Good point and I do agree with it overall. However, to assume that not a single customer would have purchased the original works - even if it does fall within the spirit of the law - is equally unlikely. Well, its very much an improbability for any recent game system at least. But you know, this case deals with the Power Player... So yeah, you are probably right.:D
And again, we're dealing with old games, none of which (I'm assuming) are in production or even for sale anymore. So did this guy REALLY cut into the profits of the copyright holder(s)? Probably not. His crime was really using another's work as the cornerstone for his own product. I wonder if that's how the case was looked at, or if it was viewed as though he had deprived the copyright holder of sales also?
Really though, I think the only way to be fair about this is to ask the customers whether or not they would have purchased any of the 75 titles and which ones. Heck, some of them may have even owned them... We're talking about Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, etc.. I guess the copyright holder could pass the time/cost of collecting that information to the defendant in the final settlement. That seems like a relatively fair way of doing things, although pretty tedious.
I (would like to) believe it'll be pretty difficult to find anyone who actually thinks that infringing upon another's copyrighted work for profit is NOT wrong.
The argument from 'pirates' is extremely varied, but it usually involves no profit, in which case, it becomes less black and white. If you 'pirate' something that you wouldn't have purchased anyway and don't share it with anyone, then no one is really hurt. I can actually sympathize with that. BUT, people LOVE free stuff and 99% of the time, that just isn't the case and it is unprovable (arbitrary figure, but I'm sure it is high).
In this case though, we're talking about getting something that should have been paid for for free, intentionally profiting and wittingly depriving potential sales of the involved works. There are a couple of levels of wrong here.
One could argue though, that if none of his customers had planned to purchase the original work, then not much harm was done. But that's unrealistic and impossible to *prove*... Not to mention that profiting on another's work without compensation is pretty scummy in itself. But it is worth looking at that point of view in his defense... I guess.
Screw you. You don't get to do things to me for my own good. -- Fulcrum Of Evil
I don't want to be forced to install anything -- RudeIota
With that kind of attitude, you can write a browser yourself, then. And if you adore your freedom that much, use another one. Mozilla's job isn't to cater to you or your incredibly narrow ideology of "You don't get to do things to me for my own good."
Someone, somewhere in your life has made your mind up for you on more than one occasion. From the time you are born, you have been told what to do and who you are today is a result of that. Whether you like/accept it or not, you are a product of other people's guidelines. Your whole life is will remain so forever because that's how humanity's societal structure works.
So, to tell me to screw myself because I can empathize with a non-profit organization wanting to push you into updating the software they wrote for your personal use... sounds a little silly.:) If you really want to make a change, try dissolving government and corporate rule... Don't scold me because I believe (most) people will benefit from an update notification that can be disabled before and/or after the fact.
I believe it is the *right* thing to do, since this will benefit both the majority of its user base and Mozilla itself (they've been able to argue that Firefox users keep their browser updated far more frequently than IE users).
BUT, I don't want to be forced to install anything (even though I would). So the deal is, if it prompts me with an option to disable it and/or there is an option in the preferences to turn disable nag screen, then that's a fair trade to me.
While compressing the Hell out of audio is all the rage these days, that applies to every format.
But, what really does go missing in digital reproduction is the data itself.
Digital sampling causes information to be lost, which results in poorer sound quality than the source. When audio is captured digitally, it cannot be captured in one continuous stream, instead it is sampled 44,100 times per second. That's just kind of how it works. Although 44,100 samples sounds pretty impressive, whatever is in between those samples is lost in the final recording and can make a noticeable difference to the human hear (especially in fast-paced music). This is the reason why vinyl is still around and (oddly enough) preferred by some audiophiles. In principle, I might liken this to the annoyance of low screen refresh rates or the DLP rainbow effect in that the cause is very similar (The output is too slow and can't fool the human eye well enough, much like ill-sampled audio can't fool the human ear).
DVDs allow for a higher sampling rates, so less sound is lost. The sound, as a result, is more true to the original source. Currently, DVD movies use 96,000 samples per second or higher.
rounded particle about a millionth of a meter across
Get it right.
