you know, for those times you know a statement is ridiculous but can't get past the resultant mental 'why would you even think that?' enough to form a coherent logical explanation of your point in response... (note that this is not the same thing as such explanation not existing)
not recently, but for a while there TAM basically used the line whenever he couldn't find something specific to object to about what Mike had posted at the time.
you say that as if politics is more honest than statistics...
politics is usually one of the major causes of statistics being on that list... statistics are kinda a subset of politics in that reguard... or at least there's an overlap.. or something...
basically politics should be a lot further down that list :P
(also, obvious troll is obvious, i guess? *feeds vegetables*)
actually, that comment is based entirely on the fact that, by some of the meanings of average, 49-50 % of any given sample group will be below the average, by definition, in any context :P
your little jab there may or may not hold water as a result.
the annoying part about this is that, if memory serves, the USA has no business being in that agreement in the first place. (it started off involving a lot less parties and with more tightly focused goals... and more chance of actually being useful. oh, AND specific statements to the effect that it had nothing to do with copyright and such. if i remember rightly at least.)
well, if you consider that the whole point is to get them to keep making more stuff, then making it longer just reduces it's effectiveness because it's that much longer they can collect on a single work.
i do somewhat see your point regarding the movie... but on the other hand, how does it matter? so they wait five years. big whoop? then the movie has it's own five year bit. the movie is not the author writing more books, is it?
as for: "Some movies, for example, fail to find their feet until a DVD release a few years later," why the hell does it take them a few YEARS to release the dvd? that's windowing (already a driving force behind piracy). something we'd like to Discourage. the answer to this particular objection is: don't wait years to release the DVD. use it or lose it. if you're waiting around, you're not using it.
anyway, if the movie studio is willing to actually plan five years ahead and put off the income Now, then that's actual semi-long term planning. something we'd LOVE to encourage in corporations who, it seems, rarely plan past a 4th of a year in most cases.
potential income is hardly Real, anyway. it's 'what i might get if i actually did the thing'. if it takes more than five years to turn potential income into actual income then a large part of that is because you didn't actually Do it.
what professions allow one to continuously reap the financial rewards, with no further action, of one set of effort? so far as i can tell it amounts to 'the creation of copyrightable things' and 'investing'.
i figure 'five years from date of first publication, provided it is actually in print and available. terminated six months after it goes out of print if it does so before those five years are up'
on the basis that if it's out of print they're not getting anything out of it Anyway... consider it a 'dog in the manger' clause. the six months is so they can organise it being published elsewhere if it was an issue with the publisher.
similar deal with patents: if you're not Doing anything with it it should go away. ('doing something with it' does include licensing someone else to actually do something with it, mind you).
trademarks are, of course, an entirely different thing.
amusing note: stalin and hitler both rose to power with popular movements...
the commonwealth nations (and empire. it was sort of a mixture during ww2 i belive?) were monarchies.
this amuses me.
of course, the commonwealth also had democratic elements that were a lot more functional than the above mentioned ones.
so, actually, if you look carefully i think you'll find there weren't actually any democracies involved at all, but instead a collection of monarchies and oligarchies, most of whom have found regular popularity contests to be better ways of resolving power struggles than assassination.
it is unfortunately slow and mildly expensive, but any organization of reasonable size can completely bypass the banks if they want. (heck, to some degree so can individuals).
you see, there's this little thing called precious metals...
unfortunately, unlike the digital cash as employed by the banks these days, you can't fabricate entirely new money simply by running it through the system, nor can you make a transaction with someone on the other side of the world within seconds.
so, slower, logistical issues...
but on the up side the only way it can actually be 'blocked' is outright theft or Actual piracy at sea. additionally, even if the banks won't give you local currency for it, jewelers probably will... and if they won't you can probably find some kind of middleman... failing that, it probably wouldn't take too much effort to get people to just accept the silver itself if your 'coins' were reliable in their consistency.
only really starts having major issues if you debase your coin.
oh, best part? most places won't tax silver until you try to convert it into local currency (unless you start running into things like 'capital gains tax' and the like)
(gold also works, and on certain scales bulk iron or other not so precious metals work too. the thing about precious metals is that you can actually physically posses the metals, not just a bit of paper saying you own the rights to the profits from the sale of a percentage of a certain stack of the stuff)
another downside, of course, is that with modern currency being so ridiculously inflated compared to silver, and everything being priced in that inflated currency, it's hard to get a small enough quantity of silver for practical use in day to day activity. (inflation in the USA since the switch from a metal based standard to fiat currency is something ridiculous like 300% more than it ever had in the entire time before that. for exact numbers you'll have to look it up yourself though).
the simple solution to this of course is to keep accounts and pay 'em when they get to a value where that actually works, but that doesn't work so well when making one off purchases...
