Me neither, but if the record companies are doing little more than offering loans...
isn't taking over the copyright and taking so much of the profit incredibly usurious? (excessive interest rate)
If all or even a primary part of the record companies dealings is to loan money, shouldn't they be governed by the same laws that apply to bank loans?
I assume the media companies must have some special touch to help you get advertising for that money they "loan" you. And i guess it's also a fairly risky business, considering their supposed failure rates on investments on new artists. But I wonder if that's not almost solely due to bad decisions on which artists to push, and also going overboard pushing the artists...
"Transgaming directly competes with the few companies left that do native ports."
That's plain BS. Maybe Win4L runs MS Word fine, but I haven't played a single game under WineX that doesn't have a 30+ percent performance hit. Not to mention numerous stability errors and difficulties in configuration. No one is going to buy WineX over an out-of-the-box solution.
Furthermore, no one has the choice. That's why WineX was created in the first place.
"They provide forums for games like, Unreal tournamnet, Return to castle wolfenstien Majesty, and many many others which have native ports."
Umm...and this competes, how? In these forums most questions are given a response of "dumbass, use the native version". Meanwhile the linux version of these games are FREE. IE: NOT COMPETING. People already paid the money for these games. If they're brain damaged enough to run the windows version under Wine, then more power to em.
I'm sure next you're going to be telling us that Microsoft would have made Office for Linux, but didn't because it runs under Wine...
Does the label really do nothing more than provide $$ in advance (ie: an EXTRAORDINARILY high interest loan) and provide some of the contacts (advertising means, etc.) for the artist to spend the advance on?
Or now that all the radio stations and TV stations are owned by the same companies that own record labels, is it hard/impossible for an artist to get a decent deal on advertising without the media conglomerate's support?
a) If you were there, and no one else was making sense, isn't the best thing to try to fix things from the inside? There are plenty of people (unsuccessfully) trying to talk reason to the RIAA from the outside already.
b) If she's covering ass so she can play both sides as a journalist, that sounds good to me. How much have we heard both sides of piracy so far?
I've never once heard a hint of sarcasm when "journalists" read the RIAA's statistics on how bad they're doing or how many gazillions of dollars piracy has cost them.
My first fear when reading this article was "great, as if the news media wasn't biased enough already against file sharing". I was quite surprised to hear someone complaining that she would be taking our side in the news media.
Re:Check out transgaming - was "No 3D?"
on
Win4Lin 5.0 Reviewed
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Some trolls have been astroturfing saying that emulation is a bad idea and will prevent anything from ever going native.
This would be bad because emulation is almost universally slower and more buggy.
I think that proves it right there - emulation will create a market willing to buy the faster and less buggy linux version. WineX will tide us over only until our numbers are large enough to demand native linux apps.
Besides, emulation is important for legacy applications+games. I really don't think Blizzard is going to go back and make Warcraft2 for linux, but I got to play through it again on linux using Wine.
Isn't depression (for instance) a chemical imbalance whether your dog just died or you are diagnosed with depression?
Doesn't every mood and change in our body manifest itself as a chemical "imbalance"?
And couldn't an (slight evolutionary) increase in intelligence possibly also manifest itself as a chemical imbalance?
I don't believe this is the truth, just a possibility. I was in the "gifted" classes in school, and most of my friends were too. We all have troubles paying attention in class, but manage to get good grades anyway.
I guess it would be reasonable for ADD and "gifted"ness to share the symptom of being bored in school without actually being the same affliction/blessing.
It's also ridiculous because 4$ per CD-R? To presume that every CD-R, or anywhere near that, is being used to "pirate" music, not to backup legally owned music, backup other data files, create mixes, to use your mp3-cd player, get a file from one computer to another (what the hell files fit on a 1.4mb floppy disk these days?), and on and on.
This presumption of guilt and preemptive punishment is absurd.
LOL! Your links are so ridiculous and unresearched as to be little more than a joke.
"Why would simple organisms, which can reproduce all by themselves, evolve into creatures that need a mate? What is the advantage that sexual reproduction gives that results in a victory in the struggle for survival?"
