According to the RIAA, if I have mpegs from CDs that would have cost say $300 to buy on my hard-drive, they are down $300 dollars. Does this mean that if that hard-drive crashes, they are suddenly up $300 dollars.
Also, to extend Schroedinger's experiment a little, say I place a PC with a CD recorder in a sealed box and set it so at the random decay of a radioctive substance, the CD is either copied or not. According to quantum theory, before box is opened, the CD is in a superposed state of being copied and not copied. Therefore, according to the RIAA, they are in the superposed state of having "lost" the value of the CD and not having "lost" the value. If I never open the box, will the RIAA continue to operate on this superposed state or is it the case that it will not make a blind bit of difference?
The only true claim that can be made about copyright infringement is that it has no direct effect on the copyright holder. Claims can be made about indirect effect but these can never be anything more than conjecture and supposition.
No, you're missing this guy's point which I think is very subtle and very insightful.
You can work all your life, pay off your debts and own your own property and then you die and the government gets a nice slice of your property and then your offspring, who should have had an easier time of things, now have to work to pay for their property.
This affects the poorer much more than the rich. The rich, although loosing a bigger chunk, can soon make it up as the money that they have breeds money. Although it looks like inheritance tax hits the rich, it's actually much more crippling to the poor.
In no function of real life am I ever restricted to performing an action and then waiting for the
corresponding action from the other party
Not tried buying or selling a house yet then? I've currently been waiting nearly three months from performing an action (accepting an offer on my house) to the corresponding action from the other party (exchange of contracts). On the other hand, that was incredibly annoying which doesn't exactly support turn based games (which I like).
My fave turn based game for anyone who recalls it is "Rebelstar". There were definitely FPS before Wolfenstein too.
Very strange no one has been able to see thru this in
the last 2 thousand years...
Nah. Not when there's people who play the lottery every week. Then there's the amount of people who are Christians *and* believe in ghosts when the scriptures basically say "You die and then there's the rapture". Not to mention that the prevailing acceptance that government it there to rule the people when, in fact, they are there to serve the people (in America anyway).
It's the same document it was two hundred years ago precisely because it was intended to last for all time as
a universal declaration of human rights in the face of tyranny.
And it is a fine document. I really mean that. The US constitution is a fine blueprint for how any fair demcracy should be styled. Unfortunately, it is being subverted by your government and seems to be heading to being nothing more than a footnote in history. People like yourself hold it up as some magical shield against tyrrany when what the US constitution actually is is just words on paper. It needs to be carried in the hearts and actions of the people to be effective.
It's like when Sen Ashcroft was being quizzed about his support of gun rights and it being needed as a protection against a tyrranical gov't. Sen Kennedy said "Do we really have a tyrranical govt?" (or words to that effect). Well, duh dufus, people *have* guns.
We may have higher taxes than we used to, but that's because we chose to under the 16th amendment.
I don't suspect anyone in the USA walked up to the ballot box and put an X next to "more taxation". In fact, I think you had a rather effective revolution a couple of hundred years ago precisely because of taxation. The fact is that taxation has been increased by politicians. You might say that the country has a choice to choose the politicians that make the laws but currently, the Dems and Reps have it pretty well sewn up between them and neither of them seems to have a real yen to cut taxes. So no, I wouldn't say you'd chosen them.
Unlike your country where you're perpetually beholden to the whims of your parliament, we answer to no
one but Divine Providence and the letter of Law.
Yeah right. England is a democracy (forget the queen woman) and from experience of both systems (though less with the US) I'd say they were both pretty much neck and neck in the fairness/corruption stakes. Both beholden to corporate interests but better than many other systems. You might start waving your constitution around but you already know that holds no weight with me. It's the politicians you need to be showing it to anyway.
