CSS prevents copying a DVD to a video tape or other format. But it does nothing to prevent duplicating (i.e. copying) the DVD using another DVD because doing that doesn't require cracking CSS.
In the days before DVD burner's were common, CSS may have been effective copy protection, but now days it just keeps people from playing it in the wrong country. Country codes mean that it is and was at least in part intended to be playback protection.
The cameras everywhere thing is a bit of a myth to be fair.
When I visited Cambridge last year, there were easily ten times as many outdoor camera's as there are in most US cities. Mostly that is because most US cities (excluding the most populous ones) have basically zero outdoor surveillance cameras. I'm not saying it was a good or bad thing, but the contrast was jarring. (This frog doesn't know if the water is boiling yet, but the water is definitely warmer in the UK in this respect.)
(In the USA, there are a few camera's at fast food drive-ins, but they are to help the person on the other end of the intercom see your car so they can help you. It has very little to do with security.)
This may seem off topic but the bank holiday monday tommorrow will be one of their biggest times of the year and the roads will be packed.
What holiday would that be? I ask because tomorrow is also a national holiday in the USA. (Memorial Day when we remember soldiers to died in service of their county).
another popular economic view on niche-products: people will tend to pay any price for something they really want/need, so for niche-products high prices are fine
That popular (among uninformed people) economic view is not a popular view among economists.
The behaviour you describe has to do with economic elasticty more than anything else and it can favor either the buyer or the seller depending on the situation. Being a niche product is often correlated with an inelastic demand but not always, and it is elasticity rather than being niche that determines the price (among other things).
For example some newsletters are a good example of a niche product (since very few are interested in having it) that usually has a very low price (since those that want it don't want it that badly).
If you haven't already, try to take a microeconomics class sometime. You'll find out that the difference between folk economics and real economic theory is about as big as between Aristotelian physics and Newtonian physics. It is also a surprisingly fun topic once you understand the (correct) principals behind it.
There's also the problem of genotype vs phenotype. Fido's genes may be expressed differently the next go-round, leading to subtle or possibly not-so-subtle differences.
As an example, I know two women who are identical twins, but because the split was so early, they developed in two different placental sacks (*) which means they don't look like identical twins. They look very similar, but only as much as two sisters might.
They have the same genes, but their phenotypes are definitely not identical.
(*) That's how they explained it to me, but I might have misunderstood or misremembered.
I think this robot could easily be a victim of the uncanny valley. If it were too friendly, it would come across as making light of a serious situation and would potentially feel patronizing.
I mean seriously, if I'm trapped under a building, I'm really not going to be in the mood for emotionally bonding with a robot.
To avoid the uncanny valley, the robot needs to be be friendly but not like a dog or person. Instead it should be like a friendly car or other reliable tool that we feel safe using.
For a little while I worked for a company that specialized in catching cable operators that did exactly this. So for example (names have been changed), Cox might be the cable operator and NBC be the network, so NBC wants to be sure that Cox isn't swapping out ads for a little extra money on the side.
So it is something that the networks worry about (we had some big name customers), but I don't know what the law has to say about this. Inserting ads in HTTP might even be a different case because there is a contract that is being breached between Cox and NBC while the ISP probably doesn't have any explicit contract with the web site.
Your argument is a red herring. Yes, there is a lot of land out there. Yes, a lot of it is non-arable. But even so that doesn't change the fact that there is lot of sustainably arable land that we haven't used. And on top of that, the amount of crop per acre produced is increasing at an astounding rate that has kept abreast of or surpassed the population's growth rate due to improvements in agricultural technology.
One step in all those old rotation schemes is not using the land. The european method was two seasons of use, one season bare. Interesting, but the point still remains: even at only 2/3 use, there is a lot of arable land that we haven't used yet.
Do people realize just how much arable land is not in use? Do you realize that using all the arable land will also mean that within a few generations they won't be arable anymore? We are already overfishing all the oceans, and burning the rain forest. All three of these have in common that while they can help us sustain more people, they aren't long-term options. If only someone could invent a way to reuse crop land with out depleting it. Like maybe some kind of crop rotation scheme... oh, wait even the anchient Romans knew about that.
So another 20,30 years, we'll either hit the theoritical limit or have billions of people dying every year to prevent us from getting there.
