That is the key. Congress can make no law, nothing in the Constitution prevents states or their legislatures from doing it. What does it the over extension of the Federal Courts into the business of the States. The 14th amendment states No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Basically it means federal law trumps state law... sorry the south lost the civil war. Allowing children to read a prayer at their graduation is not a violation of the First Amendment. In fact it probably is more of a violation of the intent of the First to prevent the students from doing just that. I agree. Unfortunately some law makers/judges feel that by not acting, it is implied state sponsorship, so they get annoying laws and restrictions passed.
I think you're overestimating most people. Few Americans could even tell you that it takes the earth 365.25 days to revolve around the sun, many don't know what makes the moon light up. I bet less than half could even tell you 365. Ask them why there are 30 days in a month, or 365 days in a year, and they'll just say "because thats the way the calendar was made". Only like 25% op them can find Iraq on a globe Probably less than that, though the numbers may have gone up after the war started. You wonder why Americans are so fat, when most of them think carbs are something are bad for you, when hardly any of them can explain what "callories from fat" means. Most probably don't even know carb is short for carbohydrate.
Looks like this was a survey of readers (I am assuming marketing type folks) as to their favorite brands, not which brands are most recognizable to people. Coca-Cola is by far the most recognizable brand in the world. You can go to rural areas in 3rd world countries and ask for a "coca-cola" or even a "coke" and they will know what you are talking about. Ask if they have an "apple" and they will most likely think of the fruit.
Sellers will try to sell as high a price as they can. Yes that is what the RIAA and MPAA are doing. When you play a song on your player, you are using your own property - there is no "sale of services" involved You purchased a license to use somebody else's property. You can use the physical portion any way you like, but you did not purchase the rights to the information portion, therfore you do not have the rights to do whatever you want with it There was no agreement. The law-writers working under the direction of special interests have made it possible for greedy people to get money without working for it You mean the law makers we elected, under the rules we agreed. As long as most people agree ideas can be treated as property, then they will be. You can work to change the terms of the contract (change the law, or amend the Constitution) if you get enough people to agree with you. Like I said, property is only what we define as property. There are also people who believe that people shouldn't be able to own land who have the same ability to redefine property. Personally, I prefer keeping rules that promote people's creativity and keep a stable economy. In the case of trademark violation, it involves building an association yourself or your product with the public persona of another entity by using the symbols that society commonly associates which that other entity. Except you can't use things that are public domain as a tradmark, and if there are no IP rights, everything is public domain. There is no fraud unless special rights are granted for exclusive use, and your arguement is that such rights should not be granted to ideas. With today's trademark rules, however, if you use the logo _at all_, the entity "owning" that trademark will use that as an excuse to stop you, even if you didn't do anything which would confuse your identity with that of the logo's "owner". I can't think of a situation where you could use a trademark and not have it confused with the original entity. I'm not seeing how that helps society or the "little guys" at all. The fact that big companies can't just directly clone everything interesting they see is how it is helping the little guy. Whenever a big company buys a small company the little guy won. Most people would figure they'd have to figure out another way to make a buck Ah so programmers, writers, songwriters, inventors, everybody who focuses on creating ideas should just figure out different ways to make a buck. I'm sure this world would be a better place without those jobs. If somebody comes up with an idea, they have they contributed to society and a system should be in place where society recognizes and rewards their contribution. In your model there is no reward, society just takes the contributions. Considering what kind of "product" Microsoft & EA provide, I highly doubt they'd be able to leverage diddly-squat - since they wouldn't have been able to make the grotesque amounts of money that they did if it weren't for the artificial monopoly granted to them by the "intellectual property" laws. Fact is they exist now with tons of money. If you drop IP you have to take into account the state of things as they are now, instead of trying to cobble together some hypothetical dream world. Though in that world a company like IBM that also received cash in other ways would dominate. I'm sure that would be all the better. I prefer a society where if I come up with a unique innovative idea, I have the time to develop and capitalize on it, rather than my idea being taken by somebody else who has more money and more contacts for them to capitalize on it. You're going to have to look outside of the software industry for examples of where "intellectual property" laws have helped the little guys against the big guys. You mean like the example I gave about AMD and Intel?
