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Slashback: Ford, Buccaneers, Hardware
It seemed like a good idea at the time, though. GeekLife.com writes: "After 20 months, Ford has ended (technically "deferred") their "Model E" free computer and discounted Internet access for their employees (announced here and discussed here). Employees who already have computers will be able to keep them, and their Internet service will not be affected."
I sure hope that Ford (like many large companies) at the very least gives Ford employees dibs on any computers that are being replaced within the company to make up for each new round of Windows.
Sounds like a slimple decision, if you like the look. rockwood writes: "We've all been waiting for this for quite some time, but it appears that now for only $269.00 Slim Devices, Inc. is now shipping their sliMP3. Though they state quantity is limited, due to a component shortage. Last minute Christmas gift for the tech on your list!"
For that price, it better read aloud in a very sexy voice. The other day we linked to a review of the new all-singing, all-dancing Audigy sound card on 3D Spotlight; in case that wasn't enough to help you choose whether to spend or save your money, LinkDJ writes: "This card is great for those with older sound card in their systems, but if you have a Sound Blaster 5.1, there is no real need to upgrade. The cool things about this card are that it has integrated SB1394 Firewire, thus eliminating the need for a separate Firewire add-in card. Read the full review."
WhoseSQL? gwynnebaer writes "A friend of mine just pointed out to me that the contentious www.mysql.org now points to the main MySQL AB site. If you remember, there was much gnashing of lawsuits over trademark issues this past summer. So, looks like at least one part of the battle is over, but for the life of me, I can't find any articles or newsworthy information to explain what happened. Anyone know the scoop?"
Free software might be a good way to lessen your legal liability. MooRogue writes: "Looks like the Feds are raiding Universities and corporate offices for more pirated software. They're questioning people and seizing computers to gather digital evidence in 'Operation Buccaneer.' Here's the article on the NY Times (free reg, blah blah)"
"only" $269?
...all the pimps, drug dealers, and other riff-raff, who must surely all be behind bars now and consequently our law-enforcement agencies have nothing to do but hassle college kids!
These are the pirates that they need to be going after, not college kids swapping mp3z or warez...
You're using her as bait, Master!
all I want to know is when linux drivers would be available for the audigy.. ;)
an Australian LUG applauded the raid saying that stamping out pirated software will make open source alternatives more attractive
Now, my question: what were these "DrinkOrDie" people thinking? They are going to spend months, maybe years in jail just because they couldn't live without their precious warez. I find it hard to imagine what you can't do with free, legal open source software - so why did these kids forsake their entire future over some crappy commercial software products? It blows the mind, really. The latest Debian CD provides all the software anyone could ever conceive of needing.
One possibility is that they did this to "be cool" and to show that they could get away with it - just for the thrill of doing something illegal. Well, it didn't get them laid, and they're not getting away with it. So they can take comfort in the fact that they will be rotting away in their prison cells as vaginal virgins. I hope they are proud of themselves.
Why anyone would subject themselves to this sort of punishment for a little free closed-source software is beyond the realm of comprehension.
~waIly
Actually this is for me a big reason to use free software. Especially so because I earn my money in closed source software. Illegal use of software wasn't that big an issue for me when I was a teen, but now i'm a bit more concerned with the moral aspects of stealing someones work.
I try to point friends to freely available software as much as I can, thereby slowly trying to win them over to the Open Source community. It ain't much, but i'd like to think that every little bit helps..
karma capped
http://www.x10.com/products/x10_ak11a.htm
And it only runs about $80.
It's pretty much the same deal since you have to have the receiver and whatever you're snarfing the mp3s from in unobstructed view from one other.
The whole Slim Devices web site seems kind of chincy anyway. But, at least they dont throw pop-under ads at you...
~dlb
My uncle on vacation here in the good old USA, while he was still in China i asked him to buy me some programs and games. well what i got was a little bit over my head. i got windows XP pro, adobe photoshop and other expensive looking programs on a three cd's. but they were not offical from there respective owners yes they were bootlegs. they even have nice cd's for the bootlegs. what gets me is they get all these programs before they even come out here in the US, and they openly sell these cd's on the street. I got a bunch of games too. i asked him if there are real cd's out there. he says yes but why would you spend about 100(insert english version of the chinese currency) on the real cd's but for pennies or dollars you get a disc that has 4 games on it. God bless china the only place microsoft isn't a monopoly.
