So, you need 650 dollars up front in your simplistic example. Gas/electricity of course just arrives for free and has no upfront costs in your silly world of moronic idiots who don't know what they are talking about.

Being poor is about not HAVING any money to spend. A classic example is the washing machine. Going to a laundromat is far more expensive AND time consuming but until you can afford the upfront cost of a washing machine, you have little choice but to try to save up for one while spending the higher amount of laundromat. Say you got a budget of 10 dollars for laundry per week. The laundromat costs 9.50, using your own washing machine costs 500 up front and 5 dollars per wash.

The person who doesn't have 500 dollars, has to use the laundromat and can only save up 50 cents per week. To save up the 500 dollars needed to buy a washing machine, takes years.

That is assuming said person even lives somewhere where it is possible/allowed to run a washing machine. A moron like Solandri will no doubt suggest to not wash your clothes and save up for 50 weeks those 10 dollars and then buy a washing machine. No doubt as the spoiled little rich white kid he will just say to get your mom to do it. He did. But if you do not wash your clothes for a year, you will go through clothes a LOT faster and most likely loose whatever job you have.

It is well known that the richer you are, the cheaper you can life. Even Terry Pratchett wrote about it with Sam Vimes Boots theory of economic injustice. It goes something like this: If you can afford 100 dollars for a pair of boots, you will have a pair of boots that will keep your feet dry for your life and can pass on to your children. If you can only afford a 10 dollar pair, they will leak with in six months and begone in a year. So the poor man spends more on boots then the rich men but still has wet feet. And no, you can't go for 10 years without boots to save up for a good pair.

What morons like Solandri fail to understand is that being poor means you don't have money. You would think this is fairly easy to understand concept but people like Solandri are really dumb indeed, they think poor people just want to be poor and could just get the money somewhere by magic if only they tried.

You can see how stupid Solandri is by not including the fixed costs of utility services, they charge a flat fee on top of which you pay for actual usage. He is a classic spoiled little rich kid who moans about the poor but doesn't know the price of milk.

Mars rover: lasts for years. iPhone barely makes it through the day.

Or how about speed? Mars rover several meters a day. iPhone, just sits there.

User upgrades in the field? Mars rover: zero. iPhone: zero.

Yeah yeah, you have more computing power in your pocket then in NASA machine. That was a fun stat for voyager news briefings. A decade ago. It is not funny anymore, it is just sad and a sign the reporter in question has no idea about tech. This stuff is for morning tv.

Why is there no radio station run by artists? No streaming service run by artists? Why did artists not create iTunes? Because they are ALL workshy bastards who only dream of signing a fat contract they won't read and then roll is cash for a few hours work.

And the fact remains that radio stations, music publishers etc keep rolling in it and they do this by squeezing the artists who are happy to be squeezed. The money is there, go and get it.

What is missing from the artist mind is the analysis of what music is worth. The article mentions a price of 0.42 cent per streamed song... and? In what context does this price exist in the artist mind? It is indeed seemingly a small sum of money. If say a baker got 0.42 cent revenue per loaf, he would be out of business in a heartbeat. It should be obvious that the costs in that case would be far higher then the price.

But music is not a physical product. How many cents does it take the artist to deliver the song to the listener? 0 cent. That is the real cost. 0 cent. So she makes a revenue of 0.42 cent per listened to song. In Holland there might be VAT applied (paid by the consumer, in this case the streaming service) but the tax office are such nice guys that if your tax collections or not worth it, you can CHARGE VAT but you do not have to PAY it to the tax office. Nice eh? You can collect 20% extra and can stick it straight into your pocket. For small businesses it is a real boon.

"But it is only 0.42 cent" you say? Supermarkets make on some items as little as a single cent as well, they make up for it with big ticket items and scale. Since they got to have the shop in any case with the whole support infrastructure, selling low ticket items is worth it because a cent is a cent. And these items are typically what people need often like butter, milk, bread. So 1 center every day from every customer soon adds up to billions. Not everyone can be an Apple and sell only to the big spenders, a lot of business has to add up the cents to make their millions.

Because streaming music is NOT the same as buying music. It is 0.42 per song listened to. Once. iTunes rather famously charges 99 cents per song (an outrageous price for a small binary file) so some very rough math shows us that 200 times listening to a song has the same revenue as one song bought... oh wait... NO! That is a COMPLETE and utter lie.

