Surely if you want more from your headphones connection than we already have, just use Bluetooth and leave the rest of us to our 3.5mm-it-ain't-broke-so-stop-trying-to-fix-it serenity?
I doubt it, since your very next statement completely glosses over the issue.
My very next statement was actually part of the background for the point I was actually making, which was at the end of my post (did you actually read that far?).
why people get quite so angry when the record companies insult our intelligence with this sort of BS.
If it makes them no money (or more precisely, gives them no benefits), then they will not sign. Period.
This statement seems to be as naive as a lot of the artists are that sign these contracts.
You appear to come from a world where, before joining a band, artists will have already obtained years of experience in contract law, or have amassed the funds to pay for a lawyer with such experience.
In the world I live in, on one side there are artists who are often quite young but have a talent for creating music and on the other side, are experienced professionals who are very talented at dealing with such artists and getting the best deal possible. In my world, the professionals are paid by record companies and so, irrespective of what they may tell the artists, that is where their loyalties lie.
Of course they tell the artists that the contract will bring money and other benefits, as otherwise, as you point out, the artist is less likely to sign. What they keep hidden, is that the money and benefits will be mainly going to the record company.
Now if the record companies were completely honest about this and explained to everyone, including the media and politicians that they lobby for ever more lucrative laws to be passed, then I for one would have far less of a problem. But while they continue to churn out the same old BS year in and year out and expect that I am stupid enough to fall for it, then I will continue to be pissed off by them and those that seem to fall for their spin.
Yes, I have been a freeloader and a parasite for years, long before the Internet turned up in fact. Many a time I would sit listening to the radio and not pay a penny for the privilege. Since a lot of my listening was on the BBC, I wouldn't even have to listen to some boring adverts to somehow atone for my sins.
Of course I would occasionally hear something I liked enough to go out and buy a CD.
I was aware that in doing so I was most likely supporting the operations of a record company that, due to some one-sided contract they had convinced them to sign, was in the process of extorting work from the artist involved, but it was the only way I could get access to the music, to play where and when I wanted to listen to it.
Sometimes I would find that I had effectively paid well over the odds for a single, as the rest of the stuff on the CD was just filler. Occasionally however, I would find that I actually liked everything on the CD and would look out for other stuff by the same artist. I might then check if they were playing live somewhere nearby and get tickets to their concerts.
I could go on iTunes and randomly buy loads of tracks in the hope that some of them might be something I actually like and that the DRM will allow me to play it where and when I choose, or I could go over to the dark side and download stuff for free.
Of course the end result would be the same as 20 years or so ago; I would be sitting, listening to free music and occasionally finding something that makes me want to go and see the artist live, but somehow with all the advances we have made in the meantime, what I am doing no longer supports the record companies and may well be illegal.
I think you misunderstand. A copyright belongs to the artist, to be used however they wish. If artists are having trouble with their labels, it is between them and the label, no-one else. They don't need pirates telling them what is best for them, or stripping of their copyrights over some nanny-state paternalistic bullcrap. If they don't want to be signed, they won't sign.
Conversely, if they are signed, it means they wanted to be signed (or perhaps are indifferent either way). Maybe the figures floating around the internet don't tell us the whole story? A lot of people want the labels to fail, so a misinformation campaign wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
I think the misunderstanding might be yours.
Often once the artist (who is neither an experienced contract lawyer nor someone who has access to, or the money to pay for such expertise), has signed an extremely one-sided contract with the record company (that has both the access and the money) a copyright no longer belongs to the artist. In a lot of cases, neither does control over their artistic careers.
The record company's spin when it comes to online "piracy" is that it is threatening the livelihoods of the artists, whereas it is in fact far more likely that the artists themselves could survive perfectly well in the Internet age, but that the future for the companies is far less certain.
Couple this spin with the fact that the artists' livelihoods are far more under threat from the record companies themselves http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy.html, and you will begin to see why people get quite so angry when the record companies insult our intelligence with this sort of BS.
