Simple: it sits around. I bought a PSP along with Metal Gear Acid, then Wipeout Pure. I've played each a little, and otherwise, the PSP tends to get charged up then die again before I even use it.
Well, since Qtrax was developed by LTDnetwork, which is a wholly own subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Inc, which brought us the evil of Brilliant Digital Entertainment's b3d Projector, it would seem to me that the evil is just being repackaged in a different wrapper.
Personally, BDE left such a bad taste in my mouth from the sneaky way that they tried to do things that I won't give them a second chance to make a mess on my computer. Many people have made other valid comments regarding how this platform is crippled from day one - who wants proprietary formats and heavy DRM that forces you to view ads to play music? I don't pretend to have a better option, but this whole idea smells bad.
EVE Online (http://www.eve-online.com/) probably has the largest consistent world. It's not as BIG player-wise as WoW, but we like it that way anyway. And it's in space, not fantasy. But aside from that, there's lots of fun things to do, even though the game does have a bit of a learning curve.
Players can give out unlimited free 2-week trials to other people too, so if anyone wants one, drop a note to ja!de@cris==tal @t gmail.com. (remove non-letter characters to get a valid address)
I seem to recall reading, after looking at a roadmap, that 1.0 would be delayed for OSX, since they wanted to Aqua-fy it. Now, I see that there is a nice 1.0 OSX package available. Is it "just Firefox," without OSX pretty-ness, or did they get it done early?
I know someone (that I work with) who has been helping with the OSX port, which is, as rumors indicate, close to done. From my understanding.
The whole process has been good for the client software as well. In the process of porting it, lots of things got cleaned up - something about gcc not being so friendly about inefficient coding practices as VC++ is. Perhaps I can convince that person to come post something nice and long about the wonderful joys of making the client byte-order independent.
Real simple: in the US, unlike Europe, where the sending/originator of a call or message pays, our scummy mobile phone companies make *US* pay. So, if someone goes to cingular.com and sends me a totally unsolicited message, voila-$.10 for my bill.
And if someone does that 100 times, voila-$10 on my bill. There's not any incentive for the mobile carriers to make it stop, except of customer complaints. Which, in this case, are probably what caused the lawsuit, since Verizon wants to be seen as proactive on the issue. But I really doubt that they mind that much. If there were no complaints, do you think they'd sue?
Autoplay begins reading from a drive as soon as you insert media in the drive. As a result, the setup file of programs and the music on audio media start immediately.
By default, Autoplay is disabled on removable drives, such as the floppy disk drive (but not the CD-ROM drive), and on network drives.
If you enable this setting, you can also disable Autoplay on CD-ROM drives or disable Autoplay on all drives.
This setting disables Autoplay on additional types of drives. You cannot use this setting to enable Autoplay on drives on which it is disabled by default.
Note: This setting appears in both the Computer Configuration and User Configuration folders. If the settings conflict, the setting in Computer Configuration takes precedence over the setting in User Configuration.
Note: This setting does not prevent Autoplay for music CDs.
*What* are you talking about? I mind that we can no longer carry box cutters onto airliners, for several reasons, not the least of which is that denying boarding to those who have box cutters does NOT make the plane more secure.
The fact is, on at least one of those planes the people sitting there when someone started waving a box cutter around kept sitting there and did nothing about it. Box cutters. There were enough people to crush the terrorist to death, and they just sat there.
Just like guns, blaming the object (a 1" blade that slides out of a convenient handle) instead of the criminal (a lunatic who wanted to take over a plane and crash it into a building) is a projection of the problem onto something else that the sheep seem willing to accept. After all, it must be the fault of the box cutter that the terrorist took over the plane.
Do you really feel safer just knowing that people can't take box cutters onto a plane any more?
Ok, fine. So they'll win. Let's do some fun math, and look at the practical results of such a suit...
