Arguably, 'capital expense' is a valid term; the counterpart would be 'operating expense'. You can say 'capital expenditures' and 'operating expenditures'.
The capital part is, arguably, the important part of the phrase although I agree that 'expense' by itself implies operating expenditures.
That's a complicated question. There are basically three answers:
1: It may make your work faster and more efficient. 2: It may require less maintenance than your old computer. 3: It won't, but that's not necessary; it's like asking a workman whether a new hammer would make his job any more profitable. That doesn't mean it's not an investment anyway.
Are you telling me that as a computer geek, when you lay out money to purchase a computer you do not expect profit to arise from it?
I think that's a very dangerous statement. Everyone who uses their computer for work 'invests' in it. Everyone who uses their second-hand car to drive to work 'invests' in it.
It is not solely necessary for the capital expense to appreciate for it to be an investment.
Your answer is quite true, but it's also a non sequitur, as we both know that in this case the law was perfectly obvious.
Yes, there are a majority of laws regarding things that people don't know about. The tax code, for example, is huge. And yet, there is an expectation that before embarking on any particular venture, you understand the legalities of doing so.
For example, you are required to file your taxes; it is expected that before doing so, you acquaint yourself satisfactorily with the tax code (or hire an expert who has done so) so as not to run afoul of it.
When you operate a motor vehicle, you are expected to have understood the sections of the highway traffic act that pertain to operation of said vehicle.
When you embark on business ventures, again, you are expected to understand the law around what you are doing.
It is, in my experience, very rare that people essentially randomly run afoul of a law they knew nothing about and had no reasonable responsibility to know about.
Jails are immensely expensive. In Canada, it costs between $80,000-$240,000 per year to keep a prisoner in Federal custody, and the Department of Justice has commissioned more than one study which finds that jail time may in fact increase recidivism rates .
Moreover, there's a reasonable amount of evidence to conclude that in fact, keeping murderers in jail, in general, is not a productive use of society's resources. The Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCRS) puts forward a specific picture of violent crime- that the more violent the crime, the more likely it is to be committed by someone close to the victim and the more likely it is that specific events were tied to the crime; i.e., the criminal, if released, is not likely to go out and randomly kill somebody they found on the street.
As for the punishment of copyright offenses, it is a sticky issue. There exist criminal sanctions now for property crimes, and to be perfectly honest I don't see any reason why copyright infringement should not be a crime just like vandalism; both are crimes against property. (Or, if you want a more relevant example, say trespassing; both of which are violations of a limited, government-granted monopoly.)
Is jail time the right answer? Perhaps not. It's rarely the right answer for most criminal offenses, but it is popular with the Law and Order crowd of politicians (and to a great extent the public).
The right answer here is probably civil- profits + punitive damages, and that 'answer' is probably relevant to most criminal cases as well.
I suppose it doesn't help to point out, though, that it costs more for the government to prosecute more crimes than those crimes are worth. Theft under $5000, for example, might cost $100,000 to prosecute.
So according to you it doesn't matter which law you break and how?
Not at all. I'm saying the best way to not be punished for breaking the law is not to break it.
This crime doesn't deserve jail. Jail for this guy is going to make things worse for everyone involved including society as a whole, because he will come out of jail a worse man.
And that might be true, but that's really an issue with the criminal justice system as a whole- not just this case. A multitude of studies have found that recidivism rates are rarely helped by prison time in general for any criminals.
All that said, I'm going to toss in my two cents: The government already has a way to revoke its temporarily granted monopolies (over say, real property): it's called eminent domain, and it involves the State taking from private citizens presumably in order to best serve the interests of the State. The fact that the government does not routinely do this with regard to copyrights indicates the fact that the government does not consider the removal to the public domain of copyrighted work particularly important, and so barring your complaints to the contrary, it seems likely we will continue to see criminal sanctions as well as civil as and when they are enforced (naturally, as a rule they are relatively low priority).
(Actually, it does tie in with the problems with dealing with convicted offenders in the criminal justice system as well, but that's not really terribly relevant to the issue at hand...)
The solution to #1 is to cash the cheque, refuse to wire back the money, and dump the money into a high-interest savings account. The bank'll grab back the $3500, but you get to keep the interest.
The internet was never 'run' by the IETF, and the IETF never really claimed to run it- they're the Internet Engineering Task Force, not ISOC (The Internet Society, which probably has a better claim to 'running' the Internet, as it oversees the IETF through the Internet Architecture Board, the IAB).
