It may be easier when the character is really an existing archtype. You get a lot of baggage for free. It's also why actors have a value - they often bring a lot of baggage from previous movies to either use or play against. (for example john wayne in a western- you get a lot of stuff for free).
Pretty sure that is the point since Venom started out as a spidey alternative (tho he got bigger later- more the Rock size- topher better start working out if he is going to be in the sequel).
You could avoid the legalese by putting it to some kind of vote.
Say that you had to contact 1100 people randomly (who couldn't serve more than once per bill) and they had to agree by a simple majority that it was not related for it to be removed.
That would be easy to phrase as an amendment.
--- Another alternative would be to require a vote to add it to the base bill as related. Then at least you could use bad examples against senators and representatives when they ran again--- "Is it true.... Senator Dobson... that you voted that "Pig farm subsidies" were related directly to military base closures? Would you care to explain your reasoning on that?"
I'm not sure it is really constitutional what they are doing these days anyway. Congress is supposed to send laws to the president. Not 1300 page omnibus bills with thousands of laws at once.
It's really bad when the laws are not even remotely related to the same subject. To me it violates the original constitutional concept of the role of congress.
If all you have of value is your time, you are screwed. Because there are about a billion people on the planet who have nothing but time on their hands who are ready and happy to take your job for a few thousand dollars a year. The artificial moat protecting you is gone. From here out, their standard of living will creep up and the advanced nations standard of living will creep down. Any "pure brain"/"brain+time" job is facing severe competition.
Likewise, if you are in a field that competes with idealistic college kids or rich people, you are toast as well. You need to be saving a huge portion of your income (I save just shy of half of my net pay) and you need to be looking for a new career.
Part of the problem is that we are still paying top dollar for drugs, entertainment, property, clothing while our competitors are paying 5-10% of our prices because of false monopolies and trade franchises which prevent us from benefiting from the low prices being charged. If the prices were "fair" then either we would be making less but living well because our $100 drugs would cost $1 or they wouldn't be able to compete so well because their $1 drugs would cost $100. Same thing across the board for computers, software, etc. Only things like cars and heavy machinary seem to sell for about the same price everywhere.
I've had 2 jobs where I was very happy. Both were messed up by co-workers (not bosses). I had one job where I was happy and then got demotivated because management slammed in procedures that literally resulted in sitting around for 3-5 weeks at a time with nothing to do (sarbaynes-oxley related) and another 2-3 weeks of filling out paperwork that no one would ever read (Sox again) to do about 40 hours worth of real work. Felt very dilbertish.
There are tons of free apps. If they are only supported by a small group of people, they run into trouble when that person loses interest.
There are many charge apps that have the same issue. The company loses interest (EA's Space Mmorg for example) even tho there are thousands of paying customers because there are not tens of thousands of paying customers.
But an open source application, supported by a couple hundred people is probably a better choice- and some of these free products are supported by more than a couple hundred people.
Software involves nothing but people's time and thoughts to produce. It has no intrinsic value. So unless you can set up a moat of some kind around your product, someone else is going to write a free version of it.
It sucks to go the way of the buggy whip- and I'm in the field. But once any piece of software is fully spec'd, anyone can develop it. So why should we be spending hundreds of dollars on a word processor when there is a solid free word processor available?
Yea- and how about Ally McBeal. All 5 seasons out in Europe but you can only buy 6 episodes in the States. I bought those 6.
---
They need to stop the region encoding crap and release the product at the same price worldwide. If that is 2.50 a DVD then so be it. If it is 12.50 a DVD and folks in china can't afford it then so be it. But to charge them 2.50 and then let them compete with us for jobs by earning less is crazy.
Speeding cameras bug me tho. They violate the idea that you commit a crime and immediately get punished so you stop. They seem more about revenue gathering than stopping speeding.
No- it's really a vector for trogans/virus for any legal content as well. Remember, via some unanticipated buffer overrun trick, any file can be a virus. Remember the JPG thing last year.
Seems like updating the software to be able to ban bad trackers will be the answer.
When commercials make up 33% of a show and we have to watch it at a certain time, it's crap.
When they make up 0% of the show, and we can watch it at some random time when we are bored, then it has value.
Somewhere between those extremes is a tipping point. Shows from the 1970's are 52 minutes long (8 minutes of commercials, ~12%)), Shows from the 1980's are 48 minutes long (12 minutes of commercials, 20%). A recent episode of a modern show (Alias, I think) was 38 minutes long (+24 minutes of commercials- they actually started and ended the show 1 minute into the other hours- which hosed up DVR's so if you were not watching it live- you were screwed).
