That is the very crux of the issue right there. A shampoo bottle is designed to do two things, keep the shampoo from drying out, and spurting it on your hand in the morning. A VCR is designed to do one generalized task, play and record video tapes. People do not expect it to do much more than that. Fancy VCRs primarily just have features that embellish the core functions. Fancy shampoo bottles have better smelling shampoo.
Computers, on the other hand, are designed to be in partial to full control of nearly anything. In their desktop and laptop form, they are extremely generalized, and a skilled person can do all manner of tasks on it, up to and including writing their own operating system for it.
The problem, in my opinion, is the marketing not the computer. It is fully possible, and indeed there are examples, to make computers specifically designed to do non-generalized tasks, such as the one you provided at the end, reading and responding to email. It is the responsibility of manufacturers to make and support devices that do this, instead of selling all-in-one-wonder desktops that can do everything from receiving television signals to crunching gigabtyes of data in some rendering farm in Simi Valley, California.
I completely agree with your viewpoint there. Where I do not agree is that the desktop concept should be reduced in complexity to become a lesser all-in-one, just for the sake of easy of use. That is what specific intention devices should be manufactured for. There is a legitimate need for multi-purpose machines that goes beyond just satiating types like ourselves that like to tinker.
Oh, and by the way, I know people who do expect their raspberry mango shampoo bottles to connect to the Internet, people want it everywhere.:)
In summery, I don't think things are as bad as you make it sound. Yes, they are more expensive, but if all you want to do is email and a little word processing now and then, an Apple works just fine, and is enough out of the way or the mainstream to where you do not need to be hyper-paranoid about security. When you use something that is by far the most popular, and hated, operating system, in an interconnected semi-anonymous world, you have to expect a little overhead in keeping things secure. If hypothetical person A does not want to put up with that, there are alternatives that work quite nicely, even in the realm of specialized devices. I saw a little black box with a keyboard that hooks up to Earthlink that allows you to do email, and that is it. Bravo.
Once the problem with getting good alternatives to the generalized super-machine is overcome, then you really only have the newness of the tech to get over. Computers are a vast thing. Even the most hardcore geek could not claim to have significant knowledge in more than a few branches (or meta-branches,) and there are thousands of branches -- all weaved in such a way to create potentially millions of pseudo-branches through combination. The fact that we have gotten computers to the point that we have, where a vendor like Apple and even some PC vendors, can send out a machine and have a complete novice checking email a few hours later, is pretty impressive (and I am not even going to try and fix that run-on sentence, I get tired just looking at it.)
Anyway, sorry about the glib response earlier, I just get tired of the car and VCR analogies, because a turn signal stick does one thing, it operates a blinking light -- whereas a computer has to have the hypothetical turn signal programmed, and the same physical material that allows the turn signal software to work can be wiped clean and turned into a SETI number cruncher by somebody else. A powerful ability that implies the potential for powerful mistakes.:)
Why are using analogies? Video is in no way similar to computers. Cars are nothing like computers. Why are you dragging out examples of random things and then declaring that everything should be just as easy to use. By your logic, a VCR should be just as simple to use a shampoo bottle, and thus, so should computers.
It isn't elitist to say that computers are fairly unique and complex devices. Just because everyone uses one now, improperly for the most part, doesn't mean they should or even can magically becomes television sets with six buttons on the front.
Yeah, I was actually in the U.S.S.R several months before it collapsed. I should get bonus tactical Western Presence points, now where did I place my honorary carrier, I seem to have forgotten...
...I thought playing a lot of chess would make me the best doctor in town!
If I recall correctly, the potions you could make were done using a huge chemistry set. There was no allusion to magic.
The Sims started farely realistic, I mean, as much as one could in "real" time on four year old technology. They stayed pretty close to that formula with a few silly diversions here and there. The genie, a voodoo doll. When I say their formula was realism, I don't mean it actually is realistic, but it is the basic intention.
Sims 2 might be a bit more interesting on the realism score. At least from the screenshots I have seen, it looks like they have spent a lot of time on the emotions of the Sims, and giving them unique and varied responses to situations. Sims will also grow up into adults, get old, and then die. So you could play a family for generations, instead of the same twenty-somethings and bratty six year olds year in and year out. Chasing the green.
You neglected to mention one other reason that historically been a root of war, religion. It is a very old cause, and one that doesn't have much merit to those outside of the belief system. The destruction of property is universal. Everyone can sympathize with it. The destruction of lives are universal. But killing people because they have been declared somehow evil in the mind of the earthly interpreters is usually only looked favorably upon by people who believe such a person is directly inspired by a deity.
That is one of the primary reasons why people are so nervous about Bush and company, because they are using terms like "evil," and "god is on our side," to raise credibility for their wars within the nation itself.
I was about to disagree with you until you got to the end and emphasized that for younger children it is a good way to boost their early reading skills. Once you have passed a certain level, there is no substitute for the thousands of years that humans have been writing down their thoughts, freely available in any library.
Thus, making the transition becomes the tricky point, and a demerit on the topic of computer games because they are so addicting and appeal to the visceral parts of our minds. To one who has grown up on such speed, picking up a book and dropping the controller will be much more difficult.
When I was growing up, computer games hadn't really hit. People will still outfoxing the Wumpus on mainframes. I managed to be at the topic of my class, and scored three grades ahead, in all reading and writing skill tests. So games are not necessary to jump start a kid at reading, but they might help, as long as the importance of not over-indulging in video games is stressed.
Actually it carries over quite well. I have logged countless many hours in various versions of Flight Simulator, from the first version for DOS (green label with cream coloured text) to FS2002. In 1999, I was given the opportunity to fly a Cessna 172. Basically the "teaser" flight they give you in flight school prior to ground training. The instructor critiqued my skills, and was quite impressed with my overall confidence, handling, and trust in the technicality of flying over the tactile feel of flying.
Obviously, the biggest difference is the tactile response. Flying a real Cessna feels nothing like flying one in FS, but like you said, the principles are there, especially if you've set the simulator to use the most realistic parameters.
In response to the parent.parent, though, FS does simulate malfunctioning equipment, and even just natural drift of equipment. The reason aircraft have so many gauges is for redundancy and to keep them all calibrated with each other. A magnetic compass isn't as useful for calculating directionals, but it is generally more accurate, and doesn't suffer from gyroscopic drift. The easier modes of FS do not even simulate altimeter drift due to barometric drift, so a lot of players might not realize that kind of stuff exists. It is there though, and adds a lot of fun to the game if you are a serious armchair pilot.
If you enjoyed '98 for its realism, you should consider upgrading to 2002. The air traffic controller system makes flying a lot more fun. Also if you purchase FS2002 flight charts from Jeppesen, it gets even more fun, and you can chart flight plans on the bus with your flight charts and everyone will think you are a real pilot.:) The weather system was greatly improved as well. Flying into a cloudy system actually looks like flying into a cloudy system, complete with sporadic glimpses of the ground and sky as you break through puffs of clouds.
They could even cause the keyboard to tilt up a bit really easily. Just have the mechanism attached to the tilt of the screen, so when you raise it, the center edges of the split keyboard raised about half an inch. That would be so nice, and it would not be all that difficult to design for a no-fault tolerance.
Yeah, that was my first thought when I saw the photographs of Apple's 17" with the HUGE amount of wasted space on either side of the keyboard -- for speakers? Please. I'll take pain-free wrists over nice sounding operating system beeps any day.
It's all moot for me now though. I picked up a TouchStream keyboard, really an ultra-thin, ergonomic mouse/gesture/keypad device. You can just set it down on top of the laptop's keyboard area and never suffer those ill-placed keys again.
There are plenty of laptops that exceed the DPIs listed in the parent. That is what SXGA, UXGA and the wide screen variants are all about. They are quite a bit more expensive to construct, and that is probably why Apple has stuck with the lower end of the resolution bar.
As for eyestrain, you are right, it is subjective. I use UXGA (15" LCD, 1600x1200 resolution) and if anything it makes my eyes feel better because of the increased DPI. I vastly prefer reading text on it to Apple's LCDs, because to me the excessive amount of blur on them gives me a headache, even on the CRTs, but that is an OS X thing that you can fortunately tweak a bit. On my LCD, reading text is nearly like reading off a sheet of paper -- incredibly smooth and low fatigue.
It isn't a huge market, but I do a lot of image editing and sometimes video work on the road, as I am shooting pictures. That way, when I get back home I don't have eight hundred photographs to sort and color correct all at once. Trying to handle 35MB 16bpc TIFF files on an ultra-light would be amusing. I need something that foremost has a near proof quality screen, and secondly has the guts to throw big files around. Thirdly, and optionally, it would be nice if it can reasonably replace a desktop for most tasks, which my current laptop does. Then you are never without your base system, and your other desktops become specialized peripheral computers. The way it should be, in my opinion. Yes, it is a beast to carry around (mine is actually 13 pounds,) but I would rather do that and get a little real work done then crunch time when I get back.
I have considered getting a cheap ultra-light for non-photographic trips, because 13 pounds does get to be quite heavy when all you need is email and word processing.
Heh. Actually his screen is probably designed to run at that resolution. In other words, the pixels are yes that small. About 133 DPI, actually. I actually prefer the way my 1600x1200 laptop looks to the same resolution on a 19" CRT. Everything is much more crisp and defined; easier to read.
Yes, and you might be able to scale the LCD to that resolution too, but it will be "virtual." My 15" UXGA powered by a 128mb card can be virtually scaled up into the 2k x 2k resolutions, but you have to "pan" around with the mouse to see the whole screen. Personally I have never liked that arrangement in Windows. I don't mind it when using *NIX though, because usually your applications are just using small spaces and panning around them isn't an issue. With Windows applications tend to use huge amounts of space, so part of the application is off of the screen.
Eh, I have lots of experience with Apple's PowerBook LCDs and they hold no candle to my 15" UXGA Wide Angle screen, even Apple's 17". Apple's displays start showing color shifts and massive tone shifts if you are slightly off-center in relation to the screen. The PowerBooks are leagues better than the iBooks, but still have the problem. My display holds to about 90% accuracy within a nearly full 180 degree vertical and horizontal tilt. Which for me, means better color accuracy when color correcting on the road. Another issue with Apple's displays is color depth. Yes, I know, the preferences and video card say 24bpp, but in actuality not many LCDs really do the full 24bpp spectrum. My UXGA doesn't either. That is why serious graphics professionals never use panels for serious proof color work. The PowerBook's displays are in the middle end of the spectrum though. You can see significant color shallowness. Step down to the iBook class and it is almost in the 16bpp range. The end of the day is where the story is told. When I did all of my mobile color correction on Apples, when they got back to the shop they all had to be significantly reworked. With my PC, I usually do not need to touch anything.
Maybe the Apple screens are nice when, as you say, you walk by them in CompUSA -- but under extensive usage they are not professional displays, and should not be pawned off as such.
As far as resolution goes, have you ever worked on a UXGA? It doesn't sound like it. You can fit a lot more than one application and a "docked" program. Try two full sized browser windows side by side. Yes, it is just making everything smaller, but software DPI can be adjusted to compensate for that, increasing the size of widgets and window fonts. Content can stay the same, as it should, since the whole point of having a lot of dots is being able to do a lot of work at once.
I agree with this, and while it might sound elitist, I think the "difficult" installation serves to discourage the folks who are not ready for Debian. When I first installed Linux back in 1996, it was Debian. Miraculously, I got it installed, but couldn't really get anything to work after that point (I played around with MegaHAL for a while.) So I downloaded the ISO for Red Hat and ended up using that for a half year before RPM caused me too much grief to be worth it. So I gave Debian another swing and didn't have any substantial problems, I was ready for it.
The reason I think it is good every Joe User doesn't get too far is that the Debian support system would otherwise get flooded with well meaning, but entirely clueless newbies. I say let the companies that are making $100 a pop and have live telephone support systems handle the first-timers. That's what those companies are in business for.
