Fuck the idea of "due compensation". Should a mason be paid in perpetuum for the work he did on a store front?
Does the mason get paid a living wage on building the wall? Yes. Can the mason proceed to build an arbitrary number of walls? Yes. So the mason gets £x, €y or $z per hour, and can work hour after hour.
Now, what's the going rate for a songwriter's work? Pennies per unit. What's the going rate for a novellist's work? About £1, €1 or $1 per unit, if you're lucky.
So to compare copyright to manual labour, you're going to have to explain to me who on Earth is going to spend £5,000 to be the first person to listen to a single song, or £20,000 to be the first person to listen to a novel, and who is then going to be willing to let the rest of the world listen to it for free....
Simple solution: all men work in engineering, all women work on the bridge. No direct access from one to the other. Couples have private cabins with a door into each section. This way, all women can socialise with each other and all men can socialise with each other, but each man only socialises with one women and vice versa. No jealousy, no sneaky visits to the med room etc.
But the men still get to fantasise about what the womenfolk are up to with each other....
Earth's shield from cosmic radiation is its magnet field. What strength of magnetic field would you need to generate to protect a long-distance spacecraft? I'm aware that it's probably so strong it would induce cancer and cause mechanical and electrical failures on the spacecraft itself, but I'm just curious...
iTV has been a complete and utter failure compared to other DVR systems. The market is already saturated with cheap DVR devices that can do more than the iTV can and this is obvious to the outside observer.
And that is why they're adding stuff to the Apple TV that your average Far Eastern video box can't do.
Now, on the jubject at hand, I do agree with the above post that the platforms (Sony and Xbox, I don't really count Nintendo) offer very similar experiences. But wouldn't you blame that on the game developers and not the consoles? The developers have to turn a profit and if their games are only available on one system then that sort of limits the audience, no?
It's not a question of blame. Whatever the prime motivator for the lack of difference between Xbox and PS, the design of the Apple TV means that the same duplication is impossible, so by necessity, the games for it will have to be different from PSxyz games.
The "efficiency" is kind of reduced by the potential for a massive suit for monitoring and logging of data for purposes not stipulated in the contract. And the fact that after the first fine hits the news, everyone would uninstall the app.....
You're trolling, right? Most nintendo consoles are sold on the strength of super mario XXIV. Nintendo is no more or less guilty of sequel-itis and no more or less innovative than sony or microsoft.
Sequel != uninnovative.
Mario has long led innovation in platform games. Super Mario 64 was a world apart from Super Mario World. Then we got Super Mario Galaxy and Super Paper Mario, all producing a radically new experience, yet maintaining a certain continuity of Mario charm. Nintendo isn't a bland games factory, Nintendo is an inventor and an innovator.
Traffic in terms of what... page views or data? TPB has a very low bandwidth requirement -- there are very few images on their pages and the tracker files that are their raison d'être are smaller than most jpeg images, so it really isn't an expensive site to run per user. I don't know whether this means they're profitting or not, and I wouldn't like to claim either way.
Consider this: with several different HD sizes in frequent use, and even more computer screen geometries, for any given video you're going to find a lot of legitimate users viewing a radically resized version, so indiscriminate interference is unworkable. So who is this "specific combination" aimed at? YouTube. Could YouTube change their settings to get round this? Yes. Would YouTube change their settings to get round this? No. Because they would then be actively facilitating piracy and in breach of the DMCA. Any change of the YouTube reencoding settings would have to be thoroughly justified with some other goal, or they'd see themselves sued to bits.
So because no other monuments of that scale were built (or didn't last until present day (which means because no proof exists today means that it never existed under your claim?)) that means the pagans (or druids, or whatever you want to call them) died off (or their culture as you claim? I didn't realize they were a separate civilization) shortly after Stonehenge was built... I'm sorry, but that explanation just doesn't wash.
Hold up... "the pagans"... there's no single group called that, so for them to die off is illogical. "The Druids"... they were still going well into the Roman era. My point was that we have no proof it was druids who built Stonehenge, and that claim was always simply built on the fact that they were the earliest well-documented group in the British Isles, thanks to the Romans. But now we have archaeology and common sense -- druidism probably wasn't around in those days. Druidism is mostly linked to mainland European Celtic culture, and the Celts aren't thought to have reached Britain until over a millenium after Stonehenge. Druidism isn't even thought to have come over with the first wave of Celtic culture (it's only well attested in regions near the channel, and the Gaels in the north and west of the archipelago had a fairly standard pantheistic mythology with clear parallels to Greek, Roman and Germanic legends, rather than the obscure animism of the druids).
But civilisations don't die out. They adapt. Stonehenge was hard work, and was really a fairly hamfisted affair. They will have found better ways to get the same results.
