I love the fact in his letters he always "hopes to keep this confidential." That always works when the internet is involved.
I think you may misunderstand the reason he writes that he "hopes to keep this confidential".
It's not about protecting himslef, it's part of the threat package: "Pay me now or spend a fortune paying me later... oh, and by the way... nice reputation you have there. It would be a shame if anything *happened* to it."
No, because the papers themselves won't be able to afford to pay reporters.
The AP is a way for them to cut costs by sharing the expense of reporters. One AP reporter is far more efficient for raw facts than twelve reporters getting the same facts for twelve papers (though, of course, variety and depth suffer -- but that's another discussion).
Newspaper revenues are tanking, and if the newswires go bye-bye for lack of revenue, news reporting as we've known it is gone forever. Compare the papers today to the papers of fifteen years ago, and you'll see that the transformation of newspapers has already begun. The death of the AP (and Reuters, Bloomberg, and other wire services) would pretty much put the nail in the coffin for news reporting, and I think it'd be a terrible loss... social progress depends on public education, and good news reporting is a cornerstone of that.
As a matter of fact, it is. Maybe not for you and me, but we both read/., so we are not exactly the norm. Have you not seen people talking to or screaming at their computer? Things like "work, bloody @#%#$@#%!!!"? Repeatedly pressing the same button in anger?
Yes, I've seen it. And I attribute it to learned behavior that can be changed.
And you speak of a different approach: most people do not know how to do a task on a computer any other way than what was shown to them. A computer is a big black box for them, and they now that if they do A, then B, then C normally X happens. You and me might try B' instead of B or even B'', but most people just have not got the faintest idea. We know what goes on inside a computer, most people don't; they simply copy behaviour.
Which is part of my point... and by making it easy for them to never ever have to think for themselves, they will never bother applying basic problem-solving skills. They don't need to know anything about the inside of a computer... it could be as simple as them realizing that the problem is beyond their skillset to solve, and they need to reach out to someone more informed. And then that person can impart some knowledge to them.
Yes, there enough reason: computers do not understand us. Period. My mother can perfectly explain to me, even in different ways, what she wants her computer to do. But while working with her computer, she is simply at a loss because she should speak the computer's language insteaad of the computer understanding her language.
I think we're partly in agreement here... computers don't have good comprehension skills; that's why we must use a different approach. To think of interacting with a computer as an equivalent to using language is misguided. Sorry for the car analogy, but you don't tell your car to take you to the mall; you drive your car to the mall. The same paradigm exists for computers, and I don't think we'll be able to get away from it in my lifetime, or my kids' lifetimes. The problem is that people anthropomorphize their computers to such an extent that they attempt to use human-human interaction methods with something that is not even close to equivalent to a computer.
That is a broad statement, you may be right there, may be wrong as well. More intuitive software would certainly harm no one. Even very smart people are more happy when something is intuitive.
'Intuitive' is a very fuzzy word... I think (not sure) what you mean is that people prefer interfaces that are similar to (or are analogues of)other things they've interacted with. The problem I have with this is that it limits the potential of new technologies, since they become constrained with non-optimal interfaces. I've come across this several times implementing paperless office solutions, when seniors required the workflow (and step processes) to exactly mimic their old paper processes -- this resulted in that office not being able to take advantage of their paperless office, except to save on filing and document search costs.
I was merely reflecting on the fact that most of IT is (still) not intuitive enough. I cannot explain to my mother that on one occasion she should retry an action, while on other occasions she should simply wait.
The problem here is that your mother lacks the proper frame of reference for this to be intuitive. This is a product of the youth of the information age. You could try showing her how to triage the problem. Is the computer nuresponsive or slow? Then wait. Does the computer seem to otherwise be working properly, except for the intended action? (If she uses Windows) teach her about the process manager.
If the process manager is too much for her, then probably she shouldn't be using Windows at all. She should be using an email-internet-media viewing appl
Your reaction is indicative for what is wrong in IT: when in the real world something does not work, you try it again and again, maybe even in different ways.
It is not human nature, to repeat a failed action in the hopes that the results change... and that especially is not indicative of problem-solving skills. It can fall under the umbrella of learned helplessness, an actual term which I suggest you read up on.
It can also be a different learned action, from when a person speaks and must repeat themselves to be heard -- either because the listener wasn't paying attention, did not understand, or some other reason.
