No, I think he was talking about marijuana being a catch-22. You had to take it to the licensing office to get the permit. But once you got there, you would be arrested for having it without the permit. It was on the History channel a while back.
Nobody's saying it's not really cool. It's awesome that a 3D printer can be made for so cheap. It's cool enough that the inventors shouldn't need to make shit up to promote it.
The phrase "self replicating machine" implies a machine who's output is an exact copy of itself. Not a machine that produces some parts, to which other parts are added, and then finally they all get assembled by a person. When you shove raw materials in one end of the "RepRap", and fully assembled, functional "RepRap"s pop out the other side, then you'll have a self replicating machine.
Basically, if the "self replicating machine" requires human intervention, you're doing it wrong.
The money that currently goes to funding public schools would be paid to parents. The parents would then use the money to pay for schools. Or, more likely, the parents would tell the government where their kid goes to school, and the government would pay the school. Everybody else seemed to get it.
But that's not the stated goal. The goal is to rise the average. Why should everybody be forced to do poorly because some people are going to do poorly no matter what?
Like I said, the majority of people are neither rich nor poor, and most of that in between group would be better off under this system. In the worst case the rich and poor would stay the same.
1. Transport. You just know that "poor" schools will be in poor neighborhoods. Now, poor people don't tend to have the money to drive their kids to school (they most likely have to leave their house before their kids even to get to work somehow), so poor kids would have to either go to those schools or be transported somehow to the "better" ones. How do you plan to solve this problem?
I agree, that would be a problem, but there are ways around it, like taking the city bus, riding a bike across town, dropping the kid off early, car pools, and probably others if I wanted to think about it. The point is, that option isn't even available now. It's more choice, which a good thing.
2. "Money on top" from the parents. What should this money pay for, if there is already a standard set? Additional credit? Better teaching material and/or teachers? No matter what that money pays for, it gives the children whose parents can pay some sort of advantage. How does this not disadvantage the children of poor parents?
Not a "standard set", a "minimum set". If a parent wants just the minimum, they're free to send their kid to a school that offers just the minimum. If, however, they want a school that specializes in science content, for example, they can send their kid to a school that has extra science, while still knowing the kid will get at least the minimum amount of reading and writing.
The extra money can be spent on a school with better teachers, or a school with a better reputation, or a school with "extra" stuff like sports, or band, or whatever else. For example, right now most high schools have big sports stadiums for football, track, and other outdoor sports. A lot of kids never use that stuff, but it's still paid for by tax dollars. Under the new system, if your kid wasn't interested in sports, you could send him to a school that didn't spend money on sports.
Also, there's no reason somebody couldn't setup a charity that would donate money to pay for poor people's schooling. That way the people who care about poor people going to better schools could donate money or volunteer their time tranporting kids to better schools.
Basically not a bad idea, but you just know how it will turn out: Good schools will require you to fork over extra money, so they can hire better teachers and get better equipment, which no poor person can afford, and the dregs will be left over for the poor kids. That won't change a thing.
How is that any different than right now? Rich people can send their kids to private schools right now. But the public schools don't have to compete with the private schools because so few people can afford them.
Look at it this way: Right now, the choices are:
Pay taxes for public school
Pay $15k a year for private school, and *still* pay taxes for public school
With Friedman's system, it might be $15k for one school, $17k for another, and $20k for another. If the government subsidy is $15k, going to a better school only requires the parents to pay an extra $2k or $5k, which is much more affordable than an extra $15k.
You're also forgetting that not everybody is rich or poor. The majority of people *can* afford to transport their kids across town or pay extra for a better school. I don't think we should all suffer because some poor people with little opportunity are probably going to remain poor with little opportunity. On average I think we'd be better off.
Really? Around here (Toronto, Canada) you can send your kids to whatever school you want. Junior high schools even have field trips for the students so they can pick the best high school for them.
But even if it's like you say, I find it hard to believe that a parent couldn't rectify the situation with some choice phone calls.
Wow, it's nothing like that here. My city is divided up into districts, and each district has a bunch of schools, and each school has a section of town assigned to it. Your kids go to the school who's area you live in. If you bitch enough (and I mean a LOT) you might get to move your kid to a nearby school in the same district. Going to a different district is right out. Unless you move, of course.