I understand why people speed on highways, but on some residential roads in built up areas the speed limit is essential to keep people safe
A major part of the problem with speed limits is that they are set at one speed to cover all conditions and times of day and then they are enforced irrespective of the context. This in turn engenders a contempt for speed limits in general, which leads to people ignoring the speed limit where they really shouldn't.
This is a real world aspect that is never considered by those setting the rules
Oh please. The whole thing is encrypted with GPG. It doesn't matter who has the data, as long as they can't read it.
That's fine, as long as no one can read your profile data, they can't misuse it.
Having said that though, if no one can read it, its not going to be very useful in a social network site where people being able to read it is pretty much the point.
You assume that the project doesn't keep each person's profile on their own machine, with only name + main photo on machines of friends.
If the project does work in the way you suggest, this would mean that the millions of people who currently use Facebook would have to be capable of setting up their own, always on servers and maintaining their own copy of the project.
That might be fine for you and me, but the most likely scenario is that some more technically able people will set up severs and offer to host other (less able?) peoples' profiles. If this is the case, who are these people and can they be trusted with the data any more than Facebook?
Um... public key encryption might mitigate your worries. Not sure how to revoke privileges, and key exchanges would have to be done privately, but from then on you don't need to worry so much about who has your data in transmission. Then YOU decide who gets to read your data.
I'm less worried about who might see the data in transmission than I am about who gets access to it and the various copies shared with my friends. Unless I host my own profile and that of everyone I allow access to my profile, there will be people with copies of my profile data on their servers.
How do I know who those people are and how do I control what they do with the copies of my data they now have?
P2P, decentralized, or managed by FaceBook, as soon as anyone, including your "friends" has a copy of your data, you've lost control of it, and there is really no way to regain it.
I agree, but the message that the article seems to suggest is that it is only Facebook that we need to worry about and if only your data was being looked after by someone else, using free, open source software, that the problems with regards to data security go away.
Not only does this seem to miss the point, but ignores the fact that, should you wish to delete your profile using the new improved system, rather than go to one centralised point, it is likely that you would have to track down all the copies shared with all the servers that host your friends' accounts.
You'll host your data on your server, so there'll be no p2p stuff going on on dynamic IPs. It's p2p between servers, not in the same way bittorrent works.
Ah, so the millions of people who currently use facebook will get themselves a server with a static ip address and set up and maintain their own copy of the new system?...nope, can't see any major problems there.
This is the real problem they need to solve - how non-techies can get set up. But presumably you'll be able to have 3rd parties providing hosting like with wordpress.
Oh right, so lots of third parties will host the user's data? Doesn't this bring us back to the point I made regarding who knows who those third parties are and who has access to the user data they now control instead of facebook?
They're trying to build a decentralized, p2p-style facebook application.
The problem with facebook is not the centralised nature of the application, but the lack of control a user has over their data and what facebook intend to do with it
In the case of a p2p, decentralised system it is surely even less clear as to where your profile data (embarrasing photos, etc) will actually be stored, who will have access to that data and how can you ensure you can delete it when you want to.
While the law is in place, it is, and you're obliged to follow it or suffer the consequences.
And from your reaction to my posts, you also imply that "you are obliged not to question the correctness of that law".
Either I am missing something or you are, but I have never suggested that the law should be broken.
One other thing that you are missing, is that law in society is always a balance between the word of law and the application of that law. Hence someone involved in a crime may or may not be convicted of it, not on the facts of the case, but on whether the prosecutor decides to take the case forward. In making that decision they might weigh up the benefit to society vs. the cost and chances of bringing a conviction.
Prior to modern technology being involved, being convicted of speeding was reliant on have an officer of the law accurately register your speed and then go to a (not insignificant), amount of effort to take it further. In this way the balance was maintained as it would typically only be where the excessive speed was deemed to be dangerous within the context in which it occurred, that a prosecution would occur.