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
i have a ac'97 codec on my motherboard as the sound card. would it be worth paying up to hundreds of dollars for a new sound card. the only thing i do on my pc is listen to mp3 and ogg files (has anyone made a napster for ogg files?) and play games on the puter but they all want this eax thing that i don't have. if i do upgrade do i need new speakers i have the top of the line air wave 2.1 one speakers with 3D sound option, the salesmen told me they were the best (for 20 dollars). if you see this reply so i can spend more of my parent's money.
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
"I only copy one or two games a month and nobody has ever busted me."
/. really does log personal info from users.)
The fact that you haven't been caught doesn't make it right. How dare you suggest that stealing "only one or two" is justified?
I know this isn't a perfect world and not every criminal can be caught, but that doesn't mean you should flaunt the fact that you haven't been caught stealing yet. (And not even posting anonymously... there are ways to track you down, especially if
The mistake these guys made was in stealing their first piece of software. They got away with it, but commit a crime enough times and you will and should eventually get caught.
-Space for rent
"Why rob a bank when the credit union next door is handing out $100 bills?"
And that analogy is perfect for this situation.
freebsd guy
Has everyone on slashdot forgotten about NuSphere's apparent violation of the GPL with their non-free Gemini table extensions? This seems to be a serious issue that very much deserves defending... Especially now that mysql.org is down (was Gemini source every available there?), it's important we don't forget what they are doing, and that we remain in an uproar, as we always are when evil companies violate the GPL. Can anyone offer any news on this?
From the article:
Law-enforcement officials said more raids were imminent as they tried to shut down a multi-billion- dollar international piracy ring
Multi-billion dollar? How do they come up with these figures? "Oh, it cost our studio ten million dollars to make this movie, and you have a copy on your hard drive, so you stole ten million dollars from us."
If we had a police state like this 80 years ago, Prohibition would never have been repealed.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
freebsd guy
time for a Cowboy ÜberNeal poll on NY times Registration.
i see you have this down to a science.
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
Just because taxes are theft doesn't make theft any less wrong.
However, I do agree with you that taxes would be better spent, if spent at all, prosecuting violent crimes.
If you believe your taxes are better spent catching software thieves, then donate to the BSA or whatever it's called. If you think it's better spent on violent crime, then send your money to someone who prosecutes violent crime. Or NORML, to convince the thugs to go after violent criminals instead of peaceful private drug users.
I would gladly donate to a fund that tracks down and prosecutes murderers, rapists and muggers, but I have no money left since my money has already been taken by some of the worst thieves I've ever seen. They wear badges.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
But that is illegal unless they wipe the windows off the hard disks and install Linux/NetBSD/etc on it instead. Or, they can pay microsoft their extortion/protection fee.
The windows licenses that the corporation bought are not transferrable. In the future you will not be able to buy older versions of windows at all. Yet, the newer versions of windows (XP) won't work nicely on these computers - otherwise why would they be getting replaced?
So in a roundabout way, microsoft makes linux the only option for people with older computers - especially if the computers are hand-me-downs.
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
Actually for anyone writing music there is a very, very good reason to upgrade to an audigy. It has 4x more power, so more effects can be done in hardware. It also has ASIO drivers. With a SB Live I get ~70ms latency in Propellerheads Reason, with the Audigy and the newer drivers you get ~8ms. This makes a huge diffence when trying to sync live/semilive effects to the midi streams.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I have to agree. Getting in trouble by copying Microsoft software? Talk about adding insult to injury!
The real treasure is the movies, though. Seriously, legal DVD's are not all that expensive, what's the draw? If the persecutors, I mean prosecutors, weren't using "list price" of the software to rack up the "multi-billion dollar pirate ring" charge, just how much "value" did these crooks steal anyway?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
buy a turtle beach santa cruz.
1/2 the price and 3 times the quality.
check the specs, it blows away anything creative can make and borders on professional quality.
Yes, but what if you have a machine with only four PCI slots and you want to replace both the sucky on-mobo sound and add Firewire to your system? You have these cards installed:
1.)Xpert 128 PCI video to kill the hideous i810 Vampire Video;
2.)TV Wonder;
3.)Intel NIC
Pop question: what do you do?
a: Get the Santa Cruz and forget about Firewire, or:
b: Get the Audigy OEM for $20 less than the Santa Cruz and have a little less audio fidelity but all the functionality?