You get sued, and refuse to settle. The RIAA takes their $100/hour lawyers (probably quite low) to court, and make an example out of you. You were sharing, oh... say, 500 songs. Now, the maximum statutory penalty for willful copyright infringement would be 250,000 USD TIMES 500 songs. 125 MILLION dollars. Lets say that the really nice RIAA lawyers, in making an example out of you, decide to recommend to the judge that you only be fined... 10,000 USD per infringement. <sarcasm>After all, that's much better than 250,000 USD.</sarcasm> Willful infringement would likely be really hard to prove, but infringement is easy if you were really infringing and they have proof.
Moving on, at 10,000 USD/song, we now have a much more reasonable number of only 5 million USD. RIAA presents proof, IP addresses, whatever. BAM goes the gavel, and a judgement against you is entered for 5M USD. Ignoring court costs.
You have a really good job, where you make 50,000/year. Their chances of ever seeing anything out of you? Nominal. The chance that they've just fscked your life (if you had much of a filesystem left in the first place after they raid you)? Pretty good.
And thus we again have a semi-sane, though probably twisted, example of why copyright is messed up.
Disclaimer, as usual: IANAL. This is not intended to constitute legal advice, if it could be taken in such manner under any interpretation. If you're in the process of being 0wn3d by the Racketeering In America Association, please contact a REAL lawyer.
I'll go even further, since I *just* purchased a 40 GB iPod, *knowing* that there were rumors of small iPods.
WHY, in any world, would it be smart to pay half the price ($249 instead of $499) for ONE TENTH of the space? Granted, you can say that it's a lot more money, but if you have the money to justify spending $249 for a music player, you can probably justify spending $499 for a music player with ten times the space.
A friend just sent me an email, asking if I "felt good now," along with a link to the new iPods. Yes, I feel fine. And I'll keep my shiny pretty new iPod, preciousssss...
Re:One weakness of both articles: free always wins
on
Economics of File-Sharing
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I wouldn't go so far to say that "free always wins." If there is an artist I like, I *want* to support them, to the point of driving 8+ hours to see them.
And while I'm there, I buy stuff just to buy it, like an extra copy of the CD I already have, and a shirt. In this case, it's pop/rock, but hey, that's one of the kinds of music that I like. Some of the artists that I like are signed to majors, some aren't - the reality of it is that even if they are signed to a major, they likely aren't making enough money to make it really worth their while, unless they're overpromoted for their talent.
I'm not naive enough to say that those unsigned artists that even have time to tour will be totally supported by thing like t-shirt sales - that's silly, and to the point of an overused cliche.
At risk of being flamed badly, I'll even admit to subscribing the "new" Napster, though I do so with no misunderstanding about what I'm "buying," which is pretty much a crappy sampling experience. The iTunes store is somewhat better, but still leaves things to be desired. Perhaps in time, the music industry, as it sits today, will get a clue. If not, the solution HAS to be music without industry.
Copyright violation is not stealing. It's copyright violation. You have not deprived anyone else of physical goods, just some profit that they might have made if you had purchased the copyrighted work rather than making a copy of it.
Please read the whole comment, and note that from what I just said, this does not make copyright violation any better than stealing, from a legal perspective. They are both violations of the law. The difference is that "piracy" is equated in people's mind with pillage, rape, robbery, and murder - equating "piracy" with copyright violation is exactly what the so-called content industry does, so that rather than consider questioning the law, you back down. Disagreeing with something called "piracy" implies that you might think that pillage, rape, and murder, and everything else that goes along with it, might be something else that you disagree is bad.
Letting the content industry twist words for the sake of propaganda isn't in our best interest. Propagating their twisting by using their terminology is probably not in our best interest either. Let's call apples apples and oranges oranges, and not compare things that have no relation to each other. "Piracy" is not a good metaphor for copyright violation.
This is modded as +5, Funny. Why, exactly, is this funny? We are dealing with someone driven not only by the desire to make a profit, but to make the MAXIMUM profit possible, under monopoly conditions, and at any cost to society.
Economic principles show clearly that in a monopoly, the cost for goods is higher than in a non-monopoly. The monopolist can charge whatever they want, and since there is a point at which people will no longer pay for something (determined by their price elasticity of demand), the monopolist optimzes such that they can charge the largest number of people the most possible.
