"Freedom of speech" implies the right to hold/express an opinion
How about holding the opinion that my time on MySpace is worth just as much as your time on Google? I'm not a big MySpace user, but you are putting values to the way people spend their time. If your community feels that people shouldn't use library computers to get on MySpace, then campaign to make it a policy of your local library, but don't support some bill that will make it a requirement of every library. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean there isn't some community that only uses their libraries to access MySpace.
You're right, as the discussion went on and points were made against subpoints, I lost track of the initial question. I don't know enough about Rudy to comment on that topic, but I agree with you everywhere else, especially the last line, which kinda over rules everything else we've said. Nice discussion though.
I'm just not convinced of that. I guess that depends on what you mean by "a lot". I think most democrats don't care, and by most I mean at least the majority. I think that generally, republicans are more conservative while democrats are more liberal, and that these beliefs tend to extend into the issues of race and feminism. I'm not sure if the number of democrats who won't vote for either of the two will outweigh the number of republicans who don't want to see another Bush, but the more I talk to other people about the subject, the less I worry about having another republican in office.
With that said, I'm not trying to say that it isn't a factor. If the democrats get a white male through the primaries, I have trouble seeing any way for the republicans to win, while it could be a battle if Obama or Hillary wins the primaries. I just don't think that enough people care about race or sex (although I think Obama has the better shot) anymore to give this battle to the republicans.
I agree with most of what you've said. I'm from a rural town in Illinois, and although I've always been pretty liberal (and consequently a democrat), the vast majority of people where I grew up were very conservative republicans. However, over the last 3 years or so, I've seen almost all of them change to to democrats. People are fed up with the republicans.
What I didn't completely agree with you about is the idea that Hillary or Obama will lose the "I'm not a republican" advantage. I think that the people who wouldn't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or Obama because he's black are mostly the same people who are still going to vote republican because that's the only way they see to vote. The rural farmers who are voting democrat for the first times in their lives have taken a big step, so I'm not sure if race or sex will be enough to turn them back at this point. Then again, I'm really not sure about that, it's just an idea.
I'm now going to make it a practice to check your profile before I watch anything on YouTube. If your profile is gone, I won't use YouTube. I won't watch any videos at a site that stifles free speech.
Maybe you should have to give a portion of your pay to supporting the medical problems of every jobless waif in the damned country because the unemployment rate is usually caused by banks and the government instead of the unemployed individuals choosing not to work. Many governments work to have an unemployment rate somewhere between 4 and 10% for a variety of reasons, most of which go over my head. What I do understand, is that our economy functions properly with a certain level of unemployment, so in many ways, we depend on the unemployed for our livelihood. If we need the unemployed to function, then shouldn't we support them?
I will admint that my idea was not thought through. It was mainly an attempt at a counter to an idea that I think is wrong (making it illegal to cross the street while using an iPod). However, I do not agree with any or your reasoning.
I feel that I have the right not to be run over by some stupid pr1ck on his/her mobile.
You don't. You also don't have a right to not be murdered, a right to not be hit, or a right to not be spit in the face. We have laws put in place to punish people who commit these offenses (although I don't think its illegal to spit in someone's face), and those laws may be used to deter people from committing the crimes, but they are not in place because you have a right to not being assaulted. It's not quite that simple, but certain rights protect others and the right to freedom prevents you from having a right to not be murdered.
On a related topic 10 years ago we all managed fine without cell phones
And one hundred years ago we didn't have cars, and people managed to get around just fine. Nowadays it seems like everyone drives a car. They can wait a little longer to get to work. Ok, that was more than a little sarcastic, but seriously, times change. While I agree with you that most cell conversations can wait (and I also think that a large number of people use their cell phones when it is rude to do so or at inappropriate times), that's not the point. The point is whether or not we have should be allowed to choose when to use the phone, or if the government should choose for us. This is the same for the iPod. Do we trust people to know when it is safe to use an iPod, or do we let the government tell us when we can or can't do it? After writing that sentence, I reread it and laughed at how ridiculous this law is when put in that perspective.
What if on the first accident they hit you, or a member of your family.
I saved this one for last. If they hit me or a member of my family, I hope that no one in law enforcement would let my or my families emotions cloud the law. Do you think that a person who was just hit by a car is in a good emotional state to make such decisions? Our laws are supposed to be based on logic, not emotion. I don't believe in the death penalty; I don't think killing is ever a good thing. If someone broke into my house and proceeded to torture and murder my family, I would probably want to see that person killed. The problem is at that point, I'm no longer a rational person. I'm an emotional wreck whose decisions are not based on logic (or at least are not as logical as when I'm not emotional). Even though the politicians play on our emotions to draw support, the best decisions that we can make are logical, not emotional. This isn't to say that emotion can't play a role in our decisions, just that logic should take precedence. It is crucial to recognize / separate the two. I try to put emotion aside as much as possible in cases such as these, because it isn't fair to judge someone's action based on your emotions, especially if your emotions are closely linked to the action. Search for emotional fallacy for other reasons why it your argument isn't valid.