In the end, they decided to try a utilitarian approach: allowing SHORT-TERM monopolies for the goal of advancing the Arts & Sciences Which I agree with that approach, I am not saying I agree 100% with the implementation. I would prefer shorter term monolopolies and requirements of registration fees. No, most people will pay what they think is fair for a good or service If there are grapes for $1c each (a fair price), and some free... most people will choose the free ones. People are maximizers. Ideas are NOT real property, so only greedy people expect payment for use of ideas So your arguement comes down to "I don't think it's really property". While I have explained (and you have agreed) that property is what is defined by social contract. Property comes out of agreement, and our society has agreed that ideas are property for a limited time. With your Movie Phone example, you are being provided the service of being connected with a database of interesting information. You do the same when you play a CD, you have a small database of music you are accessing everytime you listen. When you play a song you are getting something, if what you get is not a good then by defintion it is a service. Still doesn't meet the common-sense rule of being REAL physical property, since the "owner" of the trademark can use it an infinite amount of times without
"using it up". Property doesn't have to be real, property can be anything we decide it to be. We as a society define what is and isn't property, and how ownership is determined. Trademark violations are cases of FRAUD, and should be treated as such instead of property. How can you commit fraud with something that is public domain. Without IP a logo is just a piece of art I can use however I see fit, maybe I like to put the logo on my products, since nobody owns the logo, nobody can stop me from doing what I want. Personally I'm glad society recognizes ideas as property. Intellectual property is important to the development of our economic system, it allows product differentiation and it promotes investment in ideas, things that are key to the progress of capitalism. What most people lose sight of is that intellectual property protects the little guy as well as the big guys. The big corporations would have way more power than they do right now without copyright/patents/trademarks. An independent band puts out a CD, a big company can take that CD, flood the market and not compensate the original artist, how is that for an alternate business plan? I'm sure you would love it if instead of buying small companies, Microsoft or EA could just take the software and leverage their greater marketing and sales channels to dominate the market. Even "real" property nowadays contains alot of IP. You think AMD would be in a strong position if Intel was making Opterons? The actual silicon production is rather trivial compared to the design work. Intel would be able to out manufacture and out market AMD into nothingness. IP promotes competition, it promotes innovation, just because it doesn't work 100% doesn't mean we should abandon the entire idea, we just need to adjust the rules.
Technically, but I think most people would refuse to accept it if the government something like the color "red" as someone's private property. It might be LEGAL, but that doesn't make it really "property" by a moral, society-beneficial or even common-sense standard. Yes, "property" is only what the people agree upon whether its via social contract or goverment. The drafters of the Constitution recognized that there is value to the protection of ideas for the overall benifit of society and chose to treat them as property. What intellectual propery does is allow people to further specialize in "idea only" activities. You can unbundle the performance from the song, and you allow somebody who is a talented songwriter to enrich society by just writing songs even if they aren't a good performer. The main reason some people LIKE intellectual property laws because they see a way where they force people to pay for stuff that people wouldn't ordinarily want to pay for. People will always pay the lowest amount. Using your logic, laws against car theft only exist to force people to pay for something they wouldn't normally pay for. Most people would just borrow a neighbor's car and not worry about their own if it was legal. Certain things cost more to make the first copy and additional copies are trivial. The problem is how do you recover the money for making that first copy? You can't sell the first copy of a movie for $100M, and as you pointed out people will choose the cheapest solution (downloading/copying somebody else's). If there were no way to recover that money, then those kinds of films wouldn't be made, and we'd end up for better or worse, with just a bunch of low budget "indy" movies. The closest anybody has come to an alternative system for intellectual property distribution was Stephen King's "The Plant." Unfortunately it showed that once the initial "buzz" went away, people went back to their greedy ways (consuming and not paying) and he stopped releasing chapters. The only reason it worked initially was name recognition. A song on a CD is NOT a performance - it is a hunk of plastic whose value has been increased by encoding something on it which can be converted to pleasing sound waves. It is a service, like I said, a human being doesn't have to be there for something to be a service. Movie Phone is an information service, yet there is no person telling you the information. It is a recording, but it is providing you with something value added same as a CD. No, trademarks are an intended form of FRAUD protection - to prevent people from fraudently selling product or services associated with another person or company's A trademark is owned, has a very real dollar value, it is a property. Yes it is used for fraud protection, but that doesn't mean it isn't intellectual property. If you can use something and prevent others from using it, it is property, especially if there is a quantifiable dollar value attached.
