The statements aren't necessarily contradictory. While only 3% of crimes are solved using the cameras, they may be an aid in obtaining guilty verdicts in a far higher number of cases. Solving != convicting.
They make more money from the efficiency of being a larger company, but they also make more by providing a lower quality of service (at least by your report).
Your chances of being paroled if you are a "to life" convicted murderer in California are extremely low. Reiser will probably stay in prison for the rest of his life.
That's hard to say, given the numbers provided. Someone might misinterpret your observation to mean that Reiser only has a 1% chance of ever getting out of prison, which is very misleading and probably not close to being accurate.
First, we don't really know the breakdown of those 16,000, e.g. how many of them are career criminals, multiple rape/homicides,... vs. one time "crimes of passion" (if that's what this was).
Second, presumably many of those prisoners are not rehabilitated and have clean prison records. No one would want Reiser released if this were not the case, so a better predictor would be to look at the % of "rehabilitated" (by an objective measure) lifers who are paroled.
Third, some of the qualified candidates for parole had already been released, so the 16,000 left will be disproportionately weighted towards those who repeatedly don't make the cut.
Of course, we also don't have data on a lot of factors that would skew the odds in the other direction. E.g. how many lifers die before they even get to their first parole hearing. But if someone gave me 100 to 1 odds on Reiser getting out of prison at some point, I'd take it in a second.
Well yeah, that's usually how it works. Do you think it should work the other way - that criminals who leave bodies lying out in the open should get shorter sentences? "Thanks for saving us all the trouble of digging through the woods, take a couple years off your sentence for making our jobs easy."
The bottom line is that they didn't tell me I'd be capped or interfered with when I ordered their package nearly 5 years ago.
This is laughable. At that time they really promised you unlimited service at a fixed price for the lifetime of your account? Right.
Times change, competition changes, business models change and customer demands change. Grow up and deal with it. I imagine you weren't complaining 5 years ago when you bailed on your dialup line to switch to Comcast while AOL was crying about the "fraud" that you perpetrated - "you promised you'd stay with us on our crappy dialup service forever."
Yes, but the 250 GB limit is so high that the vast majority of their customers won't even be close and don't need to know. And most of those that do go over will have the technical knowledge to keep tabs on it themselves.
But most importantly, what you're missing is that Comcast has not said that they will just instantly shut off your internet when you reach the limit. Those users affected by this policy will know how much they've used because Comcast will notify them of exactly how much they've used and the customer then has the opportunity to change his habits to be within what Comcast considers reasonable usage.
Yeah, it would be cool to go to a website to track your own usage, but I really don't have much sympathy for someone who needs this feature so they can eke every last MB out of their connection.
And your old ISP most likely sold out because they couldn't make a decent profit with that business model. Most users are too cheap and short-sighted to pay a fair price for such good service - so I'd say that yes, you and the all the other users in your community did have some say in this.
So it's fair that such a content hungry family pays more than average, isn't it? Why would you expect everyone else to subsidize their entertainment budget?
What doesn't make sense is how a company that pays by bandwidth hopes to alleviate its problem by controlling traffic. I may only download 1 movie a month, but if I do it during the same hour as every other house in my neighborhood, Comcast still doesn't have the bandwidth.
Statistically, fewer people using excessive bandwidth will mean that fewer people are blocking your once a month movie.
Comcast is using the excuse of low-bandwidth to restrict traffic, purely for profit. They won't upgrade their network to provide more bandwidth, but they'll try to charge people more to use it (I am making the obvious assumption that they will soon offer 250+ GB plans for a premium price).
They're a business, so yes they are trying to make money. What would you suggest they do to boost their profit margins without implementing such a cap?
Comcasts approach to controlling bandwidth issues would be like a local government saying too many people drive too fast on the roads during rush-hour, so they decided to raise the tax on gasoline. That won't slow people down, it just means they can afford less gas, and run out 75% of the way to their destination.
This analogy isn't even close. It is more like the local government increasing the gas tax because there are too many cars on the road during rush hour. This will indeed accomplish the intent of getting more cars off the road at that time (which doesn't mean there aren't even better ideas).
