Aye! They were lucky. there are some open source projects that would give their right arm just for a dollar and a filthy crust o' bread. But you tell some folks that and they'll never believe you.
We don't need to save every teenager's text message.
I'm not willing to spend a lot of money to preserve my *own* memories. If they think it is so important, then they can kick in some money and free time to do it.
This reminds me of when I went to Westminster abbey.
It was forbidden to take pictures on the day I was there but not the day before or after. There were unescorted people taking pictures everywhere and yet the priest with us on our tour was very serious that we should not take pictures.
My solution was to put the video camera on, in the bag, where it could video as we walked.
Not at all. America had a 90% tax on the wealthy for a couple decades at least last century and they didn't consider it slavery one bit.
Once we are paying taxes, the rate is really a negotiation about what's fair.
Now is it fair to let you live on the best land in the area, provide you with roads, police protection, military protection, and let you give all the jobs to people who are not citizens of the area? The citizens will probably vote to impair your ability to do that since they don't like starving and the really don't starving while you become a billionaire.
Oh I totally agree with you on the population issue. It kills us in about 35 to 50 years. It kills us in a very ugly way.
But for now, we have plenty of resources if 15 people didn't have enough wealth to feed everyone else in the world 3 square meals a day.
It's an atrocity that children starve while Rowling has a billion dollars and Gates is a multi-billionaire and there are 15-20 people like this in every country on earth now and they basically own the government.
However, in the 20 years I've been in the market, I've been told over and over and over and (well you get the idea) that *NO ONE* is irreplaceable.
Businesses fire irreplaceable people all the time and train up new people who do just as well in a few years in many cases and in those cases where the business was wrong.. they STILL do not admit it. And it's usually only about 20% of the time. 80% of the time Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. irreplaceable is very replaceable.
And since their potential jobs are not being allocated to inexpensive foreign labor, more americans will train for those jobs.
The problem for the last 15 to 20 years is that companies are not willing to even repay what college costs.
They want someone with 12 years experience but are willing to pay $50k (which is insane considering you paid $50k to get the required training, degrees and certifications).
Part of the problem is that college in india and china is cheap because professors there are cheap, buildings there are cheap, and so on.
Ideally, instead of paying $200k to go to MIT, you would go to India Tech or China Tech, pay $5000 (including living expenses) for your bachelors (and probably more rigorous than here) and then come back without the need for a $90k job just to maybe get out of debt by the time you are 40.
Likewise, our executive class got completely out of hand starting in the late 80's. It's not capitalism when 1% of the workers who control the pay system but really contribute very little value to the company can demand the pay of 6,000 other workers. In a capitalist market, we'd have outsourcing of executives too.
Since most of the world doesn't follow American values it pretty much has turned to shit. As strong as the American system was, we couldn't carry the entire world on our back.
Also, our politicians and corporate leaders used to put the country first. A generation of boomers in the 90's and 00's ended that. They are selfish pricks who sold out the rest of the country on many levels. This weakened the country enormously, further reducing the ability to support the rest of the world.
Next time a fascist government decides to take over the world and slaughter everyone, we will probably just sit back and let it- provided that it gives us a good deal on workers.
The boomers have no real moral foundation and no code of honor. They do what feels good and whatever makes money.
But back to the first point, many countries used to be in decent shape in the 1950's. While not wealthy, they were not impoverished. But two generations of looting by their business and ruling classes have left 99% of their populations on the verge of starvation without any hope for the future.
If Microsoft wants to move to india (or better! China) and live with their business laws then I applaud them.
However, if they wish to live in nice safe houses in seattle, then I think the voters in america have a say in how they do business.
Executives in india and china do not make as much as executives in the united states and they are not sentenced to death for selling tainted products.
You take the good with the bad.
Of course, another solution would be to allow them to use foreign labor and set a 90% tax on their profits and use it to provide free services to american citizens.
