Indeed. My paternal grandmother, born in 1903 and who cooked with lard and was told by five doctors, one after the other (who all died) said she'd die soon from her high cholesterol, lived a hundred years. Her brother started amoking at age 12 and quit at age 82, ten years before he died. Her other siblings are likewise long lived (Grandpa died in an accident at age 60, fell four stories carrying two 100 lb sacks of feed... Purina was guilty of negligent manslaughter). My other grandparents lived until their late 80s, most of my mother's siblings are alive and in their 90s (she's the baby at age 84).
Almost everyone in the family, both sides, are gifted in many ways -- intelligence, creativity, eye-hand coordination, musical ability, etc. I wonder if there's any correlation betwen these traits and longevity? I'll turn 60 this year, but I don't look or feel like I'm 60. Most people would peg me at 50, even younger if I died my hair (which is all still there). There is most likely a genetic reason that different people age at different rates; I know people 20 years younger than me you'd swear were my age or older; they look as much older than they are as I look younger than I am.
And it started early; I was 30 before I could grow a full beard. I could barely grow a goatee when I was 25. I didn't feel like an adult until I was well into my third decade. And I certainly don't feel like the geezer I am; in fact, a couple of years ago my friend Amy (her late father was a year younger than me) was telling me that I was younger than her boyfriend, who was her age, because all he did was sit around complaining and watching TV but I'd take her to bars and laugh and joke and have a good time.
That was a very good comment (well done, moderators!) but there are a few points...
If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow.
We could have had a true representational democracy from the beginning, without the internet. Same setup as now, with an elected President and representatives, but have no bill the President signs to become law until the citizenry votes it up or down. No need for the internet for that. It's no harder to have a referendum than it is to elect a President.
We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian
You could have used a far better example than Obama. I've seen no evidence (besides his being a lawyer, running for President, and wearing a necktie) that he's a fake Christian. Mr. Newt, on the other hand... well, he handed his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital dying of cancer. He was cheating on his second wife while impeaching Clinton for lying about cheating on Hillary. He's been cencured by his own party for ethical violations. Yet he would have fools believe he's a Christian; I don't think the asshat even believes God exists. He certainly doesn't follow the teachings of Christ. You should have used Gingrich, OBVIOUSLY not a Christian, as your example.
Speech is not violence. Here's your proof, if you have the courage to try it: go into a bar in a rough part of town and start talking trash. When you get the shit beat out of you, see who gets arrested.
You have the right to call me a dumb American mick. I do not have the right to knock your teeth out in response.
If one kid dies because they have messed with the control systems it will be used to the full extent of the public outrage (Not withstanding that if a kid dies for another reason and Disney is able to pin it on anonymous they will do so.).
I worked at Disney for five years. If a kid dies there, they'll do everything in their power to hush it up, starting with offering a big settlement and NDA. If the press gets wind of it, then is when they'll lay the blame at whoever is easiest to blame. But most of these incidents don't make the paper. Did you know a kid died in the Haunted Mansion? An employee got his head knocked off when they were testing Frontierland's roller coaster (they used us as perfectly willing guinea pigs)? Did you know that twelve construction workers gave their lives for EPCOT? I learned of all of these and more working there, but very little afterwards except the occasional heart attack on Space Mountain or other ride, which actually enhanses their revenue (kids like danger).
This is what I come to slashdot for; a biologist (or other field in other threads) giving clear explanations or clarifications for something interesting. Thank you, Ms. Wright!
Well, now, look, y'all city slickers, don't yew know how ta talk? I went ta that thar s'loon and drank six o' them bears next ta the winder, an' almos' got a buzz!
Um, where are all those young people who want to change written language so words are spelled like they sound to defend this poor guy's typo?
I doubt seriously that Disney's ride controls are connected to the internet. Afaik nothing is much different at Disney World now than when I worked there in the early eighties. And the engineers there (Disney calls them "imagineers") are pretty damned sharp, I can't see them doing much very stupid when it comes to engineering -- mechanical and electrical, at least.
However, your "social engineering" is a bit frightening. The engineers there must have never taken any psychology courses, as evidenced by a mishap on a new ride when I worked there.
One of the perks of being a Disney employee is you got to ride the new rides before the general public -- Guinea pigs. They had a new roller coaster in Frontier land that was supposed to be a runaway mine train. I rode it , and WOW. It went sixty miles per hour (about 100kph). If you ride it, it's only 20 mph. What happened was one stupid employee decided to stand up in the car as it went into a tunnel, and the idiot obviously thought that the rock ledge would move out of the way. It knocked his head completely off! See, there IS a cure for stupid! They reduced the speed after that particular accident. Pity there are so many idiots, that was a hell of a ride!
If you visit the Haunted Mansion, keep in mind that someone died there! Makes it a lot more fun. One idiot tourist decided to get out of the car to get a closer look at the witch head hologram, not realising he was a hundred feet off the ground.
Twelve people died building the EPCOT "golf ball" (I forgot its real name). Disney nor any other corporation gives a rat's ass about your safety unless it costs them money. Corporations are by nature sociopathic. Everything they do is designed to garner more profit.
But still, driving there from Kissimmee is more dangerous than any of the rides, even if the SCADA systems get hacked. People in Florida drive like the dumbasses they are. So if you want to hack Disney's SCADA, go ahead. The death toll won't rise much.
My grandmother must have been an anomaly, then. Once she left the farm at age 55 about the only exercise she got was doing housework. I never saw her doing any mental puzzles, and she watched a lot of TV. The only time I ever saw any mental decline in her was in her seventies, and it turned out to be due to the prescription drugs her doctor was feeding her.
Diet? She was born in 1903, had eggs and bacon and buttered toast for breakfast, cooked with lard most of her life, etc. Her doctor said if she didn't get her cholesterol dow she was going to die. Well, the doctor died. Her new doctor took her off the drugs, and her mind became sharp again. He, too, said if she didn't get her cholesterol down she'd die. He died, too. So did her next three doctors.
Their predictions finally came through -- she finally did die, when she fell down in the nursing home and broke her hip at age 99. Of course, a sample of one is pretty much meaningless, but her brothers and sisters were all similar. For example, my great uncle smoked cigarettes from age 12 to age 82, and got scared and quit when he got a small skin cancer on his lip. He, too, was in his nineties when he passed.
Personally, I think diet and excersize are greatly overrated. Besides, like grandma told me when she was 95, "I don't know why folks want to live to be a hundred. It ain't no fun bein' old!" You have to die from something, might as well be eating what you want and doing or not doing what you want.
WTF is this "bias crime" shit? The first amendment protects your right to post GNAA trolls or any damned other dusgusting thing. I'm against "hate crimes" but at least there's some logic to that -- there has to be violence for it to be a "hate crime". If this isn't thrown out in court, America has no hope left. I don't give a flying fuck what you call your network, they can't outlaw speech. Not yet, anyway.
BTW, the offensive language I just used was deliberate. Arrest me, I dare you!
But actually, considering we're talking about rednecks, "Hay, thar, darlin, get me a bear" is no typo. Maybe you should have another serving of Ghaaa? (actually I think Ghaaa isn't spelled quite like that).
I got a humorus birthday card last year, a redneck translator. One was Rat -- example: "It's rat past the bait shop!"
Jim Morrison: "I am the typo king. I can misspell anything!"
1. Cory Doctorow. It wasn't his best book, but wasn't too bad either, and did give one food for thought. Almost required reading for this topic; it's available at your local bookstore, or for free at BoingBoing.
2. What good is being an inventor when a patent is practically impossible for someone who isn't filthy rich to obtain and defend? The rich not only have priveleges you don't, they have rights you don't. Actually, this is one of the subthemes of the aformentioned book.
If I had the money to obtain a patent, I'd have several by now. The patent system is in serious need of reform.
I made an old man mistake on the price of meat; the patty is more like fifty cents (ten patties for five bucks at WalMart, each patty about twice as big as a McD patty) than five.
