"In high school, I was always being told by my teachers, family, and friends that I should get into tech."
When I started college in 1982, I was explicitly told by academic advisors that there was no real future in computer programming.
All I want to do now is become a college math teacher and do that until I retire. I'm finding higher barriers to entry in that endeavor than I ever did in the business world.
"Other countries" pass similar laws as the US, in order to address similar problems, and the laws pass with similar levels of support from the constituency, (provided we are referring to republics or popular democracies.)
That makes them "other countries' laws", not "US laws being enforced in other countries."
It has less to do with the US being a superpower, and more to do with the problems addressed by the law being perceived as somewhat universal.
Going further, it's all a result of nonparticipation in the political process. Tyranny always has its roots in the apathy of the governed.
I'm not sure I buy the story. Names and badge numbers of the NYPD officers, and names and positions of the INS agents involved would be helpful for the story's credibility.
Saying "The Fourth Amendment" doesn't give you any rights. In all coldness, the true way to test the fourth amendment would have been for the journalist to force the issue, and make the agents arrest him for leaving. Or is he trying to say he would have been shot? Whatever it takes to force the incident to be documented.
As it stands, we have a report that is easily falsifiable. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I am saying that screaming "ACLU" won't make a bit of difference if he is not willing to literally make a Federal case out of the incident. And in order to do that he needs better evidence.
You just need to add teeth to your disclaimer, and then stick to your guns. If you choose to ignore my advice, I will not answer any more questions about your computer. Then, when the time comes, DO NOT ANSWER ANY MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR COMPUTER.
I don't see what's so hard about that. If they're paying you, it's a whole nother game of course. But then it's in your best interest for them to keep screwing up. You need to be indispensible to them:-)
The more I think about it, the fact that popup IE windows don't have menubars is really their main annoyance. If they did have menus, they'd be useful, sometimes even convenient.
There are some reality assumptions expressed by the article that are not really supported with evidence.
The first is, "record companies are ailing." But almost every mainstream record that is distributed today, ultimately traces its product lifecycle to either Sony, Time Warner, EMI, Polygram, Vivendi/Universal, or Disney. If they are "ailing", that assessment should not be made independently of the trends of the markets among which they are treade.
The second assumption is "internet file sharing is responsible" for the first.
The only thing the article provides in the way of evidence, "the music industry is worth $66.6 Billion Canadian" does not support the premises.
So the writers stoop to an appeal to Elvis. The writer presumes to know what Elvis would do. That's insulting to me and to Elvis.
>we don't vote the way rich people would prefer >we vote
We don't vote counter to it either, or else your "fixed" election wouldn't have been, essentially, "too close to call".
It's not as if Bush got 4% of the popular vote and still won the election... It was more like 50-50 decided with a weighted coin toss. And just looking at the presidential election doesn't explain *everything* in government.
YES! That was proposed, passed, and ratified by people you and I have elected at various times during the last 30 (!!) years.
Didn't vote in every state, local, and federal election since you've been elegible? Guess what? YOU ALSO ELECTED THEM! Didn't take every opportunity to contact them WHILE THEY WERE LOCAL POLITICIANS WHO ANSWER THEIR OWN PHONE? Don't expect them to listen to you in Washington if they didn't meet you at home.
"Stop buying music from retailers, such as Virgin & Tower. "
I think we did do that. That's why they're screaming. It may be that they have found a false cause in the internet file trading culture, or it may be that they are right.
The only thing that will force "Them" to address other causes, would be if a competing industry overtakes the record industry. Poetic justice would be for that industry to be born from file swapping networks! But it would be sufficient if many independent productions would become more successful than anything represented by the RIAA... It would be a nice coup d'état if they were explicitly anti-RIAA...
But that's a pipe dream... I mean, if you could make a 250 horsepower alternative fuel car, you would see the oil industry collapse. If you could compete with the record industry on another playing field altogether you could overtake it... But is it going to happen? Who's actually working on it?
