Slashdot Mirror
MPAA Opens Anti-filesharing Website
PontifexPrimus writes "The MPAA's new advertising campaign against movie piracy has a home on the internet. Did you know that 'Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.'? Learn about the dangers of filesharing!"
The be-all and end-all word: FUD.
Need I say more?
Bash script for FP whores
I ran a file share app, someone "hacked" my computer and put those .mp3's there. It wasn't me. ;)
;)
Anybody mirror the site yet?
For those of you who *always* wondered what happens When you download movies illegally:
:)
#1. You're cheating yourself.. absolutely, I divorce myself!
#2. You're threatening the livelihood of thousands.. just the MPAA member company shareholders/execs
#3. Your computer is vulnerable.. avi/mpeg/mov can carry a virus? Learn something new everyday!
#4. You're breaking the law.. >:]
The best part of their site was their "Music Games & More" section where they say "Did you know that you can download the latest songs", I wonder what the RIAA would think.
"Don't cheat yourself (the poor shareholders/execs) out of the magic (new yacht/ferrari). Movies - They're worth it (HONEST!)!"
I don't know about other people, but I know that all of the movies have downloaded in the past I had actually paid to go see them before/after I had downloaded it and/or bought the dvd if I thought it was good. Not even Kazaa can beat Dolby 5.1 and a dvd picture
...of the movie "Truman Show" where Jim Carrey is in the travel agency, and one of the posters on the wall shows a jumbo jet being hit by lightning. The caption on the poster read "This could happen to YOU!"
LOL! Sometimes FUD is funny.
learned about the dangers of the slashdot effect.
Posting an article on slashdot is a new method hackers are using in order to carry out DDoS attacks on websites they dont like. Will you be next? Protect your site today!
Only produce movies starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, that way... No one will want to pirate them because they suck so bad!
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
I was worried when I read this article, until I remembered that I am immune to this kind of thing ever since I bought the software that prevents my computer from broadcasting an IP address. I'm so glad I clicked on that popup ad!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
You also become a distribution source for illegal downloading of movies, music and more, which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie yourself.
So the riaa should really sue the riaa since they were offering songs for download when their website got broken into?
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
Most of the time, the movies available for download on the Internet are obtained when someone sneaks a camcorder into a theatre and illegally records the movie up on the screen. The sound isn't right, the picture isn't in focus, people are walking in front of the camera, and scenes are missing. Is that any way to experience the magic of the movies?
Is what any way to experience the magic of the movies? Free? I think it's a great way.
Only 4 out of 10 films turn a profit.
6 out of 10 films suck.
Do you really want fewer movies to choose from?
Gladly. Maybe they'll be forced to make movies that aren't complete shit.
Here's an idea MPAA. You can use this one for free, and I'm putting it in the public domain for you. Because you have such high opinions of movies such as "TITANIC" and "SPIDER-MAN" and "JURASSIC PARK", I have some news for you: Don't make movies that suck.
There is nothing that compares to the silver screen. Well, there wasn't, but home theaters are starting to come close. So, make movies that don't suck and people will still go to see them.
4 out of 10 movies don't recoup their investment because they suck. Gigli isn't going to recoup it's investment because it sucks. 4 out of 10 movies are going to suck. The other 6 are just going to suck less. Stop automating your script-writing, and be more stringent with what movies you actually produce and then people will still go see them in the theater and you will still make money. People will still pirate them, but so what.
The biggest thing people use pirated movies for: To find out if it is worth the $8. If it sucks, it isn't worth $8. I'm not cheating myself, I'm saving my damn money.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
If they're anything like RIAA, they'll be hacked pretty quickly...
The RIAA website used to have an unpassword protected administration page at riaa.org/admin/ - helpfully pointed out by robots.txt!
The link got posted on FARK and Slashdot and several hundred fake news items got posted (including everyone's favorite goatse man) until they finally took it down.
Whoops!
And these are the people some Congressmen want to trust to hack filesharer's computers to remove copywritten works? Heh heh heh...
With movies taking in more money every year and with DVD sales growing by leaps and bounds, if those thousands of Industry employees aren't getting enough money I would think the problem does not lie with illegal downloads.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
I just saw 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. 'Sometimes the right path, the right course, requires a little piracy'
Or, if you want, try this link.