But a loaf of bread is 89 cents at either WalMart or County Market (buns are more expensive retail, but you can bet McD spends practically nothing on them; economy of scale). McD quality cheese (the cheapest shit you can find) is a buck for thirty slices at WalMart (I pay more, I like velveeta, which is about 3 times as expensive but worth every penny at County Market). Condiments are practically free; a bottle of ketchup, mustard, mayo lasts me for months, and they're maybe a dollar or two per bottle. So you're still talking less than a buck, over three times cheaper. Fries? A small order of fries is a dollar, one potato will make three small McD fries -- and a whole bag of potatos costs two dollars. You're talking a nickle per potato, so discounting everything but ingredients that three orders of "value fries" that they get three bucks for cost a nickel in raw material -- and that's retail, McD buys wholesale and pays FAR less. I used to make my own potato chips before I lost my spud chipper in the last move (probably boxed up in the basement), and a single potato would make enough chips to fill a three dollar bag! And as they were fresh out of the pan they tasted a lot better, too.
You mention that you would get a better cut of meat, but McD doesn't. Your $3 burger is more like a twenty dollar burger in a nice restaraunt than a Big Mac.
You mention drinks, they make a killing on drinks. A twenty dollar drum of syrup will garner hundreds of dollars in soda sales.
There are restaraunts (not fas food) where you do get your money's worth, at least here in Springfield. D'Arcy's Pint is incredibly reasonable; corned beef and cabbage with even better potatos than my grandma made is under ten bucks, and corned beef is expensive. If you're ever in Springfield, you owe youself a meal there! I took one woman to dinner there who hadn't eaten there before, and she claimed to have gotten a "food orgasm."
I knew a fellow who owned a few bars and restaraunts, and he knew his stuff. Great cook and businessman, really sharp guy. He'd had recipes published in gourmet cooking magazines, and the food was incredibly cheap. His secret? Sell the food at almost cost to get butts on chairs, and make the money on drinks. That's probably the same business plan D'Arcy's has, their beer is a little high but not REAL high.
I think McDonald's business plan is "people are fucking lazy and impatient". Seems to work for them.
It can encourage creation by increasing the ability to reap profits from works
How can I reap a profit from my work after I'm dead?
What is the ideal copyright term?
I'm not sure there's an "ideal" term, but more than a lifetime is far too long. I've heard some say five years, but that's far too short; I'm about to have a book printed (I already have it on BitTorrent in PDF form), and it was mostly written about then.
Patents only last for twenty years, and it takes that long for some innovations, such as new drugs, to pay back the research investment, and it seems to be working OK (patent law has completely different problems from copyright). Twenty years was the standard for copyright for over a century, I'd say somewhere between 20 and 40 (40's a little long IMO).
What effect, in detail, will this have on authors, publishers, and consumers?
Authors: a great deal. Art is like science and technology, as everything new comes from the old. Imagine how technological innovation would be stifled if patents lasted as long as copyright? Well, that's how artistic creativity is being stifled. If yesterday's copyright length were as long as today's, Disney wouldn't have been able to film half their animations; the stories were in the public domain.
Publishers: Publishing companies will likely be a hing of the past in fifty years or less, regardless of copyright length. Before the digital age, there's no way a writer could have made any books without a publisher; you needed presses, typesetters, etc. That's all automated now, all a publisher does is print the book on paper or less, if it's in digital form. Today all an author needs is a print house. If dead tree books die, so will book publishing. Already the music publishing companies are completely unneeded by musicians and music listeners; in the past it took extremely expensive studios to record and expensive machinery to produce the master that the LPs were pressed from; it was an industrial operation. Today the musician's instruments are the most expensive part of recording. It will be a while before Hollywood is obsolete, since blowing up buildings and crashing cars ain't cheap, but it won't be long before photorealistic CGI is cheap and good enough to render those explosions and car wrecks.
Consumers: I see nothing but good for the consumer.
How will it affect works created by individuals?
It will only affect individuals, as explained above.
How about by businesses?
If by "businesses" you mean "corporations", corporations can't creat art. Only the humans they employ can. Corporations should have no part in the creative process, except as a customer (somebody has to write the ad copy and film the commercial).
Is it reasonable for fiction markets, magazine markets, online publication, and technical works?
