Lord Monckton

Love this guy and his many videos. The linked comment is far superior to the article he is responding to. The video is great and anyone that finds this to be damning evidence that he can't even debate a child clearly was unable to understand anything he was saying.


When I was in elementary school I was told by my teacher that if we didn't turn off the lights when we left the room that green house gases that reflected light away from the earth was going to cause the next ice age and everyone was going to freeze to death, but that it wasn't just us, we needed to tell everyone to turn off the lights and use less energy if we were to save the planet. It was scary, right up until I was told it was all still true, that the green house gases were making the planet hot, and we were all going to die because food would stop growing. The proof was that a glacier had broken somewhere and glaciers aren't supposed to break.

Why is it so "radical" or "extreme" to believe that we are all fine, the earth is fine, and people just need to calm the fuck down? Pollution is real and everyone can take responsibility for local pollution. But there is no global crisis that demands a world government to control the planets CO2 emissions. CO2? Really? There is more credibility to the Dihydrogen Monoxide crysis.

Pray for Obama

To me, the most terrifying thing Obama ever said was that the founding fathers / Constitution lacked the insight to empower the President / Federal Government to bring peace and equality to the American people. He doesn't just lack an understanding of the principles of limited government, but seems to measure the greatness of a country by the size of its bureaucracy. This also seems to be his practice. Not that I would set him too far aside from some past presidents, but he really brings attention to it like never before.

You say that he would never be a Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, or Mao, but for what we can look back upon as having been so terrible, they were not so greatly criticized while in power. Most of them achieved the level of power they did because they were beloved by their people, devoted to their ideology. To my understanding, the principle of conservative values is government should only be powerful enough to enable people to take responsibility for their own lives and collectively for each individual to protect their own private property. People can be rational when it comes to decisions that will affect their own lives because they alone bare the responsibility. When others are granted the power to make decisions for other people and their lives, it is only well intended without consequences for the decision maker. None of those "monsters" of history would be who they were if not for the idealists that empowered and enabled them. So I don't think it is a question of whether or not Obama is any of those people so much as whether or not he is being enabled and empowered by an ideology only all too similar of a history we were asked to "never forget".

(note: I will post a link to the video when I find it)

Stealing great titles: War is Peace (Too bad the author couldn't steal something else better)

I love crap like this about how our democracy is threatened by the free exercise of speech and the press. It is fun to compare pro censorship literature of the past 100 years to today and see how their tactics have improved, but always coming back to how people need to be protected from themselves, and from their own ignorance. The best part is that of course they are never talking about the reader; the reader is smart because they are reading their article. It is all those other people out there that don't read or can't understand the brilliance that is Lawrence M. Krauss that are the idiots out there we could help so much if they would just do what we say, and read what we write. After all, this is Scientific American.

My Health Care is fine. I like my doctor, and I don't think under any condition I will ever "like" hospitals (oh well). In my experience, government is just the biggest corporation around, and like many monopolies once powerful enough rarely needs to listen to the customer to keep conducting business as it pleases. Academia tells us that government is the voice of the people, but the reality of which person is being heard leaves a lot to be desired.

I think there is a lot that could be done to improve health care in the United States and the world for that matter. In my understanding of the bills as I have read them and listening to the range of opinions on specific issues, I do not like any of the proposals getting serious attention. I am very skeptical that this congress will be able to produce a decent bill. I would be more open minded if congress would at least begin by looking at some of the many social welfare programs and regulations concerning health care that have not been as effective as intended.

The fanaticism in this debate, as the author likes to put it, is the idea that something must hurriedly be passed, whatever it is. "Death Panel" is a buzz word no matter who says it that relates to actual fear (rational or otherwise) some can't easily dismiss, and controversies over how specific provisions of the various bill provisions will actually be interpreted and executed (no pun intended).

And if the scientific method as a whole is going to be brought into this debate, let us consider some principles of engineering. Great designs, in reality, are only as good as they can be explained. If a majority of people can not be more greatly persuaded by truth than by lies, maybe some of the burden lies on you to improve your documentation if not also the design itself. Blaming the reader, investor, or customer for simply not understanding your brilliance is a cop out. And if there really is an emergency, all the more reason for due diligence, not blind faith.

In response to some of the comments made by readers of the article:

"Where is the proof?"

I believe, at least, he is regurgitating quotes by right wing extremists have taken from Congressional Research Services Health Care Reform: An Introduction by Bob Lyke, April 2009 (http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40517_20090414.pdf), you know, the one and only AUTHORITY Congress uses to determine the cost and impact of bills. I would hope and am fairly certain that someone in congress uses other sources for information in the debate. But simply going by my understanding of the above article, if CRS says more people will be left without coverage, costs will go up, and there is no reason to believe quality will improve, should not we all just take them at their word? Despite the fact that I would agree with their position, I do not support centralization of information dispensation. It is worth pointing out, but no justification for censorship of less authoritative opposition.

