People have been saying this since the late 80s, we all know that what the major music labels have been pushing is total crap and that is the real reason sales are dropping. Of course some meathead will say that well Britney Spears (or anyone, come on) is a #1 seller, well if that's all you're selling then no shit sherlock. Push quality and you will get more sales that your crap.
Well I'm a Libertarian and I guess you could say I'm a nerd though I'm pretty sure I am not...
Sure, I write software for a living but is it the career that defines a nerd? Dr. Feynman would probably be considered a nerd but he didn't fit the other stereotypes associated with nerdiness and I've seen/met plenty of nerds with "cool" or otherwise shitty jobs so are they not nerds? I would have to say there are quite a few nerds in the department of the company I work in... they have few ideas of the mores and the faux pas they commit. They are nice people at heart but they have no idea the egos they deflate, their hapless attempts at daily conversation are often insulting to non-nerds who aren't kind. So I guess I'm not a nerd libertarian or maybe I am, whatever.
Why do I think there are so many nerds who are libertarians? At the office I think it's because the uninformed liberals and conservatives just like to trumpet their causes like cheerleaders and us nerds just quietly disagree. At home I believe it is because we have a truer sense of what freedom is and means and the social responsibility of having to work hard to improve the living conditions around us and for us. Of course, I am a Libertarian and not often a political thinker so my thoughts and opinions are skewed and uninformed to the reasoning behind this as well.
I am a firm believer that one should not discuss politics. Not because it shouldn't be discussed but at least in my country (USA), 95% of the population is too immature to have an honest and open discussion about their true political thoughts and usually we're worse than children when it comes to this topic. Maybe not so much the 3rd party people but more often I encounter this among people of the big 2 political parties we have. Hopefully I am completely wrong and I am just not meeting mature Republicans and Democrats but the ones I know or have met or see on tv act like a bunch of babies.
How is parent insightful? Because of some nice sounding sentences?
It's not an issue of intelligence but of free will. Humans have the free will to decide if they go to heaven, or to hell. Animals can't make that decision.
How do you know this? Because some self-referential book told you? I'm sorry, this has nothing to do with religion but rather all the unsubstantiated assumptions that must be made in order to make this statement true or insightful. I count at least 5.
May sound like a weird topic but it's true. I'm seeing soooo much mis-information in these threads it's ridiculous. The dynamic range is being compressed, yes. This doesn't make your cds "louder" than a "quiet" cd, it reduces the dynamic range between the sounds so loud doesn't sound so "loud" as quiet.
Now, the reason record companies are doing this, yes, to maximize profits, but that cynical answer doesn't explain how or why really. The real reason is because people in cars with loud stereo systems aren't able to distinguish the dynamic ranges in a loud, noisy, moving environment so they compress the sound to make it sound best in cars. Really. Take say, the latest Front Line Assembly album (crazy loud) and listen to it in your car. It sounds great. It's compressed all to hell. On headphones it sounds like a mess though. Now take any Dire Straits album, particularly Brothers In Arms (Quiet as a mouse) and listen to it in your car. It's quiet, you can't hear it, it sounds like crap. Now listen to it on headphones and it sounds incredible. Why? The dynamic range is there so you can hear the nuances of the music throughout the album, unlike the former album where everything sounds approximately the same level.
THat is the difference between loud and quiet and compression on dynamic range.
I was sued once in the past and lawyers are bad. How's that?
I've had lawyer friends in the past flat out admit, lawyers write laws to benefit lawyers and no one else, hows that?
The ACLU is a money-grubbing headlines-begging political machine that only cares about the color of your skin and the marketability of your cause and I know because I've requested their help and got jack squat. I gotta give them props- at least they were honest about why they weren't helping me and their own bigotry.
I think there's a middle ground between your comments and mine though thank you for expanding, I didn't have time to better articulate my issues. I'm sure the people in the Indian call centers are doing a fine job with what they have & I certainly don't fault them, they're just trying to make a living however the limitations I mentioned do exist and there's not really much at presence to do with it.
English was their first language too! Mod parent up, I totally understand this problem. Why on earth companies that cater to a predominantly English speaking country off-shore their support to ESL countries where the people that can read & speak English DO NOT understand the vernacular, expressions, idioms and vocal inflexions are driving me nuts. How many companies do I have to put on a list to avoid because I just couldn't understand the person on the other end of the phone because:
1. They are ESL 2. They are reading exclusively from a script 3. The connection is so bad it sounds like we're both under water.