mind you, if you issue your own coin (not coin of the realm, exactly) using precious metals rather than fiat currency, you end up with a stockpile of said metals, and can return to the practice of writting notes to the effect of 'this note entitles the bearer to, upon it's redemption at (appropriate facility) (some amount of your currency) or equivalent at the going rate in other metals, gems, goods, or (coin of the realm) as desired and available.'
best part of those notes is that you can then issue notes worth fractions of it... but never notes for things you don't actually Have.
none of which, i admit, completely solves the problem of financial firms locking you out of the market internet wise... precious metals, being a finite, tangible, scarce good, are substantially more expensive to move around than random digital bits, which increases shipping and insurance costs. (though someone wealthy enough could actually employ trustworthy individuals specifically with the job of taking X amount of silver, going to place Y, giving it to person Z, getting object A in exchange, and returning with that item... loyal retainers are a great thing. )
i would say it would slow things down, but when it already takes months for anything to get here if one isn't willing to pay shipping fees far in excess of any justification for the product in question under the Current system, i personally don't think i'd care much about speed....
disagreeing is fine. have actual (not previously debunked) evidence and present your case well and the original article even gets changed to include it, often enough.
note how most posts declared trollish do not do this, hitting the same fallacies again and again, and being impervious to logic and reason. unlike large parts of the internet, Logic and Reason are considered, umm... significant... here.
also, I was under the impression that everyone just assumed the US government sucked like that as a matter of course, and thus it was not interesting to point out
On the post: Customs' Hamfisted Attempts To Intimidate Wikileaks Volunteers
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: So Who Else Did The Government Demand Info From In The Wikileaks Investigation?
Re:
On the post: Debunking The Myth That Wikileaks Cable Leaks Haven't Been Important
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WikiLeaks
you know, for those times you know a statement is ridiculous but can't get past the resultant mental 'why would you even think that?' enough to form a coherent logical explanation of your point in response... (note that this is not the same thing as such explanation not existing)
On the post: Press Realizing That Treatment Of Bradley Manning Is Indefensible
Re: Re: Re:
every.
single.
article.
it did get a bit tedious.
On the post: The Amazing Ability Of People To Simply Ignore Data That Proves What They Believe Is Wrong
Re:
On the post: The Amazing Ability Of People To Simply Ignore Data That Proves What They Believe Is Wrong
Re:
On the post: The Amazing Ability Of People To Simply Ignore Data That Proves What They Believe Is Wrong
Re: Re: Re:
politics is usually one of the major causes of statistics being on that list... statistics are kinda a subset of politics in that reguard... or at least there's an overlap.. or something...
basically politics should be a lot further down that list :P
(also, obvious troll is obvious, i guess? *feeds vegetables*)
On the post: Why Senator Lieberman's Censorship Law Is Unconstitutional And A Danger To Free Speech
Re: Seriously
On the post: Why Senator Lieberman's Censorship Law Is Unconstitutional And A Danger To Free Speech
Re: Re: Re: Electorate
your little jab there may or may not hold water as a result.
On the post: Son Of ACTA (But Worse): Meet TPP, The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
On the post: US Is Left Waiting For Godot On Public Domain Day: Once Again, Absolutely Nothing Enters The Public Domain This Year
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
i do somewhat see your point regarding the movie... but on the other hand, how does it matter? so they wait five years. big whoop? then the movie has it's own five year bit. the movie is not the author writing more books, is it?
as for: "Some movies, for example, fail to find their feet until a DVD release a few years later," why the hell does it take them a few YEARS to release the dvd? that's windowing (already a driving force behind piracy). something we'd like to Discourage. the answer to this particular objection is: don't wait years to release the DVD. use it or lose it. if you're waiting around, you're not using it.
anyway, if the movie studio is willing to actually plan five years ahead and put off the income Now, then that's actual semi-long term planning. something we'd LOVE to encourage in corporations who, it seems, rarely plan past a 4th of a year in most cases.
potential income is hardly Real, anyway. it's 'what i might get if i actually did the thing'. if it takes more than five years to turn potential income into actual income then a large part of that is because you didn't actually Do it.
what professions allow one to continuously reap the financial rewards, with no further action, of one set of effort? so far as i can tell it amounts to 'the creation of copyrightable things' and 'investing'.
this explains much...
On the post: US Is Left Waiting For Godot On Public Domain Day: Once Again, Absolutely Nothing Enters The Public Domain This Year
Re: Re: Re: Re:
on the basis that if it's out of print they're not getting anything out of it Anyway... consider it a 'dog in the manger' clause. the six months is so they can organise it being published elsewhere if it was an issue with the publisher.
similar deal with patents: if you're not Doing anything with it it should go away. ('doing something with it' does include licensing someone else to actually do something with it, mind you).
trademarks are, of course, an entirely different thing.