It's not that all the shows are crap- it's that the price they want is too high. There is a similar situation with movies these days- if you want a good seat for a new movie, you have to sit through 10-15 minutes of commercials.
And then... there are a lot of crappy shows on TV. You don't see torrents of them and you wouldn't download them if they were free. You wouldn't download them if you were paid a small stipend to watch them.
If you kill yourself, they are going to waste a lot of gasoline for your funeral, resources making your coffin and digging your grave. So first get all your friends angry so they won't come to your funeral if you are being considerate!
Once i have paid for the song once and compensated the artist, producer, etc., I can ethically reobtain the song if my copy is destroyed, stolen, or lost.
Yes. I agree it is very important to compensate Elvis Presley and John Lennon. I also want to compensate many of the artist from the 1950's and 1940's.
oh wait... their dead.
Perhaps I should be donating at the church instead of at the Temple of RIAA.
That's not what I said. What I said was that -today- everyone is grossly overpaid for the entertainment value they deliver compared to the past.
---
It's possible studio entertainment today would be grossly overpriced even if actors had never broken the studio system.
---
Your statement about "true market value" cuts to the point. I assert that the "true market value" for stars, writers, etc. is going to drop because the price they are charging has ruined the entertainment experience they are delivering. AND- the distribution lock (via Theatres and DVD's) is crumbling and being bypassed. As a result, the artificial monopoly they had on producing entertainment is about to be broken and hundreds-- even thousands-- of talented people shut out by the previous system are going to be producing entertainment less expensively (Re Starwreck, Star Trek new voyages, Starwars fan films, etc. etc.).
No it is not reasonable. That is why the salaries are evening out.
---
But for now they are lowering salaries and eliminating jobs while passing laws that we can't take advantage of the lower prices charged elsewhere.
---
Ah the wonders of selective editing. Let me try to pare it down for you.
Why should a poor american, living on 650 a month social security, have to pay $50 dollars out of their pocket for medicine they need to stay alive when the middle class of another country pays $10 out of their pocket. The medicine is made by the same company in the same factory. It is identical
Neither person is subsidized by any form of insurance or national health care. Is that moral? Is it right that they can pass laws making it illegal to buy the drugs for $10 and ship it back and sell it for $10 plus shipping in the states?
Same thing applies to the other products. We are not talking capitalism. In a capitalist society, everyone would share the low costs because you couldn't pass laws making it illegal to arbitrage these products.
Yea- I have friends who went that route that make better incomes than I do. In retrospect, college was not the best path to take for money.
---
But I didn't take that path for money. There is no way I could have stuck it out just for money.
---
As for the rest- as I said- you can always make excuses. There is no justification for earning a high rate of pay when all you need is an education to do it. Hence our careers are going to suffer while the rest of the world's wages even out with ours. We have no god-given right to make high wages.
---
The societies that will advance are those who focus so hard on advancing that thousands of their children commit suicide each year when they fail a test or a class. They are hungrier than we are. We are not willing to put ourselves or our children through that.
---
Nothing we do can prevent them from gaining ground- protecting our citizens from the consequences of our actions will only make any fall harder and more vicious. Do we offshore 7000 jobs? Or lose a company of 70,000 people out of business to a foreign competitor with 70,000 hungry people happy to work for a fraction of the pay. Their societies may be superior- or they may be another Japan- looking fierce but ultimately collapsing. Don't sell us short yet.
---
But our laws have a cost. Our bridges to nowhere have a cost.
---
The problem in Africa and Mexico is not education. They had education and a chance at being decent societies 50 years ago- especially Mexico. Those societies fell to corruption. Corruption helps individuals but does massive damage to the society. If you want an american example- look at Louisiana.
As I said, you might do everything and just be screwed- there are no guarantees. I didn't engage in any risky behaviors and still got cancer. I'll probably die 6-8 years early as a result of the chemo.
--
As for the rest- We can't be sure of anything. You and I can't be sure that either of us won't die tomorrow killed by some one else or a freak accident or a heart attack. --
If illegal immigrants can make a hundred bucks a day doing yard work, construction, hard but unskilled labor then you can to. If you can do that you can earn enough in a few days to get a bus ticket out of there. You can use the public library to find a place that has more jobs available.
