Where are you thinking of putting this object? In low orbit?
The sun occupies at most a couple of arc-seconds of the sky. You could put up a huge mylar film disc that would block out a significant portion of the sun and have it in a stable configuration way, way out past geostationary (44,000 miles).
I would think you could get it into a stable solar orbit inside the Earth's orbit where it would only need minor tweaks to block a lot of the sun out.
The really nice thing is that it would be incredibly easy to change the size or to collapse the whole thing when you decide you don't want it anymore.
If you built it with logs it would take all of the forests of the earth. And if it was built with limestone and mortar it would be larger than even the largest cathedral.
Now it might come to you as a surprise, but there are materials other than logs and limestone. Some of them are pretty surprising - like enough mylar film to make a 100-mile diameter disc folds up smaller than a semi-trailer.
However, if you want to continue using only logs and limestone for building stuff, I have to congratulate you. I really want to see the iPhone case you make.
And in 50 years it might be the case that an ebook would be the logical choice.
Right now, ebooks are maybe 4% of the publishing market. And this is with Amazon having a list of 100 books that are free to download on the Kindle immediately. And these aren't just recycled Project Gutenberg titles - there are new authors with some OK books in the list.
So that means that 96% of the people in today's world are buying physical books. If you are thinking about publishing a book with mass appeal, then restricting yourself to 4% of the market - even if you are making 10 times what you would with a print publisher - is senseless.
Now, there are clearly some niches where doing an ebook-only sort of thing might be the right way to go. But the article is about someone with a vampire book and how could that be considered anything but a mass market sort of book?
4% vs. 96% if you have to choose a single format. Why not go both ways? Print and ebook?
The author wanted to make a point, and unfortunately his point is lost because if you know anything at all about publishing and mass marketing of books that niggling 4% figure is going to come up and bite you in the ass.
Yes, I own a Kindle. Yes, I have lots and lots of non-Amazon content on my Kindle so don't tell me about it being locked down, because it isn't. And I have a book that the publisher produced both a print and ebook version of.
One big thing that has happend - the control over what is and is not insured has pretty much been ceded to the goverment now. It was previously in the hands of the state Board of Insurance in each of the 50 states. This has a huge effect on costs.
How does it effect costs? Well, let's say you are part of a group that believes that Fibromyalgia is a serious condition that must be covered by insurance plans. Previously, your group would have to lobby in each of the 50 states to get coverage approved and mandated. Now all you have to do is stop at one federal agency and if they agree, it is mandated for all 50 states.
Copy this for acupuncture, massage therapy, sex disfunction treatments involving use of a surrogate, etc. You get the idea. It has now become about 50 times easier to get coverage for the malady of the week covered by insurance.
Why is health insurance more expensive in California than in, say, Wyoming? Well, California mandates coverage for a lot of things that aren't required to be covered anywhere else.
When people say costs are going to triple in 2014, I'd listen to them. They stand an awfully good chance of being right.
Any theorizing about the possible results of a nuclear detonation ignores the basic fact that the military wasn't incredibly stupid. The bomb wasn't armed and therefore there was no possiblity of it going off.
Now in the bad old days "arming" the bomb did not consist of throwing a switch but actually putting the uranium or plutonium into the bomb. So there was no dependency on any sort of fail-safe mechanism. It was impossible for a crash to detonate the bomb. These things were shipped and transported taken-apart so nothing like an accidental detonation could possibly occur.
When a plane was sent out to drop one on an enemy installation the bomb would be armed on the way, after the plane was flying and everyone was reasonably certain it would continue to do so.
Yes, in the area of nuclear stuff some fairly silly things were done, but the military was quite well aware of the consequences of a plane crash and what would happen if there was a nuclear detonation anywhere on US soil. So it was made certain that nothing like that could happen, period.
Now, could something bad have happened if a plane was carrying an armed bomb over Russia and it got shot down? Sure. Anywhere up to and including an absolute certainity that the bomb would go off because the crew set it off rather than have it and the plane fall into enemy hands. But remember, no nuclear armed bomber ever went into Russian airspace.
The cellular network is designed and tariffed to be unreliable. So it can be taken down. That means some folks will end up going home instead of stopping off for some milk as the wife was going to ask if she could get through.
In major city downtown areas it is often impossible to get a cell channel. This isn't viewed as a problem either. Cell phones are unreliable and designed from the ground up to be that way.
Unfortunately, we are probably 10 years or less from having a complete collapse of the land-line phone network. It costs an incredible amount of money to maintain and that money simply isn't going to be coming from residential customers as they turn to cell-only. When the revenue base collapses, the landline infrastructure will simply be left to decay as something obsolete and unneeded.
