Government-granted monopolies suck ass. Look at Comcast, Time-Warner, and Cox. I'm beginning to think the government should NEVER grant a monopoly to company or person, except as a last, last resort.
Copyright laws have been abused (I will be dead before my favorite songs become public domain), and therefore the whole idea should be revoked as a failed project. The idea was to ENRICH culture but copyrights have the opposite effect of throwing people in jail, just because they sing a song (illegal public performance).
The "apply" button doesn't fit on a 640x480 screen. Therefore you cannot click it. Therefore the average consumer will be stuck in 640x480 with no way to escape.
>>>While this begs the question of why you changed it in to that in the first place, I just did it, so yes you can.
I don't believe you. When I changed my Ubuntu laptop to 640x480, and then tried to change it back to standard 1280x1024, there's no way to select the "OK" button because it's off the screen! I struggled with that problem for several hours before finally saying "fuck it" and reinstalling the whole damn OS from CD.
I've been told that if I use some secret key combo like ALT-CNTL-something I can drag the window around, but you see that makes the Linux non-user friendly. Your average consumer is not going to know that secret key command.
Yes it is. It's a lack of bug-checking by the Linux crew. Ubuntu's Display Preferences window does not fit on a 640x480 screen, which makes it impossible to access the "OK" button because it's off the bottom of the screen. So you'll be stuck in 640x480 mode forever.
Or until you can get some geek to reveal the secret ALT-CNTL-X-NUM-+ whatever key combo. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0 - QUOTE: "Linux works for you, because with youses guys computers, YOU work for the computers, and, and, and....."
Seems to me if the average user gets stuck in 640x480, and can't out, it's the computer that has the control not the user. Not consumer-friendly.
>>>Linux is still hampered by -perceived- usability problems
That's because it's written for programming geeks, not your average idiot. Heck even an engineer, like me, has a difficult time using Linux. (Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done.)
Windows and MacOS are idiot-friendly. Even the ancient AmigaOS and C=64 GEOS are idiot-friendly. That's what Linux needs to become if it wants to be a universal replacement desktop, instead of just an isolated tool for technicians.
>>>He's saying that Microsoft didn't bring into the fold those things they promised in Vista prior to the launch (all the interesting technologies they cut out). He's saying that Windows 7 is really just Vista with a few new eye-candy like things. >>>
Well of course. Window 7 == Windows Mohave (which was Vista in disguise).
What if you put XP and Win7 in front of them (in classic appearance)?
I bet I could tell. For one thing XP doesn't crash. For another it doesn't take 2 minutes to open my external USB: drive and get a listing of files (I exaggerate but there is a noticeable difference). For a third, I don't have a stupid popup telling me, "You must type your administrator password to install Firefox.exe" and then after I type the password..... nothing happens.* And finally when I upgrade my RAM from 1/2 to 1.5 gig XP happily accepts it. Whereas when I did the same with Vista I was accused of stealing the OS and taken to a page where I was asked to pay $100 for a license.*** I bet Win 7 Vista 6.1 will have similar behavior.
* * This just happened to me this past weekend. * *** At this point the mods are probably marking me troll. No buds it's an OPINION. Tolerate others views even if you disagree.
Exclusive copy *privileges* are revocable. They are not rights. They are temporary government-granted monopolies, not natural rights. Nature does not recognize intellectual property - on the contrary nature treats ideas as universal. I can have an idea to cook dinner in just one minute, share it with 6 billion people, and yet still enjoy the fruits of my original idea. The sharing does not diminish my well-being.
Defense contractors, after the 1990s crackdown on $700 hammers and so forth, are now the most honest companies in the U.S.
You can't charge a single hour of overtime without some Congressional agency breathing down your neck and demanding why you did that. So as a general rule-of-thumb overtime is verboten (or unpaid), and even the weekly 40 is closely tracked. My own company is run like a Nazi regime, with my boss constantly saying things like, "You charged 9 hours to lab work Friday, but I saw you spend an hour at your desk doing paperwork. Change that to 8.0."
I put up with it because A job is better than no job.
