1. Using the faster ram is a feature of the chip 2. XPS is supposed to be high performance line 3. You're obviously a threadshitter or a troll of some kind... how... unique
Does it really use ddr2-800 instead of ddr-1066? Seems like an odd oversight, unless I'm missing something. TFA says "The processor is connected to 4 GB of DDR2-800 memory, which gives theoretical memory bandwidth of 12.8 GB/s".. Anybody know for sure based on that 12.8g/s measurement? The 800 runs at 200x4 while 1066 runs at 266x4. The article doesn't even mention 1066 at all, ie, "it doesn't use 1066 because" or anything.. Actually, I just checked wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddr3 and it seems 12.8 gig is associated with ddr3/1600 ram.. now I'm really confused.
Use FLV like youtube, just don't compress them as much. The question you'll have to face is whether to allow users to skip ahead in the video or they can only watch the portion that has downloaded. If you want users to be able to skip ahead, that will require a streaming server. If you don't mind making users download the whole video to skip to the end, then any old web server will do it with no special add-ons. But yeah, basically just take high quality video and convert it to FLV. The converter program should allow you to specify the quality to use. I like FLV because it is so well supported. All the others seem to have too many gotchas, but damn near anyone can play an FLV as long as they have Flash, and almost everyone has Flash these days. And if you use the simple streaming method I mentioned above, you can host it basically anywhere you want.
I know you Republicans think the Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper, but you know what? The knowledge that Obama understands it is very reassuring to me given the flagrant abuses of the Constitution we've endured in the last 7 years.
QFFT.. I can't wait to have someone in office who believes in the rule of law, and doesn't just say they believe in the rule of law because they make up the law as they go and believe their own opinion to be divinely inspired.
In theory, I tend to feel the same way about it. Out of the entire school year, the creationism portion should take all of about 5 minutes. On the other hand, if someone (who may or may not be a creationist) cares to try to disprove evolution, I say game on. Part of the definition of a scientific theory is that it can be disproven, so if they have a valid scientific point, then make it. If the discussion is evolution, then really teach the whole thing, including any evidence, pro or con. That does not mean introducing the non-scientific theory of Jesus ponies and whatnot.
In practice, the right wing nut jobs would like to get rid of the chapter on evolution completely and REPLACE it with creationism, which is wholly and completely unacceptable.
ColdFusion the language, and Java the language have absolutely zero in common in this context, but nice try. If you don't believe me, go ahead and reply to some job ads for Java programmers, and tell them "no, but I'm great with ColdFusion". However, note that the opposite approach may actually work if it's a big CF shop (if such a thing even exists anymore, sniff).
I don't think Vista *needs* 3gigs to run well, but it certainly helps. I found 1gig to be quite usable except in the occasional intense multitasking situation (like world of warcraft in the background). Popping in the extra 2 gigs definitely solved that problem, but I was running XP on the same machine previously, and while the multitasking was better than vista (1gig on both at this point), it wasn't actually *good* on XP, and multitasking with Vista on 3gigs is better than 1gig on XP. However, with 1gig on Vista, I found general usability and application performance wholly adequate and acceptable for a good 3-4 months before I got the RAM. There was a bit more lag than xp, but nothing I couldn't live with, and it's not like XP had *no* lag, it just had *less* lag.
I have to wonder about people who buy a name brand computer, don't get enough ram, almost certainly have the OS bogged down with preinstalled crapware, and they don't enjoy their Vista experience. Then they do a fresh install of xp, and wonder of wonders if it doesn't run better. Try doing a fresh install of Vista while you're at it and do some real comparisons. You will also likely have the great joy of installing the OS and not having to install a single driver. I will always update the drivers for the video card and any special hardware I've added, but I have found near 100% automatic driver installation with Vista on 10+ machines. Ubuntu usually does too, but Vista wireless kicks Ubuntu wireless's ass.
Regarding TFA, while it is not the epitome of scientific rigor, the "study" does make a point, as far as it goes. Vista is a lot better than general consensus makes it out to be.
