the post is funny but the point is actually
very interesting. Drug companies face
huge legal risks from side-effects of
medication (think thalidomide). How
would open source medicine pay for these
risks (somebody has to pay, even if it
the patients who pay with their health)?
The obvious answer is via a public health
care system (like Canada's say) but there
would likely have to be limits on the
compensation allowable. But the basic
idea of zero patent medicine research is
excellent!
If we follow LT's average location over
the last 10 years it is clearly tending
towards... Redmond, WA. The implications
of this do not bear thinking on.
I'll throw in my stats. In a medium sized
town in Ontario (that's Canada); I have
cable internet service from Cogeco. The
service is very reliable and there seem
to be no caps. Yesterday (all day and
night) I emerged kde and the big packages
were downloading at 750 KBytes/sec. This
costs $48 CAD / month (about $ 35 USD).
I don't have much to say about this
new RIAA initiative. Except, everyone,
think about the kind of world the
corporations are evidently planning
for us. It is easy to imagine a day
when I am biometrically linked to
everything I might see, hear, use,
smell, eat, taste, excrete so that a
small fee passes for the privilege of
engaging in any activity to which some
corporate entity has a lawful stake,
be it via patent, copyright or license
fee. We will all become
nothing but a slimy biological link
between various corporate money repositories.
It's not a pretty picture to most people
I hope. Some kind of collective disengagement from
the corporate agenda (I don't mean to
pick on any person here - the corporate
agenda is an emergent phenomenon dependent
on but not reducible to the motives of
individuals) is worth thinking about.
Your analogy is not cogent... I can predict with fair
certainty that people will lose money on
average at Las Vegas. But I have to admit
I am weak on predicting the next 6 numbers
to come up on the roulette wheel. Climate
is like the odds; weather is like the
particular results.
well, that makes the comparison unfairly
slanted in favour of USA (to be fair the
per capita income should be equal).
We are assessing how well off the lowest
income levels are, not the average wealth
of the whole country. I think, even though
the USA has a higher average wealth, the
bottom dwellers - so to speak - do better
in Sweden. Despite the USA having stronger
"libertarian values".
the gini coefficient measures the degree
of inequality in income distribution (based
on the Lorenz curve) [google knows all].
Sweden: 25 / USA: 41 (where 0 is equal
distribution / 100 is completely unequal)
Sweden vs. USA ; USA has more libertarian
values than Sweden but has much more
equitable wealth distribution; given that
the standard of living for Sweden and USA is
roughly the same, this means the "little guy"
does better in Sweden than USA contrary to
your assertion (there are many more examples
and none seem to confirm your viewpoint)
I don't think you're following this closely
enough. It is SCO that has already asked
for an extension of discovery which IBM has argued against. And discovery is not over,
I think December 2004 is that date...
No doubt the voters will take this into
account (along with many other factors)
when deciding how to vote in the next
election. Do you think this issue is
big enough to swing the vote? Why or
why not? You do still have elections down
there don't you?
That service pack is called "windows 98"
(it's amazing the microsoft got away with
charging money for it!)
Not as absurd as "waterworld"
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 1
I don't think TDAT is nearly as laughable
as Kevin Costner's global warming epic,
waterworld, which assumed that all the
polar ice melts and water levels rise some
*thousands* of meters !! At the time you
could fool a lot of people with the trick
question: if the arctic cap (not Greenland)
melted how much would sea level rise?
O meters of course.
Isn't the point what it's used for: if
I use playfair to move songs onto a
linux computer to play via xmms, for
my own personal pleasure, then
I say that's fair use.
If I use playfair to make mass copies of
itunes music which I sell for profit, then
that is not fair use.
There is a grey area between these two.
Technically, perhaps there is no fair use
of itunes music because of an agreement
that itune shoppers must click acceptance
of. Then let me just ask you if you think
it is morally ok to do the first of the
above?
bogus figures in article (I hope)
on
No EZ Fix For The IRS
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
it says in the article that it costs
45 cents to collect one dollar, to
quote:
"Meanwhile, the cost of collecting $1 of revenue-45 cents in 2002..."
WTF? What's the total tax revenue from
IRS last year? Say a trillion dollars.
Is the article really claiming that it
cost 450 billion dollars to collect that??!
That's just absurd. Please somebody explain
the truth to me here.
"And when it's all over, and it will be, in about 3 years, when the economy comes roaring back and suddenly we realize that we're on the verge of losing all the Boomers who made up the majority of the workforce, then they're going to be scrambling for skilled labor. Only there won't be any."
