Of course, it's like the GPL. He charges for the service of participating in the creation of the works, while the subsequent copying and distribution is Free[tm].
So I'm free to copy his signature onto, say, a loan application from a bank. After all, I have all the same freedoms and rights to do with it as the original author, right? I'm not less Free[tm] than RMS is when it comes to his signature, am I?
Eventually and inevitablely the pyramid schemes -- for in the end that's all the revolving investment schemes are -- collapse.
And I'm sure you have all sorts of "radical adjustments" designed to maintain the wealth of the US and prevent that from happening, right? Right.
Obviously you haven't learned much, despite your observations, if that's how you characterize capital investment. In case you need a refresher, it's not a "pyramid scheme" when you take the money invested and actually produce something with it. Considering that the US GDP has tripled in real terms since you (purportedly) started paying attention in about 1970 or so - it's rather obvious that this is barely more than wishful thinking on your part.
But hey, don't let me interrupt you, so good luck with that. Just remember that your lifestyle depends on the American economy nearly as much as mine does.
Yay. You've discovered that inflation reduces the return to creditors. Congratulations - how was the rest of Econ 101, week two? Nevertheless, you might stop and ask yourself, if it's such a horrible deal, why do they keep investing nonetheless? There are two possibilities, as I see it: A) the ROI still exceeds what's available elsewhere, or; B) foreigners are stupid.
As an aside, I always find it morbidly fascinating to watch others rooting for their own demise. You do realize, I hope, that the American economy is the engine that drives the world, producing 25% of world GDP. Combine that with how deeply tied into the US economy are the economies of the remainder of the world - that US dollar you despise so much accounted for 3% of the Kiwi GDP last year, by the way, through exports to the US - and the proposed impending collapse of the US economy is actually the impending collapse of the world economy. I realize there's a certain amount of schadenfreude on the part of furriners rooting for the downfall of the United States, but the reality is, you'll be on the bread lines with us. See ya there.
Most things seem crazy when analyzed as a percentage...must be a learned behavior....
Actually, it's innate human nature to think of things that way. Put a one pound weight in one hand, and a two pound weight in the other - virtually everybody will be able to tell the difference between the two. Now put a forty pound weight in one hand, and a forty-one pound weight in the other - very few people will be able to tell the difference, despite the fact that it's a difference of one pound in both cases.
The reason we perceive the two cases differently is that, in the first case, "B" is twice as heavy as "A", whereas in the second case, "B" is only 2.5% heavier than "A". Or if you don't have heavy objects handy, get a three-way lightbulb and a lamp to match. Notice how the jump from 50 to 100 watts seems like a bigger jump in brightness than the jump from 100 watts to 150 watts. That's because, in percentage terms, it is a bigger jump. It's how we're wired to see the world, in terms of percentage differences.
People who are wired "normal" tend to not understand how "gifted" people think and feel. They don't understand that some people feel with 100, nay 1000 times the intensity of "normal" folk.
Certainly some "gifted" people find comfort in believing that about "normal" folk, anyway.
Don't the supermarkets pay for their inventory? Then what's really going on is, the manufacturer is giving the store a better price for better placement; or they're giving them a bribe that essentially lowers the cost of the goods. It's not "paying a little extra"; it's "making a little less."
No, manufacturers pay stores for shelf space. Really. And the amount you pay the supermarket depends on how much shelf space you want, and where you want it. It's a pretty good analogy considering that I'm only on my first cup of coffee:)
Don't know about the US, of course, but I think this is illegal in Sweden (and the rest of the EU) as it is bribery.
It's not bribery, and supermarkets in Europe do it too. They know very well that products at eye-level and on endcaps (the displays at the end of aisles) sell better than products on the bottom shelf in the middle of the aisle. And if you want your product to be in one of those premium locations, you'll be expected to pay a little extra for it. The applicability to the current topic is hopefully pretty obvious.
Because the free market economy has done so much for improving the free flow of information.
Well, yeah, it has. Obviously some of us take it for granted, but it certainly has when compared to centrally planned economies - information was a bit harder to come by in the old Soviet Union, for example.
