Depends on how much you drive them. In a typical scenario like that, you're driving the 10mpg vehicle to and from construction sites for work, and you're driving the 33mpg vehicle to get groceries. In that case, it's definitely better to replace the 10mpg vehicle. But if the 33mpg vehicle is being used for a 100 mile round trip commute, and all your construction work is in town, it's probably better to replace the 33mpg vehicle.
Really, what's most harmful about innumeracy is the tendency to make simplifying generalizations...
Really? You're sure only internal affairs or their superiors have access? Why are you sure of that? And why do you think that makes it okay? If, for example, their superiors have access to it, and they think it's in their interests or the interests of the police department to alter the footage, what makes you think they won't do it? Other, of course, than the fact that altering video in a way that can't be detected by a careful forensic analysis is well beyond the current state of the art?
It seems to me that your unstated premise here is that if people don't trust the cops, they won't obey the law. That's almost certainly not a valid assertion. First of all, there are plenty of laws people don't obey, so if what you're saying is true, then it's already too late. But what you are saying isn't true--the reason people routinely break laws is because they don't respect the laws, and the laws that people respect *aren't* routinely broken. So there's massive copyright violation, and speeding, but you don't have to worry that someone is going to randomly shoot you when you walk down the street.
Second, respect for law isn't particularly widespread, and people are accustomed to getting away with breaking the laws they think don't matter. If they weren't inclined to obey the other laws, the police wouldn't be able to hold them back.
Police are there to deal with the outliers--people who don't respect laws that most people respect. They aren't there to keep order. If they were necessary to keep order, we would be living in pandemonium.
As a corollary to this, police abuses are exactly the same as the thing the police exist to stop: outliers who don't respect laws that most people respect. The "few bad eggs." If you remove the tools that are necessary to deal with police abuse, you don't get a 100% abusive police department, because most police act the way we expect them to act--they protect and serve. But some don't.
There are plenty of cultures where police are mostly abusive, and where sensible laws are not respected. How does this happen? A culture of acceptance of corruption is all it takes. If you don't want to live in a culture like that, allowing people to record the police is crucial.
I think he's perhaps missing the point that their place in the internet is that they're the sites that take forever to load, and that we often surf away from because we think they're broken, and on which we can't find anything we need because they're usually not usefully indexed by Google. Not an enviable place, but certainly a place.
The most common place where I encounter flash in this context is restaurant web sites when I'm going to look at the menu. If I'm on an iPhone, I just don't go to that restaurant, or I go despite the web site, not because of it. I think restauranteurs don't realize that if I'm at their web site, it's because I already am interested in going to their restaurant, and what I need is information, not a glossy brochure.
I think Wired has some pretty interesting in-depth articles. But they're much easier to read on the web than in the print version. I'd love it if they figured out a way to make an interesting magazine on the iPad. But the one they just made isn't it. I think any magazine that demands a custom app to display it is barking up the wrong tree.
Obviously. Because you've tried it and it sucked, I presume? Or possibly you're just sure, because it's your opinion, so it must be true.
I've read quite a few books on it already, and it's been great. And no, I am not mentally insane (is there some other kind of insane?). Nor do I hate my eyes. My experience of it is that it's a lot like reading a hardcover book, only a little easier to hold up. The fonts aren't perfect, but they don't totally suck either. If every book I wanted were available on iPad, I probably wouldn't buy any paper books anymore.
Nope, more like ten minutes. I got it because people were crowing about how great it was, but it was mostly ads, and some fairly lame interactivity that could have been done better in Javascript on a web page. If this is the future of magazines, they can keep it. Don't waste your money.
Oh, plus, they warn you that they're tracking your viewing. I guess it was nice of them to warn us, but part of the Brave New magazine experience I am *not* looking for is a little mini- Conde Nast- panopticon.
Dammit, you're right. Sorry about that. I found a PDF of the actual letter in this much better article. I've typed in the names, but I make no promises about accuracy other than that I tried. And of course if the PDF was wrong, what I typed would also be wrong.
