One problem I have noticed is that Wiki editors often are confused about what is verifiable and what isn't.
If the information is verifiable, then there is absolutely no need for a seperate publication. Just because some info doesn't have a link to somewhere doesn't mean it's not trustworthy.
The Prius never was a threat for traditional cars and the established automakers. All of them have been able to survive comfortably without having anything similar to offer. That's because the Prius is neither a very economical nor environmentally that beneficial. While it might look green next to some of the American gas-guzzlers, it is only slightly more efficient than similar European cars. The fuel saved is nowhere near enough to justify the price premium. And while it's cool to drive fully electric for a few minutes, there is nothing that would make anybody go "Wow".
Tesla is different. They are a disruptive start-up with some impressive backing, and no existing business to fear cannibalizing.
Toyota may have sold over a million Prius's in the last 12 years. But I expect that twelve years from now, there will be many more cars being made based on technology developed by Tesla.
If I were making the choice between them, I'd easily choose the Volt over the Model S and do something else with the $17,000 in savings (hell, you could buy a whole other car for that if you were so inclined). In reality I'll buy neither of them, but at least it's a start.
Maybe, but the Model-S is certainly the more impressive car, and since when has hard-value and economics played a part in automobile purchases, particularly the higher segment of the market? It's 500 mm longer, but will likely be comparatively light for not having a combustion engine. While I couldn't find more specific details, I expect it will also be more powerful, also due to the larger battery. The touchscreen middle-console is awesome. And if they do it right, a fully electric car will need less maintenance and be easier to service.
It has nothing to do with using copper wires. The signals travel at close to the speed of light, for both copper wires and optical fibre. The latency has much more to do with the infrastructure. Packet switching, QOS, and shared capacity for ISPs. Basically, it's what makes the internet the internet. A few Arcade machines had direct telephone lines to central servers for "online" play, and that dealt with lag effectively. But nothing short of a internet revolution could bring it down to that kind of responsiveness.
From their site: "All prices include VAT where applicable" Anything else is illegal to advertise.
You are not paying on top of their advertised price. When you subtract the VAT from that price, that is the total turnover made by the supply chain (the supply chain being in this case one single company).
When they sell a game in the US, that amount is their revenue (excluding credit card fees etc.) If they sell it for the exact exchange rate equivalent in a European country, they have to hand over 15-25% of that as tax. Even if there were multiple parties in the supply chain, the net effect is the same.
Huh? VAT is included in the advertised price. You have to subtract the VAT from the retail price to determine the actual revenue. So say you buy a game for €50 and your state has 20% VAT, they're only getting €40. While that's still more than $50, you have to remember that typical retail prices are established over years. If games retail for €50, they're not going to push it to some odd number like €42.73 just because of fluctuations in exchange rates.
While I do understand the worries, taking this to it's logical conclusion would be to dictate what platforms developers can make GPL software for, and make it much dependant on the manufacturers. There are GPL apps that are exclusively for Windows, and for.NET, which of course have restrictions by Microsoft.
That's standard practice for everything from MP3 downloads to games, and considering you're paying anything from 17-25% tax on everything, it's not such a bad deal.
As a bit of an aside, the fact that game publishers/developers argue against selling used games has always seemed silly to me. I'm willing to bet that the majority of money that people get from selling old games gets put towards buying new games.
Your argument has always seemed silly to me. If you sold a game, the publisher lost one sale compare to if the buyer bought it new. Even assuming you put 100% back into games (unlikely), it would only result in the same total of sales. And because the developers need to keep making new games for the "pass through" customers, it reduces the market for higher-budget must-have titles and emphasizes quantity over quality.
And it's not like everyone who buys used games today would just shrug their shoulders and go buy a full-price copy instead.
Actually, that's exactly what they would do. The price difference in the major used game stores are pretty minimal. The "I can't afford it" argument has always been very weak. In all honesty, if someone can afford a $400 games console and games, chances are he'll have plenty of money to make up for the $15 price difference for one little game.
That's a very broad generalisation. It reminds me of a definition I heard of marketing: You have boxes of tomatoes. You divide them up and price one choice higher than the other. The customer then buys the more expensive one because he got the impression they're better.
Unless you understand how the food market works and know where the food was produced, it's safe to say that you're likely to get pretty much the same products no matter where you shop.
As far as quality is concerned, we're much pickier these days than ever. Prices were always a major concern for shoppers, and that was even more true in years gone by.
BTW, the difference between supermarket and market produce isn't how they're grown, but the picking and ripening periods. Sweeter fruit sells better, but on the downside there is quite a lot of waste.
