What are you talking about? What does anything have to do with contracts? Downloading ROMs or copying games is generally illegal. They point this out in their manual and are warning you that they may choose to go after you for it. This has nothing to do with contracts. Can I pirate all the movies I want because they merely include an FBI warning about it and I haven't signed a contract with the FBI? Your argument makes little sense.
The owners of copyrighted material often say they suffer "harm" and "economic loss" resulting from illegal copying. Like most arguments put forth by copyright enthusiasts, it holds little water - for several reasons:
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copying individual would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
That doesn't make it "mostly inaccurate". This makes it completely accurate. If it is "occassionally true" that people who would have bought the material now don't, then they have suffered an economic loss by losing those sales.
If you want to claim that they haven't suffered an economic loss, then you would need to say that none of the people who copied it would have bought it, and I don't think you believe that.
It's the fact that the CD format is less useful than a computer file that makes it a silly way to distribute the file. The first thing I do with a new CD is burn a digitized version of the tracks so I can have the music on laptop or portable player
Don't you think this is a bit arrogant? Just because something is less useful to you doesn't make it less useful to everyone, but that's what you seem to be saying. For me, an mp3 is much less useful than a CD. The first think I would do with it is burn it onto a CD so that I can listen to in my car. Or I could just buy it on a CD in the first place from a music store right by my house and be saved the trouble.
I don't see your point. I use my TV primarily for watching movies. Therefore, I want it to accomodate movies as best possible. If I sometimes choose to watch broadcasts on it (which I currently don't, but might someday), I would like it if they fit my television. Saying that people should give up on 16:9 tv's because they don't accomodate most current programming is silly since current programming isn't why many of us own those tv's. Since the question is about whether movies should conform to tv standards or vice versa, I don't see the relevance of my computer screen which I don't use for movies or tv. I could just as well point out that your cell phone or digital watch doesn't have a 4:3 screen. But you win the bet. So I owe you a tenth of a $100 bill now? Are you aware that that has no monetary value? Betting $100 at 10:1 would have made more sense.
Don't you find it a bit arrogant that you are definite "The World" as being content that is of interest to you? I could just as easily say "The World is 16:9. If you want to watch 90% of films in today's market, they are going to have to streatched or chopped to fit on a 4:3 TV."
Perhaps you care more about "broadcasts" (ugh) than movies and are willing to contort your movie watching to accomodate your broadcast watching, but you can't assume that's true of everyone.
Your claim makes as much sense as if I were to say that IE has much worse performance than other browsers because IE 2.0 was slow. Yeah, it's easy to make claims when you ignore any recent history that contradicts you. Ok, I'm done now. You can back to saying that Apache has fewer security problems than IIS 4 and thus no one should use IIS. From this point forward, we'll all just keep our mouths shut and pretend IIS 6 doesn't exist (since trying to claim that it's had more problems than Apache would be too ridiculous even for slashdot... or so I thought).
Would you like to be egregiously harmed only to be told that, although it should be illegal, nobody has got around to writing a law against what has happened to you
If the alternative requires me to trust Congress and the courts to correctly figure out who should go to jail for writing software that they don't like, then I would seriously consider it.
People will often support something that goes against their principles and true interests if you claim that it will reduce their taxes or stop "terrorism". Slashdotters see through that and think that they're some kind of visionaries for it. But then, as soon as they're told that a law will prevent "spyware" or stop "spammers", they have the exact same reaction.
I, for one, am very wary of letting the government say what kind of software can or can't be written and who goes to jail for writing what code. I'm not saying that their shouldn't be any rescrictions. Just that too many people here are too quick to support laws they haven't even looked at or researched if they are told that they are "anti-spyware" or "anti-spam", and one day this is going to come around and bite them in the ass when the government (and the interests that control it) abuse these laws.
Right now I buy 300 msgs a month for $2.99. T-Mobile now has a deal of $9.99 a month for unlimited texts
At $3 for each 300 msgs (I'm assuming this isn't only for the first 300), you could buy 900 for $9. So does the fact that you are instead spending $10 for unlimited messages really mean that you're going to use more than 900 a month?! That's 30 a day. There are people who really use that much?
But let's not act all shocked and surprised at the general negative attitude towards Microsoft found in this forum; it's always been there.
People aren't shocked and suprised at the general attitude of the forum participants. They are offended at the bias and deception in the writeup posted on the frontpage. Yes, it was submitted by an "anonymous reader", but the editor posting it (michael in this case) should take some responsibility for confirming that the story he posts is not completely false or misleading. Biased comments in the discussion are expected. That's why it's a discussion. But the "news" should be made to be at least a bit accurate.
Maybe I'm a bit more concerned about these issues right now than I usually am because last night I watched the excellent documentary outfoxed about the propaganda that the Fox News channel passes off as news.
ever want to slap someone for saying it Eff Ay Queue, rather than fack?
This is an annoyance online as well as in spoken conversations because you'll see people (including in the comments on this story) use the phrase "an FAQ" to refer to a list of frequently asked questions, which looks horribly wrong to people who pronounce it "fack" (or who think FAQ is inherently plural).
We can always fall back on the "Americans are just too stupid to spend 15 mins casting a vