US Rep. Rick Boucher: "How can the RIAA collect royalties on various blank media at the same time that the RIAA members are implementing copy protection mechanisms..?"
RIAA's Hillary Rosen: "Simple. We pay you - or your comrades - to hush up."
I can't believe this bald faced insult against someone for being multilingual and intelligent and well spoken, got modded up.
Getting beat up in school for being smart. Harharhardyharhar. Man I laughed so hard it came out like a disgusted groan.
Maybe slashdot should post a warning. Sounding intelligent will get you flamed. w3 st00pid d00dz r00l th3 w0r1d w3rd up t0 D4 N 2 D4 4 2 D4 T 2 D4 4 2 D4 1 2 D4 I 2 D4 3 b4yb33!! (and I bet y'all l33t d00dz can't decode that, haha)
(I wonder if the moderator rating this post is thinking, 'oh school violence is funny, get over it d00d.')
...is when a site becomes popular, and the resulting bandwidth usage leads to excessive bandwidth charges.
This very problem - a problem surely manufactured by the bandwidth providers - has forced even Salon.com, and Slashdot, to consider or implement subscription systems.
This will effectively cut them off from a large portion of their intended audience because
1) Some people can't afford to subscribe;
2) Some people already subscribe to 50 places, and are NOT gonna add another load onto their finances.
This is how you destroy even the most popular ideas and sites, very quick. Bury 'em in high bandwidth costs, and scare off 90% of their audience by forcing them to go to paid subscriptions; or worse, cause them to stop operations altogether.
First of all, thank you very much for providing me with a direct and refreshingly civil response from a RedHat employee. My respect for the company has gone from neutral to decidedly positive.
I do speculate a lot. I consider myself an intellectual minuteman. I trust no corporation that isn't non profit, and few that are. To me, money and power will always supercede charity and good will, in any business interest. I have a similar attitude towards Government. (I love my country but I fear my Government.) I have held out hope in the past that RedHat was part of a gang of "rebels" who would have some part in undoing that mindset. That hope is certainly alive and well now.
Now, I did say it was unlikely that RH owned most of its own shares, and you've shown that they do. Mea culpa. Your company is far smarter and idealism-oriented than I gave it credit for, and you have my apologies here. I wouldn't have had any idea really where to check RH's investor info and it is probably information that would have bitten me if it were a snake.
But... while I do admire RedHat, I'll always keep one suspicious eye on any institution, private or public. Now I won't blame my ignorance re: RedHat, though, on "information overload". I learned a sort of basic life lesson, in this regard - the next time, it'll be the "DOES RedHat own most of its shares, or not?" approach and not "I doubt Bob Young blah blah" (though I already know the answer to THAT question now).
Again, thanks for your tempered and informative reply, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
They might be planning to supply the schools with a free RedHat OS and free support. The RedHat package they get will include free, RedHat-made commercial software, too - stuff which you pay for on the open market. (Let us name one such example "RedHat Office Pro 20xx".) Kinda like a 100% discount version of the college student discounts you find on software in campus computer stores.
There would be a catch - again, not without precedent: said discounted commercial software cannot be purchased or used by non students, and the student agrees to pay for a license upgrade once they graduate - or if they don't, then return it and uninstall it off their system.
Since these kids were hooked on RedHat Office Pro 20xx since they were wee lil tots or whatever, and RedHat has usurped Microsoft as the sole maker of industry-used word processors, databases and spreadsheets, etc., there'll be MS Office and RedHat Office Pro standing as giants in the office world, just like Apple & the PC (before Microsoft killed Apple). He will gladly pay for a copy of RH-Office Pro so he can have this necessary tool for his adult, employed life. (Just as many people went and bought the next version of MS Office at full price after they had graduated.)
RedHat could make RedHat Office 20xx a GPL'd thing at first, and then pull a VA Software, and fork it. And worse, they could cease doing any further development on the GPL'd RedHat Office. Everyone else would be free to take the source code and TRY and keep up with RH Office Pro via reverse engineering and what not. But it would be a road fraught with incompatibilities and missing features, to say the least. (See: MS Office vs Word Perfect 8 vs Star Office vs KOffice vs Abiword...)
RedHat seems to be saying they would not do that to us now, but with all the kids hooked on their software at a young age, and with the chance that they could rip half the market out of MS' hands (by properly exploiting this Macintosh-esque opportunity), they would have you over a barrel.
And of course when you graduate from college RedHat will make you pay for support.
And being a company that is publicly traded and not privately owned, they creditors - aka share holders - to answer to. You cannot ultimately predict what your creditors/share holders will demand, and as different people come and go who own large slices of RedHat debt (er, um stock), who knows what their agendas will be? I am sure Bob Young does not own 51% of his own debt/stocks. If he doesn't, his stockholders could forcibly usurp him by calling in the debt (selling their shares). Even if he has 51%, jeez, if angry stockholders sold their, say, 30%, Bob would be screwed bad.
