Don't patronize me. It had a nonfunctional button. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I have been using and programming computers for 28 years. I think I know how to describe "this button doesn't work" in plain language that a support engineer can understand. I have *been* a support engineer. I *manage* support engineers now.
When I tried putting the unit back in service, in the vain hope that perhaps the problem was just caused by humidity, another button proved to be intermittantly nonfunctional. The power button.
I called the vendor that sold it to me (hsn.com) and they were very nice and sent me a prepaid shipping label to return it to them for a refund. On my first call to them, they told me they would immediately send me a replacement unit, but then discovered they didn't have one. No questions, no argument, just "let us send a replacement unit." That's customer service. I made plain to them that despite the problem I would be happy to buy from them again because they were friendly, fast, and responsive.
Sharp told me I must not have read the manual, and then when I complained and said I was angry they told me "don't talk to me like that." That's not customer service. I *was* thinking about the possibility of requiring every student, professor, and staff member at the college where I manage software to have a Zaurus 5600 next year. Now I'm not.
Incidentally I used Miss Manners' method, and told the person on the phone at sharp that if their computer has a "customer is irate" box, they should please check it for me. They told me it doesn't. If they're not even tracking when the customer is angry, they obviously don't give a damn about what the customer thinks.
I had a Zaurus 5500. I loved it, and the web experience was great (with your choice of Opera, that comes pre-installed, or Konqueror, which you can download and install) but mine broke, and when I sent it in to Sharp for repair they told me nothing was wrong with it and sent it back to me. I'm returning it for a refund.
I'm still trying to decide what I want to replace it. The Yopy looks great but as they don't take US credit cards, that means I'd get no additional protection on my purchase, and given that I'd be ordering it from Korea that doesn't seem to be a good thing. So, they're out, sadly.
Otherwise it looks like my choices are the Tungsten C, or some kind of ipaq with Linux installed. I don't want PocketPC.
If a store employee runs out after you and physically grabs your purchase out of your hands, an appropriate response would be to open your mouth and start yelling "HELP! POLICE! I'M BEING ASSAULTED AND ROBBED! HELP! POLICE!" as loudly as you possibly can, while pointing at the employee.
I guarantee you that: 1) This will get the attention of everyone within hearing range, who will all stop to stare at the altercation. That generally will make the employee pretty damn uncomfortable with what they're doing, although of course they will try to act like you're some kind of lunatic. Knowing that everyone is watching will, however, force them to adhere to some minimal standard of decent behavior.
2) This suddenly puts a whole different spin on how the store has to handle the situation: instead of being on the offensive, claiming you're some kind of bad customer, they're on the defensive, trying to fend off the accusation that their employees assault their customers.
Although, to be honest, any employee who physically grabs my shopping bag out of my hands is in danger of being hit: That *is* assault around here, and I *do* have the right to defend myself, and if they actually physically fought a bag out of my hands I would be likely to defend myself before stopping to consider the situation.
That's the danger of such employees: they pick on the wrong person and they may find that they've chosen to assault someone who has faster self-defense reflexes, suddenly the police are involved, and it won't be the customer who gets arrested and sued.
Now that the store has told you, "Don't ever come back," make sure to tell all of your friends about it so they know that the store doesn't want people like you as customers, so they obviously must not want any of your friends as customers either.
I noticed that Macrovision will require that for videos in which less than 100% of the production run uses Macrovision technology, those that do will have to be labeled with the Macrovision logo.
I wonder if this is something Macrovision has been waiting for an excuse to do. I notice they have actually been advertising themselves on videos, and they phrase their description so that it sounds like some sort of "protection" technology, so an uninformed consumer might think that it's a good thing that somehow prevents their video from wearing out rather than a nasty thing that restricts their fair use ability.
I'm basically wondering if Macrovision is trying to confuse, obscure, and obfuscate what they really are in a weird attempt to try to get consumers to actually look for or ask for their logo on stuff. If that's the case, I wonder why they're so desperate since they seem to have basically 100% market share already.
