If you think that music players are more important than computers, how can a company use its dominance of music players to expand into other markets? Has Apple even been able to use its dominance of online music distribution to become dominant in the closely related online movie distribution?
I agree that this can be a good initiative if done properly. As long as the police do not imply that it is criminal to leave your wireless AP unsecured and do this in a friendly, "Just wanted to be sure you were aware" way. People who knowingly leave their wireless unsecured should be fine (and talking with them may leave the police better informed about technology issues). People who unwittingly leave their wireless unsecured are at significant risk as there is a good chance that they have left their computers open to being easily hacked through that open access.
The upside of this, if properly executed) is that it will make the police more aware of the fact that not everyone is a criminal. One of the problems I have observed with police officers is that they become conditioned to believe that everyone they interact with is breaking the law, since much of the time the only people they actually interact with are in fact breaking the law.
Really, and that affects me how?
Microsoft has the dominant OS. They used that dominance to become dominant in office productivity software and web browsing software (to name a few).
How can Apple use their dominance in online music distribution to leverage themselves into dominance in other areas? If they can, they will.
The MPAA is fighting to make sure the artists and copyright holders get what they are owed? Did they forget or is it just a bunch of BS and you should not feel bad about piracy and ignore them?
When they say "artists" they mean their accountants.
Give your dollars to companies that are demonstrably "less bad" whenever possible.
I do. Apple is less bad than Microsoft, for some definition of "bad" you never imagined. Now go away and stop telling me what to think.
Apple is only "less bad" than Microsoft insofar as they do not have the dominant position to be as bad as Microsoft. I would say that Apple is not less bad than Microsoft, the only reason it appears to you to be is because it does not have the market position to do some of the things Microsoft does. If Apple was in a position to act as badly as Microsoft, they would.
Maybe you're feeling a little small because your entire country probably fits within a couple American states?
What European state would need more than one American state to fit inside? The problem is that most Europeans identify themselves as French, or German, or Belgian, etc. The same thing for Americans would be identifying oneself as Texan, or Californian, or New Yorker.
You do realize that a Baylor University study indicated that those with conservative Christian beliefs are less "credulous" than the general population ( http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=52815 ). They considered belief in the following to represent credulous thinking: dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses, communicating with the dead and astrology (Ch. 15, "Credulity: Who Believes in Bigfoot").
Except that if Illinois is like many states, the fact that your photograph is on your license doesn't do the DMV any good when you have lost your license. Most states don't have your photograph on file. They send you a renewal form. You sign it and send it back along with the fee for renewal. They send you a form that you take to the appropriate location where your picture is taken and a license is printed with your picture on it. This picture never enters the state's database.
Your point about competition is valid and important to keep in front of the public.
While there is significant truth and relevance to your argument with the OP point, the best way to accomplish your goals is to start with the point he makes. Educate the public with the fact that ISP's such as Rogers, Comcast, Verizon, etc are setting up systems to limit services that compete with services they provide. It would be fairly easy to get the public behind a law that makes it illegal for an ISP to put limits on VOIP from other providers that doesn't effect their VOIP service. Once you have won that battle, you start to point out how ISP's are using legal methods to stop other services that compete with products they sell from even coming into being. Use incrementalism to gradually educate the public and change the laws.
Because "IP' is two letters while "copyrighted works" is 16 letters. I am lazy and in the context of the discussion I was having, it should have been clear what I was referring to, as it apparently was, since you understood it well enough to suggest that I use "copyrighted works" in place of "IP".
Which brings us back to the original post I replied to. The reason the article ignores Apple is because Apple is not competing in the space that Google is (theoretically) about to compete with Microsoft in.
Sorry, I didn't see the link. I have a habit of ignoring links at the end of comments because so many people put spurious links there. In your case, I should have looked closer because while it is not where I would have put the link if I was making that comment, it was a perfectly appropriate place for it.
That being said, the article bases the "90% piracy rate" on the statement of the game's creator. I'm not convinced it is that high. You're anecdotal evidence puts the piracy rate at 66%. The two people I know who have the full game, both paid for it. This gives a piracy rate between us of 40% (You paid for a copy and have two friends who pirated it, I know two people who bought the full copy and none who pirated it). I would bet that the World of Goo creator was overstating the percentage of piracy.