There is no reason that people can't learn to try a different approach with computers than they do when speaking with people. And for that matter, effective speakers don't simply repeat the same thing again hoping that there will be comprehension the nth time. I firmly believe that the actions you ascribe to human nature are instead learned stupidity.
One problem, as pointed out by another responder, is that there is no confirmation that the command was 'accepted' by the OS. So people click (or use the shortcut keys) again thinking that maybe the system did not 'hear' them the first time.
You mention that it can be part of a problem-solving approach... but it's a bad problem-solving approach, but that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing someone repeatedly entering an instruction -- whether out of frustration or something else, I don't know... but if you read the OP, you can see that problem-solving had nothing to do with their behavior (frustration was probably a larger part of it).
The biggest problem is that the user has no other recourse... they take the only action they know how to do, which is to repeat a futile command. People faced with an obstacle do not like 'waiting' as an option for overcoming the obstacle, it's a psychological issue with feeling in control... but, IF they can be convinced that waiting is a form of action, then it works.
You say my view is what's wrong with IT... I say catering to the LCD of users/people is what's wrong with society. We're more and more a lazy stupid people, and I think it's attitudes like yours that enable it to continue.
I know a job search is hard work, but I'm not sure it's going to take as much time as a fulltime job... meaning that much more time to play with Xorg, or whatever else.
I think you misspelled Zork.
The economy is pitch-dark. You are likely to be eaten by a layoff.
Sit there and press Ctrl+Alt+N over and over, and wait and wait. Suddenly, 10 notepads will all open at once 20 seconds later and the system returns to normal.
You do realize you're slightly compounding the problem by hitting your shortcut over and over again?
Seriously, this is the #1 annoyance for me when roaming in stupid user land... if you click something, and your computer slows down or freezes up... don't click it again until the first request resolves.
Really, it's common sense.
Maybe it's just because I've been playing/working with computers for so long, but if your system is temporarily resource-starved or road-blocked (for whatever reason, including a stupid OS), you shouldn't increase the demands on it.
Existing common law has validated the need and restrictions on the doctrine of misappropriation wrt "hot news".
I fail to see why someone such as yourself would dismiss that case law out of hand without reading more about it... instead you sit on your moral high chair and demand that proof be brought to you.
I have no problem with you being sceptical... but it's intellectually lazy for you to be sceptical but to demand that others address it for you. Instead of placing a burden of proof, why not aim for greater understanding on your part?
Thus the real statement of the quesiton is this: if the manufacturing cost of books and audio books goes down then clearly the price of these should fall. But since audo books and e-books have different roylaty rates, if you change their ratio then you chance the total earnings to the authors. thus you need to re-adjust the roylaty rates so that the authors get the same total earnings.
This is false. If this were an ideal free market, it would be true -- but the fact of the matter is that there are barriers to entry, incomplete information, and most importantly, works of art/literature are NOT a commodity good.
Regardless of the the cost to produce the good (author + publisher), the price is determined by the seller, and will only loosely follow marginal cost if there is ample competition.
In short, this has little to do with economics, other than the fact the e-books compete with audiobooks, and more to do with terms of licensing of a copyrighted work.
Newspapers should drop the authors and go back to hiring journalists.
Ha. Newspapers are firing the journalists, because they can get basic news from the AP, or Reuters.
Authors are what sell print media, since that content is not available from the newswires... and they can keep the stories secret until publication.
News reporting is being outsourced to the newswires. Since all the papers get their news from the same sources, timeliness doesn't matter anymore... and the competitive advantage from timeliness doesn't outweigh the cost of a full staff of reporters.
FYI, most quality journalism is the in-depth reporting and analysis you ascribe to "authors" not to journalists. If I just want the news, I'll go online. I subscribe to three papers, for the following reasons: (1) Local news -- but this is suffering, since small papers are laying off reporters (2) Quality international reporting -- I pay for a daily that has more unbiased and varied international news than most US papers (3) Sports reporting and analysis (and this one I'll probably cancel soon, since more & better info is available online)
Maybe I'm an outlier, or an edge case... but actual newsfact reporting is a waste of newsprint, IMO.
The AP is not a newspaper, it is a newswire. There's a big difference.