You know, they had a damn fool law that set the national speed limit at 55 and another really stupid one that made alcohol illegal.
Then there were the laws saying people of certain races had different contracts than others.
Society is a negotiation. Movie makers have added additional costs ("You must watch these commercials before you can see the movie on the DVD you bought".) And we have to obey those requirements as well as we obey other laws we disagree with.
Unpopular laws only create disrespect for the law.
I'm with you on the copyright thing-- but only for 28 years. The current terms they have bribed the government to pass are ridiculous and not widely respected and even against the intent of copyright law which is to encourage artists to create lots of new stuff. Current copyright law is used to suppress the creation of a lot of material.
You have a right to your opinion- and what you are saying is legally true. And I'll probably think about that for a few seconds tonight as I drive home 5mph over the speed limit and have some absinthe-- oh wait-- absinthe is now legal again. Those darn pesky laws-- they just change if enough people resist them.
I think that the idea that 1+1=2 is not property and you do.
So you can pass laws to enforce your ideas either because most of society agrees or because you have leverage on the law-passers to pass unpopular laws.
But law or not, unless the majority of people agree with your idea, it will not happen. Bad laws are ignored by both law enforcement and the population.
Microsoft Equipt is $69.99 (U.S.) estimated retail price for a one-year renewable subscription. Each subscription will be good for three home PCs, making Microsoft Equipt ideal for families and individuals with one or several computers
* Compare to Cable TV which started at $240 a year and now runs about $1000 a year. My prices might be high- but I was using current cable prices. (and I'll be moving cable providers once again to get that price back down below $400 a year).
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=445 Under the FlexGo program, users make initial down payments on mid-range PCs and make monthly payments for software and broadband services from their local telcos, much the way customers pay cable providers for TV and Internet access. Microsoft and its partners will allow users to sign up and pay for their subscriptions in a variety of ways, ranging from ATMs and point-of-sale terminals, to the Web.
On the "own" vs. licensed you are picking a nit so I'll clarify. I can reinstall Win2k, Linux, and my particular copy of Windows XP and it will work. Now and always. No one can stop me from installing my copies.
I can reinstall my copies of Office2000, Openoffice, Gimp, Audacity, etc. and they will work. Now and always.
My windows Vista machine can be automatically disabled by microsoft at any time. My data stored in microsoft formats has previously become unavailable when microsoft orphaned the application and no longer made copies of it available to read older data. I was reduced to using a hex editor to extract the data.
Yes, any WMA format data can be denied to me by tools written into Microsoft operating systems now. Just like Divx, if something that I purchased which has a valid liscense stops being supported by the liscense servers, then I lose the ability to use the file. Meanwhile, ny MP3, OGG, and FLAC files will continue to work anywhere. And worst case, I can read the DVD onto another non-microsoft O/S (if they someday aggressively disable or even delete files they decide are unlicensed.
Having a standard size of screw did not stop production of screwdrivers and screws. It made them cheaper.
Microsoft and others want excessive amounts of money and that's not good for the economy.
15 companies *like* microsoft that produce editors of standard formats at a tenth the price is better.
The faster we rip off this band aid and get it over with the better off we will be. Japan has been in a recession for a couple decades because they propped up the bad actors.
You pay about $50 a month to use their O/S. And then you pay an extra $10 a month for Word, or get the Premium package with Word, Excel, and Access for $20.
Is this where you want to be in 5 years?
I prefer to own, not rent my own PC. I prefer to own, not rent my applications.
I want my applications to be mine and my data to be mine so that I do not lose access to them arbitrarily.
Microsoft is a big scammy company that provides extremely easy to use products that work reasonably well. I don't like them as a company but I can deal with that. I do like their ease of use and will miss it but the free competition is now only a couple years behind microsoft (and gaining).
But I won't be lead to market to slaughter and end up renting their OS and applications at the rates they desire.
My point is that prices were set based on costs when populations and profits were much lower.