Who to blame when you lose an argument you got to define?

In response to rocknog on 11/09/2009

I don't understand why religion keeps being brought into the gay marriage debate. If marriage is a religious thing, then government shouldn't be involved in any marriage. I don't understand how opponents of gay marriage can get around that contradiction.

Maybe they oppose States hijacking marriage and despite the fact that it won't change, they don't want the state further redefining marriage while in their trust. Remember, if you oppose federal control (support state rights / 10 amendment), you are a racist, and if you support individuality, personal responsibility, or anything theoretically covered by the 9th amendment (and I say theory because as far as I know, nothing has ever been supported on 9th amendment ground), then you must be a devil worshiping anarchist.

I think marriage means too many different things to too many different people and that the only people that have much any understanding of what marriage means with regard to the "state definition" is divorce lawyers. I think there should be no such thing as marriage as defined by the state because it is a loaded word. I bet if they could only call it domestic partnership that more people would actually take the time to read the contract.

People tend to ignore conservative arguments against states hijacking things for their own purposes and are generally written off as paranoid wackos, but for once "gay marriage" turned a lot of heads. And as with all the other issues they try to get attention, things such as facts makes most peoples brains go numb such that the debate evolved into who could make the most emotionally compelling argument.

One side came forward with the beautiful and happy peace loving argument of "Hate is not a Family Value". Simple, and perfect... one might think, until one rebukes with "Your tax dollars are going to be spent to teach preschoolers about anal sex". Both have nothing to do with the law, but at the point that this hit, coming back with "Civil rights... something... I think" just couldn't work.

Once you pull a Godwin/Alinsky and you let it define the fight, you just can't ever go back to a rational argument, and further, you can't cry when your opponent ends up with the bigger, more impressive tower of bullshit.

So, three cheers for Big Government democracy? Where are all the gays thrilled that the system works? Hmm...

FMOSS (Free market open source software)

With all the comments being fairly similar, going to present the other side as I see it.

Linux exists in a particular environment where INDIVIDUALS selfishly develop what THEY need for their own purposes. A person who needs a piece of software for their own purposes and successfully develops what they need has not only had their needs met, but also created intellectual wealth. The sharing of that wealth even by a single individual is positive.

The volume of wealth is so great, and the foundation so solid, that anyone with a computer and Internet access can take from the pool, ATTEMPT to improve on it, share their insight (whatever the form) and you get a positive sum of wealth.

This model, unlike any other, is INFINITELY scalable.

One problem may be approached by n people. The more people looking at the problem, the greater the chance of producing the ideal solution. Relatively no individual has the ability to STOP independent competitive solutions by any means than rationally demonstrating the superiority of their ideas.

There are "problems" with this model, but in my opinion, the nasty and poisonous perception of this model is that progress is zero-sum. I don't know if I could list in my lifetime how many ways anyone with that belief could be wrong, so let me make it very simple and clear.

WHAT I DO IN MY FREE TIME FOR MY OWN PURPOSE IS NONE OF YOUR F***ING BUSINESS any further than your freedom to do with and improve upon in your own way as you see fit what I choose to return to the community by either choice, or expected by the terms of the Gnu GPL.

You can not CONSCRIPT me into producing what YOU want, you can only enable me or discourage me to continue to contribute as I choose.

One of the articles criticisms, which seems to be a recurring themes of articles that like to tell people how they should be spending their time, is that of the number of distributions out there. Think about this: Why do people create distributions?

Is it because there are not enough of them? ... no

Is it because other distributions are going the wrong direction? ... maybe?

Is it because other distributions don't meet their needs? ... seems to be their perception at least

Is it because they feel like it?

BINGO!

Creating, maintaining, and promoting a particular distribution is a LOT of work (in my observation and from talking to people that have done it) But if you could make them not do what they want to do with their time, you really think they are going to magically do what you want instead?

What is amazing is that people left to their own devices (no pun intended) to do as they please, their minds begin to open to "what is possible in the spirit of playful cleverness".

Getting people to not do what you do not need doesn't make more for you. If you need more, there are three basic solutions: 1) wait and hope someone with with more initiative, motive, skill, etc 2) read a book and develop it yourself, or 3) Provide an incentive such as money to encourage someone with the skill to do it for you.

This is not an argument against team work, but just the same this article isn't an encouragement of team work either. Encouragement of teamwork involves 1) identifying a specific problem 2) defining the scope in which you wish to address that problem 3) outline a solution and develop a functional prototype that demonstrates why not only you have a good solution, but that your solution is better than other solutions (or non solutions) 4) Use your product from step 3 and actually demonstrate to people why they should expend their time and energy working on YOUR project, and technically 5) pick from those people you wish to bring onto the core of your team.

