The only one that still gives me that reaction is when people turn "would've" into "would of" (or "should've into "should of", etc.) Most grammar and spelling errors are excusable, but not that one. People who can't get that right should not be allowed to type or write anything that will ever be seen by anyone but their family or English teacher.
So you agree that piracy and actual theft of a CD are not the same thing? That's covered by option C.
Yes, I know you're trying to start the semantics game of "oh, but simply infringing on IP is theft!!11!!oneone!!eleven!" Sorry, that game is broken. Someone tried to play it once too often (I think that was about 5 years ago now), and since then it doesn't work. But hey, thanks for trying.
You're clearly missing GP's point. The point is that the RIAA wants to call file sharing and infringement the exact same thing as stealing a disk from a store. If that's true, and it's ok for Lars to 'Pirate' his own music, then it's also ok for him to walk into any music store and walk out with one of his CDs, because it's the exact same thing.
So here's the valid choices:
A. Piracy is theft, and since Metallica owns the rights to their own stuff, it's ok for any of them to pirate any of their music or walk into a store and grab one of their CDs.
B. Piracy is theft, but it's not ok for Lars to walk into a music store and grab a copy of his own disk and walk out without paying for it, therefore pirating his own music is also not ok, and the RIAA has to sue him and demand the same fines from him that they demand from every other "pirate".
C. Piracy is not theft, therefore since Metallica owns the rights to their own music, it's ok for Lars to pirate his own music even though it's not ok for him to steal a disk from a store.
I don't care what the DSL salesman says, they are not running individual lines all the way from an internet backbone to your house) With a monopoly the cost of this shared part of the line can be paid for with the combined profit from each home that uses it.
You're right, you don't get an individual line to the backbone, but you do get an individual line from your house to the DSLAM. The DSLAM is what's expensive to set up (around $10,000 to $20,000 for residential I believe), and that's what you have to be within a certain distance of to get DSL.
By your reasoning Verizon and Comcast should merge, rather than have separate phoneline and TV lines, because it's cheaper. However I argue it's actually more expensive, because you take away (1) freedom of choice (2) power of the people to run their own lives (see 1) and (3) create a monopoly which is inherently non-innovative, controlling, and tends to overprice.
No, not if you fully follow his reasoning. The key factor here is that Verizon and Comcast are from two very different sectors of the communications industry. It's only in the last 5-10 years that they're started overlapping significantly, and they both had huge infrastructure in place before that. It's not profitable for them to merge, because while they offer similar services, they use significantly different technology to do so. Comcast's infrastructure is not at all beneficial to Verizon, and Verizon's is equally useless to Comcast. However, it's profitable for a large DSL company like Verizon to buy up smaller DSL companies, because they're now buying additional useful infrastructure in a market with some proven customers, instead of throwing their money out on the line without knowing if there will be sufficient customers there or not.
There's a lot more that could be said here, but most of it has already been said or at least implied. However, it seems you're ignoring it. So I'll just reiterate the most important point: communications cannot be compared with any other industry (when talking about competition) because the barrier of entry is out of necessity prohibitively expensive. Consider: right now, your options for creating long-distance communications include cables, satellites, or wireless towers. Cables means acquiring permits to install it in all kinds of places, permits to dig up roads and all kinds of other things, not to mention the cost of miles of expensive cable, the cost of all the equipment to install it, the time and cost of the installation, etc. Satellites... well, we already know that's not cheap. Wireless towers are easily the cheapest route, but the tech just isn't there yet for high-speed capacity that truly competes with DSL or Cable. And even when that tech is ready, you still have to either rent space on existing towers (hopefully they'll work with your tech), or buy or rent land to build your own.
Building a car dealership or a restaurant or even an automobile factory is peanuts compared to building a communications system.
I would probably roll my eyes at the review you mention (if it is true, local health officials are useless and I shouldn't trust Tony's either...),
Yes, you would think that, as would I and most of the people who browse slashdot. But people who browse slashdot are not generally representative of the public as a whole. Most people would do exactly as GP said - get directions to Tony's and never give it a second thought.