It's common knowledge in news publishing that in-depth reporting is disappearing. There have been reporter layoffs coast-to-coast, and more papers than ever are simply paying their subscriptions to the AP or Reuters or another news service, then copyediting the AP article (and crediting the AP, of course). This alone is severely limiting the quantity of quality news (especially local news).
However, facts are facts. Since they cannot be copyrighted, this quasi-property status is all that keeps someone from grabbing the facts from the AP Newswire, and reporting on it themselves. This can be done as quickly as someone who is giving attribution to the AP, so the competitive advantage you allow for (which enables the profit) is moot.
If we work from your example, a publisher protects their profit by use of secrecy. This doesn't work for a newswire, whose very business model depends on others' having access to their reporting.
In essence, there are two levels of publication -- once by the AP to news outlets, and once by the news outlets to the public. No "hot news" provision means that the AP's customers (the news outlets) don't need to pay the AP, or even attribute stories to them. Thus, the AP can't pay reporters, and we have even fewer reporters to dig up the facts.
Eventually, all news outlets will be just like the blogosphere, with a dearth of quality reporting, and endless bloglink circle jerks.
I, for one, appreciate the value of the fourth estate.
Not sure where the confusion is... to clarify, I wrote that we must accept the fact that some "should-be-publicly-operated" services are privatized, whether or not we accept the premise by which they were privatized.
In short, I agree that privatization of the prisons is a bad idea... but since they have been privatized, we (as a society) need to deal with the realities, and figure out how to make the best of a bad situation... I don't think it's likely that we'll be able to socialize the prison system again (no matter how much it makes sense).
but privatized prisons is a quite recent phenomenon and again, this story shows us why it's a bad idea.
Only recent in the US. Britain had its share of private prisons over the centuries, before the practice was ended due to the conflict between profit and human rights. For that matter, most prisons in colonial America were private enterprises, though allowed only by grant of the Crown. Even in the young Republic, prisons were often run as loosely for-profit enterprises (Auburn plan prisons)... while the concept was that prisons be self-sufficient by enforced labor, the truth is that many prisons enriched greatly those who ran them (or their friends, who benefited from prison labor in private industry). Enough so, that in the 1850s, completely private enterprises loudly complained of the unfair competition from nearly-free labor.
At any rate, abuse of the prison system for profits has long been around. At least now it's very clear who's making the money.
As usual, I find that the decisions and writing of Judge Learned Hand to be some of the most insightful. From his extensive writings on free speech (which O.W. Holmes borrowed heavily from), to the present matter:
from Harvad Law (emphasis mine):
The Second Circuit was very hostile to INS for many years. Justice Learned Hand agreed with Justices Holmes and Brandeis and was quite overt in getting his colleagues to circumvent INS. An example of this deliberate resistance was Cheney Bros. v. Doris Silk Corp., 35 F.2d 279 (2nd Circ. 1929), involving two competing silk manufacturers. Plaintiff Cheney requested an injunction barring Doris from copying patterns used in dress design during the eight to nine month fashion season. Cheney relied on INS, saying its situation was analogous because the considerable expense involved in designing the patterns couldn't be recouped when the defendant copied the patterns with no similar expenditure and sold them for lower prices. Affirming the District Court's denial of an injunction, Justice Hand noted that because of the short season life of the patterns, design patent protection was impractical and they would likely lack the requisite originality to qualify. Nor did the patterns qualify for copyright protection because they flunked the conceptual separability test. Justice Hand said that, although it seemed unfair to not provide a remedy to Cheney, it was not up to the judicial system to extend a patent- or copyright-like monopoly in the absence of legislation authorizing it.
But this doesn't really matter anyway, since if you read on in the link I provided, you'll see that federal common law was abolished, so what matters is the specific state law. New York common law establishes strict criteria for the application of the misappropriation doctrine to "hot news" (see National Basketball Ass'n v. Sports Team Analysis & Tracking Systems, Inc. [warning: site is ugly as sin] for how a recent plaintiff's claim was found to be lacking)... and this seems to meet all of it. It made me chuckle, however, that in that link one of the biggest supporters of the defendant in that case was the AP.
At any rate, I think we need to have either sweeping federal law specifically creating this property, or we need to have no right to "hot news" as quasi-property. The problem with the latter is then there is no incentive to do fact reporting at all, since it would be impossible to recoup the costs of it. The idealist in me says "Boo to treating information as property" but the realist in me says "Yay to having paid reporters".
