This has been effective because as long as the particular form of dissent has been 'killing innocent people in order to make the general population afraid of angering your faction,' people tend to agree with the government that the dissenters are terrorists (terrorism is a style of dissent).
The danger is when 'terrorist' becomes just another word for 'dissenter.' The confustion takes place when people, as a form of dissent, label terrorists (who are being killed and imprisoned by the government) as mere 'dissenters' in order to associate the actions of the government with fascism.
In all cases, it is preferable that the terms 'dissenter' and 'terrorist' remain distinct. Anyone acting to confuse the terms is trying to either (a) vilify mere dissenters to more conveniently oppress them or (b) cartoonify terrorism because they share common goals with terrorists.
Why would the release of one technology somehow be linked to another completely indpendent technology?
This is the qustion I was answering. The question was followed by an analogy speculating that the price of regular cars would not be effected by hybrid cars entering the market, which, according to economists, is false.
My response does address the OP's question that you have quoted. He is dissappointed that the price of DVD Burners isn't going to be as cheap as he wants them to be *before* a competing format enters the market. Part of the phemonemon I was explaining is that the entrance of a a replacement product into a market drives costs down. I have no idea what the OP would consider to be a reasonable price, but odds are that he would get one sooner with the advent of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray than without it. Market forces will push the price down, which will reduce the profit margins, in turn forcing producers to either innovate more efficient manufacturing techniques or leave the market for greener pastures.
The OP's question, "How about...giving us reasonably priced dual-layer DVD-R first?" reflects an unreasonable expectation based upon an (apparently) incomplete understanding of the economic principles taught in every Economics class. I don't have any evicence that the OP doesn't understand economics, in fact, I think he does, and his post was simply the venting of frustration with the way things work and their effects on his wallet.
You, my friend, should never have successfully passed an economics class. We're not talking production cost here; we're talking percieved value, the English word for which is "price."
In the case of a factory, typically factories operate at a profit in order to recoup the cost of building the factory plus a little more. When the product being produced has a "better" replacement available, the owners of the factory are going to continue to produce until the cost at which they can sell the goods goes below the *marginal* cost, which is the cost to the factory of producing a unit without reference to the initial investment in the factory, and sometimes a bit longer if they don't have anything lined up to do with their money and workers.
This reduces the wholesale cost of outmoded goods.
In retail, items are sold at a reduced profit, no profit, or even at a loss all the time. All it takes to trigger this is that the person/store in posession of the goods decides to get as much money as they can out of the goods now in order to invest in more profitable goods.
This reduces the retail cost of outmoded goods.
If I have a truckload of Dual Layer DVD Burners in stock that I bought for $50 each, I can sell 90% of them for $40 tomorrow and also draw customers into the store, I can sell half of them over the next week at $50, or I can sell 10% of them over the next month at $60. The operative question is, do I have something better to do with my money right now?
Replacing music purchases with a flat tax on Internet use is the stupidest 'solution' to the file-sharing problem I've ever heard in my life. These idiots are assuming that the only purpose of the Internet is online music filesharing. Moreover, they are assuming that artists will continue to produce quality work when the quality of their product has been completely decoupled from their cash flow.
Glad I'm not a fan of French music.
A 50-year hard limit on all copyrights would be nice: it would ensure that culture is not held hostage, but that's not happening.
The problem with this, is that you actually have to learn the vocabularies of three other languages in order to be sure you understand what someone is saying. Not that this is a problem in Luxemburg, but seriously, isn't this how English works? If you can't find a word that means what you want to say, you just borrow one from another language, and if it catches on, it starts appearing in the newspapers and dictionaries.
but 95% of the googleverse will start to notice them more and will click on them more and will spend more.
See, that's where I disagree. I don't think that the amount of money people spend on products advertised on the Internet will increase in any significant way apart from the natural growth of the internet. What concerns me is that the attention-grabbing threshold for an effective ad is about to skyrocket. It's like an arms race, and Google is slowly going back on its non-nuclear pact. If this course is persued to its end, it's only a matter of time before the only way to get attention in a sea of ads is the boxing monkey gimmick.
It makes me sad, not because I fear that the Internet as we know it is over, but because the honeymoon with Google is over, and now it's nothing special. The landscape is not simple anymore. On the plus side, as has been mentioned numerous times in this discussion, Yahoo and MSN search have now learned to become what Google once was.
