it completely conflicts with the "ipod tax" that just passed where media devices and are taxed to compensate for copyright losses- passing this copyright bill is like saying- we are going to tax people for the fact that people are running stop signs and getting tickets since it costs us $ to have the cops give tickets.
how are you supposed to tax a public for activities that are illegal?
He is the only one who believes in this &#&@* piece of paper called the Constitution. It takes a great man to realize and accept that there are limits on his power and let others govern themselves. not true- obama is the only one truly familiar with the constitution as he has actually practiced constitutional law (in fact I have even heard talk of a supreme court nomination for him if hillary gets elected, though I would much rather see him as president)- it will be tough for anyone to take away the power that bush gave the office of the presidency through both his supreme court nominations and current laws passed through the previous republican congress.
I always find it funny though that as much as republicans preach the "government out of our lives" line of crap they are the ones doing the wiretapping and building copyright law into a corporate owned society and trying to tell people how to operate in the bedroom.
Does that mean that all the subsequent filesharers get off scott free since you're not allowed to recover damages more than once? it would make sense, if someone gets sued for a download and the person who holds the copyright is suing for the whole chain, suing again would be like someone in a 10 car pile up suing each person in the pileup for the full damages of your car- it would be thrown out of court since the matter has been settled in the first case and all following cases are redundant- this is why it makes more sense in say, the viacom vs. google where the source of distribution is being sued (not that I think anyone should be sued in the first place). The thing to remember though is that this won't count in cases that are settled out of court as that is an agreement made between the 2 parties outside of the court system.
the thing though is that to prove loss you really need to prove the intent of every person in the chain to purchase the material downloaded- let's say that I downloaded a mary-kate and ashley movie or gili- two very good examples of movies where the majority of people that downloaded it prolly had NO intention to ever spend $ on them, but wanted to see how bad it is- same goes for any media, which also then brings the question of say- you download an album to see if you want to purchase the cd and you think that it is crap when you hear it - or if you download an album and have no $ to buy it- that would warrant $0 of loss since you wouldn't or couldn't buy it anyways, it is a wash on the dollar level. To prove loss down the chain you have to bring everyone (or at least some % of the people) in the chain and get them to admit that they would have purchased the material downloaded, as well as a # of how many people had actually completed downloads of the material.
Live shows and the merchandise sold at them *are* how most bands actually make money not indies- that is not from shows- truth is I am an independent musician and shows will not pay the bills- though I am in favor of p2p.
this is why I always tell people- go ahead and download the music- if you like it buy a shirt or whatever other thing I have emblazoned with my logo- though if anyone knows of a cheap source that I can get thumb drives or usb mp3 players that are branded with my logo(prefer the players -hk or china source maybe? I have a wholesale license) I want to start selling them with music in mp3 and music vids in xvid mpeg4 on them at shows (hopefully I could sell gig or two sticks\players for under $15), all of the domestic producers charge too much for small runs- but that is what I want to do.
No, it's the estimated 90 percent of PC gamers who are too lazy to connect their PCs to their TVs to play arcade-style or console-style PC games as they were intended. How do video game developers fix that? A. my computer is in my office and my tv is in my living room
B. my pc monitor is better than my tv as a monitor
C. I like RTS's and they would suck on a crt tv vs my 30 inch widescreen flat panel- you couldn't read the text on them
D. If I get a good HD tv (which is a hazard to get up the 90 degree angle on my stairs right now- so prolly after I move at some point in the far future)I will set up a system next to the tv- specifically for such uses (though my GF will prolly try to use all opportunities to play the sims on it)
E. why would I want to play console style games on a pc hooked up to a tv when I could just... get a console to put next to the tv?
better would be a defendant's clause- if the defendant cannot afford to pay in equal to what the litigator is spending on counsel, discovery and review, it must be paid for by the litigator- hence if big bad company decides to bully people with false legal notices- and joe blow is broke, joe blow gets a free lawyer- if joe blow decides to sue a company, he does it on his own and the company uses it's own counsel as normal.
loser pays the winner discourages the second scenario and only hurts defendants that can be scared by having to not only pay what they are ruled, but also fees that a corporation can pay, but an individual can't. Also allows an even playing field in the courtroom where you don't end up (like I did once in a landlord dispute with a management corp) having to settle with cutting corners and not retaining a lawyer full time when you can't afford it.