Actually, one of the biggest reasons schools in poor neighbourhoods tend to have worse schools is because they already have a system similar to what you described, under the guise of bake sales and other kinds of fund raising. The only difference is that this additional funding only really goes toward equipment, and not salaries.
In the US the majority of public school funding comes from property taxes (PDF). Poor neighborhoods get less money from property taxes, which means they get less money for schools.
My favorite idea for "fixing" schools comes from Milton Friedman's book "Capitalism and Freedom". The basic idea is that the government would subsidize education and set some minimum requirements, while the actual schooling would be done by competeing private companies. Parents (or students) could choose which school the kids went to and, if they wanted, could add money on top of the subsidy.
It would solve the quality problem because schools would be competing with other schools. Nobody wants to send their kids to a bad school, so the schools would get better or they'd go out of business. It would also fix the teacher salary problem because better teachers would go to the better schools where they could make more money (hint: that would make them all try harder to be better teachers).
Before anybody yells about poor people getting screwed, look at the current system. Right now poor neighborhoods tend to have worse schools, and the parents in those neighborhoods have no choice but to send their kids to those schools. Under this plan there would always be the option of sending the kids to a better school across town if the nearby school got too bad.
If nearly 20000 people had been wrongly accused and bullied into settleing, every lawyer in the country would be trying to cash in with a giant class action lawsuit.
So if these guys are guilty, I'm wondering where is the proof and was it validated? Or do we simply take the **IA's word on this?
Settling means no proof is necessary and and we don't take anybody's word for it. It means the defendant would rather agree to the terms set by the person filing the lawsuit rather than go to trial.
Also, here's "proof" that at least some of the defendants are found guilty if they don't settle.
As more and more of the economic output of the USA becomes information that is encoded digitally, you wish to reduce its value to zero?
I didn't say that at all. I'm fully aware that a legalized filesharing law would never get passed. My point, which you seem to have missed, is that if you don't like a law, you can't just pretend it doesn't apply to you.
Should people really expect to be charged a ridiculous amount - hundreds of times the damage they cold possibly have caused - based on a law that was intended to deal with large scale industrial piracy?
It doesn't matter if it's fair or not because according to the law, they should be. If you don't think that's fair, you can't just pretend it doesn't apply to you. There are ways of getting laws changed, but that isn't one of them. For example: I think social security is bullshit, but that doesn't mean I can stop paying it without going to jail.
In our country the people are ultimately responsible for the laws. We vote for the people who write them, and often times we vote for the laws themselves. The RIAA didn't single handedly elect the entire congress and senate. Lobbying doesn't explain why the citizens let the politicians keep their jobs after enacting these laws.
Also, I'm a little confused about your alternative solution. Are you arguing that fixing the law would be a waste of time and it's better to remain a criminal and whine about it?
Of the tens of thousands of lawsuits the RIAA has filed, the vast majority have settled because the defendants were guilty. You don't hear about those cases because they're not very interesting, don't make the RIAA look bad, and they go against the group think on sites like Slashdot, Digg and Reddit.
Making a few mistakes doesn't mean they lose the right to defend their copyright.
Look, I'm not saying the **AA aren't scumbags. They've made some pretty huge, blatant mistakes, and some of their tactics are illegal. The cases you mentioned, and the one in the article, for instance. But, those cases only get talked about because they're the exceptions to the rule. It doesn't hurt that they make the **AA look bad. However, the majority of people go for settlements because they were guilty.
The **AA being scum doesn't make it okay to infringe their copyrights.
Not exactly, but threatening a lawsuit that will result in someone owing money to them for the rest of their life is a little too close to indentured servitude for my liking.
Yeah, but that's the risk people knowingly take when they decide to infringe the **AA's copyrights. They had to consciously think "I know I can get a huge fine for this, but I'm going to do it anyway." Is it really too much to expect people to take responsibility for their actions?
Right now, the legal choices are:
Buy **AA's music and movies
Don't buy **AA's music and movies
Vote to get IP laws changed so filesharing is legal
There is no "Disregard the law and do whatever you want" option. If they're willfully breaking the law, it shouldn't be a very big surprise when they get punished for it. And right now the penalty for copyright infringement is a big fine.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest [...]