I tried World of Goo. I never completed the free demo they distributed, so I never bothered to pay for the full version. To me, World of Goo was a really cool game that wasn't worth anything. On the other hand, I introduced a friend of mine to the World of Goo demo and he promptly paid for the download, so YMMV.
My guess would be that the people who pirated it and never bought it, played it for a couple of hours and then lost interest.
I would like to know how you know that World of Goo had a 90% rate of piracy.
Actually from many things I have seen, Mars would actually be easier to terraform, but I have always thought that Venus had more long term potential. A couple of years ago I saw a suggestion of a system to terraform Mars that is within our current technological capability. The article ran all of the numbers and it would work. The basic idea was that you find an ice asteroid or two and crash them into Mars. This would provide the missing water and help increase the density of the atmosphere (it has been long enough that I don't remember if the author suggested finding an asteroid with frozen gases such as nitrogen as well or not). The increased water and atmospheric density would create a greenhouse effect increasing the ambient temperature. I wish I could remember who the author was. It may have been Larry Niven, but I'm not sure.
No, thanks to the software companies who really think that a significant number of the people who pirated the game will buy it now. As I said in another post, there are studies showing that people who pirate IP buy more IP than the general populace (by a very large number). I believe that many people who would have bought the game (some of whom pirated it first to try it out), won't buy it at all now.
"Yes, a lot of copies will be pirated, but a lot of times, pirated copies lead to bought copies."
And a lot of times, it doesn't. Pretty risky market to get into when you "might" be able to do better then a 90% piracy rate.
I have seen several studies indicating that people who pirate IP, also buy more IP. On the other hand, unless you have some evidence suggesting otherwise, I believe that if you have a 90% piracy rate, it is because your software sucks and no one who has tried it thinks it is worth any money.
Tying a game to its maker essentially results in a better rental version. And I refuse to pay premium for renting a game.
And that is what this is really about. Content Producers (music, movie, and software publishers) don't want to sell you content any longer, they want to rent it to you. The problem with selling content is that you have to keep coming up with new content in order to ensure a revenue stream. If I can get you to pay me a rental fee (that's not what they call it), I can generate an ongoing revenue stream off of one killer product.
" It also begs the question as to all the negative press about a yet to be delivered platform and the total silence regarding Apples offerings.
When did Apple release an OS I could install on my computer? I thought you had to buy an Apple computer to use the Apple OS (legally).
How many people ever install an operating system? Seriously? Outside of the Slashdot crowd, I mean. Most people use the OS that came preinstalled, and they'll choose a computer based on which OS that is.
OK, when did Apple start selling an OS that Dell (or HP) could install on computers that they manufacture and sell?
And it was liberals who created racist cartoons of Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas. Nothing you can say can change the fact that liberals have always been racists and always will be. If a minority stops drinking the kool-aid and starts thinking for themselves, they will be belittled by liberals at every turn.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just said that she always thought that Roe v Wade was about not having growth in "populations that we don't want to have too many of."
When did Robert Byrd change parties? How about Bill clinton's mentor (William J Fulbright)? Compare the racial make up of George W. Bush's Cabinet to that of Bill Clinton.
Democrats assert that Republicans are racist, but it was Senate Democrats who wrote memos saying that Miguel Estrada must at all costs be kept off of the DC Circuit Court because he was Hispanic. It is Democrats who believe that minorities can only succeed if the government favors them.
You can't make it so easy for anyone to lock out someone else's account.
Why not? If you have a problem with legitimate users using someone else' user ID to do an incorrect login to lock that user out, you have a different problem to solve...one that probably involves firing people. If you are talking about situations where the users aren't employees, how does User A know what User B's login ID is?
Funny you bring up LBJ, because he's the one who ejected the racists from the party. Their home is now with the conservatives.
You mean people like Al Gore's father? Or Bill Clinton's mentor (J. William Fulbright)? So LBJ kicked these guys out of the Democratic Party? And LBJ kicked Ernest "Confederate Flag" Hollings out of the party? Really? You might want to check your history a little closer.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think that music players are more important than computers, how can a company use its dominance of music players to expand into other markets? Has Apple even been able to use its dominance of online music distribution to become dominant in the closely related online movie distribution?