--
Again- if there is no work where you are then you must move- there is no other valid conclusion.
As I said. Life is never certain. Do everything you can't and don't give up. If you can't get IT, get a sales job. If there is no work in Fort Wayne then you may need to move to another location.
--
It could be that you do everything right and you still will be hosed. Mean while a raging dunderhead may become wealthy. Life is a crapshoot. We can shift the odds in our favor but we may still lose.
--
But if we charge up a huge credit card bill instead of moving in with our parents or moving to another city, we drink, smoke, even date when we can't afford it, then we shift the odds against us. We are responsible for our lives even if we can't control them beyond our own actions and attitudes.
Let me expand on it this way.
Is it reasonable for me to pay $19.99 for the -exact- same movie that a chinese citizen pays $2.75 for (legal copy- not pirated).
--
Is it reasonable for me to pay $450 for the exact same program that an indian citizen pays $12 for?
--
Is it morally correct that they cannot resale those products to me for whatever price I'm willing to pay them? (yet it is prohibited).
--
Why do I have to pay $80 for the exact same drugs that are sold elsewhere for $4?
--
How is it fair to the poor of america that they are subsidizing the middle-class of other countries?
I agree with your basic principle.
---
If I personally want to pay her $100 for the story, that's my right (and her gain).
---
If every person in the world wants to pay her $16 each for the story, that's their right.
---
But part of the reason they -choose- to do so, is that they currently believe they are getting a reasonable deal for their money.
---
I'm saying (my own opinion) that when she is making more money than she can spend in 100 lifetimes, and everyone along the production chain is making similar amounts of money, that the $16 a copy is clearly NOT reasonable. In fact it is probably grossly unreasonable. If everyone took the attitude that $16 was unreasonable and didn't buy it, then the price would drop.
---
In my case- I didn't buy the book. I shared a copy from a friend. I'll save the $16 to give to someone that needs it (like for example, the money I gave to charity for Katrina, the Tsunami, and other disasters) or the money I donated to my school to fund scholarships for students who need money for an education.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct- there wasn't even a man in the suit at first.
It may be easier when the character is really an existing archtype. You get a lot of baggage for free. It's also why actors have a value - they often bring a lot of baggage from previous movies to either use or play against. (for example john wayne in a western- you get a lot of stuff for free).
Pretty sure that is the point since Venom started out as a spidey alternative (tho he got bigger later- more the Rock size- topher better start working out if he is going to be in the sequel).
Not necessarily.
You could avoid the legalese by putting it to some kind of vote.
Say that you had to contact 1100 people randomly (who couldn't serve more than once per bill) and they had to agree by a simple majority that it was not related for it to be removed.
That would be easy to phrase as an amendment.
---
Another alternative would be to require a vote to add it to the base bill as related. Then at least you could use bad examples against senators and representatives when they ran again--- "Is it true.... Senator Dobson... that you voted that "Pig farm subsidies" were related directly to military base closures? Would you care to explain your reasoning on that?"
I'm not sure it is really constitutional what they are doing these days anyway.
Congress is supposed to send laws to the president. Not 1300 page omnibus bills with thousands of laws at once.
It's really bad when the laws are not even remotely related to the same subject. To me it violates the original constitutional concept of the role of congress.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
If all you have of value is your time, you are screwed. Because there are about a billion people on the planet who have nothing but time on their hands who are ready and happy to take your job for a few thousand dollars a year. The artificial moat protecting you is gone. From here out, their standard of living will creep up and the advanced nations standard of living will creep down. Any "pure brain"/"brain+time" job is facing severe competition.
Likewise, if you are in a field that competes with idealistic college kids or rich people, you are toast as well. You need to be saving a huge portion of your income (I save just shy of half of my net pay) and you need to be looking for a new career.
Part of the problem is that we are still paying top dollar for drugs, entertainment, property, clothing while our competitors are paying 5-10% of our prices because of false monopolies and trade franchises which prevent us from benefiting from the low prices being charged. If the prices were "fair" then either we would be making less but living well because our $100 drugs would cost $1 or they wouldn't be able to compete so well because their $1 drugs would cost $100. Same thing across the board for computers, software, etc. Only things like cars and heavy machinary seem to sell for about the same price everywhere.
I've had 2 jobs where I was very happy. Both were messed up by co-workers (not bosses).
