They don't need to sell them to people with iPods. They just need to offer them as a choice.. if people buy FLAC instead of mp3 despite a warning saying 'please check your chosen format is compatible with your media player' and a default to MP3 then they probably shouldn't be using the internet to buy things.
One nice potential side effect of the inclusion of FLAC along with a slightly increased price for the banwidth would be pressure on manufacturers to start supporting FLAC. The reason being that people will likely think they are missing out on a better product.
DRM causes way more problems than FLAC ever could and they forced that on people so I don't give much credence to any arguments that an open format is unsupportable.
Hell, any actual businessman rather than con-artist would see the benefits of shutting up the 'mp3's are destroying music' crowd of technophobes.
Geez, you're really trying to defend the logic of your post by attacking the logic of a parody of your own post? Well I guess by helping you with the logic of my parody I am in some way helping you with the logic of your own post so here goes.
For a start, 'all time' is a matter of perspective meets semantics. While you could argue that there is only one definition of 'all time' you may as well argue that they sky isn't blue. Really, you could say that all time could be in different contexts both a mere moment and a non number. Within the context of my parody it was a lifespan.
The semantics was pretty much why I parodied your post, I was objecting to your use of infinity to make 75 years seem like a small number because you can only draw one relationship between a number and infinity. It doesn't matter what number you use, it's relationship to infinity is always the same. If you still don't understand my point, ask a mathmatician.. they can probably explain it better than I can.
Others are settling for the decidedly inferior product available through filesharing and torrent sites.
Weirdly, filesharing often provides better quality products as you can get pre tagged FLAC files ripped with EAC from a CD.
The only big artist I know offering a similar level of quality is Nine Inch Nails. Even the small labels have hardly realised that they can offer a better product than CD for cheaper and insist on using MP3/WMA etc.
I've hardly ever had to visit his blog due to the marvelous quality of his summaries. Maybe if he cut down on the quality of his summaries he could up the traffic to his blog.
Why should there be a downside for the public? Or the artist for the matter, unless they believe their music is worth more than those who listen to it do.. I'm sure there's a word for that somewhere.
I didn't mean to imply that the reason he hasn't closed gitmo is because he is having trouble with congress. I fully believe that if he wanted to it would only have to say 'do it'. I do think that he has reservations about how to handle the closure of the place and that the delays are more to do with his handling of the practicalities than the politics.
Your points about how the system works show a difference in opinion over what works. To me, the belief you have not been adequately represented in the last 3 elections is a symptom of the problem.
Full disclosure, idealogically I am an anarchist. Politically I am just extremely liberal. If everyone was sufficiently capable then we would not need politics. Politics is kind of the bridge between ideals and reality and right now it seems disconnected from reality almost entirely.
My thanks to bentcd for already making the key point you seem to be missing. I would like to clarify further that there are only 6.7 billion people at the moment. Much like the current average life-span is only 75 years. If we lived forever then you may have a point although I would imagine living forever would make it rather moot.
Do you get paid for posting on slashdot? Putting aside fact that you could force people NOT to pay for content and it would not stop the flow of content, I usually want to pay content creators. I don't have infinite funds however and I want the money I spend to go to the most deserving content creators. That is rather hard to do if I have to pay before I get the content.
Then you get the middlemen. I like punk music. Were I to buy punk music from a major record label then the artist would likely get bugger all. On top of that, the money that doesn't go directly to the artist is more likely to fund the next Britney Spears (who I definite DON'T want to support) than my rather offensive and not at all sexy, punk artist. Luckily for me, one of my favourite punk bands is NOFX who actually run their own label.
They do seem to pick poor analogies to make pro copyright points.
if you don't pay your electricity bill you'll get cut off
Yeah.. but they don't need the law to be able to do that. If people stream music then the person streaming the music can cut them off at any time, that would be the right parallel to draw with his analogy. I don't get my electricity taken away for not paying for it.. the supply gets stopped.
When you use analogies to show an actual comparison between what they want and what normally happens you get something completely different. My current favourite is making chairs compared to file sharing. A craftsman makes and sells a chair to Mr Bean. Mr Bean has a friend called Mr Ballmer who likes that chair and wants one just like it. Mr Bean makes an exact copy of that chair, using his own tools and materials, and gives it to the friend for free. Now in that scenario, how would the craftsman sue Mr Bean for copyright infringement? If you were to have Mr Bean mass producing chairs and giving them away for free (probably all to Ballmer), then again, what part of the law is the craftsman going to sue Mr Bean under and why the hell should he be able to anyway?
Really, however, on the whole you are seeing a relatively short span for copyright; 75 years, for example, is much closer to zero than it is to infinity.