Those who can continue to pay the price of gas will continue to drive their Corvettes, while the rest of us take the city bus to the local library to check our email after our children downloaded too many freakin movies off our netflix account.
Then you've done a poor job raising your kids and should keep a better eye on them. The situation you describe would be no different than if they had spent hours making long distance calls, drove your car until the tank was nearly empty or even drank the last of the milk so there was none left for your morning coffee. Bandwidth is a limited resource that they have been abusing with your blessing and now they need to learn some responsibility.
That needs qualified a bit for accuracy. First, my ultimate claim is that this material is old enough that it should be in the public domain.
That's a given, but the question would then be "how old is old enough", which is a much different topic and not relevant here.
Second, the point is not that it is fair game to not pay the copyright holder. The point is that the copyright holder was NOT damaged in any way because of this. The damages to be reclaimed are zero, the exact amount of additional revenue the copyright holder would have received if this gentleman hadn't been selling consoles.
As I pointed out this is an impossible argument and it undercuts the business model of all IP. It would allow you to sell bogus copies of Windows to a customer who otherwise would have been using Linux, it would allow you to market pirated copies of Mass Effect for $10 to customers who were planning on buying Spore instead.
Not really. I certainly am not willing to pay more for cheap software thrown in with hardware just so they can claim it comes with something. That is like claiming I would only have been willing to pay $400 for my new dell rather than $430 if it didn't include polar bowler or some such nonsense. The fact is the crapware isn't a consideration in my hardware purchase and while you may have added a cost into the purchase to include it, your price is obviously still less than the other guy.
I assume that the producers of the product act rationally, if they don't then they don't deserve to be in business (and probably should be in jail). If they are acting rationally they won't go to the effort to put games (even Polar Bowling) on their machines if it does not add value. There is some expense for them to do so, not the least of which is legal action for including illegal software.
Whether you personally care that those games are on the console is irrelevant. Someone, somewhere thinks they have real value and is paying this vendor for those games - otherwise he wouldn't have put them on there.
This guy was selling consoles, those consoles included some old freeware games and if I've understood correctly he didn't even load the games, the consoles were imported from china with the software already included.
If they were unrestricted freeware games then there wouldn't be a legal issue. But AFAIK these weren't even freeware games and even freeware games require you to maintain the copyright, company logos, et al. - which these guys knowingly removed. This further goes to show that these particular games did have value as it would have been trivial to acquire the rights to truly worthless games.
When you simply download them (but had no intention of ever paying for them), there is no real loss to anyone except perhaps your ISP and there are incremental gains in the popularity of the item downloaded.
This "opportunity cost" applies equally well to the consumer's time. Every hour that is spent on pirated entertainment makes it less likely that that consumer will spend real money on non-pirated entertainment.
No, people are buying cheap consoles that include some free old games as a bonus.
But they are not just a 'bonus' - each unlicensed game adds value to the product. If the product would sell for $30 with 75 games, then customers would only pay, say, $29.80 for the product with only 74 games. Some part of that 20 cents deservedly goes to the copyright holder.
Besides, the debate is not whether people would be willing to exchange value for the games but whether they would physically have taken that action had these games not been on the consoles. The answer is that no, people wouldn't buy 14-23yr old games that aren't available for sale.
You're mixing up your arguments and heading down a very slippery slope. That the games are old is irrelevant, people still want them (at some price) otherwise this product would not exist.
So your argument seems to boil down to being that any time a product is sold to someone who probably wouldn't otherwise have bought it then it's fair game to not pay the copyright holder.
Slashdot Mirror
The statements aren't necessarily contradictory. While only 3% of crimes are solved using the cameras, they may be an aid in obtaining guilty verdicts in a far higher number of cases. Solving != convicting.
Only one problem: they DO NOT WORK. They don't prevent crime, they don't help to punish crime.
And when one of the dozens who have claimed they DO NOT WORK actually provides some compelling evidence to support that, maybe I'll take it seriously.
Even the cherry-picked sources you cite don't support your conclusions - just the opposite, in fact. Take your blinders off.
Presumably he can still appeal. However, doing so would violate the plea agreement and the original sentence would be reinstated.
They make more money from the efficiency of being a larger company, but they also make more by providing a lower quality of service (at least by your report).
