it was 90% after the first $2 million, and that was in 1960. Adjusted for inflation that's something like $14 million today.

It was never really a tax per se. It was a check on out of control wealth concentration and the scary, scary power that comes with it. Plus it had the added bonus of encouraging real investment because hey, it was use it or lose it when it came to money. Now the rich can sit on a Scrooge McDuck style cash horde. But unlike the cartoon there are real consequences to that. Our economy grinds to a halt because all our capital is tied up in excesses like private jets & Mergers and acquisitions. No real value is added.

I saw the best quote ever in a news story a few weeks ago (I'm paraphrasing here): Finance is no longer a tool for getting money into productive businesses but for getting it out.

Oh ho, didn't know about the whole series thing, thanks! That's nice, as I've bought base games on Steam while they were on sale and later wanted the DLC, and it was as cheap to buy the base+DLC/GoTY Edition as it was just the DLC. Always a small annoyance of mine.

That's mostly because we've cut taxes on corps so much that they've got more cash than they know what to do with. I miss the 90% tax bracket. It kept corporate power in check and made them think about where they were investing their money. Now they can just casually toss $50 billion here and there and it's no skin off anyone's back.

While I don't have many games from GOG (I have no qualms with Steam and a huge backlog already), this could be worthwhile, especially if they beat out Origin and UPlay in the quality department. Doubly so if they can match Steam Sales. I put my name in for a beta invite and hope it goes well.

I can't find it in the announcement, but I read somewhere else that part of GOG Galaxy will be downloading the installers for games to your computer, so you can install them outside Galaxy or if the service ever terminates.

Umm, when was that exactly? Wide-scale publication was not possible until the invention of movable type in the mid-1400s. The first copyright privilege after that was granted in 1486, and others quickly followed in the 1490s and early 1500s. They were almost exclusively granted to PRINTERS, not authors.

It would take a couple more centuries before authors (not printers) tended to be granted copyright and thus had primary control over profit.

(I of course take your point that Twitter making money off of this would be copyright infringement in the modern sense. But your idyllic "back in the mists of time" when no one was guaranteed profit and authors got some of it... well, it wasn't quite like that.)

The major difference, and the problem with Nerval's Lobster, is that prior to being purchased by Dice all submissions for their prior owners and sister sub-properties (GeekNet/Andover/SourceForge) would have a disclaimer attached to it so long as I can recall. This is no longer the case; the only way to know that this is a bought-and-paid-for placement ('cause Dice bought Slashdot) is that they're always "submitted" by Nerval's Lobster. Newer visitors won't know about the potential conflict of interest because it's no longer acknowledged.

It would be nice if they just made Nerval's Lobster an editor account so the robot could post itself, but they won't because they know that thousands of regular /. users will just block that editor; rightfully so, IMO.

I agree with you that the analogy with music and programming is not exact. HOWEVER...

I think that's a bit of a misunderstanding of how one gets to the "top tier" of musicians, and for that matter, how one becomes a great chef.

It what you say were true, no violinist would ever bother recording another version of some piece of music. In fact, nobody would ever bother even going to see a concert of a standard piece, since there would be nothing new -- it would just be the same "script" or "recipe," and most well-known pieces already have arguably a number of "perfect" recordings (at least in terms of "playing all the notes in the right rhythm and in tune" or whatever your standard is).

No pop star would ever bother recording a cover of an older song. After all, a great singer already did it.

But of course that isn't true. Composers don't generally write every single detail of interpretation in a score, just like there's a lot of "unwritten knowledge" in most recipes about how to actually produce good results. Beyond that, music is a process that happens in real-time. A skilled performer will be sensitive to everything from how their instrument sounds that day to the quality of acoustics in the playing environment to the fact that today they just happened to play the high note in that first theme a little stronger, and maybe they'll bring that note out again a little later because it creates a cool connection (which listeners may not consciously be aware of, but it suddenly brings out an emotion or creates a feeling of continuity which changes the piece).

Performance is an artform at the highest levels. You may not be interested in such nuances, and that's fine. But people who spend hours and hours every day of their lives practicing instruments aren't just "learning notes." They are developing techniques, learning ways to produce better interpretations of music (beyond the basic blueprint in the score), gaining a facility to make real-time adjustments that will create a better experience for listeners at a live event, etc. Similarly, a skilled chef may follow the same instructions you do from a cookbook, but the result in quality may be vastly different. The execution often makes the difference between mediocre and truly great.