Meanwhile, the cynic in me says "It doesn't matter, we'll only see the news they want us to see", the paranoid in me says "We'll only see the news THEY want us to see", and the dadaist in me says "News? Art.".
I was going to tag this idleispants until I realized it isn't an idle story, maybe slashdotispants is the right tag. Is there some site that captures what used good about slashdot?
Nice selective quoting there. Why don't you provide the contextural details from my post that contravene your point (specifically, the references to chartered exceptions)?
Are you trolling, or is your idiocy purely accidental?
What this says to me is that unless I think *no* public service can *ever* be privatized, then expediency dictates that I should be willing to accept the privatization of *any* public service. Sorry, I can't accept that.
No, that's not what it says. That's your inferrence.
What it says is that, regardless of your personal opinion of privatization, a lot of services have been privatized, and you should act accordingly.
Sorry if you want to keep on setting up straw men... I'm not interested in debating them any further.
St. Petersburg Times: owned by the Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a journalism school well know for its uncommon (in today's world) approach of unbiased reporting and the primacy of fact over sensationalism.
Gotta say, props to you for linking to a neutral site, when there are so many sites "Obama broken promises" sites maintained by partisan hacks.
Dude, that's a mountain. It will be there for thousands of years regardless. Carving into it probably shortened its life span slightly.
But the busts are not natural, and will remain for some time. Even if they were to be cut off and stuck somewhere else for display, they'd likely last a very long time.
Also, specious use of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial is just silly... yes they require maintenance to keep standing... so did countless Egyptian Monuments that are no longer standing, yet I don't see you complaining about the shitty construction/engineering of those monuments.
And of course another reason we no longer build stuff like that: a shortage of slave labor.
That's immaterial, since we have machines instead, which might be (probably are) be cheaper than slave labor. It's simply about cost vs. perceived value of longevity.
I agree with you 100%... Unfortunately, though, that's not the reality we have to deal with now. We have to make the best of what we have.
If we're going to discuss an ideal world where public services aren't privatized, we might as well go all the way with the idealism and say there would be no crime:)
It is the sole duty of the operators of a commercial prison to maximize revenue for the shareholders.
Sigh... I keep seeing that sentiment here, and it still remains untrue.
Most corporations operate this way in spirit, but not all. By nature, public corporations act this way... but prison corps (even when publically held) are not as sensitive to market forces (and therefore maximization of profits), since their survival (and thus profits) comes from exclusive government contract, not from a free market.
The truth of the matter is that corporations are free to act in whatever way they choose wrt profit, as long as it is established in the corporate charter. Public companies act to maximize profit because to do otherwise spells D-O-O-M for their stock. But there are some very visible counter-examples, such as 'green' corporations who make exceptions to profit-maximization in order to be environmentally responsible... and since it's in the charter, no shareholder can take civil action against them for failure to make decisions in the interests of the shareholders.
We need to expect more from the corporations that have so much influence on our government, and part of that is expecting them to see beyond this quarter's profits, and part of it is having them recognize the value of acting responsibly. This last part can be done in two ways -- reward them for responsible behavior, or punish them for irresponsible behavior. Only when they factor in this additional cost/revenue can we have faith in them to act responsibly.
In this case, the prison company should be forced to make restitution to all people sentenced in this kickback scheme, and to the public for the cost of incarceration, as well as the additional costs we'll bear as a result of the incarceration. Ideally this would bankrupt the company, so another one would get to fill the spot (with hopefully more responsible decision-makers).
Modern humans living in "prehistoric" conditions have a much more sedentary lifestyle than you might think... but it's a positive feedback loop.
Requires more calories --> needs to hunt more --> requires more calories.
One of the factors feeding into the lower caloric requirement is diversity of easily-collected food sources... so less energy expended for hunting.
Also note that Neandertals regularly practiced cannibalism (nearly all Neandertal sites show evidence of cannibalism, and the best Neandertal DNA comes from bones scraped clean for food, thus being less contaminated).
I mean, can you think of a modern building that is still likely to be standing in 2000 years?
To nitpick a bit, the comparison whould be against a modern monument, not a generic modern building.