You are not the customer.
If I were sneaky, I'd log the IP of every comment made. Then go check out everyone who leaves an RIAA sucks to see if they were "sharing illegal content".
That would be a nice way to prioritise the millions of lawsuits.
Yet another reason to prefer the MPAA over the RIAA. At least when the MPAA's profits go down, they try something new, like adding content to dvds and varying release dates. When I buy a dvd in a store, I don't feel like a complete sucker. WHen I looked at buying a CD, I felt like an ignorant "consumer". Yeah, pay $30 for 1 hour of content, 8 minutes of which I like. When I bought the extended version LOTR dvd, I got:
1. The theater cut movie + deleted scenes
2. 5, count'em 5, seperate audio commentary's
3. Something like 8 hours of additional "making of" video
4. around 2000 production photographs.
I got so much content in those dvds I have not even watched it all yet. Whereas with a CD, you are done in one hour, tops.
The MPAA may be doing some unsavory things, but at least they are trying, without ripping me off or treating me like a criminal. I am boycotting CD's, but I still enjoy movies, and will pay money for the quality and experience.
"$DarlMcbride"==false
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
Nope. Nor did I know that I can get music and movies online for free. Thanks for informing me, MPAA!
- Joe User
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
You know, I bet MPAA lawyers could make a good case for sueing anybody who mirrors their slashdotted site. Hey, it's copyright infringement isn't it?
There is a more serious MP3 buffer exploit in the Windows Shell of Windows XP (including SP1). All you have to do is hover the mouse pointer over an MP3 or file with a corrupted ID3 tag to trigger the exploit. Sure, that may not be the easiest way to spread a virus or a backdoor trojan, but what about code that simply formats your hard drive? I'm sure there are plenty of trojan EXEs that will gladly re-format your HD; now what if hovering your mouse over an MP3 could have the same effect? That would be a great method for "destroying" filesharers' PCs a la Senator Orrin Hatch.
Microsoft is quite innovative in the field of security. They find ways to open up exploits in all kinds of data formats that were previously thought to be safe: MP3s, WMAs, E-mail, etc. (Okay, that was a bit of a troll and extremely unoriginal, but what the hell.)
OK, it's fairly simple stuff here.
1) The MPAA would recoup its investment MUCH faster by encouraging people to come to the movies more often, and by reducing costs. How can they do this?
a) Reduce ticket prices. Lower tickets mean more movie-goers.
b) Quit paying the stars so fucking much money!!! Ben Affleck made TWELVE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS for Gigli, one of FOUR movies released this year that he starred in. In other words, he made roughly one THOUSAND times as much as a skilled professional with a post-secondary education. (Notice that the MPAA site doesn't link to any stars' opinions--just the grips and the stuntmen, making a thousandth as much as the stars)
c) QUIT MAKING MOVIES THAT SUCK BADLY!!!
How many times do you need to hear it? How many brainless sequels to brainless movies do you need to make before it sinks in that you SUCK, and that your movies SUCK?
Imagine this: A movie where stars are treated as skilled employees and paid roughly $200,000/year (hey, their careers aren't as long as some of ours--they deserve higher salaries for that), the writers are required to come up with original and innovative ideas to earn their pay, and the tickets are $5/seat, with affordable popcorn.
Why they might actually make a profit, and DESPITE all of the file sharing (that doesn't take away a single ticket sale), get people out to the movies.
As an aside, you might ask how does this NOT relate to the RIAA?
1) The RIAA actually is hurting (some) from filesharing. Most people are as happy with a burned MP3 as they are the original quality song, whereas nobody would seriously miss a good theathre movie just because they had a really crappy camcorder copy they can watch on their TV.
2) The artists don't get paid millions--they get paid SHIT. They get about a tenth as much as the tech staff, instead of a thousand times as much.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
also, the respectcopyrights.org website was mentioned sometime ago on slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=72066&cid=6504 160
> 'Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.'
Dammit! Did I put my_ssn.txt and my_bank_records.txt into ~shared AGAIN!? Damn the insecurity!
My other car is first.
(from the "music, games & more" page)
:D
Browse the links below to discover a whole world of entertainment available to you - legally - right at home.
