Lets see, we have the chemical definition of "organic," on which a diamond is, of course, not organic (because it has to have C and H). We have the usage of "arising organically" which is supposed to mean something like "coming together in a way that resembles natural processes". And then we have what is apparently your favored definition, something like "arising on earth without human intervention" (or something, I'm not totally sure what). And then we have the food-industry word, which is really a legal word defined by the USDA to denote certain standards of food production.
So, which of these definitions would you like to call "correct" and which are "incorrect"?
Well, it turns out that plain english is not always as precise as it needs to be for the formulation of laws and legal principles. Witness, for example, the amount of legal scholarship that has gone into figuring out how we ought to define words like "reasonable" and "intent."
Law is a profession, and like any other complicated and substantive profession it has its own vocabulary. In a well run courtroom, the legalese will be reserved for arguing points of law in front of the judge - points that the jury isn't supposed to be concerned with. Then, when trying to establish the actual facts of the case, a lawyer ought to speak in a way the jury understands. He fails to do this at his own peril.
Of course, there are a lot of crappy lawyers out there, so I'm sure juries often do get confused by issues that they are not supposed to be deciding in the first place. When this happens they should ask the judge for clarification.
Allowing juries to taint themselves by giving them internet access during deliberations is probably one of the worst possible solutions to this problem.
Yes. That is also why jurors are not supposed to reach decisions on matters of law, only matters of fact. If the jury members need to understand the legalese someone is doing something wrong.
Whoa there. You might note that I went out of my way to agree with your basic point, so perhaps the hostility is a bit much?
And anyway, how is what I said a straw man argument? Quite the contrary, I made a point of vindicating you by mentioning the crappy SSD when I easily could've not mentioned it and let you Google "HP Mini 1000" yourself. And I never once claimed my netbook was brand new. Besides, your original observation wasn't about new netbooks, it was just about netbooks in general:
A netbook is nearly identical to a $2000 prissy Sony laptop from 5 years ago.
Is my Mini 1000 with the crappy hard drive not "a netbook"? If your point wasn't about the state of the art, how is my mention of a six-month old machine "out of date" information?
This is apparently the price one pays for trying to have an honest and civil dialoge around here.
Dawkins' point is an epistemological one. We have a perfectly good explanation for how the life that we see on earth today evolved, through (internally) random processes, from more primitive ancestors. Thus, it is not rational to introduce a new agent, God, to our concepts of the universe to explain what we can already explain without him.
I take it that you are arguing that, given what we know from computer science, the evolutionary process may well be designed by God. And this is true. But the point is that there is no positive reason to make this leap. Therefore you shouldn't make it. A standard for rational belief has to require a positive reason for the belief and not its mere compatibility with the observed evidence. If compatibility is all you require, then a whole flood of unverifiable propositions sneak in the back door. Suddenly you have reason to believe in invisible fairies, haecceities, ghosts, any force you can think of a name for (and then some) that has no observable effect on matter, etc.
Well, you might think these things, but I believe that I just presented empirical data to the contrary. I don't pretend to fully understand why this is the way it is. Although, since you mention video cards, the Sony has a discrete card that beats the pants off of whatever the Mini 1000 has. Of course, this comes at the cost of battery life which is one area in which the Mini comes out on top.
It is true that I upgraded the Sony's RAM... then again I upgraded the netbook's too... so I'm not sure what conclusion to draw here.
You would be right about the storage except that the netbook has an SSD so it's actually much smaller. You might, therefore, think that it would be faster than the Sony's HDD. But it's not. It doesn't have one of those snazzy, new, spinning-platter-killer SSDs that they sell today. It has whatever crap HP was sticking in Netbooks in March of '09 which, I must say, is probably the most pathetic part of the machine. One assumes that I would be much happier is I were to go out and buy a new SSD today.
This highlights the fact that your original comment may well be much truer of netbooks bought today than of netbooks purchased at the beginning of the year. I don't know. I'm just providing what empirical data I can.
Anecdotal evidence: I have a 5 year-old $2000, prissy Sony laptop and an HP Mini 1000. The Sony still kicks the netbook's ass hands down. But your general point (I think) is well taken - the performance that we get out of netbooks now isn't that much different than the tech we paid top dollar for only a few years ago. Now that it's not fancy and "cutting edge" (and sprinkle in some advancements in miniaturization, power management, etc.) the price and size have come down and it's no less capable than it was back then.
Don't worry, the next step up from viruses are lawyers. Since they have to put them in a vacuum and hit them with a laser, line 'em up and put it on Youtube... in the name of science!
