3706 was where I got to...but then being 6 at the time I realized I had better things to do with my life...like watching stray cats bring dead mice to our doorstep
Then why are you still here?:P It's not like there aren't 100 other news sites out there, or 1000x that many other things you could be doing with your time...
I do believe all the "waaah it's april 2nd i need my slashdot or my leprosy kicks in!" posts just goes to show how little a sense of humor the non-NorthAm/. community really has. Quit browsing/. and get back to work if it offends you so much. Or hell, go OUTSIDE! Let us with a sense of humor laugh our asses off at crude humor for another 8 hours!
Let those of us who enjoy crude humor be and quit posting comments about the banality of April 1st if you don't like them! If you're sick and tired of it...STOP READING! Go outside! Get a job/start doing some actual work at your job! Meet people! Or hell, just read another website for 8 more hours if it offends you so much. I swear, some of you sound like someone just sh*t in your umbilical cord...
Let those of us who enjoy crude humor be and quit posting comments about the banality of April 1st if you don't like them! If you're sick and tired of it...STOP READING! Go outside! Get a job/start doing some actual work at your job! Meet people! Or hell, just read another website for 5 more hours if it offends you so much. I swear, some of you sound like someone just sh*t in your umbilical cord...
Actually, the odds are dead on...for you. This data is for when you think of an inspecific individual. The way to get this figure is to multipy the probabily by the number of people the event would effect...when you're dealing with 6x10^9 people, well, the data suddenly appears a lot more convincing, eh?
Re:working backwards
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
And just wait until the other characters in the game start to sell you stuff. BLAM! BOOM! STAB!!!! Yeah... cool. I think you're missing the incredible opportunity you've just outlined here. Wait until another character starts selling you stuff, then stab him to death with a screwdriver. Instant ad-rage catharsis.
Coke? Coke coke coke coke DMCA coke coke! Coke coke...coke. Coke coke:
1. Coke
2. Coke
3. ????
4. Profit coke!
Coke coke coke, "coek" != coke! Excuse the pedantry. Coke!
I know I'll get modded down for this, but... Pepsi.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
·
· Score: 1
Reason isn't the word to use here, incentive is more appropriate. Anyone can find a reason to do something, but only those who are willing to work on a project as a labor of love will produce without incentive. If you'll notice, those who produce open source/free software have employment elsewhere (or are independently wealthy, but that's fairly rare in this situation). Summary: To give back to society without incentive you need two things: A love of the society/work and enough food/shelter/toys to keep you happy. Yes, I said toys...it's great if you're Ghandi, but I'm not ashamed to claim otherwise.
...learning to deal with faulty equipment and hold your temper while talking to dumbasses. IANAE, but from what I've heard from my engineer friends, this usually constitutes about 90% of their job.
Which of course is the main reason why Plato never wrote a thing, Aristotle ended up a male model, Newton was a cheese-grater, Mozart was a cook and Einstein a taxi driver.
This arguement is easily debunked. Plato, Aristotle, and Newton were members of the aristrocracy and had pre-existing wealth to support them. Their efforts were not fueled out of a need for money, they simply needed something to do with their time because they didn't have to work for a living. Mozart and Einstein? IIRC, they were well paid for their exemplary skill sets. Maybe not paid as well as their legendary status would command, but they were more well off then if they had become a cook and a taxi driver, respectively.
Art is a form of self-expression and has nothing to do with money.
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with this as well. Art *is* a form of self-expreesion, and isn't tied *directly* to money. However, you need to have the money to support your lifestyle before you can begin expressing yourself. Payment allows the artist to fully devote his time to self-expression now that he no longer has to fend for himself as, say, a cheese grater.
To respond to your assertion about science, unfortunately, at least for me, the progress of science based solely in academia by the scientists looking merely for recognition is far too slow a pace. I won't defend patents and copyrights completely, as I do believe there is some much needed reform to be done in this area. However, they can't be dismissed outright. Corporations, while trendy to label them 'evil' and other such things, accomplish goals that are incredibly sluggish and inefficient to accomplish in any other setting. Once again I point out the example of modern pharmaceuticals--the fact that the 7 year monopoly (at least, that's the law here in the states), covers and provides economics incentive to produce in spite of staggering R&D costs associated with producing new treatments.
You seem to have ignored my arguement about how the canola case should be treated, but it's reasonable to assume this arguement could spread for genetic treatments/enhancements in humans. Is it feasible to enforce a payment a generation down the line? How about two? The knowledge and expertise of something this delicate should not be open to just any crackpot to perform, that's why we pay professionals, and, to a greater extent, the corporations who employ and organize them.