I'm going to run this beastie on 2KPro. (Please don't flame me...I have my reasons.) Suggestions are welcome.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
For those interested in whose SQL it is anyway, it appears to me that MySQL AB won the dispute. They got the offending site taken down and redirected, and in return appear to have removed their story from their own web site. You can get Mysql AB's side of the story from Google's cache here.
fountain-city-nightmares
Those are no more than the spillover from Christenberry Heights, Tim.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Uhh did you actually read about the SliMP3?
That X10 thing, I see (after unblocking the entire x10.com domain from my machine) is a simple wireless transmitter, something like a cordless baby monitor with a remote control. It purports to be "digital" (the same as those headphones that say "digital ready" on them at radio shack - try running a raw PCM stream into em and watch what happens) where really all it is is a radio transmitter and a remote control that plugs into your sound card and requires (undoubtedly silly) software (undoubtedly windoze only) to work. The SliMP3 is a *TOTALLY* different thing. Whoever modded this up obviously failed to pay any attention whatsoever to what either product is. How does the SliMP3 mean "you have to have the receiver and whatever you're snarfing the mp3s from in unobstructed view from one other" (whatever that means?!!?)? It's ethernet. Ethernet is actually able to go thru walls and whatnot... Colour me confused.
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Moron. How many of the "Convicted felons" out there even know what a 'warez kiddie' is. It's not like these kids arn't going to be thrown in with the stock manipulators and stuff in min-sec prisons.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Very cool device, but $269 is pretty excessive considering you can get cheaper fully contained players for less. For example the 10G Neo Jukebox for $220. Hmm paradoxically you can buy the Neo Jukebox without the hard drive for an extra $10 at MTE.
I'm not saying don't buy one. The point is that you just know devices like this sliMP3 could be sold profitably for less than $50 if the volume was high enough. They are essentially the same as the Neo jukebox but with all the expensive components removed (battery, hard drive) and with an ethernet chip added. The Neo has a dinky remote control as well.
If you check out Slim Device's photos page, you can see just how 'garage' the company has been. It's pretty cool how they take you through the whole production process - almost makes me want to buy one just for that.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
The slim devices thing uses ethernet. It dosn't need line of sight.
And I would absolutly buy a more expensive product rather then subsidize more pup-up garbage a and the SPAM that they're sending now.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
100(insert english version of the chinese currency)
100 Yuan.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
So this means, uh.. Linux has come to steal my hard drive space?
For over 1.5 years I've been wanting (and attempting to convince friends and others to make) a device almost like this. Here's my instant money-making idea for anyone who wants it, IF ONLY THEY'LL MAKE THE DEVICES AND SELL THEM TO ME!
Really, I'm rather desperate. Here are the specs:
Source/Receiver4 RCA (stereo in/out)
1 RJ-45
1 ID selector (set unit's ID to 1-8) on back
1 Source selector on front (choose to listen from any unit
Uses 10BT chip and 2 $2 TI A/D chip to convert sound to/from PCM on the network
Cost: $US150
Receiver Unit
2 RCA (stereo in)
1 RJ-45
1 Source selector on front choose to listen from any unit
Cost: $US100
Computer Software
Encodes/decodes broadcast signal from the LAN, to let your computer be a source or receiver unit.
Cost: $US50
What I want is many-to-many sound setup in the house. Let the computer be playing MP3s and tune into it on the stereo. Let the A/V system be attached as a source so I can have any/all of the computers tuned in, re-broadcasting the sound around the house for parties. Cheap(~) receiving units can be placed in various locations (outside) with cat5 run to them.
Later improvements would include using software to set a friendly name for each source, a small cheap display to show the source names on the screen, and real-time MP3 encoding/decoding.
But at a minimum I just want a small hardware device which I can feed an RCA signal and have it use my existing ethernet infrastructure to broadcast that signal around the house! Anyone? Anyone?
Get the $199 Xtacy Everything (ti-200+TV in/out/pvr) and free up that TV wonder slot! :) But then what do you do about USB2 :(
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Though I agree that it's obscene how our "representatives" are exploiting the deaths of thousands to increase their own power. What i disagree with is the gun control issue.... the terroists didn't use a single gun in the execution of their plan, so it really does show that banning guns won't stop things of that nature. And if anyone else on those planes had been armed, the terrorists would never have succeeded (think pilots..)
Though I realize i'm probably preaching to the choir in your case.....
Buy a better motherboard.