I like your logic! Let me use that. 'Really, however, on the whole you are seeing a relatively small amount of death; 6.7 billion, for example, is much closer to zero than it is to infinity.'
So all book publishers have to do is include a EULA to stop people selling used books? And people wonder why some of us think the world would be better off without things like copyright.
In the publishers' mind people should be forced to pay for things that have no material value and the many comply out of misplaced good will. I was going to do an analogy, it was probably going to involve a chair.. but I shall spare everyone, this time. The options boil down to this; either publishers and their like can convince skeptics like me that they know better than we do or they can fuck off and let us spend our money how we see fit. It is unfortunate that we do not live in a society where people are free to make decisions in ways that effect no one else but considering society apparently can't tell a con artist from a businessman I don't think we have much to worry about.
The world may or may not still be laughing at you but I would consider the story of how he 'insulted' Britain to be a rather poor point. As a Brit I cannot say I know anyone who gives a damn about whether Barack Obama shows us respect, personally or in the media. It must be shocking that a newspaper would print a load of sensationalist crap that failed to generate more than a day or two's worth of coverage elsewhere.
Considering how much our country hates our own leaders what makes you think we have the energy to hate yours as well? We didn't even elect our current leader and he's going ahead with yet another cabinet reshuffle, I think we can afford Obama a bit of slack for managing to show us more respect than we usually get from our own royal family let alone our politicians.
Your point about gitmo is better, either the guy is in charge and can pull the plug like he said he would or he isn't in charge and made a promise he couldn't keep. Ofc, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle where he is in charge but is dealing with circumstances he didn't expect.
I can't say I have any sympathy for anyone who wants to lead a country but I can understand the sorts of problems he might be having. No that isn't an excuse, however the anger towards him is misplaced.. he may be a fool but I believe that comes more from running for president than not being able to handle it as I don't believe you would get anyone better in that position. From your attitude I would presume you to have faith in a system that seems to require some sort of AI as president to make it work. Any person more capable of doing the job should be too smart to believe they should be doing it.
So do not threat over how much of a buffoon you believe Obama to be.. threat over how he has given the system an air of legitimacy. Bush at least gave you many reasons why the system doesn't work.. A president who can speak eloquently and at least seems intelligent however incapable he may be, does do a good job of hiding the deficiencies in the system.Over here in Blighty we have very similar problems.. perhaps worse ones. At the moment however we are at a crossroads, the respect of our leaders is at such an all time low that the leaders themselves are starting to think about why the system doesn't work if just to save their jobs. If we are lucky their efforts to save their own skins may put us in a better position than yourselves even though your leader is diamond compared to our Mr Brown or even compared to the upstart Mr Cameron.
At which point (in the UK at least), you would tell them to take it through the small claims court if they want their money back and cite OFT guidance (page 52) in your defense of the claim.
I'd be surprised if you couldn't pull something similar in the US as two of the basic concepts of contract law are consideration and estoppel. I guess you would be probably relying on previous case law for this, unless the US has any guidance similar to that given in the UK.
As a bonus, they both work on Windows as well as Linux. I cannot attest to their quality compared to Skype but I also cannot think of any reason they should offer less quality than Netmeeting.
That is a fine strategy if you are worried people aren't going to take you seriously but this guy is a renowned professor at Harvard. He should have more than enough credibility to make a difference here and I don't see how dragging things on longer will do anything other than give the RIAA time to sweet talk some more politicians and judges.
They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive--termed them a 'disease.' Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term 'research.,' has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically--the "epidemic" having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between 5 and 7 million today--this remains the state of the 'science' of ADHD.
Wait, what revelation is this? Psychology is different to other medical sciences? Wow, and this guys an MD! Maybe he can join the Scientologists in their vendetta against psychiatrists.
Due to the complex nature of the human brain, psychology often diagnoses based on a set of linked symptoms with no definite cause. If you think that is fraudulent then perhaps you believe depression and Asperger's are fraudulent too.
Maybe I'm wrong and the guy does actually have a good case against ADD based on poor methodology used in diagnosis but considering he goes out of his way to categorise psychiatric disorders and the like as 'non-diseases' which is a redundant statement, I think the odds on him being a zealous loon are in my favour.
How'd this get modded informative? I can't tell if you're being bizarrely pedantic or are just uninformed. Technically you could argue that the parliament based in London represents the UK as a whole and not England specifically but it is still the parliament that governs England.
Yeah, because someone posting conflicted views on a subject as AC while declaring themselves not to be a troll is definitely genuine.
Plus, uh.. he did respond?
