"I wish they would stop lumping some guy at home who burns a game from his buddy to play on his machine in with some guy in china who produces and sells tens of thousands of copies of a game."
So, by this token, its alright to shoplift something out of a store for personal consumption, but dammit! don't lump me in with the guy that hijacks a truck full of cigarettes to sell back in Joisey.
Ignoring the idiots that are going to naturally tell me that even though I've lost a sale to someone that now has no need except for 'good will' to actually purchase my product, that piracy and theft are not the same. I'll never be able to explain to them how it is, and they will never have a rational explanation for why it isn't (yet some teen will try to explain).
Beyond that, Id is perfectly correct in stating that there is a huge difference in the levels of piracy between consoles and PCs. With a PC, you get all sorts of casual piracy. Download a torrent and its ready to play with no interaction on your part...the idiots can claim that it just jumped onto their hard drives and well, they didn't know it was a dupe because it just worked. With the console, rarely can you simply put in a duped disc. It either requires extensive hacks, such as bootloaders to memory cards, swap and switches (I remember a friend installing a door on his PS2 that could be opened without stopping the first disc from spinning and switching while the motor was still trying to do its job) or buying a $50 mod chip that has little to do with legitimate applications (i.e., I believe the new Wii ModChip can't do imports...something I believe one should ALWAYS be able to play...I'm not a fan of regionlocks...especially if its something I paid for and thats the only reason I know anything about this -- without the regionlock override, there really is no legitimacy other than I WANT TO PLAY 'BACKUPS')
So yes, big difference between a mass pirater and one that makes one or two copies. Its the difference between grand larceny and shoplifting. Glad you made this point. Not sure why...but glad you did either way.
"'ll be overjoyed when flash "hard drives" for desktop PCs are available. In the work I do on my digital audio workstation, I'm always fighting the noise that my computer produces. I've spent lots of money and countless hours playing with various cooling systems, enclosures and even really long cables so I can put the box in another room."
Off-Topic:
Dude...do like the rest of us do...KVM. No sense dealing with cooling and otherwise. Heck, I do most of my work off my laptop these days...even if the main rig is in the next room, I just remote into it.
Cost me what? $70 for 50ft cables and a $20 2unit KVM (which if I ever need a processing node, I guess I could use the extra port...I just wanted it because it amplified the signal on the other end...though I've heard with the REALLY good cables, you don't even need that). Noise in a computer should never be a factor in a DAW at this point. It way too cheap to not just slide it in a closet, or put a hole to the basement or the next room down the hall.
I have two CDs from around the original release times and they WERE pretty indestructable. Kinda...compared to what we have now.
Every year, they seem to make these things cheaper and lighter. The last batch of CDRs I picked up were $5 for 50 and I thought they were damaged because they were nearly transparent. I would have taken them back, but it would have cost me more in time than it was worth. Sat on my shelf for a couple weeks and then I ran out of the good stuff and grabbed what I had. I was surprised -- it actually worked.
Its a far cry from the first disc I bought, which looked like a copper mirror and felt like a piece of plasticized metal.
I have a PowerEdge with an attached PowerVault sitting right behind me...when setting ths up with the software provided, I ran into some trouble. Their engineers were able to get me up and running ASAP.
Trust me, I don't like defending PC Companies any more than I need...there is a reason the only PC in my home is my housemate's gaming machine. I don't know how many times I have to pull him out of trouble when something goes wrong...and each and every time I ask why he doesn't just get a Mac, he claims that "My PC Works Fine 90% Of The Time...Its Only When I Need To Use It That It Doesn't Work".
I just find it ironic that the people that claim PCs are perfect have to come to the only Mac Bigot they know to fix their machine...then again, my PCs ARE near perfect, but it takes a lot of work and know how. My Macs, however, require practically no maintenance and I treat them like crap and still have none of the problems (I don't know when I last applied manual maintenance to any of them except to copy an audio drive for my studio to another in a ghetto defrag maneuver -- one of my Apple buddies that is a director level engineer mentioned to me that is the ONLY way he defrags his audio drives because music software requires a little entropy and this ensures it as opposed to the anal retentive natures of defragging software).
But back to the point, Dell has always been good to me, regardless of their ugly machines and uglier OS (and there I'm not talking aesthetics).
"Shame that only applies to their "business" laptops"
Kinda goes into the whole What Are You Willing To Pay For idea...
If people are only willing to spend $500 on a $1200 laptop, the extra money has to come from somewhere. They don't put the spyware and otherwise on the machine because they want to, or are inherently greedy.
I own both Mac and Dell laptops and it always amazes me that people are always riding my Mac as 'expensive'...my Dell stuff costs nearly exactly the same for the same product class. And the Dell is NEARLY as stable when coming from the factory clean (sure, a lot uglier for the price, and comes with an OS that I've never liked but has guaranteed that I can live reasonably well...yes, I am a part of the problem). But the point remains, if you want to cut corners, that doesn't mean that the product is going to cost any less...it just means its going to need offset somewhere else (i.e., home class comes with practically no service, and what it does come with is someone that can mimic your native tongue but can't understand a word of it...business class "we'll get an engineer on this right away!").
"This distinction between physical property vs ideas is, I think, a lot easier to follow than the highly convoluted arguments put forth in furtherance of current IP laws (such as the argument you proposed which I originally responded to earlier in this thread.)"
Only if you make a distinction between the two.
If you look at the two as pretty much the same thing, that both are simply place holders for value, then the argument makes the same amount of sense.
There is no justification to have physical property in the hands of a few individuals. None. Nothing rational about it. Other than someone decided that it would be that way to hold power over someone else. Quite a few cultures, for example, do not believe in land ownership. They find it odd that someone might own property and do not understand trespassing laws. Just don't make any sense at all to them.
Virtual property rights make just as much sense to me as land ownership. You can either argue for one or the other, but unless you are a hypocrite, you have to agree to both. And thats what I see about this whole argument about IP...bunch of hypocrites that want one, while denying the other.