Macrovision works by constantly varying certain aspects of the signal intensity of the video signal, so the receiving device (your TV) has to constantly readjust. The point is that TVs have tuners that are capable of readjusting to this, while VCRs are required (by the VHS patent holder, under agreement with Macrovision) to have tuners which are not quite able to adjust to the extremes Macrovision uses.
I talked to a couple of video technicians about this, and they tell me that in addition to preventing you from videotaping the signal, it also may make your television tuner wear out slightly faster.
Frankly, I only went to see Spider Man for the opportunity to drool at Tobey Maguire for two hours, but to my surprise I rather liked it as a movie. I've never read the comic books, but my friends who had liked it too. It has good production values and is well acted. The plot was really predictable, but that didn't detract much from being able to take it as quality light entertainment.
Good sci fi gets written not because its on bestsellers lists but because people that write it love doing it.
Ok, fine. I doubt that will change. But wouldn't you agree that if it starts hitting bestseller lists, the authors might get paid more decently (Anne McCaffrey was halfway through her career before she could even manage to buy a modest house, and had to leave the United States because she couldn't afford to live here) and more people might be exposed to some good books?
Actually, you can. This question went to the Supreme Court quite some time ago, and they ruled that you can knowningly enter into an agreement in which you sign away a constitutional right.
Also, they absolutely CANNOT demand to install auditting software on those machines. That's theft in my book. They are forcefully taking away my cycles.
And your disk space. I think you could make a much better argument on that one.
I think another important point regards machines owned by employees rather than the organization. If they just take them home, the organization, and BSA, don't have much say in the matter.
Re:Solution: XP behind a firewall?
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Yeah, I can see this one already...
Me: You need to install a firewall for your home network.
My aunt: I really don't think the computers are about to burst into flame.
Me: No, it's a device to protect your computers from harm from outside.
My aunt: I don't think the Internet is going to send fire into the house either, and anyway you know we disconnect it when not in use and have perfectly good smoke alarms... Really now...
File a separate suit over each incident in which they called you illegally. I would guess that the small claims court's limit would allow for a $500 suit. (Wouldn't it?)
It'll be slightly more of a pain in the ass for you, and you'll have to pay the seven filing fees, but it's probably easier and cheaper than hiring a lawyer and going to a full regular court over it.
You should care because an opt-in system will default to giving you privacy, while an opt-out system will default to you not having privacy.
Of course, we can expect the worst from everyone: if it gets made opt-in, everyone will just change their user agreements to require you to opt-in to subscribe to anything, and if it gets made opt-out, they'll just do their best to hide the opt-out screen and make the process as difficult as possible... but we can at least start out in the right direction.
Re:If it wasn't preinstalled years ago it's out.
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JPEG2000 Coming Soon
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I'm currently trying to explain that using a cross-platform design would automatically give us support for IE4 and NS4, but it's an uphill battle...
I'm currently just explaining that AOL seems to be planning to go with Mozilla real soon now, so if the site isn't written based on standards they'll lose a whole lot of customers or have to do the whole site over again. It works well.
Really? We want it because we're getting support calls from customers telling us IE4 doesn't work. But IE6 users are generating nearly 25% of our hits, compared to 2.3% for IE4.
I haven't checked the 4/5/6 IE ratio lately. I probably should with that kind of numbers... IE 4.5 on the mac is such a piece of garbage that if I could just tell everyone "IE 5 and up" it would make my life a lot easier.
Voicestream does seem to recognize that existing customers upgrade their phones from time to time and provides appropriate discounts. I recently upgraded my phone after having had it for about two years. I called customer service, explained that my phone had become a bit old and beat up and that I wanted a new one, told them which one I want, and they offered me a good discount on it: $50 less than they were asking new customers for the same phone in the local Voicestream store. The only downer was that I had to order it on the phone and wait while it was shipped to me, as they said they no longer provide discounts to existing customers *at* *the* *stores*.
I don't know if this policy applies to the Treo, but you could ask.
Now that I think about it, several friends of mine who are sprint customers got discounted prices on replacement phones after a year of service, although the choices they were offered were limited. (However, in one case he brought the phone back to the Sprint store and told them "I hate this phone", so they gave him a store credit to use on any phone he wanted, and he got one he really loves.) You might want to call Sprint and inquire.