For some reason, I wanna come up with a suitably smart-ass answer to cut you down to size, but I can't -- it look like you got a really sweet system for doing some heavy video processing on a budget. My suggestions are below, but they can't match an OEM Audigy, which pricewatch says is $55.
c: If you have an ISA slot, put in an Awe 64 and a PCI firewire card.
d: Get a Radeon 8500DV, which replaces the Xpert, the TV Wonder, AND firewire.
e: Get a real motherboard, with 6 PCI and on-board ether.
And Win2k kicks boot, no flames are warranted.
-B
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
The Audigy has a useful optional package (sitting right here on my desk at work): the Platinum EX. It's similar to the various Live! Drive modules, except this one is external (hence the EX), and extends all of the normal Live!Drive jacks plus firewire to your desktop. Oh, and it's black, not asthetic-nightmre beige. 8-)
for at least the last 4ish months-- I started teaching myself mysql late in the summer, and it was there then...
/ex
Ford leases all PCs from Dell (3 yr Leases)
So, when the lease is up, the PC goes back.
The same applies with Unix Workstations (HP, SGI, SUN) (3 Yr Lease)
Mainframes, Supercomputers (Crays, etc...) (Variable Leases)
So, there are no presents to the employees.
But....
We do get great deals on Cars, Trucks, Cell Phones, Microsoft Products, etc...
It seems like law enforcemnet has a bad habit of picking fights that they can never win. The war on drugs is a great example, prohibition was another.
However, like most federal overeach, there is also beneficial side effects (to them). For example, the war on drugs helps the govt collect trillions in taxes that it would not have otherwise. Not from drug lords, but from legit busisnessmen who are fear mongered into not using the same tax protections associated with drug lords.
There is likely a similar agenda with copyright enforcement. It likely has little to do with copyrights, but the fact that the same methods used for copyright enforcement can also sacre legit businessmen from peer to peer technologies.
Budget is the key word here. This all started with a $30 motherboard I found at Overstock.Com. Most of the parts will come from my parts pile, and a good friend dropped an InWin mid-tower case with a Powerman/Sparkle 300W power supply on me, saying "happy holidays."
And much of the parts will come from a machine I rescued from a Doomed Dot Com. For details on that little adventure, follow this link: http://www.lowendpc.com/msgeek/2001/1030.html. I found the ultra-econo motherboard just after I wrote this article.
And what will be the original machine's fate? It will be a file and backup server for my home network. Running Linux. Yeah I had problems installing Mandrake but installing Debian or Red Hat on a machine that probably will never run XFree86 is not a problem.
That Radeon is tempting but very, very pricey. Also the TV Wonder is already in my parts pile.
Thanks for the ideas.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Quite a few topgroups have shutdown, some have announced pausing for two months or so...
The people who were busted were crackers.. DOD wrote DeCSS before MoRE (the latter are famous because they released sourceCode)... Razor1911 also is famous for cracking game cdroms that utilize encrypted exes, cds with pressed defects, not something that even many compSci graduates can pickup in a month.
...lower the price of software to something other than stratospheric levels. Notice that the biggest guns in the BSA are the same software companies that charge extortionate prices for their software...Microsoft? Adobe? Macromedia? Start charging fair prices for software and piracy will dry up. Big time.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
No, the cool part is ASIO compadibility and 2ms latency. This card is more designed for music creation (cubase etc) than just home end game sound. Before no soundblaster cards were supported in Cubase for lack of ASIO compadibility. The live had some shitty half assed drivers I believe though.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
Go to either of these sites to bypass the reg screen:
1 9PIRA.html
/ www.nytimes.com/2001/12/19/technology/19PIRA.html
http://college.nytimes.com/2001/12/19/technology/
http://archives.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http:/
Check this out: http://www.icrontic.com/index.php?page=public/arti cles&articleId=123
Lot's of people are saying how great this is for open source, and sure, it might help. But how many people will just shell out the $200 for Winblows or $650 for Photoshop? How long till any free *nix is labeled a hacker tool(what do you mean you dont use windows!).
All this reminds me of the poem by the German during World War 2 that mentioned he never stood up for anyone because he wasn't one of them, but when the Nazis showed up for him, there was no one left to stand up for him.