Gotta love how they don't link to project Gutenberg on the books page.
I just saw American Wedding on friday (I'm not gonna give any opinions - I'm not a movie critic). They had one of these commercials just before the previews. This pne "starred" a set designer talking about how much he loves movies, and how he met his wife on the set of The Big Chill, and how "not everybody invloved in the production of a big movie makes 6-figures". and a lot of other stuff to put a human face on the MPAA side ('cuz Jack Valenti isn't human enough). It seems like they pulled out all the stops on this one. "Touching" music (sounds almost like something Williams would do), "artistic" font design, etc. This guy rambles on about how much he loves movies for what seemed like forever before he got to the point. Once he did, it became rather apparent that the plan backfired. The theater was packed (opening night), and several people started laughing openly at this guy say how stealing one copy of a movie online steals his ability to make a living for his family. I heard a guy behind me say to the person next to him that he was going to start pirating movies if this was the "sh*t these assw*pes are gonna make me sit through before they get to the f***ing movie". The person next to him agreed.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Remember who these ads and websites are aimed at. The average /. reader knows the "truth" about back doors in software, and, more than that, knows how to share directories with granularity. The average computer user, I would posit, does not. Don't believe me? Hop on KaZaA, Gnutella, whatever, and do a search for '.xls' or '.wpd,' etc. See how many personal documents you uncover. We did that once and found a CEO's copy of the salary breakdown for his dot-com... No names to protect the clueless (and shareholder value ;)). So, it's FUD, but it's (if there is such a thing) justifiable FUD.
geek. lawyer.
No, I don't think many people on Slashdot agree that copyrights need to be repealed completely. While no doubt some do, that wouldn't work in today's world.
Copyright needs real reform, however. Film, music, and art has a significant impact on our culture, so much that these things become a PART of our culture in a very short time. This is why I have a problem with insanely long copyright terms.
The original term for copyright was fair. Let a piece of work remain copyrighted for 14 years, and then let it fall into the public domain so that society can utilize what has been added to its culture.
Elvis is dead. He had plenty of time to profit off of his works when he lived. His music has become a part of our culture and should belong to society, not some record company who will continue to take advantage of copyright extensions to charge for Elvis' music until the end of time.
Likewise, Hollywood has made a crapload of money off of its hits. Titanic, Jurassic Park, etc. all have made lots of money for studios. I doubt it would REALLY hurt Hollywood if Jurassic Park were to enter public domain in 2007.
Perhaps if the RIAA and MPAA knew they only had 14 years to make a profit off of a recording or film, these groups would focus on making quality material rather than being uncreative.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Secondly, most of the releases that come out on IRC, newsgroups, bittorrent or whatever are crappy cam recordings that people don't like anyway. Who wants to watch some washed-out version of a movie with bad sound anyway? If it's any good you'll go see it in the theater to get the real experience.
Third, most of the movies you find on the internet are in divx or some other format that generally only plays on a computer. Most people are not savvy enough even to burn a VCD to play in their DVD player, what to speak of building a dedicated home theater pc to play the divx movies. Most people do not want to sit in their computer room in front of a 17" monitor to watch movies. They would rather see it on the 42" widescreen in the living room, or in the theater.
Finally, movies is a social thing. People take dates to movies, they take their kids to movies. They like to eat the candy and sit in the theater with the big screen and surround sound.
So MPAA, take a chill pill. We're not going to drive your poor key grip and dolly boys into homelessness. WTF is a 'key grip' anyway???
umm no, 2 windows vulnerabilities in the last month. 9 potential linux vulnerabilities axed in the last month.
The fact that vulnerabilities get found and fixed on linux is hardly a blackmark.
2 windows vunerabilities in the last month
9 Linux vunderablilites in the last month
Shhh.. keep it down, what are you trying to do? Start a riot? This is Slashdot, not some sort of place to post facts.
[Since I have never downloaded a full length movie from the Internet, most of this information is second hand. Some of it may be inaccurate. My comments are in braces.]
YOU'RE CHEATING YOURSELF
Most of the time, the movies available for download on the Internet are obtained when someone sneaks a camcorder into a theatre and illegally records the movie up on the screen.