By that same argument, *ALL* property should be abandoned regardless of physicality.
It should all be for the common good because contorted arguments about why someone owns something, and how someone that did nothing to earn something (inheritance) or owns something that was overvalued, and otherwise...its all contorted logic.
Property ownership is the tool of oppression.
It doesn't matter if its physical or virtual. And if you are going to take one approach, you need to go all the way through with your logic and just admit that you feel that we would be better off all living in a commune.
I'm sorry -- I just don't believe in this idea. What a fool.
"Another analogy could be putting up signs to advertise the services of drug dealers, which would make most people think the ruling was obvious."
No, it would be more like putting up signs advertising the services of drug dealers, telling folks that you know all the drug dealers in town and that you can arrange an anonymous deal between you and the dealer, of course taking a cut of the action for your troubles, and stating clearly that your system is the safest way to get drugs because you have done some referral screenings, your clients say that this is the uncut shit, and you'll cut off anyone that offers the stuff mixed with ratpoison.
Its not just complicit in the advertising, they are offering a service to profit as a go-between and most likely bragging that you can't get caught breaking the law using their service using some convoluted logic that only an idiot would suspect indemnifies anyone.
Ok -- ya gotta be more concise about my complicity:-) I guess I'm more complicit that I thought!
But the developers choose a price and even if they got screwed, it was their decision to do so.
People make their own destiny...these folks agreed to it and as a consumer I'm going to take advantage of it. It was the distributor that did the screwing...I'm just one of the instruments they used to do so:-)
No, I was a co-owner and the decisions of other owners were the reason we went with it.
At the time, out of 6 co-owners, I had a 49% share. Pretty much took EVERYONE to vote against me to veto my decision. Didn't happen often, but in this case, they wanted the quick money.
At the same time, I have a feeling several of them wanted to cash out anyways and got their wishes.
"That's not "being wronged." That's just "bad luck" or lack of success."
Actually, it was pretty successful before all of that. And the distributors KNEW that they were offering a deal where everything they told us was correct, but they left out SEVERAL important details of which I specifically pointed out to the partners...in the end I relented because having a partnership means that you have to trust those you work with in order to provide a product, and not everything will be successful.
But in that case, the distributors were very underhanded, even without lying. Being wronged doesn't mean anything illegal happened...a friend stealing your girlfriend is being wronged...and as you put it, a case of just not working out. Nothing illegal, but its still you being wronged.
"Do you have a source for this? I've heard no speculation by outsiders, but no reliable info from participants."
There was a developer named Gus that was asked to join in with his software. He refused. He talked with other developers that were asked to participate and they said that they were given slightly different terms, while at the same time being told essentially that everyone was getting the same and not to talk about it.
So goes the rumor I heard.
The offer he got was something like $5000 flat. There are 10 developers that supposedly got the same deal. This means they had to sell at least $50k to break even (well actually $70k as charity means that 25% is kicked over). The developers made around $750k on this...meaning that $200k went to charity, and $50k went to the developers (if in fact it was equal)...and left them with $500k in pure profit for them.
Either way, this is a bad deal for the developers. Of course, it COULD have fallen on the distributors face, but if it happened, with ANYTHING this big, its going to be protected by an incorporation where the worst that would have happened would be that the distributor have had a bad reputation going forward. Oh no, an 18 year old that might have to 'start over'. I've seen this happen and wipe out a smaller software developer too...the distributor buys the rights, they go under, the parent company which was always a faceless entity waiting for everything to fall jumps in and orders bankruptcy -- and the way it works in the US is that the folks that are owed the most money get first dibs -- buy up the right to distribute the software at pennies on the dollar, and the guys that developed it get nothing -- because that is money owed by the now bankrupt company.
It was never an issue of risk for the distributors...
I gotta say, the distributors did a GREAT job. Kudos for them. I got several packages that I wouldn't have otherwise. I bought into it knowing full well that the developers agreed to this. That doesn't mean they didn't get screwed...
The one thing this will do for the community is show how big the buying population is. It will also allow them to price things appropriately in the future (I for one think that TextMate is WAAAAAAAAY overpriced...I would have bought it earlier if it were like $30 as opposed to $60...even $10 difference was enough to buy it...that and a few other pieces of software).
Just because someone makes a stupid decision, all of free will, doesn't mean they have not been wronged.
I co-owned a company that does the occasional software development that got involved (not of my doing) of something entirely similar to this. All in all, the partners thought it was a GREAT idea and pulled enough votes to get past my normal roadblock. Ended up devaluing the software to the point folks felt it was only worth a couple bucks and then the piracy rates went up (thats another story). Ended up just licensing the stuff wholesale to someone else and cutting the losses. Come to think about it, I think that was why the business went under.
As for folks being wronged, from what I get, the developers were told they were all getting exactly the same deal -- yet were told not to discuss the details with anyone else. Turns out, they were all getting different 'equal' deals...or so some of the developers have hinted. Sounds a bit like fraud to me if this is true.
Having said this, I picked up a bundle. Sounds like crap to the developers, but you know what -- their ain't no law to stop people from making bad deals (nor should there be).
"YOU don't get to decide who is and isn't a Christian."
No I don't. I would never state a single person is not a Christian. But I believe I can say without hesitation that the majority of those that are claiming to be, aren't.
All in all, the true Scottsman thing doesn't hold water. Just as one needs to have some certain criteria for being a Scottsman -- common blood, an adopted land, whatever -- there will be some minimal level of which if you don't qualify, you just don't qualify.
I'm sorry, but as a whole, if people have specific beliefs about killing others, and owning instruments that have a singular purpose of killing others, they are not Christian. Its one of the top ten rules. These are the qualifications of being a Christian.