In the past 14 years, the world population increased 20%. In 28 years that means the population will have increased by only 44%. Our world is fully able to handle that many people.
Sort of some miraculous deus ex machina technology is needed ASAP. Or we'll end up in a world war over resources. You ought to look at history. We've been coming up with "deus ex machina" technologies for quite a while now. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that some of the deux ex machina technologies are already developed. Things like solar and wind power, computers, that sort of thing.
Agreed. A good example of this is agricultural technology which (in the US) has been growing at an exponentially faster rate than the world population for a number of years.
Like I said, the term "free market" has a very specific technical meaning. It comes from economics and, among other things, it requires that buyers and sellers don't coerce each other and that they don't form cartels. Thus the need for a referee to prevent them from doing that. This referee generally shouldn't be a player (i.e. should not be buying to selling goods) and should not control the market other than the minimum necessary to ensure it continues to be a "free market".
A true "free market" may in fact be very heavily regulated. A good examples is the stock exchange which is very tightly regulated by the SEC to prevent this such as insider trading (which violates the non-cartel and equal knowledge aspects of a "free market").
Maybe the Libertarians are using the wrong term when they say they want a "free market". I don't know, but I would very highly recommend taking a college course on economics as you will discover that a lot of political arguments are actually boneheadedly miss-guided. (E.g. ask an economist about how luxury taxes end up taxing the poor more than they do the rich who buy luxuries.) Being well informed about the basics of economics should be considered a civic duty.
Whenever you see someone use this phrase, it is a sure sign they have no better argument than appeal to emotion. And that is also a phrase used as an ad hominem to try to discredit a particular point of view. Whenever you see someone use this phrase, it is a sure sign they have no better counter-argument than appeal to emotion.
What you describe sounds more like anarchism than libertarianism. Not being a libertarian myself I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I will note that "Free Market" does not mean "Unregulated Market".
It is one thing to say that the government shouldn't only be a referee and not an active player. It is another to say there should be no referees.
I hate to break your theory, but most trademarks take an indefinite article. E.g. "John bought a Ford truck", "Sally bought a Lenovo computer". While I personally like your theory, the evidence doesn't support it. In fact outside the software world and quantity nouns, I can't think of a single trademark that doesn't take an indefinite article when the generic term would take an indefinite article.
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CSS prevents copying a DVD to a video tape or other format. But it does nothing to prevent duplicating (i.e. copying) the DVD using another DVD because doing that doesn't require cracking CSS.
In the days before DVD burner's were common, CSS may have been effective copy protection, but now days it just keeps people from playing it in the wrong country. Country codes mean that it is and was at least in part intended to be playback protection.
When I visited Cambridge last year, there were easily ten times as many outdoor camera's as there are in most US cities. Mostly that is because most US cities (excluding the most populous ones) have basically zero outdoor surveillance cameras. I'm not saying it was a good or bad thing, but the contrast was jarring. (This frog doesn't know if the water is boiling yet, but the water is definitely warmer in the UK in this respect.)
(In the USA, there are a few camera's at fast food drive-ins, but they are to help the person on the other end of the intercom see your car so they can help you. It has very little to do with security.)
What holiday would that be? I ask because tomorrow is also a national holiday in the USA. (Memorial Day when we remember soldiers to died in service of their county).
Of course Scientology isn't a religion. Didn't you know, Scientology is actually a Science based on the principals of Dianetics. [/sarcasm]
The police probably wouldn't have even bothered if that was what was said considering how popular it is to bash the major western religions.
That popular (among uninformed people) economic view is not a popular view among economists.
The behaviour you describe has to do with economic elasticty more than anything else and it can favor either the buyer or the seller depending on the situation. Being a niche product is often correlated with an inelastic demand but not always, and it is elasticity rather than being niche that determines the price (among other things).
For example some newsletters are a good example of a niche product (since very few are interested in having it) that usually has a very low price (since those that want it don't want it that badly).
If you haven't already, try to take a microeconomics class sometime. You'll find out that the difference between folk economics and real economic theory is about as big as between Aristotelian physics and Newtonian physics. It is also a surprisingly fun topic once you understand the (correct) principals behind it.