I can only think of one work of fiction that a 40 year copyright would help cause an author to create, and that's Asimov's Foundation trilogy. When he first published it, the publishing house failed to get it properly marketed (no internet back then, marketing was expensive) and Asimov didn't get a dime until Doubleday licensed the rights ten years later. But then, there is no gurantee of profit from any endeavor. Most books are out of print in twenty years. Magazines? Magazines are only for sale a short time; a magazine publisher wouldn't care if the copyright were twenty years or a thousand, since they're only on the shelf a month at a time. Online publications? No effect whatever; slashdot is an online publication, and copyright doesn't seem to affect their bottom line either way. Technical works? Are you kidding??? What good is a ten year old textbook on physics or programming? One of my instructors in college groused once that by the time a textbook is printed it's already out of date.
The courts can't just jump in and rule something unconstitutional because they don't think it's the optimal solution
I think he was going for "shelves" but just didn't hit the "s" key hard enough. But I agree, that kind of mistake is forgivable in a comment, but not in TFS.
Refusal to tolerate it doesn't stop it. Three of Illinois last five governors either were, are, or will be in prison for corruption (Blago hits the slammer in March, Ryan is still incarcerated, Walker served his time and was released).
Would you say planting evidence and lying to a judge to get a warrant is corruption? Well, a cop here in Springfield was fired for just that, and the courts made the city re-hire him!
And, uh, ever been to Chicago? It's even worse up there (where our corrupt governors all come from).
That's not the only downside. If you have an ice storm, you have a serious problem; the ice pulls the wires down. You have to keep the trees around them trimmed, which costs, and if you don't the trees will take your wires down. And God help you if a tornado comes through, like it did in my neighborhood in 2006; the entire electrical infrastructure had to be completely rebuilt. Had the phone, cable, and electric wires been underground I wouldn't have been without electricity for a week, and I'm sure the army of linemen that replaced all the poles, wires, and transformers certainly didn't come cheap.
Actually, even though I'm a kubuntu user, we're a tiny monority. Writing drivers for such a miniscule audience is good PR but hardly profitable otherwise. And kudos to them if they did, and to all other companies that do.
I never buy any product that states on its box that a requirement is Windows.
I bought a $20 bluetooth dongle for the win 7 notebook I haven't yet upgraded to Linux (yes, Linux is an upgrade from Windows), and it came with drivers for Windows and Apple, but no Linux drivers. I had to run a program on the Windows box to make it work, and since there are no optical drive on the notebook I had to first copy all the files to a thumb drive, and reboot twice.
I plugged it into the Linux box, and it just worked -- installation only involved plugging it into a USB port. More companies should be like that, but again, their only profit in it is PR. A printer that you can't just plug in and it Just Works without installing drivers and software and jumping through hoops is a piece of shit, but most people, having lived in the Microsoft world all their lives, don't realize that.
check how these accounts are employed together in the same discussion to karmawhore and to steer the discussion into a more corporate PR position
That makes no sense. If they're posting the same or nearly the same comment, they'll be modded offtopic and lose karma, not gain it. And any of them you see posting are not moderating, at least not with the poster's account.
There really are MS fans, but I can't for the life of me figure out why unless the only OS and software they've ever used was MS's. Mostly shill spotting is easy -- if the verbiage sounds like it came from a marketing agency, it's probably a shill, but OTOH there are some extremely stupid and gullible people who will parrot the marketdroid buzz in a futile attempt to sound intelligent and educated.
If you live in the US, the power lines are 750 volts, the high tension lines on the towers are 30kv, but I don't think they'll be running fiber on the towers. And if the power lines are down, the fiber will be, too, and will have to be replaced anyway. even if you could burn fiber with 750 v.
If you're on one of those towers, you're in danger of being electrocuted even before the power is applied! Just the cables swinging through the earth's magnetic field generates enough electricity that when my dad was building the things, he'd wrap a 12 guage wire around a cable and burn his initials on the steel tower with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. My paternal grandmother, born in 1903 and who cooked with lard and was told by five doctors, one after the other (who all died) said she'd die soon from her high cholesterol, lived a hundred years. Her brother started amoking at age 12 and quit at age 82, ten years before he died. Her other siblings are likewise long lived (Grandpa died in an accident at age 60, fell four stories carrying two 100 lb sacks of feed... Purina was guilty of negligent manslaughter). My other grandparents lived until their late 80s, most of my mother's siblings are alive and in their 90s (she's the baby at age 84).
