It's not unreasonable, it just seems that way to you because you're comparing it to the wrong thing. You're comparing this new legal offering to the old legal offering and pointing out its obviously better. But if you'll compare it to the illegal option, you'll see that it's still pretty crappy. If we admit that the threat of litigation is fairly marginal, what are you really getting for the legal buy? You can talk about "morality" but capitalism isn't a moral system, so you really shouldn't. The legal buy will be a good deal when the cost of the song is much closer to the worth of the piece of mind one get's from not breaking the law and (to some extent) screwing artists. To me, that feels around 10-15 centish.
Paying many hundreds of dollars for data that is easily available for free is just not very compelling. Not that I commit copyright infringement myself, but even then I still can't bring myself to pay a dollar a song, at least not at the current average level of quality.
And actually there were a few notable attempts to replicate that many millions (billions) of years by creating simple organisms that have very very short generations, but in every case (I believe) what was selected for was the simplest organism, because it could reproduce and therefore consume as quickly as possible, essentially eating its competitors out of town.
Anyhow, just for safety's sake I will note here that the experiments hardly constitutes a disproof as they weren't really what is believed to have have taken place, and also because multicellularity is thought perhaps to be an unlikely evolution, but anyway thought you might like to know. I'm sure you can find the specifics with google, or I originally read about it in SA.
I'm saying that while I think the Army may be bad at doing what is essentially police work, police (who are good at police work) aren't equiped or trained to fight an enemy as well armed as your average insurgent.
It's the tactics of the LAPD and NYPD that you want in Iraq, not the actual blue suits themselves. You're right about them being better trained to go after non-fixed targets, but we need to be honest and say that they're not equiped (or trained) to go after people that tend to be armed with assault rifles and explosives. They would be fairly drastically outgunned.
It's not Sony BMG, Warner, etc at the top of the list, it's their front group the RIAA. People hate the RIAA? Guess what, that's exactly what it was created with in mind. Recording companies get to engage in strong-armed consumer-alienating behavior, but dodge the consequences because the "RIAA" is there to take the flak.
So don't call this a victory for us! This is a victory for the record companies, because it shows that they have successfully redirected your wrath to a "company" (I don't know why the summary uses that word) that doesn't have a product, and could care less that you don't like them.
Huge number of sites hosted in US + big 3 SEs follow US laws + ruling that would affect US SEs and sites = you should care. Not everything that happens to the US affects other countries, but when it's something from the US that they use then of course it effects them. Unless you're tired of using Google to find sites in the US.
Of course, even in the remote case that she won, I think the real outcome would be that she inconveniences 100,000's of webmasters that now have to specifically opt in, and really who hosts public content and doesn't want the attention of Google et al?
But back to you, US-centrist thinking can be annoying, I'll grant, but you _do_ make use of American goods and services, and their treatment by US law does affect you.
Microsoft is not really saying black is white there, and I think it's because you've confused what they meant when they say "customer." They don't mean windows user.
If WGA flags your OS as non-genuine, there are two cases (well three). The first is that you pirated the software, and then you are _not_ an MS customer, and they don't really care about your benefit.
The second case then is that you paid money expecting genuine software, and apparently you got screwed. That non-trivially sized class of people is in fact interested in genuine software, which is why they payed money instead of pirating, and they are happy to be notified, assuming MS is reasonable and efficient about giving them the software that they really already paid for.
The third class is the class that are falsely flagged, and of course for them it's all bad, but to the extent that MS doesn't _try_ to code things poorly, this isn't an intending group, and hopefully over time is eliminated.
So I'm not trying to say WGA isn't to MS's benefit too, I'm just saying it's hardly Orwellian doublespeak. Let's be disciplined in our Microsoft bashing.
Right but try building a house, forging metal, inventing the internal combustion engine, etc, etc, under water. Given the choice, being an intelligent land based creature (I think) is far superior to a water based one.
that made sense. Is the basketball court I'm in infinite? I throw a dart, and the dart hits the wall. There is "something" there, and therefore that's not the edge of the court, ergo my court is infinite. If there was a big wall at some point that nothing could get around, that would seem to be the end of the universe, at the very least in any way that is at all relevant to us (By definition). So I think those greeks need to go back to the drawing board.
Hah. Admit you didn't phrase it that way at all though. Anyhow, the rest of your post _was_ quite good. But you should probably just admit that Viacom uploading its own clips in some mastermind scheme doesn't make any sense and isn't (even) useful as a rhetorical point.
