The problem with "IP" is that we have two choices. 1) Ideas are property, and are owned by the creator of that idea, and 2) Ideas are not property, and no one ownes them. Now, if number 2 is correct, then copyright is a travisty. If number 1 is correct, then people should be stopped from using other peoples property without permission. Since I have yet to see a single idea that is not built on another persons "property", the whole idea of "IP" becomes hypocritical. Apparently we just picked a date, and decided to rob everybody with "IP" that predates that date.
Here is a solution: Every piece of "IP" should have to be researched so that permission can be granted from those who the new "IP" stole old "IP" from. This should also be required of the old "IP" for older "IP". If the owners of the root ideas in a piece of "IP" cannot be located, then the owners of the new "IP" sould loose all rights to enforce their "IP".
This is why floating a check is illegal. If you write me a check, and I immediatly take it to your bank, and you do not have the money in your account, you have been caught commiting fraud. If you have "Overdraft" protection, you are not really "floating" the check, as you have a guarentee from the bank to cover your checks. Saying that floating is not illegal unless the check actually bounces is like saying murder is not illegal if they don't find the body.
(I realise you didn't say floating was legal. I replied here because your point about a check being a "demand draft" hits the nail on the head.)
How many trees do you own? How much oxygen do you use without paying? So, what your saying is that you just willy nilly go around getting stuff for free. Unless you own enough plant life to support your breathing habit, you simply stop breathing, or you start paying for all of your oxygen, makeing the statement of "And a lot of people just want shit for free." as a way of insulting those who don't believe in copyright is simply hypocritical.
Lets face it, at least oxygen is a tangable item. If I take it and use it, you no longer have access to it.
I thought I was the only person that saw that the emperor had no clothes. The level of cheese in the new BSG is amazing. I probably wouldn't mind so much if they had called it something else, but the original show was way much better than this remake.
While, FOSS would likely be considered 'volunteer' work, what about watching comercials. We have been told be media barons that skipping comercials is stealing because we have implicitly agreed to watch the comercials in exchange for content. If that is true, then the IRS should be going after the media barons for not paying taxes on the millions (billions?) of dollars worth barter they have had with the viewers.
Well, a check card is basically a secured credit card, where they take payment after each transaction. I always discourage people from having one. The reason is that if someone gets hold of your card, they can drain your checking account without any pin, and until you can get your money back, you can very easily start bouncing checks like rent, mortgage, or utility bills. They are very insecure, and really bad for consumers. There is no benefit to a check card over a credit card, but there are a whole lot of down sides.
If you have a moral objection to credit cards in general, there isn't much anyone can say to change it. I don't understand your objection to them, but we all have our pet peaves. Credit cards are the only free way I can think of to create a credit history though.
So, the solution for MS hating black hats is to write a virus that searches machines for XBox360 code, and inserts a virus into the code that will overwrite the 360 Bios. The code that is written waits for say, 12 months, and then turns the XBox into a brick. I have personally seen serveral companies distribute software with virus on them. I would bet that given the current count of XBox360 viruses being 0, that they don't bother virus scanning the software before sending it to production.
That attitude is actually a lot easier with music than with software. Many of use would make dramatically less money if we were to just refuse to use software that we find overpriced. The number of people that would be harmed financially by not buying music CDs is miniscule.
Uh...Your second and third paragraphs contradict each other.
In fact, I can't think of a single occasion that I took my math teachers opinion as fact at face value. At least not concerning mathmatics. I cannot think of a singe situation that my math teacher did not prove what he was saying.
To be honest, an "appeal to authority" is somewhat questionable as a valid method of constructing an argument. Just spend 10 minutes talking to any bible thumping religious zealot, and this will become abunduntly clear.
I really don't think he is saying, "I'm educated so I'm right". It sounds far more like, "I've done some work in this area through my schooling (at a fairly advanced level) which establishes a descent level of familiarity with this material so here's my opinion". Stating one's credentials to establish that he or she has a certain level of knowledge on a subject is not the same as saying, "I'm right".
Um...You just gave the expanded version of "I'm educated so I'm right" argument. So, yes, that is what he was saying.