Nobody in the US has ever been arrested for downloading music.
Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law [...]
Copyright infringement is a civil matter, and so far the **AA has always correctly handled it through the courts.
Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence [...]
How is the **AA violating anybody's privacy? My understanding was they put fake listings on tracker sites, and sued for copyright infringement when people attempted to download from them. It's a bit of a leap to assume an IP identifies a single person, but it's usually correct. I'd almost agree with you if they were actively infiltrating Tor networks or using man in the middle attacks against SSL connections, but convincing idiots to download and share files with them isn't a privacy violation in my book.
Besides that, the internet in general is public. traceroute shows 12 machines between me and slashdot, and any one of them can monitor, log, or otherwise view my traffic at their whim. For better or worse, anonymity on the internet usually assumes the other person isn't trying very hard to find out who you are.
Second, theyre working for the **AA organizations, the darlings of congress, for whom no human rights violations are too great a cost, for whom ACTA is being negotiated to subvert those pesky public interest groups and constitutional protections present in every industrialized nation on earth, and for whom judges suspend several constitutional protections for due process.
I'm sorry what? When has the **AA ever violated human rights? Sure they're scumbags, but try to keep a little perspective. They're not exactly selling people into slavery.
The solution to the problem of them being "in" with congress is to give congress, and the government in general, less power. Power is abused. Always. This seems to be a pretty good example of that.
In other words, they are above the law, and the public allows them to do so because filesharing = terrorism, after all bush said so.
Get him a well know university type, perhaps someone verses in economics.
Good luck with that. I can't imagine anybody well versed in economics being pro-democrat. They're the party of minimum wage, government healthcare, government controlled social security, and overall big government. All of which flies in the face of solid economic principle. Maybe they can recruit somebody from Soviet era Russia.
I did not say taking payments was unnecessary to eBay's business. I said requiring customers to use one particular payment model that is owned by eBay is not necessary to eBay's auction business. Their auction business would survive essentially unchanged if PayPal were swapped out by any other payment processor. There is no inherent technical reason requiring a tie of the use of eBay's services to the use of PayPal's services, hence making it an unlawful service bundle (again, in US law).
I don't think it would be illegal in the US. Take this court case, for example. In that case, the court decied that the market wasn't "cellophane" it was the more general "flexible packaging material". In the eBay/PayPal case, the market isn't "payment processing for online auctions", it's the more general "payment processing". Also relevant, one could argue the market isn't "online auctions", it's the more general "auctions", or even "buying stuff online", or even just "buying stuff".
Also, just to name a few, Overstock Auctions, Webidz, and QxBid are auction sites which aren't eBay, and don't require PayPal payments, so it's a little hard to believe eBay and PayPal are a monopoly even in the "payment processing for online auctions" market.
Rubbish. There are huge barriers to entry. Buyers will not go to a new online auction site unless there are people selling things they want to buy. Sellers will not go to an online auction site that doesn't have many buyers, because they will get too low a price for their goods.
"Our competition has a huge head start", sucks, but it's not a barrier to entry. A barrier to entry is something like "It costs millions of dollars to launch a satelite" or "The equipment costs $50000".
De facto: in actuality, if not actual legal definition. Market share is a key indicator of monopoly status. Using that market share to create an artificial barrier to entry (into payment processing, not auction sites) is an abuse of that status.
What barrier are they creating? Is eBay the only website that uses payment processing?
The other payment processors, and businesses in general, aren't entitled to customers. I can start my own payment processing company this afternoon if I wanted to. Doesn't mean anybody has to use it.
To put it another way, requiring use of PayPal could easily be argued to amount to unlawful bundling of a service that is not strictly necessary to eBay's auction business.
How is taking payments not necessary to eBay's auction business? It would seem that's the entire point. This is no different than stores that don't take certain credit cards. It's not smart, but it's hardly illegal.