Fundamentally evil? Are you sure you're not part of Al-Sadr? In all seriousness however, calling something evil is *purely* a judgement call. It is an opinion, nothing more. It is impossible for anything to be fundamentally good or evil.
Books and Motion pictures are published/distributed the way they are because, frankly, you can't disseminate that kind of entertainment/information without paying someone to do it. Books can be published and written pro bono and made available to the public through libraries, but production costs are far too high for a motion picture to reach the masses in a purely altruistic fashion (Even a low-budgeter like Clerks still ran in the 5-digits for production alone).
Sure, morals, ethics, and laws are all fluid. So is glass. Another thing in common with these two sets of items is that they're both extremely viscous. Especially when there are people's financial interests (whether it be someone's livelihood or sheer greed, generally doesn't matter)at stake to hold up the status quo. Eventually these things will give in, unfortunately, we may not see this happen in the next decade, or two, or even in our lifetimes! So until then, we'll just have to make do.
Not that I can vouch for the quality of music today, but paying someone for their work will inherently cause them to put in more effort and provide a better service (this is a matter of payment versus non-payment, I really don't feel like going into a discussion of backwards-bending labor supply curves today). This is why all information shouldn't necessarily be free (I'm going to have a price on my head after posting that on/. of all places), rather, the model of having some information free and some information paid for is a better methodology than going blindly in either direction. Free information relieves creators of outside pressures (you can't cut funding if you don't have any!), but must be done as a labor of love. This results in many half finished or shoddy products, but some gems (Linux! There, I said it, please don't kill me!) do arise. Information created with the expectation of profit can result in extremely grandiose products with an immense amount of capital and labor to back it up -- modern day pharmaceuticals (chemical structures and delivery methods are basically IP, anyone with a properly equipped facility can make many of these medicines) could not be possible without the promise of profits because of the immense R&D costs involved. There are benefits to either system, and we'd be folly to completely deny either one.
There is a difference between the two. However, something that cannot be sold, notably the effort/labor/cost put into a commodity *intended for sale* is absolutely worthless if the commodity cannot be sold. A better way for me to have put that phrase would have been
[...] can't be sold and is therefore absolutely worthless?
A bit of pedantry here, but an important clarification, thanks for noting it.
And I would caution about calling diamonds essentially worthless on/. Diamond drills come to mind:P
By this logic, there's no compelling reason for any research or effort to be put into "IP". In the case of the musician here, there is no incentive for any post-production work to be done. Mastering a piece takes extra time and effort, and most importantly studio rentals. However, when you deny the ability to package and sell this labor (something that undeniably cannot be done live), there's no business sense in producing this labor, and so the chance to make a better product is lost.
As for the case of genetically engineered canola, the corporation SHOULD be getting a piece of the action wherever the crop is grown to be sold, at least until it's sufficiently homogenized into the environment (Reasonable man test -- can you feasibly grow a strain of canola not produced by Monsanto?). Why? Because it's the only incentive for this type of genetic engineering. IANAG, but as I understand it, genetic engineering is a very expensive and labor intensive process. It isn't something we can ever expect a group of willing volunteers to ever produce for free. And once again, when we remove the incentive, we're denied the better product.
If you are serious, I would like to see your take on my previous book arguement. Factor in the production of motion pictures into your rebuttal. I'd seriously love to see if you have a pliable business model for these industries, or if you think they should be reduced to storytellers and Broadway shows (No sarcasm intended, I'd really like to explore your point of view as far as these fields are concerned!).
Reasonable profit, eh? Now, saying that there's a fair way of determining this, the determination is obviously going to be working OUTSIDE THE BOUNDS OF MARKET FORCES. This here is what we call price fixing, neeeeever a good thing, save for emergencies like food rationing during a war or depression.
Suppose now, we do this. How do you determine what's fair to each individual artist? Are you going to pay for an independent panel to analyze the worth of each work of art so that you can determine "reasonable profit?" There are 3 places this money can come from, YOU (hey, you suggested the idea, why not pay for it yourself?), the sales revenues from the music sales (which is going to drive up music costs anyway), or taxpayer money (or, to put it more simply, YOU...and everyone else!).
Don't like the independent panel too much anymore? It's ok, it's not like we could trust them to definitively judge the worth of works of art anyway. So what's fair to the artist then? We'll just have to pay them all the same! Uh-oh, wait a minute...Price Fixing? Government mandated wages? Sounds to me a lot like COMMUNISM!