Does it seem redundant to make both the sender and the recipient pay for the same bandwidth?
It's not like this has never happened before. Supermarkets charge manufacturers who want their products to have premium shelf space. Does it seem "redundant" to make both manufacturers and shoppers pay for the same can of soup?
What if other countries ban this type of thing, how could you regulate speed in one area, and not in another?
Nothing's going any faster anywhere than the slowest link on the chain allows...
No, it has a short "I" sound. Vowels have short ("I" as in "chin") and long ("I" as in "ice") sounds. Consonants such as "C" and "G" have soft ("city", "giraffe") and hard ("cup", "gap") sounds. Since we're being pedantic and all;)
My daughter is about to turn twentysix, and I'm still wasting brain cells remembering about Rainbow Brite and the Sphere of Fucking Light.
See, that's the thing - otherwise useful neurons are being occupied by this information. Worse, I have another daughter who's three months old, so I have to do this all over again in a couple of years. I'm vaguely worried that I'll be gurgling on my deathbed some years from now, without a thought in my head except for that damn "my little ponyyyyyyy, my little ponyyyyyy" music...
In the second case the law must exist in roughly the same form in both countries.
Well, that's the funny thing about obscenity - the crime of offending someone is so remarkably broad that simply codifying the concept in the first place leads you to all sorts of unpleasant logical consequences. What will we say when they ask to extradite someone who's violated their laws by offending them, particularly when they point out that we've made it a crime to offend us?
Let us not devolve into semantic games. What is the practical difference between criminalizing the act of offending Baptists by showing them pictures of boobies, and criminalizing the act of offending Muslims by showing them pictures of Mohammed as a suicide bomber?
Here I'm assuming that we're talking about communities separated by state borders. Unless there is some state that requires it - and I'm not aware of any - extradition proceedings are not required to move you from one jurisdiction within a state to another within that same state.
...or the "obscene" act would have to be illegal within the state as a whole in which case the state would prosecute the criminal.
A state may criminalize obscenity, but it must also abide by the community standards doctrine in defining obscenity - whether the average person, applying community standards, would find that the material appeals to the "prurient interest". Well, okay - whose community? There are towns in upstate NY that are a heck of a lot more conservative about this sort of thing than New York City may be. Should their community standards determine obscenity in NYC? And the only way around that is to not criminalize obscenity in the first place.
Honestly, community standards was a disaster from the get-go, and the internet has only exacerbated it.
No. As pointed out elsewhere the doctrine of dual criminality would apply, so if the crime isn't a crime in both international jurisdictions there would be no extradition.
What is obscenity if not criminalizing offense to another?
Because Iran isn't part of the United States so federal law and the U.S. Constitution say we don't have to...
...until we sign an extradition treaty, at which point it seems we'll no longer be able to claim a lack of parallel offenses to avoid our treaty obligations.
Don't like the laws? Work to elect people who will work to amend the laws to better reflect your values.
Dada is suggesting that the smut peddler isn't responsible for adhering to Salt Lake City's community standards because he's not doing any business there.
If I'm ignoring the point, it's because he wants to discuss his idea of how things should be, whereas I'm attempting to point out how things actually are. It's all well and good to say that smut peddlers shouldn't be responsible for adhering to SLC's community standards, but at the moment, they are responsible for adhering to them. The Court punting on this case does not advance the should be agenda of absolving the smut peddlers of their responsibility to SLC community standards. Instead, it strengthens the way things actually are by insuring that, for the foreseeable future, smut peddlers will continue to be responsible for abiding by the community standards of Salt Lake City. Which makes his praise for this denial of cert all the more bizarre, in light of what we presume his goals to be.
The government can either adopt dada's solution and try to prosecute each obscenity viewer separately in their jurisdiction, or using the current M.O. and filing charges in a community most likely to return a conviction against the content producer, or redefining due process to allow for monitoring of the net so that people who violate community standards can be prosecuted, or allow communities to individually censor parts of the net that fail to meet their standards.
Maybe the whole thing is just a complete cluster fuck, and should be scrapped in its entirety.