None but ourselves can free our mindsThere is a difference between 'getting in trouble' and 'committing a felony'
Why don't you look up the law and see for yourself. Show me where it says possession of copyrighted material is a felony
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I dont know if it also applies to software (it probably does) but in smaller Asian countries like Korea it is impossible to get official copies of music cds and movies. You can't find them for sale at all. However, you can find some very high quality bootlegs for pretty cheap. I tend to call them 'official bootlegs' because they are as close to the real thing that you can actually get.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
No, it would be more like - you would have only your choice of Budweiser or Bud Light at the Anheiser-Busch monopoly-owned liquor stores, they would buy out any other competing company and substitute Bud for the previous maker's brew, and making your own alcohol would be a crime.
(so would be trying to figure out the ingredients). By the way, 'beer' is their trademark.
Thank god here in Oregon its only as bad as the state running all the liquor stores, setting the prices statewide, and you can't buy liquor anywhere else... (slashcode strips sarcasm markup code)
Although, it does look very cool.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
Why steal photoshop when the Gimp exists?
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
You to me a service by your eloquence. Yes, that was the point I was trying to make.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I guess you weren't alive in the 70's when a pound of pot had a "street value" of 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars......
The more things change, and all that.
First, no one I've ever voted for has won their election. That means I am taxed without representation.
My so-called "representitives" at the Federal level consist of Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinswine, and some party hack I can't even remember the name of. Oh, and "I never saw a power I didn't like" Bush, of course.
If you can tell me how any one of those will be swayed in the slightest by yet another heart felt, sincere letter opposing practically everything they have ever done, I would love to know how.
What I receive back are form letters that have nothing to do with the issues I addressed.
Please, refute me. Tell me how you convinced your "elected representitives" to change their actions. I'm really, really interested.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I sure hope that Ford (like many large companies) at the very least gives Ford employees dibs on any computers that are being replaced within the company to make up for each new round of Windows.
If Ford is like any other large company they probably lease their computers. The reason for leasing is that under IRS tax laws computers must be written off over 5 years. That means that the tax deduction is 1/5 of the price of the computer per year * their tax rate. In real life, computers are not usually kept this long.
By leasing, they are able to more closely match the cost of the machine to this time it is used (and get the bulk of the tax deduction sooner).
Because of this standard practice, I doubt that Ford will be able to give their end of life machines to their employees.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
Googlegear has an Audigy for $63.50. Sure it's OEM and all you get is the card and a CD, but at least you can save some money. You may want to check your favorite shopping site to see if they have a batter deal on an OEM version.
Xtacy Everything? Guessing that is a vid card. Who makes it?
I don't know where Mr. GeekLife.com has been hiding, but Ford cancelling the "Model E" program is such old news that /. covered it over two months ago!
/. to TVLand...
I'm starting to think that maybe VA <buzzword> sold
Lets see...
Masturbation is wrong, but it's OK for the Catholic Church to cover up all the Priests having sex with little boys....
And, It's OK to help the Nazi's, because we're not Jewish...
And Warez is bad because multimillion dollar companies who can spend millions on prosecuting their potential customers are losing a few bucks...
Man, a sense of proportion is sadly missing these days.
Hell, our govenor is holding our state parks hostage in response to not getting an income tax.... Talk about fucked!
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I'm a sys admin at one of the Ford plants in the US. A few notes on the Model E program.
The computers that the Model E program provided were crap--scraps from a botched deal with HP for company machines. Most people I've talked to in my domain wished they hadn't heard of the Model E program.
As far as giving company computers to employees as those computers are phased out, all Ford company computers are leased from Dell.
cool sounding? i originally thought it was pronouced "aww-diggy" which sounds pretty lame to me. oh well. enjoy, i guess.
One important thing to look at is did Creative fix the problems they introduced in the Live and did they migrate to the Audigy line? Many people have had trouble with the Live series causing lock-ups and other pci mayhem because it is not pci compliant and put's niose on the pci bus.
Does the audigy solve this? creative won't admit the live problem, so asking them wont help.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
to find bootlegs. If you're in the US, I've seen Adobe Photoshop and other bootlegs being sold on sidewalks in Manhattan.
Anyway, I'd say the lack of the rule of law in China is a bad thing, regardless of whether Microsoft 'deserves it.' I'd rather the government protect the civil rights of people there, even if it means some software costs more.
I know that Apple has trademarks to the name Firewire, and Sony owns iLink, and they're both IEEE1394 (although Sony's spec isn' fully implemented, small connectors only, so no power on the bus), but SoundBlaster is calling the port an "SB1394" port. Does this mean that its not a true Firewire implementation? Can I plug any 1394 device into it, or only high-end audio equipment?