I've never understood this fascination in the community with taking over the world, marketshare, visibility, "growth." I installed Linux in the first place to get rid of all that trash. To run software for the sake of running it. To develop a driver because the hardware exists, and for no other reason. Et ceteral.
Damn it! If you are going to reveal the verdict of the article, please clearly indicate your intentions in the subject field with the keyword: SPOILERS!
If someone else ripped the same song with the same software/hardware, wouldn't these files be digitally the same, and indistinguishable?
In short, no they would not. Even if you yourself ran the encoder ten times in a row with identical settings, you would end up with files that are not binary identicals. Now if you encode, and then copy the encoded file ten times, obviosly the file would have an identical signature. Expect the RIAA to use this to prove the online "path" of a file, that way the defendant couldn't say they ripped all of those files themselves, and then threw away the original media.
It is this way with most lossy encoding techniques. The algorithms produce different results every time. This is obvious to the degree of human detectability at extremly high compression rates.
They are only three, you have it "easy." Just wait until they are sixteen or seventeen. Then we'll see how much cake you think it is to keep constant tabs on them.
What if it is not Dad's PC. What if it is junior's and the kid has it all password protected and potentially encrypted (which is likely if he is distributing large enough quantities to attract the attention of the RIAA.)
Yes, I see it similar as civil disobediance. People feel the laws are wrong, so they break them willingly and passively as a form of protest. And just like the people who practically welded themselves in chains across major intersections in protest of the Iraq invasion, expect to get your wrist slapped! None of those people expected to go straight home that night. They knew they were going to be leaving in cuffs. That is what has traditionally made civil disobediance effective. If enough people are out there willing to risk fines and jail time for something they believe in, it starts to turn heads among the people who do not care that much. They start thinking about the issue., and if what they activists have to say makes sense, the wheels of change start turning.
I'll reply to both of your responses here. The example with the butter does not fully fit the term "you stole my idea" because it was an example of taking something material. My citation of that example was not to suggest that immaterial theft does not exist (my example with virginity in the other post was meant to address the reality of immaterial theft,) but that the original object must be deprived of something, which means present or past tense, not future tense. Your example of immaterial theft of idea falls under this because when an idea is stolen the idea enters a state where it has been revealed and is no longer a novel idea. To compare this to the music world, this would be like sneaking in to Modonna's studio, memorizing the tabs and lyrics for song she is working on, and then them ti perform it and publish it. That would be theft because Modonna's idea has passed a one-time state and cannot be returned to her without litigation that is public enough to convince people that it was her idea first. How often have you glanced sideways at somebody cynically when they said, "Oh, me too, I thought of that years ago." It was their present/past tense possession of a concept they owned, and now that somebody else voiced it first, they have been robbed of the ability to demonstrate they did indeed ever have that idea first; unless they have notorized documention that proves otherwise, and then you could legally return the advantage of the concept to yourself. You see? There is something removed there, even though it remains immaterial.
Illegally copying ideas that have already passed that one-time state and are in distribution does not fall under theft, because the tense of the immaterial removal shifts from past/present to future, and is hence now speculative. That is why copyright laws came into being in the first place, becausing copying things that somebody else has done and then distributing the copies is not technically theft. They needed a way to legally protect artists (originally,) speculative earnings from their work. Am I explaining myself well? I know what I am trying to say, but it is a pretty abstract concept.
I don't see what us so fickle about this. The basic average viewpoint on Slashdot is that the copyright laws in the U$A are no longer relevant in the modern era, and are doing more damage than good. They are simply griping about a chain of actions taken by the RIAA in a descending order of what they define to be stupidity, all of which are centered around the fundamental flaw. Just because going after the individual makes more sense than going after the middle-man doesn't mean the rightness or wrongness of want is being attacked has changed. That is what remains in all of these stories. The targets of the RIAA are what is fickle, and indicative of weakening case, if you ask me.
You need to look up the definitions for take and appropriate while you are at it. Even in their more abstract (13th and in alternates) forms, there is always a transferance of some tangible form that the original no longer has possession of. For instance, butter taking the flavour of the things around it technically involves the transferance of microscopic particles that the original dish is no longer in possession of.