The pagans who built Stonehenge gradually grew thinner in numbers as other religions (Christianity) started to sweep through England. Eventually Paganism was outlawed and more or less died off (except for the rumored underground pagan cults)
Sorry, that doesn't wash. Stonehenge is between two-and-a-half and three millenia older than mainstream Christianity in Great Britain, yet after Stonehenge we don't see monumental architecture on such a scale anywhere. It is not proven that the Druids built Stonehenge, but even if they did, there is a big difference between "religion" and "civilisation".
Consider that up until about 100 years ago, most of Europe was institutionally Christian. The Roman Empire was Christian in the latter half of its duration. If religion == civilisation, then our grandfathers were Romans, and we are a different civilisation from our grandparents. And on the other hand, Rome under Constantine was a different "civilisation" than before his ascendancy. Yet the trappings of Roman civilisation -- art, architecture, commerce, etc -- continued.
It's quite possible that henge technology simply became obsolete as artisans found ways to make smaller sundials out of wood. Or maybe they were happy enough with the stone circles they had that they stopped building them and forgot how to make them.
In fact, Stonehenge is notable for being recent -- it was the pinnacle of the great stone monuments, one of the last and certainly the most monumental. Comparing a potential "first" to a recognised "last" is a bit disengenuous.
Sorry, your reasoning of "US money for US people" is all well and good, but the US also makes a lot of money from exporting digital goods (Microsoft alone generate more revenue than the GDP of a small country in overseas sales), and American companies also manufacture things in the Far East for sale to Europe, making profit on goods that never even touch down in US territory (eg Ford, Fender musical instruments, Nike). That's not to mention the massive US-owned stake in Middle Eastern oil. That's lots of money being generated overseas but being taken out of their economies to bolster the US's. If you were to close your borders, you would be much worse off, believe me.
It's not about "dismantling" our economy, it's about letting it revert to its natural state by removing the artificial support of continued subjugation of the third world.
We will be responsible for the "sins of our leaders" if we actively campaign to get them to continue to commit those self-same sins.
What you have here (what you have always had here) are a number of competing nation-states, no more and no less. Some of those states are staking a claim upon the assets of their more-successful competitors in the name of "globalism". Face facts: globalism and free-trade are nothing but legalized mechanisms for transferring wealth and technological capability from wealthy nations to developing ones. Period, end-of-statement.
Nope, you have companies. The country "India" isn't directly bidding for call centre work. The "more successful" countries are traditionally the ones with most gunpowder. Economic wealth is all relative -- we are rich because they are poor. We are rich because we can buy their time cheaply. And this means we will cease to be rich if we don't buy their time, because our time is expensive, and we get less of it for our money.
Our lives are built around cheap clothing, consumer electronics and even foodstuffs that we can only afford to import because of this wage disparity. It would be hypocritical of me to complain about Indian call centres when most of the clothes I wear were made there (Indian cotton and all that).
Ok, but if they didn't offshore, they'd be uncompetitive and they'd fold. So not only would the call centre staff lose their jobs, the whole workforce would be in the firing line. And there wouldn't be any redundancy pay.
So, do I blame the people of China or India or any other developing nation for wanting a better life? No... but nor do I see that as a reason for me and mine to give up what generations of our forefathers built for us.
Western Europe and North America are merely reaping what our forefathers sowed over several centuries. Our society is built on a foundation of suppression of people with different coloured skin. Even when we stopped enslaving them, we continued to govern their countries for our own profit. Even when we gave them independence, we still exploited them economically, bribing corrupt government officials in order to get access to cheap natural resources that we rip from the ground with no attention paid to the local environment.
It is this domination of the world that has kept wages low in Africa and Asia, and so we have made our own nemesis. And the suffering that an economic levelling will cause to Western Europe and North America is nothing like the suffering that we have visited upon others.
From slavery and massacres in the third world, to the handing over of entire Eastern European countries to Stalin, history has one message: us white dudes are bastards.
Or do you believe universe itself has "laws of ethics", sort of like physical laws?
Yes. It's just that the laws of ethics operate in the domain of quantum physics. Everything is inherently both ethical and unethical until such time as you open the box and find a dead cat in it....
Slashdot Mirror
Fuck the idea of "due compensation". Should a mason be paid in perpetuum for the work he did on a store front?
Does the mason get paid a living wage on building the wall? Yes. Can the mason proceed to build an arbitrary number of walls? Yes. So the mason gets £x, €y or $z per hour, and can work hour after hour.
Now, what's the going rate for a songwriter's work? Pennies per unit. What's the going rate for a novellist's work? About £1, €1 or $1 per unit, if you're lucky.