I've also read studies that show that eating while driving is more dangerous than both drunk driving and using a cell phone combined, and is the cause of more accidents, but I can't seem to find that anywhere. Most people have also seen the mythbusters episode that seems to refute the drunk driving claim. All of this is subjective anyway, which was part of my point.
This is a little offtopic, but I think the current attitude towards cell phones is similar. A lot of cities and states are trying to make cell phones illegal while driving (or have already made it illegal). It seems to me that instead of penalizing those of us who are able to use cell phones safely while driving (whether that means pulling into the right lane on the highway and setting the cruise control or deciding not to use your cell phone on a busy street), we should just let the laws in place handle careless drivers. If someone gets into an accident while talking on a cell phone, fine. If that person get into a second accident while talking on a cell phone, then he should lose his license for being a bad driver. I don't know if two accidents or twenty should be the cutoff point, but I don't think that we need to ban cell phones to stop people from driving carelessly. I had a friend whos father used to drive us to soccer games and read the newspaper while driving. It is pretty apparent to most people that driving while reading the newspaper is a bad idea, but banning newspapers in cars isn't the answer. Bad drivers shouldn't have a license regardless of why they are a bad driver. Talking on a cell phone isn't necessarily worse than eating, changing the radio, text messaging, or reading a book while driving, so they should all be treated the same.
To bring this all back around to your point, we don't need to make more laws that are already covered by others or are obviously a bad idea. Last time I checked, walking in front of a bus was a pretty bad idea. Furthermore, walking out in front of traffic in the city usually means that you are jaywalking, so its already illegal. How many people have walked in front of traffic because they were reading the paper or eating? We haven't outlawed eating while walking in the city, so why should we outlaw iPods? But then again, I don't think people always need to be protected from their own stupidity.
So you want to maximize revenue and not profit? Maximizing revenue doesn't do a lot of good if it costs you more to sell x amount of items then the revenue you get from selling them. The RIAA's goal is not to maximize revenue, but to maximize profit. Now, since I took a class on macroeconimics too, I know that profit is maximized when the marginal cost (which includes manufacturing, marketting, etc) of the nth item equals the marginal revenue of the nth item, and in a monopoly, the price is taken by the demand at that quantity. If the demand curve stays constant but the cost of making an item drops, the quantity where the marginal revenue and cost meet is higher than before, which means the company will produce more of the product to maximize profit, and at the higher quantity, demand will drop so price will drop as well.
But this is all a completely simplistic view of a very complex problem. As you said, piracy becomes a factor in pricing because it drops the demand for the good, so obviously this is not a monopoly. Also, the RIAA has not priced goods as a function of disposable income or else the price of CDs would be higher, so either the RIAA is not a monopoly, monopolies do not price as a function of income, or both. Yes, lowered costs of production can mean more profit, but a company shouldn't spend more on distribution or advertising if it is more profitable to lower the price of goods on the market.
It has never been the principle cost driver for the medium? Even when the medium was brand new and there was no such thing as a CD pressing company so anyone who wanted to make CDs had to buy equipment that would be capable? The first CDs cost a lot to manufacture when compared to CDs today. I doubt that that was the majority of the cost of a CD, but it was more signficant then as opposed to now.
But that really wasn't my point either. I don't think we need to debate any of the costs of creating / manufacturing / marketing / selling CDs, only that we need to recognize that the change in consumer index is not the only factor in CD pricing, which is what the RIAA was arguing should be the case. In other words, the RIAA thinks that we should be happy that CD prices haven't followed the consumer index, to which I say that there are other factors that go into the pricing of any product, and no one should just be content with prices that do not raise with the consumer index without taking those other factors into consideration. I think we can both agree on that statement?
I'm not trying to refute anything that you've said, but I think you missed the point. It seemed to me that the parent was saying that the price to make a CD goes down over a reasonable amount of time, so the RIAA can't just use a function of the worth of a consumer's dollar to determine the price after x amount of years. How the price of a CD is divided up isn't really the point. The point is that it costs less to make a CD now then it did in 1996, so that needs to be factored into the pricing of CDs, instead of just the consumer index that the RIAA used.