It seems that since they've already blown off both their feet, they're now moving on to what they have left. I'm pretty sure that was one of their arms right there.
If you're selling a 50MB/s to 1,000 people at "5MB/s per person", you deserve anything bad that comes your way. I can see putting maybe up to 20 people on that 50MB/s on a supposed 5MB/s per person, but anything more than that is definitely asking for trouble. Even regular users are going to max their connections simultaneously during peak hours.
On the plus side, you can create your own custom villains, using anything in the costume creator, which gives you a ton of options. You can also create your own dialog, story, etc.
On the minus side, you can't build your own maps, nor do you have any direct control over exactly where any villains/objects/etc. are on your map.
So in the end, the only thing you can *really* customize in any meaningful way is the appearance of the villains. It's a great idea, but I think for it to really work, players are going to have to have more creative freedom.
"Unbridled capitalism" has absolutely nothing to do with what choices are available for the customer. It means that A.) corporations are completely unlimited on what they can do to grow their companies (if they can get rid of all competition, so much the better for them!), and B.) there are no restrictions on what the customer is allowed to buy. But also, since there is no regulation, there is also nothing to say that any particular corporation or industry has to make any particular thing available for sale to the customer. If it's not as financially beneficial as they would like, there's no reason to do it.
This is why we don't do unbridled capitalism. Ultimately, any given industry will result in a monopoly if left unchecked for a long enough period of time.
This is a terrible analogy. Having someone steal your reserved parking space is far more of a hassle, annoyance and damaging than having a very small percentage of your potential customers get their goods somewhere else.
Sure, and I'm not saying that's not the case. But if you think the next Rock Band and Guitar Hero games won't sell millions of copies because they didn't use any RIAA songs, you're lying to yourself. People will discover that there's damn good music out there that's not from the RIAA, and that's a genie that is impossible to stuff back into the bottle. Plenty of school kids will buy and play the games regardless of where the music comes from, and word-of-mouth will do the rest.
They agree on payment and royalties when they seek copyright permission. So why the fcuk are they moaning after?
They're moaning because they think they deserve more money from their obsolete business model. They're moaning because they think there's potential here for them to get a lot more money from the games than they are. Problem is, they are 100% wrong. They don't realize it, but these games don't need their songs, not even a little bit. And if they ask for more money, the developers of these games will (hopefully anyway, because they *should*) tell them "sorry, we don't need your songs", and then proceed to use excellent music from dozens of indie bands no one has ever heard of before, which will in turn lead to those bands gaining popularity, people searching for music from those bands online, finding the free (or at least non-DRM) distribution sites that have that music, and discovering a whole new world of alternatives to RIAA music.
If they do this, they truly will be blowing off their last foot. They'll still try to hobble around on their stumps for a while, but this will be the beginning of the end for them. I hope they do it.
This is great though, for the public. The reason is, because the RIAA is treading on *dangerously* thin ice here, and apparently they aren't aware. These games work every bit as well and are every bit as fun even if every single song is from an indie group that no one has heard of before. If they don't watch it, they might just get what they're asking for, and they're going to suddenly find the masses discovering whole new sources of indie music that can be had legitimately at a fair market price without hassle, and the RIAA will start to die sooner rather than later. I really hope they do try to push the music game developers. The only people they can possibly hurt are themselves.
...is that all this time, money and energy is being spent on bolstering a terrible system that already horribly violates the rights of the public. We shouldn't even be having this discussion at all.
Fix copyright law so it does what it's supposed to and all of these problems will cease to exist, virtually overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
As I understand it, the virus not only gets its time and date info online when it calls in, it also sets your computer's time and date accordingly.
The only one that still gives me that reaction is when people turn "would've" into "would of" (or "should've into "should of", etc.) Most grammar and spelling errors are excusable, but not that one. People who can't get that right should not be allowed to type or write anything that will ever be seen by anyone but their family or English teacher.
So you agree that piracy and actual theft of a CD are not the same thing? That's covered by option C.