No it doesn't. All it says is that most (not all) people downloaded stuff but never bought it. Perhaps it's because these people think the games are trash. I've downloaded about 100 movies over this past summer/fall, and only ONE I thought was good enough to buy on DVD. The other 99 I did not buy because I didn't enjoy them.
>>>If an app is good, you should be able to find independently written positive reviews for it. There's always the score provided in the app store, too >>>
And as we slashdot readers have seen time-after-time, online reviews are often distorted by (a) Companies hiring employees to act as customers and post positive reviews on amazon.com and other stores, or (b) The owner of certain disreputable places like XYZstore.com deliberately erasing negative reviews to boost his own sales.
And finally there's a tendency for person to be "too kind". Often I've downloaded movies or shows that got 7, 8, or even 9 stars on IMDB.com, and I found that the my own score would only be a 1 or 2. The most-recent example is Inglorious Basterds which inexplicably has high scores/positive reviews but I thoroughly disliked. Fortunately I downloaded rather than buy, so no money was wasted. Bottom lines: Reviews in most cases don't help me at all. "Try before I buy" is the only way that works for me, and it takes power away from the Corporation and puts it back in the hands of the People.
My dollars; my opinion. I like Star Trek and sci-fi in general. You don't, so you didn't waste your money (although MPAA probably thinks you should be arrested for not buying ST.) Anyway...
>>>So if 6*10^9 people download the same song, 2.4*10^6 album sales are lost.
Obfuscation interferes with communication. If 6 billion people downloaded a song, then yes 2.4 million album sales would be lost. That is what the Harvard study showed. ----- But your figure is unrealistic. The number of households with enough money to buy CDs is pretty much confined to the U.S. and EU (110 + 150 million), or about 250 million homes.
Of course not all of those know how to download off the net. Some only have dialup. A heck of a lot more don't buy music at all because they are satisfied just hearing whatever garbage's on the radio (for free). The most popular source of downloads, Piratebay, only had ~3 million users. If we give RIAA the benefit of the doubt and say 30 million US/EU homes are downloading Thriller......that's only 12000 fewer CD sales for Sony.
>>>But, on the other hand, "try before you buy" is pretty damn stupid as well. The internet is a great resource nowadays for reviews and ratings. >>>
No and no. Inglorious Basterds got fantastic reviews from critics and high scores on imdb.com. If I had followed your advice and bought the DVD based on those positive reviews, I would have wasted 20 dollars because I thought that movie was crap. (And of course there's no money back guarantee. No refunds like other consumer products.)
BUT because I follow my own rules - try before I buy - I wasted nothing. AND I will continue following that rule, so I don't waste my money.
>>>A co-worker and I just had a look at his new Blackberry, which refused to charge from his laptop unless proprietary software was also installed, >>>
That's frakked up. The whole idea of the Universal (keyword) Serial Buss is to provde a non-proprietary interface and allow devices to retrieve power while connected. It might only be a trickle but it's enough to fill the battery on my iPod, my camcorder, my FM radio, my MP4 player, my external drive, and so on. I'm amazed your phone refused to accept power from the USB.
Sorry. It was just the first thing that popped into my head when I read this: "Hamburg's prosecutor has formally requested assistance from US colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos."
I better build a secret room above my neighbors' house so I can hide. Once the Germans get ahold of my name I'll be doomed.
Broadcast TV via cable only costs $11 (Dish satellite) or $19 (Comcast). You're not really paying for the content but for the maintenance of the line from your house to the central office, plus maintenance of the giant antennas used to pick-up stations ~60 miles away.
If hulu only charged $10 a month for access that would be reasonable. However the followup press conference by Hulu says they won't be charging for everything. Only a few SELECT items will have cost, such as movies. The rest will still be free.
Also Hulu's proposed model is better than ESPN360 or DisneyConnection.com's model. They bill the ISP directly. That means you pay for these websites even if you don't want them. (It also means if your ISP doesn't pay, then you're blocked from access to those sites.)
Because the UN was never given the power to mandate an electronic design. They can offer an opinion (recommendation) but that's it.