Well, it depends on each case. The "black box" I was referring to is something that's included in a lot of new car models. I wish I could find the video that I saw, but I'll explain what happened and maybe someone else will be able tell what was going on, or better yet, find the video I'm describing (I thought it was a Penn and Teller: Bullshit! episode, but I found a video of the Big Brother episode and that wasn't it. None of the other episodes seem to be about that either, so I think it's something else).
The show was about tracking cars with pre-installed hardware. The producers or hosts of the show decided to track one of their employees as he ran errands. They found a guy who did not work for any police department, but claimed that he worked with the police at times. He brought in a laptop and showed how he could track any car with the pre-installed hardware, which was a lot of cars. Somehow, he locked onto the employees car, so they followed the employee with a camera to make sure that the tracking was working as the employee went about his business. The whole point of the segment, if I remember correctly, was to show how someone could be tracked without installing any extra hardware, just by hardware that was preinstalled on the employee's car.
Now, most new cars come with a black box that records the speed of the car, its acceleration, etc. The car companies claim that this is used in crashes to determine what happened. However, if that black box sends its information anywhere, then that information can be intercepted. With that information, if you know where the car starts, you can find out where the car is at any point. From what I remember, some of the black boxes even transmit GPS locations, which would make it even easier to track. I'm not sure if the video was using GPS to track the car, but the car involved was a red Saturn or something similar and wasn't brand new 2 years or so ago when I saw the episode.
I'm not sure if that helped answer your question or not, but hopefully it provided something worthwhile.
What's even worse than that, is that a lot of cars come with a black box or other GPS device. If you already have OnStar or other GPS systems installed, then it's pretty clear that you can be tracked. However, many cars are coming with pre-installed GPS tracking in the form of theft protection. I can't find a good link at the moment, but I remember seeing a video (for some reason I think it was on a Penn and Teller: Bullshit! episode) where a guy with a laptop tracked an employee's car as he went to do some errands. I can see how you would want to track your car if it gets stolen, but that really isn't what we are talking about here. The problem is that you can be tracked without your knowledge or consent if your car has such a black box. I'm not sure how that should play out in the legal world if tracking is done without a warrant, and this case didn't seem to take that into consideration.
Different question: what are the factors that lead a company to choose an operating system? Companies are run by people; people can be influenced by advertising. Companies can be influenced by TV ads just as easily as the everyday home user is. If we want to say that companies use analysts to determine which OS is best, then we have to realize that analysts can be influenced by ads as well. I'm not saying that companies WILL be influenced by ads, just that they could be, and that might be a contributing factor to the large marketing budget. Consumer opinion can also play a roll in selecting an OS. If I know my bank is switching to Vista, and I don't think Vista is safe, I might switch banks.
I'm not trying to say that MS does or doesn't care about the everyday home user, but I don't think that their advertising budget is good evidence to support either claim.
I start to think the same way, and then I remember that if there's one thing history teaches us, its that history repeats itself. Just because we haven't had any revolutions in the US doesn't mean we won't ever have one, and we are only on our third century as a nation. People / organizations / political groups rise to power and eventually fall leaving room for others to takeover, hopefully with better ideals than the ones before.
Exactly. If I download a few movies using bittorrent, why should my connection be throttled while my roommate downloads movies at full speed via Vongo or whatever other popular site he chooses (of course, this is assuming I am not uploading while torrenting). If they want to put limits on my connection, it should be on the amount of traffic, not the type.
That's what I thought at first too, but then I thought about my mom, who only three years ago asked me how to rewind the DVD before taking it back to the video store and last year told me to stop signing up for porn on her computer (which I never even use) because she keeps seeing ads that say "Girls from want to date you!". Just yesterday my roommate asked got an instant message from some girl he didn't know that asked him to check out a picture of them so she could add it to facebook, and he actually clicked the link to check it out and then wondered why his computer started acting funny. The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of people don't know how Google works, and it might be a good idea for some of us who do know to inform them. Then again, I'm not sure it would make much of a difference anyway.
Here are just reasons you might take a pay cut:
Many employers think that hiring fresh college grads is cheaper than hiring vets. There are a few Nuke Plants in my area and my friend's dad lost his job at one after 25 years because it shut down, and has been unable to get a job at any of the other for even close to the same salary because they don't want to pay anyone that much if they don't have to, and they don't. This happens in all fields, not just computers or nuclear.
If you have a really well paying job, its harder to find a better paying job than if you had a poor paying job. This is just a simple observation. If your job pays x dollars, y percent of jobs pay better and z percent pay worse, but getting paid X dollars where X > x means that only Y percent of jobs pay better and Z pay worse, where Y z. If the guy has 15 years experience and has a high salary for his work, it will be hard to find another job without taking a pay cut.