Almost everyone in the family, both sides, are gifted in many ways -- intelligence, creativity, eye-hand coordination, musical ability, etc. I wonder if there's any correlation betwen these traits and longevity? I'll turn 60 this year, but I don't look or feel like I'm 60. Most people would peg me at 50, even younger if I died my hair (which is all still there). There is most likely a genetic reason that different people age at different rates; I know people 20 years younger than me you'd swear were my age or older; they look as much older than they are as I look younger than I am.
And it started early; I was 30 before I could grow a full beard. I could barely grow a goatee when I was 25. I didn't feel like an adult until I was well into my third decade. And I certainly don't feel like the geezer I am; in fact, a couple of years ago my friend Amy (her late father was a year younger than me) was telling me that I was younger than her boyfriend, who was her age, because all he did was sit around complaining and watching TV but I'd take her to bars and laugh and joke and have a good time.
It would be interesting to know why.
That was a very good comment (well done, moderators!) but there are a few points...
If they truly believed in democracy, we could have a direct-democracy tomorrow.
We could have had a true representational democracy from the beginning, without the internet. Same setup as now, with an elected President and representatives, but have no bill the President signs to become law until the citizenry votes it up or down. No need for the internet for that. It's no harder to have a referendum than it is to elect a President.
We let them off the hook on the truth like Cameron pretending to be pro-NHS or Obama pretending to be Christian
You could have used a far better example than Obama. I've seen no evidence (besides his being a lawyer, running for President, and wearing a necktie) that he's a fake Christian. Mr. Newt, on the other hand... well, he handed his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital dying of cancer. He was cheating on his second wife while impeaching Clinton for lying about cheating on Hillary. He's been cencured by his own party for ethical violations. Yet he would have fools believe he's a Christian; I don't think the asshat even believes God exists. He certainly doesn't follow the teachings of Christ. You should have used Gingrich, OBVIOUSLY not a Christian, as your example.
Speech is not violence. Here's your proof, if you have the courage to try it: go into a bar in a rough part of town and start talking trash. When you get the shit beat out of you, see who gets arrested.
You have the right to call me a dumb American mick. I do not have the right to knock your teeth out in response.
If one kid dies because they have messed with the control systems it will be used to the full extent of the public outrage (Not withstanding that if a kid dies for another reason and Disney is able to pin it on anonymous they will do so.).
I worked at Disney for five years. If a kid dies there, they'll do everything in their power to hush it up, starting with offering a big settlement and NDA. If the press gets wind of it, then is when they'll lay the blame at whoever is easiest to blame. But most of these incidents don't make the paper. Did you know a kid died in the Haunted Mansion? An employee got his head knocked off when they were testing Frontierland's roller coaster (they used us as perfectly willing guinea pigs)? Did you know that twelve construction workers gave their lives for EPCOT? I learned of all of these and more working there, but very little afterwards except the occasional heart attack on Space Mountain or other ride, which actually enhanses their revenue (kids like danger).
This is what I come to slashdot for; a biologist (or other field in other threads) giving clear explanations or clarifications for something interesting. Thank you, Ms. Wright!
Warning: Going for "funny" is hazardous to your karma!
Well, now, look, y'all city slickers, don't yew know how ta talk? I went ta that thar s'loon and drank six o' them bears next ta the winder, an' almos' got a buzz!
Um, where are all those young people who want to change written language so words are spelled like they sound to defend this poor guy's typo?
I doubt seriously that Disney's ride controls are connected to the internet. Afaik nothing is much different at Disney World now than when I worked there in the early eighties. And the engineers there (Disney calls them "imagineers") are pretty damned sharp, I can't see them doing much very stupid when it comes to engineering -- mechanical and electrical, at least.
However, your "social engineering" is a bit frightening. The engineers there must have never taken any psychology courses, as evidenced by a mishap on a new ride when I worked there.
One of the perks of being a Disney employee is you got to ride the new rides before the general public -- Guinea pigs. They had a new roller coaster in Frontier land that was supposed to be a runaway mine train. I rode it , and WOW. It went sixty miles per hour (about 100kph). If you ride it, it's only 20 mph. What happened was one stupid employee decided to stand up in the car as it went into a tunnel, and the idiot obviously thought that the rock ledge would move out of the way. It knocked his head completely off! See, there IS a cure for stupid! They reduced the speed after that particular accident. Pity there are so many idiots, that was a hell of a ride!