While we're at it, maybe someone would care to share arbitrary comparisons to help us visualize... like if we could line these particles up from the Earth to the Moon, it would take nearly 3.84403(10^14) of them! Or, if we encircled the Earth with these particles, it would take nearly 4.0008(10^13)! Amazing!!! It's all so clear now.
My girlfriend unwittingly leaned across one of these scales to reach a bag of apples, whereupon the screen started showing pictures of different kinds of melons
... You never removed the bar code from your inflatable life partner?:\
The advantage to having faster RPMs isn't as much throughput as it is seek times. You can RAID 0 all the drives you want together, but you'll never improve the throughput. I'm sure this is in response to SSDs, which really have two huge advantages right now: seek time and reliability. Adding another 10,000 RPMs may help HDDs limp along in the performance arena a little while longer...
So really, RAID 0 helps if your data is read/written to sequentially, but in the real world, your data is all over the place. That's where seek time becomes *really* important and I'd personally take an SSD over a HDDx2 in RAID 0 with twice the sustained throughput.
Remember those? It kind of reminds me of the multi-head idea you have. Perhaps one of the differences (I think) is that the actual head assembly moved too, to compensate for the disc itself not being able to rotate faster (discs have the potential to shatter above the usual max speeds on current optical drives). I remember seeing a drive rated at 72X back in early 2000.. maybe even 99.. I don't feel like digging up a link though.
They were fast and quiet, but I don't think they make them anymore. I remember the reviews being favorable too, but they were a bit expensive (not outrageously so, IMO).
Just imagine how loud something like this will be. The Velociraptor is loud enough, in my opinion. And because of that, these drives will only have a place in environments where speed > noise (perhaps gaming systems).
It would appear to me that mechanical media is on its final throes before SSD totally pounces it. And if the Raptor line is is any indication of price, cost becomes less of an issue against SSDs.
In pure capitalism, the MAFIAA would have long been driven out of business.
Much like communism, the laissez-faire brand of capitalism that I assume 'pure' stands for can't work. In fact, unregulated capitalism would literally be corporately-run communism.
Without regulation, the biggest company wins absolutely everything. The biggest company has the the best deals, the best resources, the best connections, the broadest selection of goods and services and absolutely no other business can compete short of doing something that Mega Corporation Inc. hasn't thought of yet... and no doubt it will get its hands into THAT market too, hiring the best people and using its infinite resources to cut out the little guy.
A lot of this goes on ALREADY in the U.S, but thanks to rules, regulations and *some* government interest of keeping the market fair, the little guys can still exist, even if it is just barely in some markets... (Although there is certainly a few where they can't at all.)
Well, my point is, the RIAA would only go under in a 100% capitalistic society if they were superseded by something greater than themselves or if they just weren't needed. This is a little bit of a thought experiment, but I *might* argue with myself that the RIAA wouldn't be needed to start with, because a 'pure' capitalistic society would be fairly unregulated and such things as copyrights etc... wouldn't exist - not in a government-issued sense. This would have rendered the RIAA obsolete. BUT, I imagine you'd probably find a privatized version of the copyright system economically enforced by Mega Corporation Inc, which no doubt, would effectively be the RIAA too.:)
I don't know much about trains or conductors/engineers, but a set of human eyes can pick out things such as problems with tracks, signs and signals. There is probably some value to that which might justify a 'human driver'.
Also, I imagine there is a (well justified) fear of an entirely automated system failing in some way and being responsible for an accident of horrific proportions. Having someone who understands the train and rail system - someone actually on board - would definitely be extra insurance.
Also, it wouldn't surprise me if some variables like train weight, uneven loads, certain types of cars, track grades, weather etc... might make 100% automated train driving difficult. I mean, not that a human being knows exactly how much the train weighs and how uneven the loads are, but a human component could adds some sort of (necessary?) compensation for such variables. Additionally, even if total automation can be done, the cost to do deploy the technology and infrastructure may be (initially) prohibitive, even compared to worker salary. Again, I haven't much clue... just thinking aloud. It wouldn't surprise me if there ARE automated trains. Maybe some of those fancy trains in Japan or something.:)
MW has told CNETAsia that an electronic fault caused the problem, rather than a system crash of the car's Windows-based central computer, as other reports have speculated.
