I'm reminded of AltiVec in Mac G4 CPU's, another advancement that required software support, which was slow to come to market. It included SIMD processing so it was a major upgrade. AltiVec support wasn't common in audio software until over 4 years after the first G4 shipped. It was enough to send me to XP, which implemented SIMD entirely at the OS level without special programming in applications, haven't looked back. Haven't had the slightest inclination to use Vista either.
What more functionality do we really want from our phone?
What I'd love to see is less dysfunctionality from avid cel users. It drives me nuts when people prioritize texts messages over conversation. Here's a synopsis of a real conversation I had recently:
"Say, did you get that [important stuff] taken care of?"
"One sec, texting my bf*..." [patiently wait...] "Ok, what was that?"
"The [important stuff], how'd it go?"
"Well I talked to [the important client] and he has some concerns he'd like to discuss"
"Such as..."
"Hold on, bf's* on a rampage here..."
"Surely it can wait"
"If I don't get back to him right away he'll think I'm ignoring him and it'll get out of hand"
"What do you think [the important client] is going to do if I don't sort this out immediately?"
[... texting continues...]
"For &$*# sake just tell him you're busy"
"He'll never buy that, he thinks I sit on my ass all day"
"Lemme guess, because all you do around here is send texts back and forth?"
XP works fine and gave users like myself access to cheap and/or what-was-then cutting edge processing to get jobs done. My quad Opteron is getting long in the tooth, and I doubt it will be replaced by a Win7 machine, but I'm sure as hell going to avoid that costly transition as long as I can.. Nowadays very month I don't have to overhaul my audio workstation pays for my rig over again.
The judge nailed M$ $40M for trial misconduct. No question They pulled out every trick in the book and failed. The guilt of M$ in this case is certain.
In the case of M$ vs. patent trolls, remember that M$ is one of the biggest patent trolls themselves, in addition to a convicted patent thief with a $multi-billion legal arsenal.
The Privacy Commissioner is an officer of parliament (who reports directly to the Senate and the House of Commons), not an official of the Government of Canada.
Officer == Official. He works for the government and is paid by Canadian taxpayers. He is ergo a government official.
The presumption of corruption and abuse may now resume.
Legislation is not a popularity contest, nor should it ever be.
In general, art that becomes public domain becomes worthless to consumers. The value of art is virtually entirely derived from promotions. If there is no profit from promoting it, it goes unpromoted and vanishes from interest, most especially in the case of music. When music becomes public domain people will stop downloading or even listening to it, in favor of the big flashy new crap they see on MTV that people are getting sued and jailed for pirating.
The fundamental human trait at the heart of the music industry is not musical appreciation, it's vanity. The most valuable aspect of music to consumers is how it can shape how others perceive them. That, not the music itself, is what is being sold, and why people are buying it, and also why people are pirating it. It is frightfully expensive to create the demand for music, and those who do it successfully deserve to be rewarded for as long as the demand exists. Public domain kills that demand and devalues the music completely unnecessarily.
If that doesn't make sense to you, you have no business criticizing the law or how it is applied. If you disagree with it, you're in abject denial. Just look at the top-selling music in the world, it's almost all rap or dance, virtually devoid of musicality, but fraught with glamor and hype. It's more fashion show than music.
The profitability of the 'new' GM requires no explanation. $533M in environmental cleanup is a negligible expense by comparison to the value of the brands GM has developed globally. If the government was willing to buy out GM entirely, obviously they would be willing to absorb the clean-up costs to facilitate GM's survival under other ownership. The costs were inevitably going to fall on taxpayers no matter who bought GM, but only by buying out GM do taxpayers stand to get anything back. Anyone wishing a company that has employed millions of Americans through to retirement to be sold to a foreign corporation over some messy dump sites has a tainted sense of patriotism. Even critics of the Obama administration should praise them for keeping GM American.
And the term "Barack Hussein Obama" is the undisputed flag of politically bigoted. Please continue using it to openly declare your ignorance and irrational paranoia.