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
The point of the busts on December 11 is to put case law on the books. Who is going to defend a bunch of criminals, after all? The point of the bust is to prove that the DMCA and the new powers granted to the FBI are 'legal.' Once that is done they can go after people who you probably wouldn't think of as criminals. Such as open source programmers trying to make DVD player software for linux.
By the way, don't think that even one of these warez people is going to get away without any jail time. If every piece of evidence collected by the FBI were ruled to be obtained illegally, there are dozens of civil court lawsuits that could be brought for billions of dollars against them. Civil court doesn't require the same standards on evidence, but if you can't pay a billion dollar fine you're going to spend time in jail anyways.
The difference is that if the FBI wins these people will get life in Federal 'pound you up the ass' prison. The FBI will also have an unholy amount of power to wiretap etc. If the FBI loses then the warez people will get into the local prison system, probably because their lawyer managed to defend them from an outrageous fine that noone could ever hope to pay. As a side benefit everyone will have more freedom if the FBI looses.
One final thing 'Innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.' The powers granted to the FBI effectively take that away. They can treat you as guilty without needing a court of law to intervene.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Looks like they have Slashdot Spelling and Grammar Dysfunction:
- do a spell check (avialable, definately, etc.)
Doctor HTML does spell checks of web pages.
- it's = "it is", as in "it is time that my
grammar evolved beyond that of a teenager".
- its = possessive, as in "the sliMP3 uses a flouroluminescent panel as its display".
- let's = let us, as in "let's improve our writing".
- lets = form of the verb "to let", as in "keeping 802.11 out of the package lets me keep the price below $300".
- "We have done this", "I plan to do that", which is it, "we" or "I"? Have a consistent voice. Look for other forms, too (my, mine, me, our, ours, us).
I'm not trying to be snotty -- I'm trying to help you write better and thus get your message across. These kinds of errors distract your more erudite readers from the content of the page.The first step to fixing a problem is knowing you've got one.
One simple rule for its versus it's
This verbatim copy of a legally protected work is a clear violation of copyright law. You are stealing the potential revenue of Ed Post, the legal copyright holder. If he wanted to charge a million dollars to read this copyrighted text, then you have cost him a million dollars for every single slashdot reader who read it here for free. Thus, you have stolen thousands of millions of dollars from Ed Post, and should be punished accordingly!
Now some people might argue that no slashdot reader would pay even a single dollar to read this twenty-year-old letter to the editor of a defunct industry rag, much less a million dollars, and would simply choose not to read it if they could not do it for free. To these people I reply: STEALING IS BAD! STEALING IS WRONG! STEALING IS ILLEGAL! YOU WILL BE PUNISHED!
I hope I have made my point.
wtf?! Why does everyone make this a big deal about this everytime? With the "(free reg req, blah, etc)" noted in the submissions each single damn time. It's the NYT's fucking site, you don't have to constantly bitch about them because of the fact that they make you register. You don't like it, it's unneccessary, it shouldn't be done... Alright, we get it, okay, move on with your life. I find that more annoying than the blatant MS bashing. At least just make a NYT-Borg icon to express your displeasure, so I don't have to read the "free-reg" shit everytime.
Sheesh. Or just take 3 seconds and use the u/pw: slash2001, and you won't have to worry about it ever again.
I wonder if I have a point? If the pricing model is based on a certain amount of revenue lost to piracy, its a situation where even if they had zero percent lost to piracy, they would not rebate their registered customers. So, you have an obligation under the pricing model to only pay for some software? Take the moral high ground if you want, but software sales are not about morals, they're about profits, and if you are giving a corp it's expected profit then you are behaving correctly in a competetive environment. You can say stealing is always wrong, and i can say that unreasonable profits, cough riaa, are sin in the eyes of God.
---
See, there's these things called computers, and that's exactly what they do for information. Whereas the replication of information used to be limited by the rate at which which could produce "containers" for that information, computers and the Internet they form have enabled us to reproduce any piece of information in existence with the push of a button or two. And they have had a huge impact on society. The problem is, they haven't (yet) resulted in a major change to "intellectual property" laws.
Oh, sure, you can point to things like the DMCA, but those don't actually represent a major change: rather, these new laws are simply the existing laws pushed to a ridiculous extreme, trying to mask the real issue but instead pointing out the folly of the original laws on which they're based.