As for what I stand for? Well, ruthless self examination and eternal vigilance. Western governments, the US included are heading away from the "right direction" not towards it. To be in denial about this is to be part of the problem, not the solution. The only thing I was laughing at was your absurd belief that because you have your constitution, everything is hunky dory
How is a government supposed to plan what facilities are
required at what places if they don't know what type of people live where ? Plotting population trends
across the years is how you figure out where to build schools, roads, retirement homes, etc.
The same way they decide anythng of course. By listening to the lobbyists which fill their pockets with the most money.
We made this country the best in the world through
hard effort and hard choices
Through the hard effort of denial and the choice to believe that the world outside of the USA (when it exists) is all at third world standards.
America has a lot of good things going for it and in many respects, outclasses the world at certain things. However, it lacks badly in certain areas and what good things you do have are often in decline (free speach, personal liberty, low taxes). Waving your tattered constitution and chanting your "best country in the world" mantra is just going to let things slide and politicians walk over you.
It's time Americans woke up and realise that good things now depend on action now, not what some people wrote on a piece of paper 200 years ago.
AFAIK, the mean-IQ even has risin over the decades
Nope, still at 100% as it was defined to be.
Now, if you mean intelligence has risen, could be. But I suspect the mental capability of people is about the same as it has been for quite a few generations. It all depends which yardsticks you use though.
Rich
In the four years I've been using IMAP I've never had this
race condition hit me.
It's always possible that your IMAP server isn't written to the spec of course. It wouldn't be the first time a programmer has done what's sensible and not what's written down on a piece of paper.
Of course, then someone usually writes a piece of software that relies on the braindead part of the spec and everything breaks.
I would like to have a client that allows me to choose server-based or client-based management of
subscriptions and recent messages
Whenever you use the word "or" in specifying network applications, it's often worth considering whether you should use the word "and". It might be worth making subscriptions modifiable on a per client and per user basis. It might even be worth having several profiles storable on the server per user and the current profile decided by the client. You do have to draw a line when complexity increases too much but e-mail is one thing where flexibility is important.
Easily done already. Invent a filetype (.lnc) which contains informatian about a program to launch and then have a helper app that interprets the file and launches programs appropriately.
Of course, it's a security nightmare as you couldn't tell where the file had come from. Perhaps the files could use some form of authentication. Hmm. Yes, for example, NT users could "sign" launching controls then, on a company based intranet, they could launch programs as required from any networked machine. In unix, it could be used to launch programs running suid the creater of the launch control.
Rich
The dangers of sequencing chinese food:-
on
Rice Genome Mapped
·
· Score: 2
You sequence one genome then 15 minutes later, you feel like sequencing another.
Of course some folks are buying them, but some are not.
That is true of course. But I think you clearly understand why that is no reason to penalise honest people. And the original implication was that noone would buy them since they could copy them from the TV
However, if the shows are copy-protected, then
taping is suddenly out of the question, and all the folks who would have taped now must buy the tapes if
they want a copy. Perhaps most will simply do without, but some will buy, and therein lies the extra
profit.
But by restricting the content, you are reducing the utility of the service provided. This directly affects the balance of the cost/benefit equation. If we have PPV miniseries X with runs Monday through Thursday and I know I am going out Tuesday (or even might be going out) and I can't copy that episode then I won't buy it. Yes, I know this argument can be refuted by content-on-demand but it is merely illustrative.
On the other hand, if you're saying that as controls get more restrictive, then consumers will simply turn
away from the entertainment companies, then you have a legitimate argument, assuming it really
happens.
That's exactly what I'm saying. There's an army of people out there who want the convenience of "content now" at low to no cost. Now, that's a group of potential consumers. At the moment, their needs are not being met by the traditional cartels but are being supplied by *copyright infringers (and some small independents) which for some (most) people, pushes the cost too far above "low-to-no" (moral cost to high). Hopefully while the old dinosaurs are sleeping someone will jump in and find a way to meet these consumers demands and kill the dinosaurs dead. It's just waiting to happen. The dinosaurs have nothing to offer anymore. They provide poor quality content at high prices and rely on their stranglehold and the law to do it because they have nothing real to offer anymore.