I know people that believe in a power failure their cell phones will work just as well as landline phones do. They are quite wrong - most cell towers have little more than a PC-sized UPS backing them up. Unlike the landline CO with two days of battery power and a diesel generator.
So if it is possible to take down the network with ill-mannered applications and ill-mannered users, so what? The network is unavailable for some (probably short) period of time. It isn't like we are without phones, now is it? Except people don't seem to believe that cell phones are unreliable - even when standing in New York city at rush hour and being utterly unable to call out.
It is too easy. In Arizona most people have their electric panel outside the house. That means by opening the panel you gain access to pounds of copper - you just have to pull real hard.
Similarly, neighborhoods have park land with lights. The wiring connecting these to power to extremely vulnerable and has been stolen in a number of locations. Of course, nobody is talking about this because they don't want to encourage people.
The problem is going to get worse. When you have bands of people that have little to lose, why not try to steal some wires. The scrap metal dealers are sufficiently isolated from the criminal acts that they really don't care where the wire came from, especially if it isn't obviously a spool of cable that might have been stolen. So you can fill up a pickup truck with wire scraps and make $100 or more.
Any construction site is fair game. Any park with lights is a target. Homes that aren't in some gated subdivision are pretty easy as well. Parks near my house have been victimized, one has been hit twice. And this is going to generally be considered to be a victimless crime - nobody got hurt and whatever was destroyed was probably insured.
Even if they put up enough dummy cameras and a few live ones to make people think twice about this, there are plenty of sources. How much copper do you think is in the average car?
I thought the present state of the art was that WiFi "security" was impossible - any system, including WPA2, could be hacked in less than an hour. WEP goes down in seconds. WPA in minutes. MAC address filtering is just a DOS - when the hacker uses your MAC address you are blocked because of a duplicate MAC address on the same network.
So why is anyone concerned about security on a WiFi network? How could there possibly be any security at all?
(a) Data cards are expensive to the user and to the carrier. It took them a while to figure out how bad they were and start charging for the real costs. Unless you have a business need for mobile data one of these things is pointless and will result in your just getting huge bills. The $20 a month plans for unlimited data are gone and never to return.
(b) T-Mobile has unlimited texting and no "premium texting" for $5 a month. They have tower sharing with AT&T and Sprint, so the network really isn't that bad even though there is less coverage than with Verizon. My bill with T-Mobile is half of what it was with Verizon. Verizon is worth it if you absolutely have to have service in very, very out of the way places.
How long will T-Mobile be around? I don't know, but I am sure their practices are netting a lot less revenue than Verizon's are and therefore T-Mobile is doomed in the end. I pay $10 a month for unlimited calls over WiFi - this saves thousands of minutes billed every month and they get $10 for it while paying to connect the calls over the WiFi channel. So they are losing money on it. They get money for some other stuff, but certainly not enough to justify what they are giving away.
So I'm expecting to be absorbed into Sprint just like the other failed wireless carriers were. And dropped, just like what happened before as well.
So why are pirated materials now appearing in Google?
Well, it would seem partly because various fake torrent sites think it is a good idea to have their index indexed by Google. Which then leads to people without a clue clicking on links to all sorts of silly stuff.
Ever notice that no matter what you are looking for there are sites that have the exact keywords you are searching for in the exact order you are searching for them in? Oddly enough, it seems that these results always lead to another non-Google search page which is doing a search and showing some kind of results. With Google ads on it. Again.
If Pirate Bay has an index and it is not indexed by Google, then what good does it do for Google to be doing this? On the other hand, if this eliminates torrentsareus.biz, I'm all for it.
Keep in mind that if it is made legal, especially the kind where anyone can grow, the price will fall dramatically and it won't be economically feasible to run an import business or have a gang sell it. I'm sure the gang's business would drop off very quickly without the requirement of a government-controlled store anyway: if you can buy from a coffee shop, why would you still go to the shady dudes on the corner?
Why? How do you think the distributor for 7-11 would price their pot? Do you think they would look at the price they paid the grower and add a little or take the current street price (which people are willing to pay) and go from there? Trust me, the secret with consumer products is not to "leave money on the table". They are going to use the street price as a guide.
Taxes will be added. Lots of taxes, probably. Cigarette taxes are around $2 a pack or more today. Pot isn't going to get to be less than that and probably will be more. So any fantasy about it being so cheap as to eliminate the smugglers is just that - a fantasy. In all likelyhood the street dealers will be able to raise their prices to match the government taxes.