As for Gun Ownership...stepping outside of my beliefs, I feel that the gov't either accepts this and leaves it alone or amends the constitution. At the same time, being that gun ownership is a moralistic not a legal argument for Christians. The law should not dictate morality.
"What the hell does that mean? You're against all forms of violence so long as it's not personally inconvenient? Oh yeah, it's "my body" so I can do whatever I want. Thanks mom!"
Thats exactly my point -- its hypocritical.
I don't understand the liberals that are against the death penalty, but seem to want to preserve abortions.
Ban them both, or legalize both.
And don't complain about the other if your support is only one way.
"christians are the reason america has taken a turn for the violent. If you believe in an afterlife - you scare the fuck out of me. You don't have the same commitment to THIS life that I do."
I disagree. Christians are not the ones that have taken a turn for the violent, 'christians' have.
For instance, I find it reprehensible that someone can defend the combined ownership of guns, the belief in a death penalty and the hatred of abortion.
I agree with the last, but the other portions are just as engrained in todays 'christian' beliefs as if it says in the Bible "Take up guns and smite thy neighbor". Bullshit. These people are not Christians, nor should you believe they are. If they truly believed in an afterlife, they'd have changed their ways a long time ago.
What was it, just about two weeks ago, the president of the Christian Coalition resigned over disagreements with where he thought the organization should go. His claim was that he felt that these people were too involved in trying to legislate moralistic viewpoints and ignoring the world at large:
"just a basic philosophical difference.... I saw an opportunity to really broaden the conversation and broaden the constituency. I'm really over this whole polarization thing."
He had asked that they back off on abortion and gay marriage, and focus on doing what Christ would have liked them to focus on -- decreasing the burdens of the poor, treating God's lands as it said in the Bible, increasing giving to charitable organizations -- more or less, changing things that will directly impact his people and have them focus their moral attitudes within, and not with forcing others to legally follow their perspective. If we change the laws to enforce a singular belief system, this is no choice, and we are no better than organizations like the Taliban -- who have increasingly been getting more liberal over the last few years (they just made changes to their charter saying they will not kill women for disobeying them without at least giving them one warning, and then one beating after that...my gawd! These guys have turned into regular Al Frankens over night!).
But seriously, there are a lot of Christians out there that are nothing what you think of when you think of all the assholes ruining the name.
(And yeah, I know I have a long way to go as well...I just try not to be a COMPLETE hypocrite about the whole thing)
Re:Must just be the majors. The indies are thrivin
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iTunes Sales 'Collapsing'
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
CDBaby isn't an independent, its a vanity press.
Big difference...at the same time, I know a LOT of friends that have gone the CDBaby route, actually had some independent buzz before going there, or had a past life as an independent artist and their stuff is always to be found.
I have another friend that pretty much runs his own label out of his apartment, has maybe 4 or 5 bands on it (and its all pretty much the same group, with slight alterations in the line up and style) and I see his stuff featured on the genre front pages at least a few times a year (guaranteed to set sales tenfold doing nothing else). I've seen his work on the 'alternative' sections, the Electronic section (where your band is, actually looks like your albums are, but your band isn't categorized and isn't thrown in there...one of the problems of CDBaby) and a few others...
I also know, he hussles his ass off. He gets the press he needs. He sends full discs to the reviewers at Apple. He buys time on Pitchfork (for like $2000, you can buy a link with unlimited downloads for a month or something like that). The point is, technology doesn't make your album available just because you put it out there. CDBaby does no quality control -- hence the 'vanity press' moniker -- and it shouldn't, but if you go that route, expect to play all the parts of a label that they aren't doing for you.
I know if I were Apple, I'd be damned if I was going to put someone's CDBaby stuff inline with something that professionals have vetted. And maybe pros have vetted your stuff and thats why its not listed anywhere except on the backshelves? Who knows.
I listened to a few clips and it didn't sound bad -- but not significantly different from others that are doing this professionally.
Back to the main point, yeah, it does list independents -- ones that Apple likes...
"Under US law, are you allowed to make money in your home country while studying?"
Depends...I run a little research area for my university and I hire students all the time.
Depending on their visa, they may only be able to do work that is solely in support of their education...as the research we do is academic in nature and its for the same university they are attending, they can do this. At the same time, some of the stuff I do for the university that is off-campus -- we do a lot of High School outreach and assessment -- I can't even ask that these folks come with me because they could be deported if someone wanted to get technical about it (i.e., same office, same sort of job, just benefiting another academic institution other than my own -- even if it is in a partnership where we both benefit).
So yeah, the US has the same sorts of laws. I think this is why most of the folks want to get more than an academic visa before coming over (though the academic one has a few privs that the working one doesn't...and vice a versa).
"A voting machine that is as secure as an ATM is probably good enough."
Wasn't it just a few weeks ago people were finding the passwords for ATMs 'hidden' right there on the net with instructions on how to reprogram them from the front pannel so that it thought the 20s slot was actually dispensing $5s???
If this is the security we can expect...well, I just hope my side finds the password list before the other side. Those bastards are slimy cut and run warmongers who want to stay the course of flipflopping.
"This is not just lies, this encourages people to discount environmental arguments as bullshit..."
This is one of the worst things about Greenpeace and Peta -- and others here have made the same sorts of arguments.
For instance, it is widely known that if you have an older gas guzzling car it is STILL far more environmentally friendly to put the money into this car and drive it until it literally just crumbles one day that it would be to get rid of it -- most likely in a trade in to a car dealership that will sell it to a car auctionhouse where someone will buy it for practically nothing and let it fall apart -- and pick up an electric or a hybrid. The energy to make a new car is still far more than it is in wasting gas in an old one (though if you are going to buy a new one regardless -- go for the hybrid).
Yet, if you are caught in one of these, you would be demonized by these idiots.
