"They were punished multiple times and they still continued to do it."
So a rational adult would simply take the laptop away from them. Either play by the rules or take it away.
To me, this is the equivalent of sending your kid to reform school because he talked back one too many times. Its overreaction and really, its an admission of failure by the school authorities.
Everybody in Kutztown should be ashamed of themselves.
"The $13 you pay for a CD covers all the operating costs (salary, overhead including shrinkage, advertising) of the retailer, as well as the distributor"
Of course, I buy CD's from BMG music and with shipping, CD's typically cost about $7 for RIAA backed music. Yes, that includes shipping. So that implies that its possible to sell CD's for $5-6 without shipping and still make a reasonable profit.
Maybe...just maybe, they should cut the list price of a CD from $18-20 to $9-10 and let retailers cut the price down to $7-8 on sale.
Of course, the hard part is that once you buy up the back collection, they've got to come out with new musical acts worth buying. But if they increase the market size rather than the price, that will give everybody the opportunity to sell more records, including bands that may not get a shot under the current way of doing business.
And that's the point. No one should be fired over this incident. The librarian is there to assist patrons in study and scholarship, not to be a net nanny that makes sure nobody is downloading porn.
This is an unfortunate incident that a politician is trying to make a name from. If anyone should be fired its the commisioner who is now on a witch hunt.
"Thanks freeloader for not bringing down the price by buying it"
Ah, that old myth that if there was no piracy prices would be lower.
If that was true, games for video consoles would be really cheap, because except for really hardcore hardware hackers, the DRM is pretty good on the Nintendo, XBox and PS2. And yet prices are going up even as more people buy the games.
The truth is, the selling price of an item is only marginally related to its production costs. There is a market price for a DVD and if one person buys it or many million people buy it, the price is the same.
Now morally, you have the high ground by buying the movie but you aren't affecting the prices by buying it. If all the pirates in the world would buy the movie, it would have no effect on the movie or the price. It just means more money to the film's distributors.
In fact, you can make a pretty good argument that piracy keeps prices low, because the distributor must compete with "free".
Please understand I'm not in favor of piracy, just pointing out a logical error in your thinking.
"Apple has proven people are willing to accept DRM if it isn't noticable for most of the things people normally do."
True, but Apple has not really prohibited the copying of music, which is something that people normally do.
Are the movie studios willing to accept DRM that does let people make copies of their movies? Not according to this article they aren't. They want to lock it down so tight that consumers will squeak when they watch a movie. I don't think people are going to embrace something like that.
I can't speak for all, but the Canon DLSR's screens are only for camera operation and picture review. You must use the optical viewfinder to compose the picture.
But to your point: No, it isn't. You're thinking about the pro version of Beta known as Betacam, which I believe uses similar tapes, but a different technology. A description can be found here:
The Dreamcast had everyone beat. The system was good, it launched reasonably well in Japan, and Sega spent big on the 9/9/99 date.
It was only after Sony realized they'd been beaten to the punch that they tried the "Oh, if you wait for PS2, it will so much better" whisper campaign. Meanwhile, Sony didn't even have prototypes when they started their announcements.
This is more of the same. The difference is that MS has much deeper pockets than Sega and so this is at best damage control by Sony for being beaten to the punch.
Cisco, as a company, has the right to refuse to sell their equipment or sell their expertise to China.
Or do you feel they must sell their equipment to whoever has the cash? If I own a significant chunk of Cisco (lets be silly and say I own 50.1%), I certainly can call up the CEO and say "Don't sell equipment to China; I'm troubled by their human rights policy". That's okay. Its legitimate. You may not agree with it, and the other 49.9% might disagree with it. But its my company and it works the way I want it to.
"The Japanese car companies are better run companies (and better to work for) than Detroit."
What you're saying might be true, but lets look at a couple of counter examples.
Mazda is owned by ford after they continually had done poorly in the mark.
Nissan was struggling until they hired, I believe, a Frenchman to run the company.
Mitsubishi is in miserable shape, having 3 CEO's in about 3 years. I wouldn't be shocked to see them out of the car industry in a few years.
Now, clearly, some Japanese car companies do well. Honda, Toyota, and Subaru. But the rest are also rans with pretty mediocre products overall.
Is that any better than the rest of the car industry in the rest of the world? I don't see the Japanese as inherently superior at building cars, but perhaps my view is a parochial one.
A few years ago, I thought Verizon was cooked. Long distance was dead, and they were not one of the leaders in wireless, and DSL has always been a bit of a joke outside of heavily populated areas.