The definition of "monopoly" is not "large and popular". There are thousands of online auction sites. There are no barriers to entry into the online auction field. Any "web developer" worth the title could hack together a functional auction site in a couple days. The only downside is those other sites don't have as many users as eBay, but there are ways around that if you really dislike eBay.
If you keep using eBay, even though you think they're doing something wrong, how will they know you disagree with them? In fact, if you keep using them, they don't even care what you think. Making PayPal mandatory and seeing a 10% decrease in revenue means something. Making PayPal mandatory and having a bunch of people cry doesn't.
Unless you own a lot of eBay stock, you don't get to decide how they run their business. Your only options are "Use eBay" or "Don't use eBay".
It's kinda funny how every day people on here whine that companies only care about money, yet everybody avoids using it against the companies like we're supposed to.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers, but you're way off for Eclipse memory stats.
LOL! I have seen, with my own eyes, Eclipse use well over 800 megs. If it weren't against work policy, I would post a screenshot.
I can appreciate that Emacs is best for you, but please don't try to sell it as better for everyone.
Escuse me? Could you point out where I said anybody else should use Emacs? I was clearly listing the reasons I prefer Emacs over Eclipse. Never did I say anybody else should use Emacs over Eclipse. If you could point out where I did otherwise, I'd like to see it.
Am I the only one who thinks that's a really bad idea?
I was going to rant about their blatant Windows 95 rip off, but thought I'd look at their official screenshot page first. It's not as bad as the screenshot in the article makes it seem.
1. And the insurance companies have such razor thin profit margins.~
How is that even relevant? The insurance companies were going to have the same profit margins whether this bill passed or not.
2. Because that's the entire purpose of insurance?
That's the purpose, but that doesn't mean everybody should be charged an arm and a leg. High risk people are charged more because they (usually) need more medical care. Why do you think that's unfair?
Slashdot Mirror
No, I think he was talking about marijuana being a catch-22. You had to take it to the licensing office to get the permit. But once you got there, you would be arrested for having it without the permit. It was on the History channel a while back.
Nobody's saying it's not really cool. It's awesome that a 3D printer can be made for so cheap. It's cool enough that the inventors shouldn't need to make shit up to promote it.
The phrase "self replicating machine" implies a machine who's output is an exact copy of itself. Not a machine that produces some parts, to which other parts are added, and then finally they all get assembled by a person. When you shove raw materials in one end of the "RepRap", and fully assembled, functional "RepRap"s pop out the other side, then you'll have a self replicating machine.
Basically, if the "self replicating machine" requires human intervention, you're doing it wrong.
The money that currently goes to funding public schools would be paid to parents. The parents would then use the money to pay for schools. Or, more likely, the parents would tell the government where their kid goes to school, and the government would pay the school. Everybody else seemed to get it.
But that's not the stated goal. The goal is to rise the average. Why should everybody be forced to do poorly because some people are going to do poorly no matter what?
Like I said, the majority of people are neither rich nor poor, and most of that in between group would be better off under this system. In the worst case the rich and poor would stay the same.
I agree, that would be a problem, but there are ways around it, like taking the city bus, riding a bike across town, dropping the kid off early, car pools, and probably others if I wanted to think about it. The point is, that option isn't even available now. It's more choice, which a good thing.
Not a "standard set", a "minimum set". If a parent wants just the minimum, they're free to send their kid to a school that offers just the minimum. If, however, they want a school that specializes in science content, for example, they can send their kid to a school that has extra science, while still knowing the kid will get at least the minimum amount of reading and writing.
The extra money can be spent on a school with better teachers, or a school with a better reputation, or a school with "extra" stuff like sports, or band, or whatever else. For example, right now most high schools have big sports stadiums for football, track, and other outdoor sports. A lot of kids never use that stuff, but it's still paid for by tax dollars. Under the new system, if your kid wasn't interested in sports, you could send him to a school that didn't spend money on sports.
Also, there's no reason somebody couldn't setup a charity that would donate money to pay for poor people's schooling. That way the people who care about poor people going to better schools could donate money or volunteer their time tranporting kids to better schools.
How is that any different than right now? Rich people can send their kids to private schools right now. But the public schools don't have to compete with the private schools because so few people can afford them.