I think the actual expletive should have been hyphenated. I don't generally deduct stars for grammar in vulgar statements, but the hyphen would have enhanced the readability. In terms of actual effect, I think the "fuck" lends a nice sense of gravity to the relative dumbness. However, I found the assonance of the repetitive "u" sound rolls off the tongue poorly, with "much struck" being particularly egregious. I'd give it 3/5, but I think it could easily pull a 4/5 with minor tweaks.
Microsoft needs to quit screwing with the interface of Office 07 and spend some time doing something useful like creating a CD image of WinPE or even a bartpe plugin that includes a scanner for (at least) the major botnet software. Just release a new one every month or two, burn it, reboot, scan. I mean, really, this crap is getting ridiculous. MS just needs to take a bank of 1000 pc's, load xp with no service packs or security and live ip addresses, wait about 20 minutes, and then turn on the sniffers. I don't see how they are not on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit by now.
Well, sure.. back when everyone ran DOS, it was a riot.. now anyone dumb enough to fall for it wouldn't know where to type it in. They'd probably just wind up searching for it on google.
That will work fine, but there are ways to shoot yourself in the foot, and there is an extra step in there at you don't need. But as long as your ghost backup is good, then the worst that could happen is you might need to reapply the image and then do whatever you need to do like defrag or whatever, take another image, and then try again. And for future reference, applying a ghost image to a smaller partition than you took it from will work fine most of the time, and the times it won't work is because of something else.
But like I said you don't need to take an image and then reapply it. The more direct approach is to defrag so that you get a big contiguous block of space at the end of the drive, shrink the Windows partition (Vista can shrink the C: while windows is running, otherwise find a util), and then make a new partition at the end for whatever.
Either way, take a good ghost image first. Ghost is the greatest thing since jarred cheese.
I have one of them there younguns on my network (receptionist), and she managed to install random crapware onto a terminal server on 3 separate occasions. I don't know how she does it, because it's locked down fairly tight, but I'm sure it's from myspace or whatever friendster clone the kids are using these days. Anyway, she's off the terminal server and running a local Linux now. Her manager wanted me to lock her down to where she couldn't do anything, but I felt bad for her, since reception isn't such a stellar job to begin with. Plus, she's kind of wild and not too discreet, so I sometimes get to see some boobies on her screen, heh. Good times, good times. I actually covered for her the first two times and just cleaned up her mess as quick as I could, but on the third one, her manager started getting popups saying such and such dll wouldn't load, and the dll supposedly existed in the receptionists home directory. I couldn't do much about that one..
I think this is getting OT a bit.. as I understand it Phorm runs at the ISP level and then sells the data to content providers. I, for one, am getting really sick of this trend of uppity ISP's trying to get in the racket of playing monkey in the middle with our data. They get their monthly check simply for being a conduit. How about requiring the ISP's in question to call every one of their subscribers and say "we just wanted to inform you that we are going to sniff all of your traffic and sell the data to advertises" and see what kind of response they get.
Is the original FISA expiring, or just Bush's modifications? As I (think I) understand it (but could be mistaken), neither house of congress needs to pass a damned thing. The FISA laws that existed before any of this came up are still in effect, and they work just fine. FBI and police can easily get warrants if they have anything even resembling evidence, however they are subject to a bit of bureaucracy, but I can live with that. As for the wimpy telcos, maybe a few nice fat lawsuits will put the fear of the people into them, and they'll learn to question authority a bit better. It's not like they don't have droves of lawyers for just such an occasion. I'm sure they discussed whether or not they could be subjected to lawsuits, and if they take in the pants now, then the next time the question comes up, they will already know the answer, and they'll ask for a warrant like they should have done this time.
The pre-existing FISA laws maintain a desirable level of what Antonin Scalia (and apparently others) called "calculated inefficiency".
