Technically Marxist communism is merely workers being in charge of the companies they work for. Something like an employee-owned business that doesn't sell portions of itself on the stock market would qualify. Somewhere along the line it became synonymous with full-on socialism and that connotation has never once gone away. The silly thing is that communism and capitalism are not opposite ends of the same spectrum as people seem to believe. Take for example the Amana commune - an appliance-building money-making collective. The real opposites are full-on capitalism and full-on socialism. Both are extremes, in one case leading to a monopoly in charge of everything, and in the other leading to a government in charge of everything. In *BOTH* cases, the problem is that any sufficiently gigantic organization is no longer beholden to the people that made it big, and can abuse its power without reproach. And that's true regardless of whether the gigantic organization is a government or a corporate monopoly. When there's only one game in town, it's bad news for the little guy, either way.
Re:The problem is not a failure of the market
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Like so many other commenters, you seem to be operating under the impression that it's possible for advertisers to tell how many people are listening to a radio station. No such measure exists.
You can't measure number of radio listeners. That's why natioanally syndicated shows like Dr Demonto are more common in small towns than big cities. It works like this: The syndicating group (in this case, Westwood One Radio Network) wants to change the radio stations that carry their show based on how big an audience it reaches. But since they can't actually tell how many people are listening in your area, they instead base the price on how many *could* be listening in the area. Therefore radio stations who's broadcast area contains more population have to pay more to carry the syndicated show, regardless of how many people in that area actually tune in to the show. So then the Dr Demonto show is too expensive for a radio station to carry in a big city, but acceptably priced in small towns.
So how is this relevant? Well, they wouldn't be using such a sloppy pricing scale if they actually had a means of measuring number of listeners. As flawed as the Neilson's are for TV ratings, radio doesn't even have anything *that* good.
Re:The problem is not a failure of the market
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It's National PUBLIC radio, not "People's". Then again, maybe you knew that and were trying to make a politically ignorant communist reference.
Re:The problem is not a failure of the market
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Your claim is that radio airplay represents the music the public wants, because the advertisers would leave if people didn't listen. That claim is based on the unstated premise that it is possible to *tell* how many people are listening to a radio station at a given time. There's no Neilson rating system for radio, or any equivilent. The whole system is based on guesswork, and twisting the cause and effect on its ear - instead of industry execs doing what they falsely believe they are doing - monitoring people's tastes by watching album sales, and then playing those albums, they instead *create* demand for whatever albums they happen to be playing.
So is it your solution then to go out and buy music randomly, since you can't tell what you're getting ahead of time, and hope that the occasional hit makes the money you spent on the misses worth it? I tried that once. Not again. I wasted too damn much money on albums that were complete garbage. The problem with buying only from the playlists of big radio stations is that you don't hear the good music that company execs just don't "get". But The problem with buying from indie labels is that while some good bands are on indie labels because the big names screw them over, most are on indie labels because they just aren't any good.
There's some good stuff on indie labels, but the majority of it is crap (somewhat like big corporate labels, I guess.) How do I sift the crap from the good stuff *before* I waste money on it?
The whole lawful/unlawful demarkation is irrelevant if the argument is about what is ethical and what isn't. After all, screwing open-source developers with the DMCA is perfectly lawful, pretty much by definition. Giving someone an open-source DVD player is unlawful, yet perfectly ethical. The original act of the American colonies breaking away from England was quite unlawful. What is lawful is irrelevant to what is ethical.
And the original poster never brought law into it. You did, just now, for the first time.
Your side is the side full of idiots claiming this to be true.
My side is the same as yours, buffoon. Try reading the post next time. I just take exception to using that *particular* argument you are using, because it makes all gun advocates look dumb by association. And a target pistol is merely a tool to practice how to use the real thing. They wouldn't even exist if they weren't meant to be practice for the real thing. And, yes, beer *IS* designed to get you hammered, too.
Note I was careful not to say murder. I said "kill", leaving off whether the killing is a murderous one or a self-defence one. And, no the purpose of a car is to get people and things from point A to point B. The fact that the method used to do this ends up propelling a mass at deadly speeds is a side-effect of that main purpose. When a gun is used by someone to kill someone else, that *is* precisely what it was built for. It's not a side effect. Its the main effect.