Since the introduction of technology, in the vast majority of cases, a human being is rarely involved and certainly no consideration is taken of the circumstances of the offence. A computer decides your guilt and you get a letter in the post informing you of the fact and how much to pay and how many points (you can appeal, but without a good solicitor, it is unlikely that the computer will lose). In this way the original balance has been disrupted.
Now there is a proposal that things should be made even easier for the computer to go after even more people and you think there should be no discussion.
Whether you agree with a law (and a speedlimit is just that) or not is irrelevant
Well let's bring back slavery then, that was legal once.
The idea that you cannot question the validity of a law and the way that law is applied is not a position I am prepared to accept.
By simply discussing the way a law enforced without discussing whether there is anything wrong with that law in the first place is, in my view, a very blinkered way of going through life and encourages bad laws to be passed as no one is going to question the law makers.
To be honest I find this system better than the single-point checking systems that are also widely in use everywhere.
It's ok to speed for small stretches, for passing or from lack of attention to your speed
It enforces a lower speed over a longer stretch. You can't just slam on the brakes for a camera and speed up right after.
I disagree. In all of this, the first premise you have to accept is that the speed limit is correct in the first place.
In the UK we have something like 250,000 miles of roads and just 6 different speed limits. Now for every one of those quarter of a million miles of road to be set at a speed limit that is definitely not too low would be a miracle.
The easier "catching" someone for speeding gets, the more it will be used for revenue raising. The fact that people may lose their jobs along with their licences seems to be irrelevant.
"Several sections of the ACTA draft show that rightsholders can obtain an injunction just by showing that infringement is "imminent," even if it hasn't happened yet."
Why not take away every teenagers computer, to prevent them from pirating in the first place?
You have only got to look at their other wish lists that include such things as "everyone should have to install spy software on their computers, to look for and delete things we think they shouldn't have", to see that, armed with this legislation, they will argue that anyone with a computer is potentially going to infringe imminently and so fair game for their legalised extortion.
If this doen't shore up the share price, I don't know what will (James Bond doesn't seem to be enough any more).
No, I'm sorry but I fundamentally disagree, and your comments just demonstrate how pervasive the banks' spin on this has been.
"ID Theft" does not exist. It is simply a spin doctor phrase to convince you that it is you that has lost something and not the bank.
So saying "ID Theft" instead of "Fraud" does serve a purpose as it indicates that a person's private information (e.g. SSN) was used in the fraudulent activity.
So why isn't there a name for a bank robbery where they have stolen your car and used it in the crime? Although I suspect if they thought that they could spin it so that you were therefore considered liable for their losses they might just invent one.
Thief A didn't commit fraud. He did, however, steal my identity/personal information and sell it to someone else. That should be illegal.
Firstly, they haven't stolen your identity, they have copied some information relating to you. It could be that to do so they have done something illegal (data protection, etc), but you have still not lost anything.
The fact that I can guess from your/. id that you name is Jason Levine, doesn't mean that you have lost anything or that anything has been stolen, in the same way that it is not true that a photograph can steal your soul. If I subsequently use your name whilst committing a crime doesn't alter that fact either.
What annoys me is that by coming up with the spin incantation "ID Theft", banks have been able to make what is actually their problem your problem
Its not "ID Theft" its FRAUD
Before "ID Theft" existed, con artists would regularly pretend to be someone they weren't in order to steal things. If I pretend to be an engineer from the local telephone company in order to con my way into an old ladies house and steal her purse, no one would even think for a minute that the telephone company should foot the bill, but when someone pretends to be me and convinces a bank to give them some money on that basis, apparently it is ok for the bank to turn round and try to get me to pay for the result of their gullibility.
Taking something that doesn't belong to you without permission is stealing. Get over it. Stop trying to justify your selfish anti-social behavior.
Yes, but COPYING something that doesn't belong to you without permission is NOT stealing. Get over it. Stop trying to justify your ignorance of the facts.