I think what's he's looking for is for that kind of law to disappear at the federal level, giving the states the freedom to decide it for themselves, and then to disappear at the state level, giving cities the freedom to decide it for themselves, and so on down the line until people are voluntarily living in small communities that are what they want (allow or do not allow porn) and people can freely move to the next town over if they are not happy with it.
Well, the problem is, this decision does not advance that agenda. Instead of restricting the applicability of obscenity laws, it broadens them by allowing the fine folks of Bluenose, Georgia to reach out and prosecute someone completely outside their community. We can certainly discuss whether or not his idea sounds like a nice place to visit, but one thing's for sure - this particular bus ain't gonna get us there.
Sounds to me like your saying "your" community gets to set the standards for all communities or why bother.
No, I'm telling you that's what you have now, in the wake of the Court punting on this case - my community gets to set the standards for all communities. You may not care for it - obviously, you don't - but I'm merely the messenger, my friend, so don't blame me.
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So I'm free to copy his signature onto, say, a loan application from a bank. After all, I have all the same freedoms and rights to do with it as the original author, right? I'm not less Free[tm] than RMS is when it comes to his signature, am I?
And I'm sure you have all sorts of "radical adjustments" designed to maintain the wealth of the US and prevent that from happening, right? Right.
Obviously you haven't learned much, despite your observations, if that's how you characterize capital investment. In case you need a refresher, it's not a "pyramid scheme" when you take the money invested and actually produce something with it. Considering that the US GDP has tripled in real terms since you (purportedly) started paying attention in about 1970 or so - it's rather obvious that this is barely more than wishful thinking on your part.
But hey, don't let me interrupt you, so good luck with that. Just remember that your lifestyle depends on the American economy nearly as much as mine does.
As an aside, I always find it morbidly fascinating to watch others rooting for their own demise. You do realize, I hope, that the American economy is the engine that drives the world, producing 25% of world GDP. Combine that with how deeply tied into the US economy are the economies of the remainder of the world - that US dollar you despise so much accounted for 3% of the Kiwi GDP last year, by the way, through exports to the US - and the proposed impending collapse of the US economy is actually the impending collapse of the world economy. I realize there's a certain amount of schadenfreude on the part of furriners rooting for the downfall of the United States, but the reality is, you'll be on the bread lines with us. See ya there.
Considering how awful things here are supposed to be, it sure is funny that all those foreigners are still willing to lend us money...
Actually, it's innate human nature to think of things that way. Put a one pound weight in one hand, and a two pound weight in the other - virtually everybody will be able to tell the difference between the two. Now put a forty pound weight in one hand, and a forty-one pound weight in the other - very few people will be able to tell the difference, despite the fact that it's a difference of one pound in both cases.
The reason we perceive the two cases differently is that, in the first case, "B" is twice as heavy as "A", whereas in the second case, "B" is only 2.5% heavier than "A". Or if you don't have heavy objects handy, get a three-way lightbulb and a lamp to match. Notice how the jump from 50 to 100 watts seems like a bigger jump in brightness than the jump from 100 watts to 150 watts. That's because, in percentage terms, it is a bigger jump. It's how we're wired to see the world, in terms of percentage differences.
Certainly some "gifted" people find comfort in believing that about "normal" folk, anyway.
No, manufacturers pay stores for shelf space. Really. And the amount you pay the supermarket depends on how much shelf space you want, and where you want it. It's a pretty good analogy considering that I'm only on my first cup of coffee :)
It's not bribery, and supermarkets in Europe do it too. They know very well that products at eye-level and on endcaps (the displays at the end of aisles) sell better than products on the bottom shelf in the middle of the aisle. And if you want your product to be in one of those premium locations, you'll be expected to pay a little extra for it. The applicability to the current topic is hopefully pretty obvious.
Well, yeah, it has. Obviously some of us take it for granted, but it certainly has when compared to centrally planned economies - information was a bit harder to come by in the old Soviet Union, for example.
Does it seem redundant to make both the sender and the recipient pay for the same bandwidth?