Final point: Teams and Communities do not exist for their own sake; they exist because it serves the voluntarily consenting members of them. If you want a centrally controlled, managed, and developed system that democratically considers the needs of everyone equally, such a project already exists. It is called Windows.

Cannonical / Mark Shuttlesworth provides something very specific: A platform and location for people to freely collaborate and exchange ideas while providing a face, in a sense, to a very distributed community. Thankfully, Mark has the wisdom to understand his role and learned the lessons of many other FlOSS projects come and gone and never abused his position of a role model to dictate how Linux should inspire anyone.

All projects stand on their merit alone, and as one hobby / amateur programmer, I hope I am not alone in hope that this state of anarchy never changes.

More fun with CSS and Javascript

This one was just weird... whatever

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      function d2h(d){return d.toString(16);}
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    var x=0;
    var y=0;
    var z=0;
    var c=0;
    for (z=0; z<=300; z++)
    {
      if ((Math.floor(Math.random()*2)) == 0)
      {
      x=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*1100));
      y=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*2)*600);
      }
      else
      {
      x=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*2)*1100);
      y=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*600));
      }
      c=d2h(Math.floor(Math.random()*16777215))
      document.write("<p style=\"height:1; position:fixed; top:" + y + "px; left:" + x + "px; color:#" + c + "\">Happy Birthday!</p>");
      document.write("<p style=\"float:left; height:0px\">" + Math.random() + "</p>");
      document.write("<p style=\"float:right; height:0px\">" + Math.random() + "</p><br /><br />");
    }
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

My first javascript

So evidently this is a bit too complicated for me to get into blogger in any kind of reasonable way. Layouts and all that stuff... blah! Anyway, if anyone wants to check it out, here it is:

granite.png
black.png

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
   <style type="text/css">
   img
   {
     float:left;
     height:20px;
     width:20px;
     margin:0px;
     padding-top:0px;
     padding-bottom:0px;
     padding-right:0px;
     padding-left:0px;
   }
   br
   {
     clear:both;
   }
   </style>
   <script type="text/javascript">
     var t=0;
     function mouseOver(imgID)
     {
       t+=1
       document.getElementById(imgID).src ="granite.png";
       var r=setTimeout(function(){document.getElementById(imgID).src ='black.png';},t); // Thank you Rogi!
     }
   </script>
 </head>
 <body>
   <script type="text/javascript">
     var c=0;
     for (c = 0; c <= 255; c++)
     { 
       if (c % 16 == 0)
       {
         document.write("<br />");
       }
       document.write("<img src=\"black.png\" id=\"" + c + "\" onmouseOver=\"mouseOver(" + c + ")\">");
     }
   </script>
   <br />
 </body>
</html>

Havn't we seen this before?

Proof that government needs to get their stinkin' noses out of business. 1) AIDS medications are VERY expensive, so it makes sense to discriminate against pre-existing conditions, otherwise it is a service plan, not an insurance policy. Affordable service plans should be affordable, but they are still totally different. 2) She wasn't looking for an insurance policy to protect her against AIDS, which sadly she is at abnormally higher risk, but a health insurance policy for her general health and well-being in the future. 3) I would speculate that while she may still be concerned about the AIDS herself that she would be willing to buy a policy that excluded treatment coverage of AIDS if she contracted the disease, and of course subsequent harm that may be caused by the disease. If she is still HIV free in 3 years, have them take a look at her health and keep to their word of coverage without the exemption. You could probably get a bit of a cheaper rate considering you are not buying insurance against it, and they are happier to let you pay a little more when you do want the insurance again.

Now the million dollar question here is why hasn't this been thought of before? TRICK QUESTION! It has been and while the insurance companies would love to tailor your policies to exactly your needs, it is illegal. ILLEGAL! Not big bad insurance companies stopping you, but the law! Who writes the law? The government, sticking their noses in where they don't belong.

Why did the government do this? Well it was to protect people against the big evil insurance companies that were making it too complicated for people to understand what they were buying. So they made all health insurance virtually identical so people wouldn't get confused. For example, some people wanted catastrophic illness insurance, but then complained that it didn't cover antibiotics for ear infections. The really sad stories were those that bought health service plans like checkups, medication discounts, broken arm insurance, but NOT catastrophic illness insurance, and then got very sick. I remember a story of a guy that had a health service plan he bought for his whole family. After having paid premiums for him, his wife, and 12 year old daughter every month for over 12 years, his daughter was sadly diagnosed with brain cancer. The father was devastated when he "discovered" that the plan he had been paying into his daughters entire life wasn't going to help her when she was sick because as the insurance company said that while they were sorry about his daughters illness, brain cancer wasn't covered by the policy.

This story and many others like it were important anecdotes to support health care reform in the 80's. Insurance companies were demonized for selling predatory policies, and the government made insurance policies "regular", in addition to other regulations.