But in the Washington DC area, we've seen in the past few years:
1) Verizon Wireless has become one of the leaders for voice. 2) Verizon Wireless offers their 1X service which gives 90-110K web service in most areas of the country 3) in metro areas their EVDO service is now offering mid-speed internet access 4) They still offer DSL 5) In the Washington DC area, they're rolling FIOS out to everybody, far beyond their DSL offering, and they're spending money faster than I've seen anybody short of the military spend money on this rollout. Its amazing. 6) In the process of this rollout, they're getting rid of 40 year old copper infrastructure. 7) Using this fiber they'll be offering increasing video services that strike right at the heart of the cable companies.
Seriously, Comcast should be scared. They looked to be in the driver's seat 3 years ago, but Verizon has come on strong and now Comcast has to come up with an answer. Maybe they'll even start offering decent help desk and helpful employees.
My experience is that people won't switch because even though they're pretty hopeless with Windows, they feel like they've invested enough time to learn *something*.
So when you suggest OS X or (foolishly) Linux, their thought isn't "Oh good, no more spyware" its more like "Oh no, I can barely work this computer and I've been using it for 5 years. If I go with the Mac, I don't know it, all my friends tells me there's no software... I'd rather live with spyware"
I'm telling you, this is precisely what is going through most of the population's mind.
You can't shrink your way to profitability. At least not in the long term.
Not sure who said it, but it seems to be correct. Companies that are laying off lots of people are on the path to being bought out by someone else. At best.
" I got a good chuckle out of that but CEOs make a lot of money because they're worth a lot of money."
As a rule? Or just specific CEO's?
Do you think Carly Fiorina was worth all that money? Do you think she did such a fabulous job that her severance package is worth more than the severance package of the 15,000 soon-to-be laid off HP workers?
Or is a CEO only worth as much as they can create wealth? In other words, a CEO that loses money, loses market share lays off people is worth what? A lot? A little?
Is a good CEO worth a lot? Probably. Is a bad CEO worth a lot? I think they have a negative worth associated with them. So why is it that CEO's are rarely punished for doing a poor job? I mean just losing your job and being given a $21M severance package hardly seems like punishment to me, but perhaps I live in the wrong social circles?
"Well we have a fundamentally difference of opinion about DRM. I think DRM is good and you think it is bad. With DRM I have the choice to watch movies like the Matrix, Batman reborn, and revenge of the studs (that was humor). With DRM I don't have that choice. I don't see the evil in DRM that you do"
This is a false set of choice. That's because DRM != Watching A Movie.
If Congress passed a law tomorrow outlawing DRM, do you think the studios would say "oh, no more content for people, we'll sit on it and not let anybody see it!" Or is DRM simply a way to ensure 5% better margins and incidentally screw everybody out of fair use?
The answer is, without DRM, high-def (note, I didn't say high quality) video would be available, and you'd be better off as would the rest of the world. The content will be sold. I'd rather it be on my terms rather than the MPAA's terms. And I'd rather my PC not fall victim of Intel/MS's desire to increase margins just so I won't make a copy of that marvelous "Batman Begins" movie.
I'm okay with you giving up any and all your rights just for 1080i. Don't ask me to do the same all in the name of entertainment.
Its this level of data that we need within the next 2-3 years but won't get it.
Workstations/PC's are increasingly coming with about 500 G in storage. I realize this is not all data, but its mostly data. How do you back up raw video footage? Tape? SAN? Neither is practical except for large companies IMHO.
"Don't you pay now to get an internet address? What's the difference with a tax?"
Lots of little things, but a few big things:
1) Nobody "taxes" me now to get on the internet. I think you're being to generous to the U.N. I think they're talking about taxing everybody on the internet.
2) That would be a huge precedent in the U.S. to allow an access tax for internet service. Its a bad precedent since I would have no way to advice my representative about the best use of the money.
For example, I can easily call my senators and representative on matters that I care about (and I have sent letters and called them). How do I go about complaining to my U.N. rep about an internet tax? In fact, how do I get to vote on them?
You do remember the Boston Tea Party and why those guys dumped the tea overboard right?
Slashdot Mirror
"They were punished multiple times and they still continued to do it."
So a rational adult would simply take the laptop away from them. Either play by the rules or take it away.
To me, this is the equivalent of sending your kid to reform school because he talked back one too many times. Its overreaction and really, its an admission of failure by the school authorities.
Everybody in Kutztown should be ashamed of themselves.
"The $13 you pay for a CD covers all the operating costs (salary, overhead including shrinkage, advertising) of the retailer, as well as the distributor"
Of course, I buy CD's from BMG music and with shipping, CD's typically cost about $7 for RIAA backed music. Yes, that includes shipping. So that implies that its possible to sell CD's for $5-6 without shipping and still make a reasonable profit.
Maybe...just maybe, they should cut the list price of a CD from $18-20 to $9-10 and let retailers cut the price down to $7-8 on sale.