If you visit the Haunted Mansion, keep in mind that someone died there! Makes it a lot more fun. One idiot tourist decided to get out of the car to get a closer look at the witch head hologram, not realising he was a hundred feet off the ground.
Twelve people died building the EPCOT "golf ball" (I forgot its real name). Disney nor any other corporation gives a rat's ass about your safety unless it costs them money. Corporations are by nature sociopathic. Everything they do is designed to garner more profit.
But still, driving there from Kissimmee is more dangerous than any of the rides, even if the SCADA systems get hacked. People in Florida drive like the dumbasses they are. So if you want to hack Disney's SCADA, go ahead. The death toll won't rise much.
My grandmother must have been an anomaly, then. Once she left the farm at age 55 about the only exercise she got was doing housework. I never saw her doing any mental puzzles, and she watched a lot of TV. The only time I ever saw any mental decline in her was in her seventies, and it turned out to be due to the prescription drugs her doctor was feeding her.
Diet? She was born in 1903, had eggs and bacon and buttered toast for breakfast, cooked with lard most of her life, etc. Her doctor said if she didn't get her cholesterol dow she was going to die. Well, the doctor died. Her new doctor took her off the drugs, and her mind became sharp again. He, too, said if she didn't get her cholesterol down she'd die. He died, too. So did her next three doctors.
Their predictions finally came through -- she finally did die, when she fell down in the nursing home and broke her hip at age 99. Of course, a sample of one is pretty much meaningless, but her brothers and sisters were all similar. For example, my great uncle smoked cigarettes from age 12 to age 82, and got scared and quit when he got a small skin cancer on his lip. He, too, was in his nineties when he passed.
Personally, I think diet and excersize are greatly overrated. Besides, like grandma told me when she was 95, "I don't know why folks want to live to be a hundred. It ain't no fun bein' old!" You have to die from something, might as well be eating what you want and doing or not doing what you want.
WTF is this "bias crime" shit? The first amendment protects your right to post GNAA trolls or any damned other dusgusting thing. I'm against "hate crimes" but at least there's some logic to that -- there has to be violence for it to be a "hate crime". If this isn't thrown out in court, America has no hope left. I don't give a flying fuck what you call your network, they can't outlaw speech. Not yet, anyway.
BTW, the offensive language I just used was deliberate. Arrest me, I dare you!
Ghaaa. I am the typo king.
That's what you get for eating Klingon food!
But actually, considering we're talking about rednecks, "Hay, thar, darlin, get me a bear" is no typo. Maybe you should have another serving of Ghaaa? (actually I think Ghaaa isn't spelled quite like that).
I got a humorus birthday card last year, a redneck translator. One was Rat -- example: "It's rat past the bait shop!"
Jim Morrison: "I am the typo king. I can misspell anything!"
He said "our". His, mine, my preacher's. You are not one of us, by your own speech, so you can safely disregard his message. It wasn't pointed at you.
You are, however, welcome to join if you wish, and free to remain apart.
1. Cory Doctorow. It wasn't his best book, but wasn't too bad either, and did give one food for thought. Almost required reading for this topic; it's available at your local bookstore, or for free at BoingBoing.
2. What good is being an inventor when a patent is practically impossible for someone who isn't filthy rich to obtain and defend? The rich not only have priveleges you don't, they have rights you don't. Actually, this is one of the subthemes of the aformentioned book.
If I had the money to obtain a patent, I'd have several by now. The patent system is in serious need of reform.
That's a little before my time ;)
I made an old man mistake on the price of meat; the patty is more like fifty cents (ten patties for five bucks at WalMart, each patty about twice as big as a McD patty) than five.