There is a significant number of people who do like the *crosses out old*, current model. Half of those probably just haven't thought things through and the other half are probably the minority who will actually be worse off overall.
Personally I would love to see the benefits of a copyright free society, choice being the foremost. Currently if I want music legally from artists who work under a record company I have to pay the record company. This means that in paying £10 for my punk CD I am probably funding the next Spice Girls more than I am supporting the band I bought the CD of.
To me, that sucks. Instead of being able to invest in my favourite artist I am restricted to investing in a record company whose sole aim is to maximise profits. To maximise profits they may decide not to invest in punk and put all my money elsewhere. If you think that is how culture should work you can still donate money to publishers and record companies to make your decisions for you even without copyright.
If you're wondering what the fuck that has to do with your post, the same process is what gives us a £100m film. Admittedly copyright doesn't isn't the sole culprit here (after all you can still get independent artists with copyright), but if people are forced to choose what they invest in by virtue of there being no reason for companies to do it for them then I think all except those obsessed with big budget films will be a lot richer without copyright.
I don't really think it was 'the public' that was the driving force behind copyright. I rather think that when copyright was first introduced it is more likely that anyone paying attention who didn't have a vested interest in books saw it as a dangerous thing. Unfortunately history shows that lobbying is often more powerful than good sense.. especially since most of the original restrictions put on by those who were wary of copyright have been taken away by more lobbying.
Now, many generations later, most people see it as some sort of necessity right instead of one huge cock-up. The lobby groups have the vast population fooled into thinking everything they do is 'fighting crime' because they have the law on their side and most people seem to have been brought up to put the law before themselves (or at least condemn others for not doing so).
All in all, the public has had about as much say in the whole shenanigans as a fraud victim. The sooner people stop thinking the law is smarter than them the sooner we can climb out of this hole.
Sad thing is, this guy sells games on a platform that would attract the most file sharers (minimal DRM). If I had been remotely interested in his games before I read his comments I would certainly change my mind afterwards. I have however bought 3 other games on the same service by people who don't go on internet forums and pretend to be victims of theft. Incidentally, Supreme Commander is brilliant.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't need to sell them to people with iPods. They just need to offer them as a choice.. if people buy FLAC instead of mp3 despite a warning saying 'please check your chosen format is compatible with your media player' and a default to MP3 then they probably shouldn't be using the internet to buy things.
One nice potential side effect of the inclusion of FLAC along with a slightly increased price for the banwidth would be pressure on manufacturers to start supporting FLAC. The reason being that people will likely think they are missing out on a better product.
DRM causes way more problems than FLAC ever could and they forced that on people so I don't give much credence to any arguments that an open format is unsupportable.
Hell, any actual businessman rather than con-artist would see the benefits of shutting up the 'mp3's are destroying music' crowd of technophobes.
Geez, you're really trying to defend the logic of your post by attacking the logic of a parody of your own post? Well I guess by helping you with the logic of my parody I am in some way helping you with the logic of your own post so here goes.
For a start, 'all time' is a matter of perspective meets semantics. While you could argue that there is only one definition of 'all time' you may as well argue that they sky isn't blue. Really, you could say that all time could be in different contexts both a mere moment and a non number. Within the context of my parody it was a lifespan.
The semantics was pretty much why I parodied your post, I was objecting to your use of infinity to make 75 years seem like a small number because you can only draw one relationship between a number and infinity. It doesn't matter what number you use, it's relationship to infinity is always the same. If you still don't understand my point, ask a mathmatician.. they can probably explain it better than I can.
Others are settling for the decidedly inferior product available through filesharing and torrent sites.
Weirdly, filesharing often provides better quality products as you can get pre tagged FLAC files ripped with EAC from a CD.
The only big artist I know offering a similar level of quality is Nine Inch Nails. Even the small labels have hardly realised that they can offer a better product than CD for cheaper and insist on using MP3/WMA etc.
Don't be silly, hes not got an account.. why else would he post anonymously.
*whisper*
What's that? Under a bridge you say? Oh, a troll! well nevermind then.
I've hardly ever had to visit his blog due to the marvelous quality of his summaries. Maybe if he cut down on the quality of his summaries he could up the traffic to his blog.
Why should there be a downside for the public? Or the artist for the matter, unless they believe their music is worth more than those who listen to it do.. I'm sure there's a word for that somewhere.
I didn't mean to imply that the reason he hasn't closed gitmo is because he is having trouble with congress. I fully believe that if he wanted to it would only have to say 'do it'. I do think that he has reservations about how to handle the closure of the place and that the delays are more to do with his handling of the practicalities than the politics.