'Environmentalists' who call themselves such are as much about the environment as many folks that call themselves 'Christians' (I believe myself to be both, but its not a tag I generally put towards myself publicly -- I try to lead by example as opposed to by title). At one point, I supported Greenpeace, but this has been par for course for them for too long. I support environmental policy changes and I support initiatives like Kyoto, but these guys are way out in la-la-land.
There is PLENTY of batch support for Quicktime...you are probably talking the Quicktime PLAYER (which purchasing the pro version gives you access to simply the encoding portion).
You need to buy Apple's Cinema Tools (err...I think this is the right one) to do batch encoding pretty easily. Of course, you can only get it as part of Final Cut.
Beyond that, you can use Applescript to do a lot of this -- or use other third party software to batch encode this stuff. Its actually pretty simple to do it.
Sadly, I think relatively few people arguing about licensing have ever developed software on their own. Not talking about small scriptlets or hacking a PHP page to customize it just a bit more, but actual real programs.
Little things like that -- I give away free of charge. I get annoyed by people that GPL a 40 line piece of code done in a scripting language. Its obnoxious that it is even protected work.
At the same time, I believe that as an author they should be able to do as they please with it, regardless of how insignificant it is (i.e., if its that simple, recreating it from scratch would be easy and thus nothing is lost from ANY licensing scheme).
"How? They could wipe your attrib, compile it and never even acknowledge your contribution. If you took it to court they could simply say that the fact you released it under an unrestricted license like BSD was enough evidence that you did not care what anybody did with it."
In this same case, they could do the same with a GPL'd application. And they'd be breaking contractual law exactly the same.
I'm certainly positive that some judges would buy the argument with either that you were giving it away and thus didn't care. I spent a half hour trying to explain the idea that anyone would use GPL or BSD licensed software to a patent attorney a few weeks ago and he couldn't fathom the idea that anyone would give their IP away. His argument was that if you did this, it is exactly the same as PD software, and I kept explaining, no it isn't public domain, it is simply licensed under a permissive distribution ideal and that it could actually be more profitable to do so under certain instances. Yet, he kept coming back to So Its Public Domain.
"Oh I get it. The people who release under the GPL are in second grade. You are so much smarter then they are. They are just children and you are a mature intelligent adult. Only stupid naive children release code under the GPL. Adults use the BSD like you!."
There is a difference between smarter and more mature.
And yes, I feel the vast majority of those who utilize BSD are more mature. The GPL is very restrictive in a political or religious sense. You do because this is the party line, or because God tells you so. If you do not do this, you are shunned and told you are not promoting "a self healing commons" or what ever other meme, catchphrase or talking point you had been given - don't worry, the phrase will be meaningless, so feel free to virally promote it. You will be able to identify other followers through its usage. By the way, did I tell you, I 'support the war on terror'.
BSD doesn't force the promotion down your throat. It may not end up with the goal of a perfect utopia. Its goal is not to do this artificially with phoney boundaries. It encourages you to follow the ideal, but that is your choice.
Do you not see why one is more mature? Adherance through the gun is not adherence. Adherence through social change is what should be the goal.
I have friends that would never release anything under a more permissive license like the BSD and they certainly are intelligent people. They also have no faith in humanity and if pressed would probably explain that a dictatorship is more likely to provide results than a democracy. And I'd agree. Today. I see democracies today and I realize that socially we are infants. Democracies suck -- look at the choices the US are provided regularly. At the same time, if we give up the ideal, we will never get to a point socially where this makes sense...
Way too philosophical. My belief is that BSD gives the foundation for a better society, while GPL gives the foundation of better software. Which do you want?
"Then I remember that/. is full of astro turfers who love the BSD because it means people volunteering work for their favorite corporation."
I've work for non-profits my entire life and I prefer BSD.
If I am coding something and someone else packages the same product I'm giving away, I'm out NOTHING.
With the BSD, I have to be able to prove my copyright is there and thats about it. Even if someone close sources my package, I can point it out to others and show them that the closed source app *IS* essentially my application. I've done it before with some testing applications that my university has picked up because they thought the product was a better product than my own...as my old boss use to say, 'you are never a prophet in your own kingdom'. By using BSD, I'd actually been able to get someone to use the software I truely care about and in the end, prove to those detracting from my work that it really is decent.
This isn't to say I couldn't have done this with GPL, I just don't believe in forcing others to keep something open source when the base already is and it hasn't been too hard to reverse engineer what the commercial company has pushed on top of my own work (i.e., I own the copyright for the software and as such, anything they do to it really isn't protected from me implementing the same sorts of things).
If I'm going to release something for sale, I release it closed source. If I want to give it away, I BSD it.
Then again, some people haven't really progressed past the whole 2nd grade idea of what is fair or not. These are the same people that give a gift for a birthday and are offended if it is given away ('re-gifted') -- after all, the original giftee didn't pay for it!!! No, fair is giving something away for the love of giving it away and hoping it will give the person you gave it to the most enjoyment. Then again, I've also heard of people giving away lottery tickets and then suing when the numbers come up positive...that is human nature for you.
"When was the last time your XP box crashed? Mine hasn't in months."
I haven't had Windows crash in a long time -- unfortunately, I have had individual applications crash constantly. The Microsoft applications that crash are the worst...they generally take out the explorer with it. Ctrl-Alt-Del -- Task Manager -- Kill Explorer.exe -- Run Explorer.exe.
I've had individual aps crashe that caused memory leaks where it didn't take out the system, but the only way out is to restart.
But you are right, the box hasn't 'crashed' in a long time. I buy only full business class systems from recognized dealers -- none of the home crap that Dell / Compaq and others sell (i.e., people know how well their box works at work and think the home stuff will be identical). So its not because of crappy hardware and buggy drivers -- there isn't a driver that wasn't signed at this point.
BTW If Apple had 90% of the market -- of course there would be more attacks...they'd be unsuccessful compared to the Microsoft 'game', but they'd be there.
Slashdot Mirror
"I wish they would stop lumping some guy at home who burns a game from his buddy to play on his machine in with some guy in china who produces and sells tens of thousands of copies of a game."