There are plenty of other reasons why you might take a pay cut or why you might get a better job afterwards. I'm not saying that he will definitely take a pay cut, but from my experience I can see how that would be most likely. Yes, a degree will make it easier to find a job, but that doesn't mean that the new job will pay better than an employer you've worked with for 15 years. But of course, this all depends on the companies and individuals involved.
Aside from that, I'd like to know which universities you are talking about that are so easy to get a CS degree in. Getting a CS degree from a good school is not easy. I know I can drive 45 minutes from my University and finish my CS degree in one more semester instead of three if I wanted to, but the school on the diploma means more than the title of the degree.
As well as missing even some of those who are in plain sight.
Exactly. But guess what, you're going to miss some (whether they are in plain sight or not) no matter what you do. The only way to capture every terrorist is to capture everyone so that there is no one left to be a terrorist.
Sorry, that wasn't supposed to be directed at you. It reminded me of the things I hear from the same people who say that, and then started to rant a bit, even though that doesn't in any way mean that you are racist like them. That was why I said I agreed with you but just wanted to pick on wording, and then never used you in an example but just your words. Still, I can see that I didn't make that clear after reading it again.
But now I'm confused. The use of "real terrorist" as opposed to pranksters threw me in the direction of Arabs because I couldn't see any other way to distinguish the two. After reading your last post, it seems to me that you meant "real terrorists" as being who are already terrorists, or people who have committed "real" terrorist acts. Right now I'm having trouble understanding why two people can do the same thing but only one of their actions is a terrorist attack.
To me, it normally involves killing people or plotting to do so. Running a spam-bot net just makes one an ordinary criminal. If the hippies don't plan to or manage to kill anyone, that makes them ordinary criminals in my mind, too.
First, I'll agree that running a spam-bot net is not terrorism, but some of the big viruses are. Besides that, you're free to think whatever you want, but your definition of a terrorist is a bit lacking. Your definition isn't any different from homicide. I think you want to include the disruption part in there, so a terrorist is really someone who intends to kill or hurt a lot of people in a disruptive way? That would include a 10 year old who brings an assault rifle to school, which I don't think you want. What if they need to have a political agenda? That wouldn't include hippies who bomb and successfully kill people. What is your definition of a terrorist? I tend to stick with the definition of someone who uses fear or terrorizes, and I think it is analogous to hate crimes. The degree of damage done by the attack does not define a crime as a hate crime, but instead the motivation and reasons behind it. Someone who tries to scare people is a terrorist, whether or not they kill people doing it. Someone who attacks a man because of race or beliefs has committed a hate crime, whether he beats the man or kills him. Of course, the action in either case must reach some degree of severity to even be considered a crime, but the severity doesn't dictate wehther or not it is terrorism. Finally, if the "real terrorists" tried to shut down the whole city like that, would that be an act of terrorism? If so, then is an act defined as terrorism by who perpetrates the act, i.e. terrorists or regular criminals?
There's even more to it than that. For those that buy books in person in stores, there is no difference between that and picking the book up at the library (which you can also do with a lot of movies). Yet, people still buy books, and they even go the extra mile and frequently buy hardcover instead of soft. Books have collection value, which isn't really the case for movies. It's easy to compare antiques to books, but there is little more value in an official DVD than in a burnt copy.
Maybe he just thinks its the right thing to do? I know its hard to believe, but not all lawyers are in it just for the money (consider prosecuters, although a lot of them move on to private firms). If I was a lawyer and could afford to take a break long enough for this case, I would jump at the chance to take down the RIAA strictly because I think they're jack asses that need to be put in their place. I think that most lawyers out there keep an eye out for cases that they believe in because it keeps the job interesting, or at least that's what the lawyers I know do.
I agree with you, but I'm gonna rant for a sec on your wording.
When I said that it would create more terrorists, I'm considering your "pranksters" as being terrorists as well, since they fit the more traditional sense of the word, being someone who terrorizes or frightens other people. I strongly dislike the fact that if I ask a hundred random people to describe a terrorist, the vast majority will describe an arab (or maybe this is just the way it is in the midwest), and probably an arab with a long beard, a towel wrapped around his head (sorry about the wording there, but I'm trying to make a point about racism), and a bomb strapped to his chest. If I had done the same thing before September 11th, most people would describe someone like Timothy McVeigh or the Unibomber. "Real terrorists" can be anyone. Malicious hackers are terrorists. The hippies who bomb buildings that test chemicals on animals are terrorists. Anyone can be a terrorist, not just arabs. As far as I'm concerned, Bush is a terrorist because just about all he does is try to scare us. Anyway, the word "terrorist" should not be synonymous with Muslim fundamentalist.