I had one job where I was happy and then got demotivated because management slammed in procedures that literally resulted in sitting around for 3-5 weeks at a time with nothing to do (sarbaynes-oxley related) and another 2-3 weeks of filling out paperwork that no one would ever read (Sox again) to do about 40 hours worth of real work. Felt very dilbertish.
There are tons of free apps. If they are only supported by a small group of people, they run into trouble when that person loses interest. There are many charge apps that have the same issue. The company loses interest (EA's Space Mmorg for example) even tho there are thousands of paying customers because there are not tens of thousands of paying customers. But an open source application, supported by a couple hundred people is probably a better choice- and some of these free products are supported by more than a couple hundred people. Software involves nothing but people's time and thoughts to produce. It has no intrinsic value. So unless you can set up a moat of some kind around your product, someone else is going to write a free version of it. It sucks to go the way of the buggy whip- and I'm in the field. But once any piece of software is fully spec'd, anyone can develop it. So why should we be spending hundreds of dollars on a word processor when there is a solid free word processor available?
Yea- and how about Ally McBeal. All 5 seasons out in Europe but you can only buy 6 episodes in the States. I bought those 6. --- They need to stop the region encoding crap and release the product at the same price worldwide. If that is 2.50 a DVD then so be it. If it is 12.50 a DVD and folks in china can't afford it then so be it. But to charge them 2.50 and then let them compete with us for jobs by earning less is crazy.
This does address the safety issue a bit. No 22,000 mile long line of death whipping around the planet attached to a point on the equator.
But still they are both crimes.
Speeding cameras bug me tho. They violate the idea that you commit a crime and immediately get punished so you stop. They seem more about revenue gathering than stopping speeding.
No- it's really a vector for trogans/virus for any legal content as well. Remember, via some unanticipated buffer overrun trick, any file can be a virus. Remember the JPG thing last year.
Seems like updating the software to be able to ban bad trackers will be the answer.
I'll bite...
When commercials make up 33% of a show and we have to watch it at a certain time, it's crap.
When they make up 0% of the show, and we can watch it at some random time when we are bored, then it has value.
Somewhere between those extremes is a tipping point.
Shows from the 1970's are 52 minutes long (8 minutes of commercials, ~12%)),
Shows from the 1980's are 48 minutes long (12 minutes of commercials, 20%).
A recent episode of a modern show (Alias, I think) was 38 minutes long (+24 minutes of commercials- they actually started and ended the show 1 minute into the other hours- which hosed up DVR's so if you were not watching it live- you were screwed).
It's not that all the shows are crap- it's that the price they want is too high. There is a similar situation with movies these days- if you want a good seat for a new movie, you have to sit through 10-15 minutes of commercials.
And then... there are a lot of crappy shows on TV. You don't see torrents of them and you wouldn't download them if they were free. You wouldn't download them if you were paid a small stipend to watch them.
If you kill yourself, they are going to waste a lot of gasoline for your funeral, resources making your coffin and digging your grave. So first get all your friends angry so they won't come to your funeral if you are being considerate!
I would go further.
Once i have paid for the song once and compensated the artist, producer, etc., I can ethically reobtain the song if my copy is destroyed, stolen, or lost.
Yes. I agree it is very important to compensate Elvis Presley and John Lennon. I also want to compensate many of the artist from the 1950's and 1940's.
oh wait... their dead.
Perhaps I should be donating at the church instead of at the Temple of RIAA.
That's not what I said. What I said was that -today- everyone is grossly overpaid for the entertainment value they deliver compared to the past.
---
It's possible studio entertainment today would be grossly overpriced even if actors had never broken the studio system.
---
Your statement about "true market value" cuts to the point. I assert that the "true market value" for stars, writers, etc. is going to drop because the price they are charging has ruined the entertainment experience they are delivering. AND- the distribution lock (via Theatres and DVD's) is crumbling and being bypassed. As a result, the artificial monopoly they had on producing entertainment is about to be broken and hundreds-- even thousands-- of talented people shut out by the previous system are going to be producing entertainment less expensively (Re Starwreck, Star Trek new voyages, Starwars fan films, etc. etc.).
No spyware. Used it for a long time before torrents. Never had spyware turn up in any scan.
No it is not reasonable. That is why the salaries are evening out.
---
But for now they are lowering salaries and eliminating jobs while passing laws that we can't take advantage of the lower prices charged elsewhere.
---
Ah the wonders of selective editing. Let me try to pare it down for you.