Where do I sign up? (But are you sure you want to contend with mutant zombie lawyers on top of the regular ones?)
Well, did you read the GP? It rightly points out that, because musical recordings are not one of the types of work enumerated in the Copyright Act as being the types of work that can be a WFH, courts haven't always accepted claims to this effect from labels. So, the point of the more elaborate stipulation (involving explicit assignment of rights) that I suggested is that it provides a backstop for the label in case the courts in the relevant jurisdiction don't buy the WFH move.
Also, you seem to be assuming that I'm merely speculating as to whether this sort of clause is included in recording contracts. but I'm not. I do know for a fact that it is included in at least some, and I have it on good authority that it is included routinely. Make of that what you will.
Well, I think we're both half right. Recording contracts supposedly often include language to this effect: "artists works will be considered works for hire, unless the courts don't think the works meet the criteria. In that case, the artist assigns his rights to the label."
Sometimes the labels have made the argument that recordings are collective works (and thus, for hire) depending on who hired the studio, producers, engineers, backup singers, extra band members, etc. But it's also true that these days its more common for the artists to handle all of this themselves, which pretty well dodges that sort of argument.
The fact remains that this all hinges on what is actually written in the contract. But it sounds like we agree that its likely that the label has gotten the rights one way or the other.
Of course, I also only half know what I'm talking about. I am a law student, but not one with any interest in entertainment law. This also, of course, means IANAL (yet).
Well, it doesn't actually matter that they're employees. Under US law (which we're apparently pretending applies in Mexico), any Work For Hire is generally considered the property of the party that did the hiring. The definition of a Work for Hire from the Copyright Act:
Works Made for Hire. -- (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. (17 U.S.C. sec 101)
Of course it's an open question whether their contract said that their work was a work for hire, but it seems likely to me. This is generally how labels work. (That's why the label sues you for infringement, not the artist.)
Well, it sounds like you're just saying that it's a shame that they weren't able to do a better job. And surely that's true. So, if that is indeed what you're saying, we have no disagreement.
It's just that it sounded to me like you were saying "Why do something if you can't do it perfectly?" and that seemed to me like an obvious mistake. I'm glad to hear, then, that I misunderstood.
You ask "Why did they bother?" as though their archive is of no use whatsoever in its current state and we should all just wait for the completion of the "long term project" (that nobody, to my knowledge and as you define it, is working on). On the contrary, Google's project is extremely useful if you are interested in something other than the borked metadata like, I don't know, the words actually written in the books.
"A public option will be cheaper"... that's not true, for if such a thing existed the private market would have done it already. It hasn't.
Suppose this existed, this magical method, don't you think a private company would copy it and then beat the public plan ? Don't you think someone would have picked up the idea... you know... 50 years ago... and created such a company ?
I have told you what this "magical method" is, and proven that it can work by providing two concrete examples. You have given no reply other than repeating "it's impossible." You're wrong, and I have shown how and why.
Of course, the private market hasn't done what I suggest because it can't. This is the whole point. A private company that cuts costs by eliminating marketing and large executive salaries (among other things) will not survive. This is because a private company needs to make PROFIT. While a government entity need only break even.
We could just as easily be having this argument about the postal system, only there we need only look back at the last 100 years of history to see that you are wrong and that the economic forces you imagine do not exist.
It flies in the face of common sense, and obviously of economic theory, and history.
I say again: it does not. You have simply asserted this over and over again, not once giving a defense of it when I press you for one. Since your entire line of reasoning hinges on it, I suggest you give it a shot one of these days.
It is ironic that, the more you imply that I don't know the first thing about economics, the more you demonstrate that it is you who needs an education.
You have still not given one iota of explanation why your cheap, low quality insurance package has to be public.
This is obviously false. In fact, to anyone that has read this thread carefully, it will be glaringly, screamingly, painfully false. It is so ridiculous that I hesitate even to respond to it. But I'm a glutton for punishment, so here it is yet again:
But I think [a health care reform package] would be better with a public option to help keep costs down for members of private plans. Since, in many markets, there is only one health insurance provider, we need to do something to break up the monopolies and bring competition back to the market to keep prices down. (though I might be open to other ways of breaking up the monopolies as well)
Now, I take it that, for reasons you have yet to state, you think that the laws of economics somehow say that this is impossible. I have repeatedly said that economics dictates no such thing. In fact, I have just finished showing how this is possible. All you have done in reply is to attempt to poke holes in a few (hardly all!) of the examples I've given of ways the government could run an insurance plan more cheaply than private enterprise.
But, more importantly, I have given empirical evidence:
1. A Rand Corp. report showing that private insurance plans spend 30% of the money they receive in premiums on administrative overhead. Medicare, meanwhile, spends 3%.