And whatever you do, don't just tell the parole board what they want to hear. Because they just want to hear the truth.
Your chances of being paroled if you are a "to life" convicted murderer in California are extremely low. Reiser will probably stay in prison for the rest of his life.
That's hard to say, given the numbers provided. Someone might misinterpret your observation to mean that Reiser only has a 1% chance of ever getting out of prison, which is very misleading and probably not close to being accurate.
... vs. one time "crimes of passion" (if that's what this was).
First, we don't really know the breakdown of those 16,000, e.g. how many of them are career criminals, multiple rape/homicides,
Second, presumably many of those prisoners are not rehabilitated and have clean prison records. No one would want Reiser released if this were not the case, so a better predictor would be to look at the % of "rehabilitated" (by an objective measure) lifers who are paroled.
Third, some of the qualified candidates for parole had already been released, so the 16,000 left will be disproportionately weighted towards those who repeatedly don't make the cut.
Of course, we also don't have data on a lot of factors that would skew the odds in the other direction. E.g. how many lifers die before they even get to their first parole hearing. But if someone gave me 100 to 1 odds on Reiser getting out of prison at some point, I'd take it in a second.
Well yeah, that's usually how it works. Do you think it should work the other way - that criminals who leave bodies lying out in the open should get shorter sentences? "Thanks for saving us all the trouble of digging through the woods, take a couple years off your sentence for making our jobs easy."
Why doesn't anyone see a problem with this?
Well spotted, you're clearly the only one.
Getting a parking ticket is bad, do you cry over that too? Your logic and assumptions aren't warranted based on the post you replied to.
True, but your system doesn't rhyme.
Did they offer free massages during this stressful time, cause that would be great too.
Your original point was very clear and insightful, but by humoring this kibitzer it's getting lost.
11) Publishers are free to break rules 1-10, but they must clearly state the violation on the box.
The bottom line is that they didn't tell me I'd be capped or interfered with when I ordered their package nearly 5 years ago.
This is laughable. At that time they really promised you unlimited service at a fixed price for the lifetime of your account? Right.
Times change, competition changes, business models change and customer demands change. Grow up and deal with it. I imagine you weren't complaining 5 years ago when you bailed on your dialup line to switch to Comcast while AOL was crying about the "fraud" that you perpetrated - "you promised you'd stay with us on our crappy dialup service forever."
It makes sense to slashdot geeks to offer this kind of sliding scale, but sadly it is too complicated to appeal to the average consumer.
Yes, but the 250 GB limit is so high that the vast majority of their customers won't even be close and don't need to know. And most of those that do go over will have the technical knowledge to keep tabs on it themselves.
But most importantly, what you're missing is that Comcast has not said that they will just instantly shut off your internet when you reach the limit. Those users affected by this policy will know how much they've used because Comcast will notify them of exactly how much they've used and the customer then has the opportunity to change his habits to be within what Comcast considers reasonable usage.
Yeah, it would be cool to go to a website to track your own usage, but I really don't have much sympathy for someone who needs this feature so they can eke every last MB out of their connection.
And your old ISP most likely sold out because they couldn't make a decent profit with that business model. Most users are too cheap and short-sighted to pay a fair price for such good service - so I'd say that yes, you and the all the other users in your community did have some say in this.
But what do you do when the ISP with the cap has a lower monthly rate than the one which doesn't (which is far more likely)?
If you're like most consumers you'll get the cheaper one and then bitch incessantly about how unfair the caps are.
So it's fair that such a content hungry family pays more than average, isn't it? Why would you expect everyone else to subsidize their entertainment budget?
I'll go out on a limb and assume this is a serious question.
Netflix, for one.
What doesn't make sense is how a company that pays by bandwidth hopes to alleviate its problem by controlling traffic. I may only download 1 movie a month, but if I do it during the same hour as every other house in my neighborhood, Comcast still doesn't have the bandwidth.
Statistically, fewer people using excessive bandwidth will mean that fewer people are blocking your once a month movie.
Comcast is using the excuse of low-bandwidth to restrict traffic, purely for profit. They won't upgrade their network to provide more bandwidth, but they'll try to charge people more to use it (I am making the obvious assumption that they will soon offer 250+ GB plans for a premium price).
