone number upon recognizing reckless driving. A responsible adult could buy a car for their kid (or an irresponsible spouse/family member), and have a good warning system.
Now, instead of dealing with some serious consequences of false positives disabling a vehicle, the parent would simply get a phone call "your son/daughter/husband/wife is driving like a fucking moron". Now, in the case of a false positive, worst case scenario, a parent gets woken up inconveniently, and the kid simply says that the car is malfunctioning and not him/her self. Any takers?
Uh... they're bums. Aren't they going to be drunk too?
Such a shame. Maybe if you're lucky, your ISP will offer an "upgraded" service to its end users, to get guaranteed fast access to sites that won't pay them. Let the free market reign!
FTA: The broader comment is that the architecture of the Internet is based on a thirty year-old technology, TCP/IP. If you talk to most technologists, they believe TCP/IP is now obsolete.
How is this fundamentally bad? It's 30 years old and therefore unusable and obsolete? If anything, I would praise such a technology for being so versatile as to last this many years. Take the bullet for example. I don't hear the military complaining that it sucks just because it's over 250 years old.
Oh yeah, wasn't banning the use of evoting supposed to be bad because it was tying them to "an old technology"?
compared to legal video sales. The largest target continues to be adult oriented content and TV shows,
Pirated TV shows, eh? Anyone surprised? It's the content provider's fault, and its their problem. No sympathy here. The reason it's pirated so much is that there's no viable alternative. VERY few shows, except a few tokens available on iTunes (The Office, etc), can't be bought legally until the season finishes and the DVD comes out. If it comes out. Months later.
So let's say the DVDs come out. Most shows are $40 a season!! The few episodes available for download cost a whopping $1.99. So however I buy it, chances are, I'm looking at $2 per episode, for something I'm probably only going to watch once. What a ripoff! I mean, I really like Lost, but once you find out what happens in the end, there really isn't much value in rewatching it (IMO). Therefore, it's not quite comparable in value to me purchasing one of my favorite movies on DVD that I'll likely watch over and over again. Sure I could rent it, but that's kind of a pain in the ass. And that doesn't even address technical issues.
I buy my favorite music online, I can buy it in a format that doesn't suck. With mp3, it Plays for Sure (tm) on my iPod, or God forbid off-brand mp3 player. Let's say I decide to buck up for a DVD of one of my favorite TV Shows. Now I have to deal with DVD player region crap. Can I just put it on my PSP/iPod Video, etc? Apparently not. That seems to be illegal under the DMCA. Well, maybe if I pay extra money for it at the time of purchase. Sounds like a crappy deal to me.
So let's recap. I'm a (relatively) honest consumer looking to watch my favorite show because I missed it on TV. It's overpriced, I have to wait as long as months to get it, it's overpriced, I'm probably only going to watch it once, it's overpriced, it comes in a crappy format, and I can't copy it (legally), and I can't put it on my mobile device. Piracy to the rescue! Any questions?
Um, actually, in a truly free market, remember there are a relatively unlimited number of suppliers. This would mean that there would be a relatively infinite number of firms producing software identical to Visual Studio, and the buyers would be indifferent to the brand, because the PRODUCTS ARE ALL THE SAME.
However, the concept of the free market fails in certain situations (Adam Smith himself admitted it). This frequently occurs when there are large barriers to entry (ie, the millions of dollars you'd to dump on lawyers to settle your inevitable patent lawsuits), and when there are large startup and infrastructure costs compared to the unit costs (with software, 99.9% of the costs are up-front for marketing and writing the software, and the actual unit cost is negligible, save burning CDs and putting them into shrink-wrapped boxes.
Now, despite the tendency of such a market to be toward few suppliers, let's just assume there are at lets a bunch of companies writing development software. they would not write it for the platform that had the best chance of a high return on investment. Seems your freshman-level finance classes could use a bit of a brushing up. Actually, they would write software for every platform that had an *better* return on investment, than any other project in that risk range. Now, let's say a company like Microsoft didn't *happen* to have ~80% market share, and most operating systems were relatively interoperable (ie, FreeBSD and Linux). This is somewhat conceivable. In this case, writing the software for *any* operating system would be expensive, but porting it to other platforms would be extremely cheap, and you would likely see the software available for just about every operating system out there.