Two hundred years ago, (smart) people knew that "Intellectual" property wasn't actually property, but book publishers and inventors were whining so they cautiously enacted some legal protections for they works. There's lots of good quotes, and writing, from that time indicating that various statesmen knew that this was a slippery, snow-covered slope down which they were beginning to roll a snowball... Two hundred years later, that snowball is now city-sized and rolling around trying to crush people, apparently ignorant that it's no longer winter and the temperature is a balmy 80 degrees.
Active Copyright infringers -- your "pirates" -- feel justified because morality has changed with times and the laws need to catch up. Anything that helps bring this issue to a point is once step closer to a proper resolution, which would be a new economic model to reward/reimburse creative individuals for their efforts.
And please, don't fall into the blind belief that without big guarantees of making money nothing would get done. I'd much rather use/experience something that was made by someone who enjoyed making it that by someone who did it because he thought there was money to be made.
Generally, giving away a copy of a commercial product is ethically acceptable, selling compilation disks or download access for a small fee (to cover media or bandwidth costs) is a grey area, and producing 'counterfeit' software that looks like the real thing is seen as the only aspect of piracy that is truly 'wrong'.
The difference in most people's minds is that it is okay to make copies when you would never have paid for a legitimate version. The real criminals are the ones who sell counterfeit copies, where the buyer is somebody who would have purchase the real thing, and might actually have been duped into thinking they were buying a legitimate product.
The difference is, if I take your spear, you starve to death, because you lose the use of your 'real property'.If I make my own copy using my own materials (flint, rawhide, wood), you still have your spear.
If you sell spears for an arm and a leg (literally) and I would/could never pay your price, how are you being hurt when I make my own copy of your product instead of buying it?
There are ways to make money off of 'intellectual property' without draconian copyright enforcement. For example, there are bands who give away MP3s of their music, and make their real profits off of the concerts.I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
>(slashcode strips sarcasm markup code)
<sarcasm>man, I hate when that happens</sarcasm>
:-)
And as for the star trek replicator paragraph, if something like that were to come out it would have a huge impact on society, and probably result in a major change in property laws, including these copyright and patent ideas. After all, without scarcity, modern economics is pretty much lost.
Which is exactly where you're missing the point. Digital content already exists in a world without scarcity, which is why trying to apply current economic laws to it is failing so miserably. The internet is the culmination of a revolution that began with the printing press. Media companies are trying to use copyright to enforce artificial scarcity because they know that their business model won't work anymore.
I think another good point to make is that many of those who don't believe in silly things like copyright are not communists or anarchists. In fact, many value their property rights very highly and will vehemently defend them. However, the distinction is that they believe that thoughts and ideas (read: content) are simply not things that can be owned.
I'm not defending warez kiddies, of course. They're definitely not on the moral high ground here :) But the whole idea of "Intellectual Property" is a contradiction in terms, and flawed at best.
Slashdot's karma engineers have invented an entirely new form of mathematics, where: (-1) + 0 + (-1) +0 + 1 + 1 = -3 Oh... wait for it... I suspect that quantity plus (-1) will equal -6!
Aside from your misleading quotes, your arguments are also bogus.
As I said before, 'intellectual property' cannot be equated with 'real property', because a person can infringe on your 'IP rights' without denying you the use of your property.
If you steal my car, I cannot drive it. If you make a copy of my operating system, your 'theft' in no way infringes on my use of my official version.
If you copy my operating system and give copies away to your poor welfare-collecting pirate friends, I still haven't suffered any tangible loss, other than a continuing infringement on my 'IP rights', and some nebulous concept of loss of control over the distribution of my product.
If you turn around and make 'counterfeit' copies that look like my official copies of my software, and sell it to people who think they are buying the real thing, you are depriving me of 'actual' revenue.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
However, there is a better system. It's called "Unanimity". There are various other words for it, such as "voluntary cooperation" and "individual responsibility".
Like "perfect communism", it may never be reached. Unlike "perfect communism", the method for bringing it about is not through greater and greater state control and power over everyones life.
It starts by the simple recognition that it is wrong to initiate force against other people. Think about that, and about how it is just as bad for 1 person to rob you as it is for 100 people to rob you even though they represent a "majority".
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. It's merely tyrany of the majority.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
(Well, the first one works here at least, though the second one does not.)
WHY Microsoft Products?
You're obviously not a professional graphics artist if you seriously thing the Gimp is a suitable replacement for Photoshop. The Gimp is fantastic for web page graphics, but c'mon.