On the post: Spanish Politicians Already Planning To Bring Back Rejected Copyright Bill
Re: el zoro
the commonwealth nations (and empire. it was sort of a mixture during ww2 i belive?) were monarchies.
this amuses me.
of course, the commonwealth also had democratic elements that were a lot more functional than the above mentioned ones.
so, actually, if you look carefully i think you'll find there weren't actually any democracies involved at all, but instead a collection of monarchies and oligarchies, most of whom have found regular popularity contests to be better ways of resolving power struggles than assassination.
On the post: Study Suggests Placebos Don't Have To Be Secret To Work
Re: Mind Over Body
"idiots don't get colds"
the thought being that they're too stupid to realise they even Can get sick... so they don't.
one doesn't have to be an idiot to trigger a similar effect if it works... just convince one's mind/body/whatever that it can't happen.
On the post: NY Times Finally Speaks Out Against Financial Firms Blocking Wikileaks
it is unfortunately slow and mildly expensive, but any organization of reasonable size can completely bypass the banks if they want. (heck, to some degree so can individuals).
you see, there's this little thing called precious metals...
unfortunately, unlike the digital cash as employed by the banks these days, you can't fabricate entirely new money simply by running it through the system, nor can you make a transaction with someone on the other side of the world within seconds.
so, slower, logistical issues...
but on the up side the only way it can actually be 'blocked' is outright theft or Actual piracy at sea. additionally, even if the banks won't give you local currency for it, jewelers probably will... and if they won't you can probably find some kind of middleman... failing that, it probably wouldn't take too much effort to get people to just accept the silver itself if your 'coins' were reliable in their consistency.
only really starts having major issues if you debase your coin.
oh, best part? most places won't tax silver until you try to convert it into local currency (unless you start running into things like 'capital gains tax' and the like)
(gold also works, and on certain scales bulk iron or other not so precious metals work too. the thing about precious metals is that you can actually physically posses the metals, not just a bit of paper saying you own the rights to the profits from the sale of a percentage of a certain stack of the stuff)
another downside, of course, is that with modern currency being so ridiculously inflated compared to silver, and everything being priced in that inflated currency, it's hard to get a small enough quantity of silver for practical use in day to day activity. (inflation in the USA since the switch from a metal based standard to fiat currency is something ridiculous like 300% more than it ever had in the entire time before that. for exact numbers you'll have to look it up yourself though).
the simple solution to this of course is to keep accounts and pay 'em when they get to a value where that actually works, but that doesn't work so well when making one off purchases...
mind you, if you issue your own coin (not coin of the realm, exactly) using precious metals rather than fiat currency, you end up with a stockpile of said metals, and can return to the practice of writting notes to the effect of 'this note entitles the bearer to, upon it's redemption at (appropriate facility) (some amount of your currency) or equivalent at the going rate in other metals, gems, goods, or (coin of the realm) as desired and available.'
best part of those notes is that you can then issue notes worth fractions of it... but never notes for things you don't actually Have.
none of which, i admit, completely solves the problem of financial firms locking you out of the market internet wise... precious metals, being a finite, tangible, scarce good, are substantially more expensive to move around than random digital bits, which increases shipping and insurance costs. (though someone wealthy enough could actually employ trustworthy individuals specifically with the job of taking X amount of silver, going to place Y, giving it to person Z, getting object A in exchange, and returning with that item... loyal retainers are a great thing. )
i would say it would slow things down, but when it already takes months for anything to get here if one isn't willing to pay shipping fees far in excess of any justification for the product in question under the Current system, i personally don't think i'd care much about speed....
On the post: Now Random Webhosts Are Demanding Wikileaks Mirrors Be Taken Down Over Possibility Of DDoS?
Re: WikiLeaks mirrors
On the post: Now Random Webhosts Are Demanding Wikileaks Mirrors Be Taken Down Over Possibility Of DDoS?
Re: Trolls
note how most posts declared trollish do not do this, hitting the same fallacies again and again, and being impervious to logic and reason. unlike large parts of the internet, Logic and Reason are considered, umm... significant... here.
On the post: EU's Main ACTA Supporter Caught Lying About ACTA
Re: Evil Europe!!!
also, I was under the impression that everyone just assumed the US government sucked like that as a matter of course, and thus it was not interesting to point out
On the post: Not All Retailers Overreacting To Mobile Phone Wielding Shoppers
Re: Re: Signals
On the post: Not All Retailers Overreacting To Mobile Phone Wielding Shoppers
Re: Re: Shopping in the real world
mind you, what the hell rates as the 'free world' these days? it certainly isn't equivalent to 'the west' anymore.
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