The sound isn't right, the picture isn't in focus, people are walking in front of the camera, and scenes are missing.
[Most movies on the Internet today are high quality rips from the original. Point invalid.]
Is that any way to experience the magic of the movies?
Only 4 out of 10 films turn a profit. If people take the films for free and the Studios can't recoup their investment, they may not be able to make the big summer movies we all enjoy so much; the TITANICs, the SPIDER-MANs, the JURASSIC PARKs. So, not only will the creators lose, in the end, you, the consumer, will end up with fewer choices at the multiplex.
[Slippery Slope. The Jurassic Park series is the only series in this list that I believe is decent. Spider Man is just not my type of movie and Titanic is a movie that should have never been made. The MPAA has no one to blame but themselves for their lousy sales ratio.]
Do you really want fewer movies to choose from?
[Seeing the current state of the film industry today... I'd love to see fewer but better quality movies.]
YOU'RE THREATENING THE LIVELIHOOD OF THOUSANDS
The entertainment industry isn't made up only of familiar actors, actresses and directors. It is made up of over 500,000 everyday working people that bring the magic of the movies to you.
[And most of those 500K people don't see most of the money. Plus, the MPAA is assuming that every download would translate into a movie sales. This is not true for some people.]
But, when movies are illegally downloaded from the Internet, these are the people that suffer the most.
It's the woman who does the make-up, the guy who rigs the lighting, the sound technician, the costume designer, the set decorator and the caterer.
[Wrong Answer. It's the stock holders, the executives, and all of the people that make a profit from sales that suffer the most. Most people working on movies do NOT get any of the profit from movies.]
Do you really want these people to lose their jobs?
[Slippery Slope. I honestly don't think filesharing is going to cause the movie industry to go bankrupt. They seem to be doing just fine, even though the economy is in a depression.]
YOUR COMPUTER IS VULNERABLE
Have you ever had your computer crash and had to replace it or reinstall all the files due to a virus or other such problem?
[Never had a problem with viruses... That is what Norton Antivirus is there for.]
The nature of "peer-to-peer" file sharing sites like eDonkey, Gnutella, KaZaA, etc., open your computer to destructive viruses and worms and annoying pop-ups.
Common Viruses:
Apher, Benjamin, Backdoor, Duload, Fizzer, Hantner, Klez, Neuer, Nimda, Livra and Magic Eightball
[Appeal to Fear. All of those viruses are easily detected by Norton Antivirus and other virus detection software.]
You also become a distribution source for illegal downloading of movies, music and more, which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie yourself.
[Unless you don't share any of your downloads. Then you are not "just as responsible".]
Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc.
[Appeal to Fear. No real backing in the real world.]
Is the theft of your personal information worth the free movie?
[Sorry, most of the filesharing community has seen right through your FUD and know you are wrong.]
YOU'RE BREAKING THE LAW
-Valen
The risks of attending movies in theatres -- exposure to disease (SARS, tuberculosis, other airborne pathogens), risks to your sanity (insipid "previews," the idiot behind you with the cell phone, the gaggle of girls talking through the whole thing, bad sound and worse pictures), parking lot mayhem, $6 for a bucket of popcorn that's coated with the same stuff they spread on the floors to give them that wonderful, MPAA-approved tacky feel...
But then you didn't expect a balanced presentation, did you?
I wrote an essay a while ago about this very same topic. I'm saddened that nobody seems to have found it very noteworthy -- I think that given the media's efforts to invade and control our culture, they have little right to complain about infringement.
Text follows:
We are not criminals. We are the proud citizens of these United States of America, and we want our culture back. For too long the music industry has branded us criminals -- thieves who would fight to take what is not ours, unwilling to support those who influence our lives and shape our culture, our national self-image. Yet there is no sign of the media calling off its plan to define and control our culture.
The music industry claims to have the interests of artists in mind while persecuting those who would attempt to make free certain parts of our culture. With the belief that work should be compensated fairly it is self-evident that artists deserve fair compensation for their work. However, the music industry routinely uses the "work make for hire" clause of the Copyright Act of 1976 to rob artists of their right to profit from their own creations by working with whichever publisher they choose.