You don't appear to know what the "fundamentals of capitalism" really are. Clue: law of supply & demand The fundamentals of capitalism is ownership of property, and the ability to protect property. Supply and demand is a term to describe how to most efficiently create/distribute goods and services. Property is a legally defined term by goverment. The only reason you can claim to own the land you are on is because you have a piece of paper that the goverment recognizes gives you certain rights to that land. The reason artists can own creative works is because they are granted rights by the goverment for those works. Claim of ownership on anything is just a claim, and the only power of that claim is your ability to protect it, whether by force, or through social contract Not sure what you're trying to say here, except you seem to be confusing the service of playing a song for someone to listen to, or providing a copy of the song on a piece of media, versus the service of actually creating the song. You confuse performance with service. A service doesn't have to be done live by a person (a computer/robot can provide you with a service), a service is receiving anything of value that is not a good. Sorry, you seem to be confusing ideas with real private property again. Probably the easiest way to understand the importance of intellectual property is to look at trademarks (which is a form of property protection). All your arguements would apply to trademarks as well (not tangible, use doesn't prevent others from using, etc). It's easier to recognize why we protect trademarks, imagine going into a store where all the soda cans were labelled Coca-cola, or every store was called Wal-Mart. It would be impossible for the consumer to confidently purchase anything, and would greatly impact the economic growth of the country. So we decided through goverment that trademarks should be legally protected with certain rights and restrictions. Certain rights and restrictions were also given to other intellectual properties in the form of patents and copyright, to promote the progress of science & the arts. I don't agree with the implementation of patents and copyrights (I would prefer a 10 year limit with the requirement of yearly registration so people don't sit on them), but I don't disagree morally with ultimate recognition of intellectual property.
Your flip is a logical failure. Morally, they are NOT the same thing. Legally, greedy people WANT them to be the same thing (and keep trying to redefine reality so that they are treated the same). They are the same thing. It's breaking the fundamentals of capitalism you are consuming without contributing. BS. Or people who believe who in real capitalism, where you get paid for providing desired goods or services. Creating something for someone else is a service. You should get paid appropriately for that service _when you deliver the service_. Everytime you listen to a song you receive a service, I'm sure the RIAA wishes it had a system to charge you for each individual listening. To demand to get paid _every_time_ someone makes a copy of that creation, even though it doesn't require any additional effort on your part, is just greedy. Claiming to have a right to something you didn't pay for is greedy.
Excellent post. Though I would disagree and say to create a new game for the project. The person has 6 months a card game for somebody motivated I don't think would take more than 3 or 4 months. Even if the project is to learn the basics of programming, I think that learning game design portion (presumably the area they want to work in the future) is important too. I would actually suggest looking at RPG type game. They scale very well in complexity, and are very flexible in design aspects. You can start simple, which is focusing on a battle engine. I remember a person in one of my HS programming classes created an "arena treadmill" style RPG. Basically just a battle engine with a plot you were a gladiator. You would gain xp, get gold to upgrade, etc. Though simple it was something fun we wasted time playing. Then over time you can add layers complexity; character movement, improved interface, more complex battle algorithms, story, etc to make it more fun. The game doesn't have to be a one time project, it could be something that grows with the growth of the programming skill.
I was just responding to the comment the previous poster made And why does "try a child as an adult" make any sense at all?. Yes there is alot more that goes into the sentencing part than what goes into the guilty part. In that portion you try to take into account the factors why the crime occurred, the probability of repeating the crime, the mental status of the guilty party before and after the crime was commited, the social consequence of giving too harsh/too lenient sentence, etc.
Pechman said she was sentencing him at the low end of the range because although he was 18 at the time of the attack, his maturity level was much younger than that. They took into account his maturity level, and he was an adult. I don't know about you, but even at 13 I knew what a virus would do and also the implications of the damage it could do. Younger than that I would have known what I was doing was wrong, though I may not have been able to fully comprehend exactly how much damage could have been done. That is the key to trying people as adults or children, did they know what they did was wrong, and did they realize the consequences of their actions. That's why you will see a 14 year old tried as an adult for murder, but not tried as an adult for extortion or wire fraud which are more difficult concepts to understand.
at least if you download it illegally, nobody loses anything (assuming that you wouldn't buy it otherwise, i know i don't at the high prices that some of these CDs sell at) That's called criminal rationalization. You could do the same thing for a CD in the store: The store will just write it off as a loss, and recover the money as a tax break so they aren't losing anything either.
In fact, geek corps usually have to beg for money and even if their idea is admittedly great (well, admitted by other tech savvy people), this doesn't mean they get the funding they need. Everybody has to beg for money, geeks typically aren't as good at it though. It's hard to translate a great idea into a neat little package that people understand. They don't believe in knowledge -- after all, having a degree from a business school teaches you all you need to know. They also don't believe in mathematics, especially not in exponential functions. All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth. Business people aren't completely stupid, they knew that the growth was not sustainable, but still have to answer to investors/customers. The problem was not business education is worthless, its that they have to please investors, regular people. People don't use the same rationalization as geeks. When an investor see somebody else making 80% returns per year, they will take their money to that other business. The.com bubble was unique since it was part of a very long growth cycle. So the normal rationalization for investors about unsustainable growth degraded when they say companies double in price every year for 3+ years. At that point they demanded business invest in these risky.coms, otherwise their money would move elsewhere and the investment firm/bank would be out of business. Geeks see things in absolute terms, business is run in comparitive terms. To be a sucessful business you don't have to be the best over the long-term, you have to always be better than the other guy in the short term. It's more forgivable to lose 50% of the investors money when everybody else loses 50%, than to only make 50% rate of return when others are making 80%.