Reason: 0.42 cent is what the ARTIST gets per streamed song. 0.99 cent is what APPLE gets per sold song. The artist gets FAR less. 9 cents according to some. So that is 18 streaming events? A bought song I can listen to many times over. I know I have listened over time to some tracks hundred of times. If I had streamed those songs the artist would be FAR better off. The real reason this artist makes so little money is because she just isn't popular. 131000 plays in a year? Give it up girl, nobody wants to hear your music. Just compare it with youtubes most popular movies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw4KVoEVcr0 50 million times. At 0.42 cent, that is an income of 21 million dollars. I think most of us would be rather pleased to see that, even if it is before taxes.

If you are an aluminum drinking can maker, you can't say "I want a decent working wage" and then make a thousand cans and go home. You got to make half a million cans at least, each and every shift because an individual can just hasn't enough value but make enough and you get to take home a decent wage for the hours you worked.

Does the artist in question have to work every day in physical labor to produce that one song streamed a 131000 times? No. If she HAD worked very hard every day of the week, could she have produced far more songs and then have gotten payed 131000 times X 365 songs per year X 0.42 cent = 20 million dollars. No, she is bitching that for one shift at the coca cola can factory she wasn't payed a full years salary. Well, screw her. She is just a high class whore upset that she didn't get an indecent proposal or a pretty woman deal (do your math, Julia Roberts was NOT a high class hooker and to save up what she did she must have been going at it like rabbits)

It is the nasty side of life, in order to make a decent wage, most of us have to work damn hard for it. You can't go "here I baked a loaf, now pay me for the rest of my life". A baker has to get out of bed in the middle of the night six days a week and bake thousands of loafs and deal with zoning laws and rising prices and constant competition from factories. This artist made a song and what the world to pay her a living. Sorry. NO!

And it is NOT all about life performances. Some artist make money making music for movies... and MANY MANY more by making movies for company videos. Those horribly tracks under 80's porn movies? Some artist sat down and worked in order to get payed. Nobody ever said all artists will work a life of glamour. Ever looked into the world of say dancers? Terrible wages, body breaking training, uncertain employment and guaranteed to end before your work life has even started. Well, if you don't like it, stay the fuck out of that industry. Go fill shelves. Go lie on your back and earn money that way.

NOBODY owes you a living wage just because you picked a certain job, especially if you aren't any good at it. I am sure many would be programmers here are bitching about low wages caused by outsourcing, really not that different then low wages caused by copyright infringement but hey, that is how the world is, deal with it.

If you don't like how much you get payed you can:

• Get out. Shocking idea for artists I am sure but many of us had to give up their dreams in order to pay the bills, you are not special, you do not have a right to expect the world to allow you to life your dreams.
• Organize for better working conditions. If all artists stopped producing content, went on strike, then they might improve their conditions. Or risk destroying their industry ala british strike actions.
• Work harder: US working poor, 2-3 jobs and still not make enough.
• Take a side job, Sultans of swing.
• Find a benefactor, it ain't just ballet dancers who make a bit extra by dancing on their backs, historical figures are known to have given private performances for rich suitors and not just girls either.

The above list ain't nice but well... if you want to make a lot of money fast, become an industrial diver. It pays extremely well. And you risk your life daily. But you can retire early. If you survive. And many people do back breaking work until they are broken for not much money at all. Forget TV, you canNOT be everything you wannabe.

If this artist isn't making enough, she either has to increase her earnings (strike better deals, release more works, increase her popularity) or just accept that she isn't good enough to make a living with her chosen profession and just has to find an other job that does pay. It ain't complex. When the car replaced the horse it put countless farriers out of business. There are however STILL people who make a living as a farrier BUT they had to adapt to the world, the world did NOT put itself on hold for them or even adapt for them. YOU adapt to a changing world, the world does not adapt to you standing still.

It ain't nice for sure but town criers, farriers, bakers, gas-lamp lighters, newspapers printer, postmen and countless more have had to change their lifes to suit a changing world.

Music in our modern world has changed. A LOT. Before recorded music existed, every household would have an instrument. NOT as a form of tortune of kids and dad but to make music for family gatherings purely for fun because it was the only music available. When people lived closer together, they would go out and enjoy life music, even life music at early movies.

AND THIS WOMAN BITCHING ABOUT 0.42 CENT A SONG FOR WHICH SHE HAS TO DO ZERO WORK HAS PUT COUNTLESS LIFE PERFORMERS AND MUSIC INSTRUMENT MAKERS OUT OF WORK

I think it is important to mention this. EVERY recorded musician complaining about payment is responsible for countless lost jobs. Those of life performers. Someone playing a cheap piano during a buster keaton movie was put out of work by recorded artists. I say that I will support a levy or such to give this woman a living wage IF she agrees to then pay from this wage a levy to support out of work life performers and gaslamp lighters because she uses electricity and farriers because she drives a car. You want to be compensate for a changing world, then you compensate others for their losses.