"Now, where exactly would they find something of sufficent mass and density to simulate 1G on something the size of the space shuttle? They wouldn't, and actually be able to move it.:)"
The beauty of it is that they ARE using the one object around big enough to generate a 1G gravitational field, and it is indeed beneath the floor of their craft.
For the record, I despise reality TV, and therefore I don't watch it.
Name one laptop that operates off of disposable batteries.
Didn't think so. Now, do you think these laptops operate by constant cranking, or that they have some sort of mechanism to store energy for later use? What are those called again?
Well I for one thank God that highschoolers and their ignorance don't necessarily define the American language. If they did that would be like totally bogus. Not rad at all, dude.
You most certainly are not! I too demand to know why this abomination of a 'word' has been added to the OAD. Oh, wait, a simple search for the term reveals the answer: lifehack.org obvously paid to get their trendy domain name codified into our language in hopes that it would boost traffic.
That's the beauty of this solution. There is no "little section" of the web. There are only domains, directories, and filenames, which can be constructed in such a way as to easily label the content. It's still just a click away. If you wish to not be in people's faces with your pr0n, you can simply "label" it as such, and you've done your due diligence. I am not for forcing anyone to label anything if they don't want to, and indeed there is not practical way to do so, given the subjective nature of pornography.
I completely reject the idea that porn sites should have the moral right-of-way to trick you into looking at their content in order to create a market for it.
I agree that many people aren't attracted to porn until they first see it, and find that they enjoy it. To me, the desirable outcome is that those who don't actively (or passively) seek it out (and CERTAINLY those who put a filter in place on their browser--which could be as simple in functionality as the Flashblock Firefox extension) should not bombarded with porn solicitations.
Those who take no action get the current status quo. Similar arguments exist for the undesirability of spammers and telemarketers, despite the fact that they think it limits their "free speech".
Any *ISP* that filters URIs containing 'xxx' loses its common carrier status, and is responsible for *all* content that goes across its network. Even if you live in Utah, your ISP (if it is still a true ISP) will still not be able to block your favorite porn site.
That last "compliant" should be non-compliant.... actually there could be an arbitrary amount of granularity to the filtering.
The best part about this is that it's self-reporting. Every porn site wants to be able to say that they don't want children, and Uncle Seamus might want to post that nude picture on his online profile, but at the same time spare the children from scarring.
A better way to handle the lumping-together of porn if it is made mandatory (or even a voluntary standard) would be to make the.xxx TLD available, but also allow (and standardize) a sub-domain, sub-directory, and sub-filename for the same purpose, with the same status.
That way, if you run a website, and decide to include adult-only content, you could easily (without infrastructure changes) denote which content should be caught by the filters. There could even be a file at the domain-level (or directory level, in the case of domain/~username, etc.) that states (voluntarily) whether you are in compliance with this standard. Heck, it could even be an HTML header object.
Filters could be configured to only filter compliant sites, or to filter out compliant sites.
If I add to your GPL'd code to improve the product, and release my modifications back to your branch of the product, I still own the copyright to what I wrote. You can't change the lisence for my code because you aren't the copyright holder, even if it has very little meaning outside the context of your project.
That's what this whole discussion is about: the best way to implement an upgradable lisence structure without requiring every single contributor's involvment.
If the lisence to the code states that it can be released under any future GPL, then you don't need my further consent to update the lisence, but that requires quite a bit of faith in whoever controls the GPL in the future.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that the government is better at providing housing for the poor than the private sector would. This might be correct, but it's still your assumption.
It is entirely possible that the private sector through competition (and--motivated by profit--lobbying the government to relax land use and housing restrictions) might find a more efficient way to house the poor.
Or, perhaps the french government has created an artificially low threshold for immigration. If housing was more expensive, poor people would be less likely to immigrate. Maybe they wanted a plentiful supply of cheap and desperate labor.
Without artificially cheap housing fewer would immigrate, and those who did anyway would be faced with a higher housing cost, and therefore would be forced to demand a higher wage for their services.
Slashdot Mirror
The danger is when 'terrorist' becomes just another word for 'dissenter.' The confustion takes place when people, as a form of dissent, label terrorists (who are being killed and imprisoned by the government) as mere 'dissenters' in order to associate the actions of the government with fascism.
