The idea behind going real-time: Grab more business â" and money â" from customers.
Yield-management pricing techniques, like airplane tickets, for everything else in your life.
Just download this handy android banking app that also reports your location data. When you walk by a high-end furniture store it will pop-up a teaser interest rate for any credit card purchases in the next hour.
using that information to attempt to refute statements from a far more authoritative source?
Yes, the problem is facts without context. Any specialised area of knowledge has a vocabulary where otherwise normal words carry all kinds of subtlties with them and their particular use connotes all kinds of unstated meaning.
So you get people who do not even realise that there are all kinds of layers of context to these "facts" they dig up and just go with the face value, often in partial (or even) full contradiction of the meaning intended by the author.
For example in the bill of rights, the 1st amendment explicitly mentions freedom of the press, a naive reader will see "press" and think newspaper or tv news, an organisation that has professional reporters rather than the original meaning which was simple a printing press. Or the 2nd amendment which talks about a "well regulated militia" - the naive reader frequently takes regulated as meaning "controlled by law" when at the time the bill of rights was written it meant trained/designed and functioning.
Still, it is better to have information available because at least there is the opportunity for the uneducated internet user to dig in deep and get a more accurate understanding. There will always be people who care less about truth than they do about "winning" that's human nature and its unlikely we can do much to stop them other than learn to recognise and discount them.
ONE OF Einstein's colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. "You don't remember your own number?" the man asked, startled. "No," Einstein answered. "Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?" Einstein was waay ahead of his time.
I can't remember my own telephone number either, not because I can "just look it up" but rather because I never use it. I know other people's telephone numbers (well I used to before cell phones had personal phonebooks) because I use those numbers all of the time.
Your example defeats your argument. Nobody needs to memorize Moby Dick or Treasure Island to relate them together.
However, the better your memory of each book the better you are able to synthesise the information in both books in order to see connections and draw new insights.
Memory is not all or nothing - it's a continuum between remembering nothing and total memorisation. In other words, you can't readily "connect the dots" if the "dots" are off in google instead of in your head. Synthesis is probably the most useful part of intelligence, people who can't synthesise knowledge are just squishy dictionaries.
I've seen that excuse before. However, one of the common controls used for such studies is to exclude the results from everybody who reports an immediate improvement. That's particularly effective for anti-depressant studies because those usually take a month or so before they are even supposed to start working.
TOMMY So Tommy, tell me -- with all this money on every side, how does anything get done? O'CONNOR It doesn't! That's the genius of the system!
What's missing from this analysis is that if there really was equal money for every side, that would leave the politicians free to do the right thing because the effect of the money would cancel out, it would be the equivalent of having no money.
Of course it really isn't that way - there's rarely much money on the side of the average joe.
The editing of that video reeked of brietbartism so I hunted down the entire transcript.
In the process, I saw that all the top hits were websites like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. The kind of places that you can count on to take the most fauxrageous interpretation. What I read was obama describing the way things are. People who want to be insulted by Obama are going to see it as an insult.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
You've said that everybody in the room is willing to do what they have to do, wants to get something done by August 2nd. But isn't the problem the people who aren't in the room, and in particular Republican presidential candidates, Republican tea partyers on the Hill, and the American public?
The latest CBS News polls show that only 24 percent of Americans said you should raise the debt limit to avoid an economic catastrophe. There are still 69 percent who oppose raising the debt limit.
So is it the problem that you and others have failed to convince the American people that we have a crisis here and how are you going to change that?
OBAMA: Well, let me distinguish between professional politicians and the public at large. You know, the public is not paying close attention to the ins and outs of how a treasury auction goes. They shouldn't.
OBAMA: They're worrying about their family; they're worrying about their jobs; they're worrying about their neighborhood. They've got a lot of other things on their plate.
We're paid to worry about it.
I think, depending on how you phrased the question, if you said to the American people, "Is it a good idea for the United States not to pay its bills and potentially create another recession that could throw millions of more people out of work," I feel pretty confident I can get a majority on my side on that one.
And that's the fact. If we don't raise the debt ceiling and we see a crisis of confidence in the markets, and suddenly interest rates are going up significantly and everybody is paying higher interest rates on their car loans, on their mortgages, on their credit cards, and that's sucking up a whole bunch of additional money out of the pockets of the American people, I promise you, they won't like that.