I'd say that Valanti and the MPAA are doing a pretty good job of optimizing that curve...
Someone with the technical experience that they can answer questions relating to sales, like whether something can or can't be done with a product, and to provide advice.
If I understand right, they keep the market-droids in line, so that the product sold actually kinda meets the customers needs, rather than just causing the largest windfall for the sales team.
Thus, while a sales engineer will work in the sales department, and closely with the sales-people, they are at least partially a techie.
One of the things that I've been waiting for is minature power cells, a la Star Trek. It was always really cool to me how equipment could be lugged around from here to there, apparently never needing recharged.
If it helps, maybe this moves us one step closer to having laptops that can be used as true portable computers, not needing charged for days or weeks at a time.
1000 km/h, while quite "fast" to us, is still a mere fraction of the speed of light. Relativistic effects, like time dialation, don't begin to occur at what most people would consider "significant" levels until more like 10% of c (light speed). For reference, 1000 km/h is.28 m/s, or so. Light moves at 300,000,000 m/s, making 1000 km/h less than a billionth of the speed of light.
Time dialation is better explained by other sites, but the math involved might be annoying for some. There is an applet for simulation, if you wish, which may or may not work for you; there is also a tutorial in special relativity.
According the MS Exchange site, an Exchange 2000 CAL "includes user rights for [Microsoft Outlook] and permits access from Outlook Web Access." Oh, yeah, and it costs $67.
Thus, it costs MORE to use the "free" alternative, Evolution, than it does to use the Microsoft solution. Where's the sense in that, no matter how much you hate MS?
Phil actually left after 7.0.3 was released, and he declared it "safe." - from my understanding, at least. After 7.0.3, it would seem that all bets were off.
Slashdot Mirror
Simple: it sits around. I bought a PSP along with Metal Gear Acid, then Wipeout Pure. I've played each a little, and otherwise, the PSP tends to get charged up then die again before I even use it.
Well, since Qtrax was developed by LTDnetwork, which is a wholly own subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Inc, which brought us the evil of Brilliant Digital Entertainment's b3d Projector, it would seem to me that the evil is just being repackaged in a different wrapper.
Personally, BDE left such a bad taste in my mouth from the sneaky way that they tried to do things that I won't give them a second chance to make a mess on my computer. Many people have made other valid comments regarding how this platform is crippled from day one - who wants proprietary formats and heavy DRM that forces you to view ads to play music? I don't pretend to have a better option, but this whole idea smells bad.
http://www.eve-online.com/background/potw/apr01.as p
EVE Online (http://www.eve-online.com/) probably has the largest consistent world. It's not as BIG player-wise as WoW, but we like it that way anyway. And it's in space, not fantasy. But aside from that, there's lots of fun things to do, even though the game does have a bit of a learning curve.
Players can give out unlimited free 2-week trials to other people too, so if anyone wants one, drop a note to ja!de@cris==tal @t gmail.com. (remove non-letter characters to get a valid address)
MOD PARENT UP, please. Of all the times not to have mod points...
Visiting the People's Democratic Republic of New York is, in fact, leaving the USA. As such, passports make more sense.
With less sarcasm, the situation really is heading towards quite-out-of-hand.
I seem to recall reading, after looking at a roadmap, that 1.0 would be delayed for OSX, since they wanted to Aqua-fy it. Now, I see that there is a nice 1.0 OSX package available. Is it "just Firefox," without OSX pretty-ness, or did they get it done early?
I know someone (that I work with) who has been helping with the OSX port, which is, as rumors indicate, close to done. From my understanding.
The whole process has been good for the client software as well. In the process of porting it, lots of things got cleaned up - something about gcc not being so friendly about inefficient coding practices as VC++ is. Perhaps I can convince that person to come post something nice and long about the wonderful joys of making the client byte-order independent.
Real simple: in the US, unlike Europe, where the sending/originator of a call or message pays, our scummy mobile phone companies make *US* pay. So, if someone goes to cingular.com and sends me a totally unsolicited message, voila-$.10 for my bill.