In your dreams... the outsourcing will be
to China by then and they will have a *lot*
of hungry techs
I think it's sad that you believe that if
an unjust law is passed (i.e. making ripping
your own cds to your own computer) then
you are scum for breaking that law.
When Thoreau broke, on purpose, an unjust
law and went to jail, his friend came to
visit him, and exclaimed "Henry, why are
you in here?". Thoreau replied "why are you
*not* in here?"
I think the judge was reminding us that
copies of music that I have for personal
use are exactly as legal as bought copies.
So my possession of them is exactly as
legitimate as the library's possession of
its books. Once that fact is noted, the analogy
works just fine.
In Canada, I repeat, it is legal
to copy copyrighted music for personal use.
That, supposedly, is why Canadians pay a
tax on blank tapes and cdrs.
As for libraries, Canada also has a mechanism
for compensating authors. The "Public Lending
Right Commission" mails out checks to authors
depending on how many of their books turn
up in library surveys (I get a few hundred
dollars every year - I nice present; an author
like Pierre Berton takes in many thousands of
dollars from the PLRC). The revenue comes
from Canadian tax payers; maybe the file
sharing networks should be regarded as a
distributed lending library. The government
would survey what is being shared (tricky to
do that right I admit) and find a way to
compensate performers/composers [NOT record
companies I hope] for file sharing.
In the globe and mail story, they report
that the judge declared that *both*
copying and sharing are not copyright
violation in Canada... I've been assuming
it was perfectly alright to download files
in Canada (for personal use); now it appears
to be equally ok to share them
see
here where it is stated: "As part of his ruling, the judge found that simply downloading a song or having a file available on peer-to-peer software such as Kazaa doesn't constitute copyright infringement."
"We are appealing to the CPN (Maoist) to uphold minimum humanitarian standards as contained in Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 which prohibits violence to life and person, the taking of hostages and the summary executions of those not actively engaged in the conflict, including those placed hors de combat by detention."
just what are you raving about ?? I don't think
AI is above reproach; but I'm curious what you
think they have done which is so unjust that
it has actually - by itself apparently from
your sig - led to the deaths of 9000...
Slashdot Mirror
the post is funny but the point is actually very interesting. Drug companies face huge legal risks from side-effects of medication (think thalidomide). How would open source medicine pay for these risks (somebody has to pay, even if it the patients who pay with their health)? The obvious answer is via a public health care system (like Canada's say) but there would likely have to be limits on the compensation allowable. But the basic idea of zero patent medicine research is excellent!
If we follow LT's average location over the last 10 years it is clearly tending towards ... Redmond, WA. The implications
of this do not bear thinking on.
I'll throw in my stats. In a medium sized town in Ontario (that's Canada); I have cable internet service from Cogeco. The service is very reliable and there seem to be no caps. Yesterday (all day and night) I emerged kde and the big packages were downloading at 750 KBytes/sec. This costs $48 CAD / month (about $ 35 USD).
I don't have much to say about this new RIAA initiative. Except, everyone, think about the kind of world the corporations are evidently planning for us. It is easy to imagine a day when I am biometrically linked to everything I might see, hear, use, smell, eat, taste, excrete so that a small fee passes for the privilege of engaging in any activity to which some corporate entity has a lawful stake, be it via patent, copyright or license fee. We will all become nothing but a slimy biological link between various corporate money repositories.
It's not a pretty picture to most people I hope. Some kind of collective disengagement from the corporate agenda (I don't mean to pick on any person here - the corporate agenda is an emergent phenomenon dependent on but not reducible to the motives of individuals) is worth thinking about.
Your analogy is not cogent ... I can predict with fair
certainty that people will lose money on
average at Las Vegas. But I have to admit
I am weak on predicting the next 6 numbers
to come up on the roulette wheel. Climate
is like the odds; weather is like the
particular results.
Alright then ... it was me! I just felt
like dropping $12 million so that Opera
would quit bothering microsoft.
(disclaimer: above statement may not be entirely accurate and terms of the agreement do not permit clarification)
well, that makes the comparison unfairly slanted in favour of USA (to be fair the per capita income should be equal). We are assessing how well off the lowest income levels are, not the average wealth of the whole country. I think, even though the USA has a higher average wealth, the bottom dwellers - so to speak - do better in Sweden. Despite the USA having stronger "libertarian values".