Maybe there can be only pre-made pot cigarettes, but that isn't the California model. They don't have tax stamps like cigarettes and whiskey, so enforcement will pretty much be impossible. After you buy weed the cops can't tell if you got it legally or illegally in California today. So the only possible enforcement is right there at the point of sale. And how well is that enforcement working today? Do you really believe it is going to get stronger and more effective?
The other problem is going to be the propaganda war. Government weed will be "known" to cause impotence, raise warts, make you smell funny and grow hair on your palms. Anything that people can get away with saying (which is anything at all) will be attributed to "government weed". People will know it has chemicals in it to assist in tracking and telling the difference between taxed and untaxed plants. So the smuggled weed will be very popular and much safer - at least according to the propaganda.
People will buy from shady underground dealers because the prices will be lower and they will always be trusted more.
The prices will be lower because the starting point for pricing weed will be the current street price and then the taxes will be added on. The price will probably be double the current street price. This will persist until the growers understand there is no market at that price. And that is going to take a while.
The underground dealers will always be trusted more, just as the bootleggers in the South always had buyers because their buyers don't want to "support the Man". With weed it will be the difference between "government weed" that makes you impotent or the dealer's weed which isn't polluted by Monsanto. The propaganda war will be fierce, and the government might win in the end, but it will take decades.
And law enforcement isn't going to have a chance in this - the underground dealer transactions will be illegal just as they are today and you can see how effective the police are against them. Today you can be arrested in most places for just having weed on your person - once it is legal then all they can do is stop sales transactions. Once you walk away with your weed there is nothing the police can do about it. How could they know what is legal and what isn't? Oh, unless it is tagged with secret chemicals that probably make you impotent. See - the propaganda war is lost before they even start.
Bootleg whiskey was being sold in the South as late as 1970 with IRS agents running around blowing up stills all over the place. Sure, it has finally faded out but from the 1800s to after 1970 it was being sold. The same thing will happen with marajuana only with even more effort.
The only way to sell marajuana for less than the illegal dealers is to practically give it away. Instead, you will find a myriad of taxes and fees tacked on with the starting point being whatever the street price is today. Where else would the valuation start? End result will be that it costs twice as much from legal stores vs. the old-time networks. But because it is legal there will be no penalties for possession. They can't look at a bunch of ground leaves and say this is illegal weed. So the only enforcement possible will be at the time of the actual sale - which is illegal today and you can see how effective that enforcement is.
Do you believe legalization will result in even stronger enforcement? No, I didn't think so.
There will also be propaganda campaigns that "government weed" makes you impotent, causes AIDS, whatever. The point is that people will be very mistrusting of Marlboro Weed and be far more trusting of Mexican Smuggled Weed. And any evidence to the contrary will be viewed as right-wing propaganda just to scare people into paying the (huge) taxes.
Today there is stiff prison time for dealers. Today there are substantial risks in buying from dealers - like if they rob you what exactly are you going to do about it?
Still, the GDP of the drug trade in the US is huge. Prison isn't much of a deterrent when you have a population willing to roll the dice on conviction. Prisons are not that bad, especially compared to being out on the street without a job or having lots of debts and no money.
There is no chance that any sort of legalization and taxation scheme is going to work. Companies and the goverment are going to see the current price for an ounce of weed is $200 and they are going to charge $400 because it is FDA approved and has $300 in taxes on it. End result will be the Mexican drug smugglers will have an explosion of demand and be much cheaper than TokeMart.
For around 50 years after alcohol was legalized (1933) there were plenty of people making their own, illegal and untaxed. Agents of the IRS would routinely travel around blowing up homes and farms to destroy alcohol production with complete immunity from any laws.
Marijuana is more heavily prosecuted than alcohol was during Prohibition but more people are using.
Any thoughts that this is going to change with the end of legal enforcement is a joke. The other problem is that consumption of alcohol on the job was frowned upon but at no time has there ever been a "drug test" that would see that someone was a drunk and result in their dismissal. Today, people are routinely fired for violating drug use policies. That is going to have to come to an end and with it there will be an explosion of people who can use marijuana and desire to do so but are currently prevented from doing so because of their employment restrictions.
I want to see CNN or Fox give a prize for the first person to find a stoned-on-the-job cop. Commercial pilots can drink eight hours before flying - do you believe there will be similar restrictions for pot? When will the rules be placed into effect? The FAA is, after all, known for being the Tombstone Agency.
How about teachers? I know of no absolute rules against using alcohol while teaching, so will there be special rules about pot? Probably not.
Not sure I would agree about "mental illness" but there are clearly effects from long-term use. Anyone that has lived with or near someone that uses regularly can see distinct changes in behavior and attitudes.