Don't be so hasty with you +1, Insightful points on parent. There is no +1, Shortsighted.
I very acutely disagree with one statement made in the article, perhaps on a choice of words more than anything.
If we had previously heeded the concerns of the creative community, we would have no radio, no TV, no VCR, no computer, no e-mail and no Internet.
Hold on one moment here. The "creative community", as far as I'm concerned, would be the musicians, script writers, actors (to an extent), and all of the 'little guys' behind the scenes that the MPAA seems to care about so much as of late. AFAIK, those people were never complaining, or at least never complained loudly. The ones who did complain were the copyright owners, many of whom have no creative talent, and have never really been part of that "community", but instead have been dampening it for years.
As much as I usually rail on people that say "this new industry should be more like this old one because that's how it is" [1], I think the movie/music industry could stand to be a lot more like authoring books. If you write a book that gets published, you get to hold the copyrights in your hands. You don't have to turn them over to Kensington or John Wiley and Sons, you get to keep them. Conceptually, why should you have to dump your copyrights to some **AA giant just because you sing or videotape your artwork instead of write it down?
It's not like the movie execs are burning the midnight oil writing all the scripts they own the copyrights for. Why doesn't the artist have it? Authors of books have held theirs as long as that industry has been around, and that industry has been around for a LOT longer than selling records, CDs, or videos on VHS.
With any luck, maybe the gradually growing trend of independent music labels will start to catch on, and in however many years, we'll look back at the **AA's with a thought of 'good riddance'. Someday. Maybe.
[1] Example: on opposing 'net neutrality', saying that the postal system is good because you can pay extra for good service; therefore the internet would be better if it had that.
"Or keep them from getting worse"
Or more likely, they'll probably just let them keep getting worse.
It's good to see a lot of those morons out of there, but the new guys are just as bad. The only hope is that they probably won't get a LOT worse. Bleh. Nothing worth cheering about for anyone.
PC makers will definitely feel the (lack of) heat this holiday season. Honestly, who would want to buy now? You get a computer installed with Windows XP, most likely with one of those "promise" certificates, that supposedly give you a free upgrade to Windows Vista. I remember when I got my own computer before moving into college. It was a disaster.
This was Fall 2001. Windows XP wasn't quite out yet, but was more or less supposed to be. I got a Dell with Windows ME installed. In polite terms, it blew dick. My only hope was this certificate for a free upgrade to Windows XP Home Edition (not that I wanted Home). Well, this wasn't a license for WinXP. It was a promise. That Dell would bestow it upon me if they so desired. I called the tech support dept to see if they could do that. Oh wait, thats sales' job. I called sales. They dole me it was tech support's job. I called tech support back and they told me it still wasn't their job. 2 hours of tech support later, you can guess how far I got.
After that much anguish, I still didn't get my copy of XP. For the record, my computer had coincidentally crashed during the time it took to get through to tech support. Worst purchase I ever made. I should have just waited. Good thing for Direct Connect/Kazaa getting me a real copy of what should have been on my computer when I got it.
Even giving Dell the benefit of the doubt here, the best I could have asked for would be a clean install of XP Home. But most of the software that came with my computer was designed for FAT32 windows and not NT. If I wasn't a relatively prudent computer user, I would have been completely stumped. In fact, I knew my shit decently well, and I still had a nightmare.
Buying a computer right before a big software release is a disaster waiting to happen. Unless you're specifically not planning to upgrade, you know you're going to get a lack of proper support (Why are ou trying to run XP? It says here that your Dell came with Windows ME?).