Gregory W. Meeks, Joseph Crowley, Charlie Gonzalez, Gene Green, John Tanner, Travis Childers, Michael McMahon, Loretta Sanchez, Ed Towns, Chaka Fattah, Eddie Bernice Johnson, G. K. Butterfield, John Barrow, Alcee L. Hastings, Walt Minnick, Dan Boren, Suzanne Kosmas, Tim Holden, Albio Sires, Dennis Moore, Joe Baca, Solomon Ortiz, Henry Cueller, Tim Bishop, Bobby Bright, Russ Carnahan, Silvestre Reyes, Frank Kratovil, Jr., Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., Allyson Schwartz, Lincoln Davis, Allen Boyd, William Lacy Clay, Hank Johnson, Dennis A. Cardoza, Paul Tonko, David Scot, Ed Perlmutter, Bennie G. Thompson, Zachary T. Space, Baron P. Hill, Robert A. Brady, Parker Griffith, Debbie L. Halvorson, Donna M. Christensen, Charlie A. Wilson, Bill Foster, Jared Polis, David B. Maffei, Steve Driehaus, Elijah E. Cummings, Kathleen A. Dahlkemper, Marcia L. Fudge, Jim Costa, Leonard L. Boswell, Mike Ross, Sheila Jackson-Lee, John Spratt, Jr., Charlie Melancon, Peter Welch, Michael Michaud, Al Green, Kurt Schrader, Ed Pastor, Danny K. Davis, Michael Arcuri, Glenn Nye, Heath Shuler, Rick Larsen, Nick Rahall, Christopher P. Carney, Emanuel Cleaver
In case anybody's wondering if their congresscritter signed on to this letter, here's the list. You can get a laugh out of the "threat or danger" propaganda at this site too, if you're amused by that sort of thing.
The thing to pay attention to is that a total of just over 100 congresscritters signed either the blue dog democrat letter or the republican letter. So characterizing this as congress taking a position on what the FCC has done is nonsense, and it's unfortunate that cnet feels they can get away with such a blatant misrepresentation. This doesn't even represent a third of congress, much less a majority.
I used to think Declan McCullough was a reasonably intelligent fellow, but this is just a propaganda piece. Congress didn't do anything, and if hopes for net neutrality fade, it's because we believe this tripe, not because congress has said anything to anyone about anything.
BTW, if you think the printing press made copying "easy," you might want to rethink that. It made it *easier*, but not "easy." With the printing press, you can't make one copy for yourself. You have to make enough copies to amortize the labor of setting the type.
It's this cost structure that made copyright work the way it did. It still works now, but the way it works is different, and it doesn't address the problem we're talking about here anymore, because copying images displayed in the internet has a marginal cost of zero.
So you're engaging in what sounds like a pro bono copyright enforcement effort, getting people to take down your work, and getting paid zip for the effort. How is this a good idea? And how many infringements have you missed?
The place where your money comes from is getting people to *pay* you for your work, not getting people to *stop using* your work. This latter part is a cost center, not a profit center.
The most totalitarian governments we have ever experienced on this planet have done a pretty good job of killing off citizens they didn't like, but they have not done a very good job of controlling the flow of information between determined individuals. So no, the government can't stop copying. They can make us miserable trying, though, which is in fact my point.
I'm not arguing against copyright. I'm saying that copyright only does so much. If you want to make it do more, you have to have ever more draconian crackdowns with ever more punitive damages.
There are plenty of obvious ways to make money selling copyable things without copyright protection. One is that you don't ship any product until it's paid for, and don't expect any return after that. Another is that you ask people to pay. Many people won't, and a lot of people will. People are making a living on this model. *Lots* of people.
Another is that you sell schwag. Lots of people are making a living this way too.
Just because the old business model can't work without draconian control mechanisms doesn't mean that no business model can work without draconian control mechanisms.
I know, maybe we should just DRM everything!1!!1 That'll solve the problem.
No offense, man, but the universe doesn't owe you copyright. And unfortunately, the tradition of copyright depends on copying being hard. Now that it's easy, there's really no way to prevent people from doing this. You can send them nasty letters, but the water's coming in faster than you can bail. Like every other content producer, eventually you're going to have to learn to make money from the people who are willing to pay you.
I'm not saying it's just, or right, or good, but that's how it is. If somebody makes a shitload of money off a picture you took, sue *them*. Don't waste your time on small-time stuff.
It must be very satisfying to make these loud statements of fact, but unfortunately it doesn't affect the ability of patent holders to sue you. If you want to do something about that, make patent reform an issue that affects who you vote for. You do vote, right?
You can't patent your novel because the book was invented millennia ago, and has existed in its current form for a very long time--much longer than the term of any modern patent. You could conceivably have patented the interactive novel under this ruling, except that prior art exists for that too.