Re:If it wasn't preinstalled years ago it's out.
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JPEG2000 Coming Soon
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You so don't have a clue how consulting works. If a client says (to quote your example) "87% of our hits come from people using IE, so that's what we'll support. The effort needed to make the site work properly for the rest isn't worth the development time, which could be better used elsewhere", I point out that I already *have* working code for Netscape and Mozilla and it's faster to implement using my cross-browser API than to write custom IE-only code which will lose business for them.
The fact remains however that they want support for IE 4.0, not IE 6.0.
If I could drop support for three year old browser technology I'd be really happy about it, I can do really cool stuff with the latest tech, but there are still too many people using browsers they downloaded years ago. Fortunately that number is slowly diminishing... someday I may even be able to get away with supporting only browsers from this century!
No DVD burners on the market have anything like the capacity of the discs being sold commercially with videos on them, explicitly so you can't copy them.
So, the whole storage medium (and thus, the progress of computer science) is being held back because they want to make it hard to copy videos.
I've read similar reviews all over for this movie. And you're right, basically... But the real problem is, whats the alternative?
Uhm... don't make the movie because it's a stupid concept. Do something intelligent instead.
As with most movies, if you look for every little problem you wont enjoy it. If you go to enjoy the movie and watch it instead of analyzing it, you will really like it.
In other words, "Don't think. Thinking makes you unhappy. Not thinking is fun."
Sorry hon, I was born with this brain built-in and it's here to stay.
If it wasn't preinstalled years ago it's out.
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JPEG2000 Coming Soon
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Look, I'm a web consultant, I work with a lot of clients and see a lot of attitudes about new technologies, and basically the rule at the moment is that if it wasn't part of the standard distribution of Netscape 4.0 or IE 4.0, you can forget about it. Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x still have just barely enough market share that organizations refuse to abandon 100% support of them.
I think they'd still be trying to demand complete support of IE 3.0, market share be damned, except that it wasn't Y2K compliant. (I think it can still be run, but doesn't work right.)
If I went to a client and told them "use this new image format, it'll save you 90% of your present bandwidth usage, but all of your users will have to install a plugin," they'd fire me for incompetence and use the money they had been paying me to buy more bandwidth.
It doesn't matter how much better the new format is. If it requires 10% of users to install a plugin to use a site made with it, companies won't even consider it. When 95% of users have it preinstalled companies will think about it seriously, and companies that really *need* it will go for it. The rest will worry about losing 5% of potential customers and decide against it. When 99% have it preinstalled, they'll probably use it and not worry about it, unless it has been too long since the technology first came out and they've become convinced that there must be something wrong with it because nobody uses it, like DHTML. (DHTML is now catching on, but I still run into clients who insist that I musn't use it because it doesn't work... while telling me that HTML, Javascript and CSS positioning are just fine.)
If a home viewer tapes a show on a VCR, the most he can do is run a few copies off for friends. But with digital content and the Internet, a home computer user can share a perfect copy of any content with potentially millions of other people, with minimal time and effort.
Really? How interesting! A commercial DVD holds 17 gigabytes of content. How long would it take to transfer a 17 gigabyte disk image file over, say, gnutella, using an average home connection, and including potential delays caused by the ISPs in between? Now, assuming your home machine is the host machine, pretend for a moment that 2 client machines connect at once to download the 17 gigabyte image... that approximately doubles the download time.
How many complete copies of the disk image of the DVD can you transfer per day at that rate? My guess is, less than one. (Based on my experience with modems, cable modems from several different cable companies, and dual ISDN connections.)
Now, are you really going to leave your machine on the net full time using *all* of your bandwidth just to illegally distribute perfect copies of a DVD to people you don't even know? I don't think so.
Then when the recipient has the complete 17 gigabyte disk image, what are they going to do with it? Nobody sells DVD writers that write disks with that capacity. They'd have to store it on a hard disk... which would cost more than buying several original, unquestionably legitimate copies of the DVD at a store.
That doesn't seem like "minimal time and effort" to me. It sounds a lot more like "run a few copies off for friends", but with a lot of pain and effort and expense on both sides.