Look at it this way: Right now, the choices are:
With Friedman's system, it might be $15k for one school, $17k for another, and $20k for another. If the government subsidy is $15k, going to a better school only requires the parents to pay an extra $2k or $5k, which is much more affordable than an extra $15k.
You're also forgetting that not everybody is rich or poor. The majority of people *can* afford to transport their kids across town or pay extra for a better school. I don't think we should all suffer because some poor people with little opportunity are probably going to remain poor with little opportunity. On average I think we'd be better off.
Wow, it's nothing like that here. My city is divided up into districts, and each district has a bunch of schools, and each school has a section of town assigned to it. Your kids go to the school who's area you live in. If you bitch enough (and I mean a LOT) you might get to move your kid to a nearby school in the same district. Going to a different district is right out. Unless you move, of course.
In the US the majority of public school funding comes from property taxes (PDF). Poor neighborhoods get less money from property taxes, which means they get less money for schools.
My favorite idea for "fixing" schools comes from Milton Friedman's book "Capitalism and Freedom". The basic idea is that the government would subsidize education and set some minimum requirements, while the actual schooling would be done by competeing private companies. Parents (or students) could choose which school the kids went to and, if they wanted, could add money on top of the subsidy.
It would solve the quality problem because schools would be competing with other schools. Nobody wants to send their kids to a bad school, so the schools would get better or they'd go out of business. It would also fix the teacher salary problem because better teachers would go to the better schools where they could make more money (hint: that would make them all try harder to be better teachers).
Before anybody yells about poor people getting screwed, look at the current system. Right now poor neighborhoods tend to have worse schools, and the parents in those neighborhoods have no choice but to send their kids to those schools. Under this plan there would always be the option of sending the kids to a better school across town if the nearby school got too bad.
So where are those in the default Windows install?
17100 lawsuits as of December 2005.
If nearly 20000 people had been wrongly accused and bullied into settleing, every lawyer in the country would be trying to cash in with a giant class action lawsuit.
Settling means no proof is necessary and and we don't take anybody's word for it. It means the defendant would rather agree to the terms set by the person filing the lawsuit rather than go to trial.
Also, here's "proof" that at least some of the defendants are found guilty if they don't settle.
I didn't say that at all. I'm fully aware that a legalized filesharing law would never get passed. My point, which you seem to have missed, is that if you don't like a law, you can't just pretend it doesn't apply to you.
It doesn't matter if it's fair or not because according to the law, they should be. If you don't think that's fair, you can't just pretend it doesn't apply to you. There are ways of getting laws changed, but that isn't one of them. For example: I think social security is bullshit, but that doesn't mean I can stop paying it without going to jail.
In our country the people are ultimately responsible for the laws. We vote for the people who write them, and often times we vote for the laws themselves. The RIAA didn't single handedly elect the entire congress and senate. Lobbying doesn't explain why the citizens let the politicians keep their jobs after enacting these laws.
Also, I'm a little confused about your alternative solution. Are you arguing that fixing the law would be a waste of time and it's better to remain a criminal and whine about it?
Of the tens of thousands of lawsuits the RIAA has filed, the vast majority have settled because the defendants were guilty. You don't hear about those cases because they're not very interesting, don't make the RIAA look bad, and they go against the group think on sites like Slashdot, Digg and Reddit.
Making a few mistakes doesn't mean they lose the right to defend their copyright.
Look, I'm not saying the **AA aren't scumbags. They've made some pretty huge, blatant mistakes, and some of their tactics are illegal. The cases you mentioned, and the one in the article, for instance. But, those cases only get talked about because they're the exceptions to the rule. It doesn't hurt that they make the **AA look bad. However, the majority of people go for settlements because they were guilty.
The **AA being scum doesn't make it okay to infringe their copyrights.
I never said the **AA was right in this case.
Yeah, but that's the risk people knowingly take when they decide to infringe the **AA's copyrights. They had to consciously think "I know I can get a huge fine for this, but I'm going to do it anyway." Is it really too much to expect people to take responsibility for their actions?
Right now, the legal choices are:
There is no "Disregard the law and do whatever you want" option. If they're willfully breaking the law, it shouldn't be a very big surprise when they get punished for it. And right now the penalty for copyright infringement is a big fine.