Really, nobody 'runs' the Internet, but the FCC does basically control communications carriers in the United States.
Take a look at CAIP's filings before the CRTC- here
Screenshots, affidavits, letters to the commission. Depends on how the throttling works, but if it really is as simple as "After twenty minutes of heavy use the connection is throttled", that should be relatively easy to show in screenshots, as CAIP did.
Firstly, I don't think a good reason to do anything today is 'so that historians in the future will have an easy time of it'. That just smacks of building your own legacy.
Secondly, the Court is pretty much obligated to keep complete and usable records. That is part of their function, and I know such records go back at least thirty-five years easily (because those are the records which I have personally asked the Court to retrieve).
I'm not sure I trust 'the internet' to keep a copy of those records for that long, especially not intact and whole.
As I posted in another comment, the concern about 'pricing people who really do need the information out' is not one I've ever found to be valid.
All of the Courts I've dealt with have had wavier programs in place to allow those who need access but cannot pay for it access to the materials they require, so long as they are willing to make the appropriate application.
The problem is that often, only one of the parties involved starts an action and the other party is left with basically conceding everything to the party starting the action or airing their dirty laundry.
The Court should not be a party to what is, at its most basic, extortion; and that's not a problem you can just 'fix' in any other way.
This is the real problem, although I can see why it would pain the average slashdotter to admit it. Free and open is not always the best way to run a society.
Moreover, as I said earlier, just because the Court is obligated to be open in its dealings does not mean it has to go out of its way to make them so. It can, and does, impose reasonable restrictions on even the matters of public record.
Indeed. And a fact that I failed to mention in my original post is that, in fact, in every jurisdiction I am aware of the Court has the ability at its own discretion to waive the fee, if you make an application that you are unable to pay it. So even that is not more than a cost of time.
A lot of people care, because a lot of the data that's posted is not necessarily what you'd imagine.
In a typical divorce case, for example, full financial disclosure is made by all parties, in some cases down to detailed records of credit card expenditures. Even records of things like psychological evaluations might be included in the record.
This is especially difficult because it can place innocent people between a rock and a hard place. You might be sued by someone with no reasonable case, but in order to put up a practical defense, you might be forced to expose all sorts of otherwise private information. Or, you may just want to get a divorce, and in order to do so be required to present all sorts of detailed financial and other types of data.
Ordinarily, (i.e., before posting court data on the internet) it was difficult to obtain this information- it was generally expensive ($1/pg, or so) and time consuming (one had to go down to the court clerk). Slashdotters may not care that this is merely security by obscurity, and it is. But it does provide an effective deterrent for the court equivalent of 'script kiddies'- individuals who troll court records for data they think is worthy of blackmail or other intimidation. It's simply too expensive and impractical for them to do their business, while individuals who really do need that information, have it open to them.
I believe it was, in fact, the Canadian Supreme Court which once said that 'must be available' does not mean 'we have to give it to you on a silver platter with a martini to your taste'.
How exactly do you commit genocide without killing people? Are the Han Chinese magically making the Tibetans disappear by sheer virtue of their presence?
That's not really a solution to his problem, though.
Yes, in Windows you can also use the equivalent of sudo to gain access to another user session on a per process basis, but that's not really what he appears to desire; rather, he wants the ability to launch separate processes in separate security contexts for the same user.
Not really. He supports a cause you support, and so you like him, but what else is really new? Ideally, everybody's lawyer supports the cause of their client, and everyone who thinks like their client will appreciate their lawyer, too.
That is, I fear, the terrible truth about lawyers- nobody really cares about the lawyers, because they are mere reflections of their clients. A lawyer's reputation tends to live or die with his clients.
That's not a good reason to completely define the Armed Forces around those missions, because, to be perfectly honest, they do not pose a threat to the United States that the Armed Forces can effectively repel.
Shifting the Armed Forces to a counterinsurgency role stops making them Armed Forces in my opinion. They are no longer defined around their ability to fight a military conflict but by their ability to exercise, effectively, heavy police presence.
Slashdot Mirror
Arguably, 'capital expense' is a valid term; the counterpart would be 'operating expense'. You can say 'capital expenditures' and 'operating expenditures'.
The capital part is, arguably, the important part of the phrase although I agree that 'expense' by itself implies operating expenditures.