Your points about how the system works show a difference in opinion over what works. To me, the belief you have not been adequately represented in the last 3 elections is a symptom of the problem.
Full disclosure, idealogically I am an anarchist. Politically I am just extremely liberal. If everyone was sufficiently capable then we would not need politics. Politics is kind of the bridge between ideals and reality and right now it seems disconnected from reality almost entirely.
My thanks to bentcd for already making the key point you seem to be missing. I would like to clarify further that there are only 6.7 billion people at the moment. Much like the current average life-span is only 75 years. If we lived forever then you may have a point although I would imagine living forever would make it rather moot.
Do you get paid for posting on slashdot? Putting aside fact that you could force people NOT to pay for content and it would not stop the flow of content, I usually want to pay content creators. I don't have infinite funds however and I want the money I spend to go to the most deserving content creators. That is rather hard to do if I have to pay before I get the content.
Then you get the middlemen. I like punk music. Were I to buy punk music from a major record label then the artist would likely get bugger all. On top of that, the money that doesn't go directly to the artist is more likely to fund the next Britney Spears (who I definite DON'T want to support) than my rather offensive and not at all sexy, punk artist. Luckily for me, one of my favourite punk bands is NOFX who actually run their own label.
They do seem to pick poor analogies to make pro copyright points.
if you don't pay your electricity bill you'll get cut off
Yeah.. but they don't need the law to be able to do that. If people stream music then the person streaming the music can cut them off at any time, that would be the right parallel to draw with his analogy. I don't get my electricity taken away for not paying for it.. the supply gets stopped.
When you use analogies to show an actual comparison between what they want and what normally happens you get something completely different. My current favourite is making chairs compared to file sharing. A craftsman makes and sells a chair to Mr Bean. Mr Bean has a friend called Mr Ballmer who likes that chair and wants one just like it. Mr Bean makes an exact copy of that chair, using his own tools and materials, and gives it to the friend for free. Now in that scenario, how would the craftsman sue Mr Bean for copyright infringement? If you were to have Mr Bean mass producing chairs and giving them away for free (probably all to Ballmer), then again, what part of the law is the craftsman going to sue Mr Bean under and why the hell should he be able to anyway?
Really, however, on the whole you are seeing a relatively short span for copyright; 75 years, for example, is much closer to zero than it is to infinity.
I like your logic! Let me use that. 'Really, however, on the whole you are seeing a relatively small amount of death; 6.7 billion, for example, is much closer to zero than it is to infinity.'
So all book publishers have to do is include a EULA to stop people selling used books? And people wonder why some of us think the world would be better off without things like copyright.
In the publishers' mind people should be forced to pay for things that have no material value and the many comply out of misplaced good will. I was going to do an analogy, it was probably going to involve a chair.. but I shall spare everyone, this time. The options boil down to this; either publishers and their like can convince skeptics like me that they know better than we do or they can fuck off and let us spend our money how we see fit. It is unfortunate that we do not live in a society where people are free to make decisions in ways that effect no one else but considering society apparently can't tell a con artist from a businessman I don't think we have much to worry about.
The world may or may not still be laughing at you but I would consider the story of how he 'insulted' Britain to be a rather poor point. As a Brit I cannot say I know anyone who gives a damn about whether Barack Obama shows us respect, personally or in the media. It must be shocking that a newspaper would print a load of sensationalist crap that failed to generate more than a day or two's worth of coverage elsewhere.
Considering how much our country hates our own leaders what makes you think we have the energy to hate yours as well? We didn't even elect our current leader and he's going ahead with yet another cabinet reshuffle, I think we can afford Obama a bit of slack for managing to show us more respect than we usually get from our own royal family let alone our politicians.
Your point about gitmo is better, either the guy is in charge and can pull the plug like he said he would or he isn't in charge and made a promise he couldn't keep. Ofc, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle where he is in charge but is dealing with circumstances he didn't expect.
I can't say I have any sympathy for anyone who wants to lead a country but I can understand the sorts of problems he might be having. No that isn't an excuse, however the anger towards him is misplaced.. he may be a fool but I believe that comes more from running for president than not being able to handle it as I don't believe you would get anyone better in that position. From your attitude I would presume you to have faith in a system that seems to require some sort of AI as president to make it work. Any person more capable of doing the job should be too smart to believe they should be doing it.