Here's a great quote I found trying to find out more about what Scalia was talking about (different justice, same sentiment):
"In his famous Myers dissent Justice Louis D. *Brandeis said: "The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three department, to save the people from autocracy" (p. 293). This is a classic expression of the eighteenth century hope that freedom could be secured by calculated inefficiency in government. A more modern hope is that freedom would be better served with more efficiency and more democratic accountability. We are still haunted by an ancient riddle: How far can we build up effective government before it topples over into despotism? How much inefficiency can we afford without slipping into disaster?" (bold=mine)
I think that really says it all.. the FBI, et al, want unfettered access to basically everything, and there are probably some in the organization who are pushing for it, and their heart really is in the right place, but that's just not good enough. How efficient can they become before it "topples over into despotism"? I'd rather not find out.
Ahh, that's better. Open source doesn't matter much to me as long as there is no real vendor lock-in. My company is fairly married to Microsoft in a lot of annoying ways. I like to occasionally put up a Linux mail server or a random BSD desktop just to mess with people. But truthfully, after using CF for a while, PHP feels horribly archaic and verbose. It just seems to take so much effort to do the littlest things. On the other hand, CF basically just extends HTML in logical and useful ways. But then it keeps getting less and less market share, so I imagine Adobe will feel obligated to cut the cord eventually. Hopefully at least the language will live on. At least there's always MySpace =]
Lol, there is no vendor lock-in with coldfusion. It runs on basically anything, can connect to any database, and there are at least two major vendors for the runtime. Heck, it will even run sourceless as a compiled native.net or j2ee app. NewAtlanta even has a free version (free for commercial use, but with distribution limitations). Hosting shouldn't cost more than any other hosting. Getting a programmer can take a while, but we're out there. It is, by far, my favorite web language, and the new version is really nice. Other languages are fine too, but CF is my favorite. I'm sorry you two don't get along.:|
She's young. She was a local florida politician.. County something or other? I forget, but anyway, she's been a total biatch for as long as I can remember. I was hoping she wouldn't get elected senator to shut her up, but since she won, she has actually been well out of the news mostly, so I'm glad I don't have to hear her name every day anymore, but it sucks that she basically got promoted. But yeah, seriously, she's pretty young, so I'm sure she has a long and promising career of being a nosy, pushy, self-righteous, know-it-all c00nt for many years to come.
Wikipedia: "Storms had an eight-year tenure on the Hillsborough County Commission (1998-2006), for which she is well known, and pushed a number of controversial issues. These issues included a fight against establishing the proposed Florida A&M University School of Law in Tampa, a campaign in favor of the sterilization of men and women convicted of child abuse, eliminating county-appropriated money for Planned Parenthood, and perhaps most publicized, her crusade for the county to officially abstain from recognizing gay and lesbian events held inside county lines, which was passed in June 2005 despite vocal opposition, most notably from openly gay topless dance club proprietor Joe Redner. She is also recognized by her quick tongue and often scathing sarcastic remarks, many of which she does not retract, stating "I am not apologizing for who I am."
I would like to know how the information was presented to the jury and whether or not the court did one of those things something like "the patent is not on trial here. the jury must assume the patent is valid. you can only use information A,B,C to make your decision" etc. I just want a clear and concise synopsis of how they got X people to decide unanimously in BB's favor. I can't help but imagine myself in the jury box, and I don't know what they could possibly say to me to go along with that unless there is way more to the story or more substance to the claim. But from skimming the previous slashdot threads on the BB patents, I don't see anything that leads me to believe there may be any real substance to the claim. So what was the jury's thinking exactly? Anyone have any insights?
They should try a new line of PSA's. It starts with some oldish teens or young adults at a house part.. the techno is bumpin, everybody's having a good time.. so a suave guy goes up to a girl and says "Hey have you heard the new ASDF album?" She smiles and says "No, why you have it?" And he say yes and pulls out a silver cd with ASDF written in crappy handwritten sharpie.. So she scoffs and rolls her eyes in disgust. Then suave guy number 2 strolls up and holds up the store bought copy, and they lock arms and walk away. There is not enough public distaste for piracy, and there should be, because it's kind of scummy. I know I feel a tinge of guilt from using pirated materials if I know I would have paid for it otherwise. On the other hand, it's hard to feel guilty about "stealing" from a bunch of uber dickheads. In the end, the only thing that will stop piracy or at least seriously reduce it is the same thing that has kept humans in line for all these years: shame. And right now, too many people are too ignorant to realize they should be utterly ashamed of their behavior.