So, by this token, its alright to shoplift something out of a store for personal consumption, but dammit! don't lump me in with the guy that hijacks a truck full of cigarettes to sell back in Joisey.
Ignoring the idiots that are going to naturally tell me that even though I've lost a sale to someone that now has no need except for 'good will' to actually purchase my product, that piracy and theft are not the same. I'll never be able to explain to them how it is, and they will never have a rational explanation for why it isn't (yet some teen will try to explain).
Beyond that, Id is perfectly correct in stating that there is a huge difference in the levels of piracy between consoles and PCs. With a PC, you get all sorts of casual piracy. Download a torrent and its ready to play with no interaction on your part...the idiots can claim that it just jumped onto their hard drives and well, they didn't know it was a dupe because it just worked. With the console, rarely can you simply put in a duped disc. It either requires extensive hacks, such as bootloaders to memory cards, swap and switches (I remember a friend installing a door on his PS2 that could be opened without stopping the first disc from spinning and switching while the motor was still trying to do its job) or buying a $50 mod chip that has little to do with legitimate applications (i.e., I believe the new Wii ModChip can't do imports...something I believe one should ALWAYS be able to play...I'm not a fan of regionlocks...especially if its something I paid for and thats the only reason I know anything about this -- without the regionlock override, there really is no legitimacy other than I WANT TO PLAY 'BACKUPS')
So yes, big difference between a mass pirater and one that makes one or two copies. Its the difference between grand larceny and shoplifting. Glad you made this point. Not sure why...but glad you did either way.
"'ll be overjoyed when flash "hard drives" for desktop PCs are available. In the work I do on my digital audio workstation, I'm always fighting the noise that my computer produces. I've spent lots of money and countless hours playing with various cooling systems, enclosures and even really long cables so I can put the box in another room."
Off-Topic:
Dude...do like the rest of us do...KVM. No sense dealing with cooling and otherwise. Heck, I do most of my work off my laptop these days...even if the main rig is in the next room, I just remote into it.
Cost me what? $70 for 50ft cables and a $20 2unit KVM (which if I ever need a processing node, I guess I could use the extra port...I just wanted it because it amplified the signal on the other end...though I've heard with the REALLY good cables, you don't even need that). Noise in a computer should never be a factor in a DAW at this point. It way too cheap to not just slide it in a closet, or put a hole to the basement or the next room down the hall.
I have two CDs from around the original release times and they WERE pretty indestructable. Kinda...compared to what we have now.
Every year, they seem to make these things cheaper and lighter. The last batch of CDRs I picked up were $5 for 50 and I thought they were damaged because they were nearly transparent. I would have taken them back, but it would have cost me more in time than it was worth. Sat on my shelf for a couple weeks and then I ran out of the good stuff and grabbed what I had. I was surprised -- it actually worked.
Its a far cry from the first disc I bought, which looked like a copper mirror and felt like a piece of plasticized metal.
I have a PowerEdge with an attached PowerVault sitting right behind me...when setting ths up with the software provided, I ran into some trouble. Their engineers were able to get me up and running ASAP.
Trust me, I don't like defending PC Companies any more than I need...there is a reason the only PC in my home is my housemate's gaming machine. I don't know how many times I have to pull him out of trouble when something goes wrong...and each and every time I ask why he doesn't just get a Mac, he claims that "My PC Works Fine 90% Of The Time...Its Only When I Need To Use It That It Doesn't Work".
I just find it ironic that the people that claim PCs are perfect have to come to the only Mac Bigot they know to fix their machine...then again, my PCs ARE near perfect, but it takes a lot of work and know how. My Macs, however, require practically no maintenance and I treat them like crap and still have none of the problems (I don't know when I last applied manual maintenance to any of them except to copy an audio drive for my studio to another in a ghetto defrag maneuver -- one of my Apple buddies that is a director level engineer mentioned to me that is the ONLY way he defrags his audio drives because music software requires a little entropy and this ensures it as opposed to the anal retentive natures of defragging software).
But back to the point, Dell has always been good to me, regardless of their ugly machines and uglier OS (and there I'm not talking aesthetics).
"Shame that only applies to their "business" laptops"
Kinda goes into the whole What Are You Willing To Pay For idea...
If people are only willing to spend $500 on a $1200 laptop, the extra money has to come from somewhere. They don't put the spyware and otherwise on the machine because they want to, or are inherently greedy.
I own both Mac and Dell laptops and it always amazes me that people are always riding my Mac as 'expensive'...my Dell stuff costs nearly exactly the same for the same product class. And the Dell is NEARLY as stable when coming from the factory clean (sure, a lot uglier for the price, and comes with an OS that I've never liked but has guaranteed that I can live reasonably well...yes, I am a part of the problem). But the point remains, if you want to cut corners, that doesn't mean that the product is going to cost any less...it just means its going to need offset somewhere else (i.e., home class comes with practically no service, and what it does come with is someone that can mimic your native tongue but can't understand a word of it...business class "we'll get an engineer on this right away!").
Anyhoo...
"This distinction between physical property vs ideas is, I think, a lot easier to follow than the highly convoluted arguments put forth in furtherance of current IP laws (such as the argument you proposed which I originally responded to earlier in this thread.)"
Only if you make a distinction between the two.
If you look at the two as pretty much the same thing, that both are simply place holders for value, then the argument makes the same amount of sense.
There is no justification to have physical property in the hands of a few individuals. None. Nothing rational about it. Other than someone decided that it would be that way to hold power over someone else. Quite a few cultures, for example, do not believe in land ownership. They find it odd that someone might own property and do not understand trespassing laws. Just don't make any sense at all to them.
Virtual property rights make just as much sense to me as land ownership. You can either argue for one or the other, but unless you are a hypocrite, you have to agree to both. And thats what I see about this whole argument about IP...bunch of hypocrites that want one, while denying the other.