My point is, RedHat COULD pull an Apple computer here, and make money off getting people hooked on them as kids, and while they are being altruistic now, RedHat has shareholders - and eventually the shareholders will not be so altruistic.
I wanted this law to go forward and then pass.
So that the people would see this and rip the RIAA to shreds. And the politicians who voted for that law.
Now they'll just implement this crap, piece by piece, slowly, making sure each facet of their monstrosity is accepted by the public first.
If this company is illegally streaming copyrighted music, I wonder how many others are.
At least the courts sent a message saying the almighty big corporations can't violate the law. It's kind of funny that they're tripping on their own shoe laces. (See: the lawsuit this company launched against mp3.com)
It's going to be quite interesting to see the repercussions as Universal tries to appeal this ruling... in effect, they're saying, "We can e-broadcast copyrighted works without paying a license, but we'll put any citizen who does it, behind bars, forever!"
And I wonder how much all these licenses will cost Universal Music Group. Maybe it will be so prohibitively high that they'll start wanting to nix the law in Congress:)
Note to Universal: "Be careful what you wish for." - Wishmaster
My opinion of this is, the ultimate perfect set up between the GUI and the CLI, is one in which the fully functional CLI version is made first; where all of its features are DNA encoded into libraries, not executables; and where the GUI takes the libraries, and implements the features with point and click efficiency.
This, to me, is the perfect way to maintain a harmonious balance between the CLI and the GUI - and the people who prefer one over the other.
I was working on that one just now! Darn. I feel so......robbed.:) I'm gonna submit it (with your name) to RMS. He's gonna love this.
Frankly I'd rather deal with RMS' fanaticism than his opposition's apathetic, let's sell Linux out to proprietary interests (one piece at a time) attitude.
All 100,000 people whose information was found during those raids, should ALL fight it in court.
If DirecTV is stupid enough to sue/prosecute ALL 100,000 people, then they deserve to be run into bankruptcy by all those legal feesx100,000.
Moreover, there aren't enough courts and there aren't enough jail cells to hold a sudden influx of 100,000 people.
This will also cause a TREMENDOUS uproar among the American public.
More likely, DirecTV will decide to pick a few random users, and go after them. Squash one pirate and make an example of him/her, and scare everyone else into compliance.
I would take a chance and check it out.
I like fact that they spend less time talking about mod_layout...
and more time working on it.
They keep the brag ratio down, and the productivity ratio up. We need more people with attitudes like this, and less people like John Romero (maker of Dai*cough*tana). ========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
Programmers who pick on other people, think they own the right of way, and who manipulate upper management, because they're valuable.
I know we've never seen this kind of behavior among regular human beings, right?
Has anyone ever heard of the 'alpha male'? The tactics of a Prima Donna are quite similar. ========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
I disagree. The typical "big businesses are free to do whatever they want" crowd (the same ones yelling "slashdot zealots" all the time) turns right around and calls for all kinds of regulations on everyone ELSE's behavior (except that of corporations).
It's okay to sign someone up for DSL at $39.95 a month for a 2 year contract, and then raise it to $49.95 a month in mid stream, because it's BIDNESS. Breach of contract? Bah. Go ahead and pay an attorney $500,000 to sue them over $10. Suckerrrrr.
It's cool when Gracenote steals all that CDDB information and locks it up under a patent, and then sues freedb (and programmers who rely on it) over it. Prior art? Bah!!
But by Golly, if you get caught adding a K to a generic word like illustrator, and putting software by that name out on the market under the GPL? OH NO NO NO, we can't have that! The corporation MUST be protected at all costs!!!
Everybody go "bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh". Thank you.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
These stupid moderators make me cough.
Escaflowne - ugh. Now I'm gonna be sick. ========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
Slashdot Mirror
I would set up a repayment plan, since they can't get blood from a turnip, and in my next episode I would talk about my blunder, and why it was wrong.
Oh, the new donations!!!
Google may be next?
Who's to say they won't start charging?
So what do they think they're gonna add that'll give me great value for $230? Cable with ALL the options? Please. In Sacramento they're hosed.
US Rep. Rick Boucher: "How can the RIAA collect royalties on various blank media at the same time that the RIAA members are implementing copy protection mechanisms..?"
RIAA's Hillary Rosen: "Simple. We pay you - or your comrades - to hush up."
I can't believe this bald faced insult against someone for being multilingual and intelligent and well spoken, got modded up.
Getting beat up in school for being smart. Harharhardyharhar. Man I laughed so hard it came out like a disgusted groan.