Nobody in the US has ever been arrested for downloading music.
Copyright infringement is a civil matter, and so far the **AA has always correctly handled it through the courts.
How is the **AA violating anybody's privacy? My understanding was they put fake listings on tracker sites, and sued for copyright infringement when people attempted to download from them. It's a bit of a leap to assume an IP identifies a single person, but it's usually correct. I'd almost agree with you if they were actively infiltrating Tor networks or using man in the middle attacks against SSL connections, but convincing idiots to download and share files with them isn't a privacy violation in my book.
Besides that, the internet in general is public. traceroute shows 12 machines between me and slashdot, and any one of them can monitor, log, or otherwise view my traffic at their whim. For better or worse, anonymity on the internet usually assumes the other person isn't trying very hard to find out who you are.
I'm sorry what? When has the **AA ever violated human rights? Sure they're scumbags, but try to keep a little perspective. They're not exactly selling people into slavery.
The solution to the problem of them being "in" with congress is to give congress, and the government in general, less power. Power is abused. Always. This seems to be a pretty good example of that.
Reference?
Good luck with that. I can't imagine anybody well versed in economics being pro-democrat. They're the party of minimum wage, government healthcare, government controlled social security, and overall big government. All of which flies in the face of solid economic principle. Maybe they can recruit somebody from Soviet era Russia.
I don't think it would be illegal in the US. Take this court case, for example. In that case, the court decied that the market wasn't "cellophane" it was the more general "flexible packaging material". In the eBay/PayPal case, the market isn't "payment processing for online auctions", it's the more general "payment processing". Also relevant, one could argue the market isn't "online auctions", it's the more general "auctions", or even "buying stuff online", or even just "buying stuff".
Also, just to name a few, Overstock Auctions, Webidz, and QxBid are auction sites which aren't eBay, and don't require PayPal payments, so it's a little hard to believe eBay and PayPal are a monopoly even in the "payment processing for online auctions" market.
"Our competition has a huge head start", sucks, but it's not a barrier to entry. A barrier to entry is something like "It costs millions of dollars to launch a satelite" or "The equipment costs $50000".
What barrier are they creating? Is eBay the only website that uses payment processing?
The other payment processors, and businesses in general, aren't entitled to customers. I can start my own payment processing company this afternoon if I wanted to. Doesn't mean anybody has to use it.
How is taking payments not necessary to eBay's auction business? It would seem that's the entire point. This is no different than stores that don't take certain credit cards. It's not smart, but it's hardly illegal.
The definition of "monopoly" is not "large and popular". There are thousands of online auction sites. There are no barriers to entry into the online auction field. Any "web developer" worth the title could hack together a functional auction site in a couple days. The only downside is those other sites don't have as many users as eBay, but there are ways around that if you really dislike eBay.
If you keep using eBay, even though you think they're doing something wrong, how will they know you disagree with them? In fact, if you keep using them, they don't even care what you think. Making PayPal mandatory and seeing a 10% decrease in revenue means something. Making PayPal mandatory and having a bunch of people cry doesn't.
Unless you own a lot of eBay stock, you don't get to decide how they run their business. Your only options are "Use eBay" or "Don't use eBay".
It's kinda funny how every day people on here whine that companies only care about money, yet everybody avoids using it against the companies like we're supposed to.
LOL! I have seen, with my own eyes, Eclipse use well over 800 megs. If it weren't against work policy, I would post a screenshot.
Escuse me? Could you point out where I said anybody else should use Emacs? I was clearly listing the reasons I prefer Emacs over Eclipse. Never did I say anybody else should use Emacs over Eclipse. If you could point out where I did otherwise, I'd like to see it.
Am I the only one who thinks that's a really bad idea?
I was going to rant about their blatant Windows 95 rip off, but thought I'd look at their official screenshot page first. It's not as bad as the screenshot in the article makes it seem.
How is that even relevant? The insurance companies were going to have the same profit margins whether this bill passed or not.
That's the purpose, but that doesn't mean everybody should be charged an arm and a leg. High risk people are charged more because they (usually) need more medical care. Why do you think that's unfair?