Haha, yes that would be whining. However what I was getting at is that the intent of a bookstore is to sell books to people who love to read, ie for personal use or perhaps as a gift. This is similar to the situation of a garage sale whose general purpose is to sell items that one doesn't need any longer to someone who has a use for them; again the intent is for personal use.

I don't think that anyone would say the primary purpose of a bookseller or a garage sale is to provide items to dealers/resellers looking solely for the most valuable items. And many would agree that those sorts of vultures reduce the enjoyability of both bookstores and garage sales. So imho, if there is a way to limit that sort of patron, eg via banning barcode scanners, so much the better.

I completely agree. The ban is a good thing and should be universal. People take useful technologies and twist them to unintended, nefarious, and clearly selfish, uses. To me, intent is an important aspect to consider. I am tired of being forced to be either a wolf or a sheep because some people insist on bending or breaking the spirit of the place or event. Bookstores--especially used bookstores--exist to benefit devoted readers of books! They are not in business to fall prey to vultures looking to make a quick buck. Apps that allow barcode scanning were developed to help end consumers decide whether to purchase an item for personal consumption, for that price, in that store. A tool for empowering personal fiscal responsibility doesn't belong in the hands of resellers.

Reminds me of the problems with resellers attending garage sales: it takes all pleasure out of leisurely perusing sales, and perhaps finding something you'll take home and actually give new life to, to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with dealers looking for items they can turn a profit on. And from the one garage sale I have held, I can tell you dealers drive hard bargains in the most unpleasant way to get you to sell to them at ridiculous, disrespectfully low prices. They are selfish leeches and shouldn't be allowed at garage sales either.

Both good points.

It was some years ago and honestly, I think it was legal at the time. "Patient dumping" became a cause celeb shortly after, but the practice continues still today, especially when they think the uninsured patient isn't in a position to know they can sue.

Berkeley is beyond mecca for the pathologically politically correct. I found that out quickly when, soon after moving there, I was chastised by fellow restaurant patrons for politely saying no to a mentally deranged homeless man who had walked in, sat down at my table and demanded that I feed him. I've even been spit on for nicely saying no. But the private hospitals are for the elite rich who can afford to behave like benevolent messiahs to those "beneath them" when it suits them. They are definitely not for those unwashed masses, or even middle class uninsured college students.

which is why I live in Colorado now :-)

I think you translate well; these are all the catch phrases that Democrats routinely trot out to show how much they care about protecting the poor little citizen. Of course really what they want is to control and tax every interaction they can.

It's peeved them ever since www and graphical browsers came along that they weren't controlling or making money off all this human interaction. The technology (and their lack of understanding of it) cut government out of the loop from the start.

I really think the Wachowski brothers had it right with The Matrix imagery. Our government sees us as nothing more than perpetual energy sources for its own sustanence and immortality. So I'm all for limiting their power while we still can.

Sorry but I need to throw in my two cents: as a college student I started to miscarry my baby, so I showed up at the local hospital in Berkeley. I wasn't even allowed in to see a doctor to be stabilized or sent by ambulance to the county hospital in Oakland. They literally couldn't hurry me off their property fast enough. I had to have someone drive me the half hour to Highland. It was shocking and awful.

What I was getting at was that if the assumption by government was that people were trying to do something good or at least harmless, like creative expansion on a theme, instead of assuming that anyone sharing copyrighted music was out to rip off the government from its rightful royalties, then we would be seeing a different legal landscape play out.

I think our government operates from an assumption that is both paranoid (we're all trying to steal what they're entitled to) and unreasonably controlling (a stance that dates back to Puritan times where citizens weren't to be trusted with autonomy).

So actually, government's attitude is ruining both society and the music industry by stifling freedom of expression.

Very interesting massage of data. What strikes me is that this decrease shows up despite the greater ease in "sampling" from other artists that modern technology has afforded. You would think that there would be a greater CPY or at least that the practice of sampling would eliminate the decrease seen since copyright law took effect. So the damping effect of copyright on creativity may be even greater than your estimate.

And it may be reasonable to conclude that the more government tightens its control of who can play or listen to music, and certainly over who can modify it, the greater the decline in creativity in society as a whole. Not good, grim outlook in fact.

I suppose it will take someone well funded enough to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court. Given their surprising interpretation of the First Amendment recently, I suspect they would rule in favor of creative freedom.

I completely agree. A major problem is that our system rewards the most egregious control freaks with more and more power.

We seem to operate out of a misplaced Puritan holdback of 'any freedom is evil' and 'humans are inherently evil and must be controlled lest they be themselves', which could only equal evil in this mindset. It's completely ass backwards and results in a total thwarting of creativity.

Without an atmosphere of assumed trustworthiness, how can our society thrive and move forward at all? The music industry (and the film industry) are symptomatic of a much bigger problem. I believe it needs to be fought against aggressively and nipped in the bud before government usurps any more control by crushing individual freedom and creativity. But I don't have any good ideas of how to stop this nauseating trend.

I've overheard it even in companies where I've worked for years, usually in the form of "go get the IT guy" or "I think the IT guy said to do it that way." And no, I don't sport the gender-blurring unibrow. I figure it just reflects how all those lowly non-IT types see us as one single flavor of non-human. That's ok: fear breeds compliance.

Crap. Now I really feel old, even though technically I'm not. So the old adage really does hold!

There's a fundamental difference between a brand new technology and yet one more way to get around Windows' inadequacies. We know that Windows sucks yet has the world's majority of software written for it. This is not going to be a Windows killer. Great if some people buy this, but I don't think it's going to make Phoenix much money or make Microcrap quake in their mink-lined boots.

It's a solution without a problem. They tried similar tacts on the Mac twice, the latest being Parallels (god save us from Bootcamp) and VMware still has no real user base, especially given knoppix and linux live. It just seems like a non-issue. Corporations won't support it and individuals will make the decision to run one OS or the other based on how much they hate microstiff or the apps they have to run.

Harsh critic--the article doesn't boast about solving theorems or offering 100% certain proofs. It is sufficient to bring to greater notice that this pattern, which had gone unnoticed, has now been noticed. Maybe someone will do something further with it. Sooner or later it's likely that this piece of information will get incorporated into something economically useful. But for now, as pure science, noticing the pattern that had not been noticed before is good enough for publication.

I am currently a fulltime college student and all 3 of our large (200+ node) computer labs are totally full from 7:30 am to 11 pm. It would be a burden for every student to have to buy all the software we need for classes (MS Office is not worth any $$ but we have to use it). Also, it is always slower to connect to the campus network from a wifi laptop than a hardwired connection. Labs also provide immediate IT support if a printer suddenly gets uninstalled, as well as a centralized place where instructors can make themselves available while students work on assignments in a new or specialized application. I think any school that abandons computer labs in 2009 will have to restore them by 2010.