"2) MPIA has been wrong about this issue; they would have killed the VCR rental market, for example; instead a multi-billion dollar business was created."
I really hate reading this crap, sorry. Video rentals include the purchase of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of copies of each video on DVD, and in some cases VHS, for every video store chain to rent. P2P as a distribution system does little to promte sales on this scale. P2P is a system based on leeching, not sharing, like many seem to unwittingly believe. A select few people are responsible for the initial seed of illegal movie distribution on P2P systems but the file seeds multiply exponentially after this. In the case of movies that are still in the theatre no sales of the movie have been made. In the case of CDs, some have ben released on P2P systems prior to being released to the public, again resulting in no sales to begin with.
"3) For a song, there is the copyright on the words (Lyrics; song writer) and the (Music; composer) and is their copyright for the performance as well (e.g., the artists). I believe the record companies also assert a copyright on the finished album (CD) as well; which maybe legal and all, but well isn't really for something all that creative and artistic that it would worth copyrighting (and the some day releasing it into the public domain."
Record labels maintain copyright over the mechanicals. These are the sound recordings themselves and nothing more.
Pixar looks for individuals who are adept at working with natural media, not some kid who took a class or two in Photoshop in high school. If you believe for an instance they don't want their character riggers, animators, and lighting designers to know industry standard software you're an idiot. Pixar is also in a unique position where they have developers write most of the software they use in-house. You can't learn how to use Pixar Animation Studio 1.0 (or whatever they cll it) simply because no one outside Pixar has access to it.
Graphic Designers are similar. Many jobs require you to know a handful of applications so you can get up to speed quickly but what they really look for in a designer is the ability to understand graphic communication, composition, and color theory.
While not the same thing exactly, Softwire allows developers to drag and drop objects and connect them through input/output nodes to create applications.
Actually I have. I use Painter and Photoshop now exclusively for raster based work though I have used PhotoPaint and I tried to use the GIMP (1.0 and 2.0, both sucked IMHO). In the end, I don't have a problem using apps like Quark over InDesign if that's what the job requires but I happen to prefer InDesign over Quark every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Same goes for Illustrator over Freehand or CorelDraw. I know others who swear by Quark and Freehand and won't even look at anything else though. Also, I do know many artists who will discuss ad nauseum the virtues of using one particular brand of one particular type of bristle over another.
Photoshop is designed for professionals, like myself, who make a shitload of money using it. $599 is a drop in the bucket, not even a full day's billing for me. As long as Adobe keeps creating applications like Photoshop thatlet me be creative with little fuss and hassle, I'll keep upgrading my copy.
What the OP was saying, and I happen to agree with his point, is that P2P software is not being used to time shift. This was the argument put forth in the Betamax case. It's hard to argue that time shifting is occurring on P2P networks and even if it is, many of the TV shows have been stripped of their commercials, something not easily done with VCRs, especially by those who were simply time shifting TV shows. There are enough differences between these two circumstances, and the climate surrounding copyright and rampant infringement on P2P networks, that Betamax applying is not a slam dunk. The US judicial system is not like some computer program that analyzes simple logic and spits out a result.
...to consider the possibility that if the study was unfavorable to Microsoft's position they would simply have pulled the plug and thrown away the results? Unless you can find fault with the study itself, there is nothing wrong with Microsoft financing studies which show Microsoft in a favorable way as long as the study itelf was legitimate. I realize this may be a difficult concept for many/.'ers to grasp but give it a shot.
I've been able to do this for years with MSN.com. The latest incarnation of this site allows me to not only customize the home page, I can also add specialized content pages. In addition to my general home page which includes traffic reports, weather, headline news, and Slate editorials amongst other things, I have pages for more in-depth coverage of local and national news, sports, a comics page, and a movie listing and reviews page. MSN.com has content from hundreds of sources from content providers like CNET, eBay, Slate, NY Times, MSNBC, and quite a few others. While the page works better in IE on Windows, it still works in Firefox sans some of the more elaborate customization features such as resizable columns and dragging content around to reorder it on the page.
I think you missed th asarcasm here, let me explain. Everytime biometrics are discussed here in relation to fingerprints some jackass inevitably wanders in and says it's easy to hack my cutting someone's finger off and using that. Now, alog comes a story about face recognition biometrics technology. Do I really need to explain this nay further?
...and use someone elses cell phone. All you need to do is lob of their head and carry it around in a sack with you. When you need to make a call, pull out the head and snap a picture; free cell phone minutes.
There's one type of encyclopedia missing from this debate, Encarta and Encarta like encyclopedias. These could provide the best of both worlds, an encyclopedia that is searchable and updatable through the internet (like wikipedia) as well as one that is thoroughly researched by professionals (like the paper based Britannica). Encyclopedias like this make it easier to offer rich media interfaces and examples (such as video or interactive charts and graphs or atlases linked to other pertinent data) which would otherwise be slower via the web.