But a loaf of bread is 89 cents at either WalMart or County Market (buns are more expensive retail, but you can bet McD spends practically nothing on them; economy of scale). McD quality cheese (the cheapest shit you can find) is a buck for thirty slices at WalMart (I pay more, I like velveeta, which is about 3 times as expensive but worth every penny at County Market). Condiments are practically free; a bottle of ketchup, mustard, mayo lasts me for months, and they're maybe a dollar or two per bottle. So you're still talking less than a buck, over three times cheaper. Fries? A small order of fries is a dollar, one potato will make three small McD fries -- and a whole bag of potatos costs two dollars. You're talking a nickle per potato, so discounting everything but ingredients that three orders of "value fries" that they get three bucks for cost a nickel in raw material -- and that's retail, McD buys wholesale and pays FAR less. I used to make my own potato chips before I lost my spud chipper in the last move (probably boxed up in the basement), and a single potato would make enough chips to fill a three dollar bag! And as they were fresh out of the pan they tasted a lot better, too.
You mention that you would get a better cut of meat, but McD doesn't. Your $3 burger is more like a twenty dollar burger in a nice restaraunt than a Big Mac.
You mention drinks, they make a killing on drinks. A twenty dollar drum of syrup will garner hundreds of dollars in soda sales.
There are restaraunts (not fas food) where you do get your money's worth, at least here in Springfield. D'Arcy's Pint is incredibly reasonable; corned beef and cabbage with even better potatos than my grandma made is under ten bucks, and corned beef is expensive. If you're ever in Springfield, you owe youself a meal there! I took one woman to dinner there who hadn't eaten there before, and she claimed to have gotten a "food orgasm."
I knew a fellow who owned a few bars and restaraunts, and he knew his stuff. Great cook and businessman, really sharp guy. He'd had recipes published in gourmet cooking magazines, and the food was incredibly cheap. His secret? Sell the food at almost cost to get butts on chairs, and make the money on drinks. That's probably the same business plan D'Arcy's has, their beer is a little high but not REAL high.
I think McDonald's business plan is "people are fucking lazy and impatient". Seems to work for them.
It can encourage creation by increasing the ability to reap profits from works
How can I reap a profit from my work after I'm dead?
What is the ideal copyright term?
I'm not sure there's an "ideal" term, but more than a lifetime is far too long. I've heard some say five years, but that's far too short; I'm about to have a book printed (I already have it on BitTorrent in PDF form), and it was mostly written about then.
Patents only last for twenty years, and it takes that long for some innovations, such as new drugs, to pay back the research investment, and it seems to be working OK (patent law has completely different problems from copyright). Twenty years was the standard for copyright for over a century, I'd say somewhere between 20 and 40 (40's a little long IMO).
What effect, in detail, will this have on authors, publishers, and consumers?
Authors: a great deal. Art is like science and technology, as everything new comes from the old. Imagine how technological innovation would be stifled if patents lasted as long as copyright? Well, that's how artistic creativity is being stifled. If yesterday's copyright length were as long as today's, Disney wouldn't have been able to film half their animations; the stories were in the public domain.
Publishers: Publishing companies will likely be a hing of the past in fifty years or less, regardless of copyright length. Before the digital age, there's no way a writer could have made any books without a publisher; you needed presses, typesetters, etc. That's all automated now, all a publisher does is print the book on paper or less, if it's in digital form. Today all an author needs is a print house. If dead tree books die, so will book publishing. Already the music publishing companies are completely unneeded by musicians and music listeners; in the past it took extremely expensive studios to record and expensive machinery to produce the master that the LPs were pressed from; it was an industrial operation. Today the musician's instruments are the most expensive part of recording. It will be a while before Hollywood is obsolete, since blowing up buildings and crashing cars ain't cheap, but it won't be long before photorealistic CGI is cheap and good enough to render those explosions and car wrecks.
Consumers: I see nothing but good for the consumer.
How will it affect works created by individuals?
It will only affect individuals, as explained above.
How about by businesses?
If by "businesses" you mean "corporations", corporations can't creat art. Only the humans they employ can. Corporations should have no part in the creative process, except as a customer (somebody has to write the ad copy and film the commercial).
Is it reasonable for fiction markets, magazine markets, online publication, and technical works?