Else, GET a real job. The rest of us have.

Well, Holland has decriminalized pot. And prostitution is legal and gambling is well regulated and barely an issue. So... are our courts free? Nope.

You see there is a tiny problem in the world. The bleeding hearts don't want to send anyone to jail and the right wingers don't want to pay for it. The first act of VVD/CDA with support of PVV was to close 3 jails. Next government VVD/PvDA closed yet more.

A legal system is expensive and NOBODY wants to pay for it. And the overburnded systems as they are ALREADY legalize a LOT of stuff, stolen bike in Amsterdam? Fill in a form, nothing will be done. Alarm goes off in an office block with a video link showing the burglars still inside. Police tells the caretaker to go take look. Check your local system, for every budget increase there are ten cutbacks. All so we can have more and more managers telling us the system ain't working at outrageous salaries rather then cops on the streets and judges on benches.

A working society is an expensive society and the best way to get elected is to promise tax cuts. That got to conflict sooner or later.

Yeah, I am sure that was the reasoning behind that Norway mass murderer, "oh well, can't get more then 20 years, might as well keep shooting".

Criminals are criminals because they don't think about anyone, not other people and not themselves. Prison is NOT there to stop criminals, it there to STOP non-criminals from becoming criminals and to punish criminals.

It is the passing a traffic jam on the emergency lane. If one person does it and get away, other will feel they have to do it to or feel a fool. BUT if you see that person getting a ticket, you feel vindicated for simply waiting till the jam resolved itself. Society needs to see those who break the rules be punished for it or it will stop obeying the rules. The "me too" mentality is how society breaks down, it is how mobs form and how gang cultures spread.

See drug dealers. If you see a drug dealer as a pathetic individual at constant risk of being send to jail and get his ass pounded, you stay with your boring regular paying job. But if you see a drug dealer as a self-made man with more money then you can dream off, you want to be part of his gang.

It ain't nice but society rarely is but punishment is about getting all the little grain stalks to stay neatly in line by showing them what happens to a grain stalk that gets out of line. Culled like a weed.

And it works... it ain't nice to say but for all the libertarians cry for freedom, how many have actually emigrated to regions with no government? How many of us have moved into a Ghetto where you ain't hassled by the police at night because there is no police at night? Making the daily commute with its eternal traffic jams is a lot easier to put up with when that guy speeding across the emergency lane gets his car impounded. It isn't noble but then who is? Slam the first sheep over the fence in jail and the rest will remain happy in their field and not get run over on the road.

If you want to be depressed, read up on rehabilitation projects and research across the globe. NONE WORK. When talking success rates, they are talking a few percentage difference on recidivism rate, the most deceitful statistic EVER. Remember that recidivism ONLY tracks CONVICTIONS, that make it INTO the records of a person.

Person rapes at 16, records cleared at 18, rapes again. Not a recidivist.

Person rapes again, crime is not reported. Not a recidivist. Not investigated. Not a recidivist. Not prosecuted. Not a recidivist. Not convicted. Not a recidivist. In Belgium, in recent news, it became clear that conviction rate for reported rapes is 1%. Yet even with that LOW LOW LOW figure, recidivism rate is the near universal 70%. What are the chances the remaining 30% are at least party accountable for the remaining 99% of rapes that were reported, let alone the far higher number that went unreported.

Person gets convicted and sent to jail. First day in jail, he is counted as a full NON-recidivist. Every day out of jail he is not convicted, he is counted as a FULL NON-recidivist. If arrested, charged and prosecuted and found guilty all the time UP to actually sentencing and that sentence being recorded, he is counted as a FULL non-recidivist. (Dutch NOS news site had a funny example of this, they reported that 2012 had the lowest amount of murders... by a whole person less then in 2011, but then 2 more murders were committed in the closing days of 2012. hey did NOT redact the article in anyway, you can still find the claim that 2012 had a record low number of murders in their archives with nowhere a correction).

Peron moves to another country and rapes there and is convicted and sentenced, link is NOT made and he continues to be counted as a non-recidivist.

