It's certainly not stealing, as nothing is being taken from anyone.
Isn't revenue being "stolen", in a similar way to shoplifting? If the first purchased copy of Windows 7 was shared, and then everyone who wanted W7 copied the shared version, Microsoft would get no revenue after that first purchase.
I do agree that not all sharing correlates to lost sales: there are people who can't afford W7 and would have no choice but to live without it if the shared version wasn't available.
Company X spends $1B developing a new idea, be it a physical widget or an algorithm. Said company sells widgets or software licenses at $A to recoup the invested money (first) and then to make a profit. Company Y sees the widget or software and can cheaply reverse engineer it, skipping 70% of the development costs. Company Y can sell their product at 0.4*$A and still make profit. Company X only gets $0.2B revenue for the item, and is out $0.8B.
How would we prevent this situation without IP? If the above happens, no one will want to invest in research, because they'd lose money, even if they "invented" the next IPod.
Maybe if all research funding came from the public, then all development successes (and failures) would be public knowledge.
Sell the game/DLC at the "pay the bills" price. Have a second payment option for "tips". If the customer likes the game/DLC, he/she can go back leave a tip later.
Planet-sized... Billboards: "Your ad here." "Save money on your spacecraft insurance by switching to..." Bumper Sticker: "My other moon is a Death Star." Solace: "We apologize for any inconvenience..." Wraparound error: The back end of the JWST.
If I'm interpreting Microsoft's policy correctly (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#ServicePackSupport), they'll stop supporting XP next year. If that happens, would you really want to be running an unpatched Microsoft OS late next year?
Thank you for pointing out that, being under 40, I was one of the people to choose Oil as a major energy source back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Thank you for pointing out that, making $50K a year, I was one of the people who lobbied politicians with the message of "there's no such thing as global climate change". Thank you for pointing out that being a non-governmental, non-petrochemical, non-drilling employee, I chose the poor oversight and safety practices that occurred on Deepwater Horizon.
Enough sarcasm.
Yes, we are too dependent upon oil. Most people know that. Many of us have believed that for decades. However, these decisions were made long ago and by people with influence.
Recently, we have been making progress: there are hybrid cars on the road now. There will be electric cars on the road soon. We're looking for alternatives for plastics as well. People can pay an extra fee to have their electricity supplied from a renewable source. But the oil problem won't change overnight.
I was watching a documentary on this Sunday. They interviewed one of the rig survivors. According to the survivor, pieces of the blowout prevention device had come up the pipe weeks before. They didn't bother to fix the BOP. When one of the controllers on the BOP failed, again, weeks before the accident, they didn't bother to fix the BOP. When Transocean wanted to put 3 cement plugs in the well, sandwiching the heavy drilling fluid, the BP managers said "No, use 2 plugs," so that it would take BP less time to unseal the well when they hooked up the pumping rig. According to the survivor, it was when they took the pressure off the well, with only two plugs, that the plugs failed.
This is people putting money before safety. This isn't an "accident". I would consider an earthquake ripping the BOP off the well an accident. I would consider a jet crashing on the rig and somehow managing to destroy the BOP an accident. This was people cutting corners and getting caught.
(Note well: This assumes the survivor was telling the truth.)
How else do we make GHG emitting energy sources more expensive than Green sources? It's $0.025 for me to get green electricity at home. Are all businesses going to pay this out of the goodness of their hearts? We've regularly see companies put profit before common sense/safety/environment.
So maybe this is what the tax revenue is used for: making sure those most effected by price increases on basic needs still get to eat. Which is more important, making sure everybody can eat today, or making sure the planet is in decent shape 50 or 100 years from now?*
Having the carbon tax seems like it would make sense. People can properly value the cost of green vs. not green energy. Otherwise, it's cheaper to pollute and that will be what most businesses choose.
Heck, someone posted a comment a year ago about automakers wishing there was a carbon tax: it would improve clarity in the gas/hybrid/all electric choice.
*(If we take climate change to the extreme:
If we don't change something soon, it could get so bad that only those people that can afford biodomes can survive. Yeah, it sounds kinda nuts, but can anyone honestly say they know when climate change will end? I do tend to trust the people who know about this topic, as I don't have training or the data. Here's a list of scientific organizations (not businesses, lobbyists, or politicians) that think greenhouse gases are changing the climate: Wiki. It's a long list. Do you really want to take the chance that they are wrong? Or are you just betting that someone will invent the "silver bullet" to capture carbon 30 years from now? Damage will be done by then, including the possibility of species becoming extinct. Are you ok with that?
This gets my vote. If one of the developers is talking (phone, another developer, boss, whoever), the other developers must filter out that extra noise to concentrate on their work. Some people do well at this. Some people will have a productivity hit.