I mean what's going to come in the next movies, some pilot named Skywalker, a hottie named Oola, fat guy named Porkins, a race of Squids called Calamari, a musician named Droopy McCool, some three eyed guy named Ree-Yees.
He knew as a direct result that people were going to commit a crime so he is responsible. The person posted links and asked other to post links to.mp3 files. This is active participation in criminal activity. And don't use the excuse he was just telling people where to find it, he didn't think anybody would actually download the files. Justice is blind, not stupid.
2) The quality of videos from street vendors is notoriously unwatchable; and Maybe around the US, but in southeast asia I could walk into the mall and purchase a good quality DVD (not a guy filming the movie with a camera type) of Star Wars Episode 2 the same day it hit theaters.
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I think we can all attest to the caring, fantastic morals, honesty, appeals to higher thinking, and absolute brilliance of the current President of the United States... and how it all seals my argument against your flag waving. I would argue this reflects more poorly on the electorate than on the elected. Being rich and coming from a powerful family doesn't guarantee anything in the system. Ultimately they have to convince those people buried in phone jobs that they can lead them. The system isn't flawed, the voters are. They are the ones who decide to they want to be led by actors, entertainers, or the child/sibling/spouse of somebody already in politics. It's nice to feel victimized and point and say, "look only the rich and powerful can get elected" the system is screwed up. It's not the system's fault that people vote for they guy who has the most TV commercials, that incumbency is the greatest factor in winning an election, or that people vote for the cute/cool/funny candidate. The reason it's difficult for somebody who isn't famous or rich to get political power isn't because goverment is holding them down, it's because the people care more about image than issues.
Will we loose our own humanity if we continue to destroy our morals for the sake of progress? It only takes a few to make that decision for the rest of us (to gain the knowledge). But on the bright side losing our humanity may help our spelling.
The fact that you choose to interpret the quote in the way that you did shows that you read the article with a bias against the ideas of global warming.
No I'm pointing out the scare mongering tactics that articles biased towards global warming use. When an article's introduction includes the phrase "no safe level" it pushes the reader towards that end of the world mentality. I also find it funny that you criticize the results of a very well-known study without actually seeing the results, then you proceed to ask for definitive results. I did not criticize the results, I criticize the way they are presented. The link you posted was something intelligent and informative, it's what should have been posted so people can have an intelligent understanding of the facts. I think there are global warming issues that need to be dealt with. What annoys me is what gets presented 90% of the time is the sensationalist portion, with nothing but "scientist say" to back up the claim.
The "system" only requires such because "investors" (which is to say all the slashdot geeks busy making day trades) only care about short term quarterly profits rather than true long term earning potential Actually it's the opposite way. Investors care more about the future than this quarter's profits. Look at all the companies that had record profits, yets the stock still goes down because of their future guidance. Laying people off this quarter will not help this quarter's numbers much. Typically when you lay people off, or close a branch, a company takes a one time charge that hurts the bottom lime that quarter. Layoffs are not a short-term decision. You lay people off because you look into the future and down see growth in your business, so the only way to grow profits is to cut cost. If you look into the future and see growth opportunity you start hiring to have capacity to grab that opportunity.
The authors urge all countries in the G8 group of rich nations to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, Nothing like a 20 year plan to solve a problem that is unstoppable after 10.
Okay when I read this quote: "The scientists behind the project, called climateprediction.net, say it shows there's no such thing as a safe level of carbon dioxide. " I can't take the rest seriously. We must get global CO2 levels down to nothing. You stop breathing! I'd like to see something more than the handwaving arguement of, scientists made a model and it says the earth's temperature will melt. Could somebody point to a real story that includes some detailed description of the climate model, the data set input into the it, and real results, not just fantastic end of the world predictions
Elf you enter a poorly lit room, you see a stack of documents on the table, you detect the musty smell of stale pizza towards your left. I'll look through the documents *rolls die* You are only able to decipher that the papers are accounting documents I use my counterfeiting skill to create a new identity *rolls die* You may now use the identity of Larry Smith, my... err his social securit... errr Royal Identification number is 555-42-2005. Out of character, Wow I like how you use actual things to make the game more realistic
Slashdot Mirror
That is the key. Congress can make no law, nothing in the Constitution prevents states or their legislatures from doing it. What does it the over extension of the Federal Courts into the business of the States.