If the music industry holds fair compensation in high regard, perhaps they could consider a business model in which an author retains ownership of her own works. If they are unable to fairly compensate artists, it is not the fault of the consumer. Business does not exist in a vacuum, and it is unfair to produce legislation which aims to preserve a monopolistic industry's position without significant consumer benefit. We want the right to experience the music of our lives at will without being forced to use our dollars to vote for the music industry's dominance.
While the popular media industries demonize citizens whose lives are most strongly tied to their products, they are fighting hard to retain their status as the group solely responsible for driving American culture. These self-proclaimed owners of our national identity strive to ensure that our lives are pervaded with their music, their movies, their values. They force their media into our lives; billing movies and albums as not just mere entertainment, but "events" which will affect our lives. One can hardly watch television or a film or listen to the radio without being subjected to mainstream music. Yet rather than rejoice and celebrate their successes they cry out at the realization that culture is a hard thing to bottle.
We do not consider it fair that the media surround us with the same sounds and images, over and over, yet we are criminalized for trying to integrate them into our culture. We have a right to our culture, and to not be regarded as criminals for demanding ownership.
A company cannot own a common term; trademark laws are such that trademark owners must take action to prevent their trademarks from falling into common usage, lest they become public-domain terms. The curious lack of a similar concept in the media domain means that our lives can be immersed in elements which become part of our cultural vocabulary, yet current law dictates that most of us will die before gaining ownership of our cultural identities.
We want ownership of the media that pervades our lives.
(original essay posted at http://www.tr0n.com/~chet/culture_ownership.html)
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Actually I don't want it for free.
... why? Hasn't the success of videotapes and DVDs shown them that they can make a ton of money. I would suggest to them that they get in front of this.
I want it easily accesible, portable and priced reasonably. This isn't about artists rights or copyrights as much as it's about distribution control.
Just today I Tivoed a movie called No Man's Land. It's an 80s flick with Charlie Sheen. Ebert gave it 3 stars, so I thought what they heck. Later on I went down to check on it and it was actually a 2001 movie about Bosnia or something.
Now, I wasn't able to get the movie I wanted. Why not let me hope on the internet, let me buy/use the movie for 30 days. Charge me a buck. Heck, encrypt my credit card in it. I don't care. But let me get it A) Right now. B) Let me move it to my laptop to watch on the plane. C) Don't gouge me on the price. It's not costing you anything except some bandwidth.
Palm does it right. They offer topical, up to date ebooks for purchase. They encrypt your credit card in it. This makes sure that you don't pass it around, but also makes it portable. They don't care where you read it. It's a very nice, easy solution for me to buy books for those long flights. I think some of their prices are too high. I think they should pass the savings of not having to publish a book onto me, but that doesn't matter. I vote with my money. I choose reasonably priced titles.
The cat is out of the bag. People want easy, convinient access to digital media. The companies better get in front of this.
As for the movie industry bitching
The RIAA is just lost. They can't seem to grasp the fundamental fact that their market is moving away from them.
I'm not looking to get involved in some battle of the zealots
Jeebus, are you in the wrong place!
With the exception of the few who are "important" enough to get cut in on a percentage of the net, these are union people who get paid by the hour and get paid rather well while work lasts. Their payment does not depend on whether or not the movie sells or is pirated.
You are saying that no more movies are going to be made if somebody downloads a low-quality copy of the next Matrix movie? What are you smoking?
The RIAA argument you're trying to make also requires you to demonstrate that significant losses in sales are occurring due to broadband downloads of movies.
EVIDENCE PLEASE, other than studies paid for by the MPAA to PR firms.
Your argument also, carried to its illogical conclusion says we have a moral obligation to buy even movies we don't like or these poor, starving industry employees will be out of work. Do they have the obligation to buy software from companies that employ us whether they like it, want it, or need it?
Or how about computer people just like us, who work on the special effects, or just install and support the computers for the people involved with a movie?
You either expect to make enough from your share of the profit to afford to take the risk of their not being any or are getting the certainty of a pretty good paycheck. Either way, you are not my problem, any more than any failed dot.com I wasn't personally involved with is.