And if someone does that 100 times, voila-$10 on my bill. There's not any incentive for the mobile carriers to make it stop, except of customer complaints. Which, in this case, are probably what caused the lawsuit, since Verizon wants to be seen as proactive on the issue. But I really doubt that they mind that much. If there were no complaints, do you think they'd sue?
If Pepsi can give away 100 million songs for free, why can't Apple? I bet it would have further driven iPod sales, too.
From Microsoft's description:
Turns off the Autoplay feature.
Autoplay begins reading from a drive as soon as you insert media in the drive. As a result, the setup file of programs and the music on audio media start immediately.
By default, Autoplay is disabled on removable drives, such as the floppy disk drive (but not the CD-ROM drive), and on network drives.
If you enable this setting, you can also disable Autoplay on CD-ROM drives or disable Autoplay on all drives.
This setting disables Autoplay on additional types of drives. You cannot use this setting to enable Autoplay on drives on which it is disabled by default.
Note: This setting appears in both the Computer Configuration and User Configuration folders. If the settings conflict, the setting in Computer Configuration takes precedence over the setting in User Configuration.
Note: This setting does not prevent Autoplay for music CDs.
System.activateAsbestosSuit();
*What* are you talking about? I mind that we can no longer carry box cutters onto airliners, for several reasons, not the least of which is that denying boarding to those who have box cutters does NOT make the plane more secure.
The fact is, on at least one of those planes the people sitting there when someone started waving a box cutter around kept sitting there and did nothing about it. Box cutters. There were enough people to crush the terrorist to death, and they just sat there.
Just like guns, blaming the object (a 1" blade that slides out of a convenient handle) instead of the criminal (a lunatic who wanted to take over a plane and crash it into a building) is a projection of the problem onto something else that the sheep seem willing to accept. After all, it must be the fault of the box cutter that the terrorist took over the plane.
Do you really feel safer just knowing that people can't take box cutters onto a plane any more?
Ok, fine. So they'll win. Let's do some fun math, and look at the practical results of such a suit...
You get sued, and refuse to settle. The RIAA takes their $100/hour lawyers (probably quite low) to court, and make an example out of you. You were sharing, oh... say, 500 songs. Now, the maximum statutory penalty for willful copyright infringement would be 250,000 USD TIMES 500 songs. 125 MILLION dollars. Lets say that the really nice RIAA lawyers, in making an example out of you, decide to recommend to the judge that you only be fined... 10,000 USD per infringement. <sarcasm>After all, that's much better than 250,000 USD.</sarcasm> Willful infringement would likely be really hard to prove, but infringement is easy if you were really infringing and they have proof.
Moving on, at 10,000 USD/song, we now have a much more reasonable number of only 5 million USD. RIAA presents proof, IP addresses, whatever. BAM goes the gavel, and a judgement against you is entered for 5M USD. Ignoring court costs.
You have a really good job, where you make 50,000/year. Their chances of ever seeing anything out of you? Nominal. The chance that they've just fscked your life (if you had much of a filesystem left in the first place after they raid you)? Pretty good.
And thus we again have a semi-sane, though probably twisted, example of why copyright is messed up.
Disclaimer, as usual: IANAL. This is not intended to constitute legal advice, if it could be taken in such manner under any interpretation. If you're in the process of being 0wn3d by the Racketeering In America Association, please contact a REAL lawyer.
I'll go even further, since I *just* purchased a 40 GB iPod, *knowing* that there were rumors of small iPods.
WHY, in any world, would it be smart to pay half the price ($249 instead of $499) for ONE TENTH of the space? Granted, you can say that it's a lot more money, but if you have the money to justify spending $249 for a music player, you can probably justify spending $499 for a music player with ten times the space.
A friend just sent me an email, asking if I "felt good now," along with a link to the new iPods. Yes, I feel fine. And I'll keep my shiny pretty new iPod, preciousssss...
I wouldn't go so far to say that "free always wins." If there is an artist I like, I *want* to support them, to the point of driving 8+ hours to see them.