2. The US Postal System. While not exactly a model for government run corporations, it it is still cheaper to mail a letter via the USPS than by FedEx. Now, it might be slower, but it certainly is cheaper and cost is what you were asking about.
I have not read one word from you addressing these points. In the meantime, I have no choice but to assume that you have no reply to them and that, indeed, they show your contentions about economic reality to to be as misguided as I believe them to be, and borne merely out of ignorance of the content of anyreal economic theory.
So what now? I am sitting at a red stoplight, which I know takes at least a minute to switch. I can't take 10 seconds to text someone that I'll be late? It's perfectly safe and the worst thing is that I'll get honked at if the light turns green before I pay attention. I have made a thoughtful, careful choice. Yet according to the law, I am as bad as a drunk driver. Fuck yeah America!
I think this is just an incorrect interpretation of the law. The law only punishes you if you are texting while causing a fatal accident. I don't see how this is possible while stopped at a red light. By punishing the texter only when his behavior causes fatalities, they have gone out of their way to make it possible to do exactly what you envision without penalty: text responsibly while stopped at a light, or in some other safe situation while punishing the truly reckless.
So now you're going to save money by having a bad insurance. One that will save money, by, amonst others, sabotaging medicine by "saving" on research ?
There are two mistakes in here that infect all of what you've just said.
1. That public insurance might not be as good as private insurance does not mean that the public insurance will be "bad". It just means that someone with some money to burn might want better insurance. Are Toyotas bad cars? No. But that doesn't mean that BMWs and Porsches aren't better.
2. I didn't say that the public plan would save by cutting medical research. I said it would save by cutting medical underwriting research. These are very different things. Underwriting research is the research that private insurance companies perform to discover ways of identifying and then eliminating higher-risk people in their customer base. That is, identifying people who are disproportionately likely to actually need medical care so that they can raise their premiums or deny them insurance entirely. This, not medical research, is one of the things that a public plan would save money by cutting.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy question. They're supposed to be sent out of the room. They are expected to tolerate the boredom. I myself don't think that's too much to ask.
Can't words have multiple definitions?
Lets see, we have the chemical definition of "organic," on which a diamond is, of course, not organic (because it has to have C and H). We have the usage of "arising organically" which is supposed to mean something like "coming together in a way that resembles natural processes". And then we have what is apparently your favored definition, something like "arising on earth without human intervention" (or something, I'm not totally sure what). And then we have the food-industry word, which is really a legal word defined by the USDA to denote certain standards of food production.
So, which of these definitions would you like to call "correct" and which are "incorrect"?
Well, it turns out that plain english is not always as precise as it needs to be for the formulation of laws and legal principles. Witness, for example, the amount of legal scholarship that has gone into figuring out how we ought to define words like "reasonable" and "intent."
Law is a profession, and like any other complicated and substantive profession it has its own vocabulary. In a well run courtroom, the legalese will be reserved for arguing points of law in front of the judge - points that the jury isn't supposed to be concerned with. Then, when trying to establish the actual facts of the case, a lawyer ought to speak in a way the jury understands. He fails to do this at his own peril.
Of course, there are a lot of crappy lawyers out there, so I'm sure juries often do get confused by issues that they are not supposed to be deciding in the first place. When this happens they should ask the judge for clarification.
Allowing juries to taint themselves by giving them internet access during deliberations is probably one of the worst possible solutions to this problem.
True, but a judge ought to tell them those things in their jury instructions.
Yes. That is also why jurors are not supposed to reach decisions on matters of law, only matters of fact. If the jury members need to understand the legalese someone is doing something wrong.
Whoa there. You might note that I went out of my way to agree with your basic point, so perhaps the hostility is a bit much?
And anyway, how is what I said a straw man argument? Quite the contrary, I made a point of vindicating you by mentioning the crappy SSD when I easily could've not mentioned it and let you Google "HP Mini 1000" yourself. And I never once claimed my netbook was brand new. Besides, your original observation wasn't about new netbooks, it was just about netbooks in general:
A netbook is nearly identical to a $2000 prissy Sony laptop from 5 years ago.
Is my Mini 1000 with the crappy hard drive not "a netbook"? If your point wasn't about the state of the art, how is my mention of a six-month old machine "out of date" information?
This is apparently the price one pays for trying to have an honest and civil dialoge around here.
Dawkins' point is an epistemological one. We have a perfectly good explanation for how the life that we see on earth today evolved, through (internally) random processes, from more primitive ancestors. Thus, it is not rational to introduce a new agent, God, to our concepts of the universe to explain what we can already explain without him.