Tech Public Policy stuff
While you're rgiht that Linux is not perfectly secure, you must admit that those are rather different classes of vulnerability. The two Windows ones were a remote root exploits in the default configuration, and a root exploit that could be easily used by a webpage/email. The Linux ones were mostly DOS vulnerabilities, most of which would require substantial access (ie, a shell account or more) to exploit, and many of which are not present in a standard configuration (eg, you have to have NFS turned on).
I would say that considering the kinds of vulnerabilities we're talking about, Linux's track record is at least as good as Windows' in this department.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
So MPAA, take a chill pill. We're not going to drive your poor key grip and dolly boys into homelessness. WTF is a 'key grip' anyway???
He holds the car keys of all the Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Jags, Lexuses (Lexi?), and Mercedez-Benzs for the actors and actresses while they are filming so that no one can steal their car.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
As a Grip, Key Grip actually, one of the "artists" listed on the site as being against the piracy of films, I am all for piracy as long as the studios aren't offering an alternative.
(Notice they didn't use actors as the artists that are being harmed by piracy? What, you don't feel sorry for Ben Affleck?)
I have to innovate to keep my job. The producers demand more efficiency from the crews and the "creatives" demand more creativity from the crews or I am not hired on the next job.
I can't sue someone that is doing a more efficient or more creative job than I am like the MPAA/RIAA are.
Fortunately "Respect Copyrights" reeks of "Just say No to Drugs."
We know how well that worked.
BTW-A Key Grip is the Head of the Grip department. The Grips are in charge of on set engineering. We build cranes to fly the camera, munt cameras on cars, fly lights from the tops of buildings, string light controlling cloth over a city street, etc.
The MPAA is missing the same opportunity that the RIAA ignored. Years ago, the RIAA should have noticed people downloading music and looking into why people do it. They then could have provided a better service and made a profit off it. Nope, they labeled it as thievery and attacked. Now they face a massive boycott. Lovely. That boycott will do more damage than P2P piracy ever could.
The MPAA has a little more time, seeing as how movies are 700 megs or so. Upload caps are still at 256k roughly so they've got some time to come up with their own service. And to an extent, they do. I found a site last night where I could 'rent' movies to watch on my computer. Damn cool really. I've been aching to watch Terminator again, and that'll only cost me $3. I won't even have to worry about returning a tape!
They're going to need to do more, though. The on-line equivalent of HBO would be nice. Pay $10 a month and get access to some movies. Heck, I'd pay my $30 month cable bill to a VoD service. Maybe more if their selection is really good, even with commercials.
The point is that if movie downloading is so popular, despite how painful it is, they need to look at WHY. Are prices too high? Are people obnoxious in theaters? Do people have time to sit and watch a 2.5 hour movie? Do people want to spend $8 to watch an iffy movie? (Sort of like the prices are too high, but it did suck that Star Trek Nemesis fell to the bottom of the heap when Two Towers, Harry Potter, and James Bond blew a gaping crater into people's movie budgets.) Can college students even make the time to go see a movie?
With the answers to these questions, the MPAA could do something shocking, like provide supply for the demand. Who'd want to download a movie off of P2P when they could spend $5 and get the Hulk streaming down like right away? I know that in my house, a good deal more money would go into watching movies. Right now I have to pick and choose a movie in the same way I pick and choose a new computer. That sucks.
"Derp de derp."
"Network users have a back door to your hard drive while you're online, thereby seeing your personal, private information, such as bank records, social security number, etc."
/. readers would care to speculate on who would like to write such a virus...
Hmm... there have been e-mail viruses that randomly send personal files to your friends. How long before viruses start placing your personal files in your shared folders?
I'm sure some
-a
The theaters are so filthy, we go there early to find a clean seat. We used to be able to hold a conversation before the movie. While the theater showed a slideshow accompanied by music, it was quiet. Now, there's 20 minutes of commercials, followed by 10-15 minutes of trailers before the movie, and it's so loud you can't talk over it.
The sound systems are always broken or set improperly (front speakers only). The movie is never in sharp focus (no, it's not my eyes). If there's a problem, you have to wait 15 minutes for the projectionist to show up. We recently watched part of a film burn up, because there was no one in the booth. When there is a problem, they skip ahead to keep the movie on schedule, so you miss part. Sure, if you complain they will give you another ticket, but that's two hours of your time.