The 14th amendment states No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Basically it means federal law trumps state law... sorry the south lost the civil war.
Allowing children to read a prayer at their graduation is not a violation of the First Amendment. In fact it probably is more of a violation of the intent of the First to prevent the students from doing just that.
I agree. Unfortunately some law makers/judges feel that by not acting, it is implied state sponsorship, so they get annoying laws and restrictions passed.
I think you're overestimating most people.
Few Americans could even tell you that it takes the earth 365.25 days to revolve around the sun, many don't know what makes the moon light up.
I bet less than half could even tell you 365. Ask them why there are 30 days in a month, or 365 days in a year, and they'll just say "because thats the way the calendar was made".
Only like 25% op them can find Iraq on a globe
Probably less than that, though the numbers may have gone up after the war started.
You wonder why Americans are so fat, when most of them think carbs are something are bad for you, when hardly any of them can explain what "callories from fat" means.
Most probably don't even know carb is short for carbohydrate.
Looks like this was a survey of readers (I am assuming marketing type folks) as to their favorite brands, not which brands are most recognizable to people.
Coca-Cola is by far the most recognizable brand in the world. You can go to rural areas in 3rd world countries and ask for a "coca-cola" or even a "coke" and they will know what you are talking about. Ask if they have an "apple" and they will most likely think of the fruit.
Sellers will try to sell as high a price as they can.
Yes that is what the RIAA and MPAA are doing.
When you play a song on your player, you are using your own property - there is no "sale of services" involved
You purchased a license to use somebody else's property. You can use the physical portion any way you like, but you did not purchase the rights to the information portion, therfore you do not have the rights to do whatever you want with it
There was no agreement. The law-writers working under the direction of special interests have made it possible for greedy people to get money without working for it
You mean the law makers we elected, under the rules we agreed. As long as most people agree ideas can be treated as property, then they will be. You can work to change the terms of the contract (change the law, or amend the Constitution) if you get enough people to agree with you. Like I said, property is only what we define as property. There are also people who believe that people shouldn't be able to own land who have the same ability to redefine property. Personally, I prefer keeping rules that promote people's creativity and keep a stable economy.
In the case of trademark violation, it involves building an association yourself or your product with the public persona of another entity by using the symbols that society commonly associates which that other entity.
Except you can't use things that are public domain as a tradmark, and if there are no IP rights, everything is public domain. There is no fraud unless special rights are granted for exclusive use, and your arguement is that such rights should not be granted to ideas.
With today's trademark rules, however, if you use the logo _at all_, the entity "owning" that trademark will use that as an excuse to stop you, even if you didn't do anything which would confuse your identity with that of the logo's "owner".
I can't think of a situation where you could use a trademark and not have it confused with the original entity.
I'm not seeing how that helps society or the "little guys" at all.
The fact that big companies can't just directly clone everything interesting they see is how it is helping the little guy. Whenever a big company buys a small company the little guy won.
Most people would figure they'd have to figure out another way to make a buck
Ah so programmers, writers, songwriters, inventors, everybody who focuses on creating ideas should just figure out different ways to make a buck. I'm sure this world would be a better place without those jobs. If somebody comes up with an idea, they have they contributed to society and a system should be in place where society recognizes and rewards their contribution. In your model there is no reward, society just takes the contributions.
Considering what kind of "product" Microsoft & EA provide, I highly doubt they'd be able to leverage diddly-squat - since they wouldn't have been able to make the grotesque amounts of money that they did if it weren't for the artificial monopoly granted to them by the "intellectual property" laws.
Fact is they exist now with tons of money. If you drop IP you have to take into account the state of things as they are now, instead of trying to cobble together some hypothetical dream world. Though in that world a company like IBM that also received cash in other ways would dominate. I'm sure that would be all the better.
I prefer a society where if I come up with a unique innovative idea, I have the time to develop and capitalize on it, rather than my idea being taken by somebody else who has more money and more contacts for them to capitalize on it.
You're going to have to look outside of the software industry for examples of where "intellectual property" laws have helped the little guys against the big guys.
You mean like the example I gave about AMD and Intel?
In the end, they decided to try a utilitarian approach: allowing SHORT-TERM monopolies for the goal of advancing the Arts & Sciences
Which I agree with that approach, I am not saying I agree 100% with the implementation. I would prefer shorter term monolopolies and requirements of registration fees.
No, most people will pay what they think is fair for a good or service
If there are grapes for $1c each (a fair price), and some free... most people will choose the free ones. People are maximizers.
Ideas are NOT real property, so only greedy people expect payment for use of ideas
So your arguement comes down to "I don't think it's really property". While I have explained (and you have agreed) that property is what is defined by social contract. Property comes out of agreement, and our society has agreed that ideas are property for a limited time.