And based on Obama's recent press conference (something about us regular people shouldn't have to know the minutiae of complex economic vehicles and we should leave it up to our masters [OK, the "master" thing is my word]),
You are going to have to back that up because, to my ears, it sounds EXACTLY like astro-turf against the Obama supported Frank-Dodd act which the banksters have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defang precisely because it does require the disclosure of the minutiae of complex economic vehicles. The abuse of those vehicles being a key component of the recent financial collapse.
Yeah, how many 4 year olds tell people that the neighbor kissed him on the lips? How many of them are completely making it up off the top of their heads?
While you seem to think that's damning evidence, it isn't. 4 year olds don't live in the rational world. They are especially susceptible to manipulation, intentional or not. The prosecutor's own description of that event says the mother freaked out about the guy being a pedophile and then the next day the child "unprompted" said he had been kissed on the lips. That's textbook kid saying what the parent wants to hear.
read the summary AGAIN... he did NOT kiss his own son, he kissed the Kostolnik's son...
Yep, but other than that, there was nothing mentioned to support the idea he was a pedophile. The article said he had two kids of his own and despite having his computers raided there was no mention of kiddie porn other than the frame-job pic.
In the current culture of fear, reporting him as a pedophile is tantamount to convicting him. At the very least it substantially raised the risk that child protective services would take his kids away from him, never mind all the other social stigma issues. Lots of parents will go batshit crazy when you threaten their kids like that.
On the other hand, he apparently was a repeat offender. Having done something similar, on a smaller scale, to a neighbor at a previous residence because he was pissed that their physical therapists (often?) blocked his driveway. At least that's what the article I read said, it may have over-simplified for purposes of sensationalism since it didn't sound like he had actually been convicted of anything before.
If saying the same thing from start to end is "word dancing" to you, then it appears to me continued discussion with you is beyond pointless.
Lol. That's what you want to go with? That you should not have been given the benefit of the doubt that you actually had a coherent point? I'll try to remember that next time I see you post.
That's very american of you. Nice explanation, I'm sure all the americans appreciate it. I wonder if you've got an equally valid explanation for, say, the UK. That way your post would be relevant.
Seems to me that it's all covered by the Berne Convention which "harmonized" such laws across practically every country in the world. But if you weren't so busy being a smug bastard you probably would have known that.
This is probably the most insightful thing I've read on/. today. Then again, I've been busy arguing with right-wing fascists about the travesty that is the USA.
Apparently you have battled too much with the monsters and stared too long into the abyss.
I don't have a problem with the concept. I am not retracting anything.
I have a problem with any execution that is proposed
So, you don't have a problem as long as we are taking about a fantasy land where there are no consequences. That is exactly the kind of BS word dancing I predicted.
Also I have a case where constricting the market works just fine - Singapore
Capital punishment for dealers and they still had 2000 drug users arrested in 2010. That's only a reduction of 66% from the early 90s. Doesn't sound like all that huge of a success to me even if you ignore the societal costs.
Your naive view that regulation is never effective at all is exactly that, naive.
Outlawing, especially with mandatory death penalties, isn't "regulation" it's full on prohibition and even your best example still had thousands of documented failures, never mind the ones that didn't get caught.
Now that there is an option to go streaming only and never have to worry about physical delivery, how hard is it to anonymously subscribe to netflix?
Can you send them a cashiers check for a year at a time? How about using one of those debit cards you can buy with cash at the convenience store? Is there such a thing as a netflix gift card that you can buy with cash?
I know that netflix will still get your IP address when they stream content to you (unless you have a really kick-ass VPN tunnel or the like), but I'm assuming that if you lie about your identity - especially if you do it intelligently and use a fake address that is still in the same town so geo-locators won't throw an alarm about your IP address, they will only bother to cross-reference your viewing habits with your made up identity rather your real self.
You may think of my position as "personally unflattering" if you wish.
Thanks for your permission. But that wasn't the question I asked. You ignored the issue of effectiveness which says to me that you know just how counter-productive your position is but aren't willing to face up to it.
2. I'd somehow accept the idea of a "content classification" if it would limit to being "advisory only"
FWIW, even "advisory" ratings result in censorship due to the economic impact of the ratings.