Any biology 101 class covers this. Vegetative reproduction is useful for quickly reproducing, but leaves an organism unable to adapt (evolve) to its surroundings.
In mating the genes from two different organisms are combined in a somewhat random manner, producing an individual with some characteristic from the "father", some from the "mother". Like you probably have "your father's eyes" and "your mother's nose".
Many(most?) plants can reproduce both asexually and sexually.
Mammals are highly evolved, probably in large part due to being forced to mate to reproduce. Every time we mammals have a baby, it's another shot at being better adapted to our environment.
If you could sprout a baby off your arm, your offspring would never get any smarter than you were. And considering your post, the human race would be very doomed.
Yeah, dissecting a frog in biology class is also desensitizing. It doesn't make you run around slaughtering frogs though, or any less mad when you see some jackass kill one for no reason.
I guess that explains why in this day of cable television and the internet teenage violence is at an ALL TIME LOW.
Get real. If violent movies and video games had the effect you suggest I would be a crazed violent maniac. As a matter of reality, i've never even been in a fight.
People (yes, even children) have been violent for as long as we have historical records. Why, when violence has dropped severely, are people so desperate to blame modern inventions for the age-old instincts of man?
The other thing that annoys me, and other posters have mentioned this, is the complete and utter lack of CONTEXT in complaining about violence. GTA3 doesn't fit this, but most video games and television violence involves self defense, the military, or officers of the law. Or, of course, the lone soldier saving the world from an invading alien race. Almost every game also punishes the player for shooting innocent bystanders. Likewise on television they make a big crying fuss over any innocent who gets hurt or killed.
I could at least understand these whinings if the violence on telvision was unprovoked and went unpunished, but it rarely if ever is.
bullshit. If everyone filed, no one would have gotten any money. And regardless, the settlement is FAR lower than the money they ripped us off for up to now, let alone how much they'll continue ripping us off in the future.
The claim they weren't guilty, so there is no indication *whatsoever* that they're going to stop doing anything. They never did anything wrong in the first place. *wink wink*. CDs will continue to cost $20+ anywhere besides Wal-mart and Best Buy. Which is what they were being sued for in the first place.
I refuses to partake in the settlement. It's ridiculous how little they were offering to pay after so many years of price fixing. I want to see them lower prices, not give me a quarter of what i've had to pay because of their illegal practices...
I've never heard any teens and mid twenties complain about the history and foundations of the USA. I think most appreciate the history (remember, teens have heard the history and brilliance of our founding fathers more recently than their elders).
What they don't appreciate is, like you say, the current state of some things, like the corruption of state officials, and the Bush administrations failure to stand up to the standards of our forfathers, for instance rallying against freedom of religion (one nation under god), against the 5th amendment right to due process (Patriot act), against privacy, against anyone not rich (voodoo economics), against freedom of speech (Bush trying to shut down websites critical of him), and PRO-dictatorship (the loss of democracy and freedom of speech/press in the Iraq war - incidentally, while provoked in part by Bush's comments, primarily enacted by those who claim to be patriotic Americans).
The problem isn't teens and mid-twenties, it's the older people who don't remember how important the foundations of this country are. They try to overthrow seperation of church and state (many of whom claim our country is founded on christian principles, despite our founding fathers in reality being atheists and deists), hurl insults at anyone questioning the government (would they prefer a dictatorship over democracy? how very patriotic!), and generally display apathy and denial in response to our country's problems in the guise of patriotism.
The problem isn't activists and similar people who are trying to better our country - it's the "patriotic" people who stand in the way of progress preferring to sit on the couch watching American Idol and Joe Millionaire.
What? Sports games aren't violent? Football, boxing, wrestling, golf...these depraved games have grown men beating each other up in REAL LIFE, for fun!
And having a kid defend the earth from invading aliens in an imaginary game is bad?
I guess we should have him go beat up the kid next door...much better to have him take out his anger on humans than on pixels...
Further more, I'd say there really is evidence of a connection between sports and violent kids. The jocks also being the bullies isn't just a stereotype...the football players and wrestlers at my school were the guys who took out their anger on underclassmen.
I can't claim it's a causal link...maybe they got into football/wrestling because they already liked to beat people up. But there is DEFINITELY a much stronger link there than there is for violent video games.
TV: Adult Swim, Simpsons, That 70s Sow. That's all I ever watch. I can't even "veg" in front of the TV anymore because the shows are so bad, and such a huge percentage of what's on TV is commercials.
Radio: I don't touch it anymore. If I'm in the car it's tapes or mp3-cd player. There are no good radio stations in my area, plain and simple. As my mom complained, the news came on on one station, and it was stupid, so she changed the station...sure enough, the 3 other stations she listened to were all airing the *exact* same news program.
I can't believe he went on to make Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Those were freakin AWFUL.
Re:CD sales and concert attendance both down
on
RIAA vs The Economy
·
· Score: 1
I've talked to a record store owner about this, and the reason isn't that CDs aren't selling, it's that the store makes more profit on the other items. From what the owner stated, this is essentially because the store gets the CDs for so much, that they can't raise the price much and still sell the CD.
You know those 19-23$ prices for a single 11-song CD? The store is only getting a very small portion of that.
Apparently on items like DVDs and action figures they make much more profit per item.
Yeah, TV is down the shitter. Now they even have obnoxious pop-up ads too, taking up as much as 1/5th of the screen when you're trying to watch a show. Plus the full-screen ads seem to be on more than the movie/show itself, especially towards the end of a movie (when it's the most distracting). And what about the credits? They squish the credits into a TINY seciton of the screen, speed them up, and show ads instead. Why even pretend to show the credits if it's impossible to read them?
You make an important mistake in presuming that corporations have a list of unalienable rights. Are you aware the corporations also (gasp!) can't vote? Well, not officially anyway, although they currently hold more voting power than the people anyway...
So who are we to say that a corporate entity should be destroyed? We're the *people*. You know, the ones who are supposed to be making the laws...
We've always been able to "destroy someone's livelyhood because we don't agree with it". That's why laws exist at all. Of course the goal isn't "destroying someone's livelihood" as you slant it, but to promote *everyone*'s livelihood. If that comes at the cost of a few monopoly-loving capitalists, then thank god.
I think you're flat-out wrong. Motive (and results) are very important.
If a burglar drops his gun, and you pick it up and shoot the burglar, that is a good (and usually legal) thing. If you pick up the gun and shoot the bank teller, you're gonna fry. That should be obvious.
Using an exploit to remove the exploit is a pretty good idea. Of course it should be tested beforehand, and shouldn't do anything risky (like deleting infected files). In this case they said all it does is remove the registry keys that Fizzer adds. That isn't a very risky thing to do, and I'm sure they still tested it beforehand.
What they did is perfectly legal and a very good idea for everyone involved. This isn't at all similar to the RIAA using an exploit to delete your files, or Microsoft using their own program to subvert security on your computer.
The news.com article makes me hopeful that this judge will understand that the DMCA effectively destroys fair use.
She asks questions like whether the DMCA prevents copyrighted works from *ever* entering the public domain, which it, of course, does.
She also brings up film reviewers who want to use movie clips (or stills) in their reviews. The DMCA makes this illegal (or at the very least, much much harder).
She doesn't bring up the issue of backups, or compression, which I think are also important. We have a right to make backup copies. We also have the right to medium-shift and compress our media. As with mp3s and Divx, this allows us to fit many more songs or movies on our portable devices (mp3-cd players, iPod, laptop) than would otherwise be possible.
I did a presentation in a class about the DMCA, and brought up the stack of CDs that could fit on a single mp3-cd.
Compression, medium-shifting(Tivo!), backups, reviewing, satire, entry into the public domain...
Fair use and the public domain are history if judges don't overturn the DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
Me neither, but if the record companies are doing little more than offering loans...
isn't taking over the copyright and taking so much of the profit incredibly usurious? (excessive interest rate)
If all or even a primary part of the record companies dealings is to loan money, shouldn't they be governed by the same laws that apply to bank loans?