Just to clear it up, the finger pointing concludes Windows wasn't necessarily to blame...
That's not off topic. The post as it reads right now is "$.4.4 million". Sure, we can assume it is 4.4 million because it seems like an nonsensical number otherwise, but this is very unclear and should be corrected.
Did you not see that Lenovo has made IBM Thinkpads for years? And no, being (pretending to be?) a level 1 tech support monkey for IBM doesn't make you any more of an official resource.
Now, as far as 'valid real world' experience goes, I have quite a bit. I work with all brands of laptops on a daily basis. I replace internal and external parts, rework them etc... I've worked on scores and scores of Thinkpads, including many T4Xs and T6Xs. In my opinion, they are well-built compared to *any* other major notebook brand (HP, Dell, Acer, Tosbhia etc..) and just as well built as the T2Xs and T3Xs. I even used to own a T21 AND T30, both of which I put together using parts and reassembled/disassembled numerous times.
In short, when it comes to build quality, my opinion is better than yours.:P
They made the right decision 98 percent of the time when the expert examined the patient with a webcam, and only 82 percent of the time when they just talked to each other on the phone. Perhaps this report will finally convince the medical community that telemedicine is important.
Actually, each 'label' you have in Gmail is represented by a 'folder' in IMAP. You end up with one master directory that has all of your emails and each sub folder (each label) contains the appropriate emails within it.
I've been using IMAP since it was introduced in gmail and it has worked exactly that way since the first day. It works that way on my phone and in Thunderbird.
Slashdot Mirror
I to understood the hole post.
Ohhh, the irony!
Good point and I do agree with it overall. However, to assume that not a single customer would have purchased the original works - even if it does fall within the spirit of the law - is equally unlikely. Well, its very much an improbability for any recent game system at least. But you know, this case deals with the Power Player... So yeah, you are probably right. :D
And again, we're dealing with old games, none of which (I'm assuming) are in production or even for sale anymore. So did this guy REALLY cut into the profits of the copyright holder(s)? Probably not. His crime was really using another's work as the cornerstone for his own product. I wonder if that's how the case was looked at, or if it was viewed as though he had deprived the copyright holder of sales also?
Really though, I think the only way to be fair about this is to ask the customers whether or not they would have purchased any of the 75 titles and which ones. Heck, some of them may have even owned them... We're talking about Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, etc.. I guess the copyright holder could pass the time/cost of collecting that information to the defendant in the final settlement. That seems like a relatively fair way of doing things, although pretty tedious.
I (would like to) believe it'll be pretty difficult to find anyone who actually thinks that infringing upon another's copyrighted work for profit is NOT wrong.
The argument from 'pirates' is extremely varied, but it usually involves no profit, in which case, it becomes less black and white. If you 'pirate' something that you wouldn't have purchased anyway and don't share it with anyone, then no one is really hurt. I can actually sympathize with that. BUT, people LOVE free stuff and 99% of the time, that just isn't the case and it is unprovable (arbitrary figure, but I'm sure it is high).
In this case though, we're talking about getting something that should have been paid for for free, intentionally profiting and wittingly depriving potential sales of the involved works. There are a couple of levels of wrong here.
One could argue though, that if none of his customers had planned to purchase the original work, then not much harm was done. But that's unrealistic and impossible to *prove*... Not to mention that profiting on another's work without compensation is pretty scummy in itself. But it is worth looking at that point of view in his defense... I guess.
That's right, seventh - right above China - if it were its own country. Yes, here is more information on how to 'NOT' run a state!
Sounds like those 'nanny state liberal' commies have ruined CA indeed! *cough*
Screw you. You don't get to do things to me for my own good. -- Fulcrum Of Evil
I don't want to be forced to install anything -- RudeIota
With that kind of attitude, you can write a browser yourself, then. And if you adore your freedom that much, use another one. Mozilla's job isn't to cater to you or your incredibly narrow ideology of "You don't get to do things to me for my own good."
:) If you really want to make a change, try dissolving government and corporate rule... Don't scold me because I believe (most) people will benefit from an update notification that can be disabled before and/or after the fact.