"I know lots of other people have said this already but that's what they are afraid of: People having a taste in music rather than having a taste based on the music they hear on the radio which the media companies (RIAA approved) can influence."
It's not at all a new phenomenon. I think we went through an entire generation where everyone besides record collectors realized this. The whole 1970's was about supergroups and then disco (And it also supports my point, but...) when I was collecting records from the 50's and 60's, it was a continual frustration to routinely find large collections of "the records THEY wanted you to buy" which do not happen to be the songs worth collecting.
They've been steering the public towards a limited catalogue since records were first mass-produced. Sheet music collectors say that the whole record thing was just an extension of the sheet music model.
I was thinking about this, and decided that the RIAA does not use the word "piracy" to represent copyright related crimes, nearly as often as slashdotters do. We are reinforcing the même more than they do. Nobody in the record industry has ever made a serious claim that copying music is equivalent to robbery and murder. They have gotten as far as calling it "theft", which is not altogether unreasonable. Congress went too far with the DMCA, but that's more your and my fault than the RIAA's.
"Just because there is precedent doesnt make it any more right."
Well... actually... under the US system of laws, the precedence is indeed what makes it right.
Perhaps it does not make it right for your own ethical system, but I'm afraid it does make it right, legally.
"Dissemination of ideas can never compare to annexation of physical matter."
But the analogy is not that simple, and that statement does not actually sum up the spirit of copyright law. Do you mean to suggest that there should be no laws respecting ownership of creative content?
I agree that the word "piracy" is not a reasonable characterization of the issue, but I also think it would be better to focus your energy on the actual issues, instead of following the red herring of language idioms.
There's probably a floor. Some point where it stops being unthinkable for a passenger to say "No thanks. It's not worth putting up with this crap just to travel. Refund my ticket please." People won't do that because the inconvenience of the security checkpoints does not yet exceed the inconvenience to forego the travel. The few who would disagree with that, won't exactly amount to a general bankruptcy of the travel industry (or a rebellion at the ballot boxes, or anything else that requires work, attention, or sacrifice).
"In order to accurately estimate the true damages, a little flashback to microeconomics class is in order."
Why?
Educated people have chosen not to go into politics during the last four decades. They don't even PARTICIPATE in politics. What makes you think this kind of enlightenment is going to sudennly take over the judges and lawyers?
It bothers me that they can find a lawyer that will even prosecute a case like this. I think that before you can claim $XX of losses, you should be required to present credible proof that you endured the losses. Where is this on their tax returns? Would it have been fraudulent to claim the capital losses there? I'd like to know why a loss that cannot be claimed for the IRS, can be the basis of a lawsuit. You shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.
"In 1918 the flu spread around the world without the aid of passenger air travel. "
Passenger air travel though, might not be as effective a vector as the crowded ships of the early 1900s. They spent weeks or months on those boats.
I realize that air travel means people can be more places faster, but I wonder if "more people infected" in the same busy port cities might be more effective that "a person here, a person there?"
"Perhaps making anyone who violates the quarrantine pay for anyone they infect?"
So your life is worth less than the net worth of the average resident of Singapore? I think you'd better check on the economic situation there before you expect them to "pay".
And if they could pay, what amount of money would that be? If someone shows up at your door and offers you a check for that amount, then you're ok with them infecting you with SARS?
Slashdot Mirror
"Income tax? How often do you pay taxes? Do you suppose that would track the economic performance of last month?"
The aggregate withholding figures would damn near be a real-time indicator.
>$4,800 a year? Oh boo ho. Try $27,000 a year
>with 4%-6.37% increases every year.
Now, you are the one who chose to go to an expensive college. I don't think your backlash at the O.P. is at all reasonable.
"In high school, I was always being told by my teachers, family, and friends that I should get into tech."
When I started college in 1982, I was explicitly told by academic advisors that there was no real future in computer programming.
All I want to do now is become a college math teacher and do that until I retire. I'm finding higher barriers to entry in that endeavor than I ever did in the business world.