I've had people tell me that a particular piece of music was worthless, even when played by top performers who can do flawless execution of the notes. I've then played them a recording of the exact same piece (with all the same notes, played from the same score) played by another performer -- and I've had people say they suddenly thought the piece was amazing... they heard things they never did before, or it had a kind of "energy" that made it enjoyable or whatever.

Anyhow -- this isn't just about music. It's recognizing the value of performance in all walks of life. It's also about recognizing how great artists, whether they generate a product or whether they perform on a stage, are able to tap into dynamic and creative processes to produce effects that are much better than others. You may have been given the greatest set of Powerpoint slides in the world, and you may basically follow a script for a presentation -- but there can still be a huge difference between a completely engaging live presentation and a crappy one that "just follows the instructions that somebody else gave you."

I know you probably didn't mean to denigrate performers, but I think we often tend to think of what's written down as the "primary stuff," no matter what line of work you're in. But there is a lot of knowledge and skill that's passed down orally and learned verbally or through tactile/kinesthetic engagement which makes the difference between following a recipe and cooking like a chef.

And, in that sense, I think there are some interesting analogues between music performance and programming -- because a lot of what makes great programmers great is their ability to see patterns and connections that can't just be expressed directly in some book on programming techniques or syntax or algorithms. That's the kind of knowledge that often comes from a combination of talent and experience -- the kind of experience you get by spending hours each day tackling various problems in slightly different ways over and over.

Are there any examples of other skills where the distribution is bi-modal? It would be extremely atypical. I think the default assumption has to be that the curve is the classic bell shape, like most skills, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

More over, I think the point that programming skills can be learned is an important one. In the west we tend to think people have certain innate abilities and weaknesses, like some people are just bad at maths and can't be helped. In some places the assumption is that almost anyone can master almost any skill with enough studying and practice. If someone wants to do programming, or any engineering, to achieve some other goal they can learn to do it well, even if they don't love programming for the sake of programming like some nerds do.

Maybe MS has decided to crack down on computer repair stores. I used to work at one many years ago, and an MS rep told us that we mustn't activate Windows ourselves. We had to let the end user do it so that they would be forced to agree to the EULA.

We pointed out that our customers expected a fully working computer that was ready to use when they got it back, but they were not interested. Maybe they want to enforce that rule suddenly.

I find it depressing that the on-going drone strikes are not considered a scandal. Or the lack of action over spying and people lying to congress.

I thought AJAX was for cleaning toilets. Are we taking about becoming a janitor?

So you are in your 30s now? Then you are too old. They want graduates who will work 50+ hour weeks for low pay. Around age 28 a little red light starts flashing on their hands and they are replaced before they start wanting s career or work-life balance.

Actually you are kinda showing your age in your post. The kids abandoned facebook, there are too many old people on there. To be honest I've lost track myself... Do they still use Snapchat?

that's where the statement came from. Nobody is liberal on economic issues, and the environment is just another economic issue in disguise. This is where the disconnect is. If you were socially conservative you'd notice more and the phrase "liberal media" would resonate with you.

most of the real bad pollution was moved to China in the 70s & 80s. Because of this it's hard to get people to buy into the whole "poisoning everything" mantra. Also the only people who have a shot at any change are the middle class; the poor's voting districts are so gerrymandered and corrupt they're basically voiceless. But the middle class live in the suburbs and don't really feel the pollution. That limits our options.

Climate change, for whatever reason, resonates with the middle class. It's about the only thing that draws any attention. You don't win elections based on logic and reason. People vote with their 'gut'. I wish they didn't, but that's just the way it works.

If he makes it to the last rounds of the DNC primaries, I can see his Dem opponents (with backing from the GOP if they see him as the strongest possible opponent) making a big ruckus about his "socialism".

I'd like to see him brand himself as a socialistic capitalist, or capitalistic socialist, to directly take on that eventual attack and also confuse the fuck out of a number of conservative voters. "How can he be a capitalist if he's a socialist?!"