Just like if I were in France, I would expect a French speaking CSR...
This isn't really news so much as it is just the result of the apathetic civil justice system in America. Our judicial system here is really only expedient with executing (most) sentences when it is a criminal trial (convict goes to prison immediately usually). When it comes to civil cases, orders and judgments can take forever to be enforced. This isn't news, just a fact of our broken system.
The worst is when an attorney for whichever side will act as an officer of the court and then you're liable never to get your paperwork from them (or judgment). These private attorneys are money-hungry and as a result over-worked and almost never bother to make sure that things get done unless it benefits them directly.
In this case, I'll bet the only reason her lawyer is pushing the judgment is so they can collect the fees for their time. If she were collecting something she'd never see it except for maybe pennies on the dollar from the collection agency.
And let me guess, all of them were against you. Wow, that's not a very nice thing to say and no, the only lawsuit I've ever been involved in as a direct participant was my divorce which went rather smoothly. Be careful, with an attitude like that, I would stay out of FL (thank goodness I got out of there), they're very litigious there & your cynicism/sarcasm would be considered an invite towards some sort of lawsuit (they're crazy!).
What do you think the probability that the courts might make a crazy judgment would be?
This wouldn't be far off. I've been involved in several lawsuits in varying aspects and seen judges make completely insane judgments out of their own arrogance, ignorance & ego. Judgments that would make people sick to see.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing as I've learned that the lawyers are the biggest winners in any case and people should learn to work out their own problems without being so litigious.
They aren't even taking kindly to DX10. Vista itself is not very well received.
I'm pretty far behind in the gaming world. I just beat doom2 and I'm about to try out half-life.
Every gamer I still know these days really sounds like they're sucking the snake of DX10 when I ask... but I never had much faith in them... it took me nearly 15 years to beat doom2 on ultraviolence without cheating!!! Of course there was a 10 year gap somewhere in between when I stopped playing video games & went through college... 3 kids, a marriage, 2 houses, 2 businesses before I got to the point in life where I could afford to play games again... *sigh*...
Nah... my ex-wife is all about the robotech. I bought the dvd boxset when it came out years ago- at that point she had never heard of it & when the divorce came around I was happy to let her have it as she enjoyed it much more than I ever did.
but it makes you wonder, if they continue on with voltron, when will they start doing live action versions of all the great anime series?:)
Maybe a remake of 8 man after??:D No wait, we all ready have that & it's called robocop.
Maybe a live-action remake of GI Joe? I'd love to see that. Esp. With the all the original good guys & bad guys & the same ethnocentrism would actually be neato to watch!
You're free NOT to make the effort to GPL projects. You're free to pick another license for your own project.
You are correct and are completely dodging what parent is stating.
Parent is stating that it is unethical for RMS to say that people shouldn't be allowed to charge for software; not that he is not free to do something other than what RMS wants.
The inherent flaw in the thinking is that all freedom is equal and that freedom means equality. What is freer someone's "right" to free software or my right to charge for it if I want? They are obviously not equal and yet they are both free. It all depends on your own prejudices and values. For instance, I believe that software should be free or not-free dependent on the author so the latter form of freedom is more free to me but not to someone else. I also believe that if they want said software for free that they are free to write it themselves which is freedom (though they will soon find that their time is not free, even to themselves) and they'll probably end up wanting to pay me for it.
I remember liking the cat version of voltron when I was a kid... then I watched it with my kids recently (who love it) and for some reason the storyline seemed like some nutty commie propaganda.
Now wasn't there some other space-ship based show also called voltron that had nothing to do with metal cats?
... not a whole lot. Its not a browser for people who like something else. I really hope firefox does not continue to play some sort of one-upmanship with other browsers- Generally when a family member or friend starts complaining to me about their browsing experience not only do I install FF for them but I go through & remove any ability to easily switch back to ie (how did you know they were all ie users?!?! lol...) Of course I tell them beforehand this is what I'm going to do & I set FF up exactly the way they want it, with all their favorites, all their prefs, etc... and guess what, they all stick with FF.