Why should a poor american, living on 650 a month social security, have to pay $50 dollars out of their pocket for medicine they need to stay alive when the middle class of another country pays $10 out of their pocket. The medicine is made by the same company in the same factory. It is identical
Neither person is subsidized by any form of insurance or national health care. Is that moral? Is it right that they can pass laws making it illegal to buy the drugs for $10 and ship it back and sell it for $10 plus shipping in the states?
Same thing applies to the other products. We are not talking capitalism. In a capitalist society, everyone would share the low costs because you couldn't pass laws making it illegal to arbitrage these products.
Yea- I have friends who went that route that make better incomes than I do. In retrospect, college was not the best path to take for money.
---
But I didn't take that path for money. There is no way I could have stuck it out just for money.
---
As for the rest- as I said- you can always make excuses. There is no justification for earning a high rate of pay when all you need is an education to do it. Hence our careers are going to suffer while the rest of the world's wages even out with ours. We have no god-given right to make high wages.
---
The societies that will advance are those who focus so hard on advancing that thousands of their children commit suicide each year when they fail a test or a class. They are hungrier than we are. We are not willing to put ourselves or our children through that.
---
Nothing we do can prevent them from gaining ground- protecting our citizens from the consequences of our actions will only make any fall harder and more vicious. Do we offshore 7000 jobs? Or lose a company of 70,000 people out of business to a foreign competitor with 70,000 hungry people happy to work for a fraction of the pay. Their societies may be superior- or they may be another Japan- looking fierce but ultimately collapsing. Don't sell us short yet.
---
But our laws have a cost. Our bridges to nowhere have a cost.
---
The problem in Africa and Mexico is not education. They had education and a chance at being decent societies 50 years ago- especially Mexico. Those societies fell to corruption. Corruption helps individuals but does massive damage to the society. If you want an american example- look at Louisiana.
As I said, you might do everything and just be screwed- there are no guarantees. I didn't engage in any risky behaviors and still got cancer. I'll probably die 6-8 years early as a result of the chemo.
--
As for the rest- We can't be sure of anything. You and I can't be sure that either of us won't die tomorrow killed by some one else or a freak accident or a heart attack.
--
If illegal immigrants can make a hundred bucks a day doing yard work, construction, hard but unskilled labor then you can to. If you can do that you can earn enough in a few days to get a bus ticket out of there. You can use the public library to find a place that has more jobs available.
--
Again- if there is no work where you are then you must move- there is no other valid conclusion.
As I said. Life is never certain. Do everything you can't and don't give up. If you can't get IT, get a sales job. If there is no work in Fort Wayne then you may need to move to another location.
--
It could be that you do everything right and you still will be hosed. Mean while a raging dunderhead may become wealthy. Life is a crapshoot. We can shift the odds in our favor but we may still lose.
--
But if we charge up a huge credit card bill instead of moving in with our parents or moving to another city, we drink, smoke, even date when we can't afford it, then we shift the odds against us. We are responsible for our lives even if we can't control them beyond our own actions and attitudes.
Let me expand on it this way. Is it reasonable for me to pay $19.99 for the -exact- same movie that a chinese citizen pays $2.75 for (legal copy- not pirated).
--
Is it reasonable for me to pay $450 for the exact same program that an indian citizen pays $12 for?
--
Is it morally correct that they cannot resale those products to me for whatever price I'm willing to pay them? (yet it is prohibited).
--
Why do I have to pay $80 for the exact same drugs that are sold elsewhere for $4?
--
How is it fair to the poor of america that they are subsidizing the middle-class of other countries?
I agree with your basic principle.
---
If I personally want to pay her $100 for the story, that's my right (and her gain).
---
If every person in the world wants to pay her $16 each for the story, that's their right.
---
But part of the reason they -choose- to do so, is that they currently believe they are getting a reasonable deal for their money.
---
I'm saying (my own opinion) that when she is making more money than she can spend in 100 lifetimes, and everyone along the production chain is making similar amounts of money, that the $16 a copy is clearly NOT reasonable. In fact it is probably grossly unreasonable. If everyone took the attitude that $16 was unreasonable and didn't buy it, then the price would drop.
---
In my case- I didn't buy the book. I shared a copy from a friend. I'll save the $16 to give to someone that needs it (like for example, the money I gave to charity for Katrina, the Tsunami, and other disasters) or the money I donated to my school to fund scholarships for students who need money for an education.