Maybe slashdot should post a warning. Sounding intelligent will get you flamed. w3 st00pid d00dz r00l th3 w0r1d w3rd up t0 D4 N 2 D4 4 2 D4 T 2 D4 4 2 D4 1 2 D4 I 2 D4 3 b4yb33!! (and I bet y'all l33t d00dz can't decode that, haha)
(I wonder if the moderator rating this post is thinking, 'oh school violence is funny, get over it d00d.')
You forgot MIB, UNATCO and DBZ
(oh wait, sorry, DBZ's a TV show, hehe)
...is when a site becomes popular, and the resulting bandwidth usage leads to excessive bandwidth charges.
This very problem - a problem surely manufactured by the bandwidth providers - has forced even Salon.com, and Slashdot, to consider or implement subscription systems.
This will effectively cut them off from a large portion of their intended audience because
1) Some people can't afford to subscribe;
2) Some people already subscribe to 50 places, and are NOT gonna add another load onto their finances.
This is how you destroy even the most popular ideas and sites, very quick. Bury 'em in high bandwidth costs, and scare off 90% of their audience by forcing them to go to paid subscriptions; or worse, cause them to stop operations altogether.
Ed,
First of all, thank you very much for providing me with a direct and refreshingly civil response from a RedHat employee. My respect for the company has gone from neutral to decidedly positive.
I do speculate a lot. I consider myself an intellectual minuteman. I trust no corporation that isn't non profit, and few that are. To me, money and power will always supercede charity and good will, in any business interest. I have a similar attitude towards Government. (I love my country but I fear my Government.) I have held out hope in the past that RedHat was part of a gang of "rebels" who would have some part in undoing that mindset. That hope is certainly alive and well now.
Now, I did say it was unlikely that RH owned most of its own shares, and you've shown that they do. Mea culpa. Your company is far smarter and idealism-oriented than I gave it credit for, and you have my apologies here. I wouldn't have had any idea really where to check RH's investor info and it is probably information that would have bitten me if it were a snake.
But... while I do admire RedHat, I'll always keep one suspicious eye on any institution, private or public. Now I won't blame my ignorance re: RedHat, though, on "information overload". I learned a sort of basic life lesson, in this regard - the next time, it'll be the "DOES RedHat own most of its shares, or not?" approach and not "I doubt Bob Young blah blah" (though I already know the answer to THAT question now).
Again, thanks for your tempered and informative reply, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
...but it wouldn't really be unprecedented.
They might be planning to supply the schools with a free RedHat OS and free support. The RedHat package they get will include free, RedHat-made commercial software, too - stuff which you pay for on the open market. (Let us name one such example "RedHat Office Pro 20xx".) Kinda like a 100% discount version of the college student discounts you find on software in campus computer stores.
There would be a catch - again, not without precedent: said discounted commercial software cannot be purchased or used by non students, and the student agrees to pay for a license upgrade once they graduate - or if they don't, then return it and uninstall it off their system.
Since these kids were hooked on RedHat Office Pro 20xx since they were wee lil tots or whatever, and RedHat has usurped Microsoft as the sole maker of industry-used word processors, databases and spreadsheets, etc., there'll be MS Office and RedHat Office Pro standing as giants in the office world, just like Apple & the PC (before Microsoft killed Apple). He will gladly pay for a copy of RH-Office Pro so he can have this necessary tool for his adult, employed life. (Just as many people went and bought the next version of MS Office at full price after they had graduated.)
RedHat could make RedHat Office 20xx a GPL'd thing at first, and then pull a VA Software, and fork it. And worse, they could cease doing any further development on the GPL'd RedHat Office. Everyone else would be free to take the source code and TRY and keep up with RH Office Pro via reverse engineering and what not. But it would be a road fraught with incompatibilities and missing features, to say the least. (See: MS Office vs Word Perfect 8 vs Star Office vs KOffice vs Abiword...)
RedHat seems to be saying they would not do that to us now, but with all the kids hooked on their software at a young age, and with the chance that they could rip half the market out of MS' hands (by properly exploiting this Macintosh-esque opportunity), they would have you over a barrel.
And of course when you graduate from college RedHat will make you pay for support.
And being a company that is publicly traded and not privately owned, they creditors - aka share holders - to answer to. You cannot ultimately predict what your creditors/share holders will demand, and as different people come and go who own large slices of RedHat debt (er, um stock), who knows what their agendas will be? I am sure Bob Young does not own 51% of his own debt/stocks. If he doesn't, his stockholders could forcibly usurp him by calling in the debt (selling their shares). Even if he has 51%, jeez, if angry stockholders sold their, say, 30%, Bob would be screwed bad.
My point is, RedHat COULD pull an Apple computer here, and make money off getting people hooked on them as kids, and while they are being altruistic now, RedHat has shareholders - and eventually the shareholders will not be so altruistic.