So maybe, like last time, instead of outlawing "confusing" policies, give people the resources necessary to make informed decisions, because no matter what the law is, if you are paying hundreds of dollars a month to someone, government, business, friend, whatever, and you don't know what it is really for, you are going to be totally screwed. And nobody loves to keep bigger secrets about how they do business for you a secret than government.

This article proves to me that government can't do anything right and need to get out of places they don't belong like economics. Actually, there are a few things the federal government might be able to do reasonably well. I think someone wrote them down once in a blog or something. Here's the link if interested: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html

And just to note, making trade regular and regulating trade or planning the economy are NOT the same thing open to interpretation as one group of people see fit when it pleases them. If you don't like the constitution, repeal it... of wait, already being done. Never mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe5dOgbu40

CSS sure is strange

This is a test
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So spending some time today checking out CSS, and evidently you can just add CSS styles to the header in the template if you edit the full template in html. Pretty cool. Wow, you sure can do some goofy stuff with CSS. :) However, the pages can not be previewed :(

Questionable motives?

Found an awesome article I hope gets some attention. In the comments there is an argument that a better explanation for the boom in film production has been a reduction in cost (i'll assume due to digital editing and cheap high quality storage). Sent this letter and hope to hear back, but in the mean time if anyone else has some thoughts on the issue would love to hear them. Anyway... the letter:

You left a comment on the article "Harvard Study Finds Weaker Copyright Protection Has Benefited Society" that makes me more interested in where you were coming from. While I would agree that the cost of production has significantly dropped, I don't necessarily see where that means the author is incorrect. This article was a summary of a summary, and while I didn't look at the original article, let alone the data, I fel you are making quite a leap with your statement. Is there at least a reasonable argument that despite "massive piracy" that "harm" has NOT been inflicted considering that, as you state, growth in the film production market, even if not the film industry, has continued to grow as the cost of production has dropped? And considering the purpose of copyright law, and in particular the HUGE recent expansions to copyright law since WWII which imo were quite questionable in the first place, hasn't scientific progress and the digital age mostly advanced IN SPITE of many of those "protections" revealing that for the most part the law has been to revealed to have really caused more harm than "prevented"?

Despite the argument that the framers of the constitution couldn't have imagined a digital age, I DO think that they understood a thing about tyranny, censorship, and human progress if you look the history of human progress.

I would argue that it was book piracy, by way of the printing press was the most direct cause of the enlightenment. Why should bit torrent be any different?

Disney built its empire on piracy. Not to completely excuse that necessarily, but isn't hypocrisy just a tad ironic, if not at least questionable?

Anyway, you had an strong opinion, so I was curious about your thoughts on some other levels, if they are things you have thought about.

Hope to hear from you,
Keith

And responding to another comment...

@Misterbull.com

Your examples are "illegal" channels compared to traditional "all rights reserved" channels. If work is shared freely on those sites either hap-hazardly or more officially by affixing a Creative Commons licence to the work, then isn't that exactly a "weakening" of copyright law (at least in ways that big industry would have you believe) and piracy (again, as industry trys to convince us)?

Further, the great technologies, like the Internet itself, is dominatingly freely shared technology that was a collaborative effort where the creators knew that open access to information is the core of human progress, and that if what you are creating is what is most important, then sharing it freely is the best thing you can do for everybody; from tcp/ip to apache and Underwriter Laboratories and Open Group, these companies represent a core of all of the technology you argue are "other factors" that you attempt to use to explain away the contributions of a culture that rejects the ownership and monopolistic control of culture (pirates) when they are really one in the same. These big companies are more and more taking from the free culture pool, and because it has been allowed (particularly the way Berkeley has treated its patents), they have also become more successful.

And yet they still chant the same mantra that was rightfully rejected with the Statute of Anne. Current Copyright law was written by and for the purpose of supporting a particular type of distribution. Their past successes have granted them the kind of wealth that lets you buy the law that while being in conflict with the people and an abomination to the social contract means they have only bought themselves an extra decade or two as powerful lords have typically done.

The current copyright law is anti-artist, anti-consumer, and maybe worst of all, anti-culture. Anyone who SAYS otherwise either makes a lot of money through the exploitation of the current system, or really doesn't read much in the way of history after what is presented to them by The Ad Council.

On Polyamory

I think all relationships are a challenge, but as a philosophy, the idea is that love is not divided between the people that you care about. I believe loving yourself is the first step in being a healthy person for someone else to love and if after that you can "be yourself" then every person you meet can be an opportunity to learn and grow.

Life is difficult enough with its natural challenges; unnatural barriers make it unnaturally more difficult. There are two very important things I get in my marriage that I could not get if we were monogamous. The first, the ability to trust another as you would trust yourself; I put this as a kind of 'rejection' of the golden rule. This is the real test of trust that requires complete honesty and no "fake" tests of faith, if you know what I mean.