The truth is, to get video data to be small enough to distribute in even vaguely acceptable amounts of time, you have to compress the hell out of it. Even the best compression algorythms available (such as DIVX) cause significant loss of video quality. Also, I don't think people are distributing DIVX files including all the supplementary materials available on the usual DVDs. We are not talking about "perfect copies" being distributed by any means.
So, consumers have continuing incentives to buy videos instead of downloading a crappy copy over a P2P service: substantially better video quality, value-added supplementary materials, and the fact that it costs more to make a perfect copy than to just buy another original.
Now audio is another story... there is very good audio compression available. However, experience shows that even though plenty of people go online and download music from P2P services, they keep going to their favorite music store and buying it on CD anyway.
Besides, congress *did* pass a law that allows private individuals to exchange copies of audio recordings as long as no financial compensation is provided. Judges that have ruled P2P services to be illegal have basically waved that aside, claiming that it never considered the possibility of perfect digital copies or online services that hook up people to exchange desired music... but it has not been repealed and is, no matter what the judge may opine, still the law. IANAL, but IMHO free P2P services for distribution of audio content are legal.
Doesn't that pose an immediate danger to copyright holders?
Apparently not any significant danger, given the absolutely absurd amounts of money movie and music studios make.
How do you propose we stem illegal distribution of copyrighted material, other than mandating that copy-thwarting be built into any device that can read the original work?
Is there illegal distribution of copyrighted material going on? Yes. There is. Do I think movie studios should (legally) be able to pursue legal cases under current law against persons unlawfully distributing copies of their copyrighted movies? My moral opinion aside, yes, I do believe that legally they should. Do I think record labels should be able to pursue legal cases against persons distributing unlawful copies of audio content in ways that are not protected by the Audio Home Recording Act? Yes, again, my moral opinions aside, I believe that legally they should.
However, I would like to make two other observations:
1) As the industries complaining that they are the victims of illegal distribution of copyrighted material are making simply absurd amounts of money, I can't believe the problem is so big that it can't be taken care of via lawsuits against individuals under existing law, particularly since if the corporations start suing any substantial number of private individals, many (most?) others will become afraid to violate the law.
We need to examine the cost/benefit ratio. The cost to society of fucking with every single computer and electronic device made for the benefit of stopping the relatively low level of copyright infringement we're talking about is much too high.
2) If there really are so many people violating these laws that the only way to stop it is to fuck with every single computer and electronic device made, maybe the laws should just be eliminated. The laws are supposed to serve and protect the people. If a majority of people are violating the law, something is very wrong with the law.
Your points mirror the lies (or, to be charitable, let's call them "utterly incorrect statements based on complete lack of knowledge of the relevant technology") told to congress a few months back by Jack Valenti... I assume you're just paraphrasing him to get a reaction here. Please consider the issue better and look at some before posting such spurious arguments in the future. We've been over this issue a million times.
All joking aside, my father's new car's engine is computer-controlled... along with everything else in the car. He tells me even the radio and CD player are both controlled through the touch screen control console.
I don't know how they're running the audio, and I don't know what they're using for software, but really I think I'd better email him a link to this article.
The casting of Paul Atreides was particuarly galling. It was like, "OK, we need to cast a military hero of mythic stature. Let's cast around Hollywood for the most gay and ineffectual actor we can find."
Oh, I wish he was gay, he was adorable.
But seriously, first I assume you must be talking about Hollywood Ireland... I think it was generally not an American production, and he is distinctly Irish.
Also, I thought he did a really good job: he has to come off believably as a teenage boy at the beginning and age a lot during the story. I think he pulled that off unusually well.
Unless you have committed a crime. Why would the fed/police/gov want to track you? I mean the police are overworked as it is, why would they want to track people that they have no reason to be suspicious of?
Because they're stupid.
Explain to me why the FBI has files on so many innocent celebrities. Explain to me why they have files on so many civil rights workers. Explain to me why they have files on so many random people.
I recall the case of a librarian who found out about the Freedom of Information Act. As a lark she wrote to the local FBI office and requested a copy of her file. They wrote back and refused to provide it because she was the subject of an active investigation, but said her file was 12 pages long. HUH? She was an *assistant* *librarian*. Her life was about as interesting as that sounds.