Of course, the hard part is that once you buy up the back collection, they've got to come out with new musical acts worth buying. But if they increase the market size rather than the price, that will give everybody the opportunity to sell more records, including bands that may not get a shot under the current way of doing business.
The RIAA is looking to get a blank CD tax in the U.S.
Not just on "blank audio CD's", but every blank CD sold for any purpose.
This is step one in the campaign.
Step two is to contact your congressman and remind him of the campaign contribution they made to him last time
Step three....
"If anyone should be fired "
And that's the point. No one should be fired over this incident. The librarian is there to assist patrons in study and scholarship, not to be a net nanny that makes sure nobody is downloading porn.
This is an unfortunate incident that a politician is trying to make a name from. If anyone should be fired its the commisioner who is now on a witch hunt.
The quote is (I'm typing as I listen):
"...during my service in the United States (uh) Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet..."
It wasn't that long ago that Maxtor was considered the best and Seagates were called "Sea-crates" and considered the worst.
"Thanks freeloader for not bringing down the price by buying it"
Ah, that old myth that if there was no piracy prices would be lower.
If that was true, games for video consoles would be really cheap, because except for really hardcore hardware hackers, the DRM is pretty good on the Nintendo, XBox and PS2. And yet prices are going up even as more people buy the games.
The truth is, the selling price of an item is only marginally related to its production costs. There is a market price for a DVD and if one person buys it or many million people buy it, the price is the same.
Now morally, you have the high ground by buying the movie but you aren't affecting the prices by buying it. If all the pirates in the world would buy the movie, it would have no effect on the movie or the price. It just means more money to the film's distributors.
In fact, you can make a pretty good argument that piracy keeps prices low, because the distributor must compete with "free".
Please understand I'm not in favor of piracy, just pointing out a logical error in your thinking.
"Apple has proven people are willing to accept DRM if it isn't noticable for most of the things people normally do."
True, but Apple has not really prohibited the copying of music, which is something that people normally do.
Are the movie studios willing to accept DRM that does let people make copies of their movies? Not according to this article they aren't. They want to lock it down so tight that consumers will squeak when they watch a movie. I don't think people are going to embrace something like that.
I can't speak for all, but the Canon DLSR's screens are only for camera operation and picture review. You must use the optical viewfinder to compose the picture.
"Also it is still used by film majors for its higher quality."
First, this is a good article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax
But to your point:
No, it isn't. You're thinking about the pro version of Beta known as Betacam, which I believe uses similar tapes, but a different technology. A description can be found here:
http://betacam.palsite.com/format.html
"He meant, they let Dreamcast release first"
But that's revisionist history.
The Dreamcast had everyone beat. The system was good, it launched reasonably well in Japan, and Sega spent big on the 9/9/99 date.
It was only after Sony realized they'd been beaten to the punch that they tried the "Oh, if you wait for PS2, it will so much better" whisper campaign. Meanwhile, Sony didn't even have prototypes when they started their announcements.
This is more of the same. The difference is that MS has much deeper pockets than Sega and so this is at best damage control by Sony for being beaten to the punch.
Can you give us an example of one of these tests that show a single mouse button is a better interface tool?
I've looked and never found anything other than opinion on the subject.
You're missing the point.
Cisco, as a company, has the right to refuse to sell their equipment or sell their expertise to China.
Or do you feel they must sell their equipment to whoever has the cash? If I own a significant chunk of Cisco (lets be silly and say I own 50.1%), I certainly can call up the CEO and say "Don't sell equipment to China; I'm troubled by their human rights policy". That's okay. Its legitimate. You may not agree with it, and the other 49.9% might disagree with it. But its my company and it works the way I want it to.
Why is that wrong?
Shareholders are allowed to care about whatever they want. It's their company.
"The Japanese car companies are better run companies (and better to work for) than Detroit."
What you're saying might be true, but lets look at a couple of counter examples.
Mazda is owned by ford after they continually had done poorly in the mark.
Nissan was struggling until they hired, I believe, a Frenchman to run the company.
Mitsubishi is in miserable shape, having 3 CEO's in about 3 years. I wouldn't be shocked to see them out of the car industry in a few years.
Now, clearly, some Japanese car companies do well. Honda, Toyota, and Subaru. But the rest are also rans with pretty mediocre products overall.
Is that any better than the rest of the car industry in the rest of the world? I don't see the Japanese as inherently superior at building cars, but perhaps my view is a parochial one.
A few years ago, I thought Verizon was cooked. Long distance was dead, and they were not one of the leaders in wireless, and DSL has always been a bit of a joke outside of heavily populated areas.