It's not always as bad as you make out. Hardware support is less of an issue than it used to be.
But I'd be interested to know specifically what "home devices" you mean from Best Buy etc. These days most peripherals are standard web cams, printers, scanners and storage devices. Things were different in the days of USB modems, but most people now have dedicated WLAN router-modems and laptops have integrated WLAN, which are generally work in Ubuntu.
While scanners are still admittedly a pain in the butt, digital cameras, USB web cams and memory sticks are generally supported "out of the box" with Ubuntu. And printing from Linux actually works much better with my Printer, because it doesn't have a crappy Windows driver which refuses to let me print if it decides my toner's too low, and makes it extra awkward to do duplex printing.
As for Audio/Video devices, like webcams and microphones, they're not "thousands of new devices daily", but actually just a handful of individual chipsets repackaged under different brands.
I would say that between all the crappy Windows drivers and the whole Security/Antivirus Software hassle on Windows, there are certainly some users which would happier with Linux.
One more anecdote if you're interested: I bought a cheap USB MIDI adapter. You can get it to work with XP, but Vista isn't, or at least wasn't at the time supported. Apparently it would conflict with some webcams too, and the manufacturer recommended a fix that involved editing the Windows registry. With Ubuntu it was a matter of plug-and-play.
What a load of crap. The components in a Mac are exactly the same as in a Windows machine, i.e. standard PC hardware. And consequently, they have the same rate of failure.
I disagree. The non-iPod DAP-market has never been weaker. Apple's offerings are basically without any serious competition. Sure, there's the bargain-bin players, and the slightly clumsy iPod alternatives which aren't much cheaper anyway, but in terms of functionality there's nothing much that can beat the iPod nano.
Because while it might be free for end consumers, there is a genuine market there which needs competition. Money changes hands for stuff like search boxes for example. I shouldn't have to mention what happened to web progression after Microsoft crushed the competition. Being dominant in the browser share would give Microsoft leverage on other web technologies. I shouldn't have to mention all the things that happened (or rather didn't happen) with the web after Microsoft crushed the competition.
It's the same reason Microsoft need should be regulated with Windows, despite the fact that it's practically free for end consumers, and there is basically no non-free alternative.
It actually has a hell of a lot to do with cost. That's the whole problem with the debate about the definitions of phrases like "open source" and "shared source". If a "free" license didn't eliminate the opportunity of marketing and selling a product (and not a "service" or "support") then FOSS would be fundamentally different.
There is no explicit exemption in U.S. law either, but it is concluded from the requirements for originality. It would have to be tried in court.
Your "fair" solution suggests that Wikipedia cave to the will of a foreign institution and abandon their principles of contribution, even though their use is clearly allowed in the relevant region (United States). Hey, maybe we should also listen to what China has to say about what gets into Wikipedia.
And don't forget that the NPG hasn't taken to this in an "evil" way, they did offer to provide lower resolution pictures and haven't been preditory
They wrote threatening letters, ignored key facts, and threatened an individual with an unreasonable deadline hoping that he would cave. They ignore international jurisdiction and assert local laws on a foreign country. I'd say that's pretty "evil"
The guys at Wikipedia explained to them in 2006 that their offer for restricted licenses was incompatible with Wikipedia's licensing, but they continued with willful ignorance.
However: when the USA increased the length of copyright, again, such that when Steamboat Willie was just about to come into public domain in the USA it became protected world wide.
Not true. In most European Regions, the Copyright would have continued. There would have been different copyright statuses for different regions.
Another example is Popeye: The character became public domain this year in Europe, but not in the US.
WMF is an U.S. institution, so U.S. courts have everything to say. If the NPG is unhappy about what is available on American servers, it can try to get UK ISPs to block Wikipedia, but if you think WMF is going to cave to every little country whining about breaking the law, you're wrong.
It's not any different than if I took a public-domain work and tried to sell a Kindle version on Amazon. Once it was discovered, Amazon should refund the end customers (which it has done in this case) and then take up action against me.
That would be perfectly legal. No-one will stop you selling public domain content for profit.
If indeed the "seller" didn't have rights to the book, it still isn't a simple matter of just deleting the copies. The infringement has already taken place. It doesn't give Amazon the right to delete content they sold.
Slashdot Mirror
One link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29
One problem I have noticed is that Wiki editors often are confused about what is verifiable and what isn't.
If the information is verifiable, then there is absolutely no need for a seperate publication. Just because some info doesn't have a link to somewhere doesn't mean it's not trustworthy.