The second is an ability to see myself more objectively in a relationship; only in multiple relationships can I see the difference between me and the relationship with another.

Ok, a third thing: When you meet somebody, they had a life before you. Hopefully if you have fallen in love with someone it is because of who they have been and all their experiences they have gathered in their lifetime before their life became intertwined with yours. While my wife and I would each say that we could not imagine our lives having not met, we still embrace that we are independently great people and love watching the other continue to grow and love right up until the time that we met. If all of that made us who we are today, perfect for each other, how could one try and say "stop being who you are, I like who you are right now"? I consider that such a discredit to our experience. I believe all my past relationships, good and bad, helped me become who I am today, and continuing that search for all the love the world has to offer can only teach me how to be a better partner for my wife, and anyone else who chooses to be a part of that. :)

Adding this cause I am sure some would find it controversial, and I am very curious what others may think. This was (as above) a comment left on a youtube video.

Relationships are a challenge, no matter what the philosophy. In the western world, there is an indoctrination leaning towards mono as much as there is towards being hetero.

What you end up with is not only an unhealthy conflict between personal philosophies regarding love, which can fail a relationship, but worse, an incompatibility in ability to communicate through it. Not to be elitist, but imho, gay and poly think more about why they are who they are for reasons 'normals' can't understand.

The Holy Trinity

Trinitarians, the atheist beloved cousin:

<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
/| The Father is our ignorance once we have been humbled.                          |/
/|                                                                                 |/
/| The Son is our culture that teaches us by example and that we posses            |/
/| to give to freely.                                                              |/
/|                                                                                 |/
/| The Holy Spirit is the eternal material world we might ever hope to understand, |/
/| that we communicate with and shape in every action and thought of               |/
/| our limited existence.                                                          |/
<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Quick, whose driving the bus?

I blame the Republicrats. There, easy. Were going to hell and all we can do is argue about who is driving the bus. My non-partisan secular position is that the government is a business just like any other, always trying to sell you one thing or another. No surprise most people love their representative and loathe congress. What did you expect? The only thing that makes government different from any other business is that under the social contract we give the government the unlimited authorisation of violence in the course of its legal action. It is no wonder that as 'legal' has become an epistemological blur that that the governments morally justified monopolistic use of violence has just become a cost of getting the job done.

The most revealing is how easy it is to be accused of ideolatery to even attempt to reference the Constitution as a reason why congress shouldn't do something. People seem to think "Well, if it's a good idea, why shouldn't Congress have the power to make it happen?" Well, even throwing out the entire idea limited government proposed by the founders as having been too long ago to matter today, can't we see plenty of examples as necessary outside the US to see that only creates trouble?

If you think "Well, were better cause this is AMERICA!", then fine, but then why in such a freaking hurry to change it?

I am proud of Mr. Obama and his ambition for the nation, and his ability to get people to rally together for a cause, and to cross many political lines to get people to work together in new and creative ways. But without going into the specifics of the thing that he has said or done that I support or criticise, if there is anybody with the slightest bit of respect for him, you need to stand up and explain to him the half he has TOTALLY WRONG.

How's this? Does Michelle Obama look like a sheep that just lies there and says "yes sir", or more like the kind of woman willing to get into a good healthy adrenaline fueled debate with the man when they disagree? What do you think makes that relationship work?

I find it sickeningly ironic that in that respect conservatives have a better relationship with Obama than his own party. I guess it is just sad then that there is no real conservative party to represent the position,but I guess it just goes to show that great Americans will always be the individual.

Chinese Proverb on piracy?

Got this in an email recently. I bet Thomas Jefferson would agree:


'When Someone shares something of value with you, and you benefit from it , you have a moral obligation to share it with others.'

Scary or funny?

I don't know if this is scary or funny. As a soap opera, it would be pretty funny. If this was an episode of Law & Order, I would be laughing my ass off. They are talking about the US Dollar. To put 9 trillion dollars into perspective, in 2007 there were only $1.5 trillion in circulation. If you have any 'money' (aka federal reserve notes) in your wallet, pull them out and take a look at a few of them and think about what you are really holding there.

The one comfort is you don't need to worry about running away anywhere... cause there is nowhere to go. Maybe another comfort is that you arn't technically any more screwed than anyone else, so nothing to really worry about, right?

So either way, funny or scary, get in a good laugh while you can...

Why I think al a carte cable programming is a bad idea for everyone

Note: this was a response to someone complaining about their $30/month cable bill.

