I agree, and thank you. It's rare that one can present an economically sound argument for downloading music online. My big problem with CDs (and most other products) is the marketing strategy. A CD that costs $2.50 to produce (maybe?) and $10 to sell... Something isn't right there. There are much better ways to get the word out about the music and still sell a few hundred thousands, maybe a few million (if it's good) copies without being 80% of the cost between producing it and getting it to the consumers.
Oh, and one other problem: the current media do not provide sufficient access to users of the various types of music that they may like to purchase --most radio is as bad as MTV. The only way we can be exposed to new music these days is to (a) listen to the special, select few that the industry pushes on its top 40 and other specialized stations or (b) get on the Internet and talk to people and do some research of our own... and download some tracks to test them out.
I buy about five CDs per month now just because I downloaded some cool songs. Before Napster, I bought maybe ten per year because I just didn't hear anything new. That isn't the only reason, but the main reason why I buy so much now is because I keep finding more that I like.
Anyway, I'm rambling, and I leave for work in five hours...
It is unfortuante that people seem to have such a poor understanding of what led to the establishment of a patent system.
My comment said nothing about the patent system. You assume too much. I simply don't understand why ideas can not be shared freely. At the same time, your argument raises a valid point: I don't see why we can not all understand that sharing our ideas would also be beneficial to everyone. No single mind is capable of everything. Einstein could only do so much on his own; by collaborating with others, he was able to incorporate their ideas, and they his, and the result was better than what it would have been had they worked in isolation. People need to learn the concepts of mutual benefit and tradeoff and the idea behind cost-benefit analysis.
One thing I would love to see is an entrance exam to hold a public office, to prove that one has basic knowledge of medicine, technology, ecology and so on.
For many federal offices, this is known as the confirmation process, often done by the Senate. The biggest problem with entry exams would be the time and money required to devote to them. I agree with you, though: I would like to see them too. Unfortunately, I don't think it's realistic at this point in time for our "give it to me now" culture to accept any slight inconvenience for the sake of an overall improvement.
She was a prom queen, and she's wasted no time exploiting the qualities that made her so since we broke up. But me? I already have my sights set. I'll let you know how it turns out in my book in about twenty years...
A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can't be wrong.
If that kind of argument had been the rule of thumb for deciding legality in America from day one, we would still have segregated schools, or even slavery, or, hell, we'd be the United Colonial States of the Commonwealth. Besides, 50 million doesn't even constitution 20% of the American population, so where does that stop? I suppose a better way to word it would have been to add this line: "What are they going to do? Jail us all?"
The meat of the argument is much better. Thomas Jefferson's belief in the free exchange of information (or ideas) to promote intellectual growth is what I have believed in since day one. Stifling the education process by prohibiting the utility of someone's ideas is not only detrimental to those who can't use the ideas, but also to those who hold claim to the ideas.
But at the same time, plagiarism is wrong. But why should utilizing others' discoveries be illegal if proper credit is given? I can't conceive any principle or moral factor that justifies that.
The problem with ideas, words, and anything related to the thought process is that they are intangible. They can not be proven to be the property of someone else, yet the patent office or whoever is in charge simply takes the first person to show up. Further more, any human mind is capable of innovative ideas that can benefit us all. What if it was my great-grandfather who originally came up with the Dr Pepper formula, but he didn't like the way it tasted so he discarded it, only for his neighbor to pick it up and start a company on it? Bad example, but it proves the point for me: it can not be proven that you're the one who worked to develop this idea or product, and it can not be morally justifiable to grant anyone the rights to prohibit the usage of such ideas simply based on the fact that they are the first to go public with it.
Information, ideas, innovation... All should be public and free to exchange. Prohibiting such exchange is prohibiting the advancement of the human mind and of the human race. We would be in much better shape if we did not have legal institutions in place for restricting our rights to apply our own thoughts.
I know. I'm one of those capitalist-to-the-core types that the average/.'er hates just because I understand the Constitution. And as for her, yes and no. She was great, no matter how stupid she was in our last days together. She made one mistake and couldn't make up for it to herself; she forgot that a relationship is a cooperative arrangement, and she stopped cooperating. I suppose it was for the best -- she never shared her side of things anyway, which if I'm not mistaken is supposed to be the man's problem. Oh well, life is better now.
Hah! Right you are. Indeed, I just had a wonderful relationship -- up till the day she left me -- thrown back in my face for no apparent reason. I'm full of bitterness right now, and I'm in the most selfish mode of my life. I feel like more of a capitalist than ever...