It's not like this has never happened before. Supermarkets charge manufacturers who want their products to have premium shelf space. Does it seem "redundant" to make both manufacturers and shoppers pay for the same can of soup?
What if other countries ban this type of thing, how could you regulate speed in one area, and not in another?
Nothing's going any faster anywhere than the slowest link on the chain allows...
No, it has a short "I" sound. Vowels have short ("I" as in "chin") and long ("I" as in "ice") sounds. Consonants such as "C" and "G" have soft ("city", "giraffe") and hard ("cup", "gap") sounds. Since we're being pedantic and all ;)
Actually, that was already said here...
See, that's the thing - otherwise useful neurons are being occupied by this information. Worse, I have another daughter who's three months old, so I have to do this all over again in a couple of years. I'm vaguely worried that I'll be gurgling on my deathbed some years from now, without a thought in my head except for that damn "my little ponyyyyyyy, my little ponyyyyyy" music...
Eh, I have a six year old daughter - believe me, you learn about all kinds of shit you never knew existed :-/
I suppose, as long as they also arranged for someone to hold a gun to your head, thereby forcing you to answer the phone and talk for hours and hours.
You don't have to answer it just because it rings ;)
Cooling would still be a problem, but thrust is a non-issue for arc welders.
Or you could click on the "Print" link to get a printer-friendly single-page layout.
Never. Not one single time. Who the fuck is smarthouse.com.au?
Well, that's the funny thing about obscenity - the crime of offending someone is so remarkably broad that simply codifying the concept in the first place leads you to all sorts of unpleasant logical consequences. What will we say when they ask to extradite someone who's violated their laws by offending them, particularly when they point out that we've made it a crime to offend us?
Let us not devolve into semantic games. What is the practical difference between criminalizing the act of offending Baptists by showing them pictures of boobies, and criminalizing the act of offending Muslims by showing them pictures of Mohammed as a suicide bomber?
A state may criminalize obscenity, but it must also abide by the community standards doctrine in defining obscenity - whether the average person, applying community standards, would find that the material appeals to the "prurient interest". Well, okay - whose community? There are towns in upstate NY that are a heck of a lot more conservative about this sort of thing than New York City may be. Should their community standards determine obscenity in NYC? And the only way around that is to not criminalize obscenity in the first place.
Honestly, community standards was a disaster from the get-go, and the internet has only exacerbated it.
What is obscenity if not criminalizing offense to another?
Don't like the laws? Work to elect people who will work to amend the laws to better reflect your values.
My point exactly. ;)
If I'm ignoring the point, it's because he wants to discuss his idea of how things should be, whereas I'm attempting to point out how things actually are. It's all well and good to say that smut peddlers shouldn't be responsible for adhering to SLC's community standards, but at the moment, they are responsible for adhering to them. The Court punting on this case does not advance the should be agenda of absolving the smut peddlers of their responsibility to SLC community standards. Instead, it strengthens the way things actually are by insuring that, for the foreseeable future, smut peddlers will continue to be responsible for abiding by the community standards of Salt Lake City. Which makes his praise for this denial of cert all the more bizarre, in light of what we presume his goals to be.
The government can either adopt dada's solution and try to prosecute each obscenity viewer separately in their jurisdiction, or using the current M.O. and filing charges in a community most likely to return a conviction against the content producer, or redefining due process to allow for monitoring of the net so that people who violate community standards can be prosecuted, or allow communities to individually censor parts of the net that fail to meet their standards.
Maybe the whole thing is just a complete cluster fuck, and should be scrapped in its entirety.
Well, the problem is, this decision does not advance that agenda. Instead of restricting the applicability of obscenity laws, it broadens them by allowing the fine folks of Bluenose, Georgia to reach out and prosecute someone completely outside their community. We can certainly discuss whether or not his idea sounds like a nice place to visit, but one thing's for sure - this particular bus ain't gonna get us there.
No, I'm telling you that's what you have now, in the wake of the Court punting on this case - my community gets to set the standards for all communities. You may not care for it - obviously, you don't - but I'm merely the messenger, my friend, so don't blame me.