Of course, nothing is certain, it may not happen, the dinosars may change and adapt to the new market but hopefully whatever happens, it will come sooner rather than later.
Rich
*I had originally used the word "pirate" but I think it is important that we get out of the habit of playing to their rules
Have you seen the ads on places like the History Channel offering to sell you a tape
of the show you just saw for $20? Have you then thought to yourself, "I don't need to spend $20 for
their tape. I'll just tape the show the next time it airs." Now do you see their angle?
And because noone would bother to buy them, they bother advertising why?
Do you see how your argument falls down? Clearly someone is buying them or they wouldn't advertiser them. Walk into a video store in the UK and you can see tapes of Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Star Trek etc etc. These videos are often on sale at the same time that the shows are being made on TV.
Logical conclusion: People are wiling to pay fair dues for a decent product. We are not all thieves and copyright infringers and don't deserve to be treated as such.
As much as the MPAA and RIAA like to rant and rave, most people know right from wrong and most people try to do "the right thing"(tm)
People use Napster because, although copyright infingement is illegal, they know that the current system is "wrong". Massive coporations soaking up sackfuls of money, using their strangleholds to force manufactured drivel down our throats, artists getting paid a tiny fraction of proceeds. The days when we all though popstars were automatically multimillionaires (They sold a million copies at $15 a piece, they must have made at least $7million right?) are gone. This is the information age and the information is that when you buy a CD, you are giving your money to liars and scoundrels.
The funny thing is that the more draconian measures the RIAA and MPAA introduce, the more they will revile people and the less willing people will be to give them their money. I used to want a huge CD collection and when DVDs came out, I fancied a huge collection of them. I now only buy second hand CDs (no, I don't have Gigabytes of mp3, I just listen to the old ones more) and one(1) DVD (The Matrix of course). I considered buying another recently but just couldn't morally bring myself to.
To paraphrase someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.". See which way the wind is blowing, there are the seeds of rebelion in it's infancy here.
New amiga product out every year since 1990. Each one less and less based on what amiga was about. It may have the name but is "a
language independent Virtual Machine, with rich multimedia APIs, and is also the fastest JVM on earth" really an amiga which I remember as a wedge shaped personal computer with a built in keyboard and ahead-of-its-time games and applications? It's not really much different than what Amstrad did with the Sincalir name after they bought it off Clive Sinclair. No way would he have produced the mediocre piece of PC crap which bore the name.
Slashdot Mirror
It's just the first time that I've ever seen anyone make the there/their mistake this way around.
Rich
Also, to extend Schroedinger's experiment a little, say I place a PC with a CD recorder in a sealed box and set it so at the random decay of a radioctive substance, the CD is either copied or not. According to quantum theory, before box is opened, the CD is in a superposed state of being copied and not copied. Therefore, according to the RIAA, they are in the superposed state of having "lost" the value of the CD and not having "lost" the value. If I never open the box, will the RIAA continue to operate on this superposed state or is it the case that it will not make a blind bit of difference?
The only true claim that can be made about copyright infringement is that it has no direct effect on the copyright holder. Claims can be made about indirect effect but these can never be anything more than conjecture and supposition.
Rich
Hey buddy, this is news for nerds. if you see the sun more than three times in a month, you have no business reading this website.
Rich
You can work all your life, pay off your debts and own your own property and then you die and the government gets a nice slice of your property and then your offspring, who should have had an easier time of things, now have to work to pay for their property.
This affects the poorer much more than the rich. The rich, although loosing a bigger chunk, can soon make it up as the money that they have breeds money. Although it looks like inheritance tax hits the rich, it's actually much more crippling to the poor.
Rich
Not tried buying or selling a house yet then? I've currently been waiting nearly three months from performing an action (accepting an offer on my house) to the corresponding action from the other party (exchange of contracts). On the other hand, that was incredibly annoying which doesn't exactly support turn based games (which I like).