That's probably the biggest reason e-readers haven't taken off yet. Price I agree- till the prices come down and tech goes up I will stick to bookr on my psp- does txt or full color pdfs- screen is small, but it works and is particularly useful if I just need to dump mapquest directions on it as well
this is a nice concept, but that means that I would have to go to cable- which is already throttling- all lines here are owned by AT&T for dsl and all cable here is owned by comcast- screwed if you do screwed if you don't
AT&T is not a telecom company anymore- they are a public utility- if the file fitering happens on the backbone vs. the subscriber level, they are breaking the law, especially if it is only allowing copywritten sources to come from certain licensees- they are in effect bypassing the court system in determining fair use on their own which opens them up to BIG class action and loss of their utility license- also it ignores the copyright holders and any permissions to use material for non-commercial use given outside of their knowledge.
And, no one says college is a right it is recognized as a right in any number of countries, especially in asian countries. I used to teach post graduate studies and in indonesia, south korea and japan every student that I had was FULLY funded by their government to go to THE COLLEGE OF THEIR CHOICE anywhere in the world provided that they pay their living expenses only(wonder why they kick our asses?). This was not a scholarship, it was a standard right given to every citizen- this is one reason why here in the US we constantly fall behind- the poor cannot get healthy or educated.
I personally do not see the army as a viable alternative for the poor to go through in order to become educated- it is like saying that if you are born into the right family you get to excel in life and if you are poor, you may get to excel- or you may end up dead or screwed up- but who cares right?
I made it through most of my college (never finished, dropped out to work and have not been able to go back to finish my last 3 units of GE to graduate since there really is no window once you are working full time +), by living on the street and working odd jobs to pay for college and sometimes enough to eat- this is NOT the way that people should have to go through life to get an education.
In my experience I have found that when you are, like I was, raised on welfare, going to an inner city high school and in an abandoned single parent home where you are asian or white(damn impossible to get scholarships or into colleges outside of JC's... this is why the quota system is wrong)you are not, by the system's standards expected or encouraged to go to college, no matter how bright (yes I was a mensa kid) or how much you desire to or how much drive you have.
I personally bucked the system during the internet boom and built a bullet proof resume which is why I CAN work in the upper middle class bracket- but it should not have been that difficult and for god's sake I should've been able to at least finish college without having to sleep in a park or in the empty classrooms in college.
OLED screens... SSD's are cool and all (when they are affordable I will prolly install one on my laptop for seek time ), but the rugged aspect really doesn't make much of a difference if you bust the LCD on your laptop, though with an SSD HD and an OLED screen you could conceivably throw the whole thing against the wall and so long as you don't break the board or power, it will still run- plus you would prolly have a standard controller for oled making replacements cheap and easy- this very much appeals to me as my laptop is mainly used for live music, so it is usually in a bar\club environment and not an office\living room environment.
if there was no one stacking the shelves they would all be empty- someone has to sweep the floor and clean the toilets, stack the shelves, wash the windows, do laundry, flip the burgers, etc- and the more that businesses grow the more need to be done- you can lower the status of people and contribute to higher crime and dissatisfaction or you can at least give the person who is willing to do a unsatisfying crappy job versus selling drugs or robbing you the ability to pay for and respect themselves
not here in the bay area- the living wage is closer to 40k- I survived with no health insurance and saving $0 for a number of years on 30k or so, you have to figure that a rat trap IF you can find it here could run you 15k - 20k a year in rent alone and then there are the inflated power and food costs as well......