But the difference would manifest something like: suppose you have a teenage son, you go into his room and see him sliding a burned cd into his deck. The current authoritarian method would be that you beat him with a bat and MAKE him sorry. The shame version would be to say "son, you have a job, but you waste your money.. if you wanted this album you should have saved up for it.. here, take your pirated cd back and play it, but I hope every time you listen to it you remember how disappointed I am right now".. IMHO, the former will backfire by making the lad A) pissed off, and B) more careful next time. But the latter has at least a chance to make a difference in a way that really matters. Do we really want to settle for just scaring people into not being dicks at every turn, or do we want to reach a little higher? Knuckle cracking is artificial. The real deal comes down to pride versus shame.
I realize that the above is a tad ethereal and maybe simplistic, but all generalizations are false anyway. The point is that since no real tangible harm has been done, I don't feel that most end user type pirates really deserve more than a helping of shame as their punishment. Excessive punishments simply make people indignant and even less likely to respect authority. But is it too late to change the culture of media consumption to allow people to feel shame for their behavior? I dunno..
For inner city pollution saving, they'd be the bomb.
How about the noise pollution from 100 air compressors running in the parking lot?
I'm still waiting for the 100% electrics that you plug in when you get home and/or plug in when you get to work, and the electricity comes from a nice clean nuclear plant. Actually, that's a lie.. I'm waiting for 35g's to get a new subaru sti wagon.. vrroooom. But I can't wait for everybody else to get their electric cars!
Slashdot Mirror
1. Using the faster ram is a feature of the chip
2. XPS is supposed to be high performance line
3. You're obviously a threadshitter or a troll of some kind... how... unique
Does it really use ddr2-800 instead of ddr-1066? Seems like an odd oversight, unless I'm missing something. TFA says "The processor is connected to 4 GB of DDR2-800 memory, which gives theoretical memory bandwidth of 12.8 GB/s".. Anybody know for sure based on that 12.8g/s measurement? The 800 runs at 200x4 while 1066 runs at 266x4. The article doesn't even mention 1066 at all, ie, "it doesn't use 1066 because" or anything.. Actually, I just checked wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddr3 and it seems 12.8 gig is associated with ddr3/1600 ram.. now I'm really confused.
Use FLV like youtube, just don't compress them as much. The question you'll have to face is whether to allow users to skip ahead in the video or they can only watch the portion that has downloaded. If you want users to be able to skip ahead, that will require a streaming server. If you don't mind making users download the whole video to skip to the end, then any old web server will do it with no special add-ons. But yeah, basically just take high quality video and convert it to FLV. The converter program should allow you to specify the quality to use. I like FLV because it is so well supported. All the others seem to have too many gotchas, but damn near anyone can play an FLV as long as they have Flash, and almost everyone has Flash these days. And if you use the simple streaming method I mentioned above, you can host it basically anywhere you want.
I know you Republicans think the Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper, but you know what? The knowledge that Obama understands it is very reassuring to me given the flagrant abuses of the Constitution we've endured in the last 7 years.
QFFT.. I can't wait to have someone in office who believes in the rule of law, and doesn't just say they believe in the rule of law because they make up the law as they go and believe their own opinion to be divinely inspired.
In theory, I tend to feel the same way about it. Out of the entire school year, the creationism portion should take all of about 5 minutes. On the other hand, if someone (who may or may not be a creationist) cares to try to disprove evolution, I say game on. Part of the definition of a scientific theory is that it can be disproven, so if they have a valid scientific point, then make it. If the discussion is evolution, then really teach the whole thing, including any evidence, pro or con. That does not mean introducing the non-scientific theory of Jesus ponies and whatnot.
In practice, the right wing nut jobs would like to get rid of the chapter on evolution completely and REPLACE it with creationism, which is wholly and completely unacceptable.