So to compare copyright to manual labour, you're going to have to explain to me who on Earth is going to spend £5,000 to be the first person to listen to a single song, or £20,000 to be the first person to listen to a novel, and who is then going to be willing to let the rest of the world listen to it for free....
HAL
But Orwell is also an example of how a book can be misinterpreted -- Animal Farm is commonly misread as a critique of communism.
HAL.
OK, so absorption of high-energy photons is problematic. What about refraction, diffraction or reflection?
HAL.
Simple solution: all men work in engineering, all women work on the bridge. No direct access from one to the other. Couples have private cabins with a door into each section. This way, all women can socialise with each other and all men can socialise with each other, but each man only socialises with one women and vice versa. No jealousy, no sneaky visits to the med room etc.
But the men still get to fantasise about what the womenfolk are up to with each other....
HAL.
Earth's shield from cosmic radiation is its magnet field. What strength of magnetic field would you need to generate to protect a long-distance spacecraft? I'm aware that it's probably so strong it would induce cancer and cause mechanical and electrical failures on the spacecraft itself, but I'm just curious...
Does anyone know?
HAL.
Ah no, but I own a book and if I don't like a page I can tear it out, so I've got freedom.
(This is sarcasm)
iTV has been a complete and utter failure compared to other DVR systems. The market is already saturated with cheap DVR devices that can do more than the iTV can and this is obvious to the outside observer.
And that is why they're adding stuff to the Apple TV that your average Far Eastern video box can't do.
Now, on the jubject at hand, I do agree with the above post that the platforms (Sony and Xbox, I don't really count Nintendo) offer very similar experiences. But wouldn't you blame that on the game developers and not the consoles? The developers have to turn a profit and if their games are only available on one system then that sort of limits the audience, no?
It's not a question of blame. Whatever the prime motivator for the lack of difference between Xbox and PS, the design of the Apple TV means that the same duplication is impossible, so by necessity, the games for it will have to be different from PSxyz games.
HAL.
The "efficiency" is kind of reduced by the potential for a massive suit for monitoring and logging of data for purposes not stipulated in the contract. And the fact that after the first fine hits the news, everyone would uninstall the app.....
HAL.
Me neither. Cos otherwise Sony will sue me for having commented.
HAL.
You're trolling, right? Most nintendo consoles are sold on the strength of super mario XXIV. Nintendo is no more or less guilty of sequel-itis and no more or less innovative than sony or microsoft.
Sequel != uninnovative.
Mario has long led innovation in platform games. Super Mario 64 was a world apart from Super Mario World. Then we got Super Mario Galaxy and Super Paper Mario, all producing a radically new experience, yet maintaining a certain continuity of Mario charm. Nintendo isn't a bland games factory, Nintendo is an inventor and an innovator.
HAL.
Traffic in terms of what... page views or data? TPB has a very low bandwidth requirement -- there are very few images on their pages and the tracker files that are their raison d'être are smaller than most jpeg images, so it really isn't an expensive site to run per user. I don't know whether this means they're profitting or not, and I wouldn't like to claim either way.
HAL.
Consider this: with several different HD sizes in frequent use, and even more computer screen geometries, for any given video you're going to find a lot of legitimate users viewing a radically resized version, so indiscriminate interference is unworkable. So who is this "specific combination" aimed at? YouTube. Could YouTube change their settings to get round this? Yes. Would YouTube change their settings to get round this? No. Because they would then be actively facilitating piracy and in breach of the DMCA. Any change of the YouTube reencoding settings would have to be thoroughly justified with some other goal, or they'd see themselves sued to bits.
HAL.
So because no other monuments of that scale were built (or didn't last until present day (which means because no proof exists today means that it never existed under your claim?)) that means the pagans (or druids, or whatever you want to call them) died off (or their culture as you claim? I didn't realize they were a separate civilization) shortly after Stonehenge was built... I'm sorry, but that explanation just doesn't wash.
Hold up... "the pagans"... there's no single group called that, so for them to die off is illogical. "The Druids"... they were still going well into the Roman era. My point was that we have no proof it was druids who built Stonehenge, and that claim was always simply built on the fact that they were the earliest well-documented group in the British Isles, thanks to the Romans. But now we have archaeology and common sense -- druidism probably wasn't around in those days. Druidism is mostly linked to mainland European Celtic culture, and the Celts aren't thought to have reached Britain until over a millenium after Stonehenge. Druidism isn't even thought to have come over with the first wave of Celtic culture (it's only well attested in regions near the channel, and the Gaels in the north and west of the archipelago had a fairly standard pantheistic mythology with clear parallels to Greek, Roman and Germanic legends, rather than the obscure animism of the druids).