In regards to his spelling, being educated and having good spelling/grammar are not linked hand in hand. Furthermore, he is posting in an internet forum . I know this is extremely significant for many folks out there but for many others it's just a way to kill time. I know I frequently just quickly write out a post without checking spelling or grammar. I have other things to be doing with my self.
I agree that poor spelling...Actaully, lets even just say, (as in this case) a spelling mistake/typo or two in an internet forum is not something to dismiss someone over. In fact, I specifically said that in my post. I also said that I make an exception when a person claims expertise on spelling, and makes spelling mistakes in the same post. You see, you should have taken my post, as a 'your right THIS TIME' to the original spelling complaint poster.
The reason that my post did not talk about the grandparent's post was that I was responding specifically to the 'grammer nazi'.
So, in your mind, I have a positive obligation to get a credit card,
No, I don't believe you have a positive obligation to get a credit card. I just offered advice on how to build a credit history without incurring the costs and long term problems you appear to (reasonably) have a problem with.
even if I don't intend to use it for what credit cards are for,
It sounds like you have fallen prey to the modern idea that credit cards are for carrying long term debt. This is not the case. Credit cards are for convenience of shopping. Credit cards were originally offered by department stores and gas stations. They felt that by offering short term credit to their customes, so that their customers would have greater convinece at their store, they would get more business and make more money. Visa and Mastercard charge a fee to the store to accept their cards, so their motive of making money is satisfied even if you pay your card off every month. In fact, American Express only recently allowed you to carry a balance past the end of the month. Stores on the other hand accept Visa/MC because it creates a convenince for their customers, and thus increases business. You see, there is nothing in the 'purpose' of the credit card that requires long term debt.
Even though this says nothing about my responsibility?
In fact the utility companies know nothing about your responsibility. They are going with the risk they know as opposed to the one they don't. If your credit history is bad enough, they will still require a deposit. Keep in mind though...When the utility companies don't take a deposit, they are offering you the same kind of credit that you would get if you took my credit card advice. They are offering you their product on credit with a one month grace period. As long as you pay the balance at the end of the month, all is good. When you pay the deposit, you are in essence pre-paying (at least a portion) of your utility bill in advance. This in no way reflects on your responsibility, just whether you have experience carrying debt or not. So, yes, collecting a deposit from someone without a credit history is ok with me.
As a final coup de grace, are you going to tell me that you seriously wonder why US household debt is so high?
No, I don't wonder at all. The reason that debt is so high is that most people don't understand money beyond what is in their pocket. For example, most people don't realise that when a store accepts a check, they are supplying you a short term line of credit. The check is only a promise to pay on demand. They also don't realise that when a business performs a service, and doesn't collect until a later date, they are also supplying you with a line of credit. Both the complaint that a utility won't offer you a line of credit without a credit history, and running up $5k in credit card debt both stem from the same misunderstanding of how money works.
To sum up, no I don't think you should HAVE to use credit, but with that, you should not get offended when someone doesn't want to be your first creditor.
You do not have to have any real debt to have good credit. Just go get a Visa card, and use it like a bank account. Every time you charge on it, pay the credit card company. Virtully all credit cards have a one billing cycle grace period. If you pay the full balance at the time you recieve the bill, you pay $0 in interest. The key is you have to only spend the money you have. In fact, if you get a rebate card, many banks will actually pay YOU to use the credit card. You still need to be responsible. The key is making sure you never forget that you should not spend money you don't have.
Ok, saying that all content will be killed off by piracy is silly. While some of them don't care that other people aren't making as much, it is also silly to say that they think they should be 'slaves'. There are many reasons people commit copyright infringment. Trying to bundle them all into one group is, as I have said before, silly.
Two issues come to mind for me. 1) I have never met a single person over the age of about 10 that has not commited one copyright violation or another. This makes most anti-piracy arguments hypocritical. 2) There is a price point where most people would just rather buy the product out of convinence. I would never copy a $5 movie. It isn't worth the trouble. I would be very unlikely to copy a $10 movie. I will not, however, buy a $30 movie.
I think the movie industry made a HUGE mistake in their pricing. If the new/avarage/old movie prices were $15/$10/$5, I would have never subscribed to Netflix. I would have just bought what movies I wanted to see. Unfortunaly, they waited too long to lower prices, and are still just a tad too high. Now that I have Netflix, I don't buy any movies. I rent what I want to see, and if I want to watch it again, I just re-rent it.