The costs have dropped to nearly nothing yet for now we still allow the old prices to be used.
Competition will eventually undercut those prices- from indy writers and bands, from you-tube video makers, from a thousand other creators who are not part of the big machine which currently has a lot of artificial constraints (you want you book distributed and we have the sole right to distribute to these book stores-- you want to sell books- we have the sole rights to sell these author's books).
We have a music cartel like that in my city. new bands must join if they want to play in clubs. new clubs must join if they want to host any signed bands.
The result is a nearly dead music scene compared to freer cities.
Not a lot of new big band music coming out because the economics of driving around 25 musicians and a crooner isn't there any more even tho the total audience is probably bigger than it was in the 1940's (it's just not concentrated like it used to be).
I disagree with some of your swags but agree strongly with your point that as the markets have gotten much larger, the prices have not dropped accordingly.
For example, The fact that the author of Harry Potter became a billionaire bugs me. It seems like something is broken in society. If she made half as much money (by selling books at 2/3 the price) then a half a billion dollars would have been free to support to other creators of books, music, etc.
I can see her making 10 million a year or something like that but over that- it seems severely off for the rest of society.
Slashdot Mirror
Explain to me why my surfing should suffer so your game has real time response?
I don't know... apple and amazon allowing non-drm sales kinda shoots a hole in that theory.
At some point, calculating the phone bill costs more than it is worth.
If songs were a penny, almost no one would bother pirating them. And they can easily be sold at a penny.
Aye! They were lucky.
there are some open source projects that would give their right arm just for a dollar and a filthy crust o' bread.
But you tell some folks that and they'll never believe you.
And so eventually our entire society will be dedicated to gazing at our navel and thinking about the past instead of doing new things.
There is already more to know and learn than anyone can know and learn in just about every body of knowledge.
We need to free our selves from a lot of the debris of the past so we can move forward.
You have to cut down the noise somehow.
We don't need to save every teenager's text message.
I'm not willing to spend a lot of money to preserve my *own* memories. If they think it is so important, then they can kick in some money and free time to do it.
This reminds me of when I went to Westminster abbey.
It was forbidden to take pictures on the day I was there but not the day before or after. There were unescorted people taking pictures everywhere and yet the priest with us on our tour was very serious that we should not take pictures.
My solution was to put the video camera on, in the bag, where it could video as we walked.
It was such a stupid arbitrary rule.
A video is just a series of pictures.
Clearly, your camera has to click once per picture taken.
duh.
Not at all. America had a 90% tax on the wealthy for a couple decades at least last century and they didn't consider it slavery one bit.
Once we are paying taxes, the rate is really a negotiation about what's fair.
Now is it fair to let you live on the best land in the area, provide you with roads, police protection, military protection, and let you give all the jobs to people who are not citizens of the area? The citizens will probably vote to impair your ability to do that since they don't like starving and the really don't starving while you become a billionaire.
Oh I totally agree with you on the population issue. It kills us in about 35 to 50 years. It kills us in a very ugly way.
But for now, we have plenty of resources if 15 people didn't have enough wealth to feed everyone else in the world 3 square meals a day.
It's an atrocity that children starve while Rowling has a billion dollars and Gates is a multi-billionaire and there are 15-20 people like this in every country on earth now and they basically own the government.
However, in the 20 years I've been in the market, I've been told over and over and over and (well you get the idea) that *NO ONE* is irreplaceable.
Businesses fire irreplaceable people all the time and train up new people who do just as well in a few years in many cases and in those cases where the business was wrong.. they STILL do not admit it. And it's usually only about 20% of the time. 80% of the time Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. irreplaceable is very replaceable.
And since their potential jobs are not being allocated to inexpensive foreign labor, more americans will train for those jobs.
The problem for the last 15 to 20 years is that companies are not willing to even repay what college costs.