Besides, this is a matter of US law anyway. Lawyers don't win cases with dictionaries, typically, they win them with finding abstracts and meanings in laws, or from precedents. So in this context, it is not a valid usage of the word, even if the dictionaries disagree and say it is.
Not necessarily, because once again there is nothing removed from the original owner. When the OED references immaterial theft, it is referring to things like -- virginity. If one steals that from another, it is gone, and can no longer be replaced in that person. Speculative income is future tense, it does not exist yet, and thus it cannot be stolen because it may or may not ever exist at all.
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Computers, on the other hand, are designed to be in partial to full control of nearly anything. In their desktop and laptop form, they are extremely generalized, and a skilled person can do all manner of tasks on it, up to and including writing their own operating system for it.
The problem, in my opinion, is the marketing not the computer. It is fully possible, and indeed there are examples, to make computers specifically designed to do non-generalized tasks, such as the one you provided at the end, reading and responding to email. It is the responsibility of manufacturers to make and support devices that do this, instead of selling all-in-one-wonder desktops that can do everything from receiving television signals to crunching gigabtyes of data in some rendering farm in Simi Valley, California.
I completely agree with your viewpoint there. Where I do not agree is that the desktop concept should be reduced in complexity to become a lesser all-in-one, just for the sake of easy of use. That is what specific intention devices should be manufactured for. There is a legitimate need for multi-purpose machines that goes beyond just satiating types like ourselves that like to tinker.
Oh, and by the way, I know people who do expect their raspberry mango shampoo bottles to connect to the Internet, people want it everywhere. :)
In summery, I don't think things are as bad as you make it sound. Yes, they are more expensive, but if all you want to do is email and a little word processing now and then, an Apple works just fine, and is enough out of the way or the mainstream to where you do not need to be hyper-paranoid about security. When you use something that is by far the most popular, and hated, operating system, in an interconnected semi-anonymous world, you have to expect a little overhead in keeping things secure. If hypothetical person A does not want to put up with that, there are alternatives that work quite nicely, even in the realm of specialized devices. I saw a little black box with a keyboard that hooks up to Earthlink that allows you to do email, and that is it. Bravo.
Once the problem with getting good alternatives to the generalized super-machine is overcome, then you really only have the newness of the tech to get over. Computers are a vast thing. Even the most hardcore geek could not claim to have significant knowledge in more than a few branches (or meta-branches,) and there are thousands of branches -- all weaved in such a way to create potentially millions of pseudo-branches through combination. The fact that we have gotten computers to the point that we have, where a vendor like Apple and even some PC vendors, can send out a machine and have a complete novice checking email a few hours later, is pretty impressive (and I am not even going to try and fix that run-on sentence, I get tired just looking at it.)
Anyway, sorry about the glib response earlier, I just get tired of the car and VCR analogies, because a turn signal stick does one thing, it operates a blinking light -- whereas a computer has to have the hypothetical turn signal programmed, and the same physical material that allows the turn signal software to work can be wiped clean and turned into a SETI number cruncher by somebody else. A powerful ability that implies the potential for powerful mistakes. :)
It isn't elitist to say that computers are fairly unique and complex devices. Just because everyone uses one now, improperly for the most part, doesn't mean they should or even can magically becomes television sets with six buttons on the front.
Yeah, I was actually in the U.S.S.R several months before it collapsed. I should get bonus tactical Western Presence points, now where did I place my honorary carrier, I seem to have forgotten...
Yeah, the rain situation would pretty much be the same, too.
I like the guy on the upper porch playing with a telescope while the entire house and neighborhood are lit up like Vegas.
If I recall correctly, the potions you could make were done using a huge chemistry set. There was no allusion to magic.
The Sims started farely realistic, I mean, as much as one could in "real" time on four year old technology. They stayed pretty close to that formula with a few silly diversions here and there. The genie, a voodoo doll. When I say their formula was realism, I don't mean it actually is realistic, but it is the basic intention.