By that same argument, *ALL* property should be abandoned regardless of physicality.
It should all be for the common good because contorted arguments about why someone owns something, and how someone that did nothing to earn something (inheritance) or owns something that was overvalued, and otherwise...its all contorted logic.
Property ownership is the tool of oppression.
It doesn't matter if its physical or virtual. And if you are going to take one approach, you need to go all the way through with your logic and just admit that you feel that we would be better off all living in a commune.
I'm sorry -- I just don't believe in this idea. What a fool.
"Another analogy could be putting up signs to advertise the services of drug dealers, which would make most people think the ruling was obvious."
No, it would be more like putting up signs advertising the services of drug dealers, telling folks that you know all the drug dealers in town and that you can arrange an anonymous deal between you and the dealer, of course taking a cut of the action for your troubles, and stating clearly that your system is the safest way to get drugs because you have done some referral screenings, your clients say that this is the uncut shit, and you'll cut off anyone that offers the stuff mixed with ratpoison.
Its not just complicit in the advertising, they are offering a service to profit as a go-between and most likely bragging that you can't get caught breaking the law using their service using some convoluted logic that only an idiot would suspect indemnifies anyone.
Ok -- ya gotta be more concise about my complicity :-) I guess I'm more complicit that I thought!
:-)
But the developers choose a price and even if they got screwed, it was their decision to do so.
People make their own destiny...these folks agreed to it and as a consumer I'm going to take advantage of it. It was the distributor that did the screwing...I'm just one of the instruments they used to do so
"...you are complicit in the wrongdoing."
No, I was a co-owner and the decisions of other owners were the reason we went with it.
At the time, out of 6 co-owners, I had a 49% share. Pretty much took EVERYONE to vote against me to veto my decision. Didn't happen often, but in this case, they wanted the quick money.
At the same time, I have a feeling several of them wanted to cash out anyways and got their wishes.
"That's not "being wronged." That's just "bad luck" or lack of success."
Actually, it was pretty successful before all of that. And the distributors KNEW that they were offering a deal where everything they told us was correct, but they left out SEVERAL important details of which I specifically pointed out to the partners...in the end I relented because having a partnership means that you have to trust those you work with in order to provide a product, and not everything will be successful.
But in that case, the distributors were very underhanded, even without lying. Being wronged doesn't mean anything illegal happened...a friend stealing your girlfriend is being wronged...and as you put it, a case of just not working out. Nothing illegal, but its still you being wronged.
"Do you have a source for this? I've heard no speculation by outsiders, but no reliable info from participants."
There was a developer named Gus that was asked to join in with his software. He refused. He talked with other developers that were asked to participate and they said that they were given slightly different terms, while at the same time being told essentially that everyone was getting the same and not to talk about it.
So goes the rumor I heard.
The offer he got was something like $5000 flat. There are 10 developers that supposedly got the same deal. This means they had to sell at least $50k to break even (well actually $70k as charity means that 25% is kicked over). The developers made around $750k on this...meaning that $200k went to charity, and $50k went to the developers (if in fact it was equal)...and left them with $500k in pure profit for them.
Either way, this is a bad deal for the developers. Of course, it COULD have fallen on the distributors face, but if it happened, with ANYTHING this big, its going to be protected by an incorporation where the worst that would have happened would be that the distributor have had a bad reputation going forward. Oh no, an 18 year old that might have to 'start over'. I've seen this happen and wipe out a smaller software developer too...the distributor buys the rights, they go under, the parent company which was always a faceless entity waiting for everything to fall jumps in and orders bankruptcy -- and the way it works in the US is that the folks that are owed the most money get first dibs -- buy up the right to distribute the software at pennies on the dollar, and the guys that developed it get nothing -- because that is money owed by the now bankrupt company.
It was never an issue of risk for the distributors...
I gotta say, the distributors did a GREAT job. Kudos for them. I got several packages that I wouldn't have otherwise. I bought into it knowing full well that the developers agreed to this. That doesn't mean they didn't get screwed...
The one thing this will do for the community is show how big the buying population is. It will also allow them to price things appropriately in the future (I for one think that TextMate is WAAAAAAAAY overpriced...I would have bought it earlier if it were like $30 as opposed to $60...even $10 difference was enough to buy it...that and a few other pieces of software).
"Who has been wronged, exactly?"
Just because someone makes a stupid decision, all of free will, doesn't mean they have not been wronged.
I co-owned a company that does the occasional software development that got involved (not of my doing) of something entirely similar to this. All in all, the partners thought it was a GREAT idea and pulled enough votes to get past my normal roadblock. Ended up devaluing the software to the point folks felt it was only worth a couple bucks and then the piracy rates went up (thats another story). Ended up just licensing the stuff wholesale to someone else and cutting the losses. Come to think about it, I think that was why the business went under.
As for folks being wronged, from what I get, the developers were told they were all getting exactly the same deal -- yet were told not to discuss the details with anyone else. Turns out, they were all getting different 'equal' deals...or so some of the developers have hinted. Sounds a bit like fraud to me if this is true.
Having said this, I picked up a bundle. Sounds like crap to the developers, but you know what -- their ain't no law to stop people from making bad deals (nor should there be).
"YOU don't get to decide who is and isn't a Christian."
No I don't. I would never state a single person is not a Christian. But I believe I can say without hesitation that the majority of those that are claiming to be, aren't.
All in all, the true Scottsman thing doesn't hold water. Just as one needs to have some certain criteria for being a Scottsman -- common blood, an adopted land, whatever -- there will be some minimal level of which if you don't qualify, you just don't qualify.
I'm sorry, but as a whole, if people have specific beliefs about killing others, and owning instruments that have a singular purpose of killing others, they are not Christian. Its one of the top ten rules. These are the qualifications of being a Christian.