Well, there you go. Here's the article for the rest of us to read:
Dirty Destruction A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could be devastating
By Michael Crowley
Although experts debate the ease of building a crude nuclear bomb, no one disputes that it is far easier to build a simpler weapon known as a dirty bomb--a conventional bomb that scatters radioactive material. A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could be devastating. In a 2002 computer simulation run by the Federation of American Scientists, a single foot-long piece of radioactive cobalt of the type commonly used in food-irradiation plants was blown up with TNT in lower Manhattan. The simulation found that a 300-square-block area would become as contaminated as the permanently closed zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and that cancer caused by residual radiation could be expected to kill one in 10 residents over the next 40 years. Under current U.S. safety standards, the entire island would have to be evacuated.
Unlike a nuclear bomb, a dirty bomb can be made from radioactive materials such as cesium, strontium and iridium, commonly found in hospitals and construction sites. Experts fret about security at such sites, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that because these materials decay quickly and only negligible amounts have been lost or stolen in the U.S., it's doubtful that terrorists could have accumulated enough to make even a single dirty bomb.
Dangerous amounts of material have gone missing elsewhere, however, and the U.S. is working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to inventory existing sources and, when possible, remove or lock them up. It's a monumental task, but the possibility of Manhattan becoming another Chernobyl makes it essential.
I think people are far more worried about the radiological and economic effects of a dirty bomb than a mushroom cloud vaporizing New York or San Francisco. The article should have discussed how easy it is to build a dirty bomb and the effects it will have on the area it's detonated in.
"The real attraction here is that if you want people to hang around your store, just offere it up for free, or charge a very minimal amount for usage that day (not for time)."
Because they want people to buy stuff from the store, not leech the internet access and thumb through magazines or books but not buy them. Panera is a bit different because buying a cup or two or three of coffee is going to be far more likely for a customer to do than simply sit and browse the internet. I'll grant you the hourly fee is a bit steep but it's necessary for bookstores who want to offer wi-fi.
Yes, Microsoft Streets and Trips does. I've been using it for years with few problems whatsoever. It's also good for finding things near you when you are on vacation and are looking for a good restaurant or decent walking/driving directions to a museum or ballpark (or wherever you may be going). Add to that the Pocket Streets and Trips and it's an immensely useful program (if you have a Pocket PC). This doesn't even begin to cover the GPS capabilities (VERY useful on my lst trip to San Francisco) and all the features requested by the original poster.
"The other side is for areas that companies won't connect up because they can't justify the small profit. Poor urban areas which can't afford to pay the cable or telephone companies might benefit from a government run operation. However, usually when governments say they're going to help lower class minorities, they just instead pad their own pockets."
The way to solve this is to subsidize the project with tax payers money but allow a private company to rollout the service. Then again, if it's a poor urban area, how beneficial is it really to have a wireless hot spot in the area when the hardware to use it is likely too expensive as well? Community centers and libraries might be a better place to spend the money to ensure they have access to the internet and web based services.
Whether or not the guy had a stake in the towing company is of little consequence. The point being the government is now becoming directly in volved as a competitor to these towing companies at the tax payers expense. Also, could anyone use these yellow trucks services or did they check id to ensure you paid for the service?
With regard to wireless service, once all the compeition has withdrawn from the area? Will the local government upgrade the service in line with other municipalities who chose to allow competition to flourish? There are way too many "gotchas" to government sponsered programs, as well meaning as they may be when they start out.
Microsoft did FAR more than just update the interface for their search engine. The entire search engine was rebuilt from the ground up and added some rather interesting, albeit relatively unknown, capabilities and it's only going to get better from here.
Actually I took a few copyright law and legal classes as an udergrad in a Recording Industry program at MTSU. I also took a Fourth Estate and Copyright law class at Boston U. while getting my MFA in Graphic Design. I have a keen interest in copyright law and a fair bit of knowledge seemingly lacking from your average slashbots that frequent these forums concerning the DMCA and its hertiage.
However, you're right, the rule I mentioned is not hard and fast (nothing in the law truly is) but in the case presented by the OP it certainly holds true.
Do some research on a PMC called Executive Outcomes and you'll begin to believe even national defense should be handled by private companies (at the very least you should come away with more contempt for the UN peacekeeping process).
Slashdot Mirror
"2) MPIA has been wrong about this issue; they would have killed the VCR rental market, for example; instead a multi-billion dollar business was created."