My fave turn based game for anyone who recalls it is "Rebelstar". There were definitely FPS before Wolfenstein too.
Rich
Nah. Not when there's people who play the lottery every week. Then there's the amount of people who are Christians *and* believe in ghosts when the scriptures basically say "You die and then there's the rapture". Not to mention that the prevailing acceptance that government it there to rule the people when, in fact, they are there to serve the people (in America anyway).
So nope, not inconsistant at all.
Rich
Err, that would be a polyhedron, Dave
Rich
Rich
It's the same document it was two hundred years ago precisely because it was intended to last for all time as a universal declaration of human rights in the face of tyranny.
And it is a fine document. I really mean that. The US constitution is a fine blueprint for how any fair demcracy should be styled. Unfortunately, it is being subverted by your government and seems to be heading to being nothing more than a footnote in history. People like yourself hold it up as some magical shield against tyrrany when what the US constitution actually is is just words on paper. It needs to be carried in the hearts and actions of the people to be effective.
It's like when Sen Ashcroft was being quizzed about his support of gun rights and it being needed as a protection against a tyrranical gov't. Sen Kennedy said "Do we really have a tyrranical govt?" (or words to that effect). Well, duh dufus, people *have* guns.
We may have higher taxes than we used to, but that's because we chose to under the 16th amendment.
I don't suspect anyone in the USA walked up to the ballot box and put an X next to "more taxation". In fact, I think you had a rather effective revolution a couple of hundred years ago precisely because of taxation. The fact is that taxation has been increased by politicians. You might say that the country has a choice to choose the politicians that make the laws but currently, the Dems and Reps have it pretty well sewn up between them and neither of them seems to have a real yen to cut taxes. So no, I wouldn't say you'd chosen them.
Unlike your country where you're perpetually beholden to the whims of your parliament, we answer to no one but Divine Providence and the letter of Law.
Yeah right. England is a democracy (forget the queen woman) and from experience of both systems (though less with the US) I'd say they were both pretty much neck and neck in the fairness/corruption stakes. Both beholden to corporate interests but better than many other systems. You might start waving your constitution around but you already know that holds no weight with me. It's the politicians you need to be showing it to anyway.
As for what I stand for? Well, ruthless self examination and eternal vigilance. Western governments, the US included are heading away from the "right direction" not towards it. To be in denial about this is to be part of the problem, not the solution. The only thing I was laughing at was your absurd belief that because you have your constitution, everything is hunky dory
Rich
A smaller profit is not a loss. A loss is when you have money and it goes away
They're probably going use it to make you pay for everyone else that steals music, whether you steal it or not.
It is not theft, it is copyright infringement.
Rich
The same way they decide anythng of course. By listening to the lobbyists which fill their pockets with the most money.
Rich
Rich
And what do you have against robots, meat-boy?
Unit QQR132A
Through the hard effort of denial and the choice to believe that the world outside of the USA (when it exists) is all at third world standards.
America has a lot of good things going for it and in many respects, outclasses the world at certain things. However, it lacks badly in certain areas and what good things you do have are often in decline (free speach, personal liberty, low taxes). Waving your tattered constitution and chanting your "best country in the world" mantra is just going to let things slide and politicians walk over you.
It's time Americans woke up and realise that good things now depend on action now, not what some people wrote on a piece of paper 200 years ago.
Rich
Did you remember that or look it up?
Rich
Nope, still at 100% as it was defined to be.
Now, if you mean intelligence has risen, could be. But I suspect the mental capability of people is about the same as it has been for quite a few generations. It all depends which yardsticks you use though. Rich
It's always possible that your IMAP server isn't written to the spec of course. It wouldn't be the first time a programmer has done what's sensible and not what's written down on a piece of paper.
Of course, then someone usually writes a piece of software that relies on the braindead part of the spec and everything breaks.