Nor should the UN make that grab for power, because once you go down that road, eventually the UN will start mandating what kind of roof you can install on your house. It's bad enough I have Congress telling me how much corn/potatoes I can or cannot grow in my own backyard. They were never granted that power under the Constitution, but since the mid-1930s they've exercised the power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
First off, I think we should disclose who we work for. I work for the a defense contractor that builds tanks. You probably work for RIAA or some other content company.
Second:
I rationalize piracy because prior to the internet, I used to buy VHS tapes or Cassette albums, and oftentimes the purchase was trash (example: a copy of Casablanca that is so poor you can't see the actors on the screen). And of course it wasn't possible to get a refund.
NOW I can try before I buy, and ONLY buy the good stuff. i.e. I avoided the trash that was Star Trek Voyager, but I discovered (and bought) the genius that is Babylon 5.
As for the statistics, the point of me quoting them is to kill RIAA's claims that 1 download == 1 lost sale. In reality it takes 2500 downloads for 1 lost sale, therefore piracy still causes damage but not as extreme as LIAR.... ooops I mean RIAA would lead you to believe. Jamie Thomas, rather than owing 2 million dollars in damages, should only owe 2 mil/2500 == $800 (approximately).
The Atari VCS/2600 games I used to buy were severely overpriced.
Each of those games cost about $30 ($80 in today's devalued dollars), and you got the equivalent of one of today's minigames or webgames which is typically free. $80 for Space Invaders in 1980 versus free today. Hmmm.
>>>Yeah amazingly absolutely no thieves thought it was good yet people who bought the game have liked it and his sales are increasing
By your logic, because Britney Spears now has the #1 song, we should all just love Britney and buy her CD immediately. False. Just because something is popular doesn't mean "the thieves" like it. If I don't buy something I download, it's because I thought it was junk.
Slashdot Mirror
Government-granted monopolies suck ass. Look at Comcast, Time-Warner, and Cox. I'm beginning to think the government should NEVER grant a monopoly to company or person, except as a last, last resort.
Copyright laws have been abused (I will be dead before my favorite songs become public domain), and therefore the whole idea should be revoked as a failed project. The idea was to ENRICH culture but copyrights have the opposite effect of throwing people in jail, just because they sing a song (illegal public performance).
>>>choose the resolution you want; click apply
The "apply" button doesn't fit on a 640x480 screen. Therefore you cannot click it. Therefore the average consumer will be stuck in 640x480 with no way to escape.
>>>While this begs the question of why you changed it in to that in the first place, I just did it, so yes you can.
I don't believe you. When I changed my Ubuntu laptop to 640x480, and then tried to change it back to standard 1280x1024, there's no way to select the "OK" button because it's off the screen! I struggled with that problem for several hours before finally saying "fuck it" and reinstalling the whole damn OS from CD.
I've been told that if I use some secret key combo like ALT-CNTL-something I can drag the window around, but you see that makes the Linux non-user friendly. Your average consumer is not going to know that secret key command.
>>>it is not usability problem
Yes it is. It's a lack of bug-checking by the Linux crew. Ubuntu's Display Preferences window does not fit on a 640x480 screen, which makes it impossible to access the "OK" button because it's off the bottom of the screen. So you'll be stuck in 640x480 mode forever.
Or until you can get some geek to reveal the secret ALT-CNTL-X-NUM-+ whatever key combo. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0 - QUOTE: "Linux works for you, because with youses guys computers, YOU work for the computers, and, and, and....."
Seems to me if the average user gets stuck in 640x480, and can't out, it's the computer that has the control not the user. Not consumer-friendly.
>>>Clearly you have not used windows 7 as there is no classic mode anymore.
Sure there is. You can make Win7 look just like XP so that, as first glance, you can't tell which is which.
Staples is selling a brand-new AMD X2 desktop with brand-new Windows7 at only $300. A comparable Mac costs about $1500.
>>>Linux is still hampered by -perceived- usability problems
That's because it's written for programming geeks, not your average idiot. Heck even an engineer, like me, has a difficult time using Linux. (Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done.)
Windows and MacOS are idiot-friendly. Even the ancient AmigaOS and C=64 GEOS are idiot-friendly. That's what Linux needs to become if it wants to be a universal replacement desktop, instead of just an isolated tool for technicians.