Much of this seems to stem from the corporations having multiple interests, e.g. Comcast wouldn't want anything that competes with their Video on Demand. Since corporations are usually interested in Money and not ethics (can't think of a better word right now), maybe we need to remove the conflict of interest? Force any company with an ISP to spin of the ISP from voice/video/music/audio/etc services. I'm kinda leery about news organizations being owned by media corporations as well... Conflict of interest. Some humans are good at dealing with it. Corporations seem to always go for the buck unless someone's in danger of death or serious injury.
Any place where an "overly greedy" human can make an extra buck at someone else's expense, they will. Yes, people should be paid for their work. When they charge so much that the customers can't put food on the table, there's a problem. Or, if dragging something out increases profit, some humans will do this. It'd be nice if we could switch to where profit was based on the task being completed, not the amount of effort that went into the task. Take healthcare. They profit off of treatment. Unethical healthcare companies could choose to not develop better/cheaper treatments, simply because they would lose profit. I'd love to see a system where they only get paid if the treatment works. (Obviously, this is difficult where the current treatments don't always work: cancer, AIDS, etc...)
One thing I've seen posted in several past/. comments is that the government gave millions of dollars to telecoms to improve telecomm infrastructure. Instead of doing that, the telecoms paid huge dividends to the stockholders. Supposedly. (I have no documentation other than to post links to old/. comments.)
I'm wondering if commodore64_love is referring to this.
It's possible (I don't know, just guessing) that someone's trying to make the point that, if you have young kids and game controllers that look like guns, your kids will first learn that all guns are toys. I suspect it's better to teach kids that all guns are dangerous (first) and then later teach them that toy guns are not dangerous in some situations. (Some situations: e.g. don't point a toy gun at a Police Officer or other armed person.)
Slashdot Mirror
20 songs per hour, 52 weeks a year.
40*20*52 = 41600.
At the latter rate, that is 41600 * 0.0075 = $312.
And that's before Pandora's own expenses, such as bandwidth and payroll.
It's certainly not stealing, as nothing is being taken from anyone.
Isn't revenue being "stolen", in a similar way to shoplifting? If the first purchased copy of Windows 7 was shared, and then everyone who wanted W7 copied the shared version, Microsoft would get no revenue after that first purchase.
I do agree that not all sharing correlates to lost sales: there are people who can't afford W7 and would have no choice but to live without it if the shared version wasn't available.
Company X spends $1B developing a new idea, be it a physical widget or an algorithm. Said company sells widgets or software licenses at $A to recoup the invested money (first) and then to make a profit. Company Y sees the widget or software and can cheaply reverse engineer it, skipping 70% of the development costs. Company Y can sell their product at 0.4*$A and still make profit. Company X only gets $0.2B revenue for the item, and is out $0.8B.
How would we prevent this situation without IP? If the above happens, no one will want to invest in research, because they'd lose money, even if they "invented" the next IPod.
Maybe if all research funding came from the public, then all development successes (and failures) would be public knowledge.
Sell the game/DLC at the "pay the bills" price. Have a second payment option for "tips". If the customer likes the game/DLC, he/she can go back leave a tip later.
*Don't* expect 15% automatically.
Planet-sized...
Billboards: "Your ad here." "Save money on your spacecraft insurance by switching to..."
Bumper Sticker: "My other moon is a Death Star."
Solace: "We apologize for any inconvenience..."
Wraparound error: The back end of the JWST.
OMG! You kill- (skip)
OMG! You kill- (skip)
OMG! You kill- (skip)
OMG! (thump) -stards!
That would be a good stimulus project: upgrading the grid.
Actually, cable companies are allowed to charge customers for D to A set top boxes:
http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner_3.html#faq1
I always thought that was the job of the Senators and Representatives. I suspect they sometimes forget this, though.
If I'm interpreting Microsoft's policy correctly (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#ServicePackSupport), they'll stop supporting XP next year. If that happens, would you really want to be running an unpatched Microsoft OS late next year?
Thank you for pointing out that, being under 40, I was one of the people to choose Oil as a major energy source back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Thank you for pointing out that, making $50K a year, I was one of the people who lobbied politicians with the message of "there's no such thing as global climate change". Thank you for pointing out that being a non-governmental, non-petrochemical, non-drilling employee, I chose the poor oversight and safety practices that occurred on Deepwater Horizon.
Enough sarcasm.
Yes, we are too dependent upon oil. Most people know that. Many of us have believed that for decades. However, these decisions were made long ago and by people with influence.