What a waste of time, no numbers just percentages, no description of the types of users, in fact no real survey data at all.
I agree. I would also say that there is no real journalism here either. Quoting things like 'A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers' individual sites.' without any analysis of what the underlying numbers are gives a very distorted impression
One of the most obvious questions to ask is "How does the number of people represented by the 56% of Google visitors that apparently do click through compare to the numbers that would have gone to the newspaper website directly.
My guess is that Google's 54% is way bigger than the 100% of people that would have got to all the newspapers' web sites by other means, combined.
The only way the "supply and demand" model fluctuates prices is when there is a true market, with many people selling the exact same thing and many people buying it (think commodities).
In this situation, each seller is not just calculating what the customer is likely to be prepared to pay for their product, but how cheaply one of their competitors is likely to sell their identical product for, thus attracting buyers away.
The situation with music and movies is not a true market. Although there is still a calculation as to what the customer is ultimately prepared to pay, there is no real competition from other suppliers as, someone who wants to listen to one artist's music is not necessarily going to switch to another company's artists just because their CD's are cheaper to buy.
Yes, things like price anchoring and appeals to "think of the poor starving artists" help the public to keep swallowing the pills, but the real issue is that without real competition, the media companies have too much control for the "market" for it to ever establish the true price of the product.
Whether you agree with it or not, the rise of the Internet "pirate" is the first real competition these companies have ever faced.
This bullshit opinion that all patents are evil needs to end. If somebody spends time and money develoing an idea and inventing something new they deserve some bloody reward for it
I don't know if as many people would have a problem with this sentiment per se. However, the patent system is regularly abused by people who haven't spent time and money inventing something and aren't actually going to spend any time and money producing the product either, but simply look to sit on the patent and make their money from suing anyone who does put the effort in and brings the product to market.
The other problem is the granting of patents (especially software patents) for things that the patent office may think is novel and worthy of protection, but we all know is so obvious that it wouldn't occur to any of us to try to patent. However, once the patent is granted, again the patentee puts all their real effort into suing anyone who dares to come up with the same idea.
It is this leeching and obstructive use of patents that I would imagine that most people have problems with.
What about a double-decker arrangement? The keyboard would be on the desk in the usual way, but the touch pad would be on a shelf below the desk.
This would be a bit like some workstations currently position the keyboard (on a retractable shelf) only, because you dont need to see the touchpad when you are using it, the shelf doesn't need to be able to be pulled out.
I'm old enough to remember when it was an expensive treat to call long distance. Today you can get unlimited long distance for pennies.
Would the tremendous increase in bandwidth and reduction in costs of changing to a digital infrastructure have anything to do with this, or is it all just down to competition?
In the UK, the telecoms provider (BT) was privatised, not as a result of any political ideology, but so that they could borrow the billions required to digitise the network without the government's involvement. In the end however, they didn't need to borrow anything as the massive savings they made from digitising the first parts of the network more than paid for each subsequent upgrade.
Being digital, the new infrastructure enabled BT to do many things from a computer keyboard that they previously had to schedule a highly trained engineer out to do and BT soon found that it was making a profit from the standing charges alone - any money made from people actually making calls was a (huge) bonus.
All this success was sold as being as a result of privatisation, rather than digitisation, which in turn led to a rush to sell off anything that wasn't nailed down - usually at, what later investigations found to be, significantly below real value.
Of course none of the subsequent utility sell-offs had anything that corresponded to BT's digitisation and have instead led to inefficient monopolies. In the fine tradition of BT however, the privatised companies rarely actually have to put their hands in their own pockets as all upgrades are paid for by large, government approved levies added to the bills - long before any benefit (if any) to the consumer is actually provided.
These levies ensure that dividends are not affected by the need to invest in the infrastructure but, being able to have their cake and eat it, the value of these infrastructure improvements (paid for by the customers and not the shareholders) significantly boosts the value of the company and so the share price.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely if you want more from your headphones connection than we already have, just use Bluetooth and leave the rest of us to our 3.5mm-it-ain't-broke-so-stop-trying-to-fix-it serenity?
the same legal protections that US citizens have
... but I thought Bradley Manning was a US citizen?