It sucks that the parasites^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpatent lawyers have figured out yet another way to suck the life out of our business, but pretending that it hasn't happened is not going to make things better.
It really wouldn't help--if anything, it would make things worse. Right now it's forbidden fruit. If it were completely unavailable, people simply wouldn't know about it, and wouldn't know what they were missing. There just aren't enough programmers in any given country for them alone to be a force for preventing this sort of stupidity. You have to get the end-users on board too.
Butbutbut oil volcano! Sea boiling! One third of all the creatures of the sea dead! This means I don't have to save for retirement, or deal with old age! I can just sit here playing with my iPad until the End comes, because it is all out of our hands, and therefore not my responsibility! Why are you being such a killjoy?!? Oil volcano!!1!!111
When Morris released the worm, there were no laws on the books specifically forbidding that activity, so there wasn't much they could charge him with. The MoD hackers were a test case for the new law that Morris' case led congress to pass. So yeah, it sucks, but you can't pass a law making something a crime and then charge someone for the crime of having done that thing before the law was passed. While there certainly are examples of the phenomenon you're talking about in law (e.g., the difference in sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine), this is not such an example.
Oh, forget that! How about how when you deprive the ball of plasma of oxygen by dunking it in water, it's snuffed out? Cuz fusion is basically just fire, only hotter...
They'll probably mess it up, but maybe not... :')
on
Does HP + Palm = Facepalm?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Actually HP has a long history with Unix, both HP-UX and Digital's Unix product. They also have a long history of producing handhelds. This is a really smart move for them, if it works. Right now, they have this iPad-like thing, which is really cool, but only runs Windows, which, frankly, isn't going to be that great on it, and has been a failure in the same market for years. Now they have Palm OS, which is actually a really great product, despite its failure to capture the hearts and minds of enough customers. This means that they are in position to make a genuine run up against the iPad. Plus, they can throw out the x86 cpu in their tablet and replace it with an ARM CPU that will perform better and suck much less battery power.
So yeah, this is a really smart move, and I'm excited to see what they do with it. HP has a lot of management that's skilled at foot-shooting, but if they can get over their cultural tendency towards NIH and really invest in this product, it could be pretty cool.
Cut trees are used for whatever brings the most profit. You talk about the paper industry like it's a single monolith, but it's actually a lot of little companies and big companies, each of which has their own practices. So what you say is probably true about some company or set of companies that you've had personal experience with, but it's not universally true.
And whether what you say is true for this particular paper company or not, making that nice paper you can put into your laser printer is nontrivial. It requires a lot of energy, and a lot of chemical processing. So the fundamental point of this article, mocking the idea that printing more is good, is correct. It is a really good idea to think before you print.
What this guy should be focusing on is how to adapt to the changing market, not how to get the market to stop changing. The market for beautiful acid-free paper whitened with peroxide is probably not going away any time soon, but the market for single-use printing is, and if you want to still be around in 20 years, it might be worth thinking about that.
Before you made this claim you might have benefited from a drive around British Columbia or eastern Washington and Oregon. Unfortunately, giant trees are routinely chipped. I agree with you that it's utterly stupid, and I wish that you were right that this beautiful wood was only going to appropriate purposes, like making beautiful homes or cabinetry.
There's a bit of a mixed metaphor when I talk about 100-year-old maples. The point is that there's a lot of second-growth forest around the U.S. in areas that were clearcut during the original settling of the country, in order to produce fields for farming, and have since lain fallow for fifty to a hundred years, and are now woodland again.
These lots have a mixture of maple and pine and oak, and various other varieties as well. They make for beautiful forests, and great habitat. And they're very profitable to cut down. Not all the wood goes for paper--you try to get the highest price you can for the wood you cut--but chipping wood for pulp is one place where the wood does go. And what is planted, if anything, after this mayhem, is not a diverse forest, but an ugly stand of pines in rows, intended to be cut down again in 40 years.
There's nothing wrong in principle with planting pines for harvest--we need wood for building, and the need for paper is never going to zero out, although I hope that we can get to the point where we're making good use of it, and not just printing on it and then throwing it away. But when someone gives you the cut-one, plant-three line, it pays to be skeptical. If you do the math, it's pretty obviously a deliberate attempt to mislead.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on how much you drive them. In a typical scenario like that, you're driving the 10mpg vehicle to and from construction sites for work, and you're driving the 33mpg vehicle to get groceries. In that case, it's definitely better to replace the 10mpg vehicle. But if the 33mpg vehicle is being used for a 100 mile round trip commute, and all your construction work is in town, it's probably better to replace the 33mpg vehicle.