Uh oh. Here come the mods...
>>>He's saying that Microsoft didn't bring into the fold those things they promised in Vista prior to the launch (all the interesting technologies they cut out). He's saying that Windows 7 is really just Vista with a few new eye-candy like things.
>>>
Well of course. Window 7 == Windows Mohave (which was Vista in disguise).
What if you put XP and Win7 in front of them (in classic appearance)?
I bet I could tell. For one thing XP doesn't crash. For another it doesn't take 2 minutes to open my external USB: drive and get a listing of files (I exaggerate but there is a noticeable difference). For a third, I don't have a stupid popup telling me, "You must type your administrator password to install Firefox.exe" and then after I type the password..... nothing happens.* And finally when I upgrade my RAM from 1/2 to 1.5 gig XP happily accepts it. Whereas when I did the same with Vista I was accused of stealing the OS and taken to a page where I was asked to pay $100 for a license.*** I bet Win 7 Vista 6.1 will have similar behavior.
*
* This just happened to me this past weekend.
*
*** At this point the mods are probably marking me troll. No buds it's an OPINION. Tolerate others views even if you disagree.
Rights are irrevocable.
Exclusive copy *privileges* are revocable. They are not rights. They are temporary government-granted monopolies, not natural rights. Nature does not recognize intellectual property - on the contrary nature treats ideas as universal. I can have an idea to cook dinner in just one minute, share it with 6 billion people, and yet still enjoy the fruits of my original idea. The sharing does not diminish my well-being.
Defense contractors, after the 1990s crackdown on $700 hammers and so forth, are now the most honest companies in the U.S.
You can't charge a single hour of overtime without some Congressional agency breathing down your neck and demanding why you did that. So as a general rule-of-thumb overtime is verboten (or unpaid), and even the weekly 40 is closely tracked. My own company is run like a Nazi regime, with my boss constantly saying things like, "You charged 9 hours to lab work Friday, but I saw you spend an hour at your desk doing paperwork. Change that to 8.0."
I put up with it because A job is better than no job.
>>>the study says you're wrong.
No it doesn't. All it says is that most (not all) people downloaded stuff but never bought it. Perhaps it's because these people think the games are trash. I've downloaded about 100 movies over this past summer/fall, and only ONE I thought was good enough to buy on DVD. The other 99 I did not buy because I didn't enjoy them.
>>>If an app is good, you should be able to find independently written positive reviews for it. There's always the score provided in the app store, too
>>>
And as we slashdot readers have seen time-after-time, online reviews are often distorted by (a) Companies hiring employees to act as customers and post positive reviews on amazon.com and other stores, or (b) The owner of certain disreputable places like XYZstore.com deliberately erasing negative reviews to boost his own sales.
And finally there's a tendency for person to be "too kind". Often I've downloaded movies or shows that got 7, 8, or even 9 stars on IMDB.com, and I found that the my own score would only be a 1 or 2. The most-recent example is Inglorious Basterds which inexplicably has high scores/positive reviews but I thoroughly disliked. Fortunately I downloaded rather than buy, so no money was wasted. Bottom lines: Reviews in most cases don't help me at all. "Try before I buy" is the only way that works for me, and it takes power away from the Corporation and puts it back in the hands of the People.
My dollars; my opinion. I like Star Trek and sci-fi in general. You don't, so you didn't waste your money (although MPAA probably thinks you should be arrested for not buying ST.) Anyway...
The Key Point - "try before you buy" works.
>>>So if 6*10^9 people download the same song, 2.4*10^6 album sales are lost.
Obfuscation interferes with communication. If 6 billion people downloaded a song, then yes 2.4 million album sales would be lost. That is what the Harvard study showed. ----- But your figure is unrealistic. The number of households with enough money to buy CDs is pretty much confined to the U.S. and EU (110 + 150 million), or about 250 million homes.