One example is how Wal-mart won't carry music with one of those "explicit lyrics" ratings. For really big acts, that means a wal-mart edition with the naughty words blanked out and an uncut edition for all the other stores. But for most acts, there is only enough money to produce one edition and since wal-mart is the largest music distributor, that one edition is usually the wal-mart friendly, censored version. (online distribution is changing the situation, but only after a couple of decades of damage)
Another example: MPAA ratings for movies consistently cause a "dumbing down" of movies in order to increase audience size by avoiding R ratings. Scenes get cut and sometimes entire movies won't get greenlit. Take the case of the current superhero binge, there have been no R-rated super-hero movies since Watchmen - which turned a decent profit but was still considered a financial failure. Even "Sucker Punch" (by the same director) which was conceived as a PG-13 movie from the start had a key scene cut in order to receive a PG-13 rating - a scene that didn't include nudity, simulated sex or really much of anything except obscenity-free dialogue.
In other words, there really is no such thing as an "advisory only" rating system, there will always be a price paid in censorship as the result of any ratings system. Some people don't have a problem with that price, but it at least needs to be acknowledged when talking about such plans.
Because obviously, I could never come to these conclusions myself, no, it *has* to be media hysteria that has warped my fragile little mind. Has to be.
I don't think you realize just how personally unflattering your alternative explanation is. It's one thing to blithely go along with whatever authority proposes without thinking about it too much since it doesn't really personally impact you. It's a far worse proposition to have thought long and hard about a subject and come to such an abjectly poor conclusion
Blocking it puts off the 'casual' viewer and constricts the market. And we all believe in market based solutions, right?
When has "constricting the market" like that ever worked? War on Drugs? Nope. Copyright Piracy? Nope. Prohibition? Nope.
Seriously, name ONE case where "constricting" has conclusively worked. You can't.
None of which are "market based" either. If anything, trying to affect a market by government action is pretty much the polar opposite of "market based."
I don't have those types of stores here (except Wal-Mart). But usually you can fill out all types of false information on those club cards, they'll give them to you regardless. You get the discounts and/or points but nothing in your mailbox.
Unless you pay with cash every single time using fake info on the loyalty card won't help you, they will record your real info from your checking/debit/credit card and cross-reference it for all past and future purchases. Even playing "musical loyalty cards" with a bunch of other people doesn't help too much unless you swap cards frequently.
I also shop at a grocery store that doesn't have any of those obnoxious club cards. Funny thing, they just give everyone the discount and it works. They have better prices than the other stores around.
That's rare. My experience in New England has been that the chain without the loyalty cards (Market Basket) is the cheapest - even factoring in loyalty discounts and they've been kicking the asses of all the other chains that do push the loyalty cards (opening new stores while the others have been closing stores).
Same thing in the South where Publix has been kicking Winn-Dixie's ass for prices and customer satisfaction ratings (and profits).
I don't have the link handy, but there was a pricing survey conducted a few years back with one particular chain, in Arizona I think, of prices before they started pushing loyalty cards and then a year afterwards and they found that on average - even with the loyalty discount - prices were substantially higher.
The obvious logical fallacy with your statement is that, just because other regimes may be evil and corrupt, it does not mean that the US is not.
Especially since two of the three cases he cited the US was complicit by providing the country military aid (Sudan was the 6th largest recipient of US military aid and everybody knows about the billions given to Pakistan).
Maybe you aren't aware that corporations also destroy physical dead tree documents, religiously.
I'm quite aware. Just like I'm aware that librarians regularly cull their collections of dead tree books. But electronic documents are not the same as dead trees and treating them as such is to ignore everything that makes them superior. You can't grep dead trees and they take up serious amounts of physical space. Neither is the case with old email.
There is no reason to archive stuff for decades, just because you consider the cost to be trivial.
There is no reason NOT to archive stuff for decades precisely because all of the costs except for legal liability for wrong doing are trivial.
Patent trolls, though, by possessing patents; but never doing anything that could infringe on patents(because their only business is patent trolling) disrupt this cushy equilibrium. They are sort of the non-state suitcase bombers with nothing to lose in the patent wars.
Perversely, if we want meaningful patent reform, it might actually be best to applaud and encourage patent trolling as much as possible.
So... One man's troll is another man's freedom fighter!
Slashdot Mirror
The idea behind going real-time: Grab more business â" and money â" from customers.
Yield-management pricing techniques, like airplane tickets, for everything else in your life.
