Heck, I can download lots of DRM'd songs easily and apparently legally off of Youtube for free. Anyone can buy a single CD or record off of the radio or off of an internet stream and then there is a free, easy to use copy in the wild.
In today's age, you can get a song in seconds-- it used to take a lot of effort.
So DRM only punishes the customers who would pay you for a *fairly* priced service (and hint-- putting 13 40 year old songs on a DVD that could hold 2000 songs in mp3 format and charging $20 is not a fair price) and doesn't prevent everyone else from having easier to use ( and probably even quasi-legal ) free recordings.
There is supernatural being to forgive a non-believer for bad things they do.
In the spirit of Obama, let's agree that there are extremists in every group but most of us are in the reasonable middle. A reasonable (rational) christian can have faith but not feel obliged to impose it on everyone else. Atheists can be moral, amoral, and immoral-- and so can christians (and anyone of any faith). The point being that HUMANS are moral, amoral, and immoral.
In fact, the same human can be amoral (very young), moral (young and idealistic), amoral/immoral (now young and hedonistic), and then return to being moral (mature), and then fall into immorality (corrupted by money or fail to deal with the wounds of childhood), and go back to being moral.
And.. it is really the extremely rare human who starts off moral, remains moral, and lives a long life without being immoral or amoral at some point.
Except "the rich" pay about 17% income tax-- a lower rate than most people earning 50 to 100k per year. (search Buffett, Secretary, Tax for a link).
Basically- if I earn 60,000 dividends off of a million bucks, I pay 15%. if I earn 60,000 interest off of a million bucks, I pay 28%. if I structure my income as a subchapter S corporation... I get 1/3 off of most of my expenses (Car, Cell, Blackberry, Most Travel, country club membership, golf games, better medical coverage), pay myself a "reasonable" salary of about $36k, and collect the rest as dividends.
They earn more money and they structure it in ways that lower the tax sting and they get the tax removed from many of their activities.
Then on top of that they *own* out right the talk radio and tv networks so they brainwash the middle and lower classes into slitting their own throats.
But Internet usage can take you down a dark path. Alchohol can take you down a dark path. Everquest can take you down a dark path. People have died from playing Mmorgs too long (from heart failure I think).
We need to give people freedom. That includes the freedom to do something until they die from it or ruin their life.
Yes... freedom can lead you down a dark path. You can die from it. Freedom is very heady stuff.
I agree with you. Consideration of risk and liability are preventing a lot of progress.
For example- we could easily be on mars and on the moon if we were willing to take the losses that the american settlers did (50%? 60%?) And even knowing the risks, people would line up to be settlers on mars and the moon if you would just let them.
We are killing the space program with an insistance on zero risk.
However.... While I'm willing to take enormous risks personally and let others take big risks - I'm not willing for corporations to make a fortune today at the cost of ruining our country / world for the next 200, 2000, or more years. We underestimate just how horrible the downside of nuclear risk can be. Just like we underestimated how bad the downside risk of subprime credit could be.
And yet, free will, expressed via random dna combinations is a great way to survive major shifts in the environment.
While things are good, the pack eats bingleberries and prospers. Those wierd cats making up 1% of the population eat random things and many die. A few survive. Then there is a big environment shift and 99% of the pack dies while the 1% survives on it's new diet of jajaberries and merfif meat.
Most of the intelligent population stays and drinks the koolade and dies. But the random part left earlier - violently disagreeing with the popular opinions and becoming skitnik poet and live.
Free will is randomness. And every sexual population expresses it.
Conciousness is something different. Not everything is concious. A lot of our will and brain takes place below the conscious level.
I'm not picking on nuclear. I'm picking on the idea of passing the bill for our current power production on to our grandkids.
You are correct and a reasonable amount of nuclear production (say 10% of the power mix) makes a good balance between risk/reward. But going heavily nuclear and producing a lot of waste seems foolhardy to me.
The US will change *A LOT* in 200 years. Who knows that YUCCA mountain won't turn out to have been the perfect spot for an interdimensional gateway or zero point energy production facility except it's polluted all to hell with nuclear waste that leaked from containers that turned out to only last 170 years.