Someone, somewhere in your life has made your mind up for you on more than one occasion. From the time you are born, you have been told what to do and who you are today is a result of that. Whether you like/accept it or not, you are a product of other people's guidelines. Your whole life is will remain so forever because that's how humanity's societal structure works.
So, to tell me to screw myself because I can empathize with a non-profit organization wanting to push you into updating the software they wrote for your personal use... sounds a little silly.
I believe it is the *right* thing to do, since this will benefit both the majority of its user base and Mozilla itself (they've been able to argue that Firefox users keep their browser updated far more frequently than IE users).
BUT, I don't want to be forced to install anything (even though I would). So the deal is, if it prompts me with an option to disable it and/or there is an option in the preferences to turn disable nag screen, then that's a fair trade to me.
... are you an extension of the Windows Mojave experiment??? ;)
While compressing the Hell out of audio is all the rage these days, that applies to every format.
But, what really does go missing in digital reproduction is the data itself.
Digital sampling causes information to be lost, which results in poorer sound quality than the source. When audio is captured digitally, it cannot be captured in one continuous stream, instead it is sampled 44,100 times per second. That's just kind of how it works. Although 44,100 samples sounds pretty impressive, whatever is in between those samples is lost in the final recording and can make a noticeable difference to the human hear (especially in fast-paced music). This is the reason why vinyl is still around and (oddly enough) preferred by some audiophiles. In principle, I might liken this to the annoyance of low screen refresh rates or the DLP rainbow effect in that the cause is very similar (The output is too slow and can't fool the human eye well enough, much like ill-sampled audio can't fool the human ear).
DVDs allow for a higher sampling rates, so less sound is lost. The sound, as a result, is more true to the original source. Currently, DVD movies use 96,000 samples per second or higher.
rounded particle about a millionth of a meter across
Get it right.
While we're at it, maybe someone would care to share arbitrary comparisons to help us visualize... like if we could line these particles up from the Earth to the Moon, it would take nearly 3.84403(10^14) of them! Or, if we encircled the Earth with these particles, it would take nearly 4.0008(10^13)! Amazing!!! It's all so clear now.
My girlfriend unwittingly leaned across one of these scales to reach a bag of apples, whereupon the screen started showing pictures of different kinds of melons
... You never removed the bar code from your inflatable life partner? :\
Maybe you'd care to post some statistics which show WD has a higher failure rate than other HDD manufacturers?
:)
It's my experience that they are all equally as awful as each other.
The advantage to having faster RPMs isn't as much throughput as it is seek times. You can RAID 0 all the drives you want together, but you'll never improve the throughput. I'm sure this is in response to SSDs, which really have two huge advantages right now: seek time and reliability. Adding another 10,000 RPMs may help HDDs limp along in the performance arena a little while longer...
So really, RAID 0 helps if your data is read/written to sequentially, but in the real world, your data is all over the place. That's where seek time becomes *really* important and I'd personally take an SSD over a HDDx2 in RAID 0 with twice the sustained throughput.
Remember those? It kind of reminds me of the multi-head idea you have. Perhaps one of the differences (I think) is that the actual head assembly moved too, to compensate for the disc itself not being able to rotate faster (discs have the potential to shatter above the usual max speeds on current optical drives). I remember seeing a drive rated at 72X back in early 2000.. maybe even 99.. I don't feel like digging up a link though.
They were fast and quiet, but I don't think they make them anymore. I remember the reviews being favorable too, but they were a bit expensive (not outrageously so, IMO).
Just imagine how loud something like this will be. The Velociraptor is loud enough, in my opinion. And because of that, these drives will only have a place in environments where speed > noise (perhaps gaming systems).
It would appear to me that mechanical media is on its final throes before SSD totally pounces it. And if the Raptor line is is any indication of price, cost becomes less of an issue against SSDs.
In pure capitalism, the MAFIAA would have long been driven out of business.
Much like communism, the laissez-faire brand of capitalism that I assume 'pure' stands for can't work. In fact, unregulated capitalism would literally be corporately-run communism.