Pretty much, yeah.
That's a complicated question. There are basically three answers:
1: It may make your work faster and more efficient.
2: It may require less maintenance than your old computer.
3: It won't, but that's not necessary; it's like asking a workman whether a new hammer would make his job any more profitable. That doesn't mean it's not an investment anyway.
Are you telling me that as a computer geek, when you lay out money to purchase a computer you do not expect profit to arise from it?
I think that's a very dangerous statement. Everyone who uses their computer for work 'invests' in it. Everyone who uses their second-hand car to drive to work 'invests' in it.
It is not solely necessary for the capital expense to appreciate for it to be an investment.
Your answer is quite true, but it's also a non sequitur, as we both know that in this case the law was perfectly obvious.
Yes, there are a majority of laws regarding things that people don't know about. The tax code, for example, is huge. And yet, there is an expectation that before embarking on any particular venture, you understand the legalities of doing so.
For example, you are required to file your taxes; it is expected that before doing so, you acquaint yourself satisfactorily with the tax code (or hire an expert who has done so) so as not to run afoul of it.
When you operate a motor vehicle, you are expected to have understood the sections of the highway traffic act that pertain to operation of said vehicle.
When you embark on business ventures, again, you are expected to understand the law around what you are doing.
It is, in my experience, very rare that people essentially randomly run afoul of a law they knew nothing about and had no reasonable responsibility to know about.
Jails are immensely expensive. In Canada, it costs between $80,000-$240,000 per year to keep a prisoner in Federal custody, and the Department of Justice has commissioned more than one study which finds that jail time may in fact increase recidivism rates .
Moreover, there's a reasonable amount of evidence to conclude that in fact, keeping murderers in jail, in general, is not a productive use of society's resources. The Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCRS) puts forward a specific picture of violent crime- that the more violent the crime, the more likely it is to be committed by someone close to the victim and the more likely it is that specific events were tied to the crime; i.e., the criminal, if released, is not likely to go out and randomly kill somebody they found on the street.
As for the punishment of copyright offenses, it is a sticky issue. There exist criminal sanctions now for property crimes, and to be perfectly honest I don't see any reason why copyright infringement should not be a crime just like vandalism; both are crimes against property. (Or, if you want a more relevant example, say trespassing; both of which are violations of a limited, government-granted monopoly.)
Is jail time the right answer? Perhaps not. It's rarely the right answer for most criminal offenses, but it is popular with the Law and Order crowd of politicians (and to a great extent the public).
The right answer here is probably civil- profits + punitive damages, and that 'answer' is probably relevant to most criminal cases as well.
I suppose it doesn't help to point out, though, that it costs more for the government to prosecute more crimes than those crimes are worth. Theft under $5000, for example, might cost $100,000 to prosecute.
Not at all. I'm saying the best way to not be punished for breaking the law is not to break it.
And that might be true, but that's really an issue with the criminal justice system as a whole- not just this case. A multitude of studies have found that recidivism rates are rarely helped by prison time in general for any criminals.
All that said, I'm going to toss in my two cents: The government already has a way to revoke its temporarily granted monopolies (over say, real property): it's called eminent domain, and it involves the State taking from private citizens presumably in order to best serve the interests of the State. The fact that the government does not routinely do this with regard to copyrights indicates the fact that the government does not consider the removal to the public domain of copyrighted work particularly important, and so barring your complaints to the contrary, it seems likely we will continue to see criminal sanctions as well as civil as and when they are enforced (naturally, as a rule they are relatively low priority).
The same argument applies to breaking any law.
The answer is to simply not break the law.
(Actually, it does tie in with the problems with dealing with convicted offenders in the criminal justice system as well, but that's not really terribly relevant to the issue at hand...)
The solution to #1 is to cash the cheque, refuse to wire back the money, and dump the money into a high-interest savings account. The bank'll grab back the $3500, but you get to keep the interest.
It would likely be $325,000 per customer affected, not per packet.
The internet was never 'run' by the IETF, and the IETF never really claimed to run it- they're the Internet Engineering Task Force, not ISOC (The Internet Society, which probably has a better claim to 'running' the Internet, as it oversees the IETF through the Internet Architecture Board, the IAB).
Really, nobody 'runs' the Internet, but the FCC does basically control communications carriers in the United States.