We only have to lower oil usage by about 3% to cause it to collapse back to $60/bbl.
This is the bane and the benefit. Solar is somewhere over $100/bbl. When you use it successfully, it makes itself grossly unprofitable.
But it only takes a little conservation and extra power to tip the scales. The current run up in oil prices is based on an extremely narrow band of about 2-3 million barrels a day of expensive oil. The rest of the oil is quite cheap to get out.
This is why no one wants to invest in alternatives-- because the more successful they are, the cheaper oil will be, and the more of a loss you will take on your successful investment.
It's not just reagan. The democrats are bought and paid for to. The democratic and republican candidates are chosen before it even gets to you. Those who the corporations do not like are outed from peccadilloes and destroyed.
Everyone has a skeleton in the closet- but they focus on you if they don't like you.
Right now the corporations have bought the government and we are legally prevented from purchasing inexpensive drugs ($.10 vs $5.00), clothing (+20-30%), sugar (+500%), computer products ($10 vs $500), movies ($2.49 vs $20). They want to *make* the products for $.50 and then have artificial laws passed putting american citizens in jail or subjecting them to financial ruin if they try to get around those artificial mutiliations of capitalism.
The executives and corporations exist in a society with legal protections and safety that would not be available to them in other countries (many of which they and their children would be likely to be kidnapped or killed or have to pay huge bribes or perhaps vanish if they offended someone in the government).
Then they break the law, and do not offer the same protections and legitimate compensation to their employees. They take wildly inappropriate a salaries while in some cases overseeing catastrophic losses in their businesses (eg. Home Depot) and there so far seems to be nothing we can do to stop them. The legal class finds ways to get around any laws restricting executive abuses.
The problem *will* solve itself. Lower unemployment here will collapse prices. Higher employment of foreign nationals will cause their wages to come up.
And it's extremely likely that we (and many other nations around the world) are about to start taxing the inholy fuck out of anyone with over 10 million dollars during the next 10-15 years or face another economic collapse of 1930's proportions.
---
And yea-- as you correctly point out- most people focus on their own narrow self interest- not consistency in their philosophy or rules of justice.
Okay... so I did some digging and the numbers are roughly...
In 1997, 640k were *regular* users and in 2004, 34.2 million Americans aged 12 and over reported lifetime use of cocaine.
The estimated 1999 cocaine death rate (ignoring drug dealers killing each other, judges, policemen and innocents because of the fabulous wealth available because it is illegal) was....
87. This includes toxicity deaths (gross overdose-- not heart attack). But say they are all heart attacks!
You get about 1/114,000 odds if regular users only used one time during the entire year and ignoring that year's share of the 34.2 million people that tried it.
I'm just guessing here but it sounds like the odds are about 1/1,000,000 and are probably equivalent to or lower than those high school kids who keel over the playing sports in gym class.
And... Fifty-five percent of passenger vehicle occupants who died in 2005 were unbelted. (~1/10,000) since I always wear my seatbelt. Thirty-nine percent of fatalities were alchohol related (but overlap not stated-- still probably brings it down to (~1/20,000) since I've never driven drunk. Oh... here's a biggie. Over 5,400 were not occupants of the automobile. About 1/8th. (1/5,100... 1/1,2000... 1/24,000). Roughly 1/3 were not in cars (various kinds of trucks) 1/36,000... There were 18 states with substantially higher fatality rates (For some reason nebraska had 50% more fatalities than texas in 2003 with a fraction of texas' population). No idea... say 1/50,000.
I think it pretty much proves your point that cocaine fatalities are "over-feared" and partially propaganda. Tho I would say, driving isn't nearly as fatal as driving in traffic with other vehicles. I luck out there too- I tend to drive when the roads are emptier but outside of the "getting out of clubs" hours.
My grandfather died at 64 from a heart attack... Cocaine can give you a heart attack the first time you use it.
But-- yes, it's a bit irrational.