Personally, I think you'd have to be stupid to buy a new computer at a time like this. With Vista's clusterf*ck, AMD's sluggish release of 65nm chips, and the Directx 10-related delays of the next-gen video cards from Nvidia and ATi (G80 and R600, respectively), why would you want to upgrade now? It would be stupid. If you want a Christmas present, get a gift certificate. If you want a *real* computer, wait till this crap get straightened out. Personally, I feel bad for the computer makers this season, but I can't recommend buying one for Christmas to anyone in their right minds.
but the 90s had things headed in the right direction
Don't forget, tthe 90s also had a lot of things headed in the wrong direction. I mean, yeah, when the nasdaq was floating in the 4000's, of course everyone was quick to praise whatever government was in place and whatever policies were in place at the time.
But that's just the shell of it. The 90s were full of bad and risky investments, (domestic and international) that saw massive returns because everyone was buying up stock and the prices were going up (because everyone was buying up stock). But many of these companies had no real assets, no management, and no, uh.... business models.
Keep in mind these were also the critical last few years of the (successful/unnoticed) corruption of Enron and Worldcom. In the 90s (on paper), they certainly appeared to be headed in the right direction. They weren't.
Generally speaking, I call into question the praise explicitly to the government/president, etc, for the booming economy of the 90s. Many people attribute it to Clinton's relatively conservative atmosphere, or Al Gore inventing the internet. But let's not forget what was really important. The 1990s saw unprecedented growth in computers. This was the first time that the average PC had a GUI that the average user could both understand/use (ie, Windows 95), and afford (ie, not Apple). The number of people that could now use spreadsheets to do useful work went up exponentially. And let's not forget email. Credit to the government for those things? I wouldn't go that far.
when you buy an Ipod, you're agreeing to use it the way Apple says you can.
No. No. No. And also, No. What am I agreeing to? Did I sign anything? I don't think so. Well, maybe a credit card statement, but then I'm only agreeing to pay for it. That's it.
If you would so desire to use Apple's iTunes interface to interact with this device, then you have to agree with the use of iTunes' EULA.
Well to that, iTunes can kiss my f*cking ass. You don't have to use iTunes by any means. There are alternatives to iTunes. Hell, some of them even have games that don't suck.
Remember, if you buy a piece of hardware, it's not licensed to you, you're not borrowing it, and you don't have to agree to jack shit. I am sure there are some issues about writing software to circumvent such (crappy/pointless) security measures as FairPlay. But those are unimportant to the end-user. You didn't sign anything saying you wouldn't install software that would hurt Steve Jobs' feelings (well at least I didn't). Exercise your rights. This is the best piece of software for the iPod I've seen in a long time. I'm downloading as we (I) speak.
Microsoft will go after Adobe next.
Heh, good riddance. Of Acrobat anyway. M$ will never be able to touch the likes of Pagemaker, Photoshop, or Premiere. If Acrobat gradually slips from the scene over the next couple years? I sure as hell won't miss it. Maybe M$'s version won't run so goddamn slow.
"Boy Scout Merit Badge Requirements"
Give four different uses of computers.
Well thats easy: Games, porn, mp3s, and an occasional paper.
quality costs more... spend less time maintaing...
Are you implying that Apple hardware is better? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it certainly seems so.
I'm a native PC user, but I've used macs a lot, particularly in recent years, and I own one myself. The Software is better. No questions asked. The hardware.... well it looks cool. And I have nothing else good to say about it.
Ironically, my 15" Ti powerbook is one of the worst designed computers (laptop or desktop) that I've ever owned. This is quite sad, because I was very impressed with it at first, but it had a massive amount of design flaws (I'll leave the one-button-ness out of this; I usually use a USB mouse anyway). I bought it in 2003, when about 99% of laptops sold had USB 2.0 (the other 1% or so being Apples), but no big loss. The first minor problem happened after about 3 months, when the latch to my Powerbook occasionally popped open. I didn't see this as a major problem at first, but it did start getting more frequent. It didn't perse affect the usability of the laptop, but a lot of times it would pop open and drain battery life, and one time it poppeed open and started running (very hot mind you) while in the case.
Just after a year passed (conveniently right after the warranty was up), my Superdrive jammed up and wouldn't accept any optical discs. Shame. There was nothing "super" about it in the first place. It was basically a DVD burner that costs $150 instead of $60 because it says Apple on it. Happens quite frequently so I hear, but Apple doesn't seem to care if it's past warranty.