now that I have a better job where I am making about twice that I can afford to split a 1 bedroom w/ my GF and still save a little and who knows, at the current rate I may even be able to put down on a house in 60 years (houses are somewhere in the 800k on the low end- here)
While I'd love a small pc that had true notebook capability with me at all times, the last thing I want to do is be further shafted by a phone service provider. that is why I want this thing to come here stateside- http://www.wibrain.com/
I am really interested in trying out the integrated 3d acceleration in the new via socket as well to see what it can do-
the problem is that a democrat from alabama is not going to vote the same as a democrat from california or a democrat from Idaho- there was a unity when all of the republicans were voted in, a unity to do very evil things, but it was the unity that allowed them to do things- while there, they boosted the power of the presidency and everything is a fight
it's funny, but people always down politicians that ACTUALLY make a science contribution, look @ jerry brown who was dubbed "moonbeam" after proposing state run and leased communication satellites- to this day people call him moonbeam as a put-down, but if it weren't for him satellite communications and state leasing $ from such (esp. gps broadcasters) wouldn't be where they are today.... but moonbeam is still an insult
actually along this line I think it would be great to set up city wide closed encrypted networks on a totally new protocol- something where you could surf regional only, uncensored, unmonitored pages and do file transfer without having anyone outside the walls look in. ISP's should support it since it wouldn't reduce subscribership (since you wouldn't be able to access the "web" through it) while still taking numbers off their backbone and you could share the bandwidth through a p2p- like packet transfer for all data, including informational pages which would be good since if you set cache files to default seed, you would effectively be able to have things float without a server, if popular enough and at the same time have a person's cache check periodically for updates page updates when accessed in order to seed the correct files. The only main question is the physical connection for the network, it would prolly have to be a wireless connection
some of this though, has a lot to do with a non-enlightened IT dept.- a company that I previously worked for actually had it's entire IT dept on the other side of the country, so if there was a problem they literally would call a contractor to come out for the day and fix things- if there was a quarterly shortfall they wouldn't hire the contractor and boom- office is effectively shut down for a month or two. Also all of our network traffic was soo filtered that we couldn't update any of our software, and the IT was so stupid that they would only allow updates by the hired contractor, as well as reformatting/reimaging machines (they couldn't be added to the domain)- after about 6 months of outages and following the rules, we just put a keylogger on one of the laptops to get the admin password when the contractor came in and got the passcode (from a disgruntled former site manager) to the server room where we could go in and set up a proxy machine to directly download our software updates and use network admin to deploy it.
6 months after I quit the company it was absorbed by a competitor and the first thing they did was dump the entire IT staff.
Im sure you're not all rude, but I'd say the general level of customer politeness in the US is pretty low compared with other parts of the world. that is incredibly untrue - firstly take a look at a world map for a minute and realize how big the US is- now compare it to the UK and think for a second how you and poland have the same culture right? well think again. I live in the bay area in california and I can say for a fact that the culture here is alien to what I saw this summer traveling in georgia and maine and new york and florida- seriously it was like another world- saying that all americans are like "X" is like saying that all black people are like "X" or all arabs are like "X"
there needs to be a change in the patent system that disallows patents for "standard technology"- the same way that pharmaceuticals have a period where they are exclusive and THEN generics have free reign for production, the same should be done with technology adoption- after a period of time a piece of technology can be declared "standard" and be allowed to be incorporated in devices free of patent licensing. it would expand both use of many proprietary systems for consumers AND give a kick in the ass to R&D for a lot of trolling corporations
yeah- limewire, like kazaa, imesh, soulseek etc. when you set up your downloads folder it is by default a shared folder- so if you say, make your c:\ your shared folder everything in that folder is available to browse and download- back in the day I actually used to troll it for fun to see what people actually had shared- you would get vacation photos, passwords, phone #s- all kinds of stuff that you shouldn't be able to get- the ability to share your "my documents" and "windows" and such was something that never should have been allowed to happen with the software providers, but it did.
this was one of the big things that changed when bittorrent took hold- it was file specific and it has to sit in your queue in your client to be shared.
Slashdot Mirror
like usual- I got spam today... 197 to be exact- it all filters out, but it is all spam
it completely conflicts with the "ipod tax" that just passed where media devices and are taxed to compensate for copyright losses- passing this copyright bill is like saying- we are going to tax people for the fact that people are running stop signs and getting tickets since it costs us $ to have the cops give tickets.
how are you supposed to tax a public for activities that are illegal?
this is true- I do smoke more while I am gaming......