I assume the media companies must have some special touch to help you get advertising for that money they "loan" you. And i guess it's also a fairly risky business, considering their supposed failure rates on investments on new artists. But I wonder if that's not almost solely due to bad decisions on which artists to push, and also going overboard pushing the artists...
"Transgaming directly competes with the few companies left that do native ports."
That's plain BS. Maybe Win4L runs MS Word fine, but I haven't played a single game under WineX that doesn't have a 30+ percent performance hit. Not to mention numerous stability errors and difficulties in configuration. No one is going to buy WineX over an out-of-the-box solution.
Furthermore, no one has the choice. That's why WineX was created in the first place.
"They provide forums for games like, Unreal tournamnet, Return to castle wolfenstien Majesty, and many many others which have native ports."
Umm...and this competes, how? In these forums most questions are given a response of "dumbass, use the native version". Meanwhile the linux version of these games are FREE. IE: NOT COMPETING. People already paid the money for these games. If they're brain damaged enough to run the windows version under Wine, then more power to em.
I'm sure next you're going to be telling us that Microsoft would have made Office for Linux, but didn't because it runs under Wine...
Quite an insightful comment.
Honestly, what has Microsoft Word added in the past 5, even 10 years? New file formats to force upgrades is the only thing i've noticed.
And so people are forced to punk down another 100-500$ to keep using the same program. Incredible.
No monopoly abuse here, no sirree
What you're saying makes good sense, but I didn't get that from the AC.
And yea, that Fox News line makes me laugh every time.
"Fox News, fair and balanced. Up next, Hillary Clinton and Harry Potter, which is more evil?"
Does the label really do nothing more than provide $$ in advance (ie: an EXTRAORDINARILY high interest loan) and provide some of the contacts (advertising means, etc.) for the artist to spend the advance on?
Or now that all the radio stations and TV stations are owned by the same companies that own record labels, is it hard/impossible for an artist to get a decent deal on advertising without the media conglomerate's support?
Hm. Well,
a) If you were there, and no one else was making sense, isn't the best thing to try to fix things from the inside? There are plenty of people (unsuccessfully) trying to talk reason to the RIAA from the outside already.
b) If she's covering ass so she can play both sides as a journalist, that sounds good to me. How much have we heard both sides of piracy so far?
I've never once heard a hint of sarcasm when "journalists" read the RIAA's statistics on how bad they're doing or how many gazillions of dollars piracy has cost them.
My first fear when reading this article was "great, as if the news media wasn't biased enough already against file sharing". I was quite surprised to hear someone complaining that she would be taking our side in the news media.
Some trolls have been astroturfing saying that emulation is a bad idea and will prevent anything from ever going native.
This would be bad because emulation is almost universally slower and more buggy.
I think that proves it right there - emulation will create a market willing to buy the faster and less buggy linux version. WineX will tide us over only until our numbers are large enough to demand native linux apps.
Besides, emulation is important for legacy applications+games. I really don't think Blizzard is going to go back and make Warcraft2 for linux, but I got to play through it again on linux using Wine.
Just curious about this chemical imbalance thing.
Isn't depression (for instance) a chemical imbalance whether your dog just died or you are diagnosed with depression?
Doesn't every mood and change in our body manifest itself as a chemical "imbalance"?
And couldn't an (slight evolutionary) increase in intelligence possibly also manifest itself as a chemical imbalance?
I don't believe this is the truth, just a possibility. I was in the "gifted" classes in school, and most of my friends were too. We all have troubles paying attention in class, but manage to get good grades anyway.
I guess it would be reasonable for ADD and "gifted"ness to share the symptom of being bored in school without actually being the same affliction/blessing.
It's also ridiculous because 4$ per CD-R? To presume that every CD-R, or anywhere near that, is being used to "pirate" music, not to backup legally owned music, backup other data files, create mixes, to use your mp3-cd player, get a file from one computer to another (what the hell files fit on a 1.4mb floppy disk these days?), and on and on.
This presumption of guilt and preemptive punishment is absurd.
LOL! Your links are so ridiculous and unresearched as to be little more than a joke.