And there are likely several modern monuments that will last a couple thousand years... Mount Rushmore, for one (sure acid rain etc will make then unrecognizable, and it's likely one or more will have sloughing issues, but note that the pyramids, while still standing, are not in their original glory).
Personally, I consider the fact that the pyramids are still standing to be a factor of chance -- they are built in the desert, with low humidity and little to no plant life which could damage the structure (unlike the pyramids of central america).
But, if we wanted to build something to last a few millenia we could. Modern engineering doesn't prevent us from building for ridiculous longevity -- we just choose to optimize for other considerations (cost!).
I'm quite familiar with the concept of herd immunity.
My post was tongue-in-cheek, but to carry the proposed attitude forward...
[Evil] If you want to have herd immunity, then get rid of those who compromise it. This includes people too stupid to get immunized, and people who cannot get immunized due to allergies, etc.
To be a complete asshole with no regard for the value of an individual, the health of the herd demands that we allow those people to be removed from the genepool. [/Evil]
Now excuse me while I go take a few showers and eat a few laxatives to cleanse/purge myself of the evilness.
Ray, it's a surprise to see you commenting on a non-RIAA story (despite all evidence to the contrary, RIAA execs & lawyers are not Neandertals).
At any rate, one thing I've read from a couple sources is that Neandertals likely had a much higher metabolic rate than modern humans, and thus were outcompeted for food. One figure I read (in Nat Geo, I think) was that Neandertals would have needed around 7k calories a day, while moder humans require around 2k calories.
This, coupled with a less diverse food supply for Neandertals, meant that modern humans were much better at surviving and reproducing during times of scarcity, like the ice ages.
Modern humans and Neadertals competed in the same niches, and if the Neandertals were better adapted to it, they would have wiped out H. Sapiens instead.
I think it's a mistake to place any scorn on individuals battling for survival, like humans were doing then. Once a culture has developed that has the excess resources to care for those less capable, then you might have a point...
Slashdot Mirror
I think you may misunderstand the reason he writes that he "hopes to keep this confidential".
It's not about protecting himslef, it's part of the threat package: "Pay me now or spend a fortune paying me later... oh, and by the way... nice reputation you have there. It would be a shame if anything *happened* to it."
No, because the papers themselves won't be able to afford to pay reporters.
The AP is a way for them to cut costs by sharing the expense of reporters. One AP reporter is far more efficient for raw facts than twelve reporters getting the same facts for twelve papers (though, of course, variety and depth suffer -- but that's another discussion).
Newspaper revenues are tanking, and if the newswires go bye-bye for lack of revenue, news reporting as we've known it is gone forever. Compare the papers today to the papers of fifteen years ago, and you'll see that the transformation of newspapers has already begun. The death of the AP (and Reuters, Bloomberg, and other wire services) would pretty much put the nail in the coffin for news reporting, and I think it'd be a terrible loss... social progress depends on public education, and good news reporting is a cornerstone of that.
P.S. Sorry for all the metaphors.
Yes, I've seen it. And I attribute it to learned behavior that can be changed.
Which is part of my point... and by making it easy for them to never ever have to think for themselves, they will never bother applying basic problem-solving skills. They don't need to know anything about the inside of a computer... it could be as simple as them realizing that the problem is beyond their skillset to solve, and they need to reach out to someone more informed. And then that person can impart some knowledge to them.
I think we're partly in agreement here... computers don't have good comprehension skills; that's why we must use a different approach. To think of interacting with a computer as an equivalent to using language is misguided. Sorry for the car analogy, but you don't tell your car to take you to the mall; you drive your car to the mall. The same paradigm exists for computers, and I don't think we'll be able to get away from it in my lifetime, or my kids' lifetimes. The problem is that people anthropomorphize their computers to such an extent that they attempt to use human-human interaction methods with something that is not even close to equivalent to a computer.
'Intuitive' is a very fuzzy word... I think (not sure) what you mean is that people prefer interfaces that are similar to (or are analogues of)other things they've interacted with. The problem I have with this is that it limits the potential of new technologies, since they become constrained with non-optimal interfaces. I've come across this several times implementing paperless office solutions, when seniors required the workflow (and step processes) to exactly mimic their old paper processes -- this resulted in that office not being able to take advantage of their paperless office, except to save on filing and document search costs.