I think the misunderstanding might be yours.
I doubt it, since your very next statement completely glosses over the issue.
My very next statement was actually part of the background for the point I was actually making, which was at the end of my post (did you actually read that far?).
why people get quite so angry when the record companies insult our intelligence with this sort of BS.
If it makes them no money (or more precisely, gives them no benefits), then they will not sign. Period.
This statement seems to be as naive as a lot of the artists are that sign these contracts.
You appear to come from a world where, before joining a band, artists will have already obtained years of experience in contract law, or have amassed the funds to pay for a lawyer with such experience.
In the world I live in, on one side there are artists who are often quite young but have a talent for creating music and on the other side, are experienced professionals who are very talented at dealing with such artists and getting the best deal possible. In my world, the professionals are paid by record companies and so, irrespective of what they may tell the artists, that is where their loyalties lie.
Of course they tell the artists that the contract will bring money and other benefits, as otherwise, as you point out, the artist is less likely to sign. What they keep hidden, is that the money and benefits will be mainly going to the record company.
Now if the record companies were completely honest about this and explained to everyone, including the media and politicians that they lobby for ever more lucrative laws to be passed, then I for one would have far less of a problem. But while they continue to churn out the same old BS year in and year out and expect that I am stupid enough to fall for it, then I will continue to be pissed off by them and those that seem to fall for their spin.
Yes, I have been a freeloader and a parasite for years, long before the Internet turned up in fact. Many a time I would sit listening to the radio and not pay a penny for the privilege. Since a lot of my listening was on the BBC, I wouldn't even have to listen to some boring adverts to somehow atone for my sins.
Of course I would occasionally hear something I liked enough to go out and buy a CD.
I was aware that in doing so I was most likely supporting the operations of a record company that, due to some one-sided contract they had convinced them to sign, was in the process of extorting work from the artist involved, but it was the only way I could get access to the music, to play where and when I wanted to listen to it.
Sometimes I would find that I had effectively paid well over the odds for a single, as the rest of the stuff on the CD was just filler. Occasionally however, I would find that I actually liked everything on the CD and would look out for other stuff by the same artist. I might then check if they were playing live somewhere nearby and get tickets to their concerts.
Now I can no longer listen to the radio at work without paying the PRS a licence fee to do so http://www.prsformusic.com/users/businessesandliveevents/musicforbusinesses/officesandfactories/Pages/officesfactories.aspx. I can listen to my MP3 player though, but the question is where to get the content?
I could go on iTunes and randomly buy loads of tracks in the hope that some of them might be something I actually like and that the DRM will allow me to play it where and when I choose, or I could go over to the dark side and download stuff for free.
Of course the end result would be the same as 20 years or so ago; I would be sitting, listening to free music and occasionally finding something that makes me want to go and see the artist live, but somehow with all the advances we have made in the meantime, what I am doing no longer supports the record companies and may well be illegal.
I think you misunderstand. A copyright belongs to the artist, to be used however they wish. If artists are having trouble with their labels, it is between them and the label, no-one else. They don't need pirates telling them what is best for them, or stripping of their copyrights over some nanny-state paternalistic bullcrap. If they don't want to be signed, they won't sign. Conversely, if they are signed, it means they wanted to be signed (or perhaps are indifferent either way). Maybe the figures floating around the internet don't tell us the whole story? A lot of people want the labels to fail, so a misinformation campaign wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
I think the misunderstanding might be yours.
Often once the artist (who is neither an experienced contract lawyer nor someone who has access to, or the money to pay for such expertise), has signed an extremely one-sided contract with the record company (that has both the access and the money) a copyright no longer belongs to the artist. In a lot of cases, neither does control over their artistic careers.