"Versions of the same library were always backwards compatible. This was Law."
And that Law is bundled with an entirely new class of problems, and is an obvious deterrent to development progress.
"Other countries" pass similar laws as the US, in order to address similar problems, and the laws pass with similar levels of support from the constituency, (provided we are referring to republics or popular democracies.)
That makes them "other countries' laws", not "US laws being enforced in other countries."
It has less to do with the US being a superpower, and more to do with the problems addressed by the law being perceived as somewhat universal.
Going further, it's all a result of nonparticipation in the political process. Tyranny always has its roots in the apathy of the governed.
>I miss the days of two hour lunches filled with
>alcohol.
And yet people wonder what went wrong...
What I have not been able to understand is, why the outsourcing situation does not give me a clear opportunity to move to India.
I'm not sure I buy the story. Names and badge numbers of the NYPD officers, and names and positions of the INS agents involved would be helpful for the story's credibility.
Saying "The Fourth Amendment" doesn't give you any rights. In all coldness, the true way to test the fourth amendment would have been for the journalist to force the issue, and make the agents arrest him for leaving. Or is he trying to say he would have been shot? Whatever it takes to force the incident to be documented.
As it stands, we have a report that is easily falsifiable. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I am saying that screaming "ACLU" won't make a bit of difference if he is not willing to literally make a Federal case out of the incident. And in order to do that he needs better evidence.
"Depending on where you live, anywhere from 0 to 7% for sales tax. "
Irrelevant -- that tax is added on whatever retail price the item sells for.
You state it as if the tax is somehow deducted from the price.
You just need to add teeth to your disclaimer, and then stick to your guns. If you choose to ignore my advice, I will not answer any more questions about your computer. Then, when the time comes, DO NOT ANSWER ANY MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR COMPUTER.
:-)
I don't see what's so hard about that.
If they're paying you, it's a whole nother game of course. But then it's in your best interest for them to keep screwing up. You need to be indispensible to them
>javascript popup with no menus/status bar.
The more I think about it, the fact that popup IE windows don't have menubars is really their main annoyance. If they did have menus, they'd be useful, sometimes even convenient.
>The only way that kind of increase in price
>becomes worth is if your doing some highly
>critical things which absolutely must be done
>faster.
Or under acceleration, or being rotated, or in zero-g.
There are some reality assumptions expressed by the article that are not really supported with evidence.
The first is, "record companies are ailing."
But almost every mainstream record that is distributed today, ultimately traces its product lifecycle to either Sony, Time Warner, EMI, Polygram, Vivendi/Universal, or Disney. If they are "ailing", that assessment should not be made independently of the trends of the markets among which they are treade.
The second assumption is "internet file sharing is responsible" for the first.
The only thing the article provides in the way of evidence, "the music industry is worth $66.6 Billion Canadian" does not support the premises.
So the writers stoop to an appeal to Elvis. The writer presumes to know what Elvis would do. That's insulting to me and to Elvis.
>we don't vote the way rich people would prefer
>we vote
We don't vote counter to it either, or else your "fixed" election wouldn't have been, essentially, "too close to call".
It's not as if Bush got 4% of the popular vote and still won the election... It was more like 50-50 decided with a weighted coin toss. And just looking at the presidential election doesn't explain *everything* in government.
>Ever heard of the DMCA?
YES! That was proposed, passed, and ratified by people you and I have elected at various times during the last 30 (!!) years.
Didn't vote in every state, local, and federal election since you've been elegible? Guess what? YOU ALSO ELECTED THEM! Didn't take every opportunity to contact them WHILE THEY WERE LOCAL POLITICIANS WHO ANSWER THEIR OWN PHONE? Don't expect them to listen to you in Washington if they didn't meet you at home.
"Stop buying music from retailers, such as Virgin & Tower. "
I think we did do that. That's why they're screaming. It may be that they have found a false cause in the internet file trading culture, or it may be that they are right.