The average user of a competitor to FF DOESN'T CARE what browser they're using so long as it works as expected and performance doesn't degrade over time.
The article (or the wiki for that matter) doesn't state just who is downloading all these dead copies so why should we care? It's certainly not anyone using ie...
DRM didn't curtail piracy and neither did litigation. Whatever the solution to piracy is, it has not been found yet and the rate will continue to rise until that paradigm is reached.
All DRM did was increase discussion about DRM and increase animosity for an industry that (for whatever reason) seems hellbent on nurturing the worst music ever created...
I used to believe that music will be pirated until the intrinsic & extrinsic values met (artists and labels put out quality music) but that's not true either.
I have ~1100 cds in my collection, I have purchased every single one. The only tracks I have dl'd on my computer are the few I received from iTunes via bottlecaps and a few cds released via creative commons license.
All the whiners saying that it's not piracy or theft, you're even worse than the **AAs. Thanks to you, private companies have totally freaked out and started trying to protect their content via draconian and gestapo tactics because you are exploiting technologies that are largely misunderstood by the general public. The GP and **AAs know that you are and that they don't understand the technology so their natural and defensive (albeit immature) response is to exploit it.
Now music companies are trying to respond to the backlash against the RIAA by *trying* to trust the consumer not to pirate their property and ya know what, I don't really care any more because I know all these a**holes are still going to pirate and give the record companies to continue to jack up their prices ultimately hurting me, the purchaser (by forcing me to continue buying used cds only) and the legitimate artist, who doesn't get a share of that increase anyway.
You can throw all the pointed comments and neato-sounding buzzwords and catchy phrases you want about correlations and statistics and this n that to try and prove that it's not piracy or it's not theft but you're really just making excuses and really no better than what you're complaining against.
So I hope this works out but it doesn't matter anyway because I prefer a lossless copy and unlike the pirates or the **AA, I'm not a thief.
Members who choose to participate will receive $500 discounts toward their deductible for each cholesterol, blood pressure, and BMI level they meet, along with refraining from tobacco use or taking a health risk assessment.
What a scam. They're not even discounting the insurance for those who are healthy and/or go out of their way to meet the standards, they are only giving a discount on the deductible. This is only helping the pocketbooks of the insurance company. It's amazing how corporate decision-makers in HR departments eat this bullcrap up...
As a recently graduated CS student, I find this type of thinking to be incredibly infuriating at times. Companies only want to hire people with experience. Yet to gain this experience, I need a job. The circular logic goes round and round until you have a brain aneurism.
You need to pay your dues after college. You need to work some crappy job and when someone asks for some code you produce it! You need to work for some crappy mom n' pop store and write them a better inventory system. you need to write a program to make something easier in your life and give it to other people. You need to get your name out there. There are a million things you need to do before you become successful and complacent in your chosen career field. I worked at a bank as a teller all through college and scrownged around for code jobs until I got fed up with a lot of processes we had so I wrote better ones over a couple nights & presented them to my boss... who passed them along until one day I got noticed.
If you want something you have to devote some genuine time and effort to it. Show people you want it. Don't just expect it.
Who says it is? If that is true, maybe the flood of H1B visas isn't having the positive effect that proponents insisted that it would. Gee, maybe we should stop the ongoing decimation of our domestic workforce by corrupt trade practices. That would be a start.
Maybe these programmers suck at what they do and the language barrier between American culture and cultures X and Y is so great that even if they were good programmers, they will never release a product that is aesthetically pleasing to Americans... but would flourish in their own country... ?
Seriously, buying an Apple computer is such an impulse buy anyway. I don't care if the one OS they can run is UNIX (though that's great for them, kudos). To buy an Apple means buying in to that Apple cult err, culture that I just don't want to be a part of... and I look at all the people coming out of the Apple store when I walk around town during lunch & those people REALLY DON'T CARE, that's for sure, they look like they're in a trance coming out of that store...
Slashdot Mirror
People have been saying this since the late 80s, we all know that what the major music labels have been pushing is total crap and that is the real reason sales are dropping. Of course some meathead will say that well Britney Spears (or anyone, come on) is a #1 seller, well if that's all you're selling then no shit sherlock. Push quality and you will get more sales that your crap.
