Rather than setting up a complicated system to make micro-payments that only some people would follow anyway, do what I do, determine a fair value for youself and make a donation.
Making a donation to Project Gutenberg is all well and good, but it will not get you any copyrighted ebooks, which is what the grandparent was talking about.
It's all moot, though. The suggestion doesn't make much sense either way. Even if PG were interested in distributing copyrighted works, the copyright owners would probably demand quite a bit more than a few pennies per download.
Actually, it doesn't much matter whether you are distributing content or not: They sue lots of people without any credible pretext. I got a letter from my cable provider [...]
So how does the fact that you got a letter from your ISP translate into lots of innocent people getting sued by the RIAA?
You != lots of people.
Your ISP != the RIAA.
A letter != a lawsuit.
I'm not saying it can't ever happen. But an innocent person is less likely to be the target of a lawsuit than a guilty one, by far. It does matter whether you are actually distributing content.
Ad Hominem means something much more specific than that.
"An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument." (emphasis mine)
Whether or not a statement about a person is ad hominem depends on the claim or argument under discussion, as well as who is making the claim or argument. Saying that Bush is incompetent, or Michael Moore is a liar, is not ipso facto a logical fallacy.
If one is, for instance, trying to decide whom to vote for, then Bush's competence is actually quite relevant. Perhaps more so than his policies.
You see it as hysterical ranting, I see it as healthy skepticism. There's nothing wrong with asking questions, even if they turn out to be inconsequential. If the system is safe and sustainable, questions won't hurt it.
Common sense. Speed is directly proportional to stopping distance, and inversely proportional to available reaction time. No matter what kind of vehicle you drive.
That grandma who "almost" ran over you? Probably would have, if she had been going faster. You BOTH would have had less time to react.
1) Go to Amazon.com and vote YES on all the negatives reviews where it askes "Did you find this review helpful".
2) Write your own negative review.
I.e., be a shill. Subvert amazon.com's honest efforts to provide meaningful user ratings and reviews. Punish the users who wrote the positive reviews, even though they were acting in good faith and have no connection with the author, the publisher, or their lawyers.
I thought we were against bullies on the internet.
Re:Corporations + first amendment protection
on
The Saga of Katie.com
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· Score: 2, Informative
No you don't. You just can't resist the urge to try to smear a Republican leader.
He said that he believed it happened during Reagan's presidency, not that Reagan was responsible. Stop jerking your knee.
You made that up or pulled it out of thin air. If not, tell us what in the world made you think that
He might have been thinking of Pacific Gas and Electric v. Public Utility Commission of California (1986), which extended "negative" speech rights to corporations. It's neither the first nor the only relevant case, but it did happen during the Reagan years.
So, can the current owner of Katie.com sue Putnam for the damages done to her (EG, increased bandwidth costs, having to redesign her site around an irrelevant topic, etc.)
If so, I see class action lawsuit against Slashdot in the future...
I don't think hibernation prevents aging...
It might or might not, but I think the point was that it would almost certainly alter the astronaut's perception of the passage of time. Along the lines of Rip Van Winkle.
10 laptops at retail price, maybe $20,000; you're talking of a period not more than maybe 2-3 months total. He'd be lucky to make a few hundred in interest, and with the way interests rates have been for awhile now, probably even less. Definitely not worth the risk.
That's a few hundred in interest, per auction. He could easily post three auctions a month, probably more.
Also, he doesn't return all of the money. The last couple of people pay $2000 each for laptops which are worth $500 to $750 less by the time they get them. He pockets the difference.
Altogether, that's $1200 to $1700 per auction. With only one auction every 10 days, that's about $44K to $62K a year, conservatively. A comfortable living, while it lasts.
Let's go back to the basics. Things cost money because of 2 things:
1) It costs money to produce/sell/ship/etc.
You forgot "design." This is the most important missing piece in your scenario. It is an intellectual process, not a physical one, so it cannot be bought and sold without the ability to enforce intellectual property law. As information, it can be distributed at virtually no cost. But it takes time to design something, and people expect (quite reasonably, I think) to be compensated for their time. If the money doesn't come from the consumer, it will have to come from somewhere else, or there will be very little in the way of new designs.
The same thing goes for music and movies, and to a lesser extent, even food (GM crops, recipes, etc.)
Musicians might survive, in a limited way, by virtue of the fact that a recording can serve as an advertisement for live performances (although that's a pretty bleak alternative). But designers of movies, cars, food, etc. would not be able to survive in this way. Effectively, every new design will instantly be infinite in supply, giving it a value of zero, and giving the designer little or no compensation, and little incentive to create anything else.
You're doing it again... No one else is talking about hard drives or RAID arrays. Just you. It's an apples-and-oranges comparison. CDs and DVDs are highly portable, read-only, and quasi-serial. You don't need all the extra functionality of a hard drive or RAID just to watch a movie.
Give it up people, media that is 100% reliable, 100% secure and 100% private will simply never exist.
Who said otherwise? In what universe does "nearly" equal 100%?