I take it that you are arguing that, given what we know from computer science, the evolutionary process may well be designed by God. And this is true. But the point is that there is no positive reason to make this leap. Therefore you shouldn't make it. A standard for rational belief has to require a positive reason for the belief and not its mere compatibility with the observed evidence. If compatibility is all you require, then a whole flood of unverifiable propositions sneak in the back door. Suddenly you have reason to believe in invisible fairies, haecceities, ghosts, any force you can think of a name for (and then some) that has no observable effect on matter, etc.
Well, you might think these things, but I believe that I just presented empirical data to the contrary. I don't pretend to fully understand why this is the way it is. Although, since you mention video cards, the Sony has a discrete card that beats the pants off of whatever the Mini 1000 has. Of course, this comes at the cost of battery life which is one area in which the Mini comes out on top.
It is true that I upgraded the Sony's RAM ... then again I upgraded the netbook's too... so I'm not sure what conclusion to draw here.
You would be right about the storage except that the netbook has an SSD so it's actually much smaller. You might, therefore, think that it would be faster than the Sony's HDD. But it's not. It doesn't have one of those snazzy, new, spinning-platter-killer SSDs that they sell today. It has whatever crap HP was sticking in Netbooks in March of '09 which, I must say, is probably the most pathetic part of the machine. One assumes that I would be much happier is I were to go out and buy a new SSD today.
This highlights the fact that your original comment may well be much truer of netbooks bought today than of netbooks purchased at the beginning of the year. I don't know. I'm just providing what empirical data I can.
Anecdotal evidence: I have a 5 year-old $2000, prissy Sony laptop and an HP Mini 1000. The Sony still kicks the netbook's ass hands down. But your general point (I think) is well taken - the performance that we get out of netbooks now isn't that much different than the tech we paid top dollar for only a few years ago. Now that it's not fancy and "cutting edge" (and sprinkle in some advancements in miniaturization, power management, etc.) the price and size have come down and it's no less capable than it was back then.
Don't worry, the next step up from viruses are lawyers. Since they have to put them in a vacuum and hit them with a laser, line 'em up and put it on Youtube ... in the name of science!
Where do I sign up? (But are you sure you want to contend with mutant zombie lawyers on top of the regular ones?)
But could you use the exam software?
Well, did you read the GP? It rightly points out that, because musical recordings are not one of the types of work enumerated in the Copyright Act as being the types of work that can be a WFH, courts haven't always accepted claims to this effect from labels. So, the point of the more elaborate stipulation (involving explicit assignment of rights) that I suggested is that it provides a backstop for the label in case the courts in the relevant jurisdiction don't buy the WFH move.
Also, you seem to be assuming that I'm merely speculating as to whether this sort of clause is included in recording contracts. but I'm not. I do know for a fact that it is included in at least some, and I have it on good authority that it is included routinely. Make of that what you will.
Well, I think we're both half right. Recording contracts supposedly often include language to this effect: "artists works will be considered works for hire, unless the courts don't think the works meet the criteria. In that case, the artist assigns his rights to the label."
Sometimes the labels have made the argument that recordings are collective works (and thus, for hire) depending on who hired the studio, producers, engineers, backup singers, extra band members, etc. But it's also true that these days its more common for the artists to handle all of this themselves, which pretty well dodges that sort of argument.
The fact remains that this all hinges on what is actually written in the contract. But it sounds like we agree that its likely that the label has gotten the rights one way or the other.
Of course, I also only half know what I'm talking about. I am a law student, but not one with any interest in entertainment law. This also, of course, means IANAL (yet).
Well, it doesn't actually matter that they're employees. Under US law (which we're apparently pretending applies in Mexico), any Work For Hire is generally considered the property of the party that did the hiring. The definition of a Work for Hire from the Copyright Act:
Works Made for Hire. -- (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. (17 U.S.C. sec 101)
Of course it's an open question whether their contract said that their work was a work for hire, but it seems likely to me. This is generally how labels work. (That's why the label sues you for infringement, not the artist.)
Don't worry, only the stupid ones.
Well, it sounds like you're just saying that it's a shame that they weren't able to do a better job. And surely that's true. So, if that is indeed what you're saying, we have no disagreement.
It's just that it sounded to me like you were saying "Why do something if you can't do it perfectly?" and that seemed to me like an obvious mistake. I'm glad to hear, then, that I misunderstood.
You ask "Why did they bother?" as though their archive is of no use whatsoever in its current state and we should all just wait for the completion of the "long term project" (that nobody, to my knowledge and as you define it, is working on). On the contrary, Google's project is extremely useful if you are interested in something other than the borked metadata like, I don't know, the words actually written in the books.