With your Movie Phone example, you are being provided the service of being connected with a database of interesting information.
You do the same when you play a CD, you have a small database of music you are accessing everytime you listen. When you play a song you are getting something, if what you get is not a good then by defintion it is a service.
Still doesn't meet the common-sense rule of being REAL physical property, since the "owner" of the trademark can use it an infinite amount of times without "using it up".
Property doesn't have to be real, property can be anything we decide it to be. We as a society define what is and isn't property, and how ownership is determined.
Trademark violations are cases of FRAUD, and should be treated as such instead of property.
How can you commit fraud with something that is public domain. Without IP a logo is just a piece of art I can use however I see fit, maybe I like to put the logo on my products, since nobody owns the logo, nobody can stop me from doing what I want.
Personally I'm glad society recognizes ideas as property. Intellectual property is important to the development of our economic system, it allows product differentiation and it promotes investment in ideas, things that are key to the progress of capitalism.
What most people lose sight of is that intellectual property protects the little guy as well as the big guys. The big corporations would have way more power than they do right now without copyright/patents/trademarks. An independent band puts out a CD, a big company can take that CD, flood the market and not compensate the original artist, how is that for an alternate business plan? I'm sure you would love it if instead of buying small companies, Microsoft or EA could just take the software and leverage their greater marketing and sales channels to dominate the market.
Even "real" property nowadays contains alot of IP. You think AMD would be in a strong position if Intel was making Opterons? The actual silicon production is rather trivial compared to the design work. Intel would be able to out manufacture and out market AMD into nothingness.
IP promotes competition, it promotes innovation, just because it doesn't work 100% doesn't mean we should abandon the entire idea, we just need to adjust the rules.
Technically, but I think most people would refuse to accept it if the government something like the color "red" as someone's private property. It might be LEGAL, but that doesn't make it really "property" by a moral, society-beneficial or even common-sense standard.
Yes, "property" is only what the people agree upon whether its via social contract or goverment. The drafters of the Constitution recognized that there is value to the protection of ideas for the overall benifit of society and chose to treat them as property.
What intellectual propery does is allow people to further specialize in "idea only" activities. You can unbundle the performance from the song, and you allow somebody who is a talented songwriter to enrich society by just writing songs even if they aren't a good performer.
The main reason some people LIKE intellectual property laws because they see a way where they force people to pay for stuff that people wouldn't ordinarily want to pay for.
People will always pay the lowest amount. Using your logic, laws against car theft only exist to force people to pay for something they wouldn't normally pay for. Most people would just borrow a neighbor's car and not worry about their own if it was legal.
Certain things cost more to make the first copy and additional copies are trivial. The problem is how do you recover the money for making that first copy? You can't sell the first copy of a movie for $100M, and as you pointed out people will choose the cheapest solution (downloading/copying somebody else's). If there were no way to recover that money, then those kinds of films wouldn't be made, and we'd end up for better or worse, with just a bunch of low budget "indy" movies.
The closest anybody has come to an alternative system for intellectual property distribution was Stephen King's "The Plant." Unfortunately it showed that once the initial "buzz" went away, people went back to their greedy ways (consuming and not paying) and he stopped releasing chapters. The only reason it worked initially was name recognition.
A song on a CD is NOT a performance - it is a hunk of plastic whose value has been increased by encoding something on it which can be converted to pleasing sound waves.
It is a service, like I said, a human being doesn't have to be there for something to be a service. Movie Phone is an information service, yet there is no person telling you the information. It is a recording, but it is providing you with something value added same as a CD.
No, trademarks are an intended form of FRAUD protection - to prevent people from fraudently selling product or services associated with another person or company's
A trademark is owned, has a very real dollar value, it is a property. Yes it is used for fraud protection, but that doesn't mean it isn't intellectual property. If you can use something and prevent others from using it, it is property, especially if there is a quantifiable dollar value attached.
You don't appear to know what the "fundamentals of capitalism" really are. Clue: law of supply & demand
The fundamentals of capitalism is ownership of property, and the ability to protect property. Supply and demand is a term to describe how to most efficiently create/distribute goods and services. Property is a legally defined term by goverment. The only reason you can claim to own the land you are on is because you have a piece of paper that the goverment recognizes gives you certain rights to that land. The reason artists can own creative works is because they are granted rights by the goverment for those works. Claim of ownership on anything is just a claim, and the only power of that claim is your ability to protect it, whether by force, or through social contract
Not sure what you're trying to say here, except you seem to be confusing the service of playing a song for someone to listen to, or providing a copy of the song on a piece of media, versus the service of actually creating the song.
