That being said, I've known some pretty Asperger-ish programmers. A lot more in those circles than in any other demographic I know. Seems to work for them, actually. Until they get promoted to mangement, alas.
In the rare event you need a possessive for some entity referred to as "it", rewrite the bloody sentence. Go directly to Rule 2 and don't look back. Before you do, however, note that constructs like "It's big pointy teeth.", while correct, are generally better written as "Godzilla's big pointy teeth."
Well, sure, but in practice, prose written that way tends to be, well, terrible. For example:
"Godzilla came crashing ashore. Was Godzilla male or a female? Nobody knew. Behind Godzilla grew a wake of destruction. Beneath each of Godzilla's footsteps ended the hopes and dreams of Tokyo's merchants, monks, men, and mariners. 'Look out!' they screamed, 'here Godzilla comes!' And then they died under Godzilla's giant feet, and skewered upon Godzilla's Pointy Teeth(tm)."
Well, other than sounding like a bad translation of the reverse translation of a secondary translation of a Norse poem, the point is that there are a couple of places in there where an "it" or maybe an "it's" would actually improve the flow of the text. In spoken English, you don't usually come across:
"Where's the water cooler?"
"The water cooler is down the hall."
"Down the hall" is more likely in conversation, and it implies an understanding of the subject. "It's down the hall" works pretty well too. But repeating the name of subject is just as clunky in writing as it is when spoken, I think. But's that my take on it (so to speak).
Obviously, when I say "can't" I mean "can't without the expectation that the owner of the diner can shoot you down like a dog while you're throwing a molotov cocktail at his business." Or "can't" in the sense that "can't without understanding that in buring the place down, you're giving up any claim on your own liberty, and can't bitch when the jury locks you up."
I am all for sell-by-the-song if the musician wants it that way. I know musicians that are convinced that no matter how much you like that one or two tracks on their CD, that you won't really get to know them until you've listened to the rest of it, too. Doesn't matter: it's up to the musician, or should be. If they're dumb, they're dumb. If seeing that they'll do more business a dollar at a time on their better music finally turns on the light bulb and they realize that their crappier tracks just aren't worth it... great! But nowhere in that recipe, even for the people that make most of their money at concerts, is there some magic justification for ripping off the artist that doesn't want to work for free. Some do, and that's up to them. But most smaller-profile artists will still gladly take that $50 for selling some singles this week, rather than not. And really popular performers that do several decimal places better... hard to see, at that point, why they'd give up that way of earning until they see a compelling reason.
Except that the public has the power to determine what businesses are viable
But not by trashing the business in question. If I open a diner that's popular with lots of local folks, but a vegan/PETA type decides that shouldn't be a "viable" business because I'm serving meat, they can vote with their wallet - but they can't vote by burning down the restaurant. Further, people can't say that the only way in which they'll consider my work in the diner as viable is if I do it for free, and show me that by having me work for them (as I fix their lunch), and then skipping out on the check en masse. The point is, if I don't attract and keep customers, that's one thing. But being ripped off is another.
Most people like getting something for nothing
Sure, when it's offered. But most normal people (especially those that do something productive for a living themselves) would feel more than a little odd climbing over the fence of the local concert venue to see a musician they love. The point is that they claim to respect the musician (and her work), and they know that she's asking a price for entertaining people, but they're willing to rip her off anyway - even in the act of enjoying what that person does. It just suggests a real disconnect that would probably stop if they had to look that artist in the eye as they climbed over the fence. Can't you hear the conversation? "I love your music! You're so great! Now, can you help me down off of this fence so I can watch you perform for me? I didn't want to pay you."
I suppose that if your neighbor had a really nice looking garden, you'd want to give him some money for making the street look nicer?
No, of course not. Because I happen to know that my neighbor's enjoyment of her garden is its own reward. People who like to get paid for producing beautiful landscapes are called landscape architects, or professional gardeners. If they want to get into that (tough) line of work, that's what they'll do, and they'll find people (or municipalities, or businesses) that actually do want to improve the looks of their environment, and have other things to focus on... and hence the money they pay for the physical work, as well as the creativity of people like that. The neighbor that makes their yard gorgeous usually gets the additional benefit of inspiring other neighbors to at least put in a little effort to do the same. That's not the same as being in the landscape design business, any more than listening to the neighbor practice the violin is the same as choosing to go see a performance for which the musician has decided to charge.