ColdFusion the language, and Java the language have absolutely zero in common in this context, but nice try. If you don't believe me, go ahead and reply to some job ads for Java programmers, and tell them "no, but I'm great with ColdFusion". However, note that the opposite approach may actually work if it's a big CF shop (if such a thing even exists anymore, sniff).
I don't think Vista *needs* 3gigs to run well, but it certainly helps. I found 1gig to be quite usable except in the occasional intense multitasking situation (like world of warcraft in the background). Popping in the extra 2 gigs definitely solved that problem, but I was running XP on the same machine previously, and while the multitasking was better than vista (1gig on both at this point), it wasn't actually *good* on XP, and multitasking with Vista on 3gigs is better than 1gig on XP. However, with 1gig on Vista, I found general usability and application performance wholly adequate and acceptable for a good 3-4 months before I got the RAM. There was a bit more lag than xp, but nothing I couldn't live with, and it's not like XP had *no* lag, it just had *less* lag.
I have to wonder about people who buy a name brand computer, don't get enough ram, almost certainly have the OS bogged down with preinstalled crapware, and they don't enjoy their Vista experience. Then they do a fresh install of xp, and wonder of wonders if it doesn't run better. Try doing a fresh install of Vista while you're at it and do some real comparisons. You will also likely have the great joy of installing the OS and not having to install a single driver. I will always update the drivers for the video card and any special hardware I've added, but I have found near 100% automatic driver installation with Vista on 10+ machines. Ubuntu usually does too, but Vista wireless kicks Ubuntu wireless's ass.
Regarding TFA, while it is not the epitome of scientific rigor, the "study" does make a point, as far as it goes. Vista is a lot better than general consensus makes it out to be.
I'm pretty much struck fuck dumb by this
I think the actual expletive should have been hyphenated. I don't generally deduct stars for grammar in vulgar statements, but the hyphen would have enhanced the readability. In terms of actual effect, I think the "fuck" lends a nice sense of gravity to the relative dumbness. However, I found the assonance of the repetitive "u" sound rolls off the tongue poorly, with "much struck" being particularly egregious. I'd give it 3/5, but I think it could easily pull a 4/5 with minor tweaks.
I can't wait to read about this in the news. I can just imagine the "no vigilante justice" versus "haha!" thread that would ensue. /haha!
Microsoft needs to quit screwing with the interface of Office 07 and spend some time doing something useful like creating a CD image of WinPE or even a bartpe plugin that includes a scanner for (at least) the major botnet software. Just release a new one every month or two, burn it, reboot, scan. I mean, really, this crap is getting ridiculous. MS just needs to take a bank of 1000 pc's, load xp with no service packs or security and live ip addresses, wait about 20 minutes, and then turn on the sniffers. I don't see how they are not on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit by now.
There's a reason they call it the law of gravity and not the philosophy of gravity.
Well, sure.. back when everyone ran DOS, it was a riot.. now anyone dumb enough to fall for it wouldn't know where to type it in. They'd probably just wind up searching for it on google.
What is known is that it was the humans who scorched the sky.
Go China!
That will work fine, but there are ways to shoot yourself in the foot, and there is an extra step in there at you don't need. But as long as your ghost backup is good, then the worst that could happen is you might need to reapply the image and then do whatever you need to do like defrag or whatever, take another image, and then try again. And for future reference, applying a ghost image to a smaller partition than you took it from will work fine most of the time, and the times it won't work is because of something else.
But like I said you don't need to take an image and then reapply it. The more direct approach is to defrag so that you get a big contiguous block of space at the end of the drive, shrink the Windows partition (Vista can shrink the C: while windows is running, otherwise find a util), and then make a new partition at the end for whatever.
Either way, take a good ghost image first. Ghost is the greatest thing since jarred cheese.