Oh- and Amy Winehouse is total crap.
Glad to see an ISP do the right thing and not pander to buggy software.
Well I'm a Libertarian and I guess you could say I'm a nerd though I'm pretty sure I am not...
Sure, I write software for a living but is it the career that defines a nerd? Dr. Feynman would probably be considered a nerd but he didn't fit the other stereotypes associated with nerdiness and I've seen/met plenty of nerds with "cool" or otherwise shitty jobs so are they not nerds? I would have to say there are quite a few nerds in the department of the company I work in... they have few ideas of the mores and the faux pas they commit. They are nice people at heart but they have no idea the egos they deflate, their hapless attempts at daily conversation are often insulting to non-nerds who aren't kind. So I guess I'm not a nerd libertarian or maybe I am, whatever.
Why do I think there are so many nerds who are libertarians? At the office I think it's because the uninformed liberals and conservatives just like to trumpet their causes like cheerleaders and us nerds just quietly disagree. At home I believe it is because we have a truer sense of what freedom is and means and the social responsibility of having to work hard to improve the living conditions around us and for us. Of course, I am a Libertarian and not often a political thinker so my thoughts and opinions are skewed and uninformed to the reasoning behind this as well.
I am a firm believer that one should not discuss politics. Not because it shouldn't be discussed but at least in my country (USA), 95% of the population is too immature to have an honest and open discussion about their true political thoughts and usually we're worse than children when it comes to this topic. Maybe not so much the 3rd party people but more often I encounter this among people of the big 2 political parties we have. Hopefully I am completely wrong and I am just not meeting mature Republicans and Democrats but the ones I know or have met or see on tv act like a bunch of babies.
We used to hate people
Now we just make fun of them
It's more effective that way
Sex! Drugs! Dogma! America!
How is parent insightful? Because of some nice sounding sentences?
It's not an issue of intelligence but of free will. Humans have the free will to decide if they go to heaven, or to hell. Animals can't make that decision.
How do you know this? Because some self-referential book told you? I'm sorry, this has nothing to do with religion but rather all the unsubstantiated assumptions that must be made in order to make this statement true or insightful. I count at least 5.
May sound like a weird topic but it's true. I'm seeing soooo much mis-information in these threads it's ridiculous. The dynamic range is being compressed, yes. This doesn't make your cds "louder" than a "quiet" cd, it reduces the dynamic range between the sounds so loud doesn't sound so "loud" as quiet.
Now, the reason record companies are doing this, yes, to maximize profits, but that cynical answer doesn't explain how or why really. The real reason is because people in cars with loud stereo systems aren't able to distinguish the dynamic ranges in a loud, noisy, moving environment so they compress the sound to make it sound best in cars. Really. Take say, the latest Front Line Assembly album (crazy loud) and listen to it in your car. It sounds great. It's compressed all to hell. On headphones it sounds like a mess though. Now take any Dire Straits album, particularly Brothers In Arms (Quiet as a mouse) and listen to it in your car. It's quiet, you can't hear it, it sounds like crap. Now listen to it on headphones and it sounds incredible. Why? The dynamic range is there so you can hear the nuances of the music throughout the album, unlike the former album where everything sounds approximately the same level.
THat is the difference between loud and quiet and compression on dynamic range.
I was sued once in the past and lawyers are bad. How's that?
I've had lawyer friends in the past flat out admit, lawyers write laws to benefit lawyers and no one else, hows that?
The ACLU is a money-grubbing headlines-begging political machine that only cares about the color of your skin and the marketability of your cause and I know because I've requested their help and got jack squat. I gotta give them props- at least they were honest about why they weren't helping me and their own bigotry.
I think there's a middle ground between your comments and mine though thank you for expanding, I didn't have time to better articulate my issues. I'm sure the people in the Indian call centers are doing a fine job with what they have & I certainly don't fault them, they're just trying to make a living however the limitations I mentioned do exist and there's not really much at presence to do with it.
English was their first language too!
Mod parent up, I totally understand this problem. Why on earth companies that cater to a predominantly English speaking country off-shore their support to ESL countries where the people that can read & speak English DO NOT understand the vernacular, expressions, idioms and vocal inflexions are driving me nuts. How many companies do I have to put on a list to avoid because I just couldn't understand the person on the other end of the phone because:
1. They are ESL
2. They are reading exclusively from a script
3. The connection is so bad it sounds like we're both under water.
Just like if I were in France, I would expect a French speaking CSR...