:)
Without regulation, the biggest company wins absolutely everything. The biggest company has the the best deals, the best resources, the best connections, the broadest selection of goods and services and absolutely no other business can compete short of doing something that Mega Corporation Inc. hasn't thought of yet... and no doubt it will get its hands into THAT market too, hiring the best people and using its infinite resources to cut out the little guy.
A lot of this goes on ALREADY in the U.S, but thanks to rules, regulations and *some* government interest of keeping the market fair, the little guys can still exist, even if it is just barely in some markets... (Although there is certainly a few where they can't at all.)
Well, my point is, the RIAA would only go under in a 100% capitalistic society if they were superseded by something greater than themselves or if they just weren't needed. This is a little bit of a thought experiment, but I *might* argue with myself that the RIAA wouldn't be needed to start with, because a 'pure' capitalistic society would be fairly unregulated and such things as copyrights etc... wouldn't exist - not in a government-issued sense. This would have rendered the RIAA obsolete. BUT, I imagine you'd probably find a privatized version of the copyright system economically enforced by Mega Corporation Inc, which no doubt, would effectively be the RIAA too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoXgRtDysLY
# nip it in the butt instead of nip it in the bud
A text-book case... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn
I don't know much about trains or conductors/engineers, but a set of human eyes can pick out things such as problems with tracks, signs and signals. There is probably some value to that which might justify a 'human driver'.
:)
Also, I imagine there is a (well justified) fear of an entirely automated system failing in some way and being responsible for an accident of horrific proportions. Having someone who understands the train and rail system - someone actually on board - would definitely be extra insurance.
Also, it wouldn't surprise me if some variables like train weight, uneven loads, certain types of cars, track grades, weather etc... might make 100% automated train driving difficult. I mean, not that a human being knows exactly how much the train weighs and how uneven the loads are, but a human component could adds some sort of (necessary?) compensation for such variables. Additionally, even if total automation can be done, the cost to do deploy the technology and infrastructure may be (initially) prohibitive, even compared to worker salary. Again, I haven't much clue... just thinking aloud. It wouldn't surprise me if there ARE automated trains. Maybe some of those fancy trains in Japan or something.
MW has told CNETAsia that an electronic fault caused the problem, rather than a system crash of the car's Windows-based central computer, as other reports have speculated.
Just to clear it up, the finger pointing concludes Windows wasn't necessarily to blame...
As posted by CmdrTaco:
$.4.4 million
That's not off topic. The post as it reads right now is "$.4.4 million". Sure, we can assume it is 4.4 million because it seems like an nonsensical number otherwise, but this is very unclear and should be corrected.
to develop novel, scalable attack detection algorithms
'novel' just doesn't carry the same meaning anymore. USPTO is a prime example.
Did you not see that Lenovo has made IBM Thinkpads for years? And no, being (pretending to be?) a level 1 tech support monkey for IBM doesn't make you any more of an official resource.
:P
Now, as far as 'valid real world' experience goes, I have quite a bit. I work with all brands of laptops on a daily basis. I replace internal and external parts, rework them etc... I've worked on scores and scores of Thinkpads, including many T4Xs and T6Xs. In my opinion, they are well-built compared to *any* other major notebook brand (HP, Dell, Acer, Tosbhia etc..) and just as well built as the T2Xs and T3Xs. I even used to own a T21 AND T30, both of which I put together using parts and reassembled/disassembled numerous times.
In short, when it comes to build quality, my opinion is better than yours.
They made the right decision 98 percent of the time when the expert examined the patient with a webcam, and only 82 percent of the time when they just talked to each other on the phone. Perhaps this report will finally convince the medical community that telemedicine is important.
82% ought to be good enough for everyone.
Actually, each 'label' you have in Gmail is represented by a 'folder' in IMAP. You end up with one master directory that has all of your emails and each sub folder (each label) contains the appropriate emails within it.
I've been using IMAP since it was introduced in gmail and it has worked exactly that way since the first day. It works that way on my phone and in Thunderbird.
It's like criticizing the makers of Soylent Green for using people as the ingredients and yet YOU STILL EAT SOYLENT GREEN.
Bah, we have do *something* about all these damned people everywhere. Besides... pork is delicious. :)
And in the context of the iPhone, it might be made from people, but it tastes great and that's all that matters.