But in the Washington DC area, we've seen in the past few years:
1) Verizon Wireless has become one of the leaders for voice.
2) Verizon Wireless offers their 1X service which gives 90-110K web service in most areas of the country
3) in metro areas their EVDO service is now offering mid-speed internet access
4) They still offer DSL
5) In the Washington DC area, they're rolling FIOS out to everybody, far beyond their DSL offering, and they're spending money faster than I've seen anybody short of the military spend money on this rollout. Its amazing.
6) In the process of this rollout, they're getting rid of 40 year old copper infrastructure.
7) Using this fiber they'll be offering increasing video services that strike right at the heart of the cable companies.
Seriously, Comcast should be scared. They looked to be in the driver's seat 3 years ago, but Verizon has come on strong and now Comcast has to come up with an answer. Maybe they'll even start offering decent help desk and helpful employees.
Nah. I think they'd rather go out of businss.
"No. It's going to be a while before Intel-based Macs are available"
January
/. and then tell everybody you'd rather use old computers because...you're comfortable with them.
Well, new Intel Macs will be available 1Q06, so we're all but done with July...
August
September
October
November
December
Wow...6 months... Most of you fan boys will still be on payment 4 and a the new Intel Macs will be out.
Then what will you do... come on
Then you'll make fun of your dad because he doesn't use cellphones because he's not comfortable with them.
I find irony fun!
My experience is that people won't switch because even though they're pretty hopeless with Windows, they feel like they've invested enough time to learn *something*.
So when you suggest OS X or (foolishly) Linux, their thought isn't "Oh good, no more spyware" its more like "Oh no, I can barely work this computer and I've been using it for 5 years. If I go with the Mac, I don't know it, all my friends tells me there's no software... I'd rather live with spyware"
I'm telling you, this is precisely what is going through most of the population's mind.
You can't shrink your way to profitability. At least not in the long term.
Not sure who said it, but it seems to be correct. Companies that are laying off lots of people are on the path to being bought out by someone else. At best.
" I got a good chuckle out of that but CEOs make a lot of money because they're worth a lot of money."
As a rule? Or just specific CEO's?
Do you think Carly Fiorina was worth all that money? Do you think she did such a fabulous job that her severance package is worth more than the severance package of the 15,000 soon-to-be laid off HP workers?
Or is a CEO only worth as much as they can create wealth? In other words, a CEO that loses money, loses market share lays off people is worth what? A lot? A little?
Is a good CEO worth a lot? Probably. Is a bad CEO worth a lot? I think they have a negative worth associated with them. So why is it that CEO's are rarely punished for doing a poor job? I mean just losing your job and being given a $21M severance package hardly seems like punishment to me, but perhaps I live in the wrong social circles?
"Well we have a fundamentally difference of opinion about DRM. I think DRM is good and you think it is bad. With DRM I have the choice to watch movies like the Matrix, Batman reborn, and revenge of the studs (that was humor). With DRM I don't have that choice. I don't see the evil in DRM that you do"
This is a false set of choice. That's because DRM != Watching A Movie.
If Congress passed a law tomorrow outlawing DRM, do you think the studios would say "oh, no more content for people, we'll sit on it and not let anybody see it!" Or is DRM simply a way to ensure 5% better margins and incidentally screw everybody out of fair use?
The answer is, without DRM, high-def (note, I didn't say high quality) video would be available, and you'd be better off as would the rest of the world. The content will be sold. I'd rather it be on my terms rather than the MPAA's terms. And I'd rather my PC not fall victim of Intel/MS's desire to increase margins just so I won't make a copy of that marvelous "Batman Begins" movie.
I'm okay with you giving up any and all your rights just for 1080i. Don't ask me to do the same all in the name of entertainment.
So in China, the iPod isn't the hip digital music player?
Its this level of data that we need within the next 2-3 years but won't get it.
Workstations/PC's are increasingly coming with about 500 G in storage. I realize this is not all data, but its mostly data. How do you back up raw video footage? Tape? SAN? Neither is practical except for large companies IMHO.
I was surprised when I found out they don't celebrate July 4 in England. ;-)
"Don't you pay now to get an internet address? What's the difference with a tax?"
Lots of little things, but a few big things:
1) Nobody "taxes" me now to get on the internet. I think you're being to generous to the U.N. I think they're talking about taxing everybody on the internet.
2) That would be a huge precedent in the U.S. to allow an access tax for internet service. Its a bad precedent since I would have no way to advice my representative about the best use of the money.
For example, I can easily call my senators and representative on matters that I care about (and I have sent letters and called them). How do I go about complaining to my U.N. rep about an internet tax? In fact, how do I get to vote on them?
You do remember the Boston Tea Party and why those guys dumped the tea overboard right?