People will try to dazzle you with figures about crime rates and rehabilitation because it is a gigantic business and NOT just in the US. But from country to country, from system to system, the figures remain the same once you start accounting for accounting errors. With recidivism it gets really depressing just how little is tracked. You can see this every time some convicted pedophile gets a job as a day care worker. In Holland we get a certificate of good conduct needed for some jobs and such. Do you know how far back it goes? 4 years and this was in the news because a minister wanted to reduce it to two years to make sure criminals weren't haunted to long with their past in finding jobs and houses. 2 years... well... that is nice. So basically a certificate of good conduct means "he didn't kill the clerk who handed it out to him, that is good conduct".

The legal system is a system of last recourse and it is wasn't setup to do justice for criminals or even victims, it was to re-assure the normal people that those who step out of line are dealt with harshly so that we don't feel to bad about staying in line.

And frankly having lived in areas where people can queue and where it is every man for himself all the time, I take the god damned queue and smile when a guard pulls a cue jumper away and gives him a sound talking to. Yes. I am a sheep. And I feel better about my field and the sheering and the flee-dipping when I see the sheep jumping over the fence get it in the neck. Never claimed I am nice, just human.

So you think if Adolf Hitler had been captured, he should have been left out after 25 years, so in 1970 you would have opened the door to his jail and let him walk away free. Oh but wait, would he have gotten time of for good behavior? Nowadays it can rise to as much as 2/3 of the sentence in some countries because jails are full.

Your are bleeding heart who just wants to ignore victims because they are icky and bleed all over the criminal. The 105 year POSSIBLE maximum sentence is there to stop excesses like Norway where a mass murderer can really only be made to do time for ONE murder.

The simple problem is that our legal system in Europe really only works with non-criminals. It is setup on the idea that if the police caution you, you listen. It can't deal with habitual criminals who see a 2nd chance as chance to this time, not get caught! When you realize that for crimes like rape, in Belgium the conviction rate is 1% and yet recidivism rate (which doesn't track re-offend rate but re-convict rate) is 70%, you got to learn to accept that people don't learn.

Bleeding hearts always gush on how about the 3rd strike rule in the US sentences people to life behind bars for stealing cookies. They FORGET to mention that said people already committed TWO violent crimes and then often STRAIGHT out of jail, were caught AGAIN. And remember, arrest and conviction rates are NOT 100%. If a rapist has been convicted TWICE and then is caught doing something again. Chances are very high that in reality he committed many more crimes for which he was not convicted.

I for one do believe SOME people deserve a second chance IF they earned it and a second chance is all you get. I wouldn't even have three strikes. Once chance. Next time, throw away the key.

It is easy to bleed all over the criminal. Remember a documentary about some nun who assisted people on death row. She was very compassionate but did her utmost best to avoid dealing at all with the relatives of the victim because that might influence her... yeah... learning the guy you are crying for beat a child to dead ignoring her cries for mercy tends to do that.

Bleeding hearts think prison is a correctional service. It is not. It is punishment. It is a very heavy stick with a tiny carrot and many criminals don't want the carrot. Removing the stick isn't going to solve anything. The most shocking thing is that the crime rates between different countries don't really differ all that much. Oh... there are statistical differences but if for instance a country decided to not count something as an offense, you can't really use such crimes. For instance, Holland has decriminalized possession of weed but NOT production. The US has criminalization possession so a LOT of people are in jail extra but you can't really count them OR you would ALSO have to acknowledge somehow in your figures that Washington has now legalized pot.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, jail rarely works for rehab because those who enter into it often already did many crimes before that went unreported or didn't result in a conviction and at most you can get them to wish to avoid being caught again. The 3 strike rule shows just how few criminals can even be convinced that maybe after two jail terms, it is wiser to not offend again. And they don't, when a guy is sent down for life for stealing cookies, you can blame the system but you got to accept that you are dealing with a person who knowing full well that he risks life in prison, still couldn't keep his hands of a roll of cookies.

The bleeding hearts are full of compassion and care (for the criminal, never the victims) but they never have a solution. The majority of people simply don't want revolving door criminals.

You can tell a bleeding heart because they talk in dogma's. "At some point you have to give SOME redemption". Why? How many times?

This guy HAD 350 changes to STOP. He didn't have to continue. He could at any point have walked away. He didn't. THAT is why he faces a life time in jail, because he had HUNDREDS of second chances and didn't take them.

32gb memory is very cheap right now... well the memory is. Seeing Windows want to create a 50gb swap file is priceless...