But civilisations don't die out. They adapt. Stonehenge was hard work, and was really a fairly hamfisted affair. They will have found better ways to get the same results.
The pagans who built Stonehenge gradually grew thinner in numbers as other religions (Christianity) started to sweep through England. Eventually Paganism was outlawed and more or less died off (except for the rumored underground pagan cults)
Sorry, that doesn't wash. Stonehenge is between two-and-a-half and three millenia older than mainstream Christianity in Great Britain, yet after Stonehenge we don't see monumental architecture on such a scale anywhere. It is not proven that the Druids built Stonehenge, but even if they did, there is a big difference between "religion" and "civilisation".
Consider that up until about 100 years ago, most of Europe was institutionally Christian. The Roman Empire was Christian in the latter half of its duration. If religion == civilisation, then our grandfathers were Romans, and we are a different civilisation from our grandparents. And on the other hand, Rome under Constantine was a different "civilisation" than before his ascendancy. Yet the trappings of Roman civilisation -- art, architecture, commerce, etc -- continued.
It's quite possible that henge technology simply became obsolete as artisans found ways to make smaller sundials out of wood. Or maybe they were happy enough with the stone circles they had that they stopped building them and forgot how to make them.
HAL.
In fact, Stonehenge is notable for being recent -- it was the pinnacle of the great stone monuments, one of the last and certainly the most monumental. Comparing a potential "first" to a recognised "last" is a bit disengenuous.
My point is that they're winning this business by fair competition. That's OK in my book. They're not walking up and shooting people.
Sorry, your reasoning of "US money for US people" is all well and good, but the US also makes a lot of money from exporting digital goods (Microsoft alone generate more revenue than the GDP of a small country in overseas sales), and American companies also manufacture things in the Far East for sale to Europe, making profit on goods that never even touch down in US territory (eg Ford, Fender musical instruments, Nike). That's not to mention the massive US-owned stake in Middle Eastern oil. That's lots of money being generated overseas but being taken out of their economies to bolster the US's. If you were to close your borders, you would be much worse off, believe me.
HAL.
It's not about "dismantling" our economy, it's about letting it revert to its natural state by removing the artificial support of continued subjugation of the third world.
We will be responsible for the "sins of our leaders" if we actively campaign to get them to continue to commit those self-same sins.
HAL.
...and Information's parents wish they'd learnt about firewalls.
What you have here (what you have always had here) are a number of competing nation-states, no more and no less. Some of those states are staking a claim upon the assets of their more-successful competitors in the name of "globalism". Face facts: globalism and free-trade are nothing but legalized mechanisms for transferring wealth and technological capability from wealthy nations to developing ones. Period, end-of-statement.
Nope, you have companies. The country "India" isn't directly bidding for call centre work. The "more successful" countries are traditionally the ones with most gunpowder. Economic wealth is all relative -- we are rich because they are poor. We are rich because we can buy their time cheaply. And this means we will cease to be rich if we don't buy their time, because our time is expensive, and we get less of it for our money.
Our lives are built around cheap clothing, consumer electronics and even foodstuffs that we can only afford to import because of this wage disparity. It would be hypocritical of me to complain about Indian call centres when most of the clothes I wear were made there (Indian cotton and all that).
HAL.
In the end, it all comes down to one thing: some people have stuff that other people want, and they'll try and take it any way they can.
Exactly.
Panama had a canal. Iraq has oil.
HAL.
Ok, but if they didn't offshore, they'd be uncompetitive and they'd fold. So not only would the call centre staff lose their jobs, the whole workforce would be in the firing line. And there wouldn't be any redundancy pay.
HAL.
So, do I blame the people of China or India or any other developing nation for wanting a better life? No ... but nor do I see that as a reason for me and mine to give up what generations of our forefathers built for us.
Western Europe and North America are merely reaping what our forefathers sowed over several centuries. Our society is built on a foundation of suppression of people with different coloured skin. Even when we stopped enslaving them, we continued to govern their countries for our own profit. Even when we gave them independence, we still exploited them economically, bribing corrupt government officials in order to get access to cheap natural resources that we rip from the ground with no attention paid to the local environment.
It is this domination of the world that has kept wages low in Africa and Asia, and so we have made our own nemesis. And the suffering that an economic levelling will cause to Western Europe and North America is nothing like the suffering that we have visited upon others.
From slavery and massacres in the third world, to the handing over of entire Eastern European countries to Stalin, history has one message: us white dudes are bastards.
HAL.
Or do you believe universe itself has "laws of ethics", sort of like physical laws?
Yes. It's just that the laws of ethics operate in the domain of quantum physics. Everything is inherently both ethical and unethical until such time as you open the box and find a dead cat in it....
HAL.