You confuse performance with service. A service doesn't have to be done live by a person (a computer/robot can provide you with a service), a service is receiving anything of value that is not a good.
Sorry, you seem to be confusing ideas with real private property again.
Probably the easiest way to understand the importance of intellectual property is to look at trademarks (which is a form of property protection).
All your arguements would apply to trademarks as well (not tangible, use doesn't prevent others from using, etc). It's easier to recognize why we protect trademarks, imagine going into a store where all the soda cans were labelled Coca-cola, or every store was called Wal-Mart. It would be impossible for the consumer to confidently purchase anything, and would greatly impact the economic growth of the country. So we decided through goverment that trademarks should be legally protected with certain rights and restrictions.
Certain rights and restrictions were also given to other intellectual properties in the form of patents and copyright, to promote the progress of science & the arts.
I don't agree with the implementation of patents and copyrights (I would prefer a 10 year limit with the requirement of yearly registration so people don't sit on them), but I don't disagree morally with ultimate recognition of intellectual property.
Your flip is a logical failure. Morally, they are NOT the same thing. Legally, greedy people WANT them to be the same thing (and keep trying to redefine reality so that they are treated the same).
They are the same thing. It's breaking the fundamentals of capitalism you are consuming without contributing.
BS. Or people who believe who in real capitalism, where you get paid for providing desired goods or services. Creating something for someone else is a service. You should get paid appropriately for that service _when you deliver the service_.
Everytime you listen to a song you receive a service, I'm sure the RIAA wishes it had a system to charge you for each individual listening.
To demand to get paid _every_time_ someone makes a copy of that creation, even though it doesn't require any additional effort on your part, is just greedy.
Claiming to have a right to something you didn't pay for is greedy.
Excellent post.
Though I would disagree and say to create a new game for the project. The person has 6 months a card game for somebody motivated I don't think would take more than 3 or 4 months. Even if the project is to learn the basics of programming, I think that learning game design portion (presumably the area they want to work in the future) is important too.
I would actually suggest looking at RPG type game. They scale very well in complexity, and are very flexible in design aspects. You can start simple, which is focusing on a battle engine. I remember a person in one of my HS programming classes created an "arena treadmill" style RPG. Basically just a battle engine with a plot you were a gladiator. You would gain xp, get gold to upgrade, etc. Though simple it was something fun we wasted time playing. Then over time you can add layers complexity; character movement, improved interface, more complex battle algorithms, story, etc to make it more fun.
The game doesn't have to be a one time project, it could be something that grows with the growth of the programming skill.
I was just responding to the comment the previous poster made And why does "try a child as an adult" make any sense at all?.
Yes there is alot more that goes into the sentencing part than what goes into the guilty part. In that portion you try to take into account the factors why the crime occurred, the probability of repeating the crime, the mental status of the guilty party before and after the crime was commited, the social consequence of giving too harsh/too lenient sentence, etc.
Pechman said she was sentencing him at the low end of the range because although he was 18 at the time of the attack, his maturity level was much younger than that.
They took into account his maturity level, and he was an adult.
I don't know about you, but even at 13 I knew what a virus would do and also the implications of the damage it could do. Younger than that I would have known what I was doing was wrong, though I may not have been able to fully comprehend exactly how much damage could have been done.
That is the key to trying people as adults or children, did they know what they did was wrong, and did they realize the consequences of their actions. That's why you will see a 14 year old tried as an adult for murder, but not tried as an adult for extortion or wire fraud which are more difficult concepts to understand.
Except we'll have flying cars... Of the FUTURE!
at least if you download it illegally, nobody loses anything (assuming that you wouldn't buy it otherwise, i know i don't at the high prices that some of these CDs sell at)
That's called criminal rationalization. You could do the same thing for a CD in the store: The store will just write it off as a loss, and recover the money as a tax break so they aren't losing anything either.
In fact, geek corps usually have to beg for money and even if their idea is admittedly great (well, admitted by other tech savvy people), this doesn't mean they get the funding they need. .com bubble was unique since it was part of a very long growth cycle. So the normal rationalization for investors about unsustainable growth degraded when they say companies double in price every year for 3+ years. At that point they demanded business invest in these risky .coms, otherwise their money would move elsewhere and the investment firm/bank would be out of business.
Everybody has to beg for money, geeks typically aren't as good at it though. It's hard to translate a great idea into a neat little package that people understand.
They don't believe in knowledge -- after all, having a degree from a business school teaches you all you need to know. They also don't believe in mathematics, especially not in exponential functions. All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth.