My uncle works in the defense industry. I stayed with him for a couple of months during the summer when I was 16. My aunt and I used to get followed around shopping malls by ridiculously obvious guys in trenchcoats. We thought it was funny and would just walk into Victoria's Secret and watch them get embarassed and leave, but nevertheless it was a waste of resources: we didn't (and don't) have any access to any sensitive materials, and we were doing very innocent shopping. Someday I will write to the FBI and see if it was indeed them, just out of curiosity.
I'll trust the feds/police/government to responsibly choose who to investigate/track when hell freezes over.
I got the warning from godaddy.com so I'm not going to be deceived in this case, but if I hadn't received that warning I would likely have at least been confused. (I would have read the fine print and not done it, but I'm a cynical SOB.)
The reality is, godaddy.com is sending the linked email to existing customers (such as myself), so recipients already know their prices. I think they're trying to drum in the fact that if you switch you'll be paying more... which is of course true.
Yes, their motivation in this is to keep customers. However, it's also apparently true that Verisign is pulling this scam. Just offhand I can think of at least one of my uncles who has his own domain and quite possibly would get confused by Verisign's letter and switch his domain without realizing what he's doing.
So, this email from godaddy.com may serve their business, but it also could be helpful to many of their customers.
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Don't patronize me. It had a nonfunctional button. Seems pretty straightforward to me. I have been using and programming computers for 28 years. I think I know how to describe "this button doesn't work" in plain language that a support engineer can understand. I have *been* a support engineer. I *manage* support engineers now.
When I tried putting the unit back in service, in the vain hope that perhaps the problem was just caused by humidity, another button proved to be intermittantly nonfunctional. The power button.
I called the vendor that sold it to me (hsn.com) and they were very nice and sent me a prepaid shipping label to return it to them for a refund. On my first call to them, they told me they would immediately send me a replacement unit, but then discovered they didn't have one. No questions, no argument, just "let us send a replacement unit." That's customer service. I made plain to them that despite the problem I would be happy to buy from them again because they were friendly, fast, and responsive.
Sharp told me I must not have read the manual, and then when I complained and said I was angry they told me "don't talk to me like that." That's not customer service. I *was* thinking about the possibility of requiring every student, professor, and staff member at the college where I manage software to have a Zaurus 5600 next year. Now I'm not.
Incidentally I used Miss Manners' method, and told the person on the phone at sharp that if their computer has a "customer is irate" box, they should please check it for me. They told me it doesn't. If they're not even tracking when the customer is angry, they obviously don't give a damn about what the customer thinks.
I had a Zaurus 5500. I loved it, and the web experience was great (with your choice of Opera, that comes pre-installed, or Konqueror, which you can download and install) but mine broke, and when I sent it in to Sharp for repair they told me nothing was wrong with it and sent it back to me. I'm returning it for a refund.
I'm still trying to decide what I want to replace it. The Yopy looks great but as they don't take US credit cards, that means I'd get no additional protection on my purchase, and given that I'd be ordering it from Korea that doesn't seem to be a good thing. So, they're out, sadly.
Otherwise it looks like my choices are the Tungsten C, or some kind of ipaq with Linux installed. I don't want PocketPC.
I lost 50 pounds in three months on the Atkins diet. It wasn't even hard. I would have lost more but I cheated for a weekend about once a month.
Your mileage may vary.
If a store employee runs out after you and physically grabs your purchase out of your hands, an appropriate response would be to open your mouth and start yelling "HELP! POLICE! I'M BEING ASSAULTED AND ROBBED! HELP! POLICE!" as loudly as you possibly can, while pointing at the employee.
I guarantee you that:
1) This will get the attention of everyone within hearing range, who will all stop to stare at the altercation. That generally will make the employee pretty damn uncomfortable with what they're doing, although of course they will try to act like you're some kind of lunatic. Knowing that everyone is watching will, however, force them to adhere to some minimal standard of decent behavior.
2) This suddenly puts a whole different spin on how the store has to handle the situation: instead of being on the offensive, claiming you're some kind of bad customer, they're on the defensive, trying to fend off the accusation that their employees assault their customers.