Now maybe these changes are for the better - after all, isn't the US pretty much turning into a unemployed state? So if segments of the population are lazy and unmotivated isn't that a good thing? Why bother looking for a job if all the jobs are in Mexico, China and India?
This might fix a whole bunch of things. We can have a government stimulus program to buy pot for people so they won't be so stressed out being out of a job permanently.
It is extremely unlikely that any method of regulation will work that will prevent people from using marijuana on the job or in public. Current drug testing for employees will have to end - it will infringe on their right to use a legal substance. Today, you can't fire people for using sugar but you can for using any number of illegal drugs. This would change that.
First air, rail or transit accident that happens will make it clear. People are going to die, probably in large quantities. But, they will be consuming fewer resources, emitting less CO2 and overall improving the environment. So what's not to like?
You could expect some of those countries to react rather pointedly should they be cut off for what would appear to be no valid reason.
See, I suspect in Romaina there is a law that says you aren't allowed to rob people, except Americans. And maybe some Europeans. Bulgaria is probably a bit more open with a law that says if you defraud people they can't live in Eastern Europe - anywhere else is OK.
Yes, this is the government turning a blind eye to the enterprising economic efforts of their population. But given their GDP, can you really blame them?
I would expect a whole lot of trouble from the UN should anyone decide to cut off access to countries that encourage free enterprise like this. You would be able to hear the shouting in Chicago. Trade sanctions would result and maybe war.
A professional organization that knows its web presence is its life is going to have a bit better setup than a server that someone else (Network Solutions in this case) has control over. The right solution is a co-located server that is controlled exclusively by the organization. The hosting company doesn't need to have any passwords. They are also going to have their email processed by their own server and not be relying on an ISP for anything at all except connectivity.
However, a completely amateur operation is going to use shared virtual hosting because it is cheaper and the hosting company will be doing backups for them. And controlling passwords. And all other security. Oh, and using a non-domain based email setup from an ISP.
I guess it is pretty obvious into which category Cryptome falls, right?
Yes, it would cost $2000 a year or more for a co-located server whereas shared virtual hosting is dirt cheap.
With broadcast TV and radio you are correct. With the Internet you do absolutely have a guarantee that your content isn't viewed without your ads. While this isn't exactly true for 100% of the population, it is correct for 95% and maybe 99%.
Also, ads can be charged for on per-impression basis rather than a flat rate for a particular item. So instead of spending $50,000 on an ad that is hoped to reach 100,000 people you are paying $50,000 for an ad that is viewed 200,000 times. Or probably more accurately you are paying $51,213.25 for an ad that is viewed by exactly 204853 people.
I guess they just have to adapt to a new business model. That's what people keep saying about music. Why wouldn't it apply to movies and everything else?
What Lawrence Lessig seems to be championing is the idea that creativity is dead. Actually, by its very nature creativity is now impossible.
You see, just like the folks looking at the US Patent office in the 1890s, everything that could possibly be created has already been created.
Sure, you can have "mashups", remixes and somewhat unique ways of revisiting the creative works of yesteryear and these are going to count as new things for younger people. But the basic idea that someone goes out and creates something "new" is foreign to these people and thought to be impossible. Everything is just the rehashing of what has alread been.
Well if you believe that, you need to understand that it is fully within your power to create and nurture that world. Insure that creative works cannot be treated as something worthy of compensation, because obviously they are just rehashing old stuff. Whether it is software, movies, music or books paying for the author's time and thoughts is silly and wasteful according to this philosophy.
Oh, and make sure whatever sort of a job you have doesn't involve the slightest bit of creativity.
They are unfilled because if I offer you a job picking melons for $2 a hour you would laugh and stay on unemployment.
If I offer Jose with no papers $2 a hour to pick melons he says "Si" because it is twice what he could make back home. He can then send half his income back home and it is like he never left - except he isn't eating there anymore so they are much better off.
There is no way legal Americans are going to compete with that kind of labor. It distorts our entire economy and pushes things in very strange directions. It also means that no matter what, Jose is digging into a hole he will never get out of.
The solution is to remove the cheap labor from the equation completely. Get them the heck out of the country. Make it a crime to employ an undocumented worker. Make it a crime to pay someone less than minimum wage, or better yet, a crime to pay someone less than fair market wages. Start putting employers in prison for 10 years because they have 100 illegal workers and you will see some changes. Until then, well I hope you like unemployment because nobody in their right mind is going to hire someone for more than they have to pay some undocumented worker.
That means that just about every job in the US is at risk if it involved unskilled labor.
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Where are you thinking of putting this object? In low orbit?
The sun occupies at most a couple of arc-seconds of the sky. You could put up a huge mylar film disc that would block out a significant portion of the sun and have it in a stable configuration way, way out past geostationary (44,000 miles).