Just download this handy android banking app that also reports your location data. When you walk by a high-end furniture store it will pop-up a teaser interest rate for any credit card purchases in the next hour.
I can't wait!!!
using that information to attempt to refute statements from a far more authoritative source?
Yes, the problem is facts without context. Any specialised area of knowledge has a vocabulary where otherwise normal words carry all kinds of subtlties with them and their particular use connotes all kinds of unstated meaning.
So you get people who do not even realise that there are all kinds of layers of context to these "facts" they dig up and just go with the face value, often in partial (or even) full contradiction of the meaning intended by the author.
For example in the bill of rights, the 1st amendment explicitly mentions freedom of the press, a naive reader will see "press" and think newspaper or tv news, an organisation that has professional reporters rather than the original meaning which was simple a printing press. Or the 2nd amendment which talks about a "well regulated militia" - the naive reader frequently takes regulated as meaning "controlled by law" when at the time the bill of rights was written it meant trained/designed and functioning.
Still, it is better to have information available because at least there is the opportunity for the uneducated internet user to dig in deep and get a more accurate understanding. There will always be people who care less about truth than they do about "winning" that's human nature and its unlikely we can do much to stop them other than learn to recognise and discount them.
ONE OF Einstein's colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. "You don't remember your own number?" the man asked, startled. "No," Einstein answered. "Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?" Einstein was waay ahead of his time.
I can't remember my own telephone number either, not because I can "just look it up" but rather because I never use it. I know other people's telephone numbers (well I used to before cell phones had personal phonebooks) because I use those numbers all of the time.
Your example defeats your argument. Nobody needs to memorize Moby Dick or Treasure Island to relate them together.
However, the better your memory of each book the better you are able to synthesise the information in both books in order to see connections and draw new insights.
Memory is not all or nothing - it's a continuum between remembering nothing and total memorisation. In other words, you can't readily "connect the dots" if the "dots" are off in google instead of in your head. Synthesis is probably the most useful part of intelligence, people who can't synthesise knowledge are just squishy dictionaries.
I've seen that excuse before. However, one of the common controls used for such studies is to exclude the results from everybody who reports an immediate improvement. That's particularly effective for anti-depressant studies because those usually take a month or so before they are even supposed to start working.
TOMMY So Tommy, tell me -- with all this money on every side, how does anything get done?
O'CONNOR It doesn't! That's the genius of the system!
What's missing from this analysis is that if there really was equal money for every side, that would leave the politicians free to do the right thing because the effect of the money would cancel out, it would be the equivalent of having no money.
Of course it really isn't that way - there's rarely much money on the side of the average joe.
The editing of that video reeked of brietbartism so I hunted down the entire transcript.
In the process, I saw that all the top hits were websites like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. The kind of places that you can count on to take the most fauxrageous interpretation. What I read was obama describing the way things are. People who want to be insulted by Obama are going to see it as an insult.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
You've said that everybody in the room is willing to do what they have to do, wants to get something done by August 2nd. But isn't the problem the people who aren't in the room, and in particular Republican presidential candidates, Republican tea partyers on the Hill, and the American public?
The latest CBS News polls show that only 24 percent of Americans said you should raise the debt limit to avoid an economic catastrophe. There are still 69 percent who oppose raising the debt limit.
So is it the problem that you and others have failed to convince the American people that we have a crisis here and how are you going to change that?
OBAMA: Well, let me distinguish between professional politicians and the public at large. You know, the public is not paying close attention to the ins and outs of how a treasury auction goes. They shouldn't.
OBAMA: They're worrying about their family; they're worrying about their jobs; they're worrying about their neighborhood. They've got a lot of other things on their plate.
We're paid to worry about it.
I think, depending on how you phrased the question, if you said to the American people, "Is it a good idea for the United States not to pay its bills and potentially create another recession that could throw millions of more people out of work," I feel pretty confident I can get a majority on my side on that one.
And that's the fact. If we don't raise the debt ceiling and we see a crisis of confidence in the markets, and suddenly interest rates are going up significantly and everybody is paying higher interest rates on their car loans, on their mortgages, on their credit cards, and that's sucking up a whole bunch of additional money out of the pockets of the American people, I promise you, they won't like that.