You're extrapolating my support for the rights of an artist (or their surrogate, their publisher) to go after someone who's ripping them off into a lack of support for other models or for resistence to change. That's not a fair assumption on your part. I'm quite certain that more nimble people, or artists who are willing to put down their instruments in order to do a lot of the heavy lifting they need to do to conduct their own sales activity online, are going to thrive. But I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about people who mysteriously feel obliged to hate (as in "I regard popular artists as either scabs or hacks") certain musicians while defending ripping them off - that whole love the artist's music, hate the artist enough to rip them off thing. It is a little clearer that what you're advocating is ripping them off in order to get them out of our culture as entertainers (at least, that what it sounds like). Except, you're depending on a a lot of people to paradoxically like them enough to rip them off. Doesn't that strike you as an unlikely way to wage a culture war?
You're suggesting that there are all sorts of artists that appeal to brainier, more sophisticated consumers like yourself... but then you're suggesting that they're too dumb to do any homework or get recommendations from their friends, and are just slaves to advertising. Well, which is it? Are all the smart sophisticates like yourself actually not? You seem to be thoughtful about what you like, and have found all the music you want without paying larger publishers for access to it (and of course, I'm sure you've never ripped anything from any of those wage slave musicians that are, by their choices, showing you that they're too dumb to like as musicians anyway), so if there's one of you, there must be more... and what do you care if a bunch of less sophisticated teenagers pay $12.95 for a recording they like? Or if Grandma pays $18 for the soundtrack from her favorite musical? They're obviously not people who would ever be in your hip social circle, so why encourage them to think of ripping off musicians as an entitlement just because they've got a broadband connection?
Luckily, on the rest of your comment (about being a cunning thief) it's close enough to obvious that you're being pedanticly sarcastic, rather than simply a hypocrite.
You're deliberately conflating two things we're talking about here. You've complained that to some people working at a label, the material they handle and the artists for whom they handle business are "content." I'm telling you that people are only just so passionate, personally, about so many flavors of music, and that if they only worked for artists that made music they personally loved, you'd have hundreds (thousands?) of very small, low-revenue labels that couldn't support all of the activities (as an economy of scale) that can be needed.
But, somehow, by telling me that you don't think an artist is making enough money (um, when they get paid exactly what the contract they just signed said they would get paid), you're just not convincing me that the right thing to do is to make sure they don't make any money.
The funny thing is that "it's" takes an extra keystroke and reflects a deliberate placement of a character. And that means that the typist thinks it should be there. I'm rarely one to bitch about typos here, and I've certainly made my share of them (no question!), but that sort of thing in the headline or summary is just sort of embarassing, and contributes to the further poor use of it by more monkey-see-monkey-do people. I mean, the apostrophe has a system! Slashdotters are all about systematic nuances, and certainly love to kvetch about things like code syntax... so, here's a bit of code that's continually misused. Let's kvetch, I say.
But it's not your music. The artists (that you seem to consider as "your" artists) have chosen to let those companies take care of their business dealings. Period.
When you work at a company that handles thousands of artists, you simply can't be a personal devotee of each one. Sometimes, from a business perspective, you have to find a word to use when describing what you handle. Content, art, music... a rose is a rose, and dreck is dreck depending on who you are. The person running sales or operations for a large label probably has a musical form they personally love and are passionate about (say, Celtic harp music, or bluegrass), but they're employed by a thousand other musicians to take care of the daily grind of handling the business of sales, airplay, and so on. And that's a job. A chore. It's "content" until it also happens to be your personal passion. If every record lable was so small that everyone working there only touched their personal favorite material, most of those people couldn't make a living - especially as online distribution in one form or another drives down net prices.
Well, which are the greedy ones? The musicians who decide to sell music, or their so-called fans who want it without paying the artists?
The only "greed" in that picture is on the part of the people that know the musician has chosen to sell their work, and yet (while claiming to like the performer, apparently) decide they want it on their own terms (i.e., "free"), instead. Turning the musician into your pet entertainment slave is greedy. Choosing to sell your music (which may indeed result in no one thinking you're worth the trouble to spend $15) is a business venture. "Ripping" off that business (such an appropriate term) is just what it sounds like.
Make music people are willing to pay for
Hmmm. So, if musicians do not make music that [more, non-14-yeard-olds, presumably?] people are willing to pay for, how does that legitimize ripping off what they do make? This is the part I'm always a little foggy on. If someone doesn't like the music enough to buy it, why are they willing to rip it off? If they hate the music, why do they want it? If they like the musician, why aren't they willing to enter into the same transaction that they muscian has said they want to enter into? And if you think the artist is a jerk for working within the larger, traditional music industry framework, why would you none the less want the music made by that person? I've never quite been able to put myself into the shoes of the person that says either:
"I hate this guy because he charges for his music, so I'm going to rip off a copy and enjoy it!"
or
"I love this musician so much! Every time he comes out with a new recording I must show my admiration by getting a copy. It's just that I don't love him enough to actually do what he's asking and pay him for entertaining me. Too bad for him! Sucker! But I love him and his music!"