Really, what's most harmful about innumeracy is the tendency to make simplifying generalizations...
Dunno, my Prius gets the best milage on the lowest octane gas. I think it really depends a lot on the specific engine.
The current Supreme Kangaroo Court doesn't have a good track record on respecting the constitution.
Really? You're sure only internal affairs or their superiors have access? Why are you sure of that? And why do you think that makes it okay? If, for example, their superiors have access to it, and they think it's in their interests or the interests of the police department to alter the footage, what makes you think they won't do it? Other, of course, than the fact that altering video in a way that can't be detected by a careful forensic analysis is well beyond the current state of the art?
It seems to me that your unstated premise here is that if people don't trust the cops, they won't obey the law. That's almost certainly not a valid assertion. First of all, there are plenty of laws people don't obey, so if what you're saying is true, then it's already too late. But what you are saying isn't true--the reason people routinely break laws is because they don't respect the laws, and the laws that people respect *aren't* routinely broken. So there's massive copyright violation, and speeding, but you don't have to worry that someone is going to randomly shoot you when you walk down the street.
Second, respect for law isn't particularly widespread, and people are accustomed to getting away with breaking the laws they think don't matter. If they weren't inclined to obey the other laws, the police wouldn't be able to hold them back.
Police are there to deal with the outliers--people who don't respect laws that most people respect. They aren't there to keep order. If they were necessary to keep order, we would be living in pandemonium.
As a corollary to this, police abuses are exactly the same as the thing the police exist to stop: outliers who don't respect laws that most people respect. The "few bad eggs." If you remove the tools that are necessary to deal with police abuse, you don't get a 100% abusive police department, because most police act the way we expect them to act--they protect and serve. But some don't.
There are plenty of cultures where police are mostly abusive, and where sensible laws are not respected. How does this happen? A culture of acceptance of corruption is all it takes. If you don't want to live in a culture like that, allowing people to record the police is crucial.
I think he's perhaps missing the point that their place in the internet is that they're the sites that take forever to load, and that we often surf away from because we think they're broken, and on which we can't find anything we need because they're usually not usefully indexed by Google. Not an enviable place, but certainly a place.
The most common place where I encounter flash in this context is restaurant web sites when I'm going to look at the menu. If I'm on an iPhone, I just don't go to that restaurant, or I go despite the web site, not because of it. I think restauranteurs don't realize that if I'm at their web site, it's because I already am interested in going to their restaurant, and what I need is information, not a glossy brochure.
Sigh.
I think Wired has some pretty interesting in-depth articles. But they're much easier to read on the web than in the print version. I'd love it if they figured out a way to make an interesting magazine on the iPad. But the one they just made isn't it. I think any magazine that demands a custom app to display it is barking up the wrong tree.
Obviously. Because you've tried it and it sucked, I presume? Or possibly you're just sure, because it's your opinion, so it must be true.
I've read quite a few books on it already, and it's been great. And no, I am not mentally insane (is there some other kind of insane?). Nor do I hate my eyes. My experience of it is that it's a lot like reading a hardcover book, only a little easier to hold up. The fonts aren't perfect, but they don't totally suck either. If every book I wanted were available on iPad, I probably wouldn't buy any paper books anymore.
Nope, more like ten minutes. I got it because people were crowing about how great it was, but it was mostly ads, and some fairly lame interactivity that could have been done better in Javascript on a web page. If this is the future of magazines, they can keep it. Don't waste your money.
Oh, plus, they warn you that they're tracking your viewing. I guess it was nice of them to warn us, but part of the Brave New magazine experience I am *not* looking for is a little mini- Conde Nast- panopticon.
Dammit, you're right. Sorry about that. I found a PDF of the actual letter in this much better article. I've typed in the names, but I make no promises about accuracy other than that I tried. And of course if the PDF was wrong, what I typed would also be wrong.