From knowing many many people who used cocaine, I know that it is addictive at low rates. I've one acquaintance who was addicted to everything (coke, drugs, sex, having children) and many acquaintances who did coke in the 70's and 80's (I *just* missed it along with all the free sex and dancing by about 2 years) and stopped and have great lives. I think the coke is about as physically addictive as alcohol. The real issue is a lot of people in emotional pain self medicating- not physical addiction.
They don't even need the appearance. They just have to match the legal requirements.
It is like the word games redefining torture as not being torture.
It is like defining a rope with a hook as a "braking system".
If the law says torture is illegal, just make sure your actions are legally not torture. If the law requires a braking system, just make sure a rope with a hook is defined as a braking system.
If the law requires and open standard, just make sure some government or standards body calls it an "open standard". It does not have to actually be open.
I worked in an office full of very successful people about 10 years older than I was that apparently did coke on a regular basis in the late 70's and 80's. My sister-in-law from my first marriage also used coke multiple times without issue. I recently dated a lady who had apparently "tooted" many times and was fine (except really greedy and on hard times from the real estate crash).
I highly doubt that cocaine causes physical addition in 90% of the population. I think most people can use it, enjoy the high, and not use it and be fine.
I think about the same percentage as have problems with alchohol have serious problems with cocaine. Either because they have severe unresolved issues that they are self medicating (child hood abuse being a big one) for or because they do get physical addiction to it (perhaps like native americans for alchohol).
Slashdot Mirror
And O.J. was with him! They both found the one-armed webmaster who had killed their wives.
But it doesn't.
Heck, I can download lots of DRM'd songs easily and apparently legally off of Youtube for free. Anyone can buy a single CD or record off of the radio or off of an internet stream and then there is a free, easy to use copy in the wild.
In today's age, you can get a song in seconds-- it used to take a lot of effort.
So DRM only punishes the customers who would pay you for a *fairly* priced service (and hint-- putting 13 40 year old songs on a DVD that could hold 2000 songs in mp3 format and charging $20 is not a fair price) and doesn't prevent everyone else from having easier to use ( and probably even quasi-legal ) free recordings.
There is supernatural being to forgive a non-believer for bad things they do.
In the spirit of Obama, let's agree that there are extremists in every group but most of us are in the reasonable middle. A reasonable (rational) christian can have faith but not feel obliged to impose it on everyone else. Atheists can be moral, amoral, and immoral-- and so can christians (and anyone of any faith). The point being that HUMANS are moral, amoral, and immoral.
In fact, the same human can be amoral (very young), moral (young and idealistic), amoral/immoral (now young and hedonistic), and then return to being moral (mature), and then fall into immorality (corrupted by money or fail to deal with the wounds of childhood), and go back to being moral.
And.. it is really the extremely rare human who starts off moral, remains moral, and lives a long life without being immoral or amoral at some point.
Except "the rich" pay about 17% income tax-- a lower rate than most people earning 50 to 100k per year. (search Buffett, Secretary, Tax for a link).
Basically-
if I earn 60,000 dividends off of a million bucks, I pay 15%.
if I earn 60,000 interest off of a million bucks, I pay 28%.
if I structure my income as a subchapter S corporation...
I get 1/3 off of most of my expenses (Car, Cell, Blackberry, Most Travel, country club membership, golf games, better medical coverage), pay myself a "reasonable" salary of about $36k, and collect the rest as dividends.
They earn more money and they structure it in ways that lower the tax sting and they get the tax removed from many of their activities.
Then on top of that they *own* out right the talk radio and tv networks so they brainwash the middle and lower classes into slitting their own throats.
Our toll roads are backed up by pictures of your car & license number.
And they do audits-- if the wrong car has the tag, you get a $5 ticket. And that's without the real person complaining you are ripping them off.
Yes but NSA is not going to blow a carefully built cover intended for national security over a couple random guys.
lol.
yea, whenever I say "It's the population" I basically get accused of genocide.
It's not cars- we get to 11 billion and our farts are going to be a factor just like cows.
Can you be so sure? I mean, even your post is clearly attributable to GW!
Actually you don't add it that way. Babies don't immediately have children. What you are saying is true on a scale of two decades tho.