Despite the sturdy Titanium shell, the frame on the side of the laptop is flimsy plastic, which ended up cracking in several places. Did I drop it? No. Just from picking it up occasionally with one hand (gasp). The weight of the laptop was enough to bend the plastic enough to fracture over time. Also, the cord started coming apart from the piece of plastic that I where the AC adapter plugs into the back of the laptop. I am not the only one that has had this problem (read the reviews).
As for price/performance, Apple has a very large history of being WAY behind the curb. When I got my powerbook (1 Ghz was the fastest), most P4 laptops at the time were around 2.0-2.2 Ghz. More efficient chip blah blah, there is no wsy, by any stretch of the imagnation that any 32-bit 1.0 ghz will beat any 32-bit 2.0 processor. In fact, the PowerPC isn't even that much faster even at a 1:1 ratio clock speed. And on top of being slow, still costs more? I am not particularly impressed.
I have to admit, Apple has made a LOT of progress moving over to the Intel platform; they have gotten a LOT faster (with considerably reduced power consumption too). Of course, now I fail to see how the mac hardware is fundamentally different from standard PC hardware. The architecture is the same now, and based on my experiences (and others'), it is certainly not better (Don't forget the passively cooled cube "supercomputer" either). I think Apple should suck it up and open up their platform a bit more, instead of suing the asses off of anyone that tries to do it for them. I'm certainly not saying they should phase out their hardware, but they (and their fanboys) really should stop putting it on such a pedestal.
This post is turning out to be a bit more of a troll than I intended, and I'm not certainly not anti-Apple, but I really feel like they should be making a few adjustments. In the future, I'd really like to see Apple focusing more on software (OS X is unquestionably the best OS out there), iPods, and services like iTunes.
1. I buy music on CD.
3. RIAA sends nasty letter to my ISP; sues one of my friends.
4. I realize how evil RIAA is.
5. I buy many fewer CDs.
Genius.
is gonna take one HUGE ass line, and is gonna pose huge dangers.
Good point. Now, imagine a line capable of delivering upwards of 10 GALLONS of gasoline per minute (keep in mind, this is ~100 MegaJoules/gallon), without a calculator on hand, we're looking at about 15 MegaWatts of potential energy being pumped into your car. Now, imagine several of these monstrous 15 MegaWatt 'Energy Pumps' in every tow, perhaps one every couple blocks. Hm.... seems that we did that about 50 years ago. Yes, they are potentially dangrous. But, with modern control systems, and a (semi-)intelligent person ready to immediately cut fuel to the pumps in light of a customer smoking a cigarette during fueling, we have managed to create an impressively safe system of these.
How could we do it without superconductors? F*cked if I know, but there's probably a way. Why not do it with semiconductors? Ever hear of an MRI? They're pretty common these days in hospitals, etc. Why not gas stations? Yes it's a considerable overhead cost, but there's a large potential benefit coming out of it. I do not see this problem as much of a roadblock. Sure there are logistics, but I would consider these trivial compared to simple market inertia (ie, how do you make customers 'feel like' buying one). I vote possible and feasible.
Actually, the students are not getting the students in trouble. The only way that would happen is if they turned themselves (or each other) in. The University, however, is using this service as a specific way to catch cheaters (ie, get students in trouble).
I obviously don't want students ripping off my work, but if the scope of that is a paper written in a bullshit English class, I could give two shits if (s)he rips off my work. Hell, if anybody bothered ripping off any crappy paper I wrote, I'd probably feel flattered more than anything.
If, perchance, I publish a work that I find to be important, I will call up the Copyright Office and have it registered. I do believe that a service such as Turnitin should search publicly available works (Creative Commons and registered copyrights, etc) for verification, but certainly not masses of public works of students who did not give permission for them to do so, and more importantly, students who don't even know about it. That, and make a profit on it? I don't like the idea at all.
probably weren't worried about Joe Sixpack discovering that Linux et al are just as simple as Windows XP when someone else installs it for him.