I have one of them there younguns on my network (receptionist), and she managed to install random crapware onto a terminal server on 3 separate occasions. I don't know how she does it, because it's locked down fairly tight, but I'm sure it's from myspace or whatever friendster clone the kids are using these days. Anyway, she's off the terminal server and running a local Linux now. Her manager wanted me to lock her down to where she couldn't do anything, but I felt bad for her, since reception isn't such a stellar job to begin with. Plus, she's kind of wild and not too discreet, so I sometimes get to see some boobies on her screen, heh. Good times, good times. I actually covered for her the first two times and just cleaned up her mess as quick as I could, but on the third one, her manager started getting popups saying such and such dll wouldn't load, and the dll supposedly existed in the receptionists home directory. I couldn't do much about that one..
I think this is getting OT a bit.. as I understand it Phorm runs at the ISP level and then sells the data to content providers. I, for one, am getting really sick of this trend of uppity ISP's trying to get in the racket of playing monkey in the middle with our data. They get their monthly check simply for being a conduit. How about requiring the ISP's in question to call every one of their subscribers and say "we just wanted to inform you that we are going to sniff all of your traffic and sell the data to advertises" and see what kind of response they get.
Is the original FISA expiring, or just Bush's modifications? As I (think I) understand it (but could be mistaken), neither house of congress needs to pass a damned thing. The FISA laws that existed before any of this came up are still in effect, and they work just fine. FBI and police can easily get warrants if they have anything even resembling evidence, however they are subject to a bit of bureaucracy, but I can live with that. As for the wimpy telcos, maybe a few nice fat lawsuits will put the fear of the people into them, and they'll learn to question authority a bit better. It's not like they don't have droves of lawyers for just such an occasion. I'm sure they discussed whether or not they could be subjected to lawsuits, and if they take in the pants now, then the next time the question comes up, they will already know the answer, and they'll ask for a warrant like they should have done this time.
The pre-existing FISA laws maintain a desirable level of what Antonin Scalia (and apparently others) called "calculated inefficiency".
Here's a great quote I found trying to find out more about what Scalia was talking about (different justice, same sentiment):
"In his famous Myers dissent Justice Louis D. *Brandeis said: "The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three department, to save the people from autocracy" (p. 293). This is a classic expression of the eighteenth century hope that freedom could be secured by calculated inefficiency in government. A more modern hope is that freedom would be better served with more efficiency and more democratic accountability. We are still haunted by an ancient riddle: How far can we build up effective government before it topples over into despotism? How much inefficiency can we afford without slipping into disaster?" (bold=mine)
http://www.answers.com/topic/separation-of-powers?cat=biz-fin
I think that really says it all.. the FBI, et al, want unfettered access to basically everything, and there are probably some in the organization who are pushing for it, and their heart really is in the right place, but that's just not good enough. How efficient can they become before it "topples over into despotism"? I'd rather not find out.
Ahh, that's better. Open source doesn't matter much to me as long as there is no real vendor lock-in. My company is fairly married to Microsoft in a lot of annoying ways. I like to occasionally put up a Linux mail server or a random BSD desktop just to mess with people. But truthfully, after using CF for a while, PHP feels horribly archaic and verbose. It just seems to take so much effort to do the littlest things. On the other hand, CF basically just extends HTML in logical and useful ways. But then it keeps getting less and less market share, so I imagine Adobe will feel obligated to cut the cord eventually. Hopefully at least the language will live on. At least there's always MySpace =]
Lol, there is no vendor lock-in with coldfusion. It runs on basically anything, can connect to any database, and there are at least two major vendors for the runtime. Heck, it will even run sourceless as a compiled native .net or j2ee app. NewAtlanta even has a free version (free for commercial use, but with distribution limitations). Hosting shouldn't cost more than any other hosting. Getting a programmer can take a while, but we're out there. It is, by far, my favorite web language, and the new version is really nice. Other languages are fine too, but CF is my favorite. I'm sorry you two don't get along. :|
She's young. She was a local florida politician.. County something or other? I forget, but anyway, she's been a total biatch for as long as I can remember. I was hoping she wouldn't get elected senator to shut her up, but since she won, she has actually been well out of the news mostly, so I'm glad I don't have to hear her name every day anymore, but it sucks that she basically got promoted. But yeah, seriously, she's pretty young, so I'm sure she has a long and promising career of being a nosy, pushy, self-righteous, know-it-all c00nt for many years to come.