It would suprise the hell out of me. Either it would have to be a higher up doing it, who wouldn't because he has better stuff to do, or they'd be paying underlings. Which would obviously be incredibly stupid because don't you think one of those underlings is fairly likely to blow the whistle at some point? Plently of people are willing to post Viacom owned clips without Viacom needing to risk an exceptionally embarrassing and damaging situation when their scheme was exposed.
What you suggested was basically akin to the suggestion that explosives were planted to destroy the levies aroud NO. There's already a very credible explanation for what went/is going on, and the conspiracy theory postulates an extremely high risk, likely to be exposed effort to achieve something of little gain. Let's try to save our tin foil for when we need it.
I know what GRBs are, and I looked at all those Saturn photos. But that doesn't mean I think these people are totally moronic. Maybe for trying to legislate it, but that aside, don't you have at least a little sentimentality for the old system? Now all those times I looked in a telescope at pluto, I have to remind myself that I was just looking at a friggin rock.
It is dumb to try and legislate it though, I suppose.
I think I'm your average wikipedia user. When I want to know where Scott Adams lives, or something about Dirac, it's where I go. I say that to preface my statement that "seems good to me." On the subject of corrupt admins, is this visible for the user? Or is only an issue for contributers and people on the talk pages, etc? Because whenever wikipedia comes up on Slashdot, there are always a few high rated posts complaining vaguely about corruption. I'm of course not implying that it's not a grounded accusation, but could you be the first to be specific?
If I'm alone in this, but can we not act as if everything is a wrestling fight? They didn't "smack" anything down, and in fact the wording the article itself uses is "expressed concern."
Same goes to "blast." If I wanted to read sensationalist crap, I'd turn on fox. Let's not have any of that here!
No one cares if a plane is diverted to Algeria. They care if it's flown into the ground or a target, which is of course something the pilots will never do no matter how many passengers are killed, for obvious reasons. Seperating pilot from passenger accomplishes only one thing, but its a very important thing. Namely, it prevents the class of hijackings in which all passengers die, and those are the ones we care about.
No offense, but this is a terrible idea. Who has the authority to decide what is "valuable"? Britney spears was very popular. Does that make her more valuable? Andy Mckee is a fabulous musician, but relatively obscure. Is he then less valuable, or more because what he does is more difficult and complex?
Whatever you think is the answer is irrelevant, because the point is that a huge number of people will disagree with you. Whatever answer is legislated, a lot of people are going to be upset when, in their opinion, they're spending money incentivising the wrong thing. And what if I don't listen to music? Am I exempt, or is funding the pleasures of others a reasonable thing to be required of me?
I don't know why having some sort of committee deciding what artists should be paid seems appealing, and that is what it would ultimately come down to. The free market _can_ work here, it just doesn't because we have stupid copyright laws, and a cartel that no one seems willing to take on. That doesn't make a nonsensical socialist program the answer.
I actually was nearly finished writing a "Mod parent up" post, when I realized you're not quite right. Causes _are_ important because they affect how we treat it. A better analogy (if we *sigh* need an analogy) would be if someone came in coughing blood and vomiting. It's very important to know whether that's drug related, viral, cancer, etc, before you can treat him effectively. So it is relevant whether it's carbon emissions, or solar activity, or some other unknown factor. If carbon emmissions were irrelevant (just SUPPOSE, I'm certainly not advocating that as truth in any way), then spending money to cut emissions would be a waste of resources that maybe we need to build a solar shade (or whatever).
That said, however, there does come a point when you need to say, OK guys, the house is on fire, and it's time to do SOMETHING, even if more information would be handy. And to the extent that we are nearing that point, the bickering over causes does need to stop, particularly if it's just going to be all heat and no light.
About tracing an ip back to a particular computer. The IP in itself obviously can't do that, but I'm fairly certain that part of the IP protocol includes the MAC adress of the requestee. So maybe he was being unclear when he used the term "IP address," and he really meant to say logged data. I'm not in anyway on this guys side, and of course in any regard there is no excuse for being unclear in such a fashion in a court case, but I'm curious from a technical side.
So if someone knows the answer, be great if you let me know (what else is slashdot for, anyway).
Well, to be fair, with an incredible amount of brilliance, so he can find a job where physical work is almost entirely unneccassary. It's not like he's an average guy just making it in the world. Sort of like ol Chris Reeves. All his story really means is that if you're extremely rich, you can expect to get treatments that far exceed what others would get. And since all the effort he puts into that directly helps him, I guess the most you can say is that he's not a wimp.