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"Freedom of speech" implies the right to hold/express an opinion
How about holding the opinion that my time on MySpace is worth just as much as your time on Google? I'm not a big MySpace user, but you are putting values to the way people spend their time. If your community feels that people shouldn't use library computers to get on MySpace, then campaign to make it a policy of your local library, but don't support some bill that will make it a requirement of every library. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean there isn't some community that only uses their libraries to access MySpace.
You're right, as the discussion went on and points were made against subpoints, I lost track of the initial question. I don't know enough about Rudy to comment on that topic, but I agree with you everywhere else, especially the last line, which kinda over rules everything else we've said. Nice discussion though.
I'm just not convinced of that. I guess that depends on what you mean by "a lot". I think most democrats don't care, and by most I mean at least the majority. I think that generally, republicans are more conservative while democrats are more liberal, and that these beliefs tend to extend into the issues of race and feminism. I'm not sure if the number of democrats who won't vote for either of the two will outweigh the number of republicans who don't want to see another Bush, but the more I talk to other people about the subject, the less I worry about having another republican in office.
With that said, I'm not trying to say that it isn't a factor. If the democrats get a white male through the primaries, I have trouble seeing any way for the republicans to win, while it could be a battle if Obama or Hillary wins the primaries. I just don't think that enough people care about race or sex (although I think Obama has the better shot) anymore to give this battle to the republicans.
I agree with most of what you've said. I'm from a rural town in Illinois, and although I've always been pretty liberal (and consequently a democrat), the vast majority of people where I grew up were very conservative republicans. However, over the last 3 years or so, I've seen almost all of them change to to democrats. People are fed up with the republicans.
What I didn't completely agree with you about is the idea that Hillary or Obama will lose the "I'm not a republican" advantage. I think that the people who wouldn't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or Obama because he's black are mostly the same people who are still going to vote republican because that's the only way they see to vote. The rural farmers who are voting democrat for the first times in their lives have taken a big step, so I'm not sure if race or sex will be enough to turn them back at this point. Then again, I'm really not sure about that, it's just an idea.
I'm now going to make it a practice to check your profile before I watch anything on YouTube. If your profile is gone, I won't use YouTube. I won't watch any videos at a site that stifles free speech.
Maybe you should have to give a portion of your pay to supporting the medical problems of every jobless waif in the damned country because the unemployment rate is usually caused by banks and the government instead of the unemployed individuals choosing not to work. Many governments work to have an unemployment rate somewhere between 4 and 10% for a variety of reasons, most of which go over my head. What I do understand, is that our economy functions properly with a certain level of unemployment, so in many ways, we depend on the unemployed for our livelihood. If we need the unemployed to function, then shouldn't we support them?
I will admint that my idea was not thought through. It was mainly an attempt at a counter to an idea that I think is wrong (making it illegal to cross the street while using an iPod). However, I do not agree with any or your reasoning.
I feel that I have the right not to be run over by some stupid pr1ck on his/her mobile.
You don't. You also don't have a right to not be murdered, a right to not be hit, or a right to not be spit in the face. We have laws put in place to punish people who commit these offenses (although I don't think its illegal to spit in someone's face), and those laws may be used to deter people from committing the crimes, but they are not in place because you have a right to not being assaulted. It's not quite that simple, but certain rights protect others and the right to freedom prevents you from having a right to not be murdered.
On a related topic 10 years ago we all managed fine without cell phones
And one hundred years ago we didn't have cars, and people managed to get around just fine. Nowadays it seems like everyone drives a car. They can wait a little longer to get to work. Ok, that was more than a little sarcastic, but seriously, times change. While I agree with you that most cell conversations can wait (and I also think that a large number of people use their cell phones when it is rude to do so or at inappropriate times), that's not the point. The point is whether or not we have should be allowed to choose when to use the phone, or if the government should choose for us. This is the same for the iPod. Do we trust people to know when it is safe to use an iPod, or do we let the government tell us when we can or can't do it? After writing that sentence, I reread it and laughed at how ridiculous this law is when put in that perspective.
What if on the first accident they hit you, or a member of your family.
I saved this one for last. If they hit me or a member of my family, I hope that no one in law enforcement would let my or my families emotions cloud the law. Do you think that a person who was just hit by a car is in a good emotional state to make such decisions? Our laws are supposed to be based on logic, not emotion. I don't believe in the death penalty; I don't think killing is ever a good thing. If someone broke into my house and proceeded to torture and murder my family, I would probably want to see that person killed. The problem is at that point, I'm no longer a rational person. I'm an emotional wreck whose decisions are not based on logic (or at least are not as logical as when I'm not emotional).