I agree with all of the above, except the omitted contempt of court charge and subsequent penalties - fines which bankruptcy won't absolve, and a criminal record which at very least seriously complicates international travel, and of course job applications.
If it isn't painfully obvious by now, they're never going to stop. Fines for breaking rules are factored into their budget for this campaign. In the end, even if there are mass organized protests, the final question is going to be "should people be allowed to steal music?"
If you hate the RIAA, then get out and support indie music! DUH!!!
Asperger's is a very real condition, however by definition it is no defense for criminal behavior. The similar condition that is severe enough to merit a diminished capacity defense is called Autism. The threshold of diminished capacity was long established in autism diagnosis before Asperger's was identified. Autism is a disease, Asperger's is a disorder.
And although we can agree on the invalidity of the legal argument, I must point out that derogatory comments about the mentally disabled is extremely lame.
What good is public domain to music? Music that has no profitability doesn't get played except as background for other profitable ventures. Or has ragtime music come back with a vengeance and I haven't noticed? It's a sad fact, music only gets played because promotions tell people they want it. The days of good music selling itself ended with Elvis Presley.
I agree the term of copyright need only be an incentive to make good music, far less than 70 years, but the end of the copyright term only brings about the end of interest in the music. If there is still demand for music over 70 years old, that's an incredible achievement. Why shouldn't the songwriter and promoters be rewarded?
If you've got a problem with rewarding labels for making you aware of your favorite music, get off your ass and check out some indie bands. I couldn't care less what's on the radio, indie bands have real talent and diversity.
Labels don't make bands better, nor do they determine what bands are good. All they care about is marketability - "can I sell this" - which leans more towards looks than musical ability. In fact, their music is usually dumbed down to be more acceptable to a wider audience, though less inspiring. I can name a dozen bands that will get signed in the next year, and 8 of them will be worse than they are now. Look what Universal did with my friend's band!
People who want music to come to them are probably already using online stores to get new music. Everyone else is willing to go wherever the music is.
Also large chains have their own distribution network, cutting UPS out of the loop as well as much of the other distribution costs (reduced packaging, fewer clients to administer, etc). Walmart wouldn't have to offer much more to defer the net expense of reduced distribution, in exchange for exclusivity. Surprised it didn't happen sooner.
But can we be sure that this is the guy who actually invented it?
I know what you mean! I invented the time machine, then it turns out my wife had already patented it a year earlier! Guess that means she's going to find out I've been tapping her sister...
The sad fact is that patents have become such a big industry of their own, and the effect of a patent is no longer the rights provided by the patent itself, instead it's true power is its means of unleashing prohibitively expensive legal pressure upon others.
Multi-billion dollar corporations stand to lose millions on a product they market to the entire country due to an upstart company serving a smaller region. The larger company has nothing to lose by spending millions arguing a stretched scope of the patent causing the smaller company to spend millions on defense, or else lose millions due to false patent violations. Larger corporations also have nothing to lose by monopolizing the patent office with as many superfluous patent applications as they can dream up, making it more difficult and costly for smaller companies to obtain protection from their legal department.
If a patent holder had to demonstrate a concerted effort to bring a patented product or process to market within five years or face massive fines proportional to the patent holder's net worth, things would be a lot different. Unfortunately, corporate-funded lobbyists would never let that happen.
More significantly, how do you account for changes in people's sense of beauty? For example, in a matter of a few years a seemingly permanent preference for Baywatch-style high leg line swimsuits was replaced by a low waistline showing off a flat tummy. In the 80's, low waistlines were ugly, and today high leg lines are tacky. Which is more beautiful? They're very different, and at any given time one has always been considered more beautiful than the other. Need I bring up bell-bottoms?
And while those are fashion issues, parallels can easily be applied to genetic and lifestyle variations. In the 1800's larger women were considered more attractive in western civilization, and today in other parts of the world that is also the case.
