Assuming neither sender nor recipient has a text messaging plan, yeah.
I'm paying $30/month for unlimited texting, as I mentioned; my sister makes good use of it (~1000 outgoing, ~1000 incoming texts monthly). Figure that's the only way I'll get my money's worth.
Trouble is, disabling data also disables picture messaging (MMS), both sending and receiving, at least on AT&T, and that's something we (the five people on my plan) use fairly often.
Their "Municipal Wifi" covers a one block area around the courthouse, which probably just means the block that the courthouse is on. That's hardly "municipal". Maybe you can call a single open access point "progressive", but come on... TFA is obviously blowing things way out of proportion.
Furthermore, the MPAA didn't even ask them to shut it down. They simply notified the ISP of an illegal download, the ISP notified the access point operators, and then the AP operators shut down the access points. Basically, the politicians panicked.
TFA links to the source, which does confirm your parent post's analysis.
I guess reading TFA is taboo.
Anyway, the original article doesn't mention the MPAA being involved in the shutdown at all. By all appearances, the MPAA notified the ISP, then the ISP notified the county, then the county shut down the access point.
AT&T is no different when it comes to nickel-and-diming their customers to death.
- I have unlimited messaging on my family plan. It allows me to send unlimited SMS and MMS messages. - I quite often accidentally push the dedicated "MediaNET" button on the phone. This opens a browser, and I am charged $0.01 per KB (rounded up, of course). - You can have them block the browser, but blocking the browser blocks picture messages (both sending and receiving).
So either I put up with paying an extra buck or so every month (across five phones) or I shut off MMS entirely.
There's other games that cell carriers like to play, too:
AT&T loves charging you "upgrade" fees when you upgrade your phone (quite separate from getting charged for the phone itself). They claim it's so they can update their system - which is of course a gargantuan lie. I sat on the phone for twenty minutes coaxing the CSR into refunding it for me, last time they did it. The same goes for "activation" fees. I signed a two-year contract with an early cancellation fee; there's no reason to charge me on top of that. (I got that fee refunded as well.)
Seriously, people - call your cell service provider next time you upgrade your phone. Insist that they refund the "upgrade" fee, and if they need a reason tell them they're obviously charging you for nothing (since you could have merely obtained your phone some other way and they'd never know). A two-year contract is enough to satisfy their "well we subsidized the phone" fake concerns. AT&T will cave to your demand - if enough of us do it, maybe they'll stop charging it altogether. I can only assume Verizon and Sprint will follow suit given enough customer pressure.
I don't even want to start ranting about SMS messaging rates without a plan. $0.20 for a 160-byte text message that (quite literally) costs them nothing? That's where to look if you want to show nickel-and-diming...
If everyone went by your logic, there wouldn't be any satellite TV. (If you're going to ask why, it's because everyone would take it for free, the company would go broke, and the satellites would stop transmitting.)
Do you see a problem with that, or do you just like freeloading?
What entitles you is the fact that someone is voluntarily giving you the media for free.
I guess you think it's irrelevant that the people giving you the media for free are not legally authorized to give you that media for free?
In the case of pirated satellite TV, Dish Network didn't give you the codes to descramble HBO without a subscription; someone else did that. Why does that make you entitled to it for free?
My point was that just because you can get something for free doesn't mean you're entitled to it.
In the situations I used as examples, sneaking in has no effect on the income of the artist/theater, if you assume that there's a free seat or enough standing room.
When you use that satellite signal, watch that downloaded movie, play that pirated game, etc., you're just filling that seat that was going to be empty anyway - but that does not entitle you to the media for free.
In other words, just as I said before, "ability" is not equal to "entitlement".
I usually use a root shell myself, but you have to admit it's not always the best answer. (For example, multi-user environments where you don't want normal users to have full root access but where they still need some elevated privileges.)
That's fine, but that has one big problem: it requires users to know the root password. On a large multi-user system, that's likely undesirable.
A big benefit of sudo is that (if I'm not mistaken) it lets you specify particular programs that users can run. For example, I may want a user to be able to "/etc/init.d/apache2 restart", but nothing else.
It's not about having root, it's about not having a root shell open. If I need to run/bin/foo as root, then it's preferable to run it with sudo than by invoking "su" and then running it as root, because with sudo I do not run the risk of forgetting to exit the root shell and then doing something else stupid in that shell.
Your argument may now be "well don't be stupid", but that's an entirely different issue, and doesn't mean we shouldn't have sudo around.
No, they (the pirates) already bought the only thing Microsoft was getting any money from them for. Banning them from XBox Live doesn't somehow refund that purchase.
I had an "allowance", but I had to work to get it. If I didn't mow the lawn/do the dishes/clean my room/etc, I didn't get the money. (As opposed to what I'd call a "stipend", where some parents just hand their kids money every week.)
My take is that people have decided they want what they want now
Agreed. There's also the whole "we think you promised $X, you technically gave us $X by the letter of the promise but (we say) not by the spirit, so now we want $X plus $Y for free" thing that some people have going. (Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, I'm looking at you.)
They may not have lost something, but he still isn't entitled to obtain the works of other's for free just because he wants it.
Exactly.
An artist puts on an exhibit and charges an entrance fee (so he can buy food/housing and then create new art). If I sneak in, the artist hasn't lost anything, but that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
A movie theater plays some new movie. They're going to play it whether I sneak in the back door or not; unless the theater is full, they're not losing money since I only take up one seat. But that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
(And so on and so forth, as applied to DVDs and streaming video, games and other software, music, pirated satellite/cable tv, hacked cable modems, etc.)
or the most intellectually bankrupt one of "piracy helps the maker because it gets them marketshare." I remember people using that last one since way back in the early 80's.
What most people using that excuse don't realize is that "marketshare" is meaningless for video games unless the video game was explicitly designed around getting a large marketshare.
For example: you can't *really* pirate MMOs, because to play them you have to pay Blizzard anyway. Their business model is largely based on getting a large marketshare.
Starcraft, on the other hand, only generates profit from sales; every pirated copy is money they didn't get from a sale (since the majority of pirates aren't going to buy the game but are still going to play it). I wouldn't call that a loss, but I would point out that it's not a net gain, even if some small percentage of pirates show the game to friends who later buy the game.
Anyway, I think if pirates keep pushing the "it gets them a larger marketshare" line, we're going to end up with lower quality games that are free to download and play but are also full of ads. (I won't speculate on whether the market is headed that way anyway.)
It is a generalization, but I think it's perhaps the most useful observation a person can make.
If the Slashdot crowd would remember it (and its corollary, "generalizations have exceptions"), there would be far fewer pointless arguments clogging the comments.
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'Twas a good thought; unfortunately my phone tells me that the "MEdia Net" profile is locked.
(It's a Samsung W580i. Anyone know how to unlock those settings?)
Assuming neither sender nor recipient has a text messaging plan, yeah.
I'm paying $30/month for unlimited texting, as I mentioned; my sister makes good use of it (~1000 outgoing, ~1000 incoming texts monthly). Figure that's the only way I'll get my money's worth.
I understand why, I'm just pointing out that disabling data has that (unintended) side effect.
Trouble is, disabling data also disables picture messaging (MMS), both sending and receiving, at least on AT&T, and that's something we (the five people on my plan) use fairly often.
Obviously you didn't RTFA.
Their "Municipal Wifi" covers a one block area around the courthouse, which probably just means the block that the courthouse is on. That's hardly "municipal". Maybe you can call a single open access point "progressive", but come on... TFA is obviously blowing things way out of proportion.
Furthermore, the MPAA didn't even ask them to shut it down. They simply notified the ISP of an illegal download, the ISP notified the access point operators, and then the AP operators shut down the access points. Basically, the politicians panicked.
TFA links to the source, which does confirm your parent post's analysis.
I guess reading TFA is taboo.
Anyway, the original article doesn't mention the MPAA being involved in the shutdown at all. By all appearances, the MPAA notified the ISP, then the ISP notified the county, then the county shut down the access point.
AT&T is no different when it comes to nickel-and-diming their customers to death.
- I have unlimited messaging on my family plan. It allows me to send unlimited SMS and MMS messages.
- I quite often accidentally push the dedicated "MediaNET" button on the phone. This opens a browser, and I am charged $0.01 per KB (rounded up, of course).
- You can have them block the browser, but blocking the browser blocks picture messages (both sending and receiving).
So either I put up with paying an extra buck or so every month (across five phones) or I shut off MMS entirely.
There's other games that cell carriers like to play, too:
AT&T loves charging you "upgrade" fees when you upgrade your phone (quite separate from getting charged for the phone itself). They claim it's so they can update their system - which is of course a gargantuan lie. I sat on the phone for twenty minutes coaxing the CSR into refunding it for me, last time they did it. The same goes for "activation" fees. I signed a two-year contract with an early cancellation fee; there's no reason to charge me on top of that. (I got that fee refunded as well.)
Seriously, people - call your cell service provider next time you upgrade your phone. Insist that they refund the "upgrade" fee, and if they need a reason tell them they're obviously charging you for nothing (since you could have merely obtained your phone some other way and they'd never know). A two-year contract is enough to satisfy their "well we subsidized the phone" fake concerns. AT&T will cave to your demand - if enough of us do it, maybe they'll stop charging it altogether. I can only assume Verizon and Sprint will follow suit given enough customer pressure.