I really hate reading this crap, sorry. Video rentals include the purchase of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of copies of each video on DVD, and in some cases VHS, for every video store chain to rent. P2P as a distribution system does little to promte sales on this scale. P2P is a system based on leeching, not sharing, like many seem to unwittingly believe. A select few people are responsible for the initial seed of illegal movie distribution on P2P systems but the file seeds multiply exponentially after this. In the case of movies that are still in the theatre no sales of the movie have been made. In the case of CDs, some have ben released on P2P systems prior to being released to the public, again resulting in no sales to begin with.
"3) For a song, there is the copyright on the words (Lyrics; song writer) and the (Music; composer) and is their copyright for the performance as well (e.g., the artists). I believe the record companies also assert a copyright on the finished album (CD) as well; which maybe legal and all, but well isn't really for something all that creative and artistic that it would worth copyrighting (and the some day releasing it into the public domain."
Record labels maintain copyright over the mechanicals. These are the sound recordings themselves and nothing more.
My apologies. It was somewhat implied by your tone. I don't need Photoshop to be creative, I need Photoshop to aid in the creative process though.
Pixar looks for individuals who are adept at working with natural media, not some kid who took a class or two in Photoshop in high school. If you believe for an instance they don't want their character riggers, animators, and lighting designers to know industry standard software you're an idiot. Pixar is also in a unique position where they have developers write most of the software they use in-house. You can't learn how to use Pixar Animation Studio 1.0 (or whatever they cll it) simply because no one outside Pixar has access to it.
Graphic Designers are similar. Many jobs require you to know a handful of applications so you can get up to speed quickly but what they really look for in a designer is the ability to understand graphic communication, composition, and color theory.
While not the same thing exactly, Softwire allows developers to drag and drop objects and connect them through input/output nodes to create applications.
Actually I have. I use Painter and Photoshop now exclusively for raster based work though I have used PhotoPaint and I tried to use the GIMP (1.0 and 2.0, both sucked IMHO). In the end, I don't have a problem using apps like Quark over InDesign if that's what the job requires but I happen to prefer InDesign over Quark every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Same goes for Illustrator over Freehand or CorelDraw. I know others who swear by Quark and Freehand and won't even look at anything else though. Also, I do know many artists who will discuss ad nauseum the virtues of using one particular brand of one particular type of bristle over another.
Photoshop is designed for professionals, like myself, who make a shitload of money using it. $599 is a drop in the bucket, not even a full day's billing for me. As long as Adobe keeps creating applications like Photoshop thatlet me be creative with little fuss and hassle, I'll keep upgrading my copy.
What the OP was saying, and I happen to agree with his point, is that P2P software is not being used to time shift. This was the argument put forth in the Betamax case. It's hard to argue that time shifting is occurring on P2P networks and even if it is, many of the TV shows have been stripped of their commercials, something not easily done with VCRs, especially by those who were simply time shifting TV shows. There are enough differences between these two circumstances, and the climate surrounding copyright and rampant infringement on P2P networks, that Betamax applying is not a slam dunk. The US judicial system is not like some computer program that analyzes simple logic and spits out a result.
...to consider the possibility that if the study was unfavorable to Microsoft's position they would simply have pulled the plug and thrown away the results? Unless you can find fault with the study itself, there is nothing wrong with Microsoft financing studies which show Microsoft in a favorable way as long as the study itelf was legitimate. I realize this may be a difficult concept for many /.'ers to grasp but give it a shot.
"Though the existence of the cloaked pages at all is somewhat questionable, at least Google has responded with integrity and consistency."
Wow, they removed the pages that were discovered. How many more are there and have these been cleaned up as well?
I've been able to do this for years with MSN.com. The latest incarnation of this site allows me to not only customize the home page, I can also add specialized content pages. In addition to my general home page which includes traffic reports, weather, headline news, and Slate editorials amongst other things, I have pages for more in-depth coverage of local and national news, sports, a comics page, and a movie listing and reviews page. MSN.com has content from hundreds of sources from content providers like CNET, eBay, Slate, NY Times, MSNBC, and quite a few others. While the page works better in IE on Windows, it still works in Firefox sans some of the more elaborate customization features such as resizable columns and dragging content around to reorder it on the page.
I think you missed th asarcasm here, let me explain. Everytime biometrics are discussed here in relation to fingerprints some jackass inevitably wanders in and says it's easy to hack my cutting someone's finger off and using that. Now, alog comes a story about face recognition biometrics technology. Do I really need to explain this nay further?
...and use someone elses cell phone. All you need to do is lob of their head and carry it around in a sack with you. When you need to make a call, pull out the head and snap a picture; free cell phone minutes.
There's one type of encyclopedia missing from this debate, Encarta and Encarta like encyclopedias. These could provide the best of both worlds, an encyclopedia that is searchable and updatable through the internet (like wikipedia) as well as one that is thoroughly researched by professionals (like the paper based Britannica). Encyclopedias like this make it easier to offer rich media interfaces and examples (such as video or interactive charts and graphs or atlases linked to other pertinent data) which would otherwise be slower via the web.