Yes, that's true. (Someone mod that up +5 for being informative and interesting!) But at 12,000 MPH, there's a helluva lot of air resistance, no matter how thin the air is. The fact that the shuttle is basically a 12,000 MPH fireball until it slows to its final approach is enough for me to believe that anything passing through the air at that speed is pretty warm.
...yet so much contradicting data. I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation, but I may as well throw one more crazy idea out just in case:
Could there have been some unusually dense [something] in the shuttle's path that hit it that near-instantly shattered the entire shuttle? Is it conceivable that the shuttle's path intercepted the path of a falling meteor for an extremely unlikely and fatal collision?
Just speculating about the unlikely. I'm sure we'll have answers soon enough.
I'm glad I haven't bought Revisited yet, then. Buying this package is thus justified. (I justified re-purchasing the movie here, though I hardly need to justify my own purchases...)
I tried to submit this about three days ago and couldn't get through to the site. This is only related because I tried to submit it first, but: what was going on with the site that prevented me from submitting a story from four different locations? The submit page loaded only once, and when I clicked 'preview', I received a server error. After that, I could get the main page, stories, etc. to load, but not the submit page. From school, home, and work... I'm only curious.
As for the special edition DVD... I can't wait! I unfortunately received a copy of my Matrix DVD with the pins in the center of the jewel case broken and missing, so the DVD has simply been sliding around for over a year. I never bothered to buy another copy because I figured a special edition had to come out sooner or later.
But looking at the release specs, deleted scenes still seem to be absent. Did they only shoot what they wanted, and did nothing get cut? I can hardly find that believable... or was everything worth keeping kept (probably)?
Either way, the Matrix is my favorite movie of all time -- bar none -- and I'll be there to pick up my copy of the special edition DVD as soon as I can!
Then Shephard was lacking information! I missed the press conference, mostly as a result of it being several minutes late and having several things to do this afternoon. I suppose I could go back and read the text of it (I've linked to it from my web site, after all...)
At 12,000 MPH at 200,000 feet above the earth, I'm reasonably certain that the human body could not withstand the friction caused by air resistance. I wouldn't be surprised if huge chunks of the shuttle were entirely vaporized; the chances that any of the astronauts were not are, well, very slim. But I don't like thinking about that. Let's talk about why it happened and what happens next, mkay?:-)
This Fox News video of their first airing of the last transmission from the astronauts around 9:00am ET also provides insight into what might have happened. (If using Windows Media Player, right click on the preview-ad, click "Navigate", then "Skip Forward" to jump to the actual coverage.)
Shawn Shephard discusses the potential "tire pressure problem". From the video:
A tire explosion could very well take a door off. Underneath the tires would be all sorts of hydrolics... which could have caused massive problems.
Offer a free service for bands to submit audio and video recordings. Lots of sites host semi-ameteur "legal" mp3s. Why not videos too?
Probably a bad idea, but I'm sure more than just bands have an imagination and a video camera. Sponsor some creative video contests, like the AtomFilm Star Wars spoof thing...
But the damage has been done: the astronauts are dead, and the U.S. space program -- which never recovered from Challenger's loss -- may soon be dead as well.
The space program isn't dying. American resolve is much too strong to let a tragic incident such as this, even given past incidents, stop the entire program. Our government, and indeed the entire human race, recognizes the significance of our quests in space. We have always been aware of the risks taken when sending anyone into space, and the public's complacency resulting from a very good track record is no reason to shut it down when one thing goes bad.
The astronauts know the risks, the space program knows the risks, and many of us know the risks. They (and some of us) also know the services they are providing greatly outweigh those risks. The benefits too greatly outweigh the costs to hang it up now. I don't think our government will disagree.
Actually, a post can be rated as low as -2, at which point it disappears forever except for the person who wrote it. Slashdot does not allow us to look at a threshold below -1, but we can still moderate at -1.
I think most of us were hoping for and counting on this being the case at some point anyway. As convenient as VCDs have been, it has been obvious that they are only a short-term solution while better technologies are being developed.... as... is... everything else.
1. Incentive. Let people keep the money they earn at work. Commissions and productivity bonuses, etc.
2. FairTax. Flat tax rate. Let the social programs take care of people where they need to, and even keep those below the defined poverty line off of income tax rolls. Fine. But otherwise, despite that it seems like it should be okay to tax the wealthy at a higher tax rate, it violates the American principle of "equal treatment under the laws" that we fight so hard to attain. Do you ever wonder why it's so hard to get that in other aspects of the law? I don't. It's because of all the double standards. If the law isn't absolute, then where's the "law" in it, or isn't it just a theory?