This isn't really news so much as it is just the result of the apathetic civil justice system in America. Our judicial system here is really only expedient with executing (most) sentences when it is a criminal trial (convict goes to prison immediately usually). When it comes to civil cases, orders and judgments can take forever to be enforced. This isn't news, just a fact of our broken system.
The worst is when an attorney for whichever side will act as an officer of the court and then you're liable never to get your paperwork from them (or judgment). These private attorneys are money-hungry and as a result over-worked and almost never bother to make sure that things get done unless it benefits them directly.
In this case, I'll bet the only reason her lawyer is pushing the judgment is so they can collect the fees for their time. If she were collecting something she'd never see it except for maybe pennies on the dollar from the collection agency.
And let me guess, all of them were against you.
Wow, that's not a very nice thing to say and no, the only lawsuit I've ever been involved in as a direct participant was my divorce which went rather smoothly. Be careful, with an attitude like that, I would stay out of FL (thank goodness I got out of there), they're very litigious there & your cynicism/sarcasm would be considered an invite towards some sort of lawsuit (they're crazy!).
What do you think the probability that the courts might make a crazy judgment would be?
This wouldn't be far off. I've been involved in several lawsuits in varying aspects and seen judges make completely insane judgments out of their own arrogance, ignorance & ego. Judgments that would make people sick to see.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing as I've learned that the lawyers are the biggest winners in any case and people should learn to work out their own problems without being so litigious.
They aren't even taking kindly to DX10. Vista itself is not very well received.
I'm pretty far behind in the gaming world. I just beat doom2 and I'm about to try out half-life.
Every gamer I still know these days really sounds like they're sucking the snake of DX10 when I ask... but I never had much faith in them... it took me nearly 15 years to beat doom2 on ultraviolence without cheating!!! Of course there was a 10 year gap somewhere in between when I stopped playing video games & went through college... 3 kids, a marriage, 2 houses, 2 businesses before I got to the point in life where I could afford to play games again... *sigh*...
yes, you might be thinking of robotech :)
:)
:D No wait, we all ready have that & it's called robocop.
Nah... my ex-wife is all about the robotech. I bought the dvd boxset when it came out years ago- at that point she had never heard of it & when the divorce came around I was happy to let her have it as she enjoyed it much more than I ever did.
but it makes you wonder, if they continue on with voltron, when will they start doing live action versions of all the great anime series?
Maybe a remake of 8 man after??
Maybe a live-action remake of GI Joe? I'd love to see that. Esp. With the all the original good guys & bad guys & the same ethnocentrism would actually be neato to watch!
You're free NOT to make the effort to GPL projects. You're free to pick another license for your own project.
You are correct and are completely dodging what parent is stating.
Parent is stating that it is unethical for RMS to say that people shouldn't be allowed to charge for software; not that he is not free to do something other than what RMS wants.
The inherent flaw in the thinking is that all freedom is equal and that freedom means equality. What is freer someone's "right" to free software or my right to charge for it if I want? They are obviously not equal and yet they are both free. It all depends on your own prejudices and values. For instance, I believe that software should be free or not-free dependent on the author so the latter form of freedom is more free to me but not to someone else. I also believe that if they want said software for free that they are free to write it themselves which is freedom (though they will soon find that their time is not free, even to themselves) and they'll probably end up wanting to pay me for it.
I remember liking the cat version of voltron when I was a kid... then I watched it with my kids recently (who love it) and for some reason the storyline seemed like some nutty commie propaganda.
Now wasn't there some other space-ship based show also called voltron that had nothing to do with metal cats?
Maybe gamers will eventually get sick of getting fucked by Microsoft when this happens a couple more times? Or not...
... not a whole lot. Its not a browser for people who like something else. I really hope firefox does not continue to play some sort of one-upmanship with other browsers- Generally when a family member or friend starts complaining to me about their browsing experience not only do I install FF for them but I go through & remove any ability to easily switch back to ie (how did you know they were all ie users?!?! lol...) Of course I tell them beforehand this is what I'm going to do & I set FF up exactly the way they want it, with all their favorites, all their prefs, etc... and guess what, they all stick with FF.