I've called the THX number and emailed the theaters to complain, but nothing is improving. Of course, the admission price is going up. It now costs less to buy the DVD than it costs for my wife and I to see the movie in the theater, and we get several hours of extras on the disk.
We obviously loved going to the movies, but with the increasing cost and reduction in quality, it's hard to justify. I can see why people are bootlegging the movies.
If the MPAA wants to stop the bootlegging, they should just release the DVD at the same time as the movie is in the theaters. Let the market decide how they want to see the film.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
"Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get."
- Frederick Douglass
Translation: It's OK for us to rip you off, but you can't rip us off.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
9 Linux vunderablilites in the last month"
We don't take kindly to strangers 'round 'ere.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
"What about the money the copyright holders arn't making?" you may now ask. "Isn't this stealing?" No, the copyright owners never had the money, thus it cannot be stolen. Why is this difficult?
"What about the constitutional right to intellectual property?" Try reading the constitution. All it says about copyrights is that the congress may set a copyright. But this isn't to protect people's intelectual property, the point of the option of copyright law is clelarly spelled out in the constitution. The point is to further the advancement of the art by granting a TEMPORARY monopoly to the creator. There would, however, be no constitutional ground whatsoever to stand on if congress decided to revoke the copyright laws, it is not gaurenteed.
"But its still illegal!" you may now protest, your arguments becomming flustered. NOW I'll agree. This is obvious copyright infringement. This is illegal, under current laws (which I don't agree with but accept as law) but this does not make it theft.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
OK, now I'll respond to the 2 vs. 7 post and i'll entitle it: "Lies, damn lies, and Statistics."
First off, you've got the kernel source, and anybody can look for bugs.
Second, you are encouraged to report bugs in linux so that they will be promptly fixed. Microsoft asks that you inform only them and if you tell the world, then Microsoft will likely get mad at you.
Third, what is the bug comparision total over the long term? A lot of the bugs you stated were similar and one was a vendor driver problem and only one gave the user root access.
In conclusion, bug count totals are meaningless when used in comparison, much like counting lines of code. They only speak of the quality of the code along with other factors.
The fact is linux is designed with security in mind, and windows is not. Even microsoft people say so. Linux is updated much more frequently than windows, and new kernel roll outs are simple. Windows is closed source and bugs reporting is discouraged and may be illegal under the DMCA.
I would then expect Linux to have more bugs reported, but that says nothing about the number of bugs present in windows. And as other posters have said the linux bugs are predominately unlikely to work remotely, and even if they did, only a couple are root cracks the rest are DOS bugs.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
is the way they complain about money. I could see arguing that it is morally wrong or that it is illegal, but saying that a company that makes $50 million on a good movie on opening weekend doesn't have enough money to pay its workers because of p2p apps is just rediculus. If they really can't pay the lighting crew, maybe they should stop paying the "stars" $30 million a pop for a crappy job.
SIGFAULT
You see, the line of thinking (disclaimer, I subscribe to this line of thinking) always has been that Linux is less buggy *because* bugs are more readily found, resulting in safer, less buggy software.
Here's the line of thinking as I understand it, well written software, just due to human nature and the nature of programming, ends up with a more or less constant rate of glitches (constant in a statistical sense, I'm sure). Usually, the hardest part about making glitch-free software is just knowing about the bugs. Apparently, the most important part in bug-fixing (and the hardest) is the bug-finding.
You're assuming that the argument is that, because it's OSS, it's bug-free from inception. I don't think anyone has ever made that claim. OSS, the argument goes, is just better software (in a general way, of course. OSS is no guaranty of crappyness-free software, just as the fact that someone succesfully managed to charge for their software is no form of guarantee either) because the process in which it's developed (checkout The Cathedral and the Bazaar, insteresting stuff) more bugs are found faster.
Your post pretty much suports this view -- what you're showing is pretty much, according to OSS suporters, the superior bug squashing process taking place. In that light, according to your nice list, MS is 7 bugfixes behind! (doesn't it appeal to common sense also? What do you think is more likely, that the 7 bugs don't exist in MS software, or that MS hasn't found them yet?)
Actually it's what you just said that makes no sense. It also makes no sense that you assume anyone who prefers one system over another must be a zealot, this is a clear indication that you yourself are a zealot.