Although, to be honest, any employee who physically grabs my shopping bag out of my hands is in danger of being hit: That *is* assault around here, and I *do* have the right to defend myself, and if they actually physically fought a bag out of my hands I would be likely to defend myself before stopping to consider the situation.
That's the danger of such employees: they pick on the wrong person and they may find that they've chosen to assault someone who has faster self-defense reflexes, suddenly the police are involved, and it won't be the customer who gets arrested and sued.
Now that the store has told you, "Don't ever come back," make sure to tell all of your friends about it so they know that the store doesn't want people like you as customers, so they obviously must not want any of your friends as customers either.
I noticed that Macrovision will require that for videos in which less than 100% of the production run uses Macrovision technology, those that do will have to be labeled with the Macrovision logo.
I wonder if this is something Macrovision has been waiting for an excuse to do. I notice they have actually been advertising themselves on videos, and they phrase their description so that it sounds like some sort of "protection" technology, so an uninformed consumer might think that it's a good thing that somehow prevents their video from wearing out rather than a nasty thing that restricts their fair use ability.
I'm basically wondering if Macrovision is trying to confuse, obscure, and obfuscate what they really are in a weird attempt to try to get consumers to actually look for or ask for their logo on stuff. If that's the case, I wonder why they're so desperate since they seem to have basically 100% market share already.
Macrovision works by constantly varying certain aspects of the signal intensity of the video signal, so the receiving device (your TV) has to constantly readjust. The point is that TVs have tuners that are capable of readjusting to this, while VCRs are required (by the VHS patent holder, under agreement with Macrovision) to have tuners which are not quite able to adjust to the extremes Macrovision uses.
I talked to a couple of video technicians about this, and they tell me that in addition to preventing you from videotaping the signal, it also may make your television tuner wear out slightly faster.
Frankly, I only went to see Spider Man for the opportunity to drool at Tobey Maguire for two hours, but to my surprise I rather liked it as a movie. I've never read the comic books, but my friends who had liked it too. It has good production values and is well acted. The plot was really predictable, but that didn't detract much from being able to take it as quality light entertainment.
Ok, fine. I doubt that will change. But wouldn't you agree that if it starts hitting bestseller lists, the authors might get paid more decently (Anne McCaffrey was halfway through her career before she could even manage to buy a modest house, and had to leave the United States because she couldn't afford to live here) and more people might be exposed to some good books?
I think another important point regards machines owned by employees rather than the organization. If they just take them home, the organization, and BSA, don't have much say in the matter.
Yeah, I can see this one already...
Me: You need to install a firewall for your home network.
My aunt: I really don't think the computers are about to burst into flame.
Me: No, it's a device to protect your computers from harm from outside.
My aunt: I don't think the Internet is going to send fire into the house either, and anyway you know we disconnect it when not in use and have perfectly good smoke alarms... Really now...
File a separate suit over each incident in which they called you illegally. I would guess that the small claims court's limit would allow for a $500 suit. (Wouldn't it?)
It'll be slightly more of a pain in the ass for you, and you'll have to pay the seven filing fees, but it's probably easier and cheaper than hiring a lawyer and going to a full regular court over it.
You should care because an opt-in system will default to giving you privacy, while an opt-out system will default to you not having privacy.
Of course, we can expect the worst from everyone: if it gets made opt-in, everyone will just change their user agreements to require you to opt-in to subscribe to anything, and if it gets made opt-out, they'll just do their best to hide the opt-out screen and make the process as difficult as possible... but we can at least start out in the right direction.
Voicestream does seem to recognize that existing customers upgrade their phones from time to time and provides appropriate discounts. I recently upgraded my phone after having had it for about two years. I called customer service, explained that my phone had become a bit old and beat up and that I wanted a new one, told them which one I want, and they offered me a good discount on it: $50 less than they were asking new customers for the same phone in the local Voicestream store. The only downer was that I had to order it on the phone and wait while it was shipped to me, as they said they no longer provide discounts to existing customers *at* *the* *stores*.
I don't know if this policy applies to the Treo, but you could ask.