Even more amazing, it needs it to. On Linux I haven't used swap in ages. Memory is CHEAP MS. Learn to do without a page file or at least not an insane amount. 1.5 times memory stops making any sense above 4 gig.

When the US was backing Germany, US volunteers went to the UK to fight on the right side. Men and women who put their lives on the line for what they believed in.

You believe in something? Then put your life on the line. Ah, thought so, life is a bit to comfortable sitting behind a computer spouting morality. Trust me, I know. It is easy to ignore the horrors of the world if they aren't happening to you.

We will all find different excuses for it "one man can't change anything" "I have no power" "the US is not the worlds police man" "China is backing them". But it all just means "don't rock my boat".

The simple fact is that NK could be liberated in a week IF the world wanted to. China is NOT going to risk global war over it if the US and the west flexed its muscle. Notions that it might not like the US on its border are beyond silly, the US doesn't have the resources to fight China on its own turf and with US fleets and international presence, it already HAS plenty of power close to China anyway.

But the fact is also that it would be a brutal fight with little financial reward. No oil. Now I am not saying the west is only interested in oil but liberating NK would be a gigantic undertaking which requires lots of boats being rocked and while the world will PROBABLY make sure none of the boats tipped over, why bother when you can just sit there and ignore it?

This is hardly the first time the world has managed to look the other way. Not even the other way, a zebra will watch an other zebra struggle and die at the hands of a lion and think itself lucky that today the Lion has been fed. The truth is that the lions would be just a dirty smear on the savannah if the herbivores put in the tiniest amount of effort (Zebra's kicks, buffalo charges, hippo bites, elephant trunk slaps have ALL killed Lions with ease) but it is easier not to.

Right now, in your city, someone is sleeping on the street. You can put them in a shelter for less then the price of a game. Are you getting out of your chair yet? No? Me neither. I know I am a moral vacuum, do you? Don't argue, there is nobody here who can't afford to help a homeless person on Slashdot. But most don't. There are no excuses.

I never had it easier getting to use a Linux desktop in a Windows environment then when the Director/Owner/etc has a Mac. Oh you want Linux, that is the same as OSX right, sure no problem, IT will make it happen, just tell them I send you". Much seething from Windows admins but they got to support it because the boss said so.

It is something sales/marketing people tend to forget. Things happen because they are made to happen by the rather random taste of people who have influence. In Holland a rather famous case is where a comedian made a joke about brand of beer and its sales NOSEDIVED. Crackberry's were IT! And then the iPhone was IT.

What does this mean? That you must do TWO things. Keep doing the same thing AND innovate. You do the same thing to keep the customers who made their choice and you innovate to catch new customers AND keep the ones who bought your product but want something new.

That is why companies die when they become efficient and save on R&D because R&D isn't efficient and we got good products now what is left to research and develop? What happens is then that your customers die off (in some longer running industries literally) and aren't replaced. You become the old fogy brand, still selling but to a declining audience. Ask Sony.

And you never see that coming because it seems for the longest time that your competition has even less of a clue. Lets remember just how long Apple was NOT part of the smartphone market compared to how long they ruled it AND how long Samsung has been ruling it now (total sales vs single model sales).

Things... change...

Apple stopped innovating, there have been LOTS of innovative cell phone designs, none of them from Apple, even their design is not their own. Oblong phone mostly screen? The XDA was that 10 years ago.

Samsung has enormous issues with support, what updates you get and when is a lottery, you are going to loose. Cyanogenmod is a nice enough idea but it can't keep up. Cooking your own is possible but it makes running linux a decade ago seem like a cakewalk. Meanwhile it is pretty obvious that if do persist, it is possible to get a LOT more performance out of Samsungs devices then their own software can. Not suprising when you realize the difference between CM+Gapps and Samsungs official roms is 300mb. Half the size.

The world... well me and the world revolves around me, is ready for a mobile phone that is more PC like. Open, kept up to date easily and easily modified to suit my tastes. Or maybe it is ready for a phone that isn't the lightest or thinnest but has a serious battery so it simply can run for several days. Or real fast multitasking with phones finally getting some real memory akin to PC's. Or a phone that pulls a Nokia, tells the US telco's to go screw themselves and makes phones based around the idea of selling hardware not software.

IT might seem like it is ruled for ages by the same giants but that is just because people have bad memories, things change all the time and enemies you thought un-important rip your head off when you least expect it. Take Linux, for a decade we talked about the year of the desktop and nobody even heard of the name. Then Apple launches OSX and suddenly people who buy Macs know what Unix is and a search engine company and a no-brand tv maker use Linux and Java (another "year off" product) to give MS and its victim (Nokia) a beating that so far has left Ballmer gasping for air.