The record company's spin when it comes to online "piracy" is that it is threatening the livelihoods of the artists, whereas it is in fact far more likely that the artists themselves could survive perfectly well in the Internet age, but that the future for the companies is far less certain.
Couple this spin with the fact that the artists' livelihoods are far more under threat from the record companies themselves http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy.html, and you will begin to see why people get quite so angry when the record companies insult our intelligence with this sort of BS.
"when certain patterns of light are shone upon it" surely? http://www.verb2verbe.com/conjugation/english-verb/shine.aspx
I understand why people speed on highways, but on some residential roads in built up areas the speed limit is essential to keep people safe
A major part of the problem with speed limits is that they are set at one speed to cover all conditions and times of day and then they are enforced irrespective of the context. This in turn engenders a contempt for speed limits in general, which leads to people ignoring the speed limit where they really shouldn't.
This is a real world aspect that is never considered by those setting the rules
Oh please. The whole thing is encrypted with GPG. It doesn't matter who has the data, as long as they can't read it.
That's fine, as long as no one can read your profile data, they can't misuse it.
Having said that though, if no one can read it, its not going to be very useful in a social network site where people being able to read it is pretty much the point.
You assume that the project doesn't keep each person's profile on their own machine, with only name + main photo on machines of friends.
If the project does work in the way you suggest, this would mean that the millions of people who currently use Facebook would have to be capable of setting up their own, always on servers and maintaining their own copy of the project.
That might be fine for you and me, but the most likely scenario is that some more technically able people will set up severs and offer to host other (less able?) peoples' profiles. If this is the case, who are these people and can they be trusted with the data any more than Facebook?
Um... public key encryption might mitigate your worries. Not sure how to revoke privileges, and key exchanges would have to be done privately, but from then on you don't need to worry so much about who has your data in transmission. Then YOU decide who gets to read your data.
I'm less worried about who might see the data in transmission than I am about who gets access to it and the various copies shared with my friends. Unless I host my own profile and that of everyone I allow access to my profile, there will be people with copies of my profile data on their servers.
How do I know who those people are and how do I control what they do with the copies of my data they now have?
P2P, decentralized, or managed by FaceBook, as soon as anyone, including your "friends" has a copy of your data, you've lost control of it, and there is really no way to regain it.
I agree, but the message that the article seems to suggest is that it is only Facebook that we need to worry about and if only your data was being looked after by someone else, using free, open source software, that the problems with regards to data security go away.
Not only does this seem to miss the point, but ignores the fact that, should you wish to delete your profile using the new improved system, rather than go to one centralised point, it is likely that you would have to track down all the copies shared with all the servers that host your friends' accounts.
You really need to read the article.
I did
You'll host your data on your server, so there'll be no p2p stuff going on on dynamic IPs. It's p2p between servers, not in the same way bittorrent works.
Ah, so the millions of people who currently use facebook will get themselves a server with a static ip address and set up and maintain their own copy of the new system? ...nope, can't see any major problems there.
This is the real problem they need to solve - how non-techies can get set up. But presumably you'll be able to have 3rd parties providing hosting like with wordpress.
Oh right, so lots of third parties will host the user's data? Doesn't this bring us back to the point I made regarding who knows who those third parties are and who has access to the user data they now control instead of facebook?
They're trying to build a decentralized, p2p-style facebook application.
The problem with facebook is not the centralised nature of the application, but the lack of control a user has over their data and what facebook intend to do with it
In the case of a p2p, decentralised system it is surely even less clear as to where your profile data (embarrasing photos, etc) will actually be stored, who will have access to that data and how can you ensure you can delete it when you want to.
While the law is in place, it is, and you're obliged to follow it or suffer the consequences.
And from your reaction to my posts, you also imply that "you are obliged not to question the correctness of that law".
Either I am missing something or you are, but I have never suggested that the law should be broken.