A budget for a Quality Assurance tester team is 100% NOT WASTEFUL spending.
I wanted this law to go forward and then pass.
So that the people would see this and rip the RIAA to shreds. And the politicians who voted for that law.
Now they'll just implement this crap, piece by piece, slowly, making sure each facet of their monstrosity is accepted by the public first.
It's like boiling a frog, really.
If this company is illegally streaming copyrighted music, I wonder how many others are.
:)
At least the courts sent a message saying the almighty big corporations can't violate the law. It's kind of funny that they're tripping on their own shoe laces. (See: the lawsuit this company launched against mp3.com)
It's going to be quite interesting to see the repercussions as Universal tries to appeal this ruling... in effect, they're saying, "We can e-broadcast copyrighted works without paying a license, but we'll put any citizen who does it, behind bars, forever!"
And I wonder how much all these licenses will cost Universal Music Group. Maybe it will be so prohibitively high that they'll start wanting to nix the law in Congress
Note to Universal: "Be careful what you wish for." - Wishmaster
My opinion of this is, the ultimate perfect set up between the GUI and the CLI, is one in which the fully functional CLI version is made first; where all of its features are DNA encoded into libraries, not executables; and where the GUI takes the libraries, and implements the features with point and click efficiency.
This, to me, is the perfect way to maintain a harmonious balance between the CLI and the GUI - and the people who prefer one over the other.
I was working on that one just now! Darn. I feel so......robbed. :) I'm gonna submit it (with your name) to RMS. He's gonna love this.
Frankly I'd rather deal with RMS' fanaticism than his opposition's apathetic, let's sell Linux out to proprietary interests (one piece at a time) attitude.
We built this Linux on
G-N-U
(What, no Jefferson Starship fans out there?)
Put your web server on port 8080 or something, although it would be fun getting to everyone the message that it's on port 8080...
All 100,000 people whose information was found during those raids, should ALL fight it in court.
If DirecTV is stupid enough to sue/prosecute ALL 100,000 people, then they deserve to be run into bankruptcy by all those legal feesx100,000.
Moreover, there aren't enough courts and there aren't enough jail cells to hold a sudden influx of 100,000 people.
This will also cause a TREMENDOUS uproar among the American public.
More likely, DirecTV will decide to pick a few random users, and go after them. Squash one pirate and make an example of him/her, and scare everyone else into compliance.
I would take a chance and check it out. I like fact that they spend less time talking about mod_layout ...
and more time working on it.
They keep the brag ratio down, and the productivity ratio up. We need more people with attitudes like this, and less people like John Romero (maker of Dai*cough*tana).
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
Programmers who pick on other people, think they own the right of way, and who manipulate upper management, because they're valuable.
I know we've never seen this kind of behavior among regular human beings, right?
Has anyone ever heard of the 'alpha male'? The tactics of a Prima Donna are quite similar.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
I disagree. The typical "big businesses are free to do whatever they want" crowd (the same ones yelling "slashdot zealots" all the time) turns right around and calls for all kinds of regulations on everyone ELSE's behavior (except that of corporations).
It's okay to sign someone up for DSL at $39.95 a month for a 2 year contract, and then raise it to $49.95 a month in mid stream, because it's BIDNESS. Breach of contract? Bah. Go ahead and pay an attorney $500,000 to sue them over $10. Suckerrrrr.
It's cool when Gracenote steals all that CDDB information and locks it up under a patent, and then sues freedb (and programmers who rely on it) over it. Prior art? Bah!!
But by Golly, if you get caught adding a K to a generic word like illustrator, and putting software by that name out on the market under the GPL? OH NO NO NO, we can't have that! The corporation MUST be protected at all costs!!!
Everybody go "bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh". Thank you.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
So when do I get to redeem my tickets to Mos Eisley?
The joke being intended, of course, to convey that "Spaceport" is a rather strong term for a mere satellite launch pad. Really.
When I think of "spaceport", I think of ships from space, coming and going. Ya know, like an airport, but for space.
*shrug* oh well.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
See, they designed this fungus so as to increase their sales. This fungus was released in conjunction with BMG's copy protected CD's.
The conspiracy is simple. You buy a copy of Philip Boa's music. The fungus eats your CD and then you have to go and buy another copy.
It's a brilliant plan!
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
Does anyone notice all the millions of ripoffs that happen in Japanese animation?
Let's see......
Dragonar (ripoff of Gundam)
Shurato (ripoff of Saint Seiya)
Big-O (ripoff of everything)
And numerous other examples.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
These stupid moderators make me cough.
Escaflowne - ugh. Now I'm gonna be sick.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
the Government owns the media
In the US, a tiny few companies (10, now) own the media, and will also soon own the net media.
Feudalism or Communism, pick your poison.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,