As for Gun Ownership...stepping outside of my beliefs, I feel that the gov't either accepts this and leaves it alone or amends the constitution. At the same time, being that gun ownership is a moralistic not a legal argument for Christians. The law should not dictate morality.
"What the hell does that mean? You're against all forms of violence so long as it's not personally inconvenient? Oh yeah, it's "my body" so I can do whatever I want. Thanks mom!"
Thats exactly my point -- its hypocritical.
I don't understand the liberals that are against the death penalty, but seem to want to preserve abortions.
Ban them both, or legalize both.
And don't complain about the other if your support is only one way.
"christians are the reason america has taken a turn for the violent. If you believe in an afterlife - you scare the fuck out of me. You don't have the same commitment to THIS life that I do."
.... I saw an opportunity to really broaden the conversation and broaden the constituency. I'm really over this whole polarization thing."
I disagree. Christians are not the ones that have taken a turn for the violent, 'christians' have.
For instance, I find it reprehensible that someone can defend the combined ownership of guns, the belief in a death penalty and the hatred of abortion.
I agree with the last, but the other portions are just as engrained in todays 'christian' beliefs as if it says in the Bible "Take up guns and smite thy neighbor". Bullshit. These people are not Christians, nor should you believe they are. If they truly believed in an afterlife, they'd have changed their ways a long time ago.
What was it, just about two weeks ago, the president of the Christian Coalition resigned over disagreements with where he thought the organization should go. His claim was that he felt that these people were too involved in trying to legislate moralistic viewpoints and ignoring the world at large:
"just a basic philosophical difference
He had asked that they back off on abortion and gay marriage, and focus on doing what Christ would have liked them to focus on -- decreasing the burdens of the poor, treating God's lands as it said in the Bible, increasing giving to charitable organizations -- more or less, changing things that will directly impact his people and have them focus their moral attitudes within, and not with forcing others to legally follow their perspective. If we change the laws to enforce a singular belief system, this is no choice, and we are no better than organizations like the Taliban -- who have increasingly been getting more liberal over the last few years (they just made changes to their charter saying they will not kill women for disobeying them without at least giving them one warning, and then one beating after that...my gawd! These guys have turned into regular Al Frankens over night!).
But seriously, there are a lot of Christians out there that are nothing what you think of when you think of all the assholes ruining the name.
(And yeah, I know I have a long way to go as well...I just try not to be a COMPLETE hypocrite about the whole thing)
CDBaby isn't an independent, its a vanity press.
Big difference...at the same time, I know a LOT of friends that have gone the CDBaby route, actually had some independent buzz before going there, or had a past life as an independent artist and their stuff is always to be found.
I have another friend that pretty much runs his own label out of his apartment, has maybe 4 or 5 bands on it (and its all pretty much the same group, with slight alterations in the line up and style) and I see his stuff featured on the genre front pages at least a few times a year (guaranteed to set sales tenfold doing nothing else). I've seen his work on the 'alternative' sections, the Electronic section (where your band is, actually looks like your albums are, but your band isn't categorized and isn't thrown in there...one of the problems of CDBaby) and a few others...
I also know, he hussles his ass off. He gets the press he needs. He sends full discs to the reviewers at Apple. He buys time on Pitchfork (for like $2000, you can buy a link with unlimited downloads for a month or something like that). The point is, technology doesn't make your album available just because you put it out there. CDBaby does no quality control -- hence the 'vanity press' moniker -- and it shouldn't, but if you go that route, expect to play all the parts of a label that they aren't doing for you.
I know if I were Apple, I'd be damned if I was going to put someone's CDBaby stuff inline with something that professionals have vetted. And maybe pros have vetted your stuff and thats why its not listed anywhere except on the backshelves? Who knows.
I listened to a few clips and it didn't sound bad -- but not significantly different from others that are doing this professionally.
Back to the main point, yeah, it does list independents -- ones that Apple likes...
"Under US law, are you allowed to make money in your home country while studying?"
Depends...I run a little research area for my university and I hire students all the time.
Depending on their visa, they may only be able to do work that is solely in support of their education...as the research we do is academic in nature and its for the same university they are attending, they can do this. At the same time, some of the stuff I do for the university that is off-campus -- we do a lot of High School outreach and assessment -- I can't even ask that these folks come with me because they could be deported if someone wanted to get technical about it (i.e., same office, same sort of job, just benefiting another academic institution other than my own -- even if it is in a partnership where we both benefit).
So yeah, the US has the same sorts of laws. I think this is why most of the folks want to get more than an academic visa before coming over (though the academic one has a few privs that the working one doesn't...and vice a versa).
"A voting machine that is as secure as an ATM is probably good enough."
Wasn't it just a few weeks ago people were finding the passwords for ATMs 'hidden' right there on the net with instructions on how to reprogram them from the front pannel so that it thought the 20s slot was actually dispensing $5s???
If this is the security we can expect...well, I just hope my side finds the password list before the other side. Those bastards are slimy cut and run warmongers who want to stay the course of flipflopping.
"This is not just lies, this encourages people to discount environmental arguments as bullshit..."
This is one of the worst things about Greenpeace and Peta -- and others here have made the same sorts of arguments.
For instance, it is widely known that if you have an older gas guzzling car it is STILL far more environmentally friendly to put the money into this car and drive it until it literally just crumbles one day that it would be to get rid of it -- most likely in a trade in to a car dealership that will sell it to a car auctionhouse where someone will buy it for practically nothing and let it fall apart -- and pick up an electric or a hybrid. The energy to make a new car is still far more than it is in wasting gas in an old one (though if you are going to buy a new one regardless -- go for the hybrid).
Yet, if you are caught in one of these, you would be demonized by these idiots.
'Environmentalists' who call themselves such are as much about the environment as many folks that call themselves 'Christians' (I believe myself to be both, but its not a tag I generally put towards myself publicly -- I try to lead by example as opposed to by title). At one point, I supported Greenpeace, but this has been par for course for them for too long. I support environmental policy changes and I support initiatives like Kyoto, but these guys are way out in la-la-land.