Re:The Next Big Thing Is... Already Here...
on
No More Next Big Thing?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's entirely possible that you are right. The next big thing could be...wait for it...computers! I'm not entirely joking. We have had such an increadable pace of advancement in computer tech over the last twenty years, that it has become acceptable to be less and less efficent with them. Take the on going $100 laptop story. Given that a C-64 level hand crank powered portable computer could easily be produced for WAY under $100, it shows a distinct mentality of waste that there is so much hoopla over getting people pentium level portables. The last time I ran through the numbers, I could build one for ~$75 with single unit retail pricing. Can you imagine the power that our modern electronics could give us if we spent our time optimizing what we currently have?
Don't get me wrong. The current path is a good one. So far, it has been more efficiant to keep throwing new tech at the problem, but once/if that becomes no longer possible, we have another generation of optimizing to gain performance. This is why I don't complain about code bloat. It makes no sense to pay $100,000 to a coder to optimize a routine when you can throw $200 worth of hardware at the problem. BUT, if you already have the most powerful hardware available, the $100,000 optimization becomes a bargain.
Heres the thing. Every President lies. Thats right. Every one of them. Every President will lie to a grand jury if they think they can get away with it. You simply do not get to the point of being president without being a very good lier. When it comes to the 'purgery' thing. We do not generally prosecute purgery when it comes to relationships. If we did, 90% of all divorces would end up with someone going to jail. The whole "did you sleep with her" line of questioning was an obvious set-up, and very few people care whether a guy (even under oath) lies about having slept with a woman. Sex is simply something we as a people believe it is ok to lie about.
Normally, my opinion is that complaining about spelling is a sign that a person has nothing of substance to argue, and thus is really admitting defeat in a debate. I think that when the original poster gives the "I'm right because I'm educated" argument, and then specifically discusses how they would solve poor spelling, AND makes spelling errors, we have an exception.
"Most major label releases are produced in a studio that's got $500,000 worth of gear and an equivalent amount of studio build-out: sound proofing, acoustic treatments, isolation booths."
First, a million dollars isn't even going to touch the cost of a real movie. Second, that million dollars in sound equipment and studio is identical, and reused for thousands of albums, while most of the costs in movie production are reoccuring. The per album cost of a million dollar equipment/studio investment is likely going to be only a few thousand dollars. Your not going to get much of a movie at those rates.
Nobody is going to convince me that the cost of producing the shoundtrack was even close to the cost of producing the movie AND soundtrack. It is also a safe bet that more copies of Who Made Who were sold than the box office tickets and DVDs combined. Combine that with the fact that we can be pretty sure that AC/DC was paid for the sound track, AND that most of the music was already written, and likely recorded before the movie was made. How can the HIGHER price be justified for the soundtrack alone? Because the can get away with it. People are more willing to pay unreasonable prices for music than for movies.
If the walls are down, do what I did, run a 2" conduit into every room so that when you decide you want to change the wiring, you just pull it through the pipe.
Only if they drop a bunch of letters out of the book to make it take less space, then make you use one of those little red filters to read the paperback so that it would be difficult for you to go and photocopy it.;)
If we found life on this moon, and our probe destryed it all, it likely had a very fragile grip anyway, and likely wouldn't have lasted. Also, if we found life on this moon, it would indicate that life in space is likely common. That being the case, one moon in the long run would not be a huge deal. This of course is a worse case scenerio. You can be sure that this worse case scenerio would also lead to massive support by the public to increase space exploration.
I am one of the annoying people that are loud, pace, act goofy, and in every other way you can think of, annoy the other people in the office. I'll tell you, noise and activity help me be more productive. The fact that I have to dramatically tone it down, just to be tolerable causes a hit to my productivity. Luckily I am now a telecommuter, I have always found that my jobs with offices got way more productivity out of me than my jobs with cubes. Those of us that thrive in noise are perticularly screwed, because no one takes our needs seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with "IP" is that we have two choices. 1) Ideas are property, and are owned by the creator of that idea, and 2) Ideas are not property, and no one ownes them. Now, if number 2 is correct, then copyright is a travisty. If number 1 is correct, then people should be stopped from using other peoples property without permission. Since I have yet to see a single idea that is not built on another persons "property", the whole idea of "IP" becomes hypocritical. Apparently we just picked a date, and decided to rob everybody with "IP" that predates that date.