The problem here is that your mother lacks the proper frame of reference for this to be intuitive. This is a product of the youth of the information age. You could try showing her how to triage the problem. Is the computer nuresponsive or slow? Then wait. Does the computer seem to otherwise be working properly, except for the intended action? (If she uses Windows) teach her about the process manager.
If the process manager is too much for her, then probably she shouldn't be using Windows at all. She should be using an email-internet-media viewing appl
It is not human nature, to repeat a failed action in the hopes that the results change... and that especially is not indicative of problem-solving skills. It can fall under the umbrella of learned helplessness, an actual term which I suggest you read up on.
It can also be a different learned action, from when a person speaks and must repeat themselves to be heard -- either because the listener wasn't paying attention, did not understand, or some other reason.
There is no reason that people can't learn to try a different approach with computers than they do when speaking with people. And for that matter, effective speakers don't simply repeat the same thing again hoping that there will be comprehension the nth time. I firmly believe that the actions you ascribe to human nature are instead learned stupidity.
One problem, as pointed out by another responder, is that there is no confirmation that the command was 'accepted' by the OS. So people click (or use the shortcut keys) again thinking that maybe the system did not 'hear' them the first time.
You mention that it can be part of a problem-solving approach... but it's a bad problem-solving approach, but that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing someone repeatedly entering an instruction -- whether out of frustration or something else, I don't know... but if you read the OP, you can see that problem-solving had nothing to do with their behavior (frustration was probably a larger part of it).
The biggest problem is that the user has no other recourse... they take the only action they know how to do, which is to repeat a futile command. People faced with an obstacle do not like 'waiting' as an option for overcoming the obstacle, it's a psychological issue with feeling in control... but, IF they can be convinced that waiting is a form of action, then it works.
You say my view is what's wrong with IT... I say catering to the LCD of users/people is what's wrong with society. We're more and more a lazy stupid people, and I think it's attitudes like yours that enable it to continue.
I think you misspelled Zork.
The economy is pitch-dark. You are likely to be eaten by a layoff.
You do realize you're slightly compounding the problem by hitting your shortcut over and over again?
Seriously, this is the #1 annoyance for me when roaming in stupid user land... if you click something, and your computer slows down or freezes up... don't click it again until the first request resolves.
Really, it's common sense.
Maybe it's just because I've been playing/working with computers for so long, but if your system is temporarily resource-starved or road-blocked (for whatever reason, including a stupid OS), you shouldn't increase the demands on it.
Existing common law has validated the need and restrictions on the doctrine of misappropriation wrt "hot news".
I fail to see why someone such as yourself would dismiss that case law out of hand without reading more about it... instead you sit on your moral high chair and demand that proof be brought to you.
I have no problem with you being sceptical... but it's intellectually lazy for you to be sceptical but to demand that others address it for you. Instead of placing a burden of proof, why not aim for greater understanding on your part?
This is false. If this were an ideal free market, it would be true -- but the fact of the matter is that there are barriers to entry, incomplete information, and most importantly, works of art/literature are NOT a commodity good.
Regardless of the the cost to produce the good (author + publisher), the price is determined by the seller, and will only loosely follow marginal cost if there is ample competition.
In short, this has little to do with economics, other than the fact the e-books compete with audiobooks, and more to do with terms of licensing of a copyrighted work.
Ha. Newspapers are firing the journalists, because they can get basic news from the AP, or Reuters.
Authors are what sell print media, since that content is not available from the newswires... and they can keep the stories secret until publication.
News reporting is being outsourced to the newswires. Since all the papers get their news from the same sources, timeliness doesn't matter anymore... and the competitive advantage from timeliness doesn't outweigh the cost of a full staff of reporters.
FYI, most quality journalism is the in-depth reporting and analysis you ascribe to "authors" not to journalists. If I just want the news, I'll go online. I subscribe to three papers, for the following reasons:
(1) Local news -- but this is suffering, since small papers are laying off reporters
(2) Quality international reporting -- I pay for a daily that has more unbiased and varied international news than most US papers
(3) Sports reporting and analysis (and this one I'll probably cancel soon, since more & better info is available online)
Maybe I'm an outlier, or an edge case... but actual newsfact reporting is a waste of newsprint, IMO.
The AP is not a newspaper, it is a newswire. There's a big difference.