They're a business, so yes they are trying to make money. What would you suggest they do to boost their profit margins without implementing such a cap?
Comcasts approach to controlling bandwidth issues would be like a local government saying too many people drive too fast on the roads during rush-hour, so they decided to raise the tax on gasoline. That won't slow people down, it just means they can afford less gas, and run out 75% of the way to their destination.
This analogy isn't even close. It is more like the local government increasing the gas tax because there are too many cars on the road during rush hour. This will indeed accomplish the intent of getting more cars off the road at that time (which doesn't mean there aren't even better ideas).
Those who can continue to pay the price of gas will continue to drive their Corvettes, while the rest of us take the city bus to the local library to check our email after our children downloaded too many freakin movies off our netflix account.
Then you've done a poor job raising your kids and should keep a better eye on them. The situation you describe would be no different than if they had spent hours making long distance calls, drove your car until the tank was nearly empty or even drank the last of the milk so there was none left for your morning coffee. Bandwidth is a limited resource that they have been abusing with your blessing and now they need to learn some responsibility.
That needs qualified a bit for accuracy. First, my ultimate claim is that this material is old enough that it should be in the public domain.
That's a given, but the question would then be "how old is old enough", which is a much different topic and not relevant here.
Second, the point is not that it is fair game to not pay the copyright holder. The point is that the copyright holder was NOT damaged in any way because of this. The damages to be reclaimed are zero, the exact amount of additional revenue the copyright holder would have received if this gentleman hadn't been selling consoles.
As I pointed out this is an impossible argument and it undercuts the business model of all IP. It would allow you to sell bogus copies of Windows to a customer who otherwise would have been using Linux, it would allow you to market pirated copies of Mass Effect for $10 to customers who were planning on buying Spore instead.
Not really. I certainly am not willing to pay more for cheap software thrown in with hardware just so they can claim it comes with something. That is like claiming I would only have been willing to pay $400 for my new dell rather than $430 if it didn't include polar bowler or some such nonsense. The fact is the crapware isn't a consideration in my hardware purchase and while you may have added a cost into the purchase to include it, your price is obviously still less than the other guy.
I assume that the producers of the product act rationally, if they don't then they don't deserve to be in business (and probably should be in jail). If they are acting rationally they won't go to the effort to put games (even Polar Bowling) on their machines if it does not add value. There is some expense for them to do so, not the least of which is legal action for including illegal software.
Whether you personally care that those games are on the console is irrelevant. Someone, somewhere thinks they have real value and is paying this vendor for those games - otherwise he wouldn't have put them on there.
This guy was selling consoles, those consoles included some old freeware games and if I've understood correctly he didn't even load the games, the consoles were imported from china with the software already included.
If they were unrestricted freeware games then there wouldn't be a legal issue. But AFAIK these weren't even freeware games and even freeware games require you to maintain the copyright, company logos, et al. - which these guys knowingly removed. This further goes to show that these particular games did have value as it would have been trivial to acquire the rights to truly worthless games.
When you simply download them (but had no intention of ever paying for them), there is no real loss to anyone except perhaps your ISP and there are incremental gains in the popularity of the item downloaded.
This "opportunity cost" applies equally well to the consumer's time. Every hour that is spent on pirated entertainment makes it less likely that that consumer will spend real money on non-pirated entertainment.
No, people are buying cheap consoles that include some free old games as a bonus.
But they are not just a 'bonus' - each unlicensed game adds value to the product. If the product would sell for $30 with 75 games, then customers would only pay, say, $29.80 for the product with only 74 games. Some part of that 20 cents deservedly goes to the copyright holder.
Besides, the debate is not whether people would be willing to exchange value for the games but whether they would physically have taken that action had these games not been on the consoles. The answer is that no, people wouldn't buy 14-23yr old games that aren't available for sale.
You're mixing up your arguments and heading down a very slippery slope. That the games are old is irrelevant, people still want them (at some price) otherwise this product would not exist.
So your argument seems to boil down to being that any time a product is sold to someone who probably wouldn't otherwise have bought it then it's fair game to not pay the copyright holder.
Clearly people would pay for those games, otherwise this product would not be manufactured and sold for real money.
How is that not obvious?