Rich
Whenever you use the word "or" in specifying network applications, it's often worth considering whether you should use the word "and". It might be worth making subscriptions modifiable on a per client and per user basis. It might even be worth having several profiles storable on the server per user and the current profile decided by the client. You do have to draw a line when complexity increases too much but e-mail is one thing where flexibility is important.
Rich
Rich
Of course, it's a security nightmare as you couldn't tell where the file had come from. Perhaps the files could use some form of authentication. Hmm. Yes, for example, NT users could "sign" launching controls then, on a company based intranet, they could launch programs as required from any networked machine. In unix, it could be used to launch programs running suid the creater of the launch control.
Rich
Rich
That is true of course. But I think you clearly understand why that is no reason to penalise honest people. And the original implication was that noone would buy them since they could copy them from the TV
However, if the shows are copy-protected, then taping is suddenly out of the question, and all the folks who would have taped now must buy the tapes if they want a copy. Perhaps most will simply do without, but some will buy, and therein lies the extra profit.
But by restricting the content, you are reducing the utility of the service provided. This directly affects the balance of the cost/benefit equation. If we have PPV miniseries X with runs Monday through Thursday and I know I am going out Tuesday (or even might be going out) and I can't copy that episode then I won't buy it. Yes, I know this argument can be refuted by content-on-demand but it is merely illustrative.
On the other hand, if you're saying that as controls get more restrictive, then consumers will simply turn away from the entertainment companies, then you have a legitimate argument, assuming it really happens.
That's exactly what I'm saying. There's an army of people out there who want the convenience of "content now" at low to no cost. Now, that's a group of potential consumers. At the moment, their needs are not being met by the traditional cartels but are being supplied by *copyright infringers (and some small independents) which for some (most) people, pushes the cost too far above "low-to-no" (moral cost to high). Hopefully while the old dinosaurs are sleeping someone will jump in and find a way to meet these consumers demands and kill the dinosaurs dead. It's just waiting to happen. The dinosaurs have nothing to offer anymore. They provide poor quality content at high prices and rely on their stranglehold and the law to do it because they have nothing real to offer anymore.
Of course, nothing is certain, it may not happen, the dinosars may change and adapt to the new market but hopefully whatever happens, it will come sooner rather than later.
Rich
*I had originally used the word "pirate" but I think it is important that we get out of the habit of playing to their rules
And because noone would bother to buy them, they bother advertising why?
Do you see how your argument falls down? Clearly someone is buying them or they wouldn't advertiser them. Walk into a video store in the UK and you can see tapes of Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Star Trek etc etc. These videos are often on sale at the same time that the shows are being made on TV.
Logical conclusion: People are wiling to pay fair dues for a decent product. We are not all thieves and copyright infringers and don't deserve to be treated as such.
As much as the MPAA and RIAA like to rant and rave, most people know right from wrong and most people try to do "the right thing"(tm)
People use Napster because, although copyright infingement is illegal, they know that the current system is "wrong". Massive coporations soaking up sackfuls of money, using their strangleholds to force manufactured drivel down our throats, artists getting paid a tiny fraction of proceeds. The days when we all though popstars were automatically multimillionaires (They sold a million copies at $15 a piece, they must have made at least $7million right?) are gone. This is the information age and the information is that when you buy a CD, you are giving your money to liars and scoundrels.
The funny thing is that the more draconian measures the RIAA and MPAA introduce, the more they will revile people and the less willing people will be to give them their money. I used to want a huge CD collection and when DVDs came out, I fancied a huge collection of them. I now only buy second hand CDs (no, I don't have Gigabytes of mp3, I just listen to the old ones more) and one(1) DVD (The Matrix of course). I considered buying another recently but just couldn't morally bring myself to.
To paraphrase someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.". See which way the wind is blowing, there are the seeds of rebelion in it's infancy here.
Rich
Rich
I think it's already gone ;)
Rich