Anyhow, I didn't mean to be downer, and Hawking is obviously a very impressive person, but he's hardly a role model for the disabled... because he's a man of near singular abilities. If Kobe Bryant had been born in the ghetto, he can hardly be a role model to your average poor kid, because none of them could ever become wealthy by being great basketball players because they don't have his abilities. You see?
You're right about any potential terrorist getting IDs themselves, 9/11 being obvious evidence to that fact. But the whole "single ID card" as asking for a huge exploit is silly. All states already honor all other states driver's licenses. I'm living in CA right now, with a NH license, for instance, and I'm treated exactly the same in all instances as someone with a CA license. As security is only as strong as its weakest link, a National ID would be (maybe will be) much harder to exploit. This is because the situation as it is now is that the weakest ID is all you need to exploit to get full privileges. We've already seen this with the 9/11 guys getting Virgina IDs. They did that for a reason.
With a national ID, ideally it would have the resources behind it to be stronger than any single state ID. However, any fraud protection is useless when you can just pay off a DMV employee, again as some of the hijackers did. The problem with national ID is not that it's in any way worse at IDing people. It's not. The problem is that is does nothing to deter or hinder terrorists, and that trying to know who everyone is at all times (and where they are if you are checked frequently enough) is extremely unamerican. It's a papers-please society, and its very bad. But it _is_ efficient, and that's unfortunately not an argument against it.
The fact that the intranet site looks the same as the internet one is irrelevant. I think you can easily chalk that up to a case of convenience, and not wanting to show anything "weird" to shoppers. They already obviously have the html sitting around, so that's a plus, and what's better than making it appear to consumers that store employees use the same "high quality, reliable" site that they do?
So, in so far as that's out of the way, and having an intranet site is reasonable for obvious reasons of reliability and speed, I can't think of _too_ much reason to be suspicious. Too many people would be involved for it to be reliably secret, and considering the incredible losses BestBuy would face if something like this were true and proved, seems like a dumb risk. AND someone coming into the store with a product and its price in mind, is probably going to notice when it isn't what they expect. So it would be a pretty lame strategy from that regard to.
So, I guess my main bullet point would have to be don't chalk up to malice what is so easily and more likely explained by incompetence.
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It's not unreasonable, it just seems that way to you because you're comparing it to the wrong thing. You're comparing this new legal offering to the old legal offering and pointing out its obviously better. But if you'll compare it to the illegal option, you'll see that it's still pretty crappy. If we admit that the threat of litigation is fairly marginal, what are you really getting for the legal buy? You can talk about "morality" but capitalism isn't a moral system, so you really shouldn't. The legal buy will be a good deal when the cost of the song is much closer to the worth of the piece of mind one get's from not breaking the law and (to some extent) screwing artists. To me, that feels around 10-15 centish.
Paying many hundreds of dollars for data that is easily available for free is just not very compelling. Not that I commit copyright infringement myself, but even then I still can't bring myself to pay a dollar a song, at least not at the current average level of quality.
Anyhow. Cheers.
And actually there were a few notable attempts to replicate that many millions (billions) of years by creating simple organisms that have very very short generations, but in every case (I believe) what was selected for was the simplest organism, because it could reproduce and therefore consume as quickly as possible, essentially eating its competitors out of town.
Anyhow, just for safety's sake I will note here that the experiments hardly constitutes a disproof as they weren't really what is believed to have have taken place, and also because multicellularity is thought perhaps to be an unlikely evolution, but anyway thought you might like to know. I'm sure you can find the specifics with google, or I originally read about it in SA.
Cheers.
I'm saying that while I think the Army may be bad at doing what is essentially police work, police (who are good at police work) aren't equiped or trained to fight an enemy as well armed as your average insurgent.
It's the tactics of the LAPD and NYPD that you want in Iraq, not the actual blue suits themselves. You're right about them being better trained to go after non-fixed targets, but we need to be honest and say that they're not equiped (or trained) to go after people that tend to be armed with assault rifles and explosives. They would be fairly drastically outgunned.
It's not Sony BMG, Warner, etc at the top of the list, it's their front group the RIAA. People hate the RIAA? Guess what, that's exactly what it was created with in mind. Recording companies get to engage in strong-armed consumer-alienating behavior, but dodge the consequences because the "RIAA" is there to take the flak.
So don't call this a victory for us! This is a victory for the record companies, because it shows that they have successfully redirected your wrath to a "company" (I don't know why the summary uses that word) that doesn't have a product, and could care less that you don't like them.
That word had alreadylost all meaning 60 years ago. Go google for an essay by none other than George Orwell himself complaining about it.