Admitting that things like Volkswagon and the Autobahn are good doesn't have to mean you think Hitler was a good guy. Similarly, admitting that Microsoft is actually in the right in ONE particular court case doesn't have to mean you think they are right in other things. After all, they've been in the right before on issues of freedom, such as when Apple tried to sue them for the fact that Windows looks vaguely like the MacOS GUI, if you squint, and close one eye, and let your vision go out of focus.
It is interesting to note that MS has only been on the right side of things in some cases where others have sued them, never in cases where MS was the initiator of the suit.
The problem is that the world is becoming one where since a company operates globally, it has to abide by the rules of all countries it operates in at once. So the set of things a company is willing to do ends up being only that small subset that is legal in EVERY country. In effect, the laws of other countries are starting to effect yours as well. (And if you don't believe that, think about it from Skylarov's (sp?) point of view.)
The purpose of a gun is to fling one or more projectiles at deadly velocity, so it can damage its target. Using it to murder is not a "misuse" any more than using it to hit a clay pigeon is. And the fact that it is a deterrent is *because* it is designed to damage the things it hits. You can't seperate the two as if they were seperate needs. If guns weren't made to kill, they wouldn't be a very powerful deterrent. Does this mean I support outlawing guns? No. I'm just sick and tired of this unworkable argument being used by people who have otherwise good points, and who's position would be stronger without resorting to it. Guns mustn't end up being ONLY in the hands of the government, precisely BECAUSE they are designed to be killing machines.
Pathetic knee-jerk rhetoric from a gun avocate isn't any better. You listed several effects, some of which are derived from the fact that guns are designed to kill, as if they were independant uses from the fact that guns are made to kill. A gun is good for defence ONLY because it is designed to kill. A gun makes someone think twice about breaking in ONLY because it is designed to kill. Look, I support gun ownership, but you guys have to learn to stop using this really dumb argument that makes your side look bad. There is one reason and one reason ONLY that gun ownership must remain legal, and that is that if the technology to make such killing devices exists, that technology must not remain only in the hands of those who will abuse the power it gives them (government, and criminals.) All this pretend "Oh, guns aren't designed for killing, really, they're not" crap just waters things down and ruins your credibility. Yes, guns are designed to kill. That's *why* they mustn't remain solely in the hands of the government and the criminals.
Uh, I had a look at that page and I note sci-fi wasn't even mentioned at all. It never said it did well. It never said it did poorly. There isn't enough data to conclude what you conclude.
You have got to be kidding. I knew my fellow Americans were dumb, but Lifetime being the number one cable channel? They're dumber than I gave them credit for.
While most "roleplaying" computers games aren't roleplaying, I agree, it is important to distinguish those games that have a plot and story with puzzle solving and clue collection from those that don't. While it's not actually roleplaying, I'd consider something like the Ultima series and it's bretheren to be closer to roleplaying than an storyless game like Everquest. (The irony is that Everquest has actual human beings to interact with, so it *should* be a better roleplaying experience than something where you play alone vs the computer. But in practice it doesn't seem that way. It seems that playing a MMOG prevents any complex plots from existing, because the game can't be safely designed to let PC's change the world in any signifigant way. (If you rout the low-level orcs from the area and save the townsfolk, then what is the next low-level newbie supposed to do? So you have to have respawning and other such anti-plot features to make it fair.)
It is a shame that it sounds like there were no representatives of the Ultima style of game in the exhibit. There were lots of that type of game to choose from: the Phantasie series, the Bard's Tale series, the AD&D series (i.e. the original Pool of Radiance), and so on. They could have had at least one, and it is certainly an important part of that era of computer gaming.
The sci-fi channel gets pretty good ratings. Not the greatest, but it certainly doesn't need to be subsidised. How many people do you think actually watch such parasite channels as "The food network" and "Lifetime"?
He explicitly mentioned the Sci-Fi channel. That implies he was certainly NOT talking about free broadcast TV, since the Sci-Fi channel is a cable channel. Thus, the irony you claimed is there, is not.
How much of a subsidy is it, really, given that adding space the user can't use causes the unit to cost more to produce? As far as that Malarky about that portion of the space being owned by Tivo and simply stored in your home, I doubt Tivo's own inventory for tax purposes would agree that they own the units installed in people's houses, or even portions of them.
And that analogy is perfect because the space Tivo has reserved for promos is part of the OS for the system and the system would be less functional without it, and also unix OSes don't allow the owner of the box to decide how to do the partitioning... oh, wait, no, not that's not true after all...So you're being deceptive. Got it.