The Prius never was a threat for traditional cars and the established automakers. All of them have been able to survive comfortably without having anything similar to offer.
That's because the Prius is neither a very economical nor environmentally that beneficial. While it might look green next to some of the American gas-guzzlers, it is only slightly more efficient than similar European cars. The fuel saved is nowhere near enough to justify the price premium. And while it's cool to drive fully electric for a few minutes, there is nothing that would make anybody go "Wow".
Tesla is different. They are a disruptive start-up with some impressive backing, and no existing business to fear cannibalizing.
Toyota may have sold over a million Prius's in the last 12 years. But I expect that twelve years from now, there will be many more cars being made based on technology developed by Tesla.
If I were making the choice between them, I'd easily choose the Volt over the Model S and do something else with the $17,000 in savings (hell, you could buy a whole other car for that if you were so inclined). In reality I'll buy neither of them, but at least it's a start.
Maybe, but the Model-S is certainly the more impressive car, and since when has hard-value and economics played a part in automobile purchases, particularly the higher segment of the market?
It's 500 mm longer, but will likely be comparatively light for not having a combustion engine. While I couldn't find more specific details, I expect it will also be more powerful, also due to the larger battery. The touchscreen middle-console is awesome. And if they do it right, a fully electric car will need less maintenance and be easier to service.
It has nothing to do with using copper wires. The signals travel at close to the speed of light, for both copper wires and optical fibre. The latency has much more to do with the infrastructure. Packet switching, QOS, and shared capacity for ISPs. Basically, it's what makes the internet the internet.
A few Arcade machines had direct telephone lines to central servers for "online" play, and that dealt with lag effectively. But nothing short of a internet revolution could bring it down to that kind of responsiveness.
From their site: "All prices include VAT where applicable"
Anything else is illegal to advertise.
You are not paying on top of their advertised price. When you subtract the VAT from that price, that is the total turnover made by the supply chain (the supply chain being in this case one single company).
When they sell a game in the US, that amount is their revenue (excluding credit card fees etc.) If they sell it for the exact exchange rate equivalent in a European country, they have to hand over 15-25% of that as tax.
Even if there were multiple parties in the supply chain, the net effect is the same.
Why do you have to make it seem complicated?
Huh? VAT is included in the advertised price. You have to subtract the VAT from the retail price to determine the actual revenue. So say you buy a game for €50 and your state has 20% VAT, they're only getting €40.
While that's still more than $50, you have to remember that typical retail prices are established over years. If games retail for €50, they're not going to push it to some odd number like €42.73 just because of fluctuations in exchange rates.
While I do understand the worries, taking this to it's logical conclusion would be to dictate what platforms developers can make GPL software for, and make it much dependant on the manufacturers. .NET, which of course have restrictions by Microsoft.
There are GPL apps that are exclusively for Windows, and for
That's standard practice for everything from MP3 downloads to games, and considering you're paying anything from 17-25% tax on everything, it's not such a bad deal.
As a bit of an aside, the fact that game publishers/developers argue against selling used games has always seemed silly to me. I'm willing to bet that the majority of money that people get from selling old games gets put towards buying new games.
Your argument has always seemed silly to me. If you sold a game, the publisher lost one sale compare to if the buyer bought it new.
Even assuming you put 100% back into games (unlikely), it would only result in the same total of sales. And because the developers need to keep making new games for the "pass through" customers, it reduces the market for higher-budget must-have titles and emphasizes quantity over quality.
And it's not like everyone who buys used games today would just shrug their shoulders and go buy a full-price copy instead.
Actually, that's exactly what they would do. The price difference in the major used game stores are pretty minimal.
The "I can't afford it" argument has always been very weak. In all honesty, if someone can afford a $400 games console and games, chances are he'll have plenty of money to make up for the $15 price difference for one little game.
If you're living in a 7-story building chances are you'll have some kind of internet connection available.
That's a very broad generalisation. It reminds me of a definition I heard of marketing:
You have boxes of tomatoes. You divide them up and price one choice higher than the other. The customer then buys the more expensive one because he got the impression they're better.
Unless you understand how the food market works and know where the food was produced, it's safe to say that you're likely to get pretty much the same products no matter where you shop.
As far as quality is concerned, we're much pickier these days than ever. Prices were always a major concern for shoppers, and that was even more true in years gone by.
BTW, the difference between supermarket and market produce isn't how they're grown, but the picking and ripening periods. Sweeter fruit sells better, but on the downside there is quite a lot of waste.
It's not always as bad as you make out. Hardware support is less of an issue than it used to be.