This no longer applies if you do record your performance and attempt to get machinery (owned by someone else) perform (based on a plastic disk owned by someone else) your performance (using energy, delivery of which someone else paid for) for you and you get paid anyways. Often expecting to get paid orders of magnitude compared to actually performing the labour. There is a name for this: a scam.
So you're saying the creative effort in composing and mastering music is absolutely worthless and can't be sold? Well, in that case, writers are scammers as well -- attempting to get machinery (printers, owned by the publisher) perform (based on bound leaves of paper owned by someone else) your performance (requiring a source of ambient light, which often costs energy to deliver) for you and you get paid anyways. You're right, bookwriters should only get paid for telling their stories live...because that's *such* an economical way to provide the service.
Get real, the only way you could be arguing this point is if you were playing devil's advocate (which is fine by me, but considered trolling in some circles), because if you honestly believe in it, you're just not putting enough thought into it.
This sounds like a great idea! How about we add "Spell: Democracy" to this test of yours? Aw, crap, looks like I've already disenfranchised someone...maybe it's not the best idea after all.
IANAE, but I have had some experience with this from Long Long Ago (tm). This was back when I had my 586 100 Mhz. My radio receiver would be right next to my computer, and I remember that if I tuned it to just the right frequency, I would hear a mid-range droning sound and high pitched spurts whenever the computer would be doing anything (from mouse movement to running a program.)
Here's a nice little hack you can use to spice up your sleep!
Right before going to sleep at night, take one or two caffeine pills. It's necessary you use pills, because the taste of familiar caffinated drinks and/or the sugars in these drinks will cause an immediate "peppy" reaction. The trick to this hack is to fall asleep before the chemicals kick in. Caffeine takes about 30-60 minutes to take effect depending on the person, so you want to be in a situation where you can fall as quickly as possible.
If you do this correctly, what'll end up happening is that the caffeine will cause a state of hyperactivity while you're still asleep! What ends up occuring is an extremely deep, relaxing sleep, while producing intensly vivid dreams. Try it!
Slashdot Mirror
3706 was where I got to...but then being 6 at the time I realized I had better things to do with my life...like watching stray cats bring dead mice to our doorstep
Ok...I'll concede that that made me laugh harder than any of the posts I've seen today ^_^
That's what you get for being Canadian ;)
(AF...don't hurt me!)
Then why are you still here? :P It's not like there aren't 100 other news sites out there, or 1000x that many other things you could be doing with your time...
I do believe all the "waaah it's april 2nd i need my slashdot or my leprosy kicks in!" posts just goes to show how little a sense of humor the non-NorthAm /. community really has. Quit browsing /. and get back to work if it offends you so much. Or hell, go OUTSIDE! Let us with a sense of humor laugh our asses off at crude humor for another 8 hours!
Let those of us who enjoy crude humor be and quit posting comments about the banality of April 1st if you don't like them! If you're sick and tired of it...STOP READING! Go outside! Get a job/start doing some actual work at your job! Meet people! Or hell, just read another website for 8 more hours if it offends you so much. I swear, some of you sound like someone just sh*t in your umbilical cord...
Let those of us who enjoy crude humor be and quit posting comments about the banality of April 1st if you don't like them! If you're sick and tired of it...STOP READING! Go outside! Get a job/start doing some actual work at your job! Meet people! Or hell, just read another website for 5 more hours if it offends you so much. I swear, some of you sound like someone just sh*t in your umbilical cord...
So annihilating the entire universe is preferable to a few nukes landing on some cities in what appears to be the middle of nowhere?
Actually, the odds are dead on...for you. This data is for when you think of an inspecific individual. The way to get this figure is to multipy the probabily by the number of people the event would effect...when you're dealing with 6x10^9 people, well, the data suddenly appears a lot more convincing, eh?
I wonder if Animal X tastes like chicken...
And just wait until the other characters in the game start to sell you stuff. BLAM! BOOM! STAB!!!! Yeah... cool.
I think you're missing the incredible opportunity you've just outlined here. Wait until another character starts selling you stuff, then stab him to death with a screwdriver. Instant ad-rage catharsis.
As you put it..."Yeah... cool."
Coke? Coke coke coke coke DMCA coke coke! Coke coke ...coke.
Coke coke:
1. Coke
2. Coke
3. ????
4. Profit coke!
Coke coke coke, "coek" != coke! Excuse the pedantry. Coke!
I know I'll get modded down for this, but...
Pepsi.