Sims 2 might be a bit more interesting on the realism score. At least from the screenshots I have seen, it looks like they have spent a lot of time on the emotions of the Sims, and giving them unique and varied responses to situations. Sims will also grow up into adults, get old, and then die. So you could play a family for generations, instead of the same twenty-somethings and bratty six year olds year in and year out. Chasing the green.
That is one of the primary reasons why people are so nervous about Bush and company, because they are using terms like "evil," and "god is on our side," to raise credibility for their wars within the nation itself.
Thus, making the transition becomes the tricky point, and a demerit on the topic of computer games because they are so addicting and appeal to the visceral parts of our minds. To one who has grown up on such speed, picking up a book and dropping the controller will be much more difficult.
When I was growing up, computer games hadn't really hit. People will still outfoxing the Wumpus on mainframes. I managed to be at the topic of my class, and scored three grades ahead, in all reading and writing skill tests. So games are not necessary to jump start a kid at reading, but they might help, as long as the importance of not over-indulging in video games is stressed.
Actually it carries over quite well. I have logged countless many hours in various versions of Flight Simulator, from the first version for DOS (green label with cream coloured text) to FS2002. In 1999, I was given the opportunity to fly a Cessna 172. Basically the "teaser" flight they give you in flight school prior to ground training. The instructor critiqued my skills, and was quite impressed with my overall confidence, handling, and trust in the technicality of flying over the tactile feel of flying. Obviously, the biggest difference is the tactile response. Flying a real Cessna feels nothing like flying one in FS, but like you said, the principles are there, especially if you've set the simulator to use the most realistic parameters. In response to the parent.parent, though, FS does simulate malfunctioning equipment, and even just natural drift of equipment. The reason aircraft have so many gauges is for redundancy and to keep them all calibrated with each other. A magnetic compass isn't as useful for calculating directionals, but it is generally more accurate, and doesn't suffer from gyroscopic drift. The easier modes of FS do not even simulate altimeter drift due to barometric drift, so a lot of players might not realize that kind of stuff exists. It is there though, and adds a lot of fun to the game if you are a serious armchair pilot. If you enjoyed '98 for its realism, you should consider upgrading to 2002. The air traffic controller system makes flying a lot more fun. Also if you purchase FS2002 flight charts from Jeppesen, it gets even more fun, and you can chart flight plans on the bus with your flight charts and everyone will think you are a real pilot. :) The weather system was greatly improved as well. Flying into a cloudy system actually looks like flying into a cloudy system, complete with sporadic glimpses of the ground and sky as you break through puffs of clouds.
They could even cause the keyboard to tilt up a bit really easily. Just have the mechanism attached to the tilt of the screen, so when you raise it, the center edges of the split keyboard raised about half an inch. That would be so nice, and it would not be all that difficult to design for a no-fault tolerance.
It's all moot for me now though. I picked up a TouchStream keyboard, really an ultra-thin, ergonomic mouse/gesture/keypad device. You can just set it down on top of the laptop's keyboard area and never suffer those ill-placed keys again.
As for eyestrain, you are right, it is subjective. I use UXGA (15" LCD, 1600x1200 resolution) and if anything it makes my eyes feel better because of the increased DPI. I vastly prefer reading text on it to Apple's LCDs, because to me the excessive amount of blur on them gives me a headache, even on the CRTs, but that is an OS X thing that you can fortunately tweak a bit. On my LCD, reading text is nearly like reading off a sheet of paper -- incredibly smooth and low fatigue.
I have considered getting a cheap ultra-light for non-photographic trips, because 13 pounds does get to be quite heavy when all you need is email and word processing.
Heh. Actually his screen is probably designed to run at that resolution. In other words, the pixels are yes that small. About 133 DPI, actually. I actually prefer the way my 1600x1200 laptop looks to the same resolution on a 19" CRT. Everything is much more crisp and defined; easier to read.