I agree that this can be a good initiative if done properly. As long as the police do not imply that it is criminal to leave your wireless AP unsecured and do this in a friendly, "Just wanted to be sure you were aware" way. People who knowingly leave their wireless unsecured should be fine (and talking with them may leave the police better informed about technology issues). People who unwittingly leave their wireless unsecured are at significant risk as there is a good chance that they have left their computers open to being easily hacked through that open access.
The upside of this, if properly executed) is that it will make the police more aware of the fact that not everyone is a criminal. One of the problems I have observed with police officers is that they become conditioned to believe that everyone they interact with is breaking the law, since much of the time the only people they actually interact with are in fact breaking the law.
Really, and that affects me how?
Microsoft has the dominant OS. They used that dominance to become dominant in office productivity software and web browsing software (to name a few).
How can Apple use their dominance in online music distribution to leverage themselves into dominance in other areas? If they can, they will.
The MPAA is fighting to make sure the artists and copyright holders get what they are owed? Did they forget or is it just a bunch of BS and you should not feel bad about piracy and ignore them?
When they say "artists" they mean their accountants.
Give your dollars to companies that are demonstrably "less bad" whenever possible.
I do. Apple is less bad than Microsoft, for some definition of "bad" you never imagined. Now go away and stop telling me what to think.
Apple is only "less bad" than Microsoft insofar as they do not have the dominant position to be as bad as Microsoft. I would say that Apple is not less bad than Microsoft, the only reason it appears to you to be is because it does not have the market position to do some of the things Microsoft does. If Apple was in a position to act as badly as Microsoft, they would.
Maybe you're feeling a little small because your entire country probably fits within a couple American states?
What European state would need more than one American state to fit inside? The problem is that most Europeans identify themselves as French, or German, or Belgian, etc. The same thing for Americans would be identifying oneself as Texan, or Californian, or New Yorker.
You do realize that a Baylor University study indicated that those with conservative Christian beliefs are less "credulous" than the general population ( http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=52815 ). They considered belief in the following to represent credulous thinking: dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses, communicating with the dead and astrology (Ch. 15, "Credulity: Who Believes in Bigfoot").
Except that if Illinois is like many states, the fact that your photograph is on your license doesn't do the DMV any good when you have lost your license. Most states don't have your photograph on file. They send you a renewal form. You sign it and send it back along with the fee for renewal. They send you a form that you take to the appropriate location where your picture is taken and a license is printed with your picture on it. This picture never enters the state's database.
Your point about competition is valid and important to keep in front of the public.
While there is significant truth and relevance to your argument with the OP point, the best way to accomplish your goals is to start with the point he makes. Educate the public with the fact that ISP's such as Rogers, Comcast, Verizon, etc are setting up systems to limit services that compete with services they provide. It would be fairly easy to get the public behind a law that makes it illegal for an ISP to put limits on VOIP from other providers that doesn't effect their VOIP service. Once you have won that battle, you start to point out how ISP's are using legal methods to stop other services that compete with products they sell from even coming into being. Use incrementalism to gradually educate the public and change the laws.
That's nice. Get off my lawn.
Because "IP' is two letters while "copyrighted works" is 16 letters. I am lazy and in the context of the discussion I was having, it should have been clear what I was referring to, as it apparently was, since you understood it well enough to suggest that I use "copyrighted works" in place of "IP".
the Rorshach ink blots. Oops, it seems I have exposed them to the public, I guess the whole debate is moot now.
No, only on slashdot, that's not a large enough group to count (although it may be over-represented among those who see psychologists).
Which brings us back to the original post I replied to. The reason the article ignores Apple is because Apple is not competing in the space that Google is (theoretically) about to compete with Microsoft in.
Sorry, I didn't see the link. I have a habit of ignoring links at the end of comments because so many people put spurious links there. In your case, I should have looked closer because while it is not where I would have put the link if I was making that comment, it was a perfectly appropriate place for it.
That being said, the article bases the "90% piracy rate" on the statement of the game's creator. I'm not convinced it is that high. You're anecdotal evidence puts the piracy rate at 66%. The two people I know who have the full game, both paid for it. This gives a piracy rate between us of 40% (You paid for a copy and have two friends who pirated it, I know two people who bought the full copy and none who pirated it). I would bet that the World of Goo creator was overstating the percentage of piracy.