Well, this is sort of a matter of perspective. Ever fly anywhere on an Airbus? Robo-take-offs-and-landings! Ever bang into something with your late-model car? Robo-ish-airbags! Life saving (or ending!) pharmaceuticals? Robo-made-drugs!
Yes, yes, these aren't walk-around-the-house robotic type things, but they're complicated, sensor-driven, hardware/software things that operate in life-and-death cirumstances to make things easier or better for people. It's not that we don't have semi-autonomous widgets in life-critical roles, it's just that they aren't in anthropomorphized form factors.
I suspect that there's nothing at all (other than price) stopping us from having a proper robo-lawnmower. It's just a lot cheaper, long-term, to hire local teenagers at $10/hour, and use a $250 mower from Sears. Or, a couple of goats. In fact, from the goat angle, you could say that we've been bio-engineering auto-homing, self-guiding, hazard-avoiding lawnmowers for centuries. Plus, you can use them to make cheese and felt, too, and they fertilize the soil while they're working.
But then, since so many of the Kabuki-like slashdot posting/comment/moderation rituals are about form and timing (rather than about content, per se), you should be able to test with:
Of the script? Is Ford really that able to make or break the script once he's agreed to do the project? Or, has he, essentially, not yet even agreed? With the buzz this has, isn't he more or less already beholden to do it?
Medicare will go bankrupt years before Social Security. How about Bush fixing the pressing problem first. Not to mention the fact they have significantly cut Medicaid funding
You are aware of the difference between the executive and legislative branches, right?
When the richest country in the world cannot take care of its population
Well, how much are you will to pay so that everyone can get a million dollars worth of health care as they see fit? The problem isn't that no one "cares" for the people who don't have a lot of their own money to spend on health care, the problem is that everyone is expecting state of the art care, tests, and drugs for everyone, in a hurry, and at rates that are no longer sustainable. Combine that with the gargantuan costs (to doctors and facilities) of malpractice insurance, and you've got an industry that has costs (prices, really) going up vastly faster than the income of the people theoretically paying for it. Who do you propose pays for that? It's going to go bankrupt not because the current administration is starving it somehow, but because it's an insane financial model in the first place. People with a sinus headache end up getting a battery of $5000 tests before anyone tries a $50 allergy meds prescription, and that ends up costing all of us a bloody fortune.
At least with the retirement funding issue, things are a lot more cut and dry. We'll be down to a couple of people working to pay the SS benefits of every retired person. That's completely unsustainable, just like having people who pay a couple thousand a year for health care, but one in ten of them rack up a $50,000 in bills.
note: this is the republican goal, to bankrupt all social services programs
Really! Please link to that info someplace, it would be fascinating to read. Or, is it more likely that it's their goal to point out when those programs are on a fundamentally bankrupting footing by their very nature? The entitlement culture is definately the problem - everyone wants everything to paid for by someone else, and they want to be able to sue for bundle if they have any dislike of how things turn out.
when the 10 year savings matches 2 weeks of expenditures
So, since it's just a few billion, might as well just keep spending it, right? That's exactly how we end up with overblown, hugely inefficient social programs in the first place. Spending to keep troops as supplied as possible is a completely different matter, and the outcome of that (the pursuit of a more peaceful, democratic middle east) will have gigantic payoffs in reduced expenses for us (and the rest of the world) in the long term. Kind of like we're no longer spending money to push back against Soviet expansionism, with savings in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Nah, he didn't write it - but the authors (there were a few involved - lots of interviews and material) but they cover a lot of his exploits. Quite a character. The whole cable thing was a hoot... with the self-enclosed inductance snooper, recording things, then getting picked up later. Actually met someone who used to do those exact dives for the Navy - apparently that book only scratches the surface, even after all this time.
If I am not free to go about my business without the threat of having to account for myself, then I might just as well be in prison.
I'd love to know how you've been travelling abroad without a passport all these years. Or, have you been having that same position for the last several decades? This is nothing new, just a new tool. There's no more of a "threat" now for having to account yourself than there ever has been: you've always had to account for yourself. Customs, immigration paperwork, visas - what, you think those are just new things that the Bush administration came up with in order to rule the world, just now? Please. Oh, and I'm curious how you handle things like traffic accidents, since you don't carry a driver's license or insurance paperwork or anything like that.
It's sad how the UK has gone from world power to weak sister in less than a few hundred years.
Sort of like Putin was saying that the worst thing in recent world history was the demise of the Soviet Union? Hell that came and went in less than 100 years. The Ottoman Empire doesn't even rate "weak sister" status any more, either.