The average user of a competitor to FF DOESN'T CARE what browser they're using so long as it works as expected and performance doesn't degrade over time.
The article (or the wiki for that matter) doesn't state just who is downloading all these dead copies so why should we care? It's certainly not anyone using ie...
DRM didn't curtail piracy and neither did litigation. Whatever the solution to piracy is, it has not been found yet and the rate will continue to rise until that paradigm is reached.
All DRM did was increase discussion about DRM and increase animosity for an industry that (for whatever reason) seems hellbent on nurturing the worst music ever created...
I used to believe that music will be pirated until the intrinsic & extrinsic values met (artists and labels put out quality music) but that's not true either.
I have ~1100 cds in my collection, I have purchased every single one. The only tracks I have dl'd on my computer are the few I received from iTunes via bottlecaps and a few cds released via creative commons license.
All the whiners saying that it's not piracy or theft, you're even worse than the **AAs. Thanks to you, private companies have totally freaked out and started trying to protect their content via draconian and gestapo tactics because you are exploiting technologies that are largely misunderstood by the general public. The GP and **AAs know that you are and that they don't understand the technology so their natural and defensive (albeit immature) response is to exploit it.
Now music companies are trying to respond to the backlash against the RIAA by *trying* to trust the consumer not to pirate their property and ya know what, I don't really care any more because I know all these a**holes are still going to pirate and give the record companies to continue to jack up their prices ultimately hurting me, the purchaser (by forcing me to continue buying used cds only) and the legitimate artist, who doesn't get a share of that increase anyway.
You can throw all the pointed comments and neato-sounding buzzwords and catchy phrases you want about correlations and statistics and this n that to try and prove that it's not piracy or it's not theft but you're really just making excuses and really no better than what you're complaining against.
So I hope this works out but it doesn't matter anyway because I prefer a lossless copy and unlike the pirates or the **AA, I'm not a thief.
This challenges the view that the upright humans evolved from the tool users.
Does not. Homo sapiens could have forked from erectus while the two coexisted for quite a while until erectus died out. This means nothing.
Members who choose to participate will receive $500 discounts toward their deductible for each cholesterol, blood pressure, and BMI level they meet, along with refraining from tobacco use or taking a health risk assessment.
What a scam. They're not even discounting the insurance for those who are healthy and/or go out of their way to meet the standards, they are only giving a discount on the deductible. This is only helping the pocketbooks of the insurance company. It's amazing how corporate decision-makers in HR departments eat this bullcrap up...
As a recently graduated CS student, I find this type of thinking to be incredibly infuriating at times. Companies only want to hire people with experience. Yet to gain this experience, I need a job. The circular logic goes round and round until you have a brain aneurism.
You need to pay your dues after college. You need to work some crappy job and when someone asks for some code you produce it! You need to work for some crappy mom n' pop store and write them a better inventory system. you need to write a program to make something easier in your life and give it to other people. You need to get your name out there. There are a million things you need to do before you become successful and complacent in your chosen career field. I worked at a bank as a teller all through college and scrownged around for code jobs until I got fed up with a lot of processes we had so I wrote better ones over a couple nights & presented them to my boss... who passed them along until one day I got noticed.
If you want something you have to devote some genuine time and effort to it. Show people you want it. Don't just expect it.
Who says it is? If that is true, maybe the flood of H1B visas isn't having the positive effect that proponents insisted that it would. Gee, maybe we should stop the ongoing decimation of our domestic workforce by corrupt trade practices. That would be a start.
Maybe these programmers suck at what they do and the language barrier between American culture and cultures X and Y is so great that even if they were good programmers, they will never release a product that is aesthetically pleasing to Americans... but would flourish in their own country... ?
In 2010 we'll have flying cars and those skateboards from BTTF Part 2 so we'll just fly over these places that need bridges.
Seriously, buying an Apple computer is such an impulse buy anyway. I don't care if the one OS they can run is UNIX (though that's great for them, kudos). To buy an Apple means buying in to that Apple cult err, culture that I just don't want to be a part of... and I look at all the people coming out of the Apple store when I walk around town during lunch & those people REALLY DON'T CARE, that's for sure, they look like they're in a trance coming out of that store...