I tried World of Goo. I never completed the free demo they distributed, so I never bothered to pay for the full version. To me, World of Goo was a really cool game that wasn't worth anything. On the other hand, I introduced a friend of mine to the World of Goo demo and he promptly paid for the download, so YMMV.
My guess would be that the people who pirated it and never bought it, played it for a couple of hours and then lost interest.
I would like to know how you know that World of Goo had a 90% rate of piracy.
Actually from many things I have seen, Mars would actually be easier to terraform, but I have always thought that Venus had more long term potential. A couple of years ago I saw a suggestion of a system to terraform Mars that is within our current technological capability. The article ran all of the numbers and it would work. The basic idea was that you find an ice asteroid or two and crash them into Mars. This would provide the missing water and help increase the density of the atmosphere (it has been long enough that I don't remember if the author suggested finding an asteroid with frozen gases such as nitrogen as well or not). The increased water and atmospheric density would create a greenhouse effect increasing the ambient temperature. I wish I could remember who the author was. It may have been Larry Niven, but I'm not sure.
No, thanks to the software companies who really think that a significant number of the people who pirated the game will buy it now. As I said in another post, there are studies showing that people who pirate IP buy more IP than the general populace (by a very large number). I believe that many people who would have bought the game (some of whom pirated it first to try it out), won't buy it at all now.
"Yes, a lot of copies will be pirated, but a lot of times, pirated copies lead to bought copies."
And a lot of times, it doesn't. Pretty risky market to get into when you "might" be able to do better then a 90% piracy rate.
I have seen several studies indicating that people who pirate IP, also buy more IP. On the other hand, unless you have some evidence suggesting otherwise, I believe that if you have a 90% piracy rate, it is because your software sucks and no one who has tried it thinks it is worth any money.
Tying a game to its maker essentially results in a better rental version. And I refuse to pay premium for renting a game.
And that is what this is really about. Content Producers (music, movie, and software publishers) don't want to sell you content any longer, they want to rent it to you. The problem with selling content is that you have to keep coming up with new content in order to ensure a revenue stream. If I can get you to pay me a rental fee (that's not what they call it), I can generate an ongoing revenue stream off of one killer product.
" It also begs the question as to all the negative press about a yet to be delivered platform and the total silence regarding Apples offerings.
When did Apple release an OS I could install on my computer? I thought you had to buy an Apple computer to use the Apple OS (legally).
How many people ever install an operating system? Seriously? Outside of the Slashdot crowd, I mean. Most people use the OS that came preinstalled, and they'll choose a computer based on which OS that is.
OK, when did Apple start selling an OS that Dell (or HP) could install on computers that they manufacture and sell?
And it was liberals who created racist cartoons of Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas. Nothing you can say can change the fact that liberals have always been racists and always will be. If a minority stops drinking the kool-aid and starts thinking for themselves, they will be belittled by liberals at every turn.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just said that she always thought that Roe v Wade was about not having growth in "populations that we don't want to have too many of."
When did Robert Byrd change parties? How about Bill clinton's mentor (William J Fulbright)? Compare the racial make up of George W. Bush's Cabinet to that of Bill Clinton.
Democrats assert that Republicans are racist, but it was Senate Democrats who wrote memos saying that Miguel Estrada must at all costs be kept off of the DC Circuit Court because he was Hispanic. It is Democrats who believe that minorities can only succeed if the government favors them.
did someone blame anything and everything on bush? i must have missed that comment.
You did blame Enron on Bush at least by implication, so his accusation is spot on.
You can't make it so easy for anyone to lock out someone else's account.
Why not? If you have a problem with legitimate users using someone else' user ID to do an incorrect login to lock that user out, you have a different problem to solve...one that probably involves firing people. If you are talking about situations where the users aren't employees, how does User A know what User B's login ID is?
Funny you bring up LBJ, because he's the one who ejected the racists from the party. Their home is now with the conservatives.
You mean people like Al Gore's father? Or Bill Clinton's mentor (J. William Fulbright)? So LBJ kicked these guys out of the Democratic Party? And LBJ kicked Ernest "Confederate Flag" Hollings out of the party? Really? You might want to check your history a little closer.