Then there's the aspect of modern media manipulating our sense of beauty. An assertion with global ramifications is drawn from a specimen base limited to a television audience? Is anyone else creeped out by that?
You have a point, but you missed a key one. Part of what Mac owners pay extra for is the included software. A $1000 Mac includes software that arguably would cost over $300 to buy for a PC. Doesn't that make it a $700 Mac?
People will only pay for something they can't otherwise get for free within a reasonable amount of time or with a reasonable amount of effort.
Agreed. Perfect example - ATM fees. The bad news is that now you can only access your money for free from your bank's ATM's. The good news is there's ATM's everywhere, so you can always access your money, for a relatively staggering fee.
ATM's have the advantage of direct access to your bank account, and only once you've been inconvenienced by committing to making a withdrawal is the fee brought to your attention. So at the point of no return you're faced with the decision of paying the fee or going back to square one and finding another ATM, which may have an even higher fee.
However, all ATM's access the same money, and there are no free ATM's to be found outside your bank chain, or at least that's what's expected. In order for any news service to do more good than harm by charging fees, all other news services would have to charge fees as well, plus the content will be subject to much higher scrutiny. Bad stories will directly result in lost revenues.
But will that result in higher journalistic standards, or will they just print what they think we want to read?
The more news services start charging, the more viewers free services will get, and the more ad revenue they will get. Charging for news makes free news services more profitable. It could only work if every news service started charging fees at the same time, which would be an anti-trust nightmare.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm reminded of AltiVec in Mac G4 CPU's, another advancement that required software support, which was slow to come to market. It included SIMD processing so it was a major upgrade. AltiVec support wasn't common in audio software until over 4 years after the first G4 shipped. It was enough to send me to XP, which implemented SIMD entirely at the OS level without special programming in applications, haven't looked back. Haven't had the slightest inclination to use Vista either.
What more functionality do we really want from our phone?
What I'd love to see is less dysfunctionality from avid cel users. It drives me nuts when people prioritize texts messages over conversation. Here's a synopsis of a real conversation I had recently:
"Say, did you get that [important stuff] taken care of?"
"One sec, texting my bf*..." [patiently wait...] "Ok, what was that?"
"The [important stuff], how'd it go?"
"Well I talked to [the important client] and he has some concerns he'd like to discuss"
"Such as..."
"Hold on, bf's* on a rampage here..."
"Surely it can wait"
"If I don't get back to him right away he'll think I'm ignoring him and it'll get out of hand"
"What do you think [the important client] is going to do if I don't sort this out immediately?"
[... texting continues...]
"For &$*# sake just tell him you're busy"
"He'll never buy that, he thinks I sit on my ass all day"
"Lemme guess, because all you do around here is send texts back and forth?"
* Note that she actually said "bf"
XP works fine and gave users like myself access to cheap and/or what-was-then cutting edge processing to get jobs done. My quad Opteron is getting long in the tooth, and I doubt it will be replaced by a Win7 machine, but I'm sure as hell going to avoid that costly transition as long as I can.. Nowadays very month I don't have to overhaul my audio workstation pays for my rig over again.
Not until hotshot defense lawyers figure out the best ways to exploit the issue in a real context.
Well, fuck.
As a friend of someone who was wrongfully incarcerated based upon DNA evidence, I say:
Well, fuck!!
The judge nailed M$ $40M for trial misconduct. No question They pulled out every trick in the book and failed. The guilt of M$ in this case is certain.
In the case of M$ vs. patent trolls, remember that M$ is one of the biggest patent trolls themselves, in addition to a convicted patent thief with a $multi-billion legal arsenal.
Actually it just means coccaine users in Japan and China are broke.
The Privacy Commissioner is an officer of parliament (who reports directly to the Senate and the House of Commons), not an official of the Government of Canada.
Officer == Official. He works for the government and is paid by Canadian taxpayers. He is ergo a government official.
The presumption of corruption and abuse may now resume.
Legislation is not a popularity contest, nor should it ever be.