While I can understand your argument in principle, I think you are overvaluing the royalties paid by the cable company to content providers as a portion of the cost to bring that content to you. For the most part the only cost to the cable company is channel integration. I would bet that maintenance of that database is nominal. Content providers make their money off of commercials, but after that, cable companies are pirates of that content. If I remember correctly, the settlement that came from those cases was that cable companies would be required to provide some number of public broadcasting channels for some number of stations they pirate. So after they have built this giant content pipe, they regulate who does and does not connect to their giant data stream in a very simple way, on or off, with very little exception. The exceptions are 1) content where per channel royalties exist (HBO, Cinemax, Encore, whatever), and 2) per program royalties channels(pay-per-view). I would expect that there is some speculation going on and the cable companies pay bulk block rates, bringing the channels cheaper to you (assuming you could even get them some other way) and likely making decent money on the side. BUT, the real business of the cable company is not the content, but the pipe. So cable companies pay for almost nothing but the initial infrastructure cost (plus the bureaucracy involved in that), then customer service, billing, and technicians and the such. One product and one price means low overhead and extremely competitive. One the cost of the infrastructure is paid off, then the money is REALLY good.

So what you pay now is a per month connection fee that for the most part is a portion of the cost to build the system that brings the content to you. Now al a carte is a request to take a very simple system and make it relatively very complicated. More equipment to control and regulate what each customer gets, these systems would of course be much more software based compared to the very dumb light switch service=on/off situation right now. The number of switches now is one per customer, based on did they pay the bill. You are proposing changing that to a number of switches equal to the number of possible customers multiplied by the number of possible channels they ever hope for the system to support (needs to be scalable). The handling of the switches would need to be related an exponentially more complicated billing system very likely bringing in security issues. Think Sigma6, in general, more things involved is always more thing to go wrong. No offense to anyone who works as a technician for a cable company, but at present it really doesn't take much of a rocket scientist to operate these networks, and even if you would disagree, you are talking about increasing the level of technical knowledge by a maintenance exponentially, meaning significantly more training, and significantly higher salaries.

So an exponentially more complicated system that personally I can only imagine would be exponentially more expensive to operate so they can more carefully micromanage their billing scheme based on something that doesn't even impact them. The only cost thing they really pay for and bill you for is infrastructure and maintenance! Why should they care at all which channels you watch? If anything, just for the sake of simplicity alone, they should just meter the time you spend watching tv per television. I think that would correlate much better than which stations you watch with regard to what costs are actually incurred by the cable company, and just embed that into the cost of the installation and you end of with a system that isn't any more expensive on the whole across the entire customer base.

Is $30 really so much? You think it would even be possible to design and implement a system where it would even be reasonable to bring you one channel for < $30/month? I would bet that an al a carte system would have a surcharge of at least $30/month before you even get any channels. The reality is that you would be paying more to get less; the necessary attraction for such a system would have to be exponential, and I would bet there are not even that many people out there that don't have cable to make offsetting the cost even feasible.

The best system to reduce the cost to the customer = ( total cost to design and build + per year cost of maintenance * number of years desired to break even) all divided by ( number of years desired to break even * anticipated number of customers ) + necessary dividends to attract the necessary number of investors. From there, once the infrastructure is paid for, the extra revenue can be used to expand into other markets. Now, dividends are going to be directly related to investor confidence which leaves customer price to be set by the price people are willing to pay that maximizes gross income, since the cost per customer is effectively negligible (this is also why they are pretty cool with letting you not pay your bill for awhile is they can keep billing you, and whatever maximizes gross income over time is their priority). This in turn tells the company the amount of time it will take for the cable company to break even. That number is directly related to risk because technology goes obsolete, and they need to cover that infrastructure cost first. So if time to break even comes out to 5 years, then likely they would say "Build it!", if it comes out to 50 years, they are likely going to say "lets do it somewhere else", cause more then likely they are investing their own money as well. Further, that time to break even will determine the exponential rate at which their market grows, and with that capital and dividends will rise over time.

Yeah, so in short, I don't think you are paying what you think you are paying, and al a carte programming is just a really bad idea for everybody.

copyright infringement is not theft

The linked article is really awesome, and not wanting to loose track of it, posting it here. I think it has one of the most clear and concise explanations on the whole "infringement is theft" and how it is a very one sided argument by people that DO NOT PRODUCE, but instead an out dated rich group of middlemen trying to buy their relevancy back into a marketplace that DOES NOT WANT THEM!

Rosa Parks v. Random college student downloading bad movie

Social Contract Theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement between them to form society. REF

Hobbes argues that we will do ANYTHING to avoid the State of Nature and will always, rationally, pick absolute authority.