Here is a solution: Every piece of "IP" should have to be researched so that permission can be granted from those who the new "IP" stole old "IP" from. This should also be required of the old "IP" for older "IP". If the owners of the root ideas in a piece of "IP" cannot be located, then the owners of the new "IP" sould loose all rights to enforce their "IP".
This is why floating a check is illegal. If you write me a check, and I immediatly take it to your bank, and you do not have the money in your account, you have been caught commiting fraud. If you have "Overdraft" protection, you are not really "floating" the check, as you have a guarentee from the bank to cover your checks. Saying that floating is not illegal unless the check actually bounces is like saying murder is not illegal if they don't find the body.
(I realise you didn't say floating was legal. I replied here because your point about a check being a "demand draft" hits the nail on the head.)
How many trees do you own? How much oxygen do you use without paying? So, what your saying is that you just willy nilly go around getting stuff for free. Unless you own enough plant life to support your breathing habit, you simply stop breathing, or you start paying for all of your oxygen, makeing the statement of "And a lot of people just want shit for free." as a way of insulting those who don't believe in copyright is simply hypocritical.
Lets face it, at least oxygen is a tangable item. If I take it and use it, you no longer have access to it.
I thought I was the only person that saw that the emperor had no clothes. The level of cheese in the new BSG is amazing. I probably wouldn't mind so much if they had called it something else, but the original show was way much better than this remake.
While, FOSS would likely be considered 'volunteer' work, what about watching comercials. We have been told be media barons that skipping comercials is stealing because we have implicitly agreed to watch the comercials in exchange for content. If that is true, then the IRS should be going after the media barons for not paying taxes on the millions (billions?) of dollars worth barter they have had with the viewers.
You do realize that using the term 'jump the shark' is jumping the shark.....
Well, a check card is basically a secured credit card, where they take payment after each transaction. I always discourage people from having one. The reason is that if someone gets hold of your card, they can drain your checking account without any pin, and until you can get your money back, you can very easily start bouncing checks like rent, mortgage, or utility bills. They are very insecure, and really bad for consumers. There is no benefit to a check card over a credit card, but there are a whole lot of down sides.
If you have a moral objection to credit cards in general, there isn't much anyone can say to change it. I don't understand your objection to them, but we all have our pet peaves. Credit cards are the only free way I can think of to create a credit history though.
So, the solution for MS hating black hats is to write a virus that searches machines for XBox360 code, and inserts a virus into the code that will overwrite the 360 Bios. The code that is written waits for say, 12 months, and then turns the XBox into a brick. I have personally seen serveral companies distribute software with virus on them. I would bet that given the current count of XBox360 viruses being 0, that they don't bother virus scanning the software before sending it to production.
That attitude is actually a lot easier with music than with software. Many of use would make dramatically less money if we were to just refuse to use software that we find overpriced. The number of people that would be harmed financially by not buying music CDs is miniscule.
Uh...Your second and third paragraphs contradict each other.
In fact, I can't think of a single occasion that I took my math teachers opinion as fact at face value. At least not concerning mathmatics. I cannot think of a singe situation that my math teacher did not prove what he was saying.
To be honest, an "appeal to authority" is somewhat questionable as a valid method of constructing an argument. Just spend 10 minutes talking to any bible thumping religious zealot, and this will become abunduntly clear.
I really don't think he is saying, "I'm educated so I'm right". It sounds far more like, "I've done some work in this area through my schooling (at a fairly advanced level) which establishes a descent level of familiarity with this material so here's my opinion". Stating one's credentials to establish that he or she has a certain level of knowledge on a subject is not the same as saying, "I'm right".
Um...You just gave the expanded version of "I'm educated so I'm right" argument. So, yes, that is what he was saying.
In regards to his spelling, being educated and having good spelling/grammar are not linked hand in hand. Furthermore, he is posting in an internet forum . I know this is extremely significant for many folks out there but for many others it's just a way to kill time. I know I frequently just quickly write out a post without checking spelling or grammar. I have other things to be doing with my self.