And based on Obama's recent press conference (something about us regular people shouldn't have to know the minutiae of complex economic vehicles and we should leave it up to our masters [OK, the "master" thing is my word]),
You are going to have to back that up because, to my ears, it sounds EXACTLY like astro-turf against the Obama supported Frank-Dodd act which the banksters have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defang precisely because it does require the disclosure of the minutiae of complex economic vehicles. The abuse of those vehicles being a key component of the recent financial collapse.
Yeah, how many 4 year olds tell people that the neighbor kissed him on the lips? How many of them are completely making it up off the top of their heads?
While you seem to think that's damning evidence, it isn't. 4 year olds don't live in the rational world. They are especially susceptible to manipulation, intentional or not. The prosecutor's own description of that event says the mother freaked out about the guy being a pedophile and then the next day the child "unprompted" said he had been kissed on the lips. That's textbook kid saying what the parent wants to hear.
read the summary AGAIN... he did NOT kiss his own son, he kissed the Kostolnik's son...
Yep, but other than that, there was nothing mentioned to support the idea he was a pedophile. The article said he had two kids of his own and despite having his computers raided there was no mention of kiddie porn other than the frame-job pic.
In the current culture of fear, reporting him as a pedophile is tantamount to convicting him. At the very least it substantially raised the risk that child protective services would take his kids away from him, never mind all the other social stigma issues. Lots of parents will go batshit crazy when you threaten their kids like that.
On the other hand, he apparently was a repeat offender. Having done something similar, on a smaller scale, to a neighbor at a previous residence because he was pissed that their physical therapists (often?) blocked his driveway. At least that's what the article I read said, it may have over-simplified for purposes of sensationalism since it didn't sound like he had actually been convicted of anything before.
If saying the same thing from start to end is "word dancing" to you, then it appears to me continued discussion with you is beyond pointless.
Lol. That's what you want to go with? That you should not have been given the benefit of the doubt that you actually had a coherent point? I'll try to remember that next time I see you post.
That's very american of you. Nice explanation, I'm sure all the americans appreciate it. I wonder if you've got an equally valid explanation for, say, the UK. That way your post would be relevant.
Seems to me that it's all covered by the Berne Convention which "harmonized" such laws across practically every country in the world. But if you weren't so busy being a smug bastard you probably would have known that.
This is probably the most insightful thing I've read on /. today. Then again, I've been busy arguing with right-wing fascists about the travesty that is the USA.
Apparently you have battled too much with the monsters and stared too long into the abyss.
I don't have a problem with the concept. I am not retracting anything.
I have a problem with any execution that is proposed
So, you don't have a problem as long as we are taking about a fantasy land where there are no consequences. That is exactly the kind of BS word dancing I predicted.
Also I have a case where constricting the market works just fine - Singapore
Capital punishment for dealers and they still had 2000 drug users arrested in 2010. That's only a reduction of 66% from the early 90s. Doesn't sound like all that huge of a success to me even if you ignore the societal costs.
Your naive view that regulation is never effective at all is exactly that, naive.
Outlawing, especially with mandatory death penalties, isn't "regulation" it's full on prohibition and even your best example still had thousands of documented failures, never mind the ones that didn't get caught.
Seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to guarantee no one knows you voluntarily watched Iron Man 2.
Not so much, it's only marginally more complicated than just blithely filling out their forms with all the info they want but don't legitimately need.
Now that there is an option to go streaming only and never have to worry about physical delivery, how hard is it to anonymously subscribe to netflix?
Can you send them a cashiers check for a year at a time? How about using one of those debit cards you can buy with cash at the convenience store? Is there such a thing as a netflix gift card that you can buy with cash?
I know that netflix will still get your IP address when they stream content to you (unless you have a really kick-ass VPN tunnel or the like), but I'm assuming that if you lie about your identity - especially if you do it intelligently and use a fake address that is still in the same town so geo-locators won't throw an alarm about your IP address, they will only bother to cross-reference your viewing habits with your made up identity rather your real self.
What position do you think I take?
This position: "But I don't really have a problem with the concept of domain filtering or domain takedowns for child pornography."
If you are now retracting that, then great. If you are going to try word dance around it then we're done because we all know what that dance means.
You may think of my position as "personally unflattering" if you wish.
Thanks for your permission. But that wasn't the question I asked. You ignored the issue of effectiveness which says to me that you know just how counter-productive your position is but aren't willing to face up to it.
2. I'd somehow accept the idea of a "content classification" if it would limit to being "advisory only"
FWIW, even "advisory" ratings result in censorship due to the economic impact of the ratings.