Of course not all of those know how to download off the net. Some only have dialup. A heck of a lot more don't buy music at all because they are satisfied just hearing whatever garbage's on the radio (for free). The most popular source of downloads, Piratebay, only had ~3 million users. If we give RIAA the benefit of the doubt and say 30 million US/EU homes are downloading Thriller... ...that's only 12000 fewer CD sales for Sony.
>>>But, on the other hand, "try before you buy" is pretty damn stupid as well. The internet is a great resource nowadays for reviews and ratings.
>>>
No and no. Inglorious Basterds got fantastic reviews from critics and high scores on imdb.com. If I had followed your advice and bought the DVD based on those positive reviews, I would have wasted 20 dollars because I thought that movie was crap. (And of course there's no money back guarantee. No refunds like other consumer products.)
BUT because I follow my own rules - try before I buy - I wasted nothing.
AND I will continue following that rule, so I don't waste my money.
>>>A co-worker and I just had a look at his new Blackberry, which refused to charge from his laptop unless proprietary software was also installed,
>>>
That's frakked up. The whole idea of the Universal (keyword) Serial Buss is to provde a non-proprietary interface and allow devices to retrieve power while connected. It might only be a trickle but it's enough to fill the battery on my iPod, my camcorder, my FM radio, my MP4 player, my external drive, and so on. I'm amazed your phone refused to accept power from the USB.
Sorry. It was just the first thing that popped into my head when I read this: "Hamburg's prosecutor has formally requested assistance from US colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos."
I better build a secret room above my neighbors' house so I can hide. Once the Germans get ahold of my name I'll be doomed.
Broadcast TV via cable only costs $11 (Dish satellite) or $19 (Comcast). You're not really paying for the content but for the maintenance of the line from your house to the central office, plus maintenance of the giant antennas used to pick-up stations ~60 miles away.
If hulu only charged $10 a month for access that would be reasonable. However the followup press conference by Hulu says they won't be charging for everything. Only a few SELECT items will have cost, such as movies. The rest will still be free.
Also Hulu's proposed model is better than ESPN360 or DisneyConnection.com's model. They bill the ISP directly. That means you pay for these websites even if you don't want them. (It also means if your ISP doesn't pay, then you're blocked from access to those sites.)
Because the UN was never given the power to mandate an electronic design. They can offer an opinion (recommendation) but that's it.
Nor should the UN make that grab for power, because once you go down that road, eventually the UN will start mandating what kind of roof you can install on your house. It's bad enough I have Congress telling me how much corn/potatoes I can or cannot grow in my own backyard. They were never granted that power under the Constitution, but since the mid-1930s they've exercised the power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Or... you could just carry a USB-to-microUSB adapter cable, and plug it into the laptop you brought with you, or your American friends' PCs.
First off, I think we should disclose who we work for. I work for the a defense contractor that builds tanks. You probably work for RIAA or some other content company.
Second:
I rationalize piracy because prior to the internet, I used to buy VHS tapes or Cassette albums, and oftentimes the purchase was trash (example: a copy of Casablanca that is so poor you can't see the actors on the screen). And of course it wasn't possible to get a refund.
NOW I can try before I buy, and ONLY buy the good stuff. i.e. I avoided the trash that was Star Trek Voyager, but I discovered (and bought) the genius that is Babylon 5.
As for the statistics, the point of me quoting them is to kill RIAA's claims that 1 download == 1 lost sale. In reality it takes 2500 downloads for 1 lost sale, therefore piracy still causes damage but not as extreme as LIAR.... ooops I mean RIAA would lead you to believe. Jamie Thomas, rather than owing 2 million dollars in damages, should only owe 2 mil/2500 == $800 (approximately).
The Atari VCS/2600 games I used to buy were severely overpriced.
Each of those games cost about $30 ($80 in today's devalued dollars), and you got the equivalent of one of today's minigames or webgames which is typically free. $80 for Space Invaders in 1980 versus free today. Hmmm.
>>>Yeah amazingly absolutely no thieves thought it was good yet people who bought the game have liked it and his sales are increasing
By your logic, because Britney Spears now has the #1 song, we should all just love Britney and buy her CD immediately. False. Just because something is popular doesn't mean "the thieves" like it. If I don't buy something I download, it's because I thought it was junk.