I would think you could get it into a stable solar orbit inside the Earth's orbit where it would only need minor tweaks to block a lot of the sun out.
The really nice thing is that it would be incredibly easy to change the size or to collapse the whole thing when you decide you don't want it anymore.
Yes, absolutely.
If you built it with logs it would take all of the forests of the earth. And if it was built with limestone and mortar it would be larger than even the largest cathedral.
Now it might come to you as a surprise, but there are materials other than logs and limestone. Some of them are pretty surprising - like enough mylar film to make a 100-mile diameter disc folds up smaller than a semi-trailer.
However, if you want to continue using only logs and limestone for building stuff, I have to congratulate you. I really want to see the iPhone case you make.
Isn't it great that with the publishing power of the Internet even high-school students and grandmas can bring publishing for revenue to an end?
And in 50 years it might be the case that an ebook would be the logical choice.
Right now, ebooks are maybe 4% of the publishing market. And this is with Amazon having a list of 100 books that are free to download on the Kindle immediately. And these aren't just recycled Project Gutenberg titles - there are new authors with some OK books in the list.
So that means that 96% of the people in today's world are buying physical books. If you are thinking about publishing a book with mass appeal, then restricting yourself to 4% of the market - even if you are making 10 times what you would with a print publisher - is senseless.
Now, there are clearly some niches where doing an ebook-only sort of thing might be the right way to go. But the article is about someone with a vampire book and how could that be considered anything but a mass market sort of book?
4% vs. 96% if you have to choose a single format. Why not go both ways? Print and ebook?
The author wanted to make a point, and unfortunately his point is lost because if you know anything at all about publishing and mass marketing of books that niggling 4% figure is going to come up and bite you in the ass.
Yes, I own a Kindle. Yes, I have lots and lots of non-Amazon content on my Kindle so don't tell me about it being locked down, because it isn't. And I have a book that the publisher produced both a print and ebook version of.
One big thing that has happend - the control over what is and is not insured has pretty much been ceded to the goverment now. It was previously in the hands of the state Board of Insurance in each of the 50 states. This has a huge effect on costs.
How does it effect costs? Well, let's say you are part of a group that believes that Fibromyalgia is a serious condition that must be covered by insurance plans. Previously, your group would have to lobby in each of the 50 states to get coverage approved and mandated. Now all you have to do is stop at one federal agency and if they agree, it is mandated for all 50 states.
Copy this for acupuncture, massage therapy, sex disfunction treatments involving use of a surrogate, etc. You get the idea. It has now become about 50 times easier to get coverage for the malady of the week covered by insurance.
Why is health insurance more expensive in California than in, say, Wyoming? Well, California mandates coverage for a lot of things that aren't required to be covered anywhere else.
When people say costs are going to triple in 2014, I'd listen to them. They stand an awfully good chance of being right.
Any theorizing about the possible results of a nuclear detonation ignores the basic fact that the military wasn't incredibly stupid. The bomb wasn't armed and therefore there was no possiblity of it going off.
Now in the bad old days "arming" the bomb did not consist of throwing a switch but actually putting the uranium or plutonium into the bomb. So there was no dependency on any sort of fail-safe mechanism. It was impossible for a crash to detonate the bomb. These things were shipped and transported taken-apart so nothing like an accidental detonation could possibly occur.
When a plane was sent out to drop one on an enemy installation the bomb would be armed on the way, after the plane was flying and everyone was reasonably certain it would continue to do so.
Yes, in the area of nuclear stuff some fairly silly things were done, but the military was quite well aware of the consequences of a plane crash and what would happen if there was a nuclear detonation anywhere on US soil. So it was made certain that nothing like that could happen, period.
Now, could something bad have happened if a plane was carrying an armed bomb over Russia and it got shot down? Sure. Anywhere up to and including an absolute certainity that the bomb would go off because the crew set it off rather than have it and the plane fall into enemy hands. But remember, no nuclear armed bomber ever went into Russian airspace.
The cellular network is designed and tariffed to be unreliable. So it can be taken down. That means some folks will end up going home instead of stopping off for some milk as the wife was going to ask if she could get through.
In major city downtown areas it is often impossible to get a cell channel. This isn't viewed as a problem either. Cell phones are unreliable and designed from the ground up to be that way.
Unfortunately, we are probably 10 years or less from having a complete collapse of the land-line phone network. It costs an incredible amount of money to maintain and that money simply isn't going to be coming from residential customers as they turn to cell-only. When the revenue base collapses, the landline infrastructure will simply be left to decay as something obsolete and unneeded.