The only reason that the UK used to have such influence (relative to its size, population, and resources) was the ballsyness of their Navy (and those telling it what to do). Through that, they were able to create a world-spanning empire that, absent battleships and whatnot, wouldn't have otherwise existed. That's pretty much the story of colonial influence by all of Europe, really. But the Brits stopped trying quite a while before the Germans did, and the Russians were pretty much the last ones to give it up. You could say that they went from World Power to Weak Sister in, oh, 20 years (not counting their Spam Power, which is of course (when the power is on) quite Imperially Impressive.
At least their politicians have some balls
Much as you obviously hate Bush, I can't imagine that you think lack of risk-taking is an issue there. Do you really think Kerry would have even brought up Social Security reform? His constituency would roast him for that, as they're doing to Bush. But he went into the election saying he was going to do that, and the talking heads assured us that would be his undoing ("taking a huge chance" etc). Just an example. Do I wish he was raised on a diet of Churchillian oratory technique? Sure. Would I rather have a spineless focus group addict shaping executive policy? No.
If you're suggesting that Blair has balls because he's willing to stand on principle and keep working on something that he thinks is the right thing to do, even while his local press wail, gnash their teeth, and henpeck him about it... then, sure - that takes a certain amount of vertebrae. But isn't that exactly what Bush does? Or, are you not really talking about "balls" and you're actually talking about principle, and you just don't like them? If so, at least say so. Oh, and if you don't think that Bush's predecessor got a huge free ride from his personal friends in the media, then you weren't actually watching the coverage. Softball questions from the press don't serve anybody, but the more liberal side of the media has certainly been throwing softballs for years, and there are a lot more of them.
You're right. That phrase has a lot of baggage associated with it, mostly because of how I use my TiVo. That said, I probably should have been clearer: I think I mean to refer more to an unspoken social contract, wherein people running popular businesses (like favorite coffee shops) are understood not to be running charities. While it's fashionable for businesses to do "community outreach" type stuff (so that Wal-Mart can defuse complaints about their size, for example), WiFi at the coffee shop is, specifically, about making the experience of patronizing that business a better one for the customers. The merchant may come across as peevish by complaining about a leech that never so much as buys a cup of coffee burning up all of their bandwidth grabbing Star Wars rips while using someone else's IP address, so it's up to the wider culture to make that sort of nonsense feel as inappropriate as it is.
Actually, I expect that the people the merchant is trying to attract, and for whom the services are intended will indeed be welcome, and should feel comfortable. It's those people, who obviously like the place where they buy their coffee and read their e-mail, that ought to spare the merchant from having to speak up. The freeloaders obviously have no shame, so it's appropriate to at least talk about it in a forum where they might grasp the reality of the no-free-lunch concept.
If it's common sense, regardless of the law, the people (in the form of a jury) can make it legal.
Not really. For example, if a person doesn't have appropriate charges brought up against them (or there are no such statutes), then there will never be an option for a jury to exercise. The jury might elect not to convict on something, but they can't cause a conviction (on other counts) where there should be one. This is particularly true where the nature of an act (like some innovative new form of online fraud, for example) hasn't been really contemplated by the justice system before.
an attitude of "buy or get out" would be devastating to any sense of culture
Um... what culture is that, now? The one where the people who don't buy anything sponge off of the merchant's not free (to them) service? The one that burns up bandwidth that the merchant put there as a value to their customers?
vulgar
No, vulgar is using a merchant's services without participating in the implied contract: be our customer. Do those same people feel comfortable showing up there every morning to wash up in the merchant's restrooms, ask for some coffee for free, and then go on their way?
It's not about whether the merchant would have to get into the awkward mode of policing their users for those that have or have not bought coffee... it's about the people who do buy it pointing out that the leeches are, well, leeches. And extracting a little social pain from them so that they get it, and don't wind up with an even stronger sense of entitlement than they already seem to have.
Then the film isn't going to make money anyway and any publicity it gets from sharing can only help DVD sales.
But if (say, in France) there ends up being no law standing between the average broadband user and a perfect dump of said movie right to your hard drive... don't you think that's going to have a bit of an impact on that film maker's bottom line? More than a bit, even? Right now, the people that grab movies that way know they're doing the wrong thing, and just don't care. But when you officually sanction the fetching of the guy's movie without any way to pay the artist, you're going to take away most of the reasons that someone with money would invest in that film maker's project. Lots of good, smaller projects simply won't get made because the bills can't be paid.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe geeks really are autistic.
Maybe being obtuse isn't particularly useful.
That being said, I've known some pretty Asperger-ish programmers. A lot more in those circles than in any other demographic I know. Seems to work for them, actually. Until they get promoted to mangement, alas.