Huge number of sites hosted in US + big 3 SEs follow US laws + ruling that would affect US SEs and sites = you should care. Not everything that happens to the US affects other countries, but when it's something from the US that they use then of course it effects them. Unless you're tired of using Google to find sites in the US.
Of course, even in the remote case that she won, I think the real outcome would be that she inconveniences 100,000's of webmasters that now have to specifically opt in, and really who hosts public content and doesn't want the attention of Google et al?
But back to you, US-centrist thinking can be annoying, I'll grant, but you _do_ make use of American goods and services, and their treatment by US law does affect you.
True. Does it do that now? In its original incarnation it just pestered the user, and (maybe) cut off updates. But point well taken nonetheless.
Microsoft is not really saying black is white there, and I think it's because you've confused what they meant when they say "customer." They don't mean windows user.
If WGA flags your OS as non-genuine, there are two cases (well three). The first is that you pirated the software, and then you are _not_ an MS customer, and they don't really care about your benefit.
The second case then is that you paid money expecting genuine software, and apparently you got screwed. That non-trivially sized class of people is in fact interested in genuine software, which is why they payed money instead of pirating, and they are happy to be notified, assuming MS is reasonable and efficient about giving them the software that they really already paid for.
The third class is the class that are falsely flagged, and of course for them it's all bad, but to the extent that MS doesn't _try_ to code things poorly, this isn't an intending group, and hopefully over time is eliminated.
So I'm not trying to say WGA isn't to MS's benefit too, I'm just saying it's hardly Orwellian doublespeak. Let's be disciplined in our Microsoft bashing.
More massive even too. Does something in (near) permanent orbit "weigh" anything?
Right but try building a house, forging metal, inventing the internal combustion engine, etc, etc, under water. Given the choice, being an intelligent land based creature (I think) is far superior to a water based one.
I mean, when you think about it.
that made sense. Is the basketball court I'm in infinite? I throw a dart, and the dart hits the wall. There is "something" there, and therefore that's not the edge of the court, ergo my court is infinite. If there was a big wall at some point that nothing could get around, that would seem to be the end of the universe, at the very least in any way that is at all relevant to us (By definition). So I think those greeks need to go back to the drawing board.
Hah. Admit you didn't phrase it that way at all though. Anyhow, the rest of your post _was_ quite good. But you should probably just admit that Viacom uploading its own clips in some mastermind scheme doesn't make any sense and isn't (even) useful as a rhetorical point.
Cheers though.
It would suprise the hell out of me. Either it would have to be a higher up doing it, who wouldn't because he has better stuff to do, or they'd be paying underlings. Which would obviously be incredibly stupid because don't you think one of those underlings is fairly likely to blow the whistle at some point? Plently of people are willing to post Viacom owned clips without Viacom needing to risk an exceptionally embarrassing and damaging situation when their scheme was exposed.
What you suggested was basically akin to the suggestion that explosives were planted to destroy the levies aroud NO. There's already a very credible explanation for what went/is going on, and the conspiracy theory postulates an extremely high risk, likely to be exposed effort to achieve something of little gain. Let's try to save our tin foil for when we need it.
It is dumb to try and legislate it though, I suppose.
I think I'm your average wikipedia user. When I want to know where Scott Adams lives, or something about Dirac, it's where I go. I say that to preface my statement that "seems good to me." On the subject of corrupt admins, is this visible for the user? Or is only an issue for contributers and people on the talk pages, etc? Because whenever wikipedia comes up on Slashdot, there are always a few high rated posts complaining vaguely about corruption. I'm of course not implying that it's not a grounded accusation, but could you be the first to be specific?
Cheers.
If I'm alone in this, but can we not act as if everything is a wrestling fight? They didn't "smack" anything down, and in fact the wording the article itself uses is "expressed concern."
Same goes to "blast." If I wanted to read sensationalist crap, I'd turn on fox. Let's not have any of that here!
No one cares if a plane is diverted to Algeria. They care if it's flown into the ground or a target, which is of course something the pilots will never do no matter how many passengers are killed, for obvious reasons. Seperating pilot from passenger accomplishes only one thing, but its a very important thing. Namely, it prevents the class of hijackings in which all passengers die, and those are the ones we care about.
Well said. But my mod points expired yesterday... and I finally find something I want to mod up. Aaah!
No offense, but this is a terrible idea. Who has the authority to decide what is "valuable"? Britney spears was very popular. Does that make her more valuable? Andy Mckee is a fabulous musician, but relatively obscure. Is he then less valuable, or more because what he does is more difficult and complex?