This could not be told better, from the same article:

According to Locke, the State of Nature, the natural condition of mankind, is a state of perfect and complete liberty to conduct one's life as one best sees fit, free from the interference of others. This does not mean, however, that it is a state of license: one is not free to do anything at all one pleases, or even anything that one judges to be in one’s interest. The State of Nature, although a state wherein there is no civil authority or government to punish people for transgressions against laws, is not a state without morality. The State of Nature is pre-political, but it is not pre-moral. Persons are assumed to be equal to one another in such a state, and therefore equally capable of discovering and being bound by the Law of Nature. The Law of Nature, which is on Locke’s view the basis of all morality, and given to us by God, commands that we not harm others with regards to their "life, health, liberty, or possessions" (par. 6). Because we all belong equally to God, and because we cannot take away that which is rightfully His, we are prohibited from harming one another. So, the State of Nature is a state of liberty where persons are free to pursue their own interests and plans, free from interference, and, because of the Law of Nature and the restrictions that it imposes upon persons, it is relatively peaceful.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

Humans are essentially free, and were free in the State of Nature, but the ‘progress' of civilization has substituted subservience to others for that freedom, through dependence, economic and social inequalities, and the extent to which we judge ourselves through comparisons with others. Since a return to the State of Nature is neither feasible nor desirable, the purpose of politics is to restore freedom to us, thereby reconciling who we truly and essentially are with how we live together. So, this is the fundamental philosophical problem that The Social Contract seeks to address: how can we be free and live together? Or, put another way, how can we live together without succumbing to the force and coercion of others? We can do so, Rousseau maintains, by submitting our individual, particular wills to the collective or general will, created through agreement with other free and equal persons. Like Hobbes and Locke before him, and in contrast to the ancient philosophers, all men are made by nature to be equals, therefore no one has a natural right to govern others, and therefore the only justified authority is the authority that is generated out of agreements or covenants.

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison on Shay's Rebellion (a violent opposition by ~1200 farmers regarding free trade agreements with Spain on the Mississippi River. Farmers feared the agreement would affirm sovereignty of Spanish traders):

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. REF

In another letter criticizing the (not yet ratified) constitution:

I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land... The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression.REF

In another letter Jefferson states:

since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas Specifically on the topic of copyright, just in case you didn't know, Madison said:With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government.

Jefferson, with good insight to the importance of the individual in an age of enlightenment, had many theories about appropriate copyright terms. If you are interested, check out more of the discussions between Jefferson and Madison; he actually makes arguments using actuarial tables (that personally, I don't think account for enough, but gives an idea of what he was thinking) of between 14 and 19 years. The following, unamended, continues to be in our constitution:

Article 1, Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. REF

The clause itself is clearly taken, as much policy was set at the time, from earlier century English common law, Statute of Anne, 1710:

An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or
Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.

Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty, that it may be Enacted, and be it Enacted by the Queens most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled, and by the Authority of the same, That from and after the [1710], the Author of any Book or Books already Printed ... shall have the sole Right and Liberty of Printing such Book and Books for the Term of [21] Years ... and no longer; and that the Author of any Book or Books already Composed and not Printed and Published, or that shall hereafter be Composed, and his Assignee, or Assigns, shall have the sole Liberty of Printing and Reprinting such Book and Books for [14 years].REF.

It took over 60 years for the courts to settle how to interpret Anne with regard to unpublished works. In Donaldson v. Beckett in 1774, court ruled that copyright for unpublished works would be perpetual, but null immediately following first publication. REF

You can see that the scope of copyright was such that it was agreement between book publishers and artists, exclusively. This philosophy, social contract, of ideas and artistry in relation to distribution rights continued with very little revision up until the end of WWII. For the history of influences and changes in the scope of copyright law from then to today in the United States, I would highly recommend the book Free Culture. For a more European view, and broader history of Copyright law back to the beginnings of the written word, I would highly recommend Steal This Film part II which covers in some great detail the violent persecution of Gutenberg and the publishers that followed him.

Short version each of those, people have always tried to control the spread of ideas, and copyright today is not what it was very recently.

Copyright of the past represented proper, social contract; copyright was an agreement between two groups of people that mutually benefit from each other, but could not agree, and such disagreement was causing harm to each.

Some would like to believe that the law is that which you can write on paper, in the same way people were convinced for a long time that the King was appointed by God. Violate the word of the paper, violate the law; violate the word of the King, you are violating God.

In a republic, we elect representatives to serve our best interests at our will, as our Declaration affirms. Through manipulation and corruption, our representatives have violated their oath of office to protect and serve the Constitution, what it represents, and what was intended by its authors. But these were not just documents that were revered, but the work of philosophers that were torn with the thought of leaving a nation that they loved dearly, that they regarded as the greatest nation on the earth, but did not love them in return with the same respect. They moved on to form their own government, under fear of death, and fear of a return to a natural state.

So our OP may not be a lawyer, publisher, artist, politician, author, inventor, lobbyist, or any other character we identify with on the battlefield of copyright reform.

But he is a human being. He is a human being. Maybe not one that revers the law, but enjoys a civilized society. He did not break the law because he has contempt for the ordered society, but because he knows by instinct that his natural right as a human being to learn has been violated; he has returned to his natural state because there is no social contract to guide him.

In his natural state, he pursued the culture that was right in front of him, sought to gather information that would serve him in whatever manner that information does.