In general, art that becomes public domain becomes worthless to consumers. The value of art is virtually entirely derived from promotions. If there is no profit from promoting it, it goes unpromoted and vanishes from interest, most especially in the case of music. When music becomes public domain people will stop downloading or even listening to it, in favor of the big flashy new crap they see on MTV that people are getting sued and jailed for pirating.
The fundamental human trait at the heart of the music industry is not musical appreciation, it's vanity. The most valuable aspect of music to consumers is how it can shape how others perceive them. That, not the music itself, is what is being sold, and why people are buying it, and also why people are pirating it. It is frightfully expensive to create the demand for music, and those who do it successfully deserve to be rewarded for as long as the demand exists. Public domain kills that demand and devalues the music completely unnecessarily.
If that doesn't make sense to you, you have no business criticizing the law or how it is applied. If you disagree with it, you're in abject denial. Just look at the top-selling music in the world, it's almost all rap or dance, virtually devoid of musicality, but fraught with glamor and hype. It's more fashion show than music.
The profitability of the 'new' GM requires no explanation. $533M in environmental cleanup is a negligible expense by comparison to the value of the brands GM has developed globally. If the government was willing to buy out GM entirely, obviously they would be willing to absorb the clean-up costs to facilitate GM's survival under other ownership. The costs were inevitably going to fall on taxpayers no matter who bought GM, but only by buying out GM do taxpayers stand to get anything back. Anyone wishing a company that has employed millions of Americans through to retirement to be sold to a foreign corporation over some messy dump sites has a tainted sense of patriotism. Even critics of the Obama administration should praise them for keeping GM American.
And the term "Barack Hussein Obama" is the undisputed flag of politically bigoted. Please continue using it to openly declare your ignorance and irrational paranoia.
I never finished university, but have secure self-employment and even employ six people.
I'd be more than happy to consider the plaintiff's resume for about 0.03 seconds before tossing it for her unreasonable princess attitude.
Oh come on! Who wouldn't want to make their car landfill prematurely and stunt renewable energy development at the same time?
Nobody seems to complain about a 911 fee on their cellular bill, solar users shouldn't complain about paying to have the grid as a back-up.
However, one may complain when the fee is unreasonably high and consumption costs are not rebated accordingly, as will surely be the case.
I agree with all of the above, except the omitted contempt of court charge and subsequent penalties - fines which bankruptcy won't absolve, and a criminal record which at very least seriously complicates international travel, and of course job applications.
If it isn't painfully obvious by now, they're never going to stop. Fines for breaking rules are factored into their budget for this campaign. In the end, even if there are mass organized protests, the final question is going to be "should people be allowed to steal music?"
If you hate the RIAA, then get out and support indie music! DUH!!!
Asperger's is a very real condition, however by definition it is no defense for criminal behavior. The similar condition that is severe enough to merit a diminished capacity defense is called Autism. The threshold of diminished capacity was long established in autism diagnosis before Asperger's was identified. Autism is a disease, Asperger's is a disorder.
And although we can agree on the invalidity of the legal argument, I must point out that derogatory comments about the mentally disabled is extremely lame.
What good is public domain to music? Music that has no profitability doesn't get played except as background for other profitable ventures. Or has ragtime music come back with a vengeance and I haven't noticed? It's a sad fact, music only gets played because promotions tell people they want it. The days of good music selling itself ended with Elvis Presley.
I agree the term of copyright need only be an incentive to make good music, far less than 70 years, but the end of the copyright term only brings about the end of interest in the music. If there is still demand for music over 70 years old, that's an incredible achievement. Why shouldn't the songwriter and promoters be rewarded?
If you've got a problem with rewarding labels for making you aware of your favorite music, get off your ass and check out some indie bands. I couldn't care less what's on the radio, indie bands have real talent and diversity.