One other thing that you are missing, is that law in society is always a balance between the word of law and the application of that law. Hence someone involved in a crime may or may not be convicted of it, not on the facts of the case, but on whether the prosecutor decides to take the case forward. In making that decision they might weigh up the benefit to society vs. the cost and chances of bringing a conviction.
Prior to modern technology being involved, being convicted of speeding was reliant on have an officer of the law accurately register your speed and then go to a (not insignificant), amount of effort to take it further. In this way the balance was maintained as it would typically only be where the excessive speed was deemed to be dangerous within the context in which it occurred, that a prosecution would occur.
Since the introduction of technology, in the vast majority of cases, a human being is rarely involved and certainly no consideration is taken of the circumstances of the offence. A computer decides your guilt and you get a letter in the post informing you of the fact and how much to pay and how many points (you can appeal, but without a good solicitor, it is unlikely that the computer will lose). In this way the original balance has been disrupted.
Now there is a proposal that things should be made even easier for the computer to go after even more people and you think there should be no discussion.
Well, once again, I disagree.
Whether you agree with a law (and a speedlimit is just that) or not is irrelevant
Well let's bring back slavery then, that was legal once.
The idea that you cannot question the validity of a law and the way that law is applied is not a position I am prepared to accept.
By simply discussing the way a law enforced without discussing whether there is anything wrong with that law in the first place is, in my view, a very blinkered way of going through life and encourages bad laws to be passed as no one is going to question the law makers.
To be honest I find this system better than the single-point checking systems that are also widely in use everywhere.
I disagree. In all of this, the first premise you have to accept is that the speed limit is correct in the first place.
In the UK we have something like 250,000 miles of roads and just 6 different speed limits. Now for every one of those quarter of a million miles of road to be set at a speed limit that is definitely not too low would be a miracle.
The easier "catching" someone for speeding gets, the more it will be used for revenue raising. The fact that people may lose their jobs along with their licences seems to be irrelevant.
Why not take away every teenagers computer, to prevent them from pirating in the first place?
You have only got to look at their other wish lists that include such things as "everyone should have to install spy software on their computers, to look for and delete things we think they shouldn't have", to see that, armed with this legislation, they will argue that anyone with a computer is potentially going to infringe imminently and so fair game for their legalised extortion.
If this doen't shore up the share price, I don't know what will (James Bond doesn't seem to be enough any more).
"ID Theft" does not exist. It is simply a spin doctor phrase to convince you that it is you that has lost something and not the bank.
So saying "ID Theft" instead of "Fraud" does serve a purpose as it indicates that a person's private information (e.g. SSN) was used in the fraudulent activity.
So why isn't there a name for a bank robbery where they have stolen your car and used it in the crime? Although I suspect if they thought that they could spin it so that you were therefore considered liable for their losses they might just invent one.
Thief A didn't commit fraud. He did, however, steal my identity/personal information and sell it to someone else. That should be illegal.
Firstly, they haven't stolen your identity, they have copied some information relating to you. It could be that to do so they have done something illegal (data protection, etc), but you have still not lost anything.
/. id that you name is Jason Levine, doesn't mean that you have lost anything or that anything has been stolen, in the same way that it is not true that a photograph can steal your soul. If I subsequently use your name whilst committing a crime doesn't alter that fact either.
The fact that I can guess from your
What annoys me is that by coming up with the spin incantation "ID Theft", banks have been able to make what is actually their problem your problem
Its not "ID Theft" its FRAUD
Before "ID Theft" existed, con artists would regularly pretend to be someone they weren't in order to steal things. If I pretend to be an engineer from the local telephone company in order to con my way into an old ladies house and steal her purse, no one would even think for a minute that the telephone company should foot the bill, but when someone pretends to be me and convinces a bank to give them some money on that basis, apparently it is ok for the bank to turn round and try to get me to pay for the result of their gullibility.
Taking something that doesn't belong to you without permission is stealing. Get over it. Stop trying to justify your selfish anti-social behavior.
Yes, but COPYING something that doesn't belong to you without permission is NOT stealing. Get over it. Stop trying to justify your ignorance of the facts.