"Why would simple organisms, which can reproduce all by themselves, evolve into creatures that need a mate? What is the advantage that sexual reproduction gives that results in a victory in the struggle for survival?"
Any biology 101 class covers this. Vegetative reproduction is useful for quickly reproducing, but leaves an organism unable to adapt (evolve) to its surroundings.
In mating the genes from two different organisms are combined in a somewhat random manner, producing an individual with some characteristic from the "father", some from the "mother". Like you probably have "your father's eyes" and "your mother's nose".
Many(most?) plants can reproduce both asexually and sexually.
Mammals are highly evolved, probably in large part due to being forced to mate to reproduce. Every time we mammals have a baby, it's another shot at being better adapted to our environment.
If you could sprout a baby off your arm, your offspring would never get any smarter than you were. And considering your post, the human race would be very doomed.
Yeah, dissecting a frog in biology class is also desensitizing. It doesn't make you run around slaughtering frogs though, or any less mad when you see some jackass kill one for no reason.
Ohhh, so there *is* a link!
I guess that explains why in this day of cable television and the internet teenage violence is at an ALL TIME LOW.
Get real. If violent movies and video games had the effect you suggest I would be a crazed violent maniac. As a matter of reality, i've never even been in a fight.
People (yes, even children) have been violent for as long as we have historical records. Why, when violence has dropped severely, are people so desperate to blame modern inventions for the age-old instincts of man?
The other thing that annoys me, and other posters have mentioned this, is the complete and utter lack of CONTEXT in complaining about violence. GTA3 doesn't fit this, but most video games and television violence involves self defense, the military, or officers of the law. Or, of course, the lone soldier saving the world from an invading alien race. Almost every game also punishes the player for shooting innocent bystanders. Likewise on television they make a big crying fuss over any innocent who gets hurt or killed.
I could at least understand these whinings if the violence on telvision was unprovoked and went unpunished, but it rarely if ever is.
Who said anything about morals or not putting forth any effort?
And why are you sitting here on slashdot bitching about it?
bullshit. If everyone filed, no one would have gotten any money. And regardless, the settlement is FAR lower than the money they ripped us off for up to now, let alone how much they'll continue ripping us off in the future.
The claim they weren't guilty, so there is no indication *whatsoever* that they're going to stop doing anything. They never did anything wrong in the first place. *wink wink*. CDs will continue to cost $20+ anywhere besides Wal-mart and Best Buy. Which is what they were being sued for in the first place.
I refuses to partake in the settlement. It's ridiculous how little they were offering to pay after so many years of price fixing. I want to see them lower prices, not give me a quarter of what i've had to pay because of their illegal practices...
I've never heard any teens and mid twenties complain about the history and foundations of the USA. I think most appreciate the history (remember, teens have heard the history and brilliance of our founding fathers more recently than their elders).
What they don't appreciate is, like you say, the current state of some things, like the corruption of state officials, and the Bush administrations failure to stand up to the standards of our forfathers, for instance rallying against freedom of religion (one nation under god), against the 5th amendment right to due process (Patriot act), against privacy, against anyone not rich (voodoo economics), against freedom of speech (Bush trying to shut down websites critical of him), and PRO-dictatorship (the loss of democracy and freedom of speech/press in the Iraq war - incidentally, while provoked in part by Bush's comments, primarily enacted by those who claim to be patriotic Americans).
The problem isn't teens and mid-twenties, it's the older people who don't remember how important the foundations of this country are. They try to overthrow seperation of church and state (many of whom claim our country is founded on christian principles, despite our founding fathers in reality being atheists and deists), hurl insults at anyone questioning the government (would they prefer a dictatorship over democracy? how very patriotic!), and generally display apathy and denial in response to our country's problems in the guise of patriotism.
The problem isn't activists and similar people who are trying to better our country - it's the "patriotic" people who stand in the way of progress preferring to sit on the couch watching American Idol and Joe Millionaire.
What? Sports games aren't violent? Football, boxing, wrestling, golf...these depraved games have grown men beating each other up in REAL LIFE, for fun!