I know people that believe in a power failure their cell phones will work just as well as landline phones do. They are quite wrong - most cell towers have little more than a PC-sized UPS backing them up. Unlike the landline CO with two days of battery power and a diesel generator.
So if it is possible to take down the network with ill-mannered applications and ill-mannered users, so what? The network is unavailable for some (probably short) period of time. It isn't like we are without phones, now is it? Except people don't seem to believe that cell phones are unreliable - even when standing in New York city at rush hour and being utterly unable to call out.
It is too easy. In Arizona most people have their electric panel outside the house. That means by opening the panel you gain access to pounds of copper - you just have to pull real hard.
Similarly, neighborhoods have park land with lights. The wiring connecting these to power to extremely vulnerable and has been stolen in a number of locations. Of course, nobody is talking about this because they don't want to encourage people.
The problem is going to get worse. When you have bands of people that have little to lose, why not try to steal some wires. The scrap metal dealers are sufficiently isolated from the criminal acts that they really don't care where the wire came from, especially if it isn't obviously a spool of cable that might have been stolen. So you can fill up a pickup truck with wire scraps and make $100 or more.
Any construction site is fair game. Any park with lights is a target. Homes that aren't in some gated subdivision are pretty easy as well. Parks near my house have been victimized, one has been hit twice. And this is going to generally be considered to be a victimless crime - nobody got hurt and whatever was destroyed was probably insured.
Even if they put up enough dummy cameras and a few live ones to make people think twice about this, there are plenty of sources. How much copper do you think is in the average car?
When they seize the computer in the house and find the downloaded music on it the argument becomes rather difficult.
Nobody has gotten any fines or judgements without having their computer seized and examined.
I thought the present state of the art was that WiFi "security" was impossible - any system, including WPA2, could be hacked in less than an hour. WEP goes down in seconds. WPA in minutes. MAC address filtering is just a DOS - when the hacker uses your MAC address you are blocked because of a duplicate MAC address on the same network.
So why is anyone concerned about security on a WiFi network? How could there possibly be any security at all?
(a) Data cards are expensive to the user and to the carrier. It took them a while to figure out how bad they were and start charging for the real costs. Unless you have a business need for mobile data one of these things is pointless and will result in your just getting huge bills. The $20 a month plans for unlimited data are gone and never to return.
(b) T-Mobile has unlimited texting and no "premium texting" for $5 a month. They have tower sharing with AT&T and Sprint, so the network really isn't that bad even though there is less coverage than with Verizon. My bill with T-Mobile is half of what it was with Verizon. Verizon is worth it if you absolutely have to have service in very, very out of the way places.
How long will T-Mobile be around? I don't know, but I am sure their practices are netting a lot less revenue than Verizon's are and therefore T-Mobile is doomed in the end. I pay $10 a month for unlimited calls over WiFi - this saves thousands of minutes billed every month and they get $10 for it while paying to connect the calls over the WiFi channel. So they are losing money on it. They get money for some other stuff, but certainly not enough to justify what they are giving away.
So I'm expecting to be absorbed into Sprint just like the other failed wireless carriers were. And dropped, just like what happened before as well.
So why are pirated materials now appearing in Google?
Well, it would seem partly because various fake torrent sites think it is a good idea to have their index indexed by Google. Which then leads to people without a clue clicking on links to all sorts of silly stuff.
Ever notice that no matter what you are looking for there are sites that have the exact keywords you are searching for in the exact order you are searching for them in? Oddly enough, it seems that these results always lead to another non-Google search page which is doing a search and showing some kind of results. With Google ads on it. Again.
If Pirate Bay has an index and it is not indexed by Google, then what good does it do for Google to be doing this? On the other hand, if this eliminates torrentsareus.biz, I'm all for it.
Keep in mind that if it is made legal, especially the kind where anyone can grow, the price will fall dramatically and it won't be economically feasible to run an import business or have a gang sell it. I'm sure the gang's business would drop off very quickly without the requirement of a government-controlled store anyway: if you can buy from a coffee shop, why would you still go to the shady dudes on the corner?
Why? How do you think the distributor for 7-11 would price their pot? Do you think they would look at the price they paid the grower and add a little or take the current street price (which people are willing to pay) and go from there? Trust me, the secret with consumer products is not to "leave money on the table". They are going to use the street price as a guide.
Taxes will be added. Lots of taxes, probably. Cigarette taxes are around $2 a pack or more today. Pot isn't going to get to be less than that and probably will be more. So any fantasy about it being so cheap as to eliminate the smugglers is just that - a fantasy. In all likelyhood the street dealers will be able to raise their prices to match the government taxes.