And while I'm there, I buy stuff just to buy it, like an extra copy of the CD I already have, and a shirt. In this case, it's pop/rock, but hey, that's one of the kinds of music that I like. Some of the artists that I like are signed to majors, some aren't - the reality of it is that even if they are signed to a major, they likely aren't making enough money to make it really worth their while, unless they're overpromoted for their talent.
I'm not naive enough to say that those unsigned artists that even have time to tour will be totally supported by thing like t-shirt sales - that's silly, and to the point of an overused cliche.
At risk of being flamed badly, I'll even admit to subscribing the "new" Napster, though I do so with no misunderstanding about what I'm "buying," which is pretty much a crappy sampling experience. The iTunes store is somewhat better, but still leaves things to be desired. Perhaps in time, the music industry, as it sits today, will get a clue. If not, the solution HAS to be music without industry.
Copyright violation is not stealing. It's copyright violation. You have not deprived anyone else of physical goods, just some profit that they might have made if you had purchased the copyrighted work rather than making a copy of it.
Please read the whole comment, and note that from what I just said, this does not make copyright violation any better than stealing, from a legal perspective. They are both violations of the law. The difference is that "piracy" is equated in people's mind with pillage, rape, robbery, and murder - equating "piracy" with copyright violation is exactly what the so-called content industry does, so that rather than consider questioning the law, you back down. Disagreeing with something called "piracy" implies that you might think that pillage, rape, and murder, and everything else that goes along with it, might be something else that you disagree is bad.
Letting the content industry twist words for the sake of propaganda isn't in our best interest. Propagating their twisting by using their terminology is probably not in our best interest either. Let's call apples apples and oranges oranges, and not compare things that have no relation to each other. "Piracy" is not a good metaphor for copyright violation.
I can't spell Jack's name right either. Sorry.
This is modded as +5, Funny. Why, exactly, is this funny? We are dealing with someone driven not only by the desire to make a profit, but to make the MAXIMUM profit possible, under monopoly conditions, and at any cost to society.
Economic principles show clearly that in a monopoly, the cost for goods is higher than in a non-monopoly. The monopolist can charge whatever they want, and since there is a point at which people will no longer pay for something (determined by their price elasticity of demand), the monopolist optimzes such that they can charge the largest number of people the most possible.
I'd say that Valanti and the MPAA are doing a pretty good job of optimizing that curve...
Ogg is the *container*, and Vorbis is the lossy audio codec designed as a free replacement for MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3).
Ogg, the container, is also useful for other formats, as it's more of a "packet-izing" thing than a format.
I think.
Someone with the technical experience that they can answer questions relating to sales, like whether something can or can't be done with a product, and to provide advice.
If I understand right, they keep the market-droids in line, so that the product sold actually kinda meets the customers needs, rather than just causing the largest windfall for the sales team.
Thus, while a sales engineer will work in the sales department, and closely with the sales-people, they are at least partially a techie.
One of the things that I've been waiting for is minature power cells, a la Star Trek. It was always really cool to me how equipment could be lugged around from here to there, apparently never needing recharged.
If it helps, maybe this moves us one step closer to having laptops that can be used as true portable computers, not needing charged for days or weeks at a time.
Don't you have "insurance" for your automobile (assuming that you have one)?
1000 km/h, while quite "fast" to us, is still a mere fraction of the speed of light. Relativistic effects, like time dialation, don't begin to occur at what most people would consider "significant" levels until more like 10% of c (light speed). For reference, 1000 km/h is .28 m/s, or so. Light moves at 300,000,000 m/s, making 1000 km/h less than a billionth of the speed of light.
Time dialation is better explained by other sites, but the math involved might be annoying for some. There is an applet for simulation, if you wish, which may or may not work for you; there is also a tutorial in special relativity.
According the MS Exchange site, an Exchange 2000 CAL "includes user rights for [Microsoft Outlook] and permits access from Outlook Web Access." Oh, yeah, and it costs $67.
Thus, it costs MORE to use the "free" alternative, Evolution, than it does to use the Microsoft solution. Where's the sense in that, no matter how much you hate MS?
Phil actually left after 7.0.3 was released, and he declared it "safe." - from my understanding, at least. After 7.0.3, it would seem that all bets were off.