Whatever you think is the answer is irrelevant, because the point is that a huge number of people will disagree with you. Whatever answer is legislated, a lot of people are going to be upset when, in their opinion, they're spending money incentivising the wrong thing. And what if I don't listen to music? Am I exempt, or is funding the pleasures of others a reasonable thing to be required of me?
I don't know why having some sort of committee deciding what artists should be paid seems appealing, and that is what it would ultimately come down to. The free market _can_ work here, it just doesn't because we have stupid copyright laws, and a cartel that no one seems willing to take on. That doesn't make a nonsensical socialist program the answer.
I actually was nearly finished writing a "Mod parent up" post, when I realized you're not quite right. Causes _are_ important because they affect how we treat it. A better analogy (if we *sigh* need an analogy) would be if someone came in coughing blood and vomiting. It's very important to know whether that's drug related, viral, cancer, etc, before you can treat him effectively. So it is relevant whether it's carbon emissions, or solar activity, or some other unknown factor. If carbon emmissions were irrelevant (just SUPPOSE, I'm certainly not advocating that as truth in any way), then spending money to cut emissions would be a waste of resources that maybe we need to build a solar shade (or whatever).
That said, however, there does come a point when you need to say, OK guys, the house is on fire, and it's time to do SOMETHING, even if more information would be handy. And to the extent that we are nearing that point, the bickering over causes does need to stop, particularly if it's just going to be all heat and no light.
About tracing an ip back to a particular computer. The IP in itself obviously can't do that, but I'm fairly certain that part of the IP protocol includes the MAC adress of the requestee. So maybe he was being unclear when he used the term "IP address," and he really meant to say logged data. I'm not in anyway on this guys side, and of course in any regard there is no excuse for being unclear in such a fashion in a court case, but I'm curious from a technical side.
So if someone knows the answer, be great if you let me know (what else is slashdot for, anyway).
Cheers.
Well, to be fair, with an incredible amount of brilliance, so he can find a job where physical work is almost entirely unneccassary. It's not like he's an average guy just making it in the world. Sort of like ol Chris Reeves. All his story really means is that if you're extremely rich, you can expect to get treatments that far exceed what others would get. And since all the effort he puts into that directly helps him, I guess the most you can say is that he's not a wimp.
Anyhow, I didn't mean to be downer, and Hawking is obviously a very impressive person, but he's hardly a role model for the disabled... because he's a man of near singular abilities. If Kobe Bryant had been born in the ghetto, he can hardly be a role model to your average poor kid, because none of them could ever become wealthy by being great basketball players because they don't have his abilities. You see?
You're right about any potential terrorist getting IDs themselves, 9/11 being obvious evidence to that fact. But the whole "single ID card" as asking for a huge exploit is silly. All states already honor all other states driver's licenses. I'm living in CA right now, with a NH license, for instance, and I'm treated exactly the same in all instances as someone with a CA license. As security is only as strong as its weakest link, a National ID would be (maybe will be) much harder to exploit. This is because the situation as it is now is that the weakest ID is all you need to exploit to get full privileges. We've already seen this with the 9/11 guys getting Virgina IDs. They did that for a reason.
With a national ID, ideally it would have the resources behind it to be stronger than any single state ID. However, any fraud protection is useless when you can just pay off a DMV employee, again as some of the hijackers did. The problem with national ID is not that it's in any way worse at IDing people. It's not. The problem is that is does nothing to deter or hinder terrorists, and that trying to know who everyone is at all times (and where they are if you are checked frequently enough) is extremely unamerican. It's a papers-please society, and its very bad. But it _is_ efficient, and that's unfortunately not an argument against it.
The fact that the intranet site looks the same as the internet one is irrelevant. I think you can easily chalk that up to a case of convenience, and not wanting to show anything "weird" to shoppers. They already obviously have the html sitting around, so that's a plus, and what's better than making it appear to consumers that store employees use the same "high quality, reliable" site that they do?
So, in so far as that's out of the way, and having an intranet site is reasonable for obvious reasons of reliability and speed, I can't think of _too_ much reason to be suspicious. Too many people would be involved for it to be reliably secret, and considering the incredible losses BestBuy would face if something like this were true and proved, seems like a dumb risk. AND someone coming into the store with a product and its price in mind, is probably going to notice when it isn't what they expect. So it would be a pretty lame strategy from that regard to.
So, I guess my main bullet point would have to be don't chalk up to malice what is so easily and more likely explained by incompetence.