I don't even want to start ranting about SMS messaging rates without a plan. $0.20 for a 160-byte text message that (quite literally) costs them nothing? That's where to look if you want to show nickel-and-diming...
If everyone went by your logic, there wouldn't be any satellite TV. (If you're going to ask why, it's because everyone would take it for free, the company would go broke, and the satellites would stop transmitting.)
Do you see a problem with that, or do you just like freeloading?
What entitles you is the fact that someone is voluntarily giving you the media for free.
I guess you think it's irrelevant that the people giving you the media for free are not legally authorized to give you that media for free?
In the case of pirated satellite TV, Dish Network didn't give you the codes to descramble HBO without a subscription; someone else did that. Why does that make you entitled to it for free?
My point was that just because you can get something for free doesn't mean you're entitled to it.
In the situations I used as examples, sneaking in has no effect on the income of the artist/theater, if you assume that there's a free seat or enough standing room.
When you use that satellite signal, watch that downloaded movie, play that pirated game, etc., you're just filling that seat that was going to be empty anyway - but that does not entitle you to the media for free.
In other words, just as I said before, "ability" is not equal to "entitlement".
Giving away Visual Studio Express for free is pretty cool. Those are good tools.
I usually use a root shell myself, but you have to admit it's not always the best answer. (For example, multi-user environments where you don't want normal users to have full root access but where they still need some elevated privileges.)
That's fine, but that has one big problem: it requires users to know the root password. On a large multi-user system, that's likely undesirable.
A big benefit of sudo is that (if I'm not mistaken) it lets you specify particular programs that users can run. For example, I may want a user to be able to "/etc/init.d/apache2 restart", but nothing else.
It's not about having root, it's about not having a root shell open. If I need to run /bin/foo as root, then it's preferable to run it with sudo than by invoking "su" and then running it as root, because with sudo I do not run the risk of forgetting to exit the root shell and then doing something else stupid in that shell.
Your argument may now be "well don't be stupid", but that's an entirely different issue, and doesn't mean we shouldn't have sudo around.
I dunno. I suspect a significant portion of affected users will merely get their parents to buy them a new one.
They expected it!
That implies that they actually read the quick-start guide or the ToS. Most of the time, they've read neither. (That's no excuse, of course.)
No, they (the pirates) already bought the only thing Microsoft was getting any money from them for. Banning them from XBox Live doesn't somehow refund that purchase.
What does wi-fi in airports have to do with Microsoft?
well I'm glad I have a PS3, simply because you can't cheat on those games.
Someone out there is taking that as a challenge. :(
I had an "allowance", but I had to work to get it. If I didn't mow the lawn/do the dishes/clean my room/etc, I didn't get the money. (As opposed to what I'd call a "stipend", where some parents just hand their kids money every week.)
My take is that people have decided they want what they want now
Agreed. There's also the whole "we think you promised $X, you technically gave us $X by the letter of the promise but (we say) not by the spirit, so now we want $X plus $Y for free" thing that some people have going. (Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, I'm looking at you.)
They may not have lost something, but he still isn't entitled to obtain the works of other's for free just because he wants it.
Exactly.
An artist puts on an exhibit and charges an entrance fee (so he can buy food/housing and then create new art). If I sneak in, the artist hasn't lost anything, but that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
A movie theater plays some new movie. They're going to play it whether I sneak in the back door or not; unless the theater is full, they're not losing money since I only take up one seat. But that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
(And so on and so forth, as applied to DVDs and streaming video, games and other software, music, pirated satellite/cable tv, hacked cable modems, etc.)
... and by "pay Blizzard" I mean "pay $COMPANY". My bad.
or the most intellectually bankrupt one of "piracy helps the maker because it gets them marketshare." I remember people using that last one since way back in the early 80's.
What most people using that excuse don't realize is that "marketshare" is meaningless for video games unless the video game was explicitly designed around getting a large marketshare.
For example: you can't *really* pirate MMOs, because to play them you have to pay Blizzard anyway. Their business model is largely based on getting a large marketshare.
Starcraft, on the other hand, only generates profit from sales; every pirated copy is money they didn't get from a sale (since the majority of pirates aren't going to buy the game but are still going to play it). I wouldn't call that a loss, but I would point out that it's not a net gain, even if some small percentage of pirates show the game to friends who later buy the game.
Anyway, I think if pirates keep pushing the "it gets them a larger marketshare" line, we're going to end up with lower quality games that are free to download and play but are also full of ads. (I won't speculate on whether the market is headed that way anyway.)
It is a generalization, but I think it's perhaps the most useful observation a person can make.
If the Slashdot crowd would remember it (and its corollary, "generalizations have exceptions"), there would be far fewer pointless arguments clogging the comments.