For years everything a CEO knew was windows software, suddenly it had become an iOS app and now Android has gained root, HTML5 is getting a massive boost out of nowhere (Jobless? Become a frontend developer, they can't get them at all).

It will be intresting to see what this year is going to produce. Will Samsung and Apple do something original or just an S4, Note 3 and iPhone 6? Will whatever meego is called now produce a phone by a company doing the radical thing of actually selling it in the west? Will Blackberry recover form the their tablet failure?

I will be disappointedif 2013 ends and we still have slab telephones with the same tired old interfaces.

Because Samsung for sure seems to NOT want to make an enormous markup in giving Android users devices with more then by now EXTREMELY low memory amounts. Try and actually GET an S3 with just 32GB or hell a Note 2 with say 64GB. They do exist, in Korea but they charge a GIGANTIC premium for them 1000 dollars for the Note 2 64GB version. But they can't actually produce enough of them to be sold around the world.

Basically, Apple charges LESS then its competitors and actually SELLS the devices in shops. I don't like Steve Jobs as much as the next guy but Apple has been winning on this ground for a long time.

Try this for amusement sake, some MP3 players are targetting the uncompressed market, which makes music files GIGANTIC but deliver their devices with 16gb memory. Pure music players (so no fancy screens) starting at 600 dollars and up to a 1000 but with 16gb memory. One 700 device can also ONLY support 64GB max with SDHC cards because in a high priced device, the device can't support more with its address space.

In the mean time, Apple has been selling large capacity devices as an option constantly and easily available. They only need to add multi sdhc (iRiver device has it but again, such a low base memory you need it to be able to store more then one album on it in RAW format) support and everyone else can just as well go home.

Really, as you say, you can sell 50 dollar memory for a 100 dollars. SO FUCKING DO IT ALREADY! SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

It is the one reason I think PC's will remain with us a long time. Apart from intel with its stupid netbook rules, you can always add what you fucking want after buying it.

16GB is NOT enough for everyone Samsung.

Government, especially the western style democracies didn't happen by magic. They were won by people who believed they could change the system and did. Once there were monarchs who rule, now they just collect a massive wage for not doing much at all. So our ancestors did not create a perfect society but they did improve society.

But now for everyone who cares, there are far more who want to keep the status quo. See the bitter hatred targetted at Julian Assange, Stallman, the whole wallstreet protests. The elite don't need to attack their enemies, the plebs will happily do it for them. Rock the boat and you will be thrown overboard by the slaves.

Oh we disguise our attacks behind claiming we want our heroes to be perfect. Oddly enough NOT something we demand of celebrities in other fields. Just that if you dare to suggest a small way in which the world could be made a better place, you better be holier then the pope and then you will be slammed for being to holy.

People REALLY do not like change, they can tolerate a LOT of badness if just it means they don't have to think, act or take a side.

And it is that way that tyrants rise to power. There is no need for a secret world government and such nonsense conspiracies. All it needs is for everyone to look away.

Trust me, I know. I am doing it myself. Just the daily drain of life has indeed made me give up. The little hamster wheel is all I want after all. Sad. BUT that is MY fault. Not the fault of anyone else. I gave up doesn't mean you should. But I can understand why people like Swartz buckle under the pressure and the people who claim his as their champion should ask whether they overloaded the guy or not. Let Lessig face a long jail time, maybe then his legal cases will actually be good and not wishful thinking.

Oh wait, accusing Lessig of not being perfect am I. Told you I had given up.

In a democracy, the power is supposed to lie with the voter. The voter has power, indeed absolute power to change the leadership every so many years and in the US even sooner because isn't that why you got so many guns... and therefor, the voter is corrupt. Nice.

The simple fact is that while a LOT of people claim outrage at this case, a LOT of people ALSO want a though stance by the justice system on OTHER peoples offenses. Hang'em all and let god sort them out is a significant voting group.

An even BIGGER group of voters is "hang em all" "oh my god, you slapped his wrist, how mean!". It is a lucrative market to serve as the media, write a story about how soft the system is on hardened criminals then a story about how hard the system is on misunderstood people and you got your readership nice and enraged and yet feeling like they are caring people after all.

The DOJ YOU got is the system your society wants. Don't believe me? Nothing has actually been changed with regards to JSTOR and its policies has it. MIT hasn't stopped working with them. Academia still submit their papers to it don't they? Everybody is having a good little cry and a nice outrage at the system and then all back on our hamster wheel part of the big machine just like before.