"Lack of batch support in Quicktime, of course."
There is PLENTY of batch support for Quicktime...you are probably talking the Quicktime PLAYER (which purchasing the pro version gives you access to simply the encoding portion).
You need to buy Apple's Cinema Tools (err...I think this is the right one) to do batch encoding pretty easily. Of course, you can only get it as part of Final Cut.
Beyond that, you can use Applescript to do a lot of this -- or use other third party software to batch encode this stuff. Its actually pretty simple to do it.
Sadly, I think relatively few people arguing about licensing have ever developed software on their own. Not talking about small scriptlets or hacking a PHP page to customize it just a bit more, but actual real programs.
Little things like that -- I give away free of charge. I get annoyed by people that GPL a 40 line piece of code done in a scripting language. Its obnoxious that it is even protected work.
At the same time, I believe that as an author they should be able to do as they please with it, regardless of how insignificant it is (i.e., if its that simple, recreating it from scratch would be easy and thus nothing is lost from ANY licensing scheme).
Anyhoo...
What? Someone can't state an opinion and then back it up with the logic behind it?
Obviously, you can't refute the logic.
"How? They could wipe your attrib, compile it and never even acknowledge your contribution. If you took it to court they could simply say that the fact you released it under an unrestricted license like BSD was enough evidence that you did not care what anybody did with it."
In this same case, they could do the same with a GPL'd application. And they'd be breaking contractual law exactly the same.
I'm certainly positive that some judges would buy the argument with either that you were giving it away and thus didn't care. I spent a half hour trying to explain the idea that anyone would use GPL or BSD licensed software to a patent attorney a few weeks ago and he couldn't fathom the idea that anyone would give their IP away. His argument was that if you did this, it is exactly the same as PD software, and I kept explaining, no it isn't public domain, it is simply licensed under a permissive distribution ideal and that it could actually be more profitable to do so under certain instances. Yet, he kept coming back to So Its Public Domain.
"Oh I get it. The people who release under the GPL are in second grade. You are so much smarter then they are. They are just children and you are a mature intelligent adult. Only stupid naive children release code under the GPL. Adults use the BSD like you!."
There is a difference between smarter and more mature.
And yes, I feel the vast majority of those who utilize BSD are more mature. The GPL is very restrictive in a political or religious sense. You do because this is the party line, or because God tells you so. If you do not do this, you are shunned and told you are not promoting "a self healing commons" or what ever other meme, catchphrase or talking point you had been given - don't worry, the phrase will be meaningless, so feel free to virally promote it. You will be able to identify other followers through its usage. By the way, did I tell you, I 'support the war on terror'.
BSD doesn't force the promotion down your throat. It may not end up with the goal of a perfect utopia. Its goal is not to do this artificially with phoney boundaries. It encourages you to follow the ideal, but that is your choice.
Do you not see why one is more mature? Adherance through the gun is not adherence. Adherence through social change is what should be the goal.
I have friends that would never release anything under a more permissive license like the BSD and they certainly are intelligent people. They also have no faith in humanity and if pressed would probably explain that a dictatorship is more likely to provide results than a democracy. And I'd agree. Today. I see democracies today and I realize that socially we are infants. Democracies suck -- look at the choices the US are provided regularly. At the same time, if we give up the ideal, we will never get to a point socially where this makes sense...
Way too philosophical. My belief is that BSD gives the foundation for a better society, while GPL gives the foundation of better software. Which do you want?
"Then I remember that /. is full of astro turfers who love the BSD because it means people volunteering work for their favorite corporation."
I've work for non-profits my entire life and I prefer BSD.
If I am coding something and someone else packages the same product I'm giving away, I'm out NOTHING.
With the BSD, I have to be able to prove my copyright is there and thats about it. Even if someone close sources my package, I can point it out to others and show them that the closed source app *IS* essentially my application. I've done it before with some testing applications that my university has picked up because they thought the product was a better product than my own...as my old boss use to say, 'you are never a prophet in your own kingdom'. By using BSD, I'd actually been able to get someone to use the software I truely care about and in the end, prove to those detracting from my work that it really is decent.
This isn't to say I couldn't have done this with GPL, I just don't believe in forcing others to keep something open source when the base already is and it hasn't been too hard to reverse engineer what the commercial company has pushed on top of my own work (i.e., I own the copyright for the software and as such, anything they do to it really isn't protected from me implementing the same sorts of things).
If I'm going to release something for sale, I release it closed source. If I want to give it away, I BSD it.
Then again, some people haven't really progressed past the whole 2nd grade idea of what is fair or not. These are the same people that give a gift for a birthday and are offended if it is given away ('re-gifted') -- after all, the original giftee didn't pay for it!!! No, fair is giving something away for the love of giving it away and hoping it will give the person you gave it to the most enjoyment. Then again, I've also heard of people giving away lottery tickets and then suing when the numbers come up positive...that is human nature for you.
"When was the last time your XP box crashed? Mine hasn't in months."
I haven't had Windows crash in a long time -- unfortunately, I have had individual applications crash constantly. The Microsoft applications that crash are the worst...they generally take out the explorer with it. Ctrl-Alt-Del -- Task Manager -- Kill Explorer.exe -- Run Explorer.exe.
I've had individual aps crashe that caused memory leaks where it didn't take out the system, but the only way out is to restart.
But you are right, the box hasn't 'crashed' in a long time. I buy only full business class systems from recognized dealers -- none of the home crap that Dell / Compaq and others sell (i.e., people know how well their box works at work and think the home stuff will be identical). So its not because of crappy hardware and buggy drivers -- there isn't a driver that wasn't signed at this point.
BTW If Apple had 90% of the market -- of course there would be more attacks...they'd be unsuccessful compared to the Microsoft 'game', but they'd be there.