Aye, I agree with you in concept but I only wish it was that simple. Don't forget Joe Sixpack probably plays a lot of computer games. Unless those games happened to be limited to Doom and Unreal Tournament, Joe Sixpack probably isn't going to be very happy. Unfortunately, MS has practically the entire gaming industry in the clutches of DirectX, and that is crippling to gamers. I, not being Joe Sixpack have to use a lot of high-end programs with few subsitutes, namely AutoCAD, MathCAD, Aspen Plus, and others. Unfortunately, included in "others" is Microsoft Excel. Even as an avid fan of OpenOffice, I could not just dump such a user onto OOo and expect him/her to sort out the various quirks without help. Sure, most of those aren't 'flaws' because they're just differences (using semicolon for separating input parameters in functions instead of commas), but small incompatiblities in file formats are a pain as well. For the final hit-home, does the phrase "Display equation on chart" mean anything to you? If you use OOo Calc, you've probably been pissed enough to throw sh*t across the room over it.
Unfortunately, 99% of these quirks are the fault of the evil giant M$ and a bunch of lazy-ass device manufacturers that don't release cross-platform drivers, and aren't the fault of Linux. But from the end user perspective, they are still disadvantages of using Linux as compared to Windows. And unless your entire school/office also uses Linux, they are some pretty heavy disadvantages.
I used Linux for a while, and I gave it a fair shot. More than a fair shot actually, because I was so eager to stick it to the Devil/Emporer Palpatine/Bill Gates (call him what you will). Eventually, I ended up switching back, but certainly not because I wanted to; I was stuck. Nightmares with wireless cards, lack of good USB support, an AIM client full of broken features (albeit AOL's fault), and lack of performance running windows apps in WINE just caused me to cave. Linux should be just as simple to use as Windows, and it's a better operating system from start to finish, but it is just not easy to use by any stretch of the imagination. Keep donating to Open Source projects, and support Linux whenever you can. It will be easier to use someday. Someday.
"the collective Slashdot response it just suck it up and deal with it, not to be so greedy, and an admonishment that information wants to be free."
Yes, this is the general response, and I personally would say the same. But I think there are two key issues here that really differentiate this comparison.
#1: When artists release songs/videos/movies, they are very conspicuously distributing them to a very large audience, of their own free will. When musicians release a song, they do that because they created a (presumably) great work of art, and they want the world to hear it (and also hopefully make some money off of it). I have several friends in bands, and when I ask them what got them into their music, they never reply "because I want to make a profit". They want the world to enjoy their music; I don't want the world to enjoy the paper I just wrote for my class. I do not want to distribute that paper. I wrote it probably because I had to, and I want to turn it in to the professor/TA and get it back.
#2: When people pirate music, they probably do it because they enjoy it (but don't want to pay for it). If I just wrote a song, and a million punk kids download it for free, at least they are doing so BECAUSE THEY WANT TO LISTEN TO MY SONG. Sure, I will be pissed that they undermined my work by not buying it. But not very pissed. At least they appreciate my art. Turnitin? They are not illegally making a copy of my paper because they want to read it, or enjoy it, or exercise the social value of it. They are taking it for the specific purpose of getting other students in trouble.
Perhaps if lucky, a couple slashdotters will open their eyes to IP and realize that they are not liberating the world by using bittorrent and kazaa, but this is clearly a different issue. At least Kazaa and similar are redistributing the artwork with the intent of end-user consumption. Turnitin is just a gigantic slap in the face to every author and artist in the world.
"but half the problem is we are running out."
No, that's not half the problem at all. Or even close to it. The bulk of the problem is the lack of a better alternative. Ethanol is great in concept, but cannot be very efficiently produced in the US (it takes almost as much energy to produce it as you get out of it, etc). Solar and Wind power are very clean and cheap, but generally don't produce enough energy to power most devices (does your car look like this?).
When you say we are running out of oil, you are thinking in very, very long term. As of now, oil is the most plentiful, cheap, and standard fuel source available. We are not running out of it anytime soon, certainly not in the next ten or twenty years. Furthermore, it is available at every gas station in the country, and there are a lot of those.
Sure, we need to break or dependence on oil, but do you have any idea how much inertia is in the petroleum-power market? There is no way you can expect the whole industry to turn around overnight. Don't go around scolding scientists for coming out with great inventions like this. Instead, you should be applauding them for coming out with ways to use this fuel source more efficiently. Yes, it is unfortunate that the vast majority of our energy consumption comes from fossil fuels, but it's still the most economical way to use energy (What if your rental car company forced you to use an ethanol fueled car, and told you that you just had to find ethanol blend gas stations around an unfamiliar town?)
Let me summarize: petroleum is unfortunately the cheapest and most plentiful fuel source available. These guys just found a way to make it work better and cleaner. Now you criticize? F*ck you.
California is now simply returning the favor.
I don't exactly agree with your logic. However, your intentions are flawless. But you have to do better than that. Let me get my bias out of the way first. I generally lean toward free market, no restrictions, blah blah, but I care about the enviroment. I'm not going to tell you that global warming doesn't exist and that it's because we're just coming out of the last ice age, and I'm not going to tell you that global warming is good for the Earth either. I don't think very much of large corporations, nor do I think they are evil. With that said, I will propose a logical argument, and keep my personal opinions out of it as best I can.
Let's start here: I do not believe corporations are morally responsible to believe in anythign that hurts their bottom line. Exxon/Mobil, GM, Ford, and all the others exist to maximize their profits. It's what they do. All cars have catallytic converters (CCs) in them, don't they? This is a BIG cost burden to auto manufacturers. They're loaded with Platinum, a rather expensive and rare metal, and the increased demand for CC's REALLY drives the cost up. From an individual consumer's point of view, it doesn't really add value to the car, so customers won't be willing to pay (much) more for them. What results from this is higher manufacturer cost, for negligible increase in selling price. And auto manufacturers have to eat this.
On comes a new law that says you have to have a CC in every car. Are auto manufacturer's going to be against it? Of course. It hurts their profits, why wouldn't they? I don't believe they should be morally responsible for polluting the environment, it's not their job. Before I go any further, let me make this clear: EVERY car should have to have a CC, no questions asked. But enforcing that is the job of an effective government, not the producer.
So, automotive manufacturers have "repeatedly sued... to keep those laws from getting enforced". Have they? I'm not sure, but I'll take your word for it. NO SHIT THEY'RE GOING TO TRY TO NOT HAVE THEM ENFORCED. IT MAKES THEM LOSE MONEY. This is at least a rational reason for being opposed to LEV/ULEV/whatever laws. It's not a very GOOD reason, but it at least has some rational basis. Now, justifying California's lawsuit because it's "returning the favor"? Where's the basis for that? It may be well intended, but it makes no sense. If CA thinks that LEV/ULEV requirements are necessary, then they should say "ok, you lose money, which sucks for you, but your products are hurting our city, so you can't do that anymore". Now, after saying that (ie, making a law), if they violate that, than they are clearly in the wrong, and should owe punitive damages.
What CA is doing now, is just illogical. For years, they were allowing manufacturers to pollute. Now, years later, they are saying "that hurt you need to pay me back". No, they don't need to pay you back. The auto manufacturers, although pressing against them, have been following all rules and regulations. If that is in detriment to CA, TOUGH SHIT. Pass some new laws to prevent further damage, dismiss their lawsuits against whatever pollution control they're complaining about, and pick up the pieces.
Whew. Now, for my personal views, which I'm not going to back up with any thought-out logic. The automotive industry is a bunch of snakes. And the oil industry is worse. A lot worse, and I'm sure they're behind the auto industry here. But being a snake isn't illegal, and they shouldn't be punished. Big corporations maximize their profits. And they'll act like snakes to make those profits. And that should be expected. When they oppose Catalyttic Converters, the state of CA needs to say "The damage you are doing to the environment outweighs your cost burden. Sucks for you, put them in anyway."
But back to the immediate problem. They are going to get sued for trying to pass these laws, but that needs to be overseen by an