Labels don't make bands better, nor do they determine what bands are good. All they care about is marketability - "can I sell this" - which leans more towards looks than musical ability. In fact, their music is usually dumbed down to be more acceptable to a wider audience, though less inspiring. I can name a dozen bands that will get signed in the next year, and 8 of them will be worse than they are now. Look what Universal did with my friend's band!
People who want music to come to them are probably already using online stores to get new music. Everyone else is willing to go wherever the music is.
Also large chains have their own distribution network, cutting UPS out of the loop as well as much of the other distribution costs (reduced packaging, fewer clients to administer, etc). Walmart wouldn't have to offer much more to defer the net expense of reduced distribution, in exchange for exclusivity. Surprised it didn't happen sooner.
They will only be imitating self-awareness, and therefore will make perfect slaves.
But can we be sure that this is the guy who actually invented it?
I know what you mean! I invented the time machine, then it turns out my wife had already patented it a year earlier! Guess that means she's going to find out I've been tapping her sister...
The sad fact is that patents have become such a big industry of their own, and the effect of a patent is no longer the rights provided by the patent itself, instead it's true power is its means of unleashing prohibitively expensive legal pressure upon others.
Multi-billion dollar corporations stand to lose millions on a product they market to the entire country due to an upstart company serving a smaller region. The larger company has nothing to lose by spending millions arguing a stretched scope of the patent causing the smaller company to spend millions on defense, or else lose millions due to false patent violations. Larger corporations also have nothing to lose by monopolizing the patent office with as many superfluous patent applications as they can dream up, making it more difficult and costly for smaller companies to obtain protection from their legal department.
If a patent holder had to demonstrate a concerted effort to bring a patented product or process to market within five years or face massive fines proportional to the patent holder's net worth, things would be a lot different. Unfortunately, corporate-funded lobbyists would never let that happen.
Women get more attractive. Men develop bigger wallets.
The more men act like johns, the more women will act like whores, and vice versa.
So would you say popular media is encouraging or discouraging that tendency?
More significantly, how do you account for changes in people's sense of beauty? For example, in a matter of a few years a seemingly permanent preference for Baywatch-style high leg line swimsuits was replaced by a low waistline showing off a flat tummy. In the 80's, low waistlines were ugly, and today high leg lines are tacky. Which is more beautiful? They're very different, and at any given time one has always been considered more beautiful than the other. Need I bring up bell-bottoms?
And while those are fashion issues, parallels can easily be applied to genetic and lifestyle variations. In the 1800's larger women were considered more attractive in western civilization, and today in other parts of the world that is also the case.
Then there's the aspect of modern media manipulating our sense of beauty. An assertion with global ramifications is drawn from a specimen base limited to a television audience? Is anyone else creeped out by that?
Careful not to infect the bacterial brains with his STD's!
You have a point, but you missed a key one. Part of what Mac owners pay extra for is the included software. A $1000 Mac includes software that arguably would cost over $300 to buy for a PC. Doesn't that make it a $700 Mac?
People will only pay for something they can't otherwise get for free within a reasonable amount of time or with a reasonable amount of effort.
Agreed. Perfect example - ATM fees. The bad news is that now you can only access your money for free from your bank's ATM's. The good news is there's ATM's everywhere, so you can always access your money, for a relatively staggering fee.
ATM's have the advantage of direct access to your bank account, and only once you've been inconvenienced by committing to making a withdrawal is the fee brought to your attention. So at the point of no return you're faced with the decision of paying the fee or going back to square one and finding another ATM, which may have an even higher fee.
However, all ATM's access the same money, and there are no free ATM's to be found outside your bank chain, or at least that's what's expected. In order for any news service to do more good than harm by charging fees, all other news services would have to charge fees as well, plus the content will be subject to much higher scrutiny. Bad stories will directly result in lost revenues.
But will that result in higher journalistic standards, or will they just print what they think we want to read?
The more news services start charging, the more viewers free services will get, and the more ad revenue they will get. Charging for news makes free news services more profitable. It could only work if every news service started charging fees at the same time, which would be an anti-trust nightmare.