Wikipedia: "Storms had an eight-year tenure on the Hillsborough County Commission (1998-2006), for which she is well known, and pushed a number of controversial issues. These issues included a fight against establishing the proposed Florida A&M University School of Law in Tampa, a campaign in favor of the sterilization of men and women convicted of child abuse, eliminating county-appropriated money for Planned Parenthood, and perhaps most publicized, her crusade for the county to officially abstain from recognizing gay and lesbian events held inside county lines, which was passed in June 2005 despite vocal opposition, most notably from openly gay topless dance club proprietor Joe Redner. She is also recognized by her quick tongue and often scathing sarcastic remarks, many of which she does not retract, stating "I am not apologizing for who I am."
I would like to know how the information was presented to the jury and whether or not the court did one of those things something like "the patent is not on trial here. the jury must assume the patent is valid. you can only use information A,B,C to make your decision" etc. I just want a clear and concise synopsis of how they got X people to decide unanimously in BB's favor. I can't help but imagine myself in the jury box, and I don't know what they could possibly say to me to go along with that unless there is way more to the story or more substance to the claim. But from skimming the previous slashdot threads on the BB patents, I don't see anything that leads me to believe there may be any real substance to the claim. So what was the jury's thinking exactly? Anyone have any insights?
They should try a new line of PSA's. It starts with some oldish teens or young adults at a house part.. the techno is bumpin, everybody's having a good time.. so a suave guy goes up to a girl and says "Hey have you heard the new ASDF album?" She smiles and says "No, why you have it?" And he say yes and pulls out a silver cd with ASDF written in crappy handwritten sharpie.. So she scoffs and rolls her eyes in disgust. Then suave guy number 2 strolls up and holds up the store bought copy, and they lock arms and walk away. There is not enough public distaste for piracy, and there should be, because it's kind of scummy. I know I feel a tinge of guilt from using pirated materials if I know I would have paid for it otherwise. On the other hand, it's hard to feel guilty about "stealing" from a bunch of uber dickheads. In the end, the only thing that will stop piracy or at least seriously reduce it is the same thing that has kept humans in line for all these years: shame. And right now, too many people are too ignorant to realize they should be utterly ashamed of their behavior.
But the difference would manifest something like: suppose you have a teenage son, you go into his room and see him sliding a burned cd into his deck. The current authoritarian method would be that you beat him with a bat and MAKE him sorry. The shame version would be to say "son, you have a job, but you waste your money.. if you wanted this album you should have saved up for it.. here, take your pirated cd back and play it, but I hope every time you listen to it you remember how disappointed I am right now".. IMHO, the former will backfire by making the lad A) pissed off, and B) more careful next time. But the latter has at least a chance to make a difference in a way that really matters. Do we really want to settle for just scaring people into not being dicks at every turn, or do we want to reach a little higher? Knuckle cracking is artificial. The real deal comes down to pride versus shame.
I realize that the above is a tad ethereal and maybe simplistic, but all generalizations are false anyway. The point is that since no real tangible harm has been done, I don't feel that most end user type pirates really deserve more than a helping of shame as their punishment. Excessive punishments simply make people indignant and even less likely to respect authority. But is it too late to change the culture of media consumption to allow people to feel shame for their behavior? I dunno..
Thank you, I accept. =]
YOU ALL SAW HIM INVITE ME!
And don't try any of that restraining order stuff like last time!
For inner city pollution saving, they'd be the bomb.
How about the noise pollution from 100 air compressors running in the parking lot?
I'm still waiting for the 100% electrics that you plug in when you get home and/or plug in when you get to work, and the electricity comes from a nice clean nuclear plant. Actually, that's a lie.. I'm waiting for 35g's to get a new subaru sti wagon.. vrroooom. But I can't wait for everybody else to get their electric cars!
Yeah, you all know what happened there.