"...bad colour schemes..."
/., particularly the games and IT sections??
you mean like
Well, there you go. Here's the article for the rest of us to read:
Dirty Destruction
A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could be devastating
By Michael Crowley
Although experts debate the ease of building a crude nuclear bomb, no one disputes that it is far easier to build a simpler weapon known as a dirty bomb--a conventional bomb that scatters radioactive material. A dirty bomb produces no nuclear chain reaction, no mushroom cloud. Yet its aftereffects could be devastating. In a 2002 computer simulation run by the Federation of American Scientists, a single foot-long piece of radioactive cobalt of the type commonly used in food-irradiation plants was blown up with TNT in lower Manhattan. The simulation found that a 300-square-block area would become as contaminated as the permanently closed zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and that cancer caused by residual radiation could be expected to kill one in 10 residents over the next 40 years. Under current U.S. safety standards, the entire island would have to be evacuated.
Unlike a nuclear bomb, a dirty bomb can be made from radioactive materials such as cesium, strontium and iridium, commonly found in hospitals and construction sites. Experts fret about security at such sites, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that because these materials decay quickly and only negligible amounts have been lost or stolen in the U.S., it's doubtful that terrorists could have accumulated enough to make even a single dirty bomb.
Dangerous amounts of material have gone missing elsewhere, however, and the U.S. is working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to inventory existing sources and, when possible, remove or lock them up. It's a monumental task, but the possibility of Manhattan becoming another Chernobyl makes it essential.
I think people are far more worried about the radiological and economic effects of a dirty bomb than a mushroom cloud vaporizing New York or San Francisco. The article should have discussed how easy it is to build a dirty bomb and the effects it will have on the area it's detonated in.
"The real attraction here is that if you want people to hang around your store, just offere it up for free, or charge a very minimal amount for usage that day (not for time)."
Because they want people to buy stuff from the store, not leech the internet access and thumb through magazines or books but not buy them. Panera is a bit different because buying a cup or two or three of coffee is going to be far more likely for a customer to do than simply sit and browse the internet. I'll grant you the hourly fee is a bit steep but it's necessary for bookstores who want to offer wi-fi.
Yes, Microsoft Streets and Trips does. I've been using it for years with few problems whatsoever. It's also good for finding things near you when you are on vacation and are looking for a good restaurant or decent walking/driving directions to a museum or ballpark (or wherever you may be going). Add to that the Pocket Streets and Trips and it's an immensely useful program (if you have a Pocket PC). This doesn't even begin to cover the GPS capabilities (VERY useful on my lst trip to San Francisco) and all the features requested by the original poster.
"The other side is for areas that companies won't connect up because they can't justify the small profit. Poor urban areas which can't afford to pay the cable or telephone companies might benefit from a government run operation. However, usually when governments say they're going to help lower class minorities, they just instead pad their own pockets."
The way to solve this is to subsidize the project with tax payers money but allow a private company to rollout the service. Then again, if it's a poor urban area, how beneficial is it really to have a wireless hot spot in the area when the hardware to use it is likely too expensive as well? Community centers and libraries might be a better place to spend the money to ensure they have access to the internet and web based services.
Whether or not the guy had a stake in the towing company is of little consequence. The point being the government is now becoming directly in volved as a competitor to these towing companies at the tax payers expense. Also, could anyone use these yellow trucks services or did they check id to ensure you paid for the service?
With regard to wireless service, once all the compeition has withdrawn from the area? Will the local government upgrade the service in line with other municipalities who chose to allow competition to flourish? There are way too many "gotchas" to government sponsered programs, as well meaning as they may be when they start out.
Microsoft did FAR more than just update the interface for their search engine. The entire search engine was rebuilt from the ground up and added some rather interesting, albeit relatively unknown, capabilities and it's only going to get better from here.
...IE is dying, film at eleven.
The change brought us in line with copyright laws from Europe. Personally I'd rather have the moral rights clauses instead of an opt-out system.
Actually I took a few copyright law and legal classes as an udergrad in a Recording Industry program at MTSU. I also took a Fourth Estate and Copyright law class at Boston U. while getting my MFA in Graphic Design. I have a keen interest in copyright law and a fair bit of knowledge seemingly lacking from your average slashbots that frequent these forums concerning the DMCA and its hertiage.
However, you're right, the rule I mentioned is not hard and fast (nothing in the law truly is) but in the case presented by the OP it certainly holds true.
Do some research on a PMC called Executive Outcomes and you'll begin to believe even national defense should be handled by private companies (at the very least you should come away with more contempt for the UN peacekeeping process).