It reminds me of Munich. How many seconds was the collecting of wealth and fame halted after the slaughter? Did a single athlete say "no this isn't right, I won't continue". In the Tour de France at least if there is some event like a rider who died, the other riders do symbolic things like letting the affected team win or ride across the finish line as a group rather then in a race. Sometimes... if the stakes aren't to high.

How many people/organizations have declared to STOP using JSTOR or to keep themselves associated with MIT? Have many MIT students have stopped going?

People forget that oppression isn't just a person at the top going "send him down", it is an entire support system beneath it. If you want to be nice it is "good men doing nothing" but mostly it is "selfish people not doing anything unless it benefits them and even then only if it doesn't take to much effort". You might blame the Klan for segregation laws in the deep south (see how neatly I avoided mentioning the nazi's and a godwin?) but that doesn't explain how easily it was implemented and supported. Every bus driver, every shop owner, every person who went into a whites only area. Did you push YOUR granddad in the face for being part of it? No? So you think the DOJ should be punished for prosecuting a criminal but racism is okay?

Life is hard, fighting the good fight all the time is FUCKING hard. Lessig is one person who does it easily by doing the fighting through proxies and getting his proxies lumbered with million dollar punishments or until a depressed young man kills himself. How many cheered Swartz on and how many gave a depressed suicidal guy a shoulder to lean on? I sure as hell didn't. I am taking the easy way out. I know this of myself and just avoid looking at myself in the mirror. SAME AS YOU!

You can convince me differently if for instance there had been a "Spartacus" event where a lot of MIT students had copied the mass download. There wasn't. If students had left MIT. They didn't. If Academia had stopped using JSTOR. They didn't. If there had been ANY action beyond a few cheap speeches.

It is even more hilarious to read articles denouncing the DOJ on this subject matter when such sites are heavy supporters of copyright and have in the past attempted to restrict fair use of their own content.

I predict that NOTHING will change. The reason is simple, NOBODY cares. Well not enough. The next election will be about taxes and employment once again and the people will vote for the guy they think is best for them (or for Romney voters, better for that rich guy they never met and will never be) and copyright is just not a big enough issue to figure in election results yet. Hell, the US doesn't even have a green party of any note. In the EU it took decades for them to get any power and the moment the economy takes a hit, it is back to the old parties in a flash.

Right now in The Netherlands the big news is that the queen is abdicating. And my god does it show how right Terry Pratchett was when he has Vimes comment that people have a weakness in their knees. Her mother married a nazi collaborator, she married a kraut and when her son couldn't find a nazi bitch, he got himself the daughter of a war criminal and a SOCIALIST prime-minister told everyone it was okay and for the last decade the entire country has pointedly ignored increasing evidence her father was not just knowledgable of human right atrocities but was part of it.

In a democracy, there should be no place for royalty especially such known corrupt (financially and morally) royalty. But the bootlicking is sickening to see. People don't really LIKE democracy, they want someone to be in charge and as long as it is not them getting it in the ass, they don't mind if someone else does it. Well not enough to do anything about it.

That is how corrupt regimes survive. People look the other way. They might whine a bit but won't do anything and when it has died down, things continue as before.

Right on this site there MUST be MIT students and JSTOR users/contributors. Proof me wrong. Has a SINGLE one of you taken ANY steps at all in protest?

No?

Then you voted FOR the system and are just upset some blood spatters showed up when someone was caught in its gears. But you ARE what powers the gears.

"I like computers"... it only gets worse when the hopeful claims to know "how to take them apart". Gee whiz! We got a rocket scientist here! He grasped the concept of the SCREW! Pity that by the way he phrased it, it is clear he has never managed to actually put one together again. But he has a golden future at a recycling center.

Neither is taking courses and getting perfect scores any clue. I took some exams and passed them with perfect scores even on languages I never used. It is easy. Most computer courses already give you a passing grade if you refrain from trying to eat the keyboard.

In The Netherlands, the current shortage is NOT in guys who can hook up a PC, or even those who can code. It is in people who can finish an application to specification within a budget. Coding is EASY. Coding well is harder but very few computer courses require you to write more then a few thousand lines of code. Hell, in university most students will build their own OS or something SEEMINGLY difficult. But building a base OS that just runs on one machine and doesn't really do anything is easy. Supporting an entire eco-system of hardware and making it fully functional for daily use by real people, THAT IS FUCKING HARD. Why do you think there are only so many OS'es out there? Why do think many of the "new" ones are really just Linux with a skin? (Android, Meego and its offspring, various realtime OS'es, Bada can use a Linux kernel as an option).