As an example, I know two women who are identical twins, but because the split was so early, they developed in two different placental sacks (*) which means they don't look like identical twins. They look very similar, but only as much as two sisters might.
They have the same genes, but their phenotypes are definitely not identical.
(*) That's how they explained it to me, but I might have misunderstood or misremembered.
According to the #exherbo IRC channel, it means "uproot". See http://daniel-lange.com/archives/30-kloeri-announces-Exherbo,-another-source-based-Linux-distribution.html. (Of course it probably means both "weed" and "uproot" but it sounds like the project intends the latter meaning.)
According to the #exherbo IRC channel, it means "uproot". See http://daniel-lange.com/archives/30-kloeri-announces-Exherbo,-another-source-based-Linux-distribution.html.
I think this robot could easily be a victim of the uncanny valley. If it were too friendly, it would come across as making light of a serious situation and would potentially feel patronizing.
I mean seriously, if I'm trapped under a building, I'm really not going to be in the mood for emotionally bonding with a robot.
To avoid the uncanny valley, the robot needs to be be friendly but not like a dog or person. Instead it should be like a friendly car or other reliable tool that we feel safe using.
All of my flights from Europe back to the US had customs on the USA side.
Tell me about Dubai in 1980.
For a little while I worked for a company that specialized in catching cable operators that did exactly this. So for example (names have been changed), Cox might be the cable operator and NBC be the network, so NBC wants to be sure that Cox isn't swapping out ads for a little extra money on the side.
So it is something that the networks worry about (we had some big name customers), but I don't know what the law has to say about this. Inserting ads in HTTP might even be a different case because there is a contract that is being breached between Cox and NBC while the ISP probably doesn't have any explicit contract with the web site.
Your argument is a red herring. Yes, there is a lot of land out there. Yes, a lot of it is non-arable. But even so that doesn't change the fact that there is lot of sustainably arable land that we haven't used. And on top of that, the amount of crop per acre produced is increasing at an astounding rate that has kept abreast of or surpassed the population's growth rate due to improvements in agricultural technology.
In the past 14 years, the world population increased 20%. In 28 years that means the population will have increased by only 44%. Our world is fully able to handle that many people.
Agreed. A good example of this is agricultural technology which (in the US) has been growing at an exponentially faster rate than the world population for a number of years.
Like I said, the term "free market" has a very specific technical meaning. It comes from economics and, among other things, it requires that buyers and sellers don't coerce each other and that they don't form cartels. Thus the need for a referee to prevent them from doing that. This referee generally shouldn't be a player (i.e. should not be buying to selling goods) and should not control the market other than the minimum necessary to ensure it continues to be a "free market".
A true "free market" may in fact be very heavily regulated. A good examples is the stock exchange which is very tightly regulated by the SEC to prevent this such as insider trading (which violates the non-cartel and equal knowledge aspects of a "free market").
Maybe the Libertarians are using the wrong term when they say they want a "free market". I don't know, but I would very highly recommend taking a college course on economics as you will discover that a lot of political arguments are actually boneheadedly miss-guided. (E.g. ask an economist about how luxury taxes end up taxing the poor more than they do the rich who buy luxuries.) Being well informed about the basics of economics should be considered a civic duty.
I have to agree with you. Otherwise we must assume that all scientists are crazy for wanting to repeat their experiments multiple times.
In fact I challenge anyone to find any official definition of insanity that uses this definition.
The same reason I don't automatically reply to every troll on slashdot. Sometimes it's not worth getting wrapped up in answering every accusation.
Wait! Was your post a troll? Doh!
What you describe sounds more like anarchism than libertarianism. Not being a libertarian myself I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I will note that "Free Market" does not mean "Unregulated Market".
It is one thing to say that the government shouldn't only be a referee and not an active player. It is another to say there should be no referees.
I hate to break your theory, but most trademarks take an indefinite article. E.g. "John bought a Ford truck", "Sally bought a Lenovo computer". While I personally like your theory, the evidence doesn't support it. In fact outside the software world and quantity nouns, I can't think of a single trademark that doesn't take an indefinite article when the generic term would take an indefinite article.
I was reading it as "memsistor" which I think is better than "memristor". I didn't realize until now that I was miss-reading it.