Yes, I know you're trying to start the semantics game of "oh, but simply infringing on IP is theft!!11!!oneone!!eleven!" Sorry, that game is broken. Someone tried to play it once too often (I think that was about 5 years ago now), and since then it doesn't work. But hey, thanks for trying.
Time to start creating a new steam account for each game. Thank goodness for free webmail.
Darnit, you're right. My apologies.
You're clearly missing GP's point. The point is that the RIAA wants to call file sharing and infringement the exact same thing as stealing a disk from a store. If that's true, and it's ok for Lars to 'Pirate' his own music, then it's also ok for him to walk into any music store and walk out with one of his CDs, because it's the exact same thing.
So here's the valid choices:
A. Piracy is theft, and since Metallica owns the rights to their own stuff, it's ok for any of them to pirate any of their music or walk into a store and grab one of their CDs.
B. Piracy is theft, but it's not ok for Lars to walk into a music store and grab a copy of his own disk and walk out without paying for it, therefore pirating his own music is also not ok, and the RIAA has to sue him and demand the same fines from him that they demand from every other "pirate".
C. Piracy is not theft, therefore since Metallica owns the rights to their own music, it's ok for Lars to pirate his own music even though it's not ok for him to steal a disk from a store.
There are no other options.
Just one small nit-pick...
I don't care what the DSL salesman says, they are not running individual lines all the way from an internet backbone to your house) With a monopoly the cost of this shared part of the line can be paid for with the combined profit from each home that uses it.
You're right, you don't get an individual line to the backbone, but you do get an individual line from your house to the DSLAM. The DSLAM is what's expensive to set up (around $10,000 to $20,000 for residential I believe), and that's what you have to be within a certain distance of to get DSL.
By your reasoning Verizon and Comcast should merge, rather than have separate phoneline and TV lines, because it's cheaper. However I argue it's actually more expensive, because you take away (1) freedom of choice (2) power of the people to run their own lives (see 1) and (3) create a monopoly which is inherently non-innovative, controlling, and tends to overprice.
No, not if you fully follow his reasoning. The key factor here is that Verizon and Comcast are from two very different sectors of the communications industry. It's only in the last 5-10 years that they're started overlapping significantly, and they both had huge infrastructure in place before that. It's not profitable for them to merge, because while they offer similar services, they use significantly different technology to do so. Comcast's infrastructure is not at all beneficial to Verizon, and Verizon's is equally useless to Comcast. However, it's profitable for a large DSL company like Verizon to buy up smaller DSL companies, because they're now buying additional useful infrastructure in a market with some proven customers, instead of throwing their money out on the line without knowing if there will be sufficient customers there or not.
There's a lot more that could be said here, but most of it has already been said or at least implied. However, it seems you're ignoring it. So I'll just reiterate the most important point: communications cannot be compared with any other industry (when talking about competition) because the barrier of entry is out of necessity prohibitively expensive. Consider: right now, your options for creating long-distance communications include cables, satellites, or wireless towers. Cables means acquiring permits to install it in all kinds of places, permits to dig up roads and all kinds of other things, not to mention the cost of miles of expensive cable, the cost of all the equipment to install it, the time and cost of the installation, etc. Satellites... well, we already know that's not cheap. Wireless towers are easily the cheapest route, but the tech just isn't there yet for high-speed capacity that truly competes with DSL or Cable. And even when that tech is ready, you still have to either rent space on existing towers (hopefully they'll work with your tech), or buy or rent land to build your own.
Building a car dealership or a restaurant or even an automobile factory is peanuts compared to building a communications system.
I would probably roll my eyes at the review you mention (if it is true, local health officials are useless and I shouldn't trust Tony's either...),
Yes, you would think that, as would I and most of the people who browse slashdot. But people who browse slashdot are not generally representative of the public as a whole. Most people would do exactly as GP said - get directions to Tony's and never give it a second thought.
It seems that since they've already blown off both their feet, they're now moving on to what they have left. I'm pretty sure that was one of their arms right there.