They want someone with 12 years experience but are willing to pay $50k (which is insane considering you paid $50k to get the required training, degrees and certifications).
Part of the problem is that college in india and china is cheap because professors there are cheap, buildings there are cheap, and so on.
Ideally, instead of paying $200k to go to MIT, you would go to India Tech or China Tech, pay $5000 (including living expenses) for your bachelors (and probably more rigorous than here) and then come back without the need for a $90k job just to maybe get out of debt by the time you are 40.
Likewise, our executive class got completely out of hand starting in the late 80's. It's not capitalism when 1% of the workers who control the pay system but really contribute very little value to the company can demand the pay of 6,000 other workers. In a capitalist market, we'd have outsourcing of executives too.
Well,
Since most of the world doesn't follow American values it pretty much has turned to shit.
As strong as the American system was, we couldn't carry the entire world on our back.
Also, our politicians and corporate leaders used to put the country first. A generation of boomers in the 90's and 00's ended that. They are selfish pricks who sold out the rest of the country on many levels. This weakened the country enormously, further reducing the ability to support the rest of the world.
Next time a fascist government decides to take over the world and slaughter everyone, we will probably just sit back and let it- provided that it gives us a good deal on workers.
The boomers have no real moral foundation and no code of honor. They do what feels good and whatever makes money.
But back to the first point, many countries used to be in decent shape in the 1950's. While not wealthy, they were not impoverished. But two generations of looting by their business and ruling classes have left 99% of their populations on the verge of starvation without any hope for the future.
We can't help them all.
If Microsoft wants to move to india (or better! China) and live with their business laws then I applaud them.
However, if they wish to live in nice safe houses in seattle, then I think the voters in america have a say in how they do business.
Executives in india and china do not make as much as executives in the united states and they are not sentenced to death for selling tainted products.
You take the good with the bad.
Of course, another solution would be to allow them to use foreign labor and set a 90% tax on their profits and use it to provide free services to american citizens.
Couldn't agree more.
I like Microsoft products. I use them daily.
I do not trust microsoft.
I know they want to lock me in.
I actively disengage from their products and look for alternatives because I know they will abuse any monopoly they build.
You know, they had a damn fool law that set the national speed limit at 55 and another really stupid one that made alcohol illegal.
Then there were the laws saying people of certain races had different contracts than others.
Society is a negotiation. Movie makers have added additional costs ("You must watch these commercials before you can see the movie on the DVD you bought".) And we have to obey those requirements as well as we obey other laws we disagree with.
Unpopular laws only create disrespect for the law.
I'm with you on the copyright thing-- but only for 28 years. The current terms they have bribed the government to pass are ridiculous and not widely respected and even against the intent of copyright law which is to encourage artists to create lots of new stuff. Current copyright law is used to suppress the creation of a lot of material.
You have a right to your opinion- and what you are saying is legally true. And I'll probably think about that for a few seconds tonight as I drive home 5mph over the speed limit and have some absinthe-- oh wait-- absinthe is now legal again. Those darn pesky laws-- they just change if enough people resist them.
What is the value in having a sequel without the base game on the system?
I would love Spore: Wii.
I'm not so interested in Spore: Hero tho I might have been if there had been a Spore: Wii.
See, this is where we disagree on the axioms.
I think that the idea that 1+1=2 is not property and you do.
So you can pass laws to enforce your ideas either because most of society agrees or because you have leverage on the law-passers to pass unpopular laws.
But law or not, unless the majority of people agree with your idea, it will not happen. Bad laws are ignored by both law enforcement and the population.
I bet they expect two days off for Christmas too!
BAH!
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jul08/07-02EquiptPR.mspx
Pricing and Availability
Microsoft Equipt is $69.99 (U.S.) estimated retail price for a one-year renewable subscription. Each subscription will be good for three home PCs, making Microsoft Equipt ideal for families and individuals with one or several computers
* Compare to Cable TV which started at $240 a year and now runs about $1000 a year. My prices might be high- but I was using current cable prices. (and I'll be moving cable providers once again to get that price back down below $400 a year).