Sure...
Agree.
But
Internet usage can take you down a dark path.
Alchohol can take you down a dark path.
Everquest can take you down a dark path.
People have died from playing Mmorgs too long (from heart failure I think).
We need to give people freedom. That includes the freedom to do something until they die from it or ruin their life.
Yes... freedom can lead you down a dark path. You can die from it. Freedom is very heady stuff.
I know. It's such a witchhunt, I won't even post in discussions of child pornography.
Oh wait...
I agree with you. Consideration of risk and liability are preventing a lot of progress.
For example- we could easily be on mars and on the moon if we were willing to take the losses that the american settlers did (50%? 60%?) And even knowing the risks, people would line up to be settlers on mars and the moon if you would just let them.
We are killing the space program with an insistance on zero risk.
However....
While I'm willing to take enormous risks personally and let others take big risks - I'm not willing for corporations to make a fortune today at the cost of ruining our country / world for the next 200, 2000, or more years. We underestimate just how horrible the downside of nuclear risk can be. Just like we underestimated how bad the downside risk of subprime credit could be.
And yet, free will, expressed via random dna combinations is a great way to survive major shifts in the environment.
While things are good, the pack eats bingleberries and prospers. Those wierd cats making up 1% of the population eat random things and many die. A few survive. Then there is a big environment shift and 99% of the pack dies while the 1% survives on it's new diet of jajaberries and merfif meat.
Most of the intelligent population stays and drinks the koolade and dies. But the random part left earlier - violently disagreeing with the popular opinions and becoming skitnik poet and live.
Free will is randomness. And every sexual population expresses it.
Conciousness is something different. Not everything is concious. A lot of our will and brain takes place below the conscious level.
I'm not picking on nuclear. I'm picking on the idea of passing the bill for our current power production on to our grandkids.
You are correct and a reasonable amount of nuclear production (say 10% of the power mix) makes a good balance between risk/reward. But going heavily nuclear and producing a lot of waste seems foolhardy to me.
The US will change *A LOT* in 200 years. Who knows that YUCCA mountain won't turn out to have been the perfect spot for an interdimensional gateway or zero point energy production facility except it's polluted all to hell with nuclear waste that leaked from containers that turned out to only last 170 years.
Funny.. I thought it was political pandering to Texas.
But you're right- Florida could swing while Texas would remain red.
We only have to lower oil usage by about 3% to cause it to collapse back to $60/bbl.
This is the bane and the benefit. Solar is somewhere over $100/bbl. When you use it successfully, it makes itself grossly unprofitable.
But it only takes a little conservation and extra power to tip the scales. The current run up in oil prices is based on an extremely narrow band of about 2-3 million barrels a day of expensive oil. The rest of the oil is quite cheap to get out.
This is why no one wants to invest in alternatives-- because the more successful they are, the cheaper oil will be, and the more of a loss you will take on your successful investment.
200 years ago most of the US was thinly settled wilderness.
Care to accurately project what the US will be like in 200 years?
Yes.. but how many people PLAY the lottery hoping to get something for nothing.
Your last sentence is incomprehensible...
It's not just reagan. The democrats are bought and paid for to. The democratic and republican candidates are chosen before it even gets to you. Those who the corporations do not like are outed from peccadilloes and destroyed.
Everyone has a skeleton in the closet- but they focus on you if they don't like you.
I'm for low wages AND low prices.
Right now the corporations have bought the government and we are legally prevented from purchasing inexpensive drugs ($.10 vs $5.00), clothing (+20-30%), sugar (+500%), computer products ($10 vs $500), movies ($2.49 vs $20). They want to *make* the products for $.50 and then have artificial laws passed putting american citizens in jail or subjecting them to financial ruin if they try to get around those artificial mutiliations of capitalism.
The executives and corporations exist in a society with legal protections and safety that would not be available to them in other countries (many of which they and their children would be likely to be kidnapped or killed or have to pay huge bribes or perhaps vanish if they offended someone in the government).