I can only think of one work of fiction that a 40 year copyright would help cause an author to create, and that's Asimov's Foundation trilogy. When he first published it, the publishing house failed to get it properly marketed (no internet back then, marketing was expensive) and Asimov didn't get a dime until Doubleday licensed the rights ten years later. But then, there is no gurantee of profit from any endeavor. Most books are out of print in twenty years. Magazines? Magazines are only for sale a short time; a magazine publisher wouldn't care if the copyright were twenty years or a thousand, since they're only on the shelf a month at a time. Online publications? No effect whatever; slashdot is an online publication, and copyright doesn't seem to affect their bottom line either way. Technical works? Are you kidding??? What good is a ten year old textbook on physics or programming? One of my instructors in college groused once that by the time a textbook is printed it's already out of date.
The courts can't just jump in and rule something unconstitutional because they don't think it's the optimal solution
That shoud be true, bu
I think he was going for "shelves" but just didn't hit the "s" key hard enough. But I agree, that kind of mistake is forgivable in a comment, but not in TFS.
Refusal to tolerate it doesn't stop it. Three of Illinois last five governors either were, are, or will be in prison for corruption (Blago hits the slammer in March, Ryan is still incarcerated, Walker served his time and was released).
Would you say planting evidence and lying to a judge to get a warrant is corruption? Well, a cop here in Springfield was fired for just that, and the courts made the city re-hire him!
And, uh, ever been to Chicago? It's even worse up there (where our corrupt governors all come from).
That's not the only downside. If you have an ice storm, you have a serious problem; the ice pulls the wires down. You have to keep the trees around them trimmed, which costs, and if you don't the trees will take your wires down. And God help you if a tornado comes through, like it did in my neighborhood in 2006; the entire electrical infrastructure had to be completely rebuilt. Had the phone, cable, and electric wires been underground I wouldn't have been without electricity for a week, and I'm sure the army of linemen that replaced all the poles, wires, and transformers certainly didn't come cheap.
Actually, even though I'm a kubuntu user, we're a tiny monority. Writing drivers for such a miniscule audience is good PR but hardly profitable otherwise. And kudos to them if they did, and to all other companies that do.
I never buy any product that states on its box that a requirement is Windows.
I bought a $20 bluetooth dongle for the win 7 notebook I haven't yet upgraded to Linux (yes, Linux is an upgrade from Windows), and it came with drivers for Windows and Apple, but no Linux drivers. I had to run a program on the Windows box to make it work, and since there are no optical drive on the notebook I had to first copy all the files to a thumb drive, and reboot twice.
I plugged it into the Linux box, and it just worked -- installation only involved plugging it into a USB port. More companies should be like that, but again, their only profit in it is PR. A printer that you can't just plug in and it Just Works without installing drivers and software and jumping through hoops is a piece of shit, but most people, having lived in the Microsoft world all their lives, don't realize that.
check how these accounts are employed together in the same discussion to karmawhore and to steer the discussion into a more corporate PR position
That makes no sense. If they're posting the same or nearly the same comment, they'll be modded offtopic and lose karma, not gain it. And any of them you see posting are not moderating, at least not with the poster's account.
There really are MS fans, but I can't for the life of me figure out why unless the only OS and software they've ever used was MS's. Mostly shill spotting is easy -- if the verbiage sounds like it came from a marketing agency, it's probably a shill, but OTOH there are some extremely stupid and gullible people who will parrot the marketdroid buzz in a futile attempt to sound intelligent and educated.
What do they serve at this massive rotating bar?
Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, of course.
Most of the people that are on the Internet since the 90's aren't computer iliterated
"illiterated"? What, they were once computer literate but forgot how?
If you live in the US, the power lines are 750 volts, the high tension lines on the towers are 30kv, but I don't think they'll be running fiber on the towers. And if the power lines are down, the fiber will be, too, and will have to be replaced anyway. even if you could burn fiber with 750 v.
If you're on one of those towers, you're in danger of being electrocuted even before the power is applied! Just the cables swinging through the earth's magnetic field generates enough electricity that when my dad was building the things, he'd wrap a 12 guage wire around a cable and burn his initials on the steel tower with it.
As long as the law reasonably "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts," it's probably Constitutional
How is reinstating your lost copyright supposed to make you want to do more creating, rather than sitting on your ass collecting license fees?
I'd certainly like to shorten copyright terms (although this is a more complicated issue than it's often given credit for)
Complicated how? The only complication I see is campaign contribution bribery.