Even though the politicians play on our emotions to draw support, the best decisions that we can make are logical, not emotional. This isn't to say that emotion can't play a role in our decisions, just that logic should take precedence. It is crucial to recognize / separate the two. I try to put emotion aside as much as possible in cases such as these, because it isn't fair to judge someone's action based on your emotions, especially if your emotions are closely linked to the action. Search for emotional fallacy for other reasons why it your argument isn't valid.
I've also read studies that show that eating while driving is more dangerous than both drunk driving and using a cell phone combined, and is the cause of more accidents, but I can't seem to find that anywhere. Most people have also seen the mythbusters episode that seems to refute the drunk driving claim. All of this is subjective anyway, which was part of my point.
I enjoy the occasional intelligent debates that surface above the usual slashdot noise.
cheers to that
This is a little offtopic, but I think the current attitude towards cell phones is similar. A lot of cities and states are trying to make cell phones illegal while driving (or have already made it illegal). It seems to me that instead of penalizing those of us who are able to use cell phones safely while driving (whether that means pulling into the right lane on the highway and setting the cruise control or deciding not to use your cell phone on a busy street), we should just let the laws in place handle careless drivers. If someone gets into an accident while talking on a cell phone, fine. If that person get into a second accident while talking on a cell phone, then he should lose his license for being a bad driver. I don't know if two accidents or twenty should be the cutoff point, but I don't think that we need to ban cell phones to stop people from driving carelessly. I had a friend whos father used to drive us to soccer games and read the newspaper while driving. It is pretty apparent to most people that driving while reading the newspaper is a bad idea, but banning newspapers in cars isn't the answer. Bad drivers shouldn't have a license regardless of why they are a bad driver. Talking on a cell phone isn't necessarily worse than eating, changing the radio, text messaging, or reading a book while driving, so they should all be treated the same.
To bring this all back around to your point, we don't need to make more laws that are already covered by others or are obviously a bad idea. Last time I checked, walking in front of a bus was a pretty bad idea. Furthermore, walking out in front of traffic in the city usually means that you are jaywalking, so its already illegal. How many people have walked in front of traffic because they were reading the paper or eating? We haven't outlawed eating while walking in the city, so why should we outlaw iPods? But then again, I don't think people always need to be protected from their own stupidity.
So you want to maximize revenue and not profit? Maximizing revenue doesn't do a lot of good if it costs you more to sell x amount of items then the revenue you get from selling them. The RIAA's goal is not to maximize revenue, but to maximize profit. Now, since I took a class on macroeconimics too, I know that profit is maximized when the marginal cost (which includes manufacturing, marketting, etc) of the nth item equals the marginal revenue of the nth item, and in a monopoly, the price is taken by the demand at that quantity. If the demand curve stays constant but the cost of making an item drops, the quantity where the marginal revenue and cost meet is higher than before, which means the company will produce more of the product to maximize profit, and at the higher quantity, demand will drop so price will drop as well.
But this is all a completely simplistic view of a very complex problem. As you said, piracy becomes a factor in pricing because it drops the demand for the good, so obviously this is not a monopoly. Also, the RIAA has not priced goods as a function of disposable income or else the price of CDs would be higher, so either the RIAA is not a monopoly, monopolies do not price as a function of income, or both. Yes, lowered costs of production can mean more profit, but a company shouldn't spend more on distribution or advertising if it is more profitable to lower the price of goods on the market.
It has never been the principle cost driver for the medium? Even when the medium was brand new and there was no such thing as a CD pressing company so anyone who wanted to make CDs had to buy equipment that would be capable? The first CDs cost a lot to manufacture when compared to CDs today. I doubt that that was the majority of the cost of a CD, but it was more signficant then as opposed to now.
But that really wasn't my point either. I don't think we need to debate any of the costs of creating / manufacturing / marketing / selling CDs, only that we need to recognize that the change in consumer index is not the only factor in CD pricing, which is what the RIAA was arguing should be the case. In other words, the RIAA thinks that we should be happy that CD prices haven't followed the consumer index, to which I say that there are other factors that go into the pricing of any product, and no one should just be content with prices that do not raise with the consumer index without taking those other factors into consideration. I think we can both agree on that statement?
I'm not trying to refute anything that you've said, but I think you missed the point. It seemed to me that the parent was saying that the price to make a CD goes down over a reasonable amount of time, so the RIAA can't just use a function of the worth of a consumer's dollar to determine the price after x amount of years. How the price of a CD is divided up isn't really the point. The point is that it costs less to make a CD now then it did in 1996, so that needs to be factored into the pricing of CDs, instead of just the consumer index that the RIAA used.