The only thing that will force "Them" to address other causes, would be if a competing industry overtakes the record industry. Poetic justice would be for that industry to be born from file swapping networks! But it would be sufficient if many independent productions would become more successful than anything represented by the RIAA... It would be a nice coup d'état if they were explicitly anti-RIAA...
But that's a pipe dream... I mean, if you could make a 250 horsepower alternative fuel car, you would see the oil industry collapse. If you could compete with the record industry on another playing field altogether you could overtake it...
But is it going to happen? Who's actually working on it?
"I know lots of other people have said this already but that's what they are afraid of: People having a taste in music rather than having a taste based on the music they hear on the radio which the media companies (RIAA approved) can influence."
It's not at all a new phenomenon. I think we went through an entire generation where everyone besides record collectors realized this. The whole 1970's was about supergroups and then disco (And it also supports my point, but...) when I was collecting records from the 50's and 60's, it was a continual frustration to routinely find large collections of "the records THEY wanted you to buy" which do not happen to be the songs worth collecting.
They've been steering the public towards a limited catalogue since records were first mass-produced. Sheet music collectors say that the whole record thing was just an extension of the sheet music model.
I was thinking about this, and decided that the RIAA does not use the word "piracy" to represent copyright related crimes, nearly as often as slashdotters do. We are reinforcing the même more than they do. Nobody in the record industry has ever made a serious claim that copying music is equivalent to robbery and murder. They have gotten as far as calling it "theft", which is not altogether unreasonable. Congress went too far with the DMCA, but that's more your and my fault than the RIAA's.
"Just because there is precedent doesnt make it any more right."
Well... actually... under the US system of laws, the precedence is indeed what makes it right.
Perhaps it does not make it right for your own ethical system, but I'm afraid it does make it right, legally.
"Dissemination of ideas can never compare to annexation of physical matter."
But the analogy is not that simple, and that statement does not actually sum up the spirit of copyright law. Do you mean to suggest that there should be no laws respecting ownership of creative content?
I agree that the word "piracy" is not a reasonable characterization of the issue, but I also think it would be better to focus your energy on the actual issues, instead of following the red herring of language idioms.
What's more obscene is the way the Presidential Seal is always draped to show the talon with the arrows...
>How much more stupid can it get?
There's probably a floor. Some point where it stops being unthinkable for a passenger to say "No thanks. It's not worth putting up with this crap just to travel. Refund my ticket please." People won't do that because the inconvenience of the security checkpoints does not yet exceed the inconvenience to forego the travel. The few who would disagree with that, won't exactly amount to a general bankruptcy of the travel industry (or a rebellion at the ballot boxes, or anything else that requires work, attention, or sacrifice).
"In order to accurately estimate the true damages, a little flashback to microeconomics class is in order."
Why?
Educated people have chosen not to go into politics during the last four decades. They don't even PARTICIPATE in politics. What makes you think this kind of enlightenment is going to sudennly take over the judges and lawyers?
It bothers me that they can find a lawyer that will even prosecute a case like this. I think that before you can claim $XX of losses, you should be required to present credible proof that you endured the losses. Where is this on their tax returns? Would it have been fraudulent to claim the capital losses there? I'd like to know why a loss that cannot be claimed for the IRS, can be the basis of a lawsuit. You shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.
Maybe a plague that can reduce an overpopulation is nature's idea of a practical solution...
"In 1918 the flu spread around the world without the aid of passenger air travel. "
Passenger air travel though, might not be as effective a vector as the crowded ships of the early 1900s. They spent weeks or months on those boats.
I realize that air travel means people can be more places faster, but I wonder if "more people infected" in the same busy port cities might be more effective that "a person here, a person there?"
"Perhaps making anyone who violates the quarrantine pay for anyone they infect?"
So your life is worth less than the net worth of the average resident of Singapore? I think you'd better check on the economic situation there before you expect them to "pay".
And if they could pay, what amount of money would that be? If someone shows up at your door and offers you a check for that amount, then you're ok with them infecting you with SARS?