Same with a web application, Webshops are a booming industry yet the number of packages available is truly limited, especially ones that are any good. 4chan software is re-used on countless sites. Most forums run on the same code base.

With mobile Apps we have seen that there are PLENTY of would-be developers out there but the vast majority can just code, have a bright idea but cannot develop it. they cobble pieces together and shove it out the door with "it works for me" and wait for the money to roll in.

IF the poster wants a job in the very wide field of IT OR development (in many ways IT is so wide that development can't be considered a part of it) he FIRST needs to get an idea of what he wants to do, and then get some experience doing it.

If you came to me for a development position, no matter how junior and said "I want to do something with computers" I would tell you politely I have no room for you. Anymore then a carpenter has room for someone who wants to do something with hammers. I can teach you how to code, I might be able to teach you how to become a developer.

I can't teach someone who thinks everything that involves proximity to a computer is the same job.

I have had occasion recently to once again see the difference between a senior DEVELOPER and a senior CODER. One guy on a project I was reviewing happily showed me amazingly well written clean code with full documentation, fully complete and accurate unit tests, continues deployment. Full A+ material.

Just a tiny pity that it had taken him apparently 1.5 years to do as subproject budgetted for a few weeks in a project that was supposed to be finished in less then half a year... he had completely overshot the mark, gone completely beyond the spec and written something vastly more complex then what was needed.

And yet, he was in the company highly regarded despite essentially being worthless to the company... without the main project being ready, there was no use for his code. But the owner of the company told me, "he writes really nice code, nicer then yours, so why should I contract you to fix it". Needless to say I didn't take the interview further, if the owner of a company can't see the difference between being productive and being on a hobby project in this bosses time, there is nothing to manage except a fast exit.

Once again, coding is easy. Finding good coders is trivial. Getting a project out the door on time and with in specifications is the hard part. Don't impress me with your fancy one page script, show me shoddy code for a site you build that is actually live and serving a customer base. I don't even care if your only user is your mom, at least it shows you FINISHED it, even if it is falling apart of the seams, you regonized the need for code to DO something rather then just be. You will be AMAZED by how many hopeful candidates fail to show working finished projects. And with finished I mean, you had an idea for a service/task and you written your code to start achieving that RATHER then get stuck in details and trying to write some super optimized database script while the original idea never gets realized.

You can buy ANY phone you want, unlocked and then use it at least on normal SIM style networks. I am aware some carriers in the US have insane schemes but surely at least one sane European style phone company exists on US soil?

I have a Nexus S, unlocked when I bought it from the US and been using it ever since on first T-Mobile and now Vodafone. I paid the full sum for the phone so it is all mine and there is no contract telling me to use a certain service.

Basically what you as a true idiot are claiming is that you went to Ma Bell and despite the sales guy telling you could use your own phone you could buy anywhere you insisted on getting their phone and to have it hardwired into the wall AND to pay them for it the service AND then you compain that you got their phone hardwired into the wall and have to pay for the service.

BUY AN UNLOCKED PHONE WITHOUT CONTRACT. It is NOT rocket science.

The sooner we can get rid of subsidies the sooner we can reduce telecoms to simple data pushers like most ISP's and get rid of insane rates.

The rental car industry is protected by laws that determine that although they GIVE you the car, you STILL have to return it!

And although I can simply REACH over a fence and take fruit from a tree, specific laws forbid me from doing so. Hell, allmost all business is protected by laws and would be impossible without laws. Or do you think property laws are NOT there to allow trade in property to occur?

There is really no great unjustice being done here, don't like your phone locked? Buy an unlocked one at retail price. You are basically complaining that it is not fair that renting a car doesn't allow you to keep it. Stop whining, a contract is a contract. Don't like it, don't sign it.

This law only exist really to stop deadbeats who buy an expensive phone on a contract they can't or don't intend to fulfill and then want to unlock the phone to use it with a different carrier. And the only reason why contract law alone is not enough is because contract law is pretty weak, setting a collection agency on every deadbeat for a few hundred dollars is not worth it, better to kill of the unlock business and a BUSINESS it is or at least used to be, getting an unlock code leads to dozens of pay sites. They improved things in Holland by requiring carriers to supply the code for free after 1 year for prepaid phones.

But really, just buy an unlocked phone to begin with if you want to unlock it.