Reason isn't the word to use here, incentive is more appropriate. Anyone can find a reason to do something, but only those who are willing to work on a project as a labor of love will produce without incentive. If you'll notice, those who produce open source/free software have employment elsewhere (or are independently wealthy, but that's fairly rare in this situation). Summary: To give back to society without incentive you need two things: A love of the society/work and enough food/shelter/toys to keep you happy. Yes, I said toys...it's great if you're Ghandi, but I'm not ashamed to claim otherwise.
...learning to deal with faulty equipment and hold your temper while talking to dumbasses.
IANAE, but from what I've heard from my engineer friends, this usually constitutes about 90% of their job.
Which of course is the main reason why Plato never wrote a thing, Aristotle ended up a male model, Newton was a cheese-grater, Mozart was a cook and Einstein a taxi driver.
This arguement is easily debunked. Plato, Aristotle, and Newton were members of the aristrocracy and had pre-existing wealth to support them. Their efforts were not fueled out of a need for money, they simply needed something to do with their time because they didn't have to work for a living. Mozart and Einstein? IIRC, they were well paid for their exemplary skill sets. Maybe not paid as well as their legendary status would command, but they were more well off then if they had become a cook and a taxi driver, respectively.
Art is a form of self-expression and has nothing to do with money.
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with this as well. Art *is* a form of self-expreesion, and isn't tied *directly* to money. However, you need to have the money to support your lifestyle before you can begin expressing yourself. Payment allows the artist to fully devote his time to self-expression now that he no longer has to fend for himself as, say, a cheese grater.
To respond to your assertion about science, unfortunately, at least for me, the progress of science based solely in academia by the scientists looking merely for recognition is far too slow a pace. I won't defend patents and copyrights completely, as I do believe there is some much needed reform to be done in this area. However, they can't be dismissed outright. Corporations, while trendy to label them 'evil' and other such things, accomplish goals that are incredibly sluggish and inefficient to accomplish in any other setting. Once again I point out the example of modern pharmaceuticals--the fact that the 7 year monopoly (at least, that's the law here in the states), covers and provides economics incentive to produce in spite of staggering R&D costs associated with producing new treatments.
You seem to have ignored my arguement about how the canola case should be treated, but it's reasonable to assume this arguement could spread for genetic treatments/enhancements in humans. Is it feasible to enforce a payment a generation down the line? How about two? The knowledge and expertise of something this delicate should not be open to just any crackpot to perform, that's why we pay professionals, and, to a greater extent, the corporations who employ and organize them.
Fundamentally evil? Are you sure you're not part of Al-Sadr? In all seriousness however, calling something evil is *purely* a judgement call. It is an opinion, nothing more. It is impossible for anything to be fundamentally good or evil.
Books and Motion pictures are published/distributed the way they are because, frankly, you can't disseminate that kind of entertainment/information without paying someone to do it. Books can be published and written pro bono and made available to the public through libraries, but production costs are far too high for a motion picture to reach the masses in a purely altruistic fashion (Even a low-budgeter like Clerks still ran in the 5-digits for production alone).
Sure, morals, ethics, and laws are all fluid. So is glass. Another thing in common with these two sets of items is that they're both extremely viscous. Especially when there are people's financial interests (whether it be someone's livelihood or sheer greed, generally doesn't matter)at stake to hold up the status quo. Eventually these things will give in, unfortunately, we may not see this happen in the next decade, or two, or even in our lifetimes! So until then, we'll just have to make do.
/. of all places), rather, the model of having some information free and some information paid for is a better methodology than going blindly in either direction. Free information relieves creators of outside pressures (you can't cut funding if you don't have any!), but must be done as a labor of love. This results in many half finished or shoddy products, but some gems (Linux! There, I said it, please don't kill me!) do arise. Information created with the expectation of profit can result in extremely grandiose products with an immense amount of capital and labor to back it up -- modern day pharmaceuticals (chemical structures and delivery methods are basically IP, anyone with a properly equipped facility can make many of these medicines) could not be possible without the promise of profits because of the immense R&D costs involved. There are benefits to either system, and we'd be folly to completely deny either one.
Not that I can vouch for the quality of music today, but paying someone for their work will inherently cause them to put in more effort and provide a better service (this is a matter of payment versus non-payment, I really don't feel like going into a discussion of backwards-bending labor supply curves today). This is why all information shouldn't necessarily be free (I'm going to have a price on my head after posting that on
There is a difference between the two. However, something that cannot be sold, notably the effort/labor/cost put into a commodity *intended for sale* is absolutely worthless if the commodity cannot be sold. A better way for me to have put that phrase would have been
/. Diamond drills come to mind :P
[...] can't be sold and is therefore absolutely worthless?