Business people aren't completely stupid, they knew that the growth was not sustainable, but still have to answer to investors/customers. The problem was not business education is worthless, its that they have to please investors, regular people. People don't use the same rationalization as geeks. When an investor see somebody else making 80% returns per year, they will take their money to that other business. The
Geeks see things in absolute terms, business is run in comparitive terms. To be a sucessful business you don't have to be the best over the long-term, you have to always be better than the other guy in the short term. It's more forgivable to lose 50% of the investors money when everybody else loses 50%, than to only make 50% rate of return when others are making 80%.
I mean what's going to come in the next movies, some pilot named Skywalker, a hottie named Oola, fat guy named Porkins, a race of Squids called Calamari, a musician named Droopy McCool, some three eyed guy named Ree-Yees.
He knew as a direct result that people were going to commit a crime so he is responsible. The person posted links and asked other to post links to .mp3 files. This is active participation in criminal activity.
And don't use the excuse he was just telling people where to find it, he didn't think anybody would actually download the files. Justice is blind, not stupid.
2) The quality of videos from street vendors is notoriously unwatchable; and
Maybe around the US, but in southeast asia I could walk into the mall and purchase a good quality DVD (not a guy filming the movie with a camera type) of Star Wars Episode 2 the same day it hit theaters.
I think we can all attest to the caring, fantastic morals, honesty, appeals to higher thinking, and absolute brilliance of the current President of the United States... and how it all seals my argument against your flag waving.
I would argue this reflects more poorly on the electorate than on the elected. Being rich and coming from a powerful family doesn't guarantee anything in the system. Ultimately they have to convince those people buried in phone jobs that they can lead them.
The system isn't flawed, the voters are. They are the ones who decide to they want to be led by actors, entertainers, or the child/sibling/spouse of somebody already in politics.
It's nice to feel victimized and point and say, "look only the rich and powerful can get elected" the system is screwed up. It's not the system's fault that people vote for they guy who has the most TV commercials, that incumbency is the greatest factor in winning an election, or that people vote for the cute/cool/funny candidate. The reason it's difficult for somebody who isn't famous or rich to get political power isn't because goverment is holding them down, it's because the people care more about image than issues.
Will we loose our own humanity if we continue to destroy our morals for the sake of progress?
It only takes a few to make that decision for the rest of us (to gain the knowledge). But on the bright side losing our humanity may help our spelling.
sorry, those chicks prefer tentacle creatures over us mere humans.
The fact that you choose to interpret the quote in the way that you did shows that you read the article with a bias against the ideas of global warming.
No I'm pointing out the scare mongering tactics that articles biased towards global warming use. When an article's introduction includes the phrase "no safe level" it pushes the reader towards that end of the world mentality.
I also find it funny that you criticize the results of a very well-known study without actually seeing the results, then you proceed to ask for definitive results.
I did not criticize the results, I criticize the way they are presented. The link you posted was something intelligent and informative, it's what should have been posted so people can have an intelligent understanding of the facts.
I think there are global warming issues that need to be dealt with. What annoys me is what gets presented 90% of the time is the sensationalist portion, with nothing but "scientist say" to back up the claim.
The "system" only requires such because "investors" (which is to say all the slashdot geeks busy making day trades) only care about short term quarterly profits rather than true long term earning potential
Actually it's the opposite way. Investors care more about the future than this quarter's profits. Look at all the companies that had record profits, yets the stock still goes down because of their future guidance. Laying people off this quarter will not help this quarter's numbers much. Typically when you lay people off, or close a branch, a company takes a one time charge that hurts the bottom lime that quarter.
Layoffs are not a short-term decision. You lay people off because you look into the future and down see growth in your business, so the only way to grow profits is to cut cost. If you look into the future and see growth opportunity you start hiring to have capacity to grab that opportunity.
The authors urge all countries in the G8 group of rich nations to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025,
Nothing like a 20 year plan to solve a problem that is unstoppable after 10.
Okay when I read this quote:
"The scientists behind the project, called climateprediction.net, say it shows there's no such thing as a safe level of carbon dioxide. "
I can't take the rest seriously. We must get global CO2 levels down to nothing. You stop breathing!
I'd like to see something more than the handwaving arguement of, scientists made a model and it says the earth's temperature will melt. Could somebody point to a real story that includes some detailed description of the climate model, the data set input into the it, and real results, not just fantastic end of the world predictions
Elf you enter a poorly lit room, you see a stack of documents on the table, you detect the musty smell of stale pizza towards your left.
I'll look through the documents *rolls die* You are only able to decipher that the papers are accounting documents
I use my counterfeiting skill to create a new identity
*rolls die* You may now use the identity of Larry Smith, my... err his social securit... errr Royal Identification number is 555-42-2005.
Out of character, Wow I like how you use actual things to make the game more realistic