But I'd be interested to know specifically what "home devices" you mean from Best Buy etc. These days most peripherals are standard web cams, printers, scanners and storage devices.
Things were different in the days of USB modems, but most people now have dedicated WLAN router-modems and laptops have integrated WLAN, which are generally work in Ubuntu.
While scanners are still admittedly a pain in the butt, digital cameras, USB web cams and memory sticks are generally supported "out of the box" with Ubuntu. And printing from Linux actually works much better with my Printer, because it doesn't have a crappy Windows driver which refuses to let me print if it decides my toner's too low, and makes it extra awkward to do duplex printing.
As for Audio/Video devices, like webcams and microphones, they're not "thousands of new devices daily", but actually just a handful of individual chipsets repackaged under different brands.
I would say that between all the crappy Windows drivers and the whole Security/Antivirus Software hassle on Windows, there are certainly some users which would happier with Linux.
One more anecdote if you're interested: I bought a cheap USB MIDI adapter. You can get it to work with XP, but Vista isn't, or at least wasn't at the time supported. Apparently it would conflict with some webcams too, and the manufacturer recommended a fix that involved editing the Windows registry. With Ubuntu it was a matter of plug-and-play.
What a load of crap. The components in a Mac are exactly the same as in a Windows machine, i.e. standard PC hardware. And consequently, they have the same rate of failure.
I disagree. The non-iPod DAP-market has never been weaker. Apple's offerings are basically without any serious competition.
Sure, there's the bargain-bin players, and the slightly clumsy iPod alternatives which aren't much cheaper anyway, but in terms of functionality there's nothing much that can beat the iPod nano.
Yeah, and lose what is probably the majority of their income. You sir are a fucking moron.
Because while it might be free for end consumers, there is a genuine market there which needs competition. Money changes hands for stuff like search boxes for example.
I shouldn't have to mention what happened to web progression after Microsoft crushed the competition. Being dominant in the browser share would give Microsoft leverage on other web technologies. I shouldn't have to mention all the things that happened (or rather didn't happen) with the web after Microsoft crushed the competition.
It's the same reason Microsoft need should be regulated with Windows, despite the fact that it's practically free for end consumers, and there is basically no non-free alternative.
It actually has a hell of a lot to do with cost. That's the whole problem with the debate about the definitions of phrases like "open source" and "shared source".
If a "free" license didn't eliminate the opportunity of marketing and selling a product (and not a "service" or "support") then FOSS would be fundamentally different.
There is no explicit exemption in U.S. law either, but it is concluded from the requirements for originality. It would have to be tried in court.
Your "fair" solution suggests that Wikipedia cave to the will of a foreign institution and abandon their principles of contribution, even though their use is clearly allowed in the relevant region (United States). Hey, maybe we should also listen to what China has to say about what gets into Wikipedia.
The public loses, because of having misleading copyright notices when in fact the works are free. That's what some people call Copyfraud.
It would also be strictly incompatible with the licenses used for all Wikimedia content.
Copyright is intended to incentivize creative work, not give museums a steady income. These institutions are also already heavily subsidized.
And don't forget that the NPG hasn't taken to this in an "evil" way, they did offer to provide lower resolution pictures and haven't been preditory
They wrote threatening letters, ignored key facts, and threatened an individual with an unreasonable deadline hoping that he would cave. They ignore international jurisdiction and assert local laws on a foreign country. I'd say that's pretty "evil"
The guys at Wikipedia explained to them in 2006 that their offer for restricted licenses was incompatible with Wikipedia's licensing, but they continued with willful ignorance.
However: when the USA increased the length of copyright, again, such that when Steamboat Willie was just about to come into public domain in the USA it became protected world wide.
Not true. In most European Regions, the Copyright would have continued. There would have been different copyright statuses for different regions.
Another example is Popeye: The character became public domain this year in Europe, but not in the US.
WMF is an U.S. institution, so U.S. courts have everything to say. If the NPG is unhappy about what is available on American servers, it can try to get UK ISPs to block Wikipedia, but if you think WMF is going to cave to every little country whining about breaking the law, you're wrong.
It's not any different than if I took a public-domain work and tried to sell a Kindle version on Amazon. Once it was discovered, Amazon should refund the end customers (which it has done in this case) and then take up action against me.
That would be perfectly legal. No-one will stop you selling public domain content for profit.
If indeed the "seller" didn't have rights to the book, it still isn't a simple matter of just deleting the copies. The infringement has already taken place. It doesn't give Amazon the right to delete content they sold.