Maybe there can be only pre-made pot cigarettes, but that isn't the California model. They don't have tax stamps like cigarettes and whiskey, so enforcement will pretty much be impossible. After you buy weed the cops can't tell if you got it legally or illegally in California today. So the only possible enforcement is right there at the point of sale. And how well is that enforcement working today? Do you really believe it is going to get stronger and more effective?
The other problem is going to be the propaganda war. Government weed will be "known" to cause impotence, raise warts, make you smell funny and grow hair on your palms. Anything that people can get away with saying (which is anything at all) will be attributed to "government weed". People will know it has chemicals in it to assist in tracking and telling the difference between taxed and untaxed plants. So the smuggled weed will be very popular and much safer - at least according to the propaganda.
The dealers are going to have a bonanza.
People will buy from shady underground dealers because the prices will be lower and they will always be trusted more.
The prices will be lower because the starting point for pricing weed will be the current street price and then the taxes will be added on. The price will probably be double the current street price. This will persist until the growers understand there is no market at that price. And that is going to take a while.
The underground dealers will always be trusted more, just as the bootleggers in the South always had buyers because their buyers don't want to "support the Man". With weed it will be the difference between "government weed" that makes you impotent or the dealer's weed which isn't polluted by Monsanto. The propaganda war will be fierce, and the government might win in the end, but it will take decades.
And law enforcement isn't going to have a chance in this - the underground dealer transactions will be illegal just as they are today and you can see how effective the police are against them. Today you can be arrested in most places for just having weed on your person - once it is legal then all they can do is stop sales transactions. Once you walk away with your weed there is nothing the police can do about it. How could they know what is legal and what isn't? Oh, unless it is tagged with secret chemicals that probably make you impotent. See - the propaganda war is lost before they even start.
Bootleg whiskey was being sold in the South as late as 1970 with IRS agents running around blowing up stills all over the place. Sure, it has finally faded out but from the 1800s to after 1970 it was being sold. The same thing will happen with marajuana only with even more effort.
The only way to sell marajuana for less than the illegal dealers is to practically give it away. Instead, you will find a myriad of taxes and fees tacked on with the starting point being whatever the street price is today. Where else would the valuation start? End result will be that it costs twice as much from legal stores vs. the old-time networks. But because it is legal there will be no penalties for possession. They can't look at a bunch of ground leaves and say this is illegal weed. So the only enforcement possible will be at the time of the actual sale - which is illegal today and you can see how effective that enforcement is.
Do you believe legalization will result in even stronger enforcement? No, I didn't think so.
There will also be propaganda campaigns that "government weed" makes you impotent, causes AIDS, whatever. The point is that people will be very mistrusting of Marlboro Weed and be far more trusting of Mexican Smuggled Weed. And any evidence to the contrary will be viewed as right-wing propaganda just to scare people into paying the (huge) taxes.
Today there is stiff prison time for dealers. Today there are substantial risks in buying from dealers - like if they rob you what exactly are you going to do about it?
Still, the GDP of the drug trade in the US is huge. Prison isn't much of a deterrent when you have a population willing to roll the dice on conviction. Prisons are not that bad, especially compared to being out on the street without a job or having lots of debts and no money.
There is no chance that any sort of legalization and taxation scheme is going to work. Companies and the goverment are going to see the current price for an ounce of weed is $200 and they are going to charge $400 because it is FDA approved and has $300 in taxes on it. End result will be the Mexican drug smugglers will have an explosion of demand and be much cheaper than TokeMart.
For around 50 years after alcohol was legalized (1933) there were plenty of people making their own, illegal and untaxed. Agents of the IRS would routinely travel around blowing up homes and farms to destroy alcohol production with complete immunity from any laws.
Marijuana is more heavily prosecuted than alcohol was during Prohibition but more people are using.
Any thoughts that this is going to change with the end of legal enforcement is a joke. The other problem is that consumption of alcohol on the job was frowned upon but at no time has there ever been a "drug test" that would see that someone was a drunk and result in their dismissal. Today, people are routinely fired for violating drug use policies. That is going to have to come to an end and with it there will be an explosion of people who can use marijuana and desire to do so but are currently prevented from doing so because of their employment restrictions.
I want to see CNN or Fox give a prize for the first person to find a stoned-on-the-job cop. Commercial pilots can drink eight hours before flying - do you believe there will be similar restrictions for pot? When will the rules be placed into effect? The FAA is, after all, known for being the Tombstone Agency.
How about teachers? I know of no absolute rules against using alcohol while teaching, so will there be special rules about pot? Probably not.