If you're selling a 50MB/s to 1,000 people at "5MB/s per person", you deserve anything bad that comes your way. I can see putting maybe up to 20 people on that 50MB/s on a supposed 5MB/s per person, but anything more than that is definitely asking for trouble. Even regular users are going to max their connections simultaneously during peak hours.
I am looking forward to it though.
On the plus side, you can create your own custom villains, using anything in the costume creator, which gives you a ton of options. You can also create your own dialog, story, etc.
On the minus side, you can't build your own maps, nor do you have any direct control over exactly where any villains/objects/etc. are on your map.
So in the end, the only thing you can *really* customize in any meaningful way is the appearance of the villains. It's a great idea, but I think for it to really work, players are going to have to have more creative freedom.
Chasing down the links leads to this:
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/02/is-the-.html
But one seemingly knowledgeable but unconfirmed source tells Hypebot that the cuts run much deeper than previously reported.
And not much else. One can hope, but so far this is nothing but a rumor.
You misspelled 'rhetoric'.
"Unbridled capitalism" has absolutely nothing to do with what choices are available for the customer. It means that A.) corporations are completely unlimited on what they can do to grow their companies (if they can get rid of all competition, so much the better for them!), and B.) there are no restrictions on what the customer is allowed to buy. But also, since there is no regulation, there is also nothing to say that any particular corporation or industry has to make any particular thing available for sale to the customer. If it's not as financially beneficial as they would like, there's no reason to do it.
This is why we don't do unbridled capitalism. Ultimately, any given industry will result in a monopoly if left unchecked for a long enough period of time.
This is a terrible analogy. Having someone steal your reserved parking space is far more of a hassle, annoyance and damaging than having a very small percentage of your potential customers get their goods somewhere else.
Sure, and I'm not saying that's not the case. But if you think the next Rock Band and Guitar Hero games won't sell millions of copies because they didn't use any RIAA songs, you're lying to yourself. People will discover that there's damn good music out there that's not from the RIAA, and that's a genie that is impossible to stuff back into the bottle. Plenty of school kids will buy and play the games regardless of where the music comes from, and word-of-mouth will do the rest.
They agree on payment and royalties when they seek copyright permission. So why the fcuk are they moaning after?
They're moaning because they think they deserve more money from their obsolete business model. They're moaning because they think there's potential here for them to get a lot more money from the games than they are. Problem is, they are 100% wrong. They don't realize it, but these games don't need their songs, not even a little bit. And if they ask for more money, the developers of these games will (hopefully anyway, because they *should*) tell them "sorry, we don't need your songs", and then proceed to use excellent music from dozens of indie bands no one has ever heard of before, which will in turn lead to those bands gaining popularity, people searching for music from those bands online, finding the free (or at least non-DRM) distribution sites that have that music, and discovering a whole new world of alternatives to RIAA music.
If they do this, they truly will be blowing off their last foot. They'll still try to hobble around on their stumps for a while, but this will be the beginning of the end for them. I hope they do it.
This is great though, for the public. The reason is, because the RIAA is treading on *dangerously* thin ice here, and apparently they aren't aware. These games work every bit as well and are every bit as fun even if every single song is from an indie group that no one has heard of before. If they don't watch it, they might just get what they're asking for, and they're going to suddenly find the masses discovering whole new sources of indie music that can be had legitimately at a fair market price without hassle, and the RIAA will start to die sooner rather than later. I really hope they do try to push the music game developers. The only people they can possibly hurt are themselves.
Where's the mod points when you need them?
Internet advertising is practically worthless. We learned this from the dotcom bust.
There's some people who run a certain website who would like to disagree with you. It's called Google, maybe you've heard of it?
No, we'll need at least 30% market share for that, so look for it in 2135.
Way to spoil your own joke. =(
But thank god they're not using wasps...
...is that all this time, money and energy is being spent on bolstering a terrible system that already horribly violates the rights of the public. We shouldn't even be having this discussion at all.
Fix copyright law so it does what it's supposed to and all of these problems will cease to exist, virtually overnight.
I use netscape navigator you insensitive clod!
(Ok, well I use Firefox now, but I *used* to use NN!!)