I agree that poor spelling...Actaully, lets even just say, (as in this case) a spelling mistake/typo or two in an internet forum is not something to dismiss someone over. In fact, I specifically said that in my post. I also said that I make an exception when a person claims expertise on spelling, and makes spelling mistakes in the same post. You see, you should have taken my post, as a 'your right THIS TIME' to the original spelling complaint poster.
The reason that my post did not talk about the grandparent's post was that I was responding specifically to the 'grammer nazi'.
So, in your mind, I have a positive obligation to get a credit card,
No, I don't believe you have a positive obligation to get a credit card. I just offered advice on how to build a credit history without incurring the costs and long term problems you appear to (reasonably) have a problem with.
even if I don't intend to use it for what credit cards are for,
It sounds like you have fallen prey to the modern idea that credit cards are for carrying long term debt. This is not the case. Credit cards are for convenience of shopping. Credit cards were originally offered by department stores and gas stations. They felt that by offering short term credit to their customes, so that their customers would have greater convinece at their store, they would get more business and make more money. Visa and Mastercard charge a fee to the store to accept their cards, so their motive of making money is satisfied even if you pay your card off every month. In fact, American Express only recently allowed you to carry a balance past the end of the month. Stores on the other hand accept Visa/MC because it creates a convenince for their customers, and thus increases business. You see, there is nothing in the 'purpose' of the credit card that requires long term debt.
Even though this says nothing about my responsibility?
In fact the utility companies know nothing about your responsibility. They are going with the risk they know as opposed to the one they don't. If your credit history is bad enough, they will still require a deposit. Keep in mind though...When the utility companies don't take a deposit, they are offering you the same kind of credit that you would get if you took my credit card advice. They are offering you their product on credit with a one month grace period. As long as you pay the balance at the end of the month, all is good. When you pay the deposit, you are in essence pre-paying (at least a portion) of your utility bill in advance. This in no way reflects on your responsibility, just whether you have experience carrying debt or not. So, yes, collecting a deposit from someone without a credit history is ok with me.
As a final coup de grace, are you going to tell me that you seriously wonder why US household debt is so high?
No, I don't wonder at all. The reason that debt is so high is that most people don't understand money beyond what is in their pocket. For example, most people don't realise that when a store accepts a check, they are supplying you a short term line of credit. The check is only a promise to pay on demand. They also don't realise that when a business performs a service, and doesn't collect until a later date, they are also supplying you with a line of credit. Both the complaint that a utility won't offer you a line of credit without a credit history, and running up $5k in credit card debt both stem from the same misunderstanding of how money works.
To sum up, no I don't think you should HAVE to use credit, but with that, you should not get offended when someone doesn't want to be your first creditor.
You do not have to have any real debt to have good credit. Just go get a Visa card, and use it like a bank account. Every time you charge on it, pay the credit card company. Virtully all credit cards have a one billing cycle grace period. If you pay the full balance at the time you recieve the bill, you pay $0 in interest. The key is you have to only spend the money you have. In fact, if you get a rebate card, many banks will actually pay YOU to use the credit card. You still need to be responsible. The key is making sure you never forget that you should not spend money you don't have.
Ok, saying that all content will be killed off by piracy is silly. While some of them don't care that other people aren't making as much, it is also silly to say that they think they should be 'slaves'. There are many reasons people commit copyright infringment. Trying to bundle them all into one group is, as I have said before, silly.
Two issues come to mind for me. 1) I have never met a single person over the age of about 10 that has not commited one copyright violation or another. This makes most anti-piracy arguments hypocritical. 2) There is a price point where most people would just rather buy the product out of convinence. I would never copy a $5 movie. It isn't worth the trouble. I would be very unlikely to copy a $10 movie. I will not, however, buy a $30 movie.
I think the movie industry made a HUGE mistake in their pricing. If the new/avarage/old movie prices were $15/$10/$5, I would have never subscribed to Netflix. I would have just bought what movies I wanted to see. Unfortunaly, they waited too long to lower prices, and are still just a tad too high. Now that I have Netflix, I don't buy any movies. I rent what I want to see, and if I want to watch it again, I just re-rent it.