What a waste of time, no numbers just percentages, no description of the types of users, in fact no real survey data at all.
I agree. I would also say that there is no real journalism here either. Quoting things like 'A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers' individual sites.' without any analysis of what the underlying numbers are gives a very distorted impression
One of the most obvious questions to ask is "How does the number of people represented by the 56% of Google visitors that apparently do click through compare to the numbers that would have gone to the newspaper website directly.
My guess is that Google's 54% is way bigger than the 100% of people that would have got to all the newspapers' web sites by other means, combined.
The only way the "supply and demand" model fluctuates prices is when there is a true market, with many people selling the exact same thing and many people buying it (think commodities).
In this situation, each seller is not just calculating what the customer is likely to be prepared to pay for their product, but how cheaply one of their competitors is likely to sell their identical product for, thus attracting buyers away.
The situation with music and movies is not a true market. Although there is still a calculation as to what the customer is ultimately prepared to pay, there is no real competition from other suppliers as, someone who wants to listen to one artist's music is not necessarily going to switch to another company's artists just because their CD's are cheaper to buy.
Yes, things like price anchoring and appeals to "think of the poor starving artists" help the public to keep swallowing the pills, but the real issue is that without real competition, the media companies have too much control for the "market" for it to ever establish the true price of the product.
Whether you agree with it or not, the rise of the Internet "pirate" is the first real competition these companies have ever faced.
This bullshit opinion that all patents are evil needs to end. If somebody spends time and money develoing an idea and inventing something new they deserve some bloody reward for it
I don't know if as many people would have a problem with this sentiment per se. However, the patent system is regularly abused by people who haven't spent time and money inventing something and aren't actually going to spend any time and money producing the product either, but simply look to sit on the patent and make their money from suing anyone who does put the effort in and brings the product to market.
The other problem is the granting of patents (especially software patents) for things that the patent office may think is novel and worthy of protection, but we all know is so obvious that it wouldn't occur to any of us to try to patent. However, once the patent is granted, again the patentee puts all their real effort into suing anyone who dares to come up with the same idea.
It is this leeching and obstructive use of patents that I would imagine that most people have problems with.
What about a double-decker arrangement? The keyboard would be on the desk in the usual way, but the touch pad would be on a shelf below the desk.
This would be a bit like some workstations currently position the keyboard (on a retractable shelf) only, because you dont need to see the touchpad when you are using it, the shelf doesn't need to be able to be pulled out.
I'm old enough to remember when it was an expensive treat to call long distance. Today you can get unlimited long distance for pennies.
Would the tremendous increase in bandwidth and reduction in costs of changing to a digital infrastructure have anything to do with this, or is it all just down to competition?
In the UK, the telecoms provider (BT) was privatised, not as a result of any political ideology, but so that they could borrow the billions required to digitise the network without the government's involvement. In the end however, they didn't need to borrow anything as the massive savings they made from digitising the first parts of the network more than paid for each subsequent upgrade.
Being digital, the new infrastructure enabled BT to do many things from a computer keyboard that they previously had to schedule a highly trained engineer out to do and BT soon found that it was making a profit from the standing charges alone - any money made from people actually making calls was a (huge) bonus.
All this success was sold as being as a result of privatisation, rather than digitisation, which in turn led to a rush to sell off anything that wasn't nailed down - usually at, what later investigations found to be, significantly below real value.
Of course none of the subsequent utility sell-offs had anything that corresponded to BT's digitisation and have instead led to inefficient monopolies. In the fine tradition of BT however, the privatised companies rarely actually have to put their hands in their own pockets as all upgrades are paid for by large, government approved levies added to the bills - long before any benefit (if any) to the consumer is actually provided.
These levies ensure that dividends are not affected by the need to invest in the infrastructure but, being able to have their cake and eat it, the value of these infrastructure improvements (paid for by the customers and not the shareholders) significantly boosts the value of the company and so the share price.