And having a kid defend the earth from invading aliens in an imaginary game is bad?
I guess we should have him go beat up the kid next door...much better to have him take out his anger on humans than on pixels...
Further more, I'd say there really is evidence of a connection between sports and violent kids. The jocks also being the bullies isn't just a stereotype...the football players and wrestlers at my school were the guys who took out their anger on underclassmen.
I can't claim it's a causal link...maybe they got into football/wrestling because they already liked to beat people up. But there is DEFINITELY a much stronger link there than there is for violent video games.
YES.
TV: Adult Swim, Simpsons, That 70s Sow. That's all I ever watch. I can't even "veg" in front of the TV anymore because the shows are so bad, and such a huge percentage of what's on TV is commercials.
Radio: I don't touch it anymore. If I'm in the car it's tapes or mp3-cd player. There are no good radio stations in my area, plain and simple. As my mom complained, the news came on on one station, and it was stupid, so she changed the station...sure enough, the 3 other stations she listened to were all airing the *exact* same news program.
And didn't Kevin Smith's films start sucking?
I can't believe he went on to make Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Those were freakin AWFUL.
I've talked to a record store owner about this, and the reason isn't that CDs aren't selling, it's that the store makes more profit on the other items. From what the owner stated, this is essentially because the store gets the CDs for so much, that they can't raise the price much and still sell the CD.
You know those 19-23$ prices for a single 11-song CD? The store is only getting a very small portion of that.
Apparently on items like DVDs and action figures they make much more profit per item.
Don't feel this troll, no matter how retarded he is
Yeah, TV is down the shitter. Now they even have obnoxious pop-up ads too, taking up as much as 1/5th of the screen when you're trying to watch a show. Plus the full-screen ads seem to be on more than the movie/show itself, especially towards the end of a movie (when it's the most distracting). And what about the credits? They squish the credits into a TINY seciton of the screen, speed them up, and show ads instead. Why even pretend to show the credits if it's impossible to read them?
You make an important mistake in presuming that corporations have a list of unalienable rights. Are you aware the corporations also (gasp!) can't vote? Well, not officially anyway, although they currently hold more voting power than the people anyway...
So who are we to say that a corporate entity should be destroyed? We're the *people*. You know, the ones who are supposed to be making the laws...
We've always been able to "destroy someone's livelyhood because we don't agree with it". That's why laws exist at all. Of course the goal isn't "destroying someone's livelihood" as you slant it, but to promote *everyone*'s livelihood. If that comes at the cost of a few monopoly-loving capitalists, then thank god.
I think you're flat-out wrong. Motive (and results) are very important.
If a burglar drops his gun, and you pick it up and shoot the burglar, that is a good (and usually legal) thing. If you pick up the gun and shoot the bank teller, you're gonna fry. That should be obvious.
Using an exploit to remove the exploit is a pretty good idea. Of course it should be tested beforehand, and shouldn't do anything risky (like deleting infected files). In this case they said all it does is remove the registry keys that Fizzer adds. That isn't a very risky thing to do, and I'm sure they still tested it beforehand.
What they did is perfectly legal and a very good idea for everyone involved. This isn't at all similar to the RIAA using an exploit to delete your files, or Microsoft using their own program to subvert security on your computer.
The news.com article makes me hopeful that this judge will understand that the DMCA effectively destroys fair use.
She asks questions like whether the DMCA prevents copyrighted works from *ever* entering the public domain, which it, of course, does.
She also brings up film reviewers who want to use movie clips (or stills) in their reviews. The DMCA makes this illegal (or at the very least, much much harder).
She doesn't bring up the issue of backups, or compression, which I think are also important. We have a right to make backup copies. We also have the right to medium-shift and compress our media. As with mp3s and Divx, this allows us to fit many more songs or movies on our portable devices (mp3-cd players, iPod, laptop) than would otherwise be possible.
I did a presentation in a class about the DMCA, and brought up the stack of CDs that could fit on a single mp3-cd.
Compression, medium-shifting(Tivo!), backups, reviewing, satire, entry into the public domain...
Fair use and the public domain are history if judges don't overturn the DMCA.