Not sure I would agree about "mental illness" but there are clearly effects from long-term use. Anyone that has lived with or near someone that uses regularly can see distinct changes in behavior and attitudes.
Now maybe these changes are for the better - after all, isn't the US pretty much turning into a unemployed state? So if segments of the population are lazy and unmotivated isn't that a good thing? Why bother looking for a job if all the jobs are in Mexico, China and India?
This might fix a whole bunch of things. We can have a government stimulus program to buy pot for people so they won't be so stressed out being out of a job permanently.
It is extremely unlikely that any method of regulation will work that will prevent people from using marijuana on the job or in public. Current drug testing for employees will have to end - it will infringe on their right to use a legal substance. Today, you can't fire people for using sugar but you can for using any number of illegal drugs. This would change that.
First air, rail or transit accident that happens will make it clear. People are going to die, probably in large quantities. But, they will be consuming fewer resources, emitting less CO2 and overall improving the environment. So what's not to like?
You could expect some of those countries to react rather pointedly should they be cut off for what would appear to be no valid reason.
See, I suspect in Romaina there is a law that says you aren't allowed to rob people, except Americans. And maybe some Europeans. Bulgaria is probably a bit more open with a law that says if you defraud people they can't live in Eastern Europe - anywhere else is OK.
Yes, this is the government turning a blind eye to the enterprising economic efforts of their population. But given their GDP, can you really blame them?
I would expect a whole lot of trouble from the UN should anyone decide to cut off access to countries that encourage free enterprise like this. You would be able to hear the shouting in Chicago. Trade sanctions would result and maybe war.
A professional organization that knows its web presence is its life is going to have a bit better setup than a server that someone else (Network Solutions in this case) has control over. The right solution is a co-located server that is controlled exclusively by the organization. The hosting company doesn't need to have any passwords. They are also going to have their email processed by their own server and not be relying on an ISP for anything at all except connectivity.
However, a completely amateur operation is going to use shared virtual hosting because it is cheaper and the hosting company will be doing backups for them. And controlling passwords. And all other security. Oh, and using a non-domain based email setup from an ISP.
I guess it is pretty obvious into which category Cryptome falls, right?
Yes, it would cost $2000 a year or more for a co-located server whereas shared virtual hosting is dirt cheap.
With broadcast TV and radio you are correct. With the Internet you do absolutely have a guarantee that your content isn't viewed without your ads. While this isn't exactly true for 100% of the population, it is correct for 95% and maybe 99%.
Also, ads can be charged for on per-impression basis rather than a flat rate for a particular item. So instead of spending $50,000 on an ad that is hoped to reach 100,000 people you are paying $50,000 for an ad that is viewed 200,000 times. Or probably more accurately you are paying $51,213.25 for an ad that is viewed by exactly 204853 people.
I guess they just have to adapt to a new business model. That's what people keep saying about music. Why wouldn't it apply to movies and everything else?
What Lawrence Lessig seems to be championing is the idea that creativity is dead. Actually, by its very nature creativity is now impossible.
You see, just like the folks looking at the US Patent office in the 1890s, everything that could possibly be created has already been created.
Sure, you can have "mashups", remixes and somewhat unique ways of revisiting the creative works of yesteryear and these are going to count as new things for younger people. But the basic idea that someone goes out and creates something "new" is foreign to these people and thought to be impossible. Everything is just the rehashing of what has alread been.
Well if you believe that, you need to understand that it is fully within your power to create and nurture that world. Insure that creative works cannot be treated as something worthy of compensation, because obviously they are just rehashing old stuff. Whether it is software, movies, music or books paying for the author's time and thoughts is silly and wasteful according to this philosophy.
Oh, and make sure whatever sort of a job you have doesn't involve the slightest bit of creativity.
They are unfilled because if I offer you a job picking melons for $2 a hour you would laugh and stay on unemployment.
If I offer Jose with no papers $2 a hour to pick melons he says "Si" because it is twice what he could make back home. He can then send half his income back home and it is like he never left - except he isn't eating there anymore so they are much better off.
There is no way legal Americans are going to compete with that kind of labor. It distorts our entire economy and pushes things in very strange directions. It also means that no matter what, Jose is digging into a hole he will never get out of.
The solution is to remove the cheap labor from the equation completely. Get them the heck out of the country. Make it a crime to employ an undocumented worker. Make it a crime to pay someone less than minimum wage, or better yet, a crime to pay someone less than fair market wages. Start putting employers in prison for 10 years because they have 100 illegal workers and you will see some changes. Until then, well I hope you like unemployment because nobody in their right mind is going to hire someone for more than they have to pay some undocumented worker.
That means that just about every job in the US is at risk if it involved unskilled labor.