Yes, and you might be able to scale the LCD to that resolution too, but it will be "virtual." My 15" UXGA powered by a 128mb card can be virtually scaled up into the 2k x 2k resolutions, but you have to "pan" around with the mouse to see the whole screen. Personally I have never liked that arrangement in Windows. I don't mind it when using *NIX though, because usually your applications are just using small spaces and panning around them isn't an issue. With Windows applications tend to use huge amounts of space, so part of the application is off of the screen.
Maybe the Apple screens are nice when, as you say, you walk by them in CompUSA -- but under extensive usage they are not professional displays, and should not be pawned off as such.
As far as resolution goes, have you ever worked on a UXGA? It doesn't sound like it. You can fit a lot more than one application and a "docked" program. Try two full sized browser windows side by side. Yes, it is just making everything smaller, but software DPI can be adjusted to compensate for that, increasing the size of widgets and window fonts. Content can stay the same, as it should, since the whole point of having a lot of dots is being able to do a lot of work at once.
The reason I think it is good every Joe User doesn't get too far is that the Debian support system would otherwise get flooded with well meaning, but entirely clueless newbies. I say let the companies that are making $100 a pop and have live telephone support systems handle the first-timers. That's what those companies are in business for.
I've never understood this fascination in the community with taking over the world, marketshare, visibility, "growth." I installed Linux in the first place to get rid of all that trash. To run software for the sake of running it. To develop a driver because the hardware exists, and for no other reason. Et ceteral.
Damn it! If you are going to reveal the verdict of the article, please clearly indicate your intentions in the subject field with the keyword: SPOILERS!
In short, no they would not. Even if you yourself ran the encoder ten times in a row with identical settings, you would end up with files that are not binary identicals. Now if you encode, and then copy the encoded file ten times, obviosly the file would have an identical signature. Expect the RIAA to use this to prove the online "path" of a file, that way the defendant couldn't say they ripped all of those files themselves, and then threw away the original media.
It is this way with most lossy encoding techniques. The algorithms produce different results every time. This is obvious to the degree of human detectability at extremly high compression rates.
What if it is not Dad's PC. What if it is junior's and the kid has it all password protected and potentially encrypted (which is likely if he is distributing large enough quantities to attract the attention of the RIAA.)
Yes, I see it similar as civil disobediance. People feel the laws are wrong, so they break them willingly and passively as a form of protest. And just like the people who practically welded themselves in chains across major intersections in protest of the Iraq invasion, expect to get your wrist slapped! None of those people expected to go straight home that night. They knew they were going to be leaving in cuffs. That is what has traditionally made civil disobediance effective. If enough people are out there willing to risk fines and jail time for something they believe in, it starts to turn heads among the people who do not care that much. They start thinking about the issue., and if what they activists have to say makes sense, the wheels of change start turning.
Illegally copying ideas that have already passed that one-time state and are in distribution does not fall under theft, because the tense of the immaterial removal shifts from past/present to future, and is hence now speculative. That is why copyright laws came into being in the first place, becausing copying things that somebody else has done and then distributing the copies is not technically theft. They needed a way to legally protect artists (originally,) speculative earnings from their work. Am I explaining myself well? I know what I am trying to say, but it is a pretty abstract concept.
I don't see what us so fickle about this. The basic average viewpoint on Slashdot is that the copyright laws in the U$A are no longer relevant in the modern era, and are doing more damage than good. They are simply griping about a chain of actions taken by the RIAA in a descending order of what they define to be stupidity, all of which are centered around the fundamental flaw. Just because going after the individual makes more sense than going after the middle-man doesn't mean the rightness or wrongness of want is being attacked has changed. That is what remains in all of these stories. The targets of the RIAA are what is fickle, and indicative of weakening case, if you ask me.
Besides, this is a matter of US law anyway. Lawyers don't win cases with dictionaries, typically, they win them with finding abstracts and meanings in laws, or from precedents. So in this context, it is not a valid usage of the word, even if the dictionaries disagree and say it is.
Not necessarily, because once again there is nothing removed from the original owner. When the OED references immaterial theft, it is referring to things like -- virginity. If one steals that from another, it is gone, and can no longer be replaced in that person. Speculative income is future tense, it does not exist yet, and thus it cannot be stolen because it may or may not ever exist at all.