The death panels are real! And they're run by NASA!
Right. (sort of) But he wasn't talking about legal persons. He was talking about the regular kind.
This is exactly right. Someone should mod you up.
"A public option will be cheaper" ... that's not true, for if such a thing existed the private market would have done it already. It hasn't.
Suppose this existed, this magical method, don't you think a private company would copy it and then beat the public plan ? Don't you think someone would have picked up the idea ... you know ... 50 years ago ... and created such a company ?
I have told you what this "magical method" is, and proven that it can work by providing two concrete examples. You have given no reply other than repeating "it's impossible." You're wrong, and I have shown how and why.
Of course, the private market hasn't done what I suggest because it can't. This is the whole point. A private company that cuts costs by eliminating marketing and large executive salaries (among other things) will not survive. This is because a private company needs to make PROFIT. While a government entity need only break even.
We could just as easily be having this argument about the postal system, only there we need only look back at the last 100 years of history to see that you are wrong and that the economic forces you imagine do not exist.
It flies in the face of common sense, and obviously of economic theory, and history.
I say again: it does not. You have simply asserted this over and over again, not once giving a defense of it when I press you for one. Since your entire line of reasoning hinges on it, I suggest you give it a shot one of these days.
It is ironic that, the more you imply that I don't know the first thing about economics, the more you demonstrate that it is you who needs an education.
You have still not given one iota of explanation why your cheap, low quality insurance package has to be public.
This is obviously false. In fact, to anyone that has read this thread carefully, it will be glaringly, screamingly, painfully false. It is so ridiculous that I hesitate even to respond to it. But I'm a glutton for punishment, so here it is yet again:
But I think [a health care reform package] would be better with a public option to help keep costs down for members of private plans. Since, in many markets, there is only one health insurance provider, we need to do something to break up the monopolies and bring competition back to the market to keep prices down. (though I might be open to other ways of breaking up the monopolies as well)
Now, I take it that, for reasons you have yet to state, you think that the laws of economics somehow say that this is impossible. I have repeatedly said that economics dictates no such thing. In fact, I have just finished showing how this is possible. All you have done in reply is to attempt to poke holes in a few (hardly all!) of the examples I've given of ways the government could run an insurance plan more cheaply than private enterprise.
But, more importantly, I have given empirical evidence:
1. A Rand Corp. report showing that private insurance plans spend 30% of the money they receive in premiums on administrative overhead. Medicare, meanwhile, spends 3%.
2. The US Postal System. While not exactly a model for government run corporations, it it is still cheaper to mail a letter via the USPS than by FedEx. Now, it might be slower, but it certainly is cheaper and cost is what you were asking about.
I have not read one word from you addressing these points. In the meantime, I have no choice but to assume that you have no reply to them and that, indeed, they show your contentions about economic reality to to be as misguided as I believe them to be, and borne merely out of ignorance of the content of anyreal economic theory.
I'm still waiting.
So what now? I am sitting at a red stoplight, which I know takes at least a minute to switch. I can't take 10 seconds to text someone that I'll be late? It's perfectly safe and the worst thing is that I'll get honked at if the light turns green before I pay attention. I have made a thoughtful, careful choice. Yet according to the law, I am as bad as a drunk driver. Fuck yeah America!
I think this is just an incorrect interpretation of the law. The law only punishes you if you are texting while causing a fatal accident. I don't see how this is possible while stopped at a red light. By punishing the texter only when his behavior causes fatalities, they have gone out of their way to make it possible to do exactly what you envision without penalty: text responsibly while stopped at a light, or in some other safe situation while punishing the truly reckless.
Well...I take your point. But I'm pretty sure nobody ever said the panels need to be installed where it snows heavily to be useful.
So now you're going to save money by having a bad insurance. One that will save money, by, amonst others, sabotaging medicine by "saving" on research ?
There are two mistakes in here that infect all of what you've just said.
1. That public insurance might not be as good as private insurance does not mean that the public insurance will be "bad". It just means that someone with some money to burn might want better insurance. Are Toyotas bad cars? No. But that doesn't mean that BMWs and Porsches aren't better.
2. I didn't say that the public plan would save by cutting medical research. I said it would save by cutting medical underwriting research. These are very different things. Underwriting research is the research that private insurance companies perform to discover ways of identifying and then eliminating higher-risk people in their customer base. That is, identifying people who are disproportionately likely to actually need medical care so that they can raise their premiums or deny them insurance entirely. This, not medical research, is one of the things that a public plan would save money by cutting.