Well, it depends on each case. The "black box" I was referring to is something that's included in a lot of new car models. I wish I could find the video that I saw, but I'll explain what happened and maybe someone else will be able tell what was going on, or better yet, find the video I'm describing (I thought it was a Penn and Teller: Bullshit! episode, but I found a video of the Big Brother episode and that wasn't it. None of the other episodes seem to be about that either, so I think it's something else).
The show was about tracking cars with pre-installed hardware. The producers or hosts of the show decided to track one of their employees as he ran errands. They found a guy who did not work for any police department, but claimed that he worked with the police at times. He brought in a laptop and showed how he could track any car with the pre-installed hardware, which was a lot of cars. Somehow, he locked onto the employees car, so they followed the employee with a camera to make sure that the tracking was working as the employee went about his business. The whole point of the segment, if I remember correctly, was to show how someone could be tracked without installing any extra hardware, just by hardware that was preinstalled on the employee's car.
Now, most new cars come with a black box that records the speed of the car, its acceleration, etc. The car companies claim that this is used in crashes to determine what happened. However, if that black box sends its information anywhere, then that information can be intercepted. With that information, if you know where the car starts, you can find out where the car is at any point. From what I remember, some of the black boxes even transmit GPS locations, which would make it even easier to track. I'm not sure if the video was using GPS to track the car, but the car involved was a red Saturn or something similar and wasn't brand new 2 years or so ago when I saw the episode.
I'm not sure if that helped answer your question or not, but hopefully it provided something worthwhile.
What's even worse than that, is that a lot of cars come with a black box or other GPS device. If you already have OnStar or other GPS systems installed, then it's pretty clear that you can be tracked. However, many cars are coming with pre-installed GPS tracking in the form of theft protection. I can't find a good link at the moment, but I remember seeing a video (for some reason I think it was on a Penn and Teller: Bullshit! episode) where a guy with a laptop tracked an employee's car as he went to do some errands. I can see how you would want to track your car if it gets stolen, but that really isn't what we are talking about here. The problem is that you can be tracked without your knowledge or consent if your car has such a black box. I'm not sure how that should play out in the legal world if tracking is done without a warrant, and this case didn't seem to take that into consideration.
Different question: what are the factors that lead a company to choose an operating system? Companies are run by people; people can be influenced by advertising. Companies can be influenced by TV ads just as easily as the everyday home user is. If we want to say that companies use analysts to determine which OS is best, then we have to realize that analysts can be influenced by ads as well. I'm not saying that companies WILL be influenced by ads, just that they could be, and that might be a contributing factor to the large marketing budget. Consumer opinion can also play a roll in selecting an OS. If I know my bank is switching to Vista, and I don't think Vista is safe, I might switch banks.
I'm not trying to say that MS does or doesn't care about the everyday home user, but I don't think that their advertising budget is good evidence to support either claim.
I start to think the same way, and then I remember that if there's one thing history teaches us, its that history repeats itself. Just because we haven't had any revolutions in the US doesn't mean we won't ever have one, and we are only on our third century as a nation. People / organizations / political groups rise to power and eventually fall leaving room for others to takeover, hopefully with better ideals than the ones before.
Exactly. If I download a few movies using bittorrent, why should my connection be throttled while my roommate downloads movies at full speed via Vongo or whatever other popular site he chooses (of course, this is assuming I am not uploading while torrenting). If they want to put limits on my connection, it should be on the amount of traffic, not the type.
That's what I thought at first too, but then I thought about my mom, who only three years ago asked me how to rewind the DVD before taking it back to the video store and last year told me to stop signing up for porn on her computer (which I never even use) because she keeps seeing ads that say "Girls from want to date you!". Just yesterday my roommate asked got an instant message from some girl he didn't know that asked him to check out a picture of them so she could add it to facebook, and he actually clicked the link to check it out and then wondered why his computer started acting funny. The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of people don't know how Google works, and it might be a good idea for some of us who do know to inform them. Then again, I'm not sure it would make much of a difference anyway.
Here are just reasons you might take a pay cut:
Many employers think that hiring fresh college grads is cheaper than hiring vets. There are a few Nuke Plants in my area and my friend's dad lost his job at one after 25 years because it shut down, and has been unable to get a job at any of the other for even close to the same salary because they don't want to pay anyone that much if they don't have to, and they don't. This happens in all fields, not just computers or nuclear.
If you have a really well paying job, its harder to find a better paying job than if you had a poor paying job. This is just a simple observation. If your job pays x dollars, y percent of jobs pay better and z percent pay worse, but getting paid X dollars where X > x means that only Y percent of jobs pay better and Z pay worse, where Y z. If the guy has 15 years experience and has a high salary for his work, it will be hard to find another job without taking a pay cut.