I always find it funny though that as much as republicans preach the "government out of our lives" line of crap they are the ones doing the wiretapping and building copyright law into a corporate owned society and trying to tell people how to operate in the bedroom.
the thing though is that to prove loss you really need to prove the intent of every person in the chain to purchase the material downloaded- let's say that I downloaded a mary-kate and ashley movie or gili- two very good examples of movies where the majority of people that downloaded it prolly had NO intention to ever spend $ on them, but wanted to see how bad it is- same goes for any media, which also then brings the question of say- you download an album to see if you want to purchase the cd and you think that it is crap when you hear it - or if you download an album and have no $ to buy it- that would warrant $0 of loss since you wouldn't or couldn't buy it anyways, it is a wash on the dollar level. To prove loss down the chain you have to bring everyone (or at least some % of the people) in the chain and get them to admit that they would have purchased the material downloaded, as well as a # of how many people had actually completed downloads of the material.
this is why I always tell people- go ahead and download the music- if you like it buy a shirt or whatever other thing I have emblazoned with my logo- though if anyone knows of a cheap source that I can get thumb drives or usb mp3 players that are branded with my logo(prefer the players -hk or china source maybe? I have a wholesale license) I want to start selling them with music in mp3 and music vids in xvid mpeg4 on them at shows (hopefully I could sell gig or two sticks\players for under $15), all of the domestic producers charge too much for small runs- but that is what I want to do.
B. my pc monitor is better than my tv as a monitor
C. I like RTS's and they would suck on a crt tv vs my 30 inch widescreen flat panel- you couldn't read the text on them
D. If I get a good HD tv (which is a hazard to get up the 90 degree angle on my stairs right now- so prolly after I move at some point in the far future)I will set up a system next to the tv- specifically for such uses (though my GF will prolly try to use all opportunities to play the sims on it)
E. why would I want to play console style games on a pc hooked up to a tv when I could just... get a console to put next to the tv?
better would be a defendant's clause- if the defendant cannot afford to pay in equal to what the litigator is spending on counsel, discovery and review, it must be paid for by the litigator- hence if big bad company decides to bully people with false legal notices- and joe blow is broke, joe blow gets a free lawyer- if joe blow decides to sue a company, he does it on his own and the company uses it's own counsel as normal.
loser pays the winner discourages the second scenario and only hurts defendants that can be scared by having to not only pay what they are ruled, but also fees that a corporation can pay, but an individual can't. Also allows an even playing field in the courtroom where you don't end up (like I did once in a landlord dispute with a management corp) having to settle with cutting corners and not retaining a lawyer full time when you can't afford it.
this is a nice concept, but that means that I would have to go to cable- which is already throttling- all lines here are owned by AT&T for dsl and all cable here is owned by comcast- screwed if you do screwed if you don't
AT&T is not a telecom company anymore- they are a public utility- if the file fitering happens on the backbone vs. the subscriber level, they are breaking the law, especially if it is only allowing copywritten sources to come from certain licensees- they are in effect bypassing the court system in determining fair use on their own which opens them up to BIG class action and loss of their utility license- also it ignores the copyright holders and any permissions to use material for non-commercial use given outside of their knowledge.
I personally do not see the army as a viable alternative for the poor to go through in order to become educated- it is like saying that if you are born into the right family you get to excel in life and if you are poor, you may get to excel- or you may end up dead or screwed up- but who cares right?
I made it through most of my college (never finished, dropped out to work and have not been able to go back to finish my last 3 units of GE to graduate since there really is no window once you are working full time +), by living on the street and working odd jobs to pay for college and sometimes enough to eat- this is NOT the way that people should have to go through life to get an education.
In my experience I have found that when you are, like I was, raised on welfare, going to an inner city high school and in an abandoned single parent home where you are asian or white(damn impossible to get scholarships or into colleges outside of JC's... this is why the quota system is wrong)you are not, by the system's standards expected or encouraged to go to college, no matter how bright (yes I was a mensa kid) or how much you desire to or how much drive you have.
I personally bucked the system during the internet boom and built a bullet proof resume which is why I CAN work in the upper middle class bracket- but it should not have been that difficult and for god's sake I should've been able to at least finish college without having to sleep in a park or in the empty classrooms in college.