Recently, we have been making progress: there are hybrid cars on the road now. There will be electric cars on the road soon. We're looking for alternatives for plastics as well. People can pay an extra fee to have their electricity supplied from a renewable source. But the oil problem won't change overnight.
Now, where'd I put those marshmallows...
Jaysyn actually posted links:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1660714&cid=32297012
I was watching a documentary on this Sunday. They interviewed one of the rig survivors. According to the survivor, pieces of the blowout prevention device had come up the pipe weeks before. They didn't bother to fix the BOP. When one of the controllers on the BOP failed, again, weeks before the accident, they didn't bother to fix the BOP. When Transocean wanted to put 3 cement plugs in the well, sandwiching the heavy drilling fluid, the BP managers said "No, use 2 plugs," so that it would take BP less time to unseal the well when they hooked up the pumping rig. According to the survivor, it was when they took the pressure off the well, with only two plugs, that the plugs failed.
This is people putting money before safety. This isn't an "accident". I would consider an earthquake ripping the BOP off the well an accident. I would consider a jet crashing on the rig and somehow managing to destroy the BOP an accident. This was people cutting corners and getting caught.
(Note well: This assumes the survivor was telling the truth.)
How else do we make GHG emitting energy sources more expensive than Green sources? It's $0.025 for me to get green electricity at home. Are all businesses going to pay this out of the goodness of their hearts? We've regularly see companies put profit before common sense/safety/environment.
So maybe this is what the tax revenue is used for: making sure those most effected by price increases on basic needs still get to eat. Which is more important, making sure everybody can eat today, or making sure the planet is in decent shape 50 or 100 years from now?*
Having the carbon tax seems like it would make sense. People can properly value the cost of green vs. not green energy. Otherwise, it's cheaper to pollute and that will be what most businesses choose.
Heck, someone posted a comment a year ago about automakers wishing there was a carbon tax: it would improve clarity in the gas/hybrid/all electric choice.
*(If we take climate change to the extreme:
If we don't change something soon, it could get so bad that only those people that can afford biodomes can survive. Yeah, it sounds kinda nuts, but can anyone honestly say they know when climate change will end? I do tend to trust the people who know about this topic, as I don't have training or the data. Here's a list of scientific organizations (not businesses, lobbyists, or politicians) that think greenhouse gases are changing the climate: Wiki. It's a long list. Do you really want to take the chance that they are wrong? Or are you just betting that someone will invent the "silver bullet" to capture carbon 30 years from now? Damage will be done by then, including the possibility of species becoming extinct. Are you ok with that?
)
It'll make a big difference when the USB 3.0 systems arrive.
This gets my vote. If one of the developers is talking (phone, another developer, boss, whoever), the other developers must filter out that extra noise to concentrate on their work. Some people do well at this. Some people will have a productivity hit.
There are two links in the original article that supposedly point to PDFs of the list of events. Both links are returning Page Not Found.
Much of this seems to stem from the corporations having multiple interests, e.g. Comcast wouldn't want anything that competes with their Video on Demand. Since corporations are usually interested in Money and not ethics (can't think of a better word right now), maybe we need to remove the conflict of interest? Force any company with an ISP to spin of the ISP from voice/video/music/audio/etc services. I'm kinda leery about news organizations being owned by media corporations as well... Conflict of interest. Some humans are good at dealing with it. Corporations seem to always go for the buck unless someone's in danger of death or serious injury.
Any place where an "overly greedy" human can make an extra buck at someone else's expense, they will. Yes, people should be paid for their work. When they charge so much that the customers can't put food on the table, there's a problem. Or, if dragging something out increases profit, some humans will do this. It'd be nice if we could switch to where profit was based on the task being completed, not the amount of effort that went into the task. Take healthcare. They profit off of treatment. Unethical healthcare companies could choose to not develop better/cheaper treatments, simply because they would lose profit. I'd love to see a system where they only get paid if the treatment works. (Obviously, this is difficult where the current treatments don't always work: cancer, AIDS, etc...)
Need I say anything else?
One thing I've seen posted in several past /. comments is that the government gave millions of dollars to telecoms to improve telecomm infrastructure. Instead of doing that, the telecoms paid huge dividends to the stockholders. Supposedly. (I have no documentation other than to post links to old /. comments.)
I'm wondering if commodore64_love is referring to this.
I should've said, "if you have young kids and toy guns (game controllers or otherwise)".
It's possible (I don't know, just guessing) that someone's trying to make the point that, if you have young kids and game controllers that look like guns, your kids will first learn that all guns are toys. I suspect it's better to teach kids that all guns are dangerous (first) and then later teach them that toy guns are not dangerous in some situations. (Some situations: e.g. don't point a toy gun at a Police Officer or other armed person.)