Now that I think about it, several friends of mine who are sprint customers got discounted prices on replacement phones after a year of service, although the choices they were offered were limited. (However, in one case he brought the phone back to the Sprint store and told them "I hate this phone", so they gave him a store credit to use on any phone he wanted, and he got one he really loves.) You might want to call Sprint and inquire.
You so don't have a clue how consulting works. If a client says (to quote your example) "87% of our hits come from people using IE, so that's what we'll support. The effort needed to make the site work properly for the rest isn't worth the development time, which could be better used elsewhere", I point out that I already *have* working code for Netscape and Mozilla and it's faster to implement using my cross-browser API than to write custom IE-only code which will lose business for them.
The fact remains however that they want support for IE 4.0, not IE 6.0.
If I could drop support for three year old browser technology I'd be really happy about it, I can do really cool stuff with the latest tech, but there are still too many people using browsers they downloaded years ago. Fortunately that number is slowly diminishing... someday I may even be able to get away with supporting only browsers from this century!
No DVD burners on the market have anything like the capacity of the discs being sold commercially with videos on them, explicitly so you can't copy them.
So, the whole storage medium (and thus, the progress of computer science) is being held back because they want to make it hard to copy videos.
Sorry hon, I was born with this brain built-in and it's here to stay.
Look, I'm a web consultant, I work with a lot of clients and see a lot of attitudes about new technologies, and basically the rule at the moment is that if it wasn't part of the standard distribution of Netscape 4.0 or IE 4.0, you can forget about it. Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x still have just barely enough market share that organizations refuse to abandon 100% support of them.
I think they'd still be trying to demand complete support of IE 3.0, market share be damned, except that it wasn't Y2K compliant. (I think it can still be run, but doesn't work right.)
If I went to a client and told them "use this new image format, it'll save you 90% of your present bandwidth usage, but all of your users will have to install a plugin," they'd fire me for incompetence and use the money they had been paying me to buy more bandwidth.
It doesn't matter how much better the new format is. If it requires 10% of users to install a plugin to use a site made with it, companies won't even consider it. When 95% of users have it preinstalled companies will think about it seriously, and companies that really *need* it will go for it. The rest will worry about losing 5% of potential customers and decide against it. When 99% have it preinstalled, they'll probably use it and not worry about it, unless it has been too long since the technology first came out and they've become convinced that there must be something wrong with it because nobody uses it, like DHTML. (DHTML is now catching on, but I still run into clients who insist that I musn't use it because it doesn't work... while telling me that HTML, Javascript and CSS positioning are just fine.)
How many complete copies of the disk image of the DVD can you transfer per day at that rate? My guess is, less than one. (Based on my experience with modems, cable modems from several different cable companies, and dual ISDN connections.)
Now, are you really going to leave your machine on the net full time using *all* of your bandwidth just to illegally distribute perfect copies of a DVD to people you don't even know? I don't think so.
Then when the recipient has the complete 17 gigabyte disk image, what are they going to do with it? Nobody sells DVD writers that write disks with that capacity. They'd have to store it on a hard disk... which would cost more than buying several original, unquestionably legitimate copies of the DVD at a store.
That doesn't seem like "minimal time and effort" to me. It sounds a lot more like "run a few copies off for friends", but with a lot of pain and effort and expense on both sides.
The truth is, to get video data to be small enough to distribute in even vaguely acceptable amounts of time, you have to compress the hell out of it. Even the best compression algorythms available (such as DIVX) cause significant loss of video quality. Also, I don't think people are distributing DIVX files including all the supplementary materials available on the usual DVDs. We are not talking about "perfect copies" being distributed by any means.
So, consumers have continuing incentives to buy videos instead of downloading a crappy copy over a P2P service: substantially better video quality, value-added supplementary materials, and the fact that it costs more to make a perfect copy than to just buy another original.
Now audio is another story... there is very good audio compression available. However, experience shows that even though plenty of people go online and download music from P2P services, they keep going to their favorite music store and buying it on CD anyway.