OLED screens... SSD's are cool and all (when they are affordable I will prolly install one on my laptop for seek time ), but the rugged aspect really doesn't make much of a difference if you bust the LCD on your laptop, though with an SSD HD and an OLED screen you could conceivably throw the whole thing against the wall and so long as you don't break the board or power, it will still run- plus you would prolly have a standard controller for oled making replacements cheap and easy- this very much appeals to me as my laptop is mainly used for live music, so it is usually in a bar\club environment and not an office\living room environment.
if there was no one stacking the shelves they would all be empty- someone has to sweep the floor and clean the toilets, stack the shelves, wash the windows, do laundry, flip the burgers, etc- and the more that businesses grow the more need to be done- you can lower the status of people and contribute to higher crime and dissatisfaction or you can at least give the person who is willing to do a unsatisfying crappy job versus selling drugs or robbing you the ability to pay for and respect themselves
not here in the bay area- the living wage is closer to 40k- I survived with no health insurance and saving $0 for a number of years on 30k or so, you have to figure that a rat trap IF you can find it here could run you 15k - 20k a year in rent alone and then there are the inflated power and food costs as well......
now that I have a better job where I am making about twice that I can afford to split a 1 bedroom w/ my GF and still save a little and who knows, at the current rate I may even be able to put down on a house in 60 years (houses are somewhere in the 800k on the low end- here)
the problem is that a democrat from alabama is not going to vote the same as a democrat from california or a democrat from Idaho- there was a unity when all of the republicans were voted in, a unity to do very evil things, but it was the unity that allowed them to do things- while there, they boosted the power of the presidency and everything is a fight
yes, a blowjob and a cigar has never killed thousands upon thousands of people.................
it's funny, but people always down politicians that ACTUALLY make a science contribution, look @ jerry brown who was dubbed "moonbeam" after proposing state run and leased communication satellites- to this day people call him moonbeam as a put-down, but if it weren't for him satellite communications and state leasing $ from such (esp. gps broadcasters) wouldn't be where they are today.... but moonbeam is still an insult
actually along this line I think it would be great to set up city wide closed encrypted networks on a totally new protocol- something where you could surf regional only, uncensored, unmonitored pages and do file transfer without having anyone outside the walls look in. ISP's should support it since it wouldn't reduce subscribership (since you wouldn't be able to access the "web" through it) while still taking numbers off their backbone and you could share the bandwidth through a p2p- like packet transfer for all data, including informational pages which would be good since if you set cache files to default seed, you would effectively be able to have things float without a server, if popular enough and at the same time have a person's cache check periodically for updates page updates when accessed in order to seed the correct files. The only main question is the physical connection for the network, it would prolly have to be a wireless connection
some of this though, has a lot to do with a non-enlightened IT dept.- a company that I previously worked for actually had it's entire IT dept on the other side of the country, so if there was a problem they literally would call a contractor to come out for the day and fix things- if there was a quarterly shortfall they wouldn't hire the contractor and boom- office is effectively shut down for a month or two. Also all of our network traffic was soo filtered that we couldn't update any of our software, and the IT was so stupid that they would only allow updates by the hired contractor, as well as reformatting/reimaging machines (they couldn't be added to the domain)- after about 6 months of outages and following the rules, we just put a keylogger on one of the laptops to get the admin password when the contractor came in and got the passcode (from a disgruntled former site manager) to the server room where we could go in and set up a proxy machine to directly download our software updates and use network admin to deploy it.
6 months after I quit the company it was absorbed by a competitor and the first thing they did was dump the entire IT staff.
there needs to be a change in the patent system that disallows patents for "standard technology"- the same way that pharmaceuticals have a period where they are exclusive and THEN generics have free reign for production, the same should be done with technology adoption- after a period of time a piece of technology can be declared "standard" and be allowed to be incorporated in devices free of patent licensing. it would expand both use of many proprietary systems for consumers AND give a kick in the ass to R&D for a lot of trolling corporations
yeah- limewire, like kazaa, imesh, soulseek etc. when you set up your downloads folder it is by default a shared folder- so if you say, make your c:\ your shared folder everything in that folder is available to browse and download- back in the day I actually used to troll it for fun to see what people actually had shared- you would get vacation photos, passwords, phone #s- all kinds of stuff that you shouldn't be able to get- the ability to share your "my documents" and "windows" and such was something that never should have been allowed to happen with the software providers, but it did.
this was one of the big things that changed when bittorrent took hold- it was file specific and it has to sit in your queue in your client to be shared.
that is horrible- I am sooo offended by cats