Then they break the law, and do not offer the same protections and legitimate compensation to their employees. They take wildly inappropriate a salaries while in some cases overseeing catastrophic losses in their businesses (eg. Home Depot) and there so far seems to be nothing we can do to stop them. The legal class finds ways to get around any laws restricting executive abuses.
The problem *will* solve itself. Lower unemployment here will collapse prices. Higher employment of foreign nationals will cause their wages to come up.
And it's extremely likely that we (and many other nations around the world) are about to start taxing the inholy fuck out of anyone with over 10 million dollars during the next 10-15 years or face another economic collapse of 1930's proportions.
---
And yea-- as you correctly point out- most people focus on their own narrow self interest- not consistency in their philosophy or rules of justice.
Okay... so I did some digging and the numbers are roughly...
In 1997, 640k were *regular* users and in 2004, 34.2 million Americans aged 12 and over reported lifetime use of cocaine.
The estimated 1999 cocaine death rate (ignoring drug dealers killing each other, judges, policemen and innocents because of the fabulous wealth available because it is illegal) was....
87. This includes toxicity deaths (gross overdose-- not heart attack). But say they are all heart attacks!
You get about 1/114,000 odds if regular users only used one time during the entire year and ignoring that year's share of the 34.2 million people that tried it.
I'm just guessing here but it sounds like the odds are about 1/1,000,000 and are probably equivalent to or lower than those high school kids who keel over the playing sports in gym class.
And...
Fifty-five percent of passenger vehicle occupants who died in 2005 were unbelted. (~1/10,000) since I always wear my seatbelt.
Thirty-nine percent of fatalities were alchohol related (but overlap not stated-- still probably brings it down to (~1/20,000) since I've never driven drunk.
Oh... here's a biggie. Over 5,400 were not occupants of the automobile. About 1/8th. (1/5,100... 1/1,2000... 1/24,000).
Roughly 1/3 were not in cars (various kinds of trucks) 1/36,000...
There were 18 states with substantially higher fatality rates (For some reason nebraska had 50% more fatalities than texas in 2003 with a fraction of texas' population). No idea... say 1/50,000.
I think it pretty much proves your point that cocaine fatalities are "over-feared" and partially propaganda. Tho I would say, driving isn't nearly as fatal as driving in traffic with other vehicles. I luck out there too- I tend to drive when the roads are emptier but outside of the "getting out of clubs" hours.
My grandfather died at 64 from a heart attack... Cocaine can give you a heart attack the first time you use it.
But-- yes, it's a bit irrational.
From knowing many many people who used cocaine, I know that it is addictive at low rates. I've one acquaintance who was addicted to everything (coke, drugs, sex, having children) and many acquaintances who did coke in the 70's and 80's (I *just* missed it along with all the free sex and dancing by about 2 years) and stopped and have great lives. I think the coke is about as physically addictive as alcohol. The real issue is a lot of people in emotional pain self medicating- not physical addiction.
In the U.S. enterprising youths have decided to make a game of destroying the camera. Sort of a status thing.
It's a temporary fix until the government goes to aerial drones and super tall steel towers.
They don't even need the appearance.
They just have to match the legal requirements.
It is like the word games redefining torture as not being torture.
It is like defining a rope with a hook as a "braking system".
If the law says torture is illegal, just make sure your actions are legally not torture.
If the law requires a braking system, just make sure a rope with a hook is defined as a braking system.
If the law requires and open standard, just make sure some government or standards body calls it an "open standard". It does not have to actually be open.
I worked in an office full of very successful people about 10 years older than I was that apparently did coke on a regular basis in the late 70's and 80's.
My sister-in-law from my first marriage also used coke multiple times without issue.
I recently dated a lady who had apparently "tooted" many times and was fine (except really greedy and on hard times from the real estate crash).
I highly doubt that cocaine causes physical addition in 90% of the population. I think most people can use it, enjoy the high, and not use it and be fine.
I think about the same percentage as have problems with alchohol have serious problems with cocaine. Either because they have severe unresolved issues that they are self medicating (child hood abuse being a big one) for or because they do get physical addiction to it (perhaps like native americans for alchohol).