In all cases, it is preferable that the terms 'dissenter' and 'terrorist' remain distinct. Anyone acting to confuse the terms is trying to either (a) vilify mere dissenters to more conveniently oppress them or (b) cartoonify terrorism because they share common goals with terrorists.
This is the qustion I was answering. The question was followed by an analogy speculating that the price of regular cars would not be effected by hybrid cars entering the market, which, according to economists, is false.
My response does address the OP's question that you have quoted. He is dissappointed that the price of DVD Burners isn't going to be as cheap as he wants them to be *before* a competing format enters the market. Part of the phemonemon I was explaining is that the entrance of a a replacement product into a market drives costs down. I have no idea what the OP would consider to be a reasonable price, but odds are that he would get one sooner with the advent of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray than without it. Market forces will push the price down, which will reduce the profit margins, in turn forcing producers to either innovate more efficient manufacturing techniques or leave the market for greener pastures.
The OP's question, "How about...giving us reasonably priced dual-layer DVD-R first?" reflects an unreasonable expectation based upon an (apparently) incomplete understanding of the economic principles taught in every Economics class. I don't have any evicence that the OP doesn't understand economics, in fact, I think he does, and his post was simply the venting of frustration with the way things work and their effects on his wallet.
You, my friend, should never have successfully passed an economics class. We're not talking production cost here; we're talking percieved value, the English word for which is "price."
In the case of a factory, typically factories operate at a profit in order to recoup the cost of building the factory plus a little more. When the product being produced has a "better" replacement available, the owners of the factory are going to continue to produce until the cost at which they can sell the goods goes below the *marginal* cost, which is the cost to the factory of producing a unit without reference to the initial investment in the factory, and sometimes a bit longer if they don't have anything lined up to do with their money and workers.
This reduces the wholesale cost of outmoded goods.
In retail, items are sold at a reduced profit, no profit, or even at a loss all the time. All it takes to trigger this is that the person/store in posession of the goods decides to get as much money as they can out of the goods now in order to invest in more profitable goods.
This reduces the retail cost of outmoded goods.
If I have a truckload of Dual Layer DVD Burners in stock that I bought for $50 each, I can sell 90% of them for $40 tomorrow and also draw customers into the store, I can sell half of them over the next week at $50, or I can sell 10% of them over the next month at $60. The operative question is, do I have something better to do with my money right now?
Actually, I think it is the other way around: IE is a part of the OS because OS provided APIs are based on it.
Replacing music purchases with a flat tax on Internet use is the stupidest 'solution' to the file-sharing problem I've ever heard in my life. These idiots are assuming that the only purpose of the Internet is online music filesharing. Moreover, they are assuming that artists will continue to produce quality work when the quality of their product has been completely decoupled from their cash flow.
Glad I'm not a fan of French music.
A 50-year hard limit on all copyrights would be nice: it would ensure that culture is not held hostage, but that's not happening.
The problem with this, is that you actually have to learn the vocabularies of three other languages in order to be sure you understand what someone is saying. Not that this is a problem in Luxemburg, but seriously, isn't this how English works? If you can't find a word that means what you want to say, you just borrow one from another language, and if it catches on, it starts appearing in the newspapers and dictionaries.
See, that's where I disagree. I don't think that the amount of money people spend on products advertised on the Internet will increase in any significant way apart from the natural growth of the internet. What concerns me is that the attention-grabbing threshold for an effective ad is about to skyrocket. It's like an arms race, and Google is slowly going back on its non-nuclear pact. If this course is persued to its end, it's only a matter of time before the only way to get attention in a sea of ads is the boxing monkey gimmick.
It makes me sad, not because I fear that the Internet as we know it is over, but because the honeymoon with Google is over, and now it's nothing special. The landscape is not simple anymore. On the plus side, as has been mentioned numerous times in this discussion, Yahoo and MSN search have now learned to become what Google once was.
We have always been at war with EastGoogle.
You have Autorun enabled?
That does it. Hand over your Geek Card(TM).
The easy way to counter this would be to put a lens on the porthole.
The beauty of it is that they ARE using the one object around big enough to generate a 1G gravitational field, and it is indeed beneath the floor of their craft.