Gregory W. Meeks, Joseph Crowley, Charlie Gonzalez,
Gene Green, John Tanner, Travis Childers,
Michael McMahon, Loretta Sanchez, Ed Towns,
Chaka Fattah, Eddie Bernice Johnson, G. K. Butterfield,
John Barrow, Alcee L. Hastings, Walt Minnick,
Dan Boren, Suzanne Kosmas, Tim Holden,
Albio Sires, Dennis Moore, Joe Baca,
Solomon Ortiz, Henry Cueller, Tim Bishop,
Bobby Bright, Russ Carnahan, Silvestre Reyes,
Frank Kratovil, Jr., Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., Allyson Schwartz,
Lincoln Davis, Allen Boyd, William Lacy Clay,
Hank Johnson, Dennis A. Cardoza, Paul Tonko,
David Scot, Ed Perlmutter, Bennie G. Thompson,
Zachary T. Space, Baron P. Hill, Robert A. Brady,
Parker Griffith, Debbie L. Halvorson, Donna M. Christensen,
Charlie A. Wilson, Bill Foster, Jared Polis,
David B. Maffei, Steve Driehaus, Elijah E. Cummings,
Kathleen A. Dahlkemper, Marcia L. Fudge, Jim Costa,
Leonard L. Boswell, Mike Ross, Sheila Jackson-Lee,
John Spratt, Jr., Charlie Melancon, Peter Welch,
Michael Michaud, Al Green, Kurt Schrader,
Ed Pastor, Danny K. Davis, Michael Arcuri,
Glenn Nye, Heath Shuler, Rick Larsen,
Nick Rahall, Christopher P. Carney, Emanuel Cleaver
In case anybody's wondering if their congresscritter signed on to this letter, here's the list. You can get a laugh out of the "threat or danger" propaganda at this site too, if you're amused by that sort of thing.
The thing to pay attention to is that a total of just over 100 congresscritters signed either the blue dog democrat letter or the republican letter. So characterizing this as congress taking a position on what the FCC has done is nonsense, and it's unfortunate that cnet feels they can get away with such a blatant misrepresentation. This doesn't even represent a third of congress, much less a majority.
I used to think Declan McCullough was a reasonably intelligent fellow, but this is just a propaganda piece. Congress didn't do anything, and if hopes for net neutrality fade, it's because we believe this tripe, not because congress has said anything to anyone about anything.
BTW, if you think the printing press made copying "easy," you might want to rethink that. It made it *easier*, but not "easy." With the printing press, you can't make one copy for yourself. You have to make enough copies to amortize the labor of setting the type.
It's this cost structure that made copyright work the way it did. It still works now, but the way it works is different, and it doesn't address the problem we're talking about here anymore, because copying images displayed in the internet has a marginal cost of zero.
So you're engaging in what sounds like a pro bono copyright enforcement effort, getting people to take down your work, and getting paid zip for the effort. How is this a good idea? And how many infringements have you missed?
The place where your money comes from is getting people to *pay* you for your work, not getting people to *stop using* your work. This latter part is a cost center, not a profit center.
The most totalitarian governments we have ever experienced on this planet have done a pretty good job of killing off citizens they didn't like, but they have not done a very good job of controlling the flow of information between determined individuals. So no, the government can't stop copying. They can make us miserable trying, though, which is in fact my point.
I'm not arguing against copyright. I'm saying that copyright only does so much. If you want to make it do more, you have to have ever more draconian crackdowns with ever more punitive damages.
There are plenty of obvious ways to make money selling copyable things without copyright protection. One is that you don't ship any product until it's paid for, and don't expect any return after that. Another is that you ask people to pay. Many people won't, and a lot of people will. People are making a living on this model. *Lots* of people.
Another is that you sell schwag. Lots of people are making a living this way too.
Just because the old business model can't work without draconian control mechanisms doesn't mean that no business model can work without draconian control mechanisms.
I know, maybe we should just DRM everything!1!!1 That'll solve the problem.
No offense, man, but the universe doesn't owe you copyright. And unfortunately, the tradition of copyright depends on copying being hard. Now that it's easy, there's really no way to prevent people from doing this. You can send them nasty letters, but the water's coming in faster than you can bail. Like every other content producer, eventually you're going to have to learn to make money from the people who are willing to pay you.
I'm not saying it's just, or right, or good, but that's how it is. If somebody makes a shitload of money off a picture you took, sue *them*. Don't waste your time on small-time stuff.
It must be very satisfying to make these loud statements of fact, but unfortunately it doesn't affect the ability of patent holders to sue you. If you want to do something about that, make patent reform an issue that affects who you vote for. You do vote, right?