In the rare event you need a possessive for some entity referred to as "it", rewrite the bloody sentence. Go directly to Rule 2 and don't look back. Before you do, however, note that constructs like "It's big pointy teeth.", while correct, are generally better written as "Godzilla's big pointy teeth."
Well, sure, but in practice, prose written that way tends to be, well, terrible. For example:
"Godzilla came crashing ashore. Was Godzilla male or a female? Nobody knew. Behind Godzilla grew a wake of destruction. Beneath each of Godzilla's footsteps ended the hopes and dreams of Tokyo's merchants, monks, men, and mariners. 'Look out!' they screamed, 'here Godzilla comes!' And then they died under Godzilla's giant feet, and skewered upon Godzilla's Pointy Teeth(tm)."
Well, other than sounding like a bad translation of the reverse translation of a secondary translation of a Norse poem, the point is that there are a couple of places in there where an "it" or maybe an "it's" would actually improve the flow of the text. In spoken English, you don't usually come across:
"Where's the water cooler?"
"The water cooler is down the hall."
"Down the hall" is more likely in conversation, and it implies an understanding of the subject. "It's down the hall" works pretty well too. But repeating the name of subject is just as clunky in writing as it is when spoken, I think. But's that my take on it (so to speak).
Obviously, when I say "can't" I mean "can't without the expectation that the owner of the diner can shoot you down like a dog while you're throwing a molotov cocktail at his business." Or "can't" in the sense that "can't without understanding that in buring the place down, you're giving up any claim on your own liberty, and can't bitch when the jury locks you up."
I am all for sell-by-the-song if the musician wants it that way. I know musicians that are convinced that no matter how much you like that one or two tracks on their CD, that you won't really get to know them until you've listened to the rest of it, too. Doesn't matter: it's up to the musician, or should be. If they're dumb, they're dumb. If seeing that they'll do more business a dollar at a time on their better music finally turns on the light bulb and they realize that their crappier tracks just aren't worth it... great! But nowhere in that recipe, even for the people that make most of their money at concerts, is there some magic justification for ripping off the artist that doesn't want to work for free. Some do, and that's up to them. But most smaller-profile artists will still gladly take that $50 for selling some singles this week, rather than not. And really popular performers that do several decimal places better... hard to see, at that point, why they'd give up that way of earning until they see a compelling reason.
Except that the public has the power to determine what businesses are viable
But not by trashing the business in question. If I open a diner that's popular with lots of local folks, but a vegan/PETA type decides that shouldn't be a "viable" business because I'm serving meat, they can vote with their wallet - but they can't vote by burning down the restaurant. Further, people can't say that the only way in which they'll consider my work in the diner as viable is if I do it for free, and show me that by having me work for them (as I fix their lunch), and then skipping out on the check en masse. The point is, if I don't attract and keep customers, that's one thing. But being ripped off is another.
Most people like getting something for nothing
Sure, when it's offered. But most normal people (especially those that do something productive for a living themselves) would feel more than a little odd climbing over the fence of the local concert venue to see a musician they love. The point is that they claim to respect the musician (and her work), and they know that she's asking a price for entertaining people, but they're willing to rip her off anyway - even in the act of enjoying what that person does. It just suggests a real disconnect that would probably stop if they had to look that artist in the eye as they climbed over the fence. Can't you hear the conversation? "I love your music! You're so great! Now, can you help me down off of this fence so I can watch you perform for me? I didn't want to pay you."
I suppose that if your neighbor had a really nice looking garden, you'd want to give him some money for making the street look nicer?
No, of course not. Because I happen to know that my neighbor's enjoyment of her garden is its own reward. People who like to get paid for producing beautiful landscapes are called landscape architects, or professional gardeners. If they want to get into that (tough) line of work, that's what they'll do, and they'll find people (or municipalities, or businesses) that actually do want to improve the looks of their environment, and have other things to focus on... and hence the money they pay for the physical work, as well as the creativity of people like that. The neighbor that makes their yard gorgeous usually gets the additional benefit of inspiring other neighbors to at least put in a little effort to do the same. That's not the same as being in the landscape design business, any more than listening to the neighbor practice the violin is the same as choosing to go see a performance for which the musician has decided to charge.
You're extrapolating my support for the rights of an artist (or their surrogate, their publisher) to go after someone who's ripping them off into a lack of support for other models or for resistence to change. That's not a fair assumption on your part. I'm quite certain that more nimble people, or artists who are willing to put down their instruments in order to do a lot of the heavy lifting they need to do to conduct their own sales activity online, are going to thrive. But I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about people who mysteriously feel obliged to hate (as in "I regard popular artists as either scabs or hacks") certain musicians while defending ripping them off - that whole love the artist's music, hate the artist enough to rip them off thing. It is a little clearer that what you're advocating is ripping them off in order to get them out of our culture as entertainers (at least, that what it sounds like). Except, you're depending on a a lot of people to paradoxically like them enough to rip them off. Doesn't that strike you as an unlikely way to wage a culture war?