For the record, I despise reality TV, and therefore I don't watch it.
Is there a new Godwin's Law?
Name one laptop that operates off of disposable batteries.
Didn't think so. Now, do you think these laptops operate by constant cranking, or that they have some sort of mechanism to store energy for later use? What are those called again?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminine_rhyme
Well I for one thank God that highschoolers and their ignorance don't necessarily define the American language. If they did that would be like totally bogus. Not rad at all, dude.
Or you could just go buy a digital music player.
You most certainly are not! I too demand to know why this abomination of a 'word' has been added to the OAD. Oh, wait, a simple search for the term reveals the answer: lifehack.org obvously paid to get their trendy domain name codified into our language in hopes that it would boost traffic.
That's the beauty of this solution. There is no "little section" of the web. There are only domains, directories, and filenames, which can be constructed in such a way as to easily label the content. It's still just a click away. If you wish to not be in people's faces with your pr0n, you can simply "label" it as such, and you've done your due diligence. I am not for forcing anyone to label anything if they don't want to, and indeed there is not practical way to do so, given the subjective nature of pornography. I completely reject the idea that porn sites should have the moral right-of-way to trick you into looking at their content in order to create a market for it. I agree that many people aren't attracted to porn until they first see it, and find that they enjoy it. To me, the desirable outcome is that those who don't actively (or passively) seek it out (and CERTAINLY those who put a filter in place on their browser--which could be as simple in functionality as the Flashblock Firefox extension) should not bombarded with porn solicitations. Those who take no action get the current status quo. Similar arguments exist for the undesirability of spammers and telemarketers, despite the fact that they think it limits their "free speech". Any *ISP* that filters URIs containing 'xxx' loses its common carrier status, and is responsible for *all* content that goes across its network. Even if you live in Utah, your ISP (if it is still a true ISP) will still not be able to block your favorite porn site.
The grass is greener...
That last "compliant" should be non-compliant. ... actually there could be an arbitrary amount of granularity to the filtering.
The best part about this is that it's self-reporting. Every porn site wants to be able to say that they don't want children, and Uncle Seamus might want to post that nude picture on his online profile, but at the same time spare the children from scarring.
A better way to handle the lumping-together of porn if it is made mandatory (or even a voluntary standard) would be to make the .xxx TLD available, but also allow (and standardize) a sub-domain, sub-directory, and sub-filename for the same purpose, with the same status.
Examples of porn labelled as such:
www.domain.xxx
xxx.domain.com
www.domain.com/xxx
www.domain.com/index.xxx.html
www.domain.com/images/image.xxx.jpeg
That way, if you run a website, and decide to include adult-only content, you could easily (without infrastructure changes) denote which content should be caught by the filters. There could even be a file at the domain-level (or directory level, in the case of domain/~username, etc.) that states (voluntarily) whether you are in compliance with this standard. Heck, it could even be an HTML header object.
Filters could be configured to only filter compliant sites, or to filter out compliant sites.
Well put.
If I add to your GPL'd code to improve the product, and release my modifications back to your branch of the product, I still own the copyright to what I wrote. You can't change the lisence for my code because you aren't the copyright holder, even if it has very little meaning outside the context of your project.
That's what this whole discussion is about: the best way to implement an upgradable lisence structure without requiring every single contributor's involvment.
If the lisence to the code states that it can be released under any future GPL, then you don't need my further consent to update the lisence, but that requires quite a bit of faith in whoever controls the GPL in the future.
You don't understand the relationship between IP addresses and network topography.
Hmm... Perhaps then there is a mentality that French are super-human.
It's actually not that uncommon among cultures to assume that yours is the best. After all, we all tend to judge by the standards of our own culture.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that the government is better at providing housing for the poor than the private sector would. This might be correct, but it's still your assumption.
It is entirely possible that the private sector through competition (and--motivated by profit--lobbying the government to relax land use and housing restrictions) might find a more efficient way to house the poor.
Or, perhaps the french government has created an artificially low threshold for immigration. If housing was more expensive, poor people would be less likely to immigrate. Maybe they wanted a plentiful supply of cheap and desperate labor.
Without artificially cheap housing fewer would immigrate, and those who did anyway would be faced with a higher housing cost, and therefore would be forced to demand a higher wage for their services.