Let's take a look at this for the moment, the linux kernel is primarily coded by people from a pool of top programmers in the world. Microsoft and other fortune 500 companies (including IBM and those who contribute to the kernel) basically buy and swap these people around. There is a list of about 300 names and you'll find at least a few of them on the roster for any given major project, commerical or gpl. What this means is, more or less the same people are doing the programming, and they are no more or less apt to write a bug. So given two projects with roughly the same controls, of the same complexity, and with the same programmers, you'll end up with more or less equal bugs going into the code. There is no such thing as an app without bugs, they are there, they never all get weeded out.
It's what happens after that which is interesting
In the case of windows by far more bugs are discovered by 3rd parties than by microsoft after release, those parties can do nothing bug report said bugs to microsoft. No shortage of bugs are discovered first by the crackers and the crackers exploiting them is how they become known to everyone else.
With linux after release there are thousands of people looking for and fixing bugs in the linux kernel, at any given hour, of any given day. Out of the thousands of people looking over the source code trying to find a bug and get an honorable mention in the changelog. These thousands were able to come up with 9 bugs and all of them had 24hrs or less turn around time before being fixed. A bug is virtually never discovered because someone was exploiting it, bugs are almost always exploited retroactively after there is already a fix out there.
Now either way, if you don't stay patched you'll be vulnerable to bugs... because no matter how many we find there are more out there. But I consider a system where the best the hackers can do is follow the bug announcements themselves and hope I didn't patch to one where the hackers are usually the ones who find the bugs to begin with.
So by your logic, if some network administrator knew that any illegal activity was going on, they would have to shutdown the entire network? There are usually far too many students or employees to be able to afford policing all the traffic (nevermind the privacy issues).
Furthermore, it is not a crime to install or run a p2p app. It is only a crime to knowingly engage in copyright infringement. Do you think your average kazaa (not slashdot) user knows how to turn off uploads or even know that they are allowing uploads at all?
The Studios may at any time revise these Terms and Conditions by updating this posting. You are bound by any such revisions and should therefore periodically visit this page to review the then current Terms and Conditions to which you are bound.
They could revise the terms at any time and I'd be bound to them!
Yikes!
I'd better take their advice and periodically go back and get a fresh copy of their terms. What do you think...is every 100ms is periodic enough? Of course, if they could change them at any time I might miss a short lived change. Maybe I'd better check back every 10ms.
-- MarkusQ
Well, good to know someone has a parody site up at DISRESPECTCOPYRIGHTS.ORG, huh?
Godwins law doeesn't say anything about winning or losing - it merely states that at some point in any heated internet discussion someone will mention the Nazis. At this point the conversations/argument no longer has anything useful to be said and has most likely become a slanging match.
There is nothing about winners or losers.
Read all about it: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GodwinsLaw
Woooooooooo! they've been slashdotted..
;)
Anybody mirror the site yet?
Mirror their site? Absolutely not. If they can't keep their own webserver running, I dont think anyone should help them get their message out. After all, their message is to not share information
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
This doesn't always happen. Sometimes movies go into production before they've been pre-sold to theatre chains. Those are the movies destined for "straight to video/DVD" status, although very occasionally, a small film is picked up by theatre chains to fill a hole where a pre-sold movie hasn't made it out of post-production in time, usually because some snotty director mistakenly believes that it matters that it sucks. When this happens, we tell ourselves that the system works, and that it's vitally important that it continue to work in just this precise way, for ever and ever, otherwise society will fall apart, cannibalism will ensue, cats and dogs living together...
And nobody ever asks what happened to all the music hall performers when movies came out. Nobody cares what became of the movie theatre pianists when talkies appeared. We don't recall the MPAA saying that the VCR would spell the death knell for the movie industry. We don't wonder whether movie theatre box office takes might be being transmuted into DVD and home theatre sales. We don't dare to consider that people will spend exactly the same amount of their disposable income on entertainment, but that they'll spend it in different ways.
We just accept the line that the system works, that it's always worked, and that it must go on working exactly the same way - whatever the MPAA declares that to be - until the end of time. Or it will be cats and dogs, living together...
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.