There are plenty of other reasons why you might take a pay cut or why you might get a better job afterwards. I'm not saying that he will definitely take a pay cut, but from my experience I can see how that would be most likely. Yes, a degree will make it easier to find a job, but that doesn't mean that the new job will pay better than an employer you've worked with for 15 years. But of course, this all depends on the companies and individuals involved.
Aside from that, I'd like to know which universities you are talking about that are so easy to get a CS degree in. Getting a CS degree from a good school is not easy. I know I can drive 45 minutes from my University and finish my CS degree in one more semester instead of three if I wanted to, but the school on the diploma means more than the title of the degree.
As well as missing even some of those who are in plain sight.
Exactly. But guess what, you're going to miss some (whether they are in plain sight or not) no matter what you do. The only way to capture every terrorist is to capture everyone so that there is no one left to be a terrorist.
Sorry, that wasn't supposed to be directed at you. It reminded me of the things I hear from the same people who say that, and then started to rant a bit, even though that doesn't in any way mean that you are racist like them. That was why I said I agreed with you but just wanted to pick on wording, and then never used you in an example but just your words. Still, I can see that I didn't make that clear after reading it again.
But now I'm confused. The use of "real terrorist" as opposed to pranksters threw me in the direction of Arabs because I couldn't see any other way to distinguish the two. After reading your last post, it seems to me that you meant "real terrorists" as being who are already terrorists, or people who have committed "real" terrorist acts. Right now I'm having trouble understanding why two people can do the same thing but only one of their actions is a terrorist attack.
To me, it normally involves killing people or plotting to do so. Running a spam-bot net just makes one an ordinary criminal. If the hippies don't plan to or manage to kill anyone, that makes them ordinary criminals in my mind, too.
First, I'll agree that running a spam-bot net is not terrorism, but some of the big viruses are. Besides that, you're free to think whatever you want, but your definition of a terrorist is a bit lacking. Your definition isn't any different from homicide. I think you want to include the disruption part in there, so a terrorist is really someone who intends to kill or hurt a lot of people in a disruptive way? That would include a 10 year old who brings an assault rifle to school, which I don't think you want. What if they need to have a political agenda? That wouldn't include hippies who bomb and successfully kill people. What is your definition of a terrorist? I tend to stick with the definition of someone who uses fear or terrorizes, and I think it is analogous to hate crimes. The degree of damage done by the attack does not define a crime as a hate crime, but instead the motivation and reasons behind it. Someone who tries to scare people is a terrorist, whether or not they kill people doing it. Someone who attacks a man because of race or beliefs has committed a hate crime, whether he beats the man or kills him. Of course, the action in either case must reach some degree of severity to even be considered a crime, but the severity doesn't dictate wehther or not it is terrorism. Finally, if the "real terrorists" tried to shut down the whole city like that, would that be an act of terrorism? If so, then is an act defined as terrorism by who perpetrates the act, i.e. terrorists or regular criminals?
There's even more to it than that. For those that buy books in person in stores, there is no difference between that and picking the book up at the library (which you can also do with a lot of movies). Yet, people still buy books, and they even go the extra mile and frequently buy hardcover instead of soft. Books have collection value, which isn't really the case for movies. It's easy to compare antiques to books, but there is little more value in an official DVD than in a burnt copy.
Maybe he just thinks its the right thing to do? I know its hard to believe, but not all lawyers are in it just for the money (consider prosecuters, although a lot of them move on to private firms). If I was a lawyer and could afford to take a break long enough for this case, I would jump at the chance to take down the RIAA strictly because I think they're jack asses that need to be put in their place. I think that most lawyers out there keep an eye out for cases that they believe in because it keeps the job interesting, or at least that's what the lawyers I know do.
I agree with you, but I'm gonna rant for a sec on your wording.
When I said that it would create more terrorists, I'm considering your "pranksters" as being terrorists as well, since they fit the more traditional sense of the word, being someone who terrorizes or frightens other people. I strongly dislike the fact that if I ask a hundred random people to describe a terrorist, the vast majority will describe an arab (or maybe this is just the way it is in the midwest), and probably an arab with a long beard, a towel wrapped around his head (sorry about the wording there, but I'm trying to make a point about racism), and a bomb strapped to his chest. If I had done the same thing before September 11th, most people would describe someone like Timothy McVeigh or the Unibomber. "Real terrorists" can be anyone. Malicious hackers are terrorists. The hippies who bomb buildings that test chemicals on animals are terrorists. Anyone can be a terrorist, not just arabs. As far as I'm concerned, Bush is a terrorist because just about all he does is try to scare us. Anyway, the word "terrorist" should not be synonymous with Muslim fundamentalist.