A bit of pedantry here, but an important clarification, thanks for noting it.
And I would caution about calling diamonds essentially worthless on
By this logic, there's no compelling reason for any research or effort to be put into "IP". In the case of the musician here, there is no incentive for any post-production work to be done. Mastering a piece takes extra time and effort, and most importantly studio rentals. However, when you deny the ability to package and sell this labor (something that undeniably cannot be done live), there's no business sense in producing this labor, and so the chance to make a better product is lost.
As for the case of genetically engineered canola, the corporation SHOULD be getting a piece of the action wherever the crop is grown to be sold, at least until it's sufficiently homogenized into the environment (Reasonable man test -- can you feasibly grow a strain of canola not produced by Monsanto?). Why? Because it's the only incentive for this type of genetic engineering. IANAG, but as I understand it, genetic engineering is a very expensive and labor intensive process. It isn't something we can ever expect a group of willing volunteers to ever produce for free. And once again, when we remove the incentive, we're denied the better product.
If you are serious, I would like to see your take on my previous book arguement. Factor in the production of motion pictures into your rebuttal. I'd seriously love to see if you have a pliable business model for these industries, or if you think they should be reduced to storytellers and Broadway shows (No sarcasm intended, I'd really like to explore your point of view as far as these fields are concerned!).
Reasonable profit, eh? Now, saying that there's a fair way of determining this, the determination is obviously going to be working OUTSIDE THE BOUNDS OF MARKET FORCES. This here is what we call price fixing, neeeeever a good thing, save for emergencies like food rationing during a war or depression.
Suppose now, we do this. How do you determine what's fair to each individual artist? Are you going to pay for an independent panel to analyze the worth of each work of art so that you can determine "reasonable profit?" There are 3 places this money can come from, YOU (hey, you suggested the idea, why not pay for it yourself?), the sales revenues from the music sales (which is going to drive up music costs anyway), or taxpayer money (or, to put it more simply, YOU...and everyone else!).
Don't like the independent panel too much anymore? It's ok, it's not like we could trust them to definitively judge the worth of works of art anyway. So what's fair to the artist then? We'll just have to pay them all the same! Uh-oh, wait a minute...Price Fixing? Government mandated wages? Sounds to me a lot like COMMUNISM!
You're not a red are you?
This no longer applies if you do record your performance and attempt to get machinery (owned by someone else) perform (based on a plastic disk owned by someone else) your performance (using energy, delivery of which someone else paid for) for you and you get paid anyways. Often expecting to get paid orders of magnitude compared to actually performing the labour. There is a name for this: a scam.
So you're saying the creative effort in composing and mastering music is absolutely worthless and can't be sold? Well, in that case, writers are scammers as well -- attempting to get machinery (printers, owned by the publisher) perform (based on bound leaves of paper owned by someone else) your performance (requiring a source of ambient light, which often costs energy to deliver) for you and you get paid anyways. You're right, bookwriters should only get paid for telling their stories live...because that's *such* an economical way to provide the service.
Get real, the only way you could be arguing this point is if you were playing devil's advocate (which is fine by me, but considered trolling in some circles), because if you honestly believe in it, you're just not putting enough thought into it.
Apparently I reallllllly need to get one of these Soviet Russian jobs!
*PEDANTIC ALERT!*
Since when does $.002 (.2cents) * 1,000,000 = $200,000? Sounds more like $2,000 to me...
This sounds like a great idea! How about we add "Spell: Democracy" to this test of yours? Aw, crap, looks like I've already disenfranchised someone...maybe it's not the best idea after all.
IANAE, but I have had some experience with this from Long Long Ago (tm). This was back when I had my 586 100 Mhz. My radio receiver would be right next to my computer, and I remember that if I tuned it to just the right frequency, I would hear a mid-range droning sound and high pitched spurts whenever the computer would be doing anything (from mouse movement to running a program.)
Right before going to sleep at night, take one or two caffeine pills. It's necessary you use pills, because the taste of familiar caffinated drinks and/or the sugars in these drinks will cause an immediate "peppy" reaction. The trick to this hack is to fall asleep before the chemicals kick in. Caffeine takes about 30-60 minutes to take effect depending on the person, so you want to be in a situation where you can fall as quickly as possible.
If you do this correctly, what'll end up happening is that the caffeine will cause a state of hyperactivity while you're still asleep! What ends up occuring is an extremely deep, relaxing sleep, while producing intensly vivid dreams. Try it!