You can't patent your novel because the book was invented millennia ago, and has existed in its current form for a very long time--much longer than the term of any modern patent. You could conceivably have patented the interactive novel under this ruling, except that prior art exists for that too.
It sucks that the parasites^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpatent lawyers have figured out yet another way to suck the life out of our business, but pretending that it hasn't happened is not going to make things better.
What have you done to stop it? Do you know your representatives positions and voting histories on this issue?
It really wouldn't help--if anything, it would make things worse. Right now it's forbidden fruit. If it were completely unavailable, people simply wouldn't know about it, and wouldn't know what they were missing. There just aren't enough programmers in any given country for them alone to be a force for preventing this sort of stupidity. You have to get the end-users on board too.
Butbutbut oil volcano! Sea boiling! One third of all the creatures of the sea dead! This means I don't have to save for retirement, or deal with old age! I can just sit here playing with my iPad until the End comes, because it is all out of our hands, and therefore not my responsibility! Why are you being such a killjoy?!? Oil volcano!!1!!111
When Morris released the worm, there were no laws on the books specifically forbidding that activity, so there wasn't much they could charge him with. The MoD hackers were a test case for the new law that Morris' case led congress to pass. So yeah, it sucks, but you can't pass a law making something a crime and then charge someone for the crime of having done that thing before the law was passed. While there certainly are examples of the phenomenon you're talking about in law (e.g., the difference in sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine), this is not such an example.
Oh, forget that! How about how when you deprive the ball of plasma of oxygen by dunking it in water, it's snuffed out? Cuz fusion is basically just fire, only hotter...
Actually HP has a long history with Unix, both HP-UX and Digital's Unix product. They also have a long history of producing handhelds. This is a really smart move for them, if it works. Right now, they have this iPad-like thing, which is really cool, but only runs Windows, which, frankly, isn't going to be that great on it, and has been a failure in the same market for years. Now they have Palm OS, which is actually a really great product, despite its failure to capture the hearts and minds of enough customers. This means that they are in position to make a genuine run up against the iPad. Plus, they can throw out the x86 cpu in their tablet and replace it with an ARM CPU that will perform better and suck much less battery power.
So yeah, this is a really smart move, and I'm excited to see what they do with it. HP has a lot of management that's skilled at foot-shooting, but if they can get over their cultural tendency towards NIH and really invest in this product, it could be pretty cool.
Cox has lower limits than Comcast. Have you actually read the service agreement?
Cut trees are used for whatever brings the most profit. You talk about the paper industry like it's a single monolith, but it's actually a lot of little companies and big companies, each of which has their own practices. So what you say is probably true about some company or set of companies that you've had personal experience with, but it's not universally true.
And whether what you say is true for this particular paper company or not, making that nice paper you can put into your laser printer is nontrivial. It requires a lot of energy, and a lot of chemical processing. So the fundamental point of this article, mocking the idea that printing more is good, is correct. It is a really good idea to think before you print.
What this guy should be focusing on is how to adapt to the changing market, not how to get the market to stop changing. The market for beautiful acid-free paper whitened with peroxide is probably not going away any time soon, but the market for single-use printing is, and if you want to still be around in 20 years, it might be worth thinking about that.
Before you made this claim you might have benefited from a drive around British Columbia or eastern Washington and Oregon. Unfortunately, giant trees are routinely chipped. I agree with you that it's utterly stupid, and I wish that you were right that this beautiful wood was only going to appropriate purposes, like making beautiful homes or cabinetry.
There's a bit of a mixed metaphor when I talk about 100-year-old maples. The point is that there's a lot of second-growth forest around the U.S. in areas that were clearcut during the original settling of the country, in order to produce fields for farming, and have since lain fallow for fifty to a hundred years, and are now woodland again.
These lots have a mixture of maple and pine and oak, and various other varieties as well. They make for beautiful forests, and great habitat. And they're very profitable to cut down. Not all the wood goes for paper--you try to get the highest price you can for the wood you cut--but chipping wood for pulp is one place where the wood does go. And what is planted, if anything, after this mayhem, is not a diverse forest, but an ugly stand of pines in rows, intended to be cut down again in 40 years.
There's nothing wrong in principle with planting pines for harvest--we need wood for building, and the need for paper is never going to zero out, although I hope that we can get to the point where we're making good use of it, and not just printing on it and then throwing it away. But when someone gives you the cut-one, plant-three line, it pays to be skeptical. If you do the math, it's pretty obviously a deliberate attempt to mislead.