Besides, congress *did* pass a law that allows private individuals to exchange copies of audio recordings as long as no financial compensation is provided. Judges that have ruled P2P services to be illegal have basically waved that aside, claiming that it never considered the possibility of perfect digital copies or online services that hook up people to exchange desired music... but it has not been repealed and is, no matter what the judge may opine, still the law. IANAL, but IMHO free P2P services for distribution of audio content are legal.Apparently not any significant danger, given the absolutely absurd amounts of money movie and music studios make.Is there illegal distribution of copyrighted material going on? Yes. There is. Do I think movie studios should (legally) be able to pursue legal cases under current law against persons unlawfully distributing copies of their copyrighted movies? My moral opinion aside, yes, I do believe that legally they should. Do I think record labels should be able to pursue legal cases against persons distributing unlawful copies of audio content in ways that are not protected by the Audio Home Recording Act? Yes, again, my moral opinions aside, I believe that legally they should.
However, I would like to make two other observations:
1) As the industries complaining that they are the victims of illegal distribution of copyrighted material are making simply absurd amounts of money, I can't believe the problem is so big that it can't be taken care of via lawsuits against individuals under existing law, particularly since if the corporations start suing any substantial number of private individals, many (most?) others will become afraid to violate the law.
We need to examine the cost/benefit ratio. The cost to society of fucking with every single computer and electronic device made for the benefit of stopping the relatively low level of copyright infringement we're talking about is much too high.
2) If there really are so many people violating these laws that the only way to stop it is to fuck with every single computer and electronic device made, maybe the laws should just be eliminated. The laws are supposed to serve and protect the people. If a majority of people are violating the law, something is very wrong with the law.
Your points mirror the lies (or, to be charitable, let's call them "utterly incorrect statements based on complete lack of knowledge of the relevant technology") told to congress a few months back by Jack Valenti... I assume you're just paraphrasing him to get a reaction here. Please consider the issue better and look at some before posting such spurious arguments in the future. We've been over this issue a million times.
All joking aside, my father's new car's engine is computer-controlled... along with everything else in the car. He tells me even the radio and CD player are both controlled through the touch screen control console.
I don't know how they're running the audio, and I don't know what they're using for software, but really I think I'd better email him a link to this article.
But seriously, first I assume you must be talking about Hollywood Ireland... I think it was generally not an American production, and he is distinctly Irish.
Also, I thought he did a really good job: he has to come off believably as a teenage boy at the beginning and age a lot during the story. I think he pulled that off unusually well.
Do not taunt happy fun ball.
Explain to me why the FBI has files on so many innocent celebrities. Explain to me why they have files on so many civil rights workers. Explain to me why they have files on so many random people.
I recall the case of a librarian who found out about the Freedom of Information Act. As a lark she wrote to the local FBI office and requested a copy of her file. They wrote back and refused to provide it because she was the subject of an active investigation, but said her file was 12 pages long. HUH? She was an *assistant* *librarian*. Her life was about as interesting as that sounds.
My uncle works in the defense industry. I stayed with him for a couple of months during the summer when I was 16. My aunt and I used to get followed around shopping malls by ridiculously obvious guys in trenchcoats. We thought it was funny and would just walk into Victoria's Secret and watch them get embarassed and leave, but nevertheless it was a waste of resources: we didn't (and don't) have any access to any sensitive materials, and we were doing very innocent shopping. Someday I will write to the FBI and see if it was indeed them, just out of curiosity.
I'll trust the feds/police/government to responsibly choose who to investigate/track when hell freezes over.
FTC policy statement on misleading advertising
I got the warning from godaddy.com so I'm not going to be deceived in this case, but if I hadn't received that warning I would likely have at least been confused. (I would have read the fine print and not done it, but I'm a cynical SOB.)
The reality is, godaddy.com is sending the linked email to existing customers (such as myself), so recipients already know their prices. I think they're trying to drum in the fact that if you switch you'll be paying more... which is of course true.
Yes, their motivation in this is to keep customers. However, it's also apparently true that Verisign is pulling this scam. Just offhand I can think of at least one of my uncles who has his own domain and quite possibly would get confused by Verisign's letter and switch his domain without realizing what he's doing.
So, this email from godaddy.com may serve their business, but it also could be helpful to many of their customers.