It's common knowledge in news publishing that in-depth reporting is disappearing. There have been reporter layoffs coast-to-coast, and more papers than ever are simply paying their subscriptions to the AP or Reuters or another news service, then copyediting the AP article (and crediting the AP, of course). This alone is severely limiting the quantity of quality news (especially local news).
However, facts are facts. Since they cannot be copyrighted, this quasi-property status is all that keeps someone from grabbing the facts from the AP Newswire, and reporting on it themselves. This can be done as quickly as someone who is giving attribution to the AP, so the competitive advantage you allow for (which enables the profit) is moot.
If we work from your example, a publisher protects their profit by use of secrecy. This doesn't work for a newswire, whose very business model depends on others' having access to their reporting.
In essence, there are two levels of publication -- once by the AP to news outlets, and once by the news outlets to the public. No "hot news" provision means that the AP's customers (the news outlets) don't need to pay the AP, or even attribute stories to them. Thus, the AP can't pay reporters, and we have even fewer reporters to dig up the facts.
Eventually, all news outlets will be just like the blogosphere, with a dearth of quality reporting, and endless bloglink circle jerks.
I, for one, appreciate the value of the fourth estate.
In short, I agree that privatization of the prisons is a bad idea... but since they have been privatized, we (as a society) need to deal with the realities, and figure out how to make the best of a bad situation... I don't think it's likely that we'll be able to socialize the prison system again (no matter how much it makes sense).
Only recent in the US. Britain had its share of private prisons over the centuries, before the practice was ended due to the conflict between profit and human rights. For that matter, most prisons in colonial America were private enterprises, though allowed only by grant of the Crown. Even in the young Republic, prisons were often run as loosely for-profit enterprises (Auburn plan prisons)... while the concept was that prisons be self-sufficient by enforced labor, the truth is that many prisons enriched greatly those who ran them (or their friends, who benefited from prison labor in private industry). Enough so, that in the 1850s, completely private enterprises loudly complained of the unfair competition from nearly-free labor.
At any rate, abuse of the prison system for profits has long been around. At least now it's very clear who's making the money.
from Harvad Law (emphasis mine):
But this doesn't really matter anyway, since if you read on in the link I provided, you'll see that federal common law was abolished, so what matters is the specific state law. New York common law establishes strict criteria for the application of the misappropriation doctrine to "hot news" (see National Basketball Ass'n v. Sports Team Analysis & Tracking Systems, Inc. [warning: site is ugly as sin] for how a recent plaintiff's claim was found to be lacking)... and this seems to meet all of it. It made me chuckle, however, that in that link one of the biggest supporters of the defendant in that case was the AP.
At any rate, I think we need to have either sweeping federal law specifically creating this property, or we need to have no right to "hot news" as quasi-property. The problem with the latter is then there is no incentive to do fact reporting at all, since it would be impossible to recoup the costs of it. The idealist in me says "Boo to treating information as property" but the realist in me says "Yay to having paid reporters".
Meanwhile, the cynic in me says "It doesn't matter, we'll only see the news they want us to see", the paranoid in me says "We'll only see the news THEY want us to see", and the dadaist in me says "News? Art.".
Awesome. Truly awesome prose, there.
I hate to just post acclaim (with nothing to add), but that is fantastic.
Masturbating Monkey is sure to be a let-down after all the fun of Leprotic Lemur.
Personally, I'm holding out for Vapid Vole.
It's Friday.
Lighten up, Nancy.
Nice selective quoting there. Why don't you provide the contextural details from my post that contravene your point (specifically, the references to chartered exceptions)?
Are you trolling, or is your idiocy purely accidental?
No, that's not what it says. That's your inferrence.
What it says is that, regardless of your personal opinion of privatization, a lot of services have been privatized, and you should act accordingly.
Sorry if you want to keep on setting up straw men... I'm not interested in debating them any further.
politifact.com: owned by St. Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg Times: owned by the Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a journalism school well know for its uncommon (in today's world) approach of unbiased reporting and the primacy of fact over sensationalism.
Gotta say, props to you for linking to a neutral site, when there are so many sites "Obama broken promises" sites maintained by partisan hacks.
But the busts are not natural, and will remain for some time. Even if they were to be cut off and stuck somewhere else for display, they'd likely last a very long time.
Also, specious use of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial is just silly... yes they require maintenance to keep standing... so did countless Egyptian Monuments that are no longer standing, yet I don't see you complaining about the shitty construction/engineering of those monuments.