Whoever called this insightful wasn't paying attention. The original poster wanted something more economical, and then iterated what he meant by that. He wanted the ability to pay for *JUST* the channels he actually wants to watch. He didn't say he wanted to get them for free. He just didn't want to subsidize the 95% of the channels that he gets no use out of whatsoever. That seems perfectly capitalist in its thinking.
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Technically Marxist communism is merely workers being in charge of the companies they work for. Something like an employee-owned business that doesn't sell portions of itself on the stock market would qualify. Somewhere along the line it became synonymous with full-on socialism and that connotation has never once gone away.
The silly thing is that communism and capitalism are not opposite ends of the same spectrum as people seem to believe. Take for example the Amana commune - an appliance-building money-making collective.
The real opposites are full-on capitalism and full-on socialism. Both are extremes, in one case leading to a monopoly in charge of everything, and in the other leading to a government in charge of everything. In *BOTH* cases, the problem is that any sufficiently gigantic organization is no longer beholden to the people that made it big, and can abuse its power without reproach. And that's true regardless of whether the gigantic organization is a government or a corporate monopoly. When there's only one game in town, it's bad news for the little guy, either way.
Like so many other commenters, you seem to be operating under the impression that it's possible for advertisers to tell how many people are listening to a radio station. No such measure exists.
You can't measure number of radio listeners.
That's why natioanally syndicated shows like Dr Demonto are more common in small towns than big cities. It works like this: The syndicating group (in this case, Westwood One Radio Network) wants to change the radio stations that carry their show based on how big an audience it reaches. But since they can't actually tell how many people are listening in your area, they instead base the price on how many *could* be listening in the area. Therefore radio stations who's broadcast area contains more population have to pay more to carry the syndicated show, regardless of how many people in that area actually tune in to the show.
So then the Dr Demonto show is too expensive for a radio station to carry in a big city, but acceptably priced in small towns.
So how is this relevant? Well, they wouldn't be using such a sloppy pricing scale if they actually had a means of measuring number of listeners. As flawed as the Neilson's are for TV ratings, radio doesn't even have anything *that* good.
It's National PUBLIC radio, not "People's". Then again, maybe you knew that and were trying to make a politically ignorant communist reference.
Your claim is that radio airplay represents the music the public wants, because the advertisers would leave if people didn't listen. That claim is based on the unstated premise that it is possible to *tell* how many people are listening to a radio station at a given time. There's no Neilson rating system for radio, or any equivilent. The whole system is based on guesswork, and twisting the cause and effect on its ear - instead of industry execs doing what they falsely believe they are doing - monitoring people's tastes by watching album sales, and then playing those albums, they instead *create* demand for whatever albums they happen to be playing.
There's some good stuff on indie labels, but the majority of it is crap (somewhat like big corporate labels, I guess.) How do I sift the crap from the good stuff *before* I waste money on it?
The whole lawful/unlawful demarkation is irrelevant if the argument is about what is ethical and what isn't. After all, screwing open-source developers with the DMCA is perfectly lawful, pretty much by definition. Giving someone an open-source DVD player is unlawful, yet perfectly ethical. The original act of the American colonies breaking away from England was quite unlawful. What is lawful is irrelevant to what is ethical.
And the original poster never brought law into it. You did, just now, for the first time.
My side is the same as yours, buffoon. Try reading the post next time. I just take exception to using that *particular* argument you are using, because it makes all gun advocates look dumb by association. And a target pistol is merely a tool to practice how to use the real thing. They wouldn't even exist if they weren't meant to be practice for the real thing.
And, yes, beer *IS* designed to get you hammered, too.
Note I was careful not to say murder. I said "kill", leaving off whether the killing is a murderous one or a self-defence one. And, no the purpose of a car is to get people and things from point A to point B. The fact that the method used to do this ends up propelling a mass at deadly speeds is a side-effect of that main purpose. When a gun is used by someone to kill someone else, that *is* precisely what it was built for. It's not a side effect. Its the main effect.
It is interesting to note that MS has only been on the right side of things in some cases where others have sued them, never in cases where MS was the initiator of the suit.
The problem is that the world is becoming one where since a company operates globally, it has to abide by the rules of all countries it operates in at once. So the set of things a company is willing to do ends up being only that small subset that is legal in EVERY country. In effect, the laws of other countries are starting to effect yours as well.
(And if you don't believe that, think about it from Skylarov's (sp?) point of view.)