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=445
Under the FlexGo program, users make initial down payments on mid-range PCs and make monthly payments for software and broadband services from their local telcos, much the way customers pay cable providers for TV and Internet access. Microsoft and its partners will allow users to sign up and pay for their subscriptions in a variety of ways, ranging from ATMs and point-of-sale terminals, to the Web.
On the "own" vs. licensed you are picking a nit so I'll clarify.
I can reinstall Win2k, Linux, and my particular copy of Windows XP and it will work. Now and always. No one can stop me from installing my copies.
I can reinstall my copies of Office2000, Openoffice, Gimp, Audacity, etc. and they will work. Now and always.
My windows Vista machine can be automatically disabled by microsoft at any time.
My data stored in microsoft formats has previously become unavailable when microsoft orphaned the application and no longer made copies of it available to read older data. I was reduced to using a hex editor to extract the data.
Yes, any WMA format data can be denied to me by tools written into Microsoft operating systems now. Just like Divx, if something that I purchased which has a valid liscense stops being supported by the liscense servers, then I lose the ability to use the file. Meanwhile, ny MP3, OGG, and FLAC files will continue to work anywhere. And worst case, I can read the DVD onto another non-microsoft O/S (if they someday aggressively disable or even delete files they decide are unlicensed.
You need to open your eyes a bit wider.
Capitalism is about creative destruction.
Having a standard size of screw did not stop production of screwdrivers and screws. It made them cheaper.
Microsoft and others want excessive amounts of money and that's not good for the economy.
15 companies *like* microsoft that produce editors of standard formats at a tenth the price is better.
The faster we rip off this band aid and get it over with the better off we will be. Japan has been in a recession for a couple decades because they propped up the bad actors.
Microsoft's goal is to be like cable TV.
You pay about $50 a month to use their O/S. And then you pay an extra $10 a month for Word, or get the Premium package with Word, Excel, and Access for $20.
Is this where you want to be in 5 years?
I prefer to own, not rent my own PC.
I prefer to own, not rent my applications.
I want my applications to be mine and my data to be mine so that I do not lose access to them arbitrarily.
Microsoft is a big scammy company that provides extremely easy to use products that work reasonably well.
I don't like them as a company but I can deal with that.
I do like their ease of use and will miss it but the free competition is now only a couple years behind microsoft (and gaining).
But I won't be lead to market to slaughter and end up renting their OS and applications at the rates they desire.
Property refers to a physical object.
You do not have a natural right to an idea which you share unless everyone agrees with you.
My point is that prices were set based on costs when populations and profits were much lower.
The costs have dropped to nearly nothing yet for now we still allow the old prices to be used.
Competition will eventually undercut those prices- from indy writers and bands, from you-tube video makers, from a thousand other creators who are not part of the big machine which currently has a lot of artificial constraints (you want you book distributed and we have the sole right to distribute to these book stores-- you want to sell books- we have the sole rights to sell these author's books).
We have a music cartel like that in my city.
new bands must join if they want to play in clubs.
new clubs must join if they want to host any signed bands.
The result is a nearly dead music scene compared to freer cities.
I like big band music.
Not a lot of new big band music coming out because the economics of driving around 25 musicians and a crooner isn't there any more even tho the total audience is probably bigger than it was in the 1940's (it's just not concentrated like it used to be).
So you are probably right.
I disagree with some of your swags but agree strongly with your point that as the markets have gotten much larger, the prices have not dropped accordingly.
For example, The fact that the author of Harry Potter became a billionaire bugs me. It seems like something is broken in society. If she made half as much money (by selling books at 2/3 the price) then a half a billion dollars would have been free to support to other creators of books, music, etc.
I can see her making 10 million a year or something like that but over that- it seems severely off for the rest of society.