If Sony is making a large profit on LCDs or is even losing money on CRTs, then it makes perfect sense to cut CRTs. Not to mention that most of the market for CRTs is probably in America... whose economy is faltering just enough to keep many of us, except the ones who can afford LCDs, from buying new computers.
I'm not going to question Sony's business decisions when I'm not privy to Sony's business analyses...:-)
I wonder if that means 2003 will be the year of the dragon... the fire-breathing version of Rosen that attacks every copyright infringement in sight in order to leave her impression on an already troubled industry.
I suppose the best we can hope for is that her replacement understands economics.
If the movie Hackers taught us anything (besides what NOT to wear in public), it taught us that the basics of networking never change. It's still ones and zeroes over telecommunications lines, and where there's a way in, there's a way to find it. Hacking is simply an application of understanding the system. Hackers are to the tech world what politicians are to government. They understand how it works and they attempt to manipulate it (for better or for worse), and they're criticized no matter what they do (good or bad).
So, based on this little theory: once a hacker, always a hacker, and damn good at it. (Further more, one doesn't even have to "hack" to be a good hacker... It's all in the skills, not necessarily how they're used.)
For better or worse...
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
For better or worse, what is the most important thing that you have learned that applies to us all?
Unless the checkboxes are completely hidden and therefore uncheckable, whether they are actually there or not, then there really isn't an issue here. It should be our responsibility not to be impatient while installing software and to make sure we understand what we are putting on our multi-thousand-dollar machines. That's a heavy investment, not to mention the investment of various resources like email, to take for granted.
Sure, companies that do this suck very badly, and I'm not on their side. But that should be obvious. I just think we should see both sides of it.
Of course, if the checkboxes or option to clear the email solicitations are completely hidden or are sent to us anyway without our knowledge and this is not a part of the agreement, then there are privacy or breach-of-contract issues that need to be dealt with.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm damn proud of that.
Oh, and one other problem: the current media do not provide sufficient access to users of the various types of music that they may like to purchase --most radio is as bad as MTV. The only way we can be exposed to new music these days is to (a) listen to the special, select few that the industry pushes on its top 40 and other specialized stations or (b) get on the Internet and talk to people and do some research of our own ... and download some tracks to test them out.
I buy about five CDs per month now just because I downloaded some cool songs. Before Napster, I bought maybe ten per year because I just didn't hear anything new. That isn't the only reason, but the main reason why I buy so much now is because I keep finding more that I like.
Anyway, I'm rambling, and I leave for work in five hours...
She was a prom queen, and she's wasted no time exploiting the qualities that made her so since we broke up. But me? I already have my sights set. I'll let you know how it turns out in my book in about twenty years...
The meat of the argument is much better. Thomas Jefferson's belief in the free exchange of information (or ideas) to promote intellectual growth is what I have believed in since day one. Stifling the education process by prohibiting the utility of someone's ideas is not only detrimental to those who can't use the ideas, but also to those who hold claim to the ideas.
But at the same time, plagiarism is wrong. But why should utilizing others' discoveries be illegal if proper credit is given? I can't conceive any principle or moral factor that justifies that.
The problem with ideas, words, and anything related to the thought process is that they are intangible. They can not be proven to be the property of someone else, yet the patent office or whoever is in charge simply takes the first person to show up. Further more, any human mind is capable of innovative ideas that can benefit us all. What if it was my great-grandfather who originally came up with the Dr Pepper formula, but he didn't like the way it tasted so he discarded it, only for his neighbor to pick it up and start a company on it? Bad example, but it proves the point for me: it can not be proven that you're the one who worked to develop this idea or product, and it can not be morally justifiable to grant anyone the rights to prohibit the usage of such ideas simply based on the fact that they are the first to go public with it.
Information, ideas, innovation... All should be public and free to exchange. Prohibiting such exchange is prohibiting the advancement of the human mind and of the human race. We would be in much better shape if we did not have legal institutions in place for restricting our rights to apply our own thoughts.
I know. I'm one of those capitalist-to-the-core types that the average /.'er hates just because I understand the Constitution. And as for her, yes and no. She was great, no matter how stupid she was in our last days together. She made one mistake and couldn't make up for it to herself; she forgot that a relationship is a cooperative arrangement, and she stopped cooperating. I suppose it was for the best -- she never shared her side of things anyway, which if I'm not mistaken is supposed to be the man's problem. Oh well, life is better now.