You're suggesting that there are all sorts of artists that appeal to brainier, more sophisticated consumers like yourself... but then you're suggesting that they're too dumb to do any homework or get recommendations from their friends, and are just slaves to advertising. Well, which is it? Are all the smart sophisticates like yourself actually not? You seem to be thoughtful about what you like, and have found all the music you want without paying larger publishers for access to it (and of course, I'm sure you've never ripped anything from any of those wage slave musicians that are, by their choices, showing you that they're too dumb to like as musicians anyway), so if there's one of you, there must be more... and what do you care if a bunch of less sophisticated teenagers pay $12.95 for a recording they like? Or if Grandma pays $18 for the soundtrack from her favorite musical? They're obviously not people who would ever be in your hip social circle, so why encourage them to think of ripping off musicians as an entitlement just because they've got a broadband connection?
Luckily, on the rest of your comment (about being a cunning thief) it's close enough to obvious that you're being pedanticly sarcastic, rather than simply a hypocrite.
You're deliberately conflating two things we're talking about here. You've complained that to some people working at a label, the material they handle and the artists for whom they handle business are "content." I'm telling you that people are only just so passionate, personally, about so many flavors of music, and that if they only worked for artists that made music they personally loved, you'd have hundreds (thousands?) of very small, low-revenue labels that couldn't support all of the activities (as an economy of scale) that can be needed.
But, somehow, by telling me that you don't think an artist is making enough money (um, when they get paid exactly what the contract they just signed said they would get paid), you're just not convincing me that the right thing to do is to make sure they don't make any money.
The funny thing is that "it's" takes an extra keystroke and reflects a deliberate placement of a character. And that means that the typist thinks it should be there. I'm rarely one to bitch about typos here, and I've certainly made my share of them (no question!), but that sort of thing in the headline or summary is just sort of embarassing, and contributes to the further poor use of it by more monkey-see-monkey-do people. I mean, the apostrophe has a system! Slashdotters are all about systematic nuances, and certainly love to kvetch about things like code syntax... so, here's a bit of code that's continually misused. Let's kvetch, I say.
And somewhere on earth there's a special place for people who can't use the apostrophe correctly. Wish I knew where that was.
Of course "their" might have been a better choice anyway.
to the bigger corporations involved in my music
But it's not your music. The artists (that you seem to consider as "your" artists) have chosen to let those companies take care of their business dealings. Period.
When you work at a company that handles thousands of artists, you simply can't be a personal devotee of each one. Sometimes, from a business perspective, you have to find a word to use when describing what you handle. Content, art, music... a rose is a rose, and dreck is dreck depending on who you are. The person running sales or operations for a large label probably has a musical form they personally love and are passionate about (say, Celtic harp music, or bluegrass), but they're employed by a thousand other musicians to take care of the daily grind of handling the business of sales, airplay, and so on. And that's a job. A chore. It's "content" until it also happens to be your personal passion. If every record lable was so small that everyone working there only touched their personal favorite material, most of those people couldn't make a living - especially as online distribution in one form or another drives down net prices.
greedy leech asses
Well, which are the greedy ones? The musicians who decide to sell music, or their so-called fans who want it without paying the artists?
The only "greed" in that picture is on the part of the people that know the musician has chosen to sell their work, and yet (while claiming to like the performer, apparently) decide they want it on their own terms (i.e., "free"), instead. Turning the musician into your pet entertainment slave is greedy. Choosing to sell your music (which may indeed result in no one thinking you're worth the trouble to spend $15) is a business venture. "Ripping" off that business (such an appropriate term) is just what it sounds like.
Make music people are willing to pay for
Hmmm. So, if musicians do not make music that [more, non-14-yeard-olds, presumably?] people are willing to pay for, how does that legitimize ripping off what they do make? This is the part I'm always a little foggy on. If someone doesn't like the music enough to buy it, why are they willing to rip it off? If they hate the music, why do they want it? If they like the musician, why aren't they willing to enter into the same transaction that they muscian has said they want to enter into? And if you think the artist is a jerk for working within the larger, traditional music industry framework, why would you none the less want the music made by that person? I've never quite been able to put myself into the shoes of the person that says either:
"I hate this guy because he charges for his music, so I'm going to rip off a copy and enjoy it!"
or
"I love this musician so much! Every time he comes out with a new recording I must show my admiration by getting a copy. It's just that I don't love him enough to actually do what he's asking and pay him for entertaining me. Too bad for him! Sucker! But I love him and his music!"