So do not threat over how much of a buffoon you believe Obama to be.. threat over how he has given the system an air of legitimacy. Bush at least gave you many reasons why the system doesn't work.. A president who can speak eloquently and at least seems intelligent however incapable he may be, does do a good job of hiding the deficiencies in the system.Over here in Blighty we have very similar problems.. perhaps worse ones. At the moment however we are at a crossroads, the respect of our leaders is at such an all time low that the leaders themselves are starting to think about why the system doesn't work if just to save their jobs. If we are lucky their efforts to save their own skins may put us in a better position than yourselves even though your leader is diamond compared to our Mr Brown or even compared to the upstart Mr Cameron.
Troll forgot to tick Post Anonymously?
At which point (in the UK at least), you would tell them to take it through the small claims court if they want their money back and cite OFT guidance (page 52) in your defense of the claim.
I'd be surprised if you couldn't pull something similar in the US as two of the basic concepts of contract law are consideration and estoppel. I guess you would be probably relying on previous case law for this, unless the US has any guidance similar to that given in the UK.
Ekiga and QuteCom
As a bonus, they both work on Windows as well as Linux. I cannot attest to their quality compared to Skype but I also cannot think of any reason they should offer less quality than Netmeeting.
How pointless, hopefully everyone will switch to something non commercial like Jabber and the only ones to suffer will be Microsoft.
That is a fine strategy if you are worried people aren't going to take you seriously but this guy is a renowned professor at Harvard. He should have more than enough credibility to make a difference here and I don't see how dragging things on longer will do anything other than give the RIAA time to sweet talk some more politicians and judges.
It doesn't matter, easier != better. Table layout may be easier but it is not better for accessibility or just plain flexibility.
They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive--termed them a 'disease.' Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term 'research.,' has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically--the "epidemic" having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between 5 and 7 million today--this remains the state of the 'science' of ADHD.
Wait, what revelation is this? Psychology is different to other medical sciences? Wow, and this guys an MD! Maybe he can join the Scientologists in their vendetta against psychiatrists.
Due to the complex nature of the human brain, psychology often diagnoses based on a set of linked symptoms with no definite cause. If you think that is fraudulent then perhaps you believe depression and Asperger's are fraudulent too.
Maybe I'm wrong and the guy does actually have a good case against ADD based on poor methodology used in diagnosis but considering he goes out of his way to categorise psychiatric disorders and the like as 'non-diseases' which is a redundant statement, I think the odds on him being a zealous loon are in my favour.
How'd this get modded informative? I can't tell if you're being bizarrely pedantic or are just uninformed. Technically you could argue that the parliament based in London represents the UK as a whole and not England specifically but it is still the parliament that governs England.
Yeah, because someone posting conflicted views on a subject as AC while declaring themselves not to be a troll is definitely genuine. Plus, uh.. he did respond?
There is a significant number of people who do like the *crosses out old*, current model. Half of those probably just haven't thought things through and the other half are probably the minority who will actually be worse off overall.
Personally I would love to see the benefits of a copyright free society, choice being the foremost. Currently if I want music legally from artists who work under a record company I have to pay the record company. This means that in paying £10 for my punk CD I am probably funding the next Spice Girls more than I am supporting the band I bought the CD of.
To me, that sucks. Instead of being able to invest in my favourite artist I am restricted to investing in a record company whose sole aim is to maximise profits. To maximise profits they may decide not to invest in punk and put all my money elsewhere. If you think that is how culture should work you can still donate money to publishers and record companies to make your decisions for you even without copyright.
If you're wondering what the fuck that has to do with your post, the same process is what gives us a £100m film. Admittedly copyright doesn't isn't the sole culprit here (after all you can still get independent artists with copyright), but if people are forced to choose what they invest in by virtue of there being no reason for companies to do it for them then I think all except those obsessed with big budget films will be a lot richer without copyright.
I don't really think it was 'the public' that was the driving force behind copyright. I rather think that when copyright was first introduced it is more likely that anyone paying attention who didn't have a vested interest in books saw it as a dangerous thing. Unfortunately history shows that lobbying is often more powerful than good sense.. especially since most of the original restrictions put on by those who were wary of copyright have been taken away by more lobbying.
Now, many generations later, most people see it as some sort of necessity right instead of one huge cock-up. The lobby groups have the vast population fooled into thinking everything they do is 'fighting crime' because they have the law on their side and most people seem to have been brought up to put the law before themselves (or at least condemn others for not doing so).
All in all, the public has had about as much say in the whole shenanigans as a fraud victim. The sooner people stop thinking the law is smarter than them the sooner we can climb out of this hole.
Sad thing is, this guy sells games on a platform that would attract the most file sharers (minimal DRM). If I had been remotely interested in his games before I read his comments I would certainly change my mind afterwards.
I have however bought 3 other games on the same service by people who don't go on internet forums and pretend to be victims of theft. Incidentally, Supreme Commander is brilliant.