One example is how Wal-mart won't carry music with one of those "explicit lyrics" ratings. For really big acts, that means a wal-mart edition with the naughty words blanked out and an uncut edition for all the other stores. But for most acts, there is only enough money to produce one edition and since wal-mart is the largest music distributor, that one edition is usually the wal-mart friendly, censored version. (online distribution is changing the situation, but only after a couple of decades of damage)
Another example: MPAA ratings for movies consistently cause a "dumbing down" of movies in order to increase audience size by avoiding R ratings. Scenes get cut and sometimes entire movies won't get greenlit. Take the case of the current superhero binge, there have been no R-rated super-hero movies since Watchmen - which turned a decent profit but was still considered a financial failure. Even "Sucker Punch" (by the same director) which was conceived as a PG-13 movie from the start had a key scene cut in order to receive a PG-13 rating - a scene that didn't include nudity, simulated sex or really much of anything except obscenity-free dialogue.
In other words, there really is no such thing as an "advisory only" rating system, there will always be a price paid in censorship as the result of any ratings system. Some people don't have a problem with that price, but it at least needs to be acknowledged when talking about such plans.
Because obviously, I could never come to these conclusions myself, no, it *has* to be media hysteria that has warped my fragile little mind. Has to be.
I don't think you realize just how personally unflattering your alternative explanation is. It's one thing to blithely go along with whatever authority proposes without thinking about it too much since it doesn't really personally impact you. It's a far worse proposition to have thought long and hard about a subject and come to such an abjectly poor conclusion
Blocking it puts off the 'casual' viewer and constricts the market. And we all believe in market based solutions, right?
When has "constricting the market" like that ever worked?
War on Drugs? Nope.
Copyright Piracy? Nope.
Prohibition? Nope.
Seriously, name ONE case where "constricting" has conclusively worked. You can't.
None of which are "market based" either. If anything, trying to affect a market by government action is pretty much the polar opposite of "market based."
I don't have those types of stores here (except Wal-Mart). But usually you can fill out all types of false information on those club cards, they'll give them to you regardless. You get the discounts and/or points but nothing in your mailbox.
Unless you pay with cash every single time using fake info on the loyalty card won't help you, they will record your real info from your checking/debit/credit card and cross-reference it for all past and future purchases. Even playing "musical loyalty cards" with a bunch of other people doesn't help too much unless you swap cards frequently.
I also shop at a grocery store that doesn't have any of those obnoxious club cards. Funny thing, they just give everyone the discount and it works. They have better prices than the other stores around.
That's rare. My experience in New England has been that the chain without the loyalty cards (Market Basket) is the cheapest - even factoring in loyalty discounts and they've been kicking the asses of all the other chains that do push the loyalty cards (opening new stores while the others have been closing stores).
Same thing in the South where Publix has been kicking Winn-Dixie's ass for prices and customer satisfaction ratings (and profits).
I don't have the link handy, but there was a pricing survey conducted a few years back with one particular chain, in Arizona I think, of prices before they started pushing loyalty cards and then a year afterwards and they found that on average - even with the loyalty discount - prices were substantially higher.
The obvious logical fallacy with your statement is that, just because other regimes may be evil and corrupt, it does not mean that the US is not.
Especially since two of the three cases he cited the US was complicit by providing the country military aid (Sudan was the 6th largest recipient of US military aid and everybody knows about the billions given to Pakistan).
Maybe you aren't aware that corporations also destroy physical dead tree documents, religiously.
I'm quite aware. Just like I'm aware that librarians regularly cull their collections of dead tree books. But electronic documents are not the same as dead trees and treating them as such is to ignore everything that makes them superior. You can't grep dead trees and they take up serious amounts of physical space. Neither is the case with old email.
There is no reason to archive stuff for decades, just because you consider the cost to be trivial.
There is no reason NOT to archive stuff for decades precisely because all of the costs except for legal liability for wrong doing are trivial.
Patent trolls, though, by possessing patents; but never doing anything that could infringe on patents(because their only business is patent trolling) disrupt this cushy equilibrium. They are sort of the non-state suitcase bombers with nothing to lose in the patent wars.
Perversely, if we want meaningful patent reform, it might actually be best to applaud and encourage patent trolling as much as possible.
So... One man's troll is another man's freedom fighter!