That's immaterial, since we have machines instead, which might be (probably are) be cheaper than slave labor. It's simply about cost vs. perceived value of longevity.
I agree with you 100%... Unfortunately, though, that's not the reality we have to deal with now. We have to make the best of what we have.
:)
If we're going to discuss an ideal world where public services aren't privatized, we might as well go all the way with the idealism and say there would be no crime
Sigh... I keep seeing that sentiment here, and it still remains untrue.
Most corporations operate this way in spirit, but not all. By nature, public corporations act this way... but prison corps (even when publically held) are not as sensitive to market forces (and therefore maximization of profits), since their survival (and thus profits) comes from exclusive government contract, not from a free market.
The truth of the matter is that corporations are free to act in whatever way they choose wrt profit, as long as it is established in the corporate charter. Public companies act to maximize profit because to do otherwise spells D-O-O-M for their stock. But there are some very visible counter-examples, such as 'green' corporations who make exceptions to profit-maximization in order to be environmentally responsible... and since it's in the charter, no shareholder can take civil action against them for failure to make decisions in the interests of the shareholders.
We need to expect more from the corporations that have so much influence on our government, and part of that is expecting them to see beyond this quarter's profits, and part of it is having them recognize the value of acting responsibly. This last part can be done in two ways -- reward them for responsible behavior, or punish them for irresponsible behavior. Only when they factor in this additional cost/revenue can we have faith in them to act responsibly.
In this case, the prison company should be forced to make restitution to all people sentenced in this kickback scheme, and to the public for the cost of incarceration, as well as the additional costs we'll bear as a result of the incarceration. Ideally this would bankrupt the company, so another one would get to fill the spot (with hopefully more responsible decision-makers).
Modern humans living in "prehistoric" conditions have a much more sedentary lifestyle than you might think... but it's a positive feedback loop.
Requires more calories --> needs to hunt more --> requires more calories.
One of the factors feeding into the lower caloric requirement is diversity of easily-collected food sources... so less energy expended for hunting.
Also note that Neandertals regularly practiced cannibalism (nearly all Neandertal sites show evidence of cannibalism, and the best Neandertal DNA comes from bones scraped clean for food, thus being less contaminated).
To nitpick a bit, the comparison whould be against a modern monument, not a generic modern building.
And there are likely several modern monuments that will last a couple thousand years... Mount Rushmore, for one (sure acid rain etc will make then unrecognizable, and it's likely one or more will have sloughing issues, but note that the pyramids, while still standing, are not in their original glory).
Personally, I consider the fact that the pyramids are still standing to be a factor of chance -- they are built in the desert, with low humidity and little to no plant life which could damage the structure (unlike the pyramids of central america).
But, if we wanted to build something to last a few millenia we could. Modern engineering doesn't prevent us from building for ridiculous longevity -- we just choose to optimize for other considerations (cost!).
I'm quite familiar with the concept of herd immunity.
My post was tongue-in-cheek, but to carry the proposed attitude forward...
[Evil]
If you want to have herd immunity, then get rid of those who compromise it. This includes people too stupid to get immunized, and people who cannot get immunized due to allergies, etc.
To be a complete asshole with no regard for the value of an individual, the health of the herd demands that we allow those people to be removed from the genepool.
[/Evil]
Now excuse me while I go take a few showers and eat a few laxatives to cleanse/purge myself of the evilness.
Ray, it's a surprise to see you commenting on a non-RIAA story (despite all evidence to the contrary, RIAA execs & lawyers are not Neandertals).
At any rate, one thing I've read from a couple sources is that Neandertals likely had a much higher metabolic rate than modern humans, and thus were outcompeted for food. One figure I read (in Nat Geo, I think) was that Neandertals would have needed around 7k calories a day, while moder humans require around 2k calories.
This, coupled with a less diverse food supply for Neandertals, meant that modern humans were much better at surviving and reproducing during times of scarcity, like the ice ages.
Modern humans and Neadertals competed in the same niches, and if the Neandertals were better adapted to it, they would have wiped out H. Sapiens instead.
I think it's a mistake to place any scorn on individuals battling for survival, like humans were doing then. Once a culture has developed that has the excess resources to care for those less capable, then you might have a point...