Take a look at CAIP's filings before the CRTC- here
Screenshots, affidavits, letters to the commission. Depends on how the throttling works, but if it really is as simple as "After twenty minutes of heavy use the connection is throttled", that should be relatively easy to show in screenshots, as CAIP did.
The FCC has the regulatory power to revoke licenses and impose fines (Up to $325,000 per infraction, I believe).
Firstly, I don't think a good reason to do anything today is 'so that historians in the future will have an easy time of it'. That just smacks of building your own legacy.
Secondly, the Court is pretty much obligated to keep complete and usable records. That is part of their function, and I know such records go back at least thirty-five years easily (because those are the records which I have personally asked the Court to retrieve).
I'm not sure I trust 'the internet' to keep a copy of those records for that long, especially not intact and whole.
As I posted in another comment, the concern about 'pricing people who really do need the information out' is not one I've ever found to be valid.
All of the Courts I've dealt with have had wavier programs in place to allow those who need access but cannot pay for it access to the materials they require, so long as they are willing to make the appropriate application.
The problem is that often, only one of the parties involved starts an action and the other party is left with basically conceding everything to the party starting the action or airing their dirty laundry.
The Court should not be a party to what is, at its most basic, extortion; and that's not a problem you can just 'fix' in any other way.
This is the real problem, although I can see why it would pain the average slashdotter to admit it. Free and open is not always the best way to run a society.
Moreover, as I said earlier, just because the Court is obligated to be open in its dealings does not mean it has to go out of its way to make them so. It can, and does, impose reasonable restrictions on even the matters of public record.
Indeed. And a fact that I failed to mention in my original post is that, in fact, in every jurisdiction I am aware of the Court has the ability at its own discretion to waive the fee, if you make an application that you are unable to pay it. So even that is not more than a cost of time.
A lot of people care, because a lot of the data that's posted is not necessarily what you'd imagine.
In a typical divorce case, for example, full financial disclosure is made by all parties, in some cases down to detailed records of credit card expenditures. Even records of things like psychological evaluations might be included in the record.
This is especially difficult because it can place innocent people between a rock and a hard place. You might be sued by someone with no reasonable case, but in order to put up a practical defense, you might be forced to expose all sorts of otherwise private information. Or, you may just want to get a divorce, and in order to do so be required to present all sorts of detailed financial and other types of data.
Ordinarily, (i.e., before posting court data on the internet) it was difficult to obtain this information- it was generally expensive ($1/pg, or so) and time consuming (one had to go down to the court clerk). Slashdotters may not care that this is merely security by obscurity, and it is. But it does provide an effective deterrent for the court equivalent of 'script kiddies'- individuals who troll court records for data they think is worthy of blackmail or other intimidation. It's simply too expensive and impractical for them to do their business, while individuals who really do need that information, have it open to them.
I believe it was, in fact, the Canadian Supreme Court which once said that 'must be available' does not mean 'we have to give it to you on a silver platter with a martini to your taste'.
How exactly do you commit genocide without killing people? Are the Han Chinese magically making the Tibetans disappear by sheer virtue of their presence?
No, it really doesn't bother me. Doesn't make me sleep any better at night, mind you, but it doesn't really bother me, either.
It's an issue on which I am, essentially, totally ambivalent and if legal minds greater than mine care to duke it out one way or another, so be it.
That's not really a solution to his problem, though.
Yes, in Windows you can also use the equivalent of sudo to gain access to another user session on a per process basis, but that's not really what he appears to desire; rather, he wants the ability to launch separate processes in separate security contexts for the same user.
In what way is it unconstitutional?
Not really. He supports a cause you support, and so you like him, but what else is really new? Ideally, everybody's lawyer supports the cause of their client, and everyone who thinks like their client will appreciate their lawyer, too.
That is, I fear, the terrible truth about lawyers- nobody really cares about the lawyers, because they are mere reflections of their clients. A lawyer's reputation tends to live or die with his clients.
A fact that I am infinitely grateful for. Electing judges and district attorneys, for example, is pure madness.
That's not a good reason to completely define the Armed Forces around those missions, because, to be perfectly honest, they do not pose a threat to the United States that the Armed Forces can effectively repel.
Shifting the Armed Forces to a counterinsurgency role stops making them Armed Forces in my opinion. They are no longer defined around their ability to fight a military conflict but by their ability to exercise, effectively, heavy police presence.