Well, this is sort of a matter of perspective. Ever fly anywhere on an Airbus? Robo-take-offs-and-landings! Ever bang into something with your late-model car? Robo-ish-airbags! Life saving (or ending!) pharmaceuticals? Robo-made-drugs!
Yes, yes, these aren't walk-around-the-house robotic type things, but they're complicated, sensor-driven, hardware/software things that operate in life-and-death cirumstances to make things easier or better for people. It's not that we don't have semi-autonomous widgets in life-critical roles, it's just that they aren't in anthropomorphized form factors.
I suspect that there's nothing at all (other than price) stopping us from having a proper robo-lawnmower. It's just a lot cheaper, long-term, to hire local teenagers at $10/hour, and use a $250 mower from Sears. Or, a couple of goats. In fact, from the goat angle, you could say that we've been bio-engineering auto-homing, self-guiding, hazard-avoiding lawnmowers for centuries. Plus, you can use them to make cheese and felt, too, and they fertilize the soil while they're working.
But then, since so many of the Kabuki-like slashdot posting/comment/moderation rituals are about form and timing (rather than about content, per se), you should be able to test with:
*geese*
Of the script? Is Ford really that able to make or break the script once he's agreed to do the project? Or, has he, essentially, not yet even agreed? With the buzz this has, isn't he more or less already beholden to do it?
Medicare will go bankrupt years before Social Security. How about Bush fixing the pressing problem first. Not to mention the fact they have significantly cut Medicaid funding
You are aware of the difference between the executive and legislative branches, right?
When the richest country in the world cannot take care of its population
Well, how much are you will to pay so that everyone can get a million dollars worth of health care as they see fit? The problem isn't that no one "cares" for the people who don't have a lot of their own money to spend on health care, the problem is that everyone is expecting state of the art care, tests, and drugs for everyone, in a hurry, and at rates that are no longer sustainable. Combine that with the gargantuan costs (to doctors and facilities) of malpractice insurance, and you've got an industry that has costs (prices, really) going up vastly faster than the income of the people theoretically paying for it. Who do you propose pays for that? It's going to go bankrupt not because the current administration is starving it somehow, but because it's an insane financial model in the first place. People with a sinus headache end up getting a battery of $5000 tests before anyone tries a $50 allergy meds prescription, and that ends up costing all of us a bloody fortune.
At least with the retirement funding issue, things are a lot more cut and dry. We'll be down to a couple of people working to pay the SS benefits of every retired person. That's completely unsustainable, just like having people who pay a couple thousand a year for health care, but one in ten of them rack up a $50,000 in bills.
note: this is the republican goal, to bankrupt all social services programs
Really! Please link to that info someplace, it would be fascinating to read. Or, is it more likely that it's their goal to point out when those programs are on a fundamentally bankrupting footing by their very nature? The entitlement culture is definately the problem - everyone wants everything to paid for by someone else, and they want to be able to sue for bundle if they have any dislike of how things turn out.
when the 10 year savings matches 2 weeks of expenditures
So, since it's just a few billion, might as well just keep spending it, right? That's exactly how we end up with overblown, hugely inefficient social programs in the first place. Spending to keep troops as supplied as possible is a completely different matter, and the outcome of that (the pursuit of a more peaceful, democratic middle east) will have gigantic payoffs in reduced expenses for us (and the rest of the world) in the long term. Kind of like we're no longer spending money to push back against Soviet expansionism, with savings in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Nah, he didn't write it - but the authors (there were a few involved - lots of interviews and material) but they cover a lot of his exploits. Quite a character. The whole cable thing was a hoot... with the self-enclosed inductance snooper, recording things, then getting picked up later. Actually met someone who used to do those exact dives for the Navy - apparently that book only scratches the surface, even after all this time.
If I am not free to go about my business without the threat of having to account for myself, then I might just as well be in prison.
I'd love to know how you've been travelling abroad without a passport all these years. Or, have you been having that same position for the last several decades? This is nothing new, just a new tool. There's no more of a "threat" now for having to account yourself than there ever has been: you've always had to account for yourself. Customs, immigration paperwork, visas - what, you think those are just new things that the Bush administration came up with in order to rule the world, just now? Please. Oh, and I'm curious how you handle things like traffic accidents, since you don't carry a driver's license or insurance paperwork or anything like that.
It's sad how the UK has gone from world power to weak sister in less than a few hundred years.
Sort of like Putin was saying that the worst thing in recent world history was the demise of the Soviet Union? Hell that came and went in less than 100 years. The Ottoman Empire doesn't even rate "weak sister" status any more, either.