It's entirely possible that you are right. The next big thing could be...wait for it...computers! I'm not entirely joking. We have had such an increadable pace of advancement in computer tech over the last twenty years, that it has become acceptable to be less and less efficent with them. Take the on going $100 laptop story. Given that a C-64 level hand crank powered portable computer could easily be produced for WAY under $100, it shows a distinct mentality of waste that there is so much hoopla over getting people pentium level portables. The last time I ran through the numbers, I could build one for ~$75 with single unit retail pricing. Can you imagine the power that our modern electronics could give us if we spent our time optimizing what we currently have?
Don't get me wrong. The current path is a good one. So far, it has been more efficiant to keep throwing new tech at the problem, but once/if that becomes no longer possible, we have another generation of optimizing to gain performance. This is why I don't complain about code bloat. It makes no sense to pay $100,000 to a coder to optimize a routine when you can throw $200 worth of hardware at the problem. BUT, if you already have the most powerful hardware available, the $100,000 optimization becomes a bargain.
Heres the thing. Every President lies. Thats right. Every one of them. Every President will lie to a grand jury if they think they can get away with it. You simply do not get to the point of being president without being a very good lier. When it comes to the 'purgery' thing. We do not generally prosecute purgery when it comes to relationships. If we did, 90% of all divorces would end up with someone going to jail. The whole "did you sleep with her" line of questioning was an obvious set-up, and very few people care whether a guy (even under oath) lies about having slept with a woman. Sex is simply something we as a people believe it is ok to lie about.
Normally, my opinion is that complaining about spelling is a sign that a person has nothing of substance to argue, and thus is really admitting defeat in a debate. I think that when the original poster gives the "I'm right because I'm educated" argument, and then specifically discusses how they would solve poor spelling, AND makes spelling errors, we have an exception.
"Most major label releases are produced in a studio that's got $500,000 worth of gear and an equivalent amount of studio build-out: sound proofing, acoustic treatments, isolation booths."
First, a million dollars isn't even going to touch the cost of a real movie. Second, that million dollars in sound equipment and studio is identical, and reused for thousands of albums, while most of the costs in movie production are reoccuring. The per album cost of a million dollar equipment/studio investment is likely going to be only a few thousand dollars. Your not going to get much of a movie at those rates.
My favorite example of overpriced CDs is
Maximum overdrive
Who Made Who
Nobody is going to convince me that the cost of producing the shoundtrack was even close to the cost of producing the movie AND soundtrack. It is also a safe bet that more copies of Who Made Who were sold than the box office tickets and DVDs combined. Combine that with the fact that we can be pretty sure that AC/DC was paid for the sound track, AND that most of the music was already written, and likely recorded before the movie was made. How can the HIGHER price be justified for the soundtrack alone? Because the can get away with it. People are more willing to pay unreasonable prices for music than for movies.
Given the last couple of presidential elections, I highly doubt that.
It's been a while since I used win2k, but I can assure you that the problem does still exist in WinXP. I was cursing that behaviour just last week.
If the walls are down, do what I did, run a 2" conduit into every room so that when you decide you want to change the wiring, you just pull it through the pipe.
They just reprint the manual to say, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, these NON-HUMAN creatures that look just like us....
Only if they drop a bunch of letters out of the book to make it take less space, then make you use one of those little red filters to read the paperback so that it would be difficult for you to go and photocopy it. ;)
If we found life on this moon, and our probe destryed it all, it likely had a very fragile grip anyway, and likely wouldn't have lasted. Also, if we found life on this moon, it would indicate that life in space is likely common. That being the case, one moon in the long run would not be a huge deal. This of course is a worse case scenerio. You can be sure that this worse case scenerio would also lead to massive support by the public to increase space exploration.
I am one of the annoying people that are loud, pace, act goofy, and in every other way you can think of, annoy the other people in the office. I'll tell you, noise and activity help me be more productive. The fact that I have to dramatically tone it down, just to be tolerable causes a hit to my productivity. Luckily I am now a telecommuter, I have always found that my jobs with offices got way more productivity out of me than my jobs with cubes. Those of us that thrive in noise are perticularly screwed, because no one takes our needs seriously.