Hah! Right you are. Indeed, I just had a wonderful relationship -- up till the day she left me -- thrown back in my face for no apparent reason. I'm full of bitterness right now, and I'm in the most selfish mode of my life. I feel like more of a capitalist than ever...
Yes, that's true. (Someone mod that up +5 for being informative and interesting!) But at 12,000 MPH, there's a helluva lot of air resistance, no matter how thin the air is. The fact that the shuttle is basically a 12,000 MPH fireball until it slows to its final approach is enough for me to believe that anything passing through the air at that speed is pretty warm.
Could there have been some unusually dense [something] in the shuttle's path that hit it that near-instantly shattered the entire shuttle? Is it conceivable that the shuttle's path intercepted the path of a falling meteor for an extremely unlikely and fatal collision?
Just speculating about the unlikely. I'm sure we'll have answers soon enough.
I'm glad I haven't bought Revisited yet, then. Buying this package is thus justified. (I justified re-purchasing the movie here, though I hardly need to justify my own purchases...)
As for the special edition DVD... I can't wait! I unfortunately received a copy of my Matrix DVD with the pins in the center of the jewel case broken and missing, so the DVD has simply been sliding around for over a year. I never bothered to buy another copy because I figured a special edition had to come out sooner or later.
But looking at the release specs, deleted scenes still seem to be absent. Did they only shoot what they wanted, and did nothing get cut? I can hardly find that believable... or was everything worth keeping kept (probably)?
Either way, the Matrix is my favorite movie of all time -- bar none -- and I'll be there to pick up my copy of the special edition DVD as soon as I can!
Then Shephard was lacking information! I missed the press conference, mostly as a result of it being several minutes late and having several things to do this afternoon. I suppose I could go back and read the text of it (I've linked to it from my web site, after all...)
At 12,000 MPH at 200,000 feet above the earth, I'm reasonably certain that the human body could not withstand the friction caused by air resistance. I wouldn't be surprised if huge chunks of the shuttle were entirely vaporized; the chances that any of the astronauts were not are, well, very slim. But I don't like thinking about that. Let's talk about why it happened and what happens next, mkay? :-)
Shawn Shephard discusses the potential "tire pressure problem". From the video:
Probably a bad idea, but I'm sure more than just bands have an imagination and a video camera. Sponsor some creative video contests, like the AtomFilm Star Wars spoof thing...
The space program isn't dying. American resolve is much too strong to let a tragic incident such as this, even given past incidents, stop the entire program. Our government, and indeed the entire human race, recognizes the significance of our quests in space. We have always been aware of the risks taken when sending anyone into space, and the public's complacency resulting from a very good track record is no reason to shut it down when one thing goes bad.
The astronauts know the risks, the space program knows the risks, and many of us know the risks. They (and some of us) also know the services they are providing greatly outweigh those risks. The benefits too greatly outweigh the costs to hang it up now. I don't think our government will disagree.
Actually, a post can be rated as low as -2, at which point it disappears forever except for the person who wrote it. Slashdot does not allow us to look at a threshold below -1, but we can still moderate at -1.
I think most of us were hoping for and counting on this being the case at some point anyway. As convenient as VCDs have been, it has been obvious that they are only a short-term solution while better technologies are being developed.... as... is... everything else.
2. FairTax. Flat tax rate. Let the social programs take care of people where they need to, and even keep those below the defined poverty line off of income tax rolls. Fine. But otherwise, despite that it seems like it should be okay to tax the wealthy at a higher tax rate, it violates the American principle of "equal treatment under the laws" that we fight so hard to attain. Do you ever wonder why it's so hard to get that in other aspects of the law? I don't. It's because of all the double standards. If the law isn't absolute, then where's the "law" in it, or isn't it just a theory?
I'm not going to question Sony's business decisions when I'm not privy to Sony's business analyses... :-)
I suppose the best we can hope for is that her replacement understands economics.
So, based on this little theory: once a hacker, always a hacker, and damn good at it. (Further more, one doesn't even have to "hack" to be a good hacker... It's all in the skills, not necessarily how they're used.)
For better or worse, what is the most important thing that you have learned that applies to us all?
Sure, companies that do this suck very badly, and I'm not on their side. But that should be obvious. I just think we should see both sides of it.
Of course, if the checkboxes or option to clear the email solicitations are completely hidden or are sent to us anyway without our knowledge and this is not a part of the agreement, then there are privacy or breach-of-contract issues that need to be dealt with.