I don't expect my car to last my entire life. But if it died after 2 years, I think I would have a right to be dissatisfied, just as I am dissatisfied with CDs and DVDs. I would gladly pay a little bit more for something more robust. Even doubling the cost of the media wouldn't make that much of a difference compared to the cost of the content, packaging, marketing, etc.
over the past 10 years, I've had more hard drive failures than scratched CDs/DVDs.
That's all well and good, but what the grandparent actually said was, "Let's try and develop nearly indestructible media." Not "Let's use hard drives."
Take them to the flea market (or better yet, HAM fest or something like that), and mark the "Free."
He might as well throw it in the landfill. The point, for me, is to make sure that my old electronics are recycled. If I give it to some random stranger, I lose control over what happens to it. So I would be trading in a 100% guarantee that it will be recycled, for a high probability that it will eventually wind up in a landfill.
Or maybe it's time for them to catch up to us. Or maybe everyone is already right where they need to be.
This is what bugs me about anime/manga geeks the most -- this pseudo-deification of Japanese culture. The idea that just because they like something, we should too. It really indicates a kind of self-loathing, when you think about it.
It's interesting to note that despite the popularity of anime/manga in Japan, they generally don't view it as "high art" the way that a few American and European geeks do. In Japan, they have no illusions about it being anything other than cheap, mass-produced, lowest common denominator entertainment.
But if you were able to borrow a friend's car for a minute (like you borrow their CD to rip it), and use a machine to make a perfect replica of the car, I bet your friend wouldn't give a crap, and neither would anyone else.
Right. Not the car salemen who are losing potential sales. Not the design team and the assembly line workers who are about to get laid off because it's no longer profitable to actually design and build cars any more. Not the company whose patents you and your friend violated.
The Social Security Number 000-00-0002 is not valid. No valid number has "000" as the first 3 digits, or "00" as the 4th and 5th digits. But there is no checksum validation for U.S. Social Security Numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
It's all moot, though. The suggestion doesn't make much sense either way. Even if PG were interested in distributing copyrighted works, the copyright owners would probably demand quite a bit more than a few pennies per download.
You != lots of people.
Your ISP != the RIAA.
A letter != a lawsuit.
I'm not saying it can't ever happen. But an innocent person is less likely to be the target of a lawsuit than a guilty one, by far. It does matter whether you are actually distributing content.
"An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument." (emphasis mine)
Whether or not a statement about a person is ad hominem depends on the claim or argument under discussion, as well as who is making the claim or argument. Saying that Bush is incompetent, or Michael Moore is a liar, is not ipso facto a logical fallacy.
If one is, for instance, trying to decide whom to vote for, then Bush's competence is actually quite relevant. Perhaps more so than his policies.
You see it as hysterical ranting, I see it as healthy skepticism. There's nothing wrong with asking questions, even if they turn out to be inconsequential. If the system is safe and sustainable, questions won't hurt it.
That grandma who "almost" ran over you? Probably would have, if she had been going faster. You BOTH would have had less time to react.
I thought we were against bullies on the internet.
I don't think hibernation prevents aging... It might or might not, but I think the point was that it would almost certainly alter the astronaut's perception of the passage of time. Along the lines of Rip Van Winkle.
You could vote for David Cobb, though.
Also, he doesn't return all of the money. The last couple of people pay $2000 each for laptops which are worth $500 to $750 less by the time they get them. He pockets the difference.
Altogether, that's $1200 to $1700 per auction. With only one auction every 10 days, that's about $44K to $62K a year, conservatively. A comfortable living, while it lasts.
Still not worth the risk, IMHO...
The same thing goes for music and movies, and to a lesser extent, even food (GM crops, recipes, etc.)
Musicians might survive, in a limited way, by virtue of the fact that a recording can serve as an advertisement for live performances (although that's a pretty bleak alternative). But designers of movies, cars, food, etc. would not be able to survive in this way. Effectively, every new design will instantly be infinite in supply, giving it a value of zero, and giving the designer little or no compensation, and little incentive to create anything else.
I don't expect my car to last my entire life. But if it died after 2 years, I think I would have a right to be dissatisfied, just as I am dissatisfied with CDs and DVDs. I would gladly pay a little bit more for something more robust. Even doubling the cost of the media wouldn't make that much of a difference compared to the cost of the content, packaging, marketing, etc.
This is what bugs me about anime/manga geeks the most -- this pseudo-deification of Japanese culture. The idea that just because they like something, we should too. It really indicates a kind of self-loathing, when you think about it.
It's interesting to note that despite the popularity of anime/manga in Japan, they generally don't view it as "high art" the way that a few American and European geeks do. In Japan, they have no illusions about it being anything other than cheap, mass-produced, lowest common denominator entertainment.
Oh, but it's JAPANESE (grovel, grovel)...
The analogy is actually quite fitting.
The Social Security Number 000-00-0002 is not valid. No valid number has "000" as the first 3 digits, or "00" as the 4th and 5th digits. But there is no checksum validation for U.S. Social Security Numbers.