The result? Many of the social contracts that he had made voluntarily, consensually, and in good faith are void. For words paid for to be written on paper without respect for the law that were not further respected by the OP, he would be denied the right to participate in civilized society; his school, his home. We will now deny him the right to be a civilized member of society.

By contrast, Rosa Parks rode the bus. The 'law' at the time said that if you want to ride the bus, you could sit where ever you wanted, unless you were non-white when a white person was on the bus. Then, white people could sit wherever they wanted, but non-whites had to sit in the back. Just as Homor Plessy had been paid by the then ACLU provide a test case to challenge the 'separate but equal' doctrine, so was Rosa Parks. In each case they LOST. Separate being inherently unequal was not brought forward and won until MUCH later in Brown v. Board of Education. The biggest difference here was that a young child is strongly influenced by the necessity to go to a very far school rather than one that is near, not because of their intelligence, but the color of their skin. This fight was WON. But back to 1955...

So the ACLU working with many others needed a way to get to the courts. Conspiring to make a point, on the designated day planned ahead of time, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person after the bus driver asked her to move. She was arrested and made an example of by the ACLU. The courts did not favor with her, but it got enough peoples attention to do something else. The bus systems in Montgomery, despite being favorable to white passengers, was greatly dependent on the patronage of non-white passengers. Thus, the Montgomery Bus Boycotts began. Non-whites (and some whites as well) in a joint campaign with the ACLU and other civil liberties groups demonstrated the mutual benefit of a more proper social contract between non-whites and the society. Hobbes says that humans will do anything to avoid returning to their natural state, but personally, I see this as the free market being the true and righteous judge in this case: people had to pick between walking, or riding segregated buses by their rules, the buses (for sake of simplicity) can either meet the demands of non-whites by giving color-blind accommodations, or go on the assumption that they could continue to operate without the patronage of those that are boycotting figuring also they probably would not enjoy walking for so long. Well, the buses tried to operate for awhile, but were unable to continue and were forced to change. Shutting down the bus system was also an option, but not one whites willing to deal with.

So yeah, in so many words, they have a lot in common. Of course they are different, different people, different places, but the ground they share is strong. The OP may not be getting paid by the ACLU to make some kind of point, and didn't go into the situation to make some kind of big political scene with lawyers in tow.

Societies don't exist for their own sake. They are there to serve. If I buy a bus ticket, I don't care where I sit so long as it is in a seat. If the buses are so crowded that I do not get a seat, I am going to be pissed. Back to basics; for people to want to cooperate together as a team, each person much "bring something to the table". The butcher and the cowboy can work together for mutual benefit. The blacksmith and the miner can work together for mutual benefit. The farmer and the brewer are each better off forging a relationship with their neighbor in this respect. Get them all together for a party, who needs more than steak and beer, with the blacksmiths mug, and the miners coal for the barbecue, who could resist such a great evening after a glorious day of working in your trade so obviously appreciated by your community. Add to this situation the musician. All great parties recorded in history have had music. If this musician comes to the party, you will see me leap from my seat to bring that fellow a hot steak and a cold beer, and I know no friend that would not do the same.

But the man who would damn me for singing his song so shall be damned from ever sitting at my table.

Criticize me all you like for being untalented and tone deaf; music is not my labor.

If you don't want your work "pirated", that's easy. Keep it to your damned self. I stand by that position morally, justly, and in the right, even if it takes a little while for the "law" to catch up.

Oh, and one last thing; Fuck You Jack Valenti.

Liberal = anti-freedom

Great article with no surprises. People want things to get better, but not every situation can be made better by giving up your freedom to choice and personal responsibility by creating some huge government monster to manage it for everybody.

People think that intrusive government meddling can be good if it is just regulated and regulated and regulated, but the problem is that it just can't work. Mommy and daddy government can't ever come up with good policies to create a perfect utopia. Anyway, just wanted to share more than rant. Enjoy.

Ayn Rand

An argument I read today from ingrenyonchera on youtube:

I agree completely that this woman was too idealistic. While it's all well and good to defend the rights of an individual, a world where it's every man for himself would result in a collapse and reversal of everything we've built up over the years.

... I'm not saying what we have now is the perfect solution, but the way forward IS FORWARD, not backwards - and I meet too many philosophers (who mostly just uphold the views of other philosophers like this) who don't seem to understand this.

Your argument is that rational egoism fails because man is ultimately evil. So somehow that puts you in favor big government? Forgive me for not following your logic here.

If man is ultimately evil, then that only supports the argument that collectively working preserving individual liberty is the only purpose government can serve without being corrosive to its own objective.

The alternative is that people are good, and government is only as efficient as it can operate on a premise of perfect knowledge.

Big government can only be intentionally harmful, or deleteriously inefficient. Take your pick. This does not even begin to address the issue of corruption.