The purpose of a gun is to fling one or more projectiles at deadly velocity, so it can damage its target. Using it to murder is not a "misuse" any more than using it to hit a clay pigeon is. And the fact that it is a deterrent is *because* it is designed to damage the things it hits. You can't seperate the two as if they were seperate needs. If guns weren't made to kill, they wouldn't be a very powerful deterrent. Does this mean I support outlawing guns? No. I'm just sick and tired of this unworkable argument being used by people who have otherwise good points, and who's position would be stronger without resorting to it. Guns mustn't end up being ONLY in the hands of the government, precisely BECAUSE they are designed to be killing machines.
Pathetic knee-jerk rhetoric from a gun avocate isn't any better. You listed several effects, some of which are derived from the fact that guns are designed to kill, as if they were independant uses from the fact that guns are made to kill. A gun is good for defence ONLY because it is designed to kill. A gun makes someone think twice about breaking in ONLY because it is designed to kill. Look, I support gun ownership, but you guys have to learn to stop using this really dumb argument that makes your side look bad. There is one reason and one reason ONLY that gun ownership must remain legal, and that is that if the technology to make such killing devices exists, that technology must not remain only in the hands of those who will abuse the power it gives them (government, and criminals.) All this pretend "Oh, guns aren't designed for killing, really, they're not" crap just waters things down and ruins your credibility. Yes, guns are designed to kill. That's *why* they mustn't remain solely in the hands of the government and the criminals.
Even evil dictators occasionally do things like start Volkswagon, or comission the Autobahn.
If it was the medium you were paying for, than it wouldn't be an ongoing monthly fee.
Uh, I had a look at that page and I note sci-fi wasn't even mentioned at all. It never said it did well. It never said it did poorly. There isn't enough data to conclude what you conclude.
You have got to be kidding. I knew my fellow Americans were dumb, but Lifetime being the number one cable channel? They're dumber than I gave them credit for.
While most "roleplaying" computers games aren't roleplaying, I agree, it is important to distinguish those games that have a plot and story with puzzle solving and clue collection from those that don't. While it's not actually roleplaying, I'd consider something like the Ultima series and it's bretheren to be closer to roleplaying than an storyless game like Everquest. (The irony is that Everquest has actual human beings to interact with, so it *should* be a better roleplaying experience than something where you play alone vs the computer. But in practice it doesn't seem that way. It seems that playing a MMOG prevents any complex plots from existing, because the game can't be safely designed to let PC's change the world in any signifigant way. (If you rout the low-level orcs from the area and save the townsfolk, then what is the next low-level newbie supposed to do? So you have to have respawning and other such anti-plot features to make it fair.)
It is a shame that it sounds like there were no representatives of the Ultima style of game in the exhibit. There were lots of that type of game to choose from: the Phantasie series, the Bard's Tale series, the AD&D series (i.e. the original Pool of Radiance), and so on. They could have had at least one, and it is certainly an important part of that era of computer gaming.
I don't get how C code is not easy to run while perl is? (Which is what you meant when you said the perl code does B well and the C code does not.)
The sci-fi channel gets pretty good ratings. Not the greatest, but it certainly doesn't need to be subsidised. How many people do you think actually watch such parasite channels as "The food network" and "Lifetime"?
He explicitly mentioned the Sci-Fi channel. That implies he was certainly NOT talking about free broadcast TV, since the Sci-Fi channel is a cable channel. Thus, the irony you claimed is there, is not.
You'll note that I didn't say the users are unaware of the terms of the deal. I said that they *ARE* paying for that space they can't use.
How much of a subsidy is it, really, given that adding space the user can't use causes the unit to cost more to produce?
As far as that Malarky about that portion of the space being owned by Tivo and simply stored in your home, I doubt Tivo's own inventory for tax purposes would agree that they own the units installed in people's houses, or even portions of them.
And that analogy is perfect because the space Tivo has reserved for promos is part of the OS for the system and the system would be less functional without it, and also unix OSes don't allow the owner of the box to decide how to do the partitioning... oh, wait, no, not that's not true after all...So you're being deceptive. Got it.
Whoever called this insightful wasn't paying attention. The original poster wanted something more economical, and then iterated what he meant by that. He wanted the ability to pay for *JUST* the channels he actually wants to watch. He didn't say he wanted to get them for free. He just didn't want to subsidize the 95% of the channels that he gets no use out of whatsoever. That seems perfectly capitalist in its thinking.