The only reason that the UK used to have such influence (relative to its size, population, and resources) was the ballsyness of their Navy (and those telling it what to do). Through that, they were able to create a world-spanning empire that, absent battleships and whatnot, wouldn't have otherwise existed. That's pretty much the story of colonial influence by all of Europe, really. But the Brits stopped trying quite a while before the Germans did, and the Russians were pretty much the last ones to give it up. You could say that they went from World Power to Weak Sister in, oh, 20 years (not counting their Spam Power, which is of course (when the power is on) quite Imperially Impressive.
At least their politicians have some balls
Much as you obviously hate Bush, I can't imagine that you think lack of risk-taking is an issue there. Do you really think Kerry would have even brought up Social Security reform? His constituency would roast him for that, as they're doing to Bush. But he went into the election saying he was going to do that, and the talking heads assured us that would be his undoing ("taking a huge chance" etc). Just an example. Do I wish he was raised on a diet of Churchillian oratory technique? Sure. Would I rather have a spineless focus group addict shaping executive policy? No.
If you're suggesting that Blair has balls because he's willing to stand on principle and keep working on something that he thinks is the right thing to do, even while his local press wail, gnash their teeth, and henpeck him about it... then, sure - that takes a certain amount of vertebrae. But isn't that exactly what Bush does? Or, are you not really talking about "balls" and you're actually talking about principle, and you just don't like them? If so, at least say so. Oh, and if you don't think that Bush's predecessor got a huge free ride from his personal friends in the media, then you weren't actually watching the coverage. Softball questions from the press don't serve anybody, but the more liberal side of the media has certainly been throwing softballs for years, and there are a lot more of them.
Best be careful with the term "implied contract"
You're right. That phrase has a lot of baggage associated with it, mostly because of how I use my TiVo. That said, I probably should have been clearer: I think I mean to refer more to an unspoken social contract, wherein people running popular businesses (like favorite coffee shops) are understood not to be running charities. While it's fashionable for businesses to do "community outreach" type stuff (so that Wal-Mart can defuse complaints about their size, for example), WiFi at the coffee shop is, specifically, about making the experience of patronizing that business a better one for the customers. The merchant may come across as peevish by complaining about a leech that never so much as buys a cup of coffee burning up all of their bandwidth grabbing Star Wars rips while using someone else's IP address, so it's up to the wider culture to make that sort of nonsense feel as inappropriate as it is.
Actually, I expect that the people the merchant is trying to attract, and for whom the services are intended will indeed be welcome, and should feel comfortable. It's those people, who obviously like the place where they buy their coffee and read their e-mail, that ought to spare the merchant from having to speak up. The freeloaders obviously have no shame, so it's appropriate to at least talk about it in a forum where they might grasp the reality of the no-free-lunch concept.
If it's common sense, regardless of the law, the people (in the form of a jury) can make it legal.
Not really. For example, if a person doesn't have appropriate charges brought up against them (or there are no such statutes), then there will never be an option for a jury to exercise. The jury might elect not to convict on something, but they can't cause a conviction (on other counts) where there should be one. This is particularly true where the nature of an act (like some innovative new form of online fraud, for example) hasn't been really contemplated by the justice system before.
an attitude of "buy or get out" would be devastating to any sense of culture
Um... what culture is that, now? The one where the people who don't buy anything sponge off of the merchant's not free (to them) service? The one that burns up bandwidth that the merchant put there as a value to their customers?
vulgar
No, vulgar is using a merchant's services without participating in the implied contract: be our customer. Do those same people feel comfortable showing up there every morning to wash up in the merchant's restrooms, ask for some coffee for free, and then go on their way?
It's not about whether the merchant would have to get into the awkward mode of policing their users for those that have or have not bought coffee... it's about the people who do buy it pointing out that the leeches are, well, leeches. And extracting a little social pain from them so that they get it, and don't wind up with an even stronger sense of entitlement than they already seem to have.
Then the film isn't going to make money anyway and any publicity it gets from sharing can only help DVD sales.
But if (say, in France) there ends up being no law standing between the average broadband user and a perfect dump of said movie right to your hard drive... don't you think that's going to have a bit of an impact on that film maker's bottom line? More than a bit, even? Right now, the people that grab movies that way know they're doing the wrong thing, and just don't care. But when you officually sanction the fetching of the guy's movie without any way to pay the artist, you're going to take away most of the reasons that someone with money would invest in that film maker's project. Lots of good, smaller projects simply won't get made because the bills can't be paid.
I guess You mean Balkans not Baltics... :-))) Serbia and Croatia are located in Balkans
Exactly! See, if the UN was doing a better job, I'd know that!