I love his idea of taking the nuclear waste into his own backyard (anti-nimby) and using it to heat his home and water :)
...
and then, think of the money you could make selling it to certain groups
"we are all gonna die if we don't stop wasting energy like we do now"
... ?
and if we do stop wasting energy
the gini coefficient measures the degree of inequality in income distribution (based on the Lorenz curve) [google knows all]. Sweden: 25 / USA: 41 (where 0 is equal distribution / 100 is completely unequal)
Sweden vs. USA ; USA has more libertarian values than Sweden but has much more equitable wealth distribution; given that the standard of living for Sweden and USA is roughly the same, this means the "little guy" does better in Sweden than USA contrary to your assertion (there are many more examples and none seem to confirm your viewpoint)
I don't think you're following this closely enough. It is SCO that has already asked for an extension of discovery which IBM has argued against. And discovery is not over, I think December 2004 is that date ...
please check the article -- this farmer had more than 1000 acres planted and 95% was roundup ready canola. You still think it just "blew there"?
No doubt the voters will take this into account (along with many other factors) when deciding how to vote in the next election. Do you think this issue is big enough to swing the vote? Why or why not? You do still have elections down there don't you?
RTFA, that's a capital "B"
nice rant, but I think the OP was about the 1990 recession
where are the service packs for MS-Windows 95?
That service pack is called "windows 98" (it's amazing the microsoft got away with charging money for it!)
I don't think TDAT is nearly as laughable as Kevin Costner's global warming epic, waterworld, which assumed that all the polar ice melts and water levels rise some *thousands* of meters !! At the time you could fool a lot of people with the trick question: if the arctic cap (not Greenland) melted how much would sea level rise? O meters of course.
Isn't the point what it's used for: if I use playfair to move songs onto a linux computer to play via xmms, for my own personal pleasure, then I say that's fair use.
If I use playfair to make mass copies of itunes music which I sell for profit, then that is not fair use.
There is a grey area between these two. Technically, perhaps there is no fair use of itunes music because of an agreement that itune shoppers must click acceptance of. Then let me just ask you if you think it is morally ok to do the first of the above?
it says in the article that it costs 45 cents to collect one dollar, to quote:
..."
"Meanwhile, the cost of collecting $1 of revenue-45 cents in 2002
WTF? What's the total tax revenue from IRS last year? Say a trillion dollars. Is the article really claiming that it cost 450 billion dollars to collect that??!
That's just absurd. Please somebody explain the truth to me here.
"And when it's all over, and it will be, in about 3 years, when the economy comes roaring back and suddenly we realize that we're on the verge of losing all the Boomers who made up the majority of the workforce, then they're going to be scrambling for skilled labor. Only there won't be any."
... the outsourcing will be
to China by then and they will have a *lot*
of hungry techs
In your dreams
I think it's sad that you believe that if an unjust law is passed (i.e. making ripping your own cds to your own computer) then you are scum for breaking that law.
When Thoreau broke, on purpose, an unjust law and went to jail, his friend came to visit him, and exclaimed "Henry, why are you in here?". Thoreau replied "why are you *not* in here?"
Breaking an unjust law does not make you "scum".
I think the judge was reminding us that copies of music that I have for personal use are exactly as legal as bought copies. So my possession of them is exactly as legitimate as the library's possession of its books. Once that fact is noted, the analogy works just fine.
In Canada, I repeat, it is legal to copy copyrighted music for personal use. That, supposedly, is why Canadians pay a tax on blank tapes and cdrs.
As for libraries, Canada also has a mechanism for compensating authors. The "Public Lending Right Commission" mails out checks to authors depending on how many of their books turn up in library surveys (I get a few hundred dollars every year - I nice present; an author like Pierre Berton takes in many thousands of dollars from the PLRC). The revenue comes from Canadian tax payers; maybe the file sharing networks should be regarded as a distributed lending library. The government would survey what is being shared (tricky to do that right I admit) and find a way to compensate performers/composers [NOT record companies I hope] for file sharing.
In the globe and mail story, they report that the judge declared that *both* copying and sharing are not copyright violation in Canada ... I've been assuming
it was perfectly alright to download files
in Canada (for personal use); now it appears
to be equally ok to share them
see here where it is stated: "As part of his ruling, the judge found that simply downloading a song or having a file available on peer-to-peer software such as Kazaa doesn't constitute copyright infringement."
What's next in Canada? Free ponies?
> and no witnesses, assuming no one is around when it takes place.
no witnesses for the ipod theft either, once muggers get fully into 21century, GTA, crime mode
From AI
...
"We are appealing to the CPN (Maoist) to uphold minimum humanitarian standards as contained in Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 which prohibits violence to life and person, the taking of hostages and the summary executions of those not actively engaged in the conflict, including those placed hors de combat by detention."
just what are you raving about ?? I don't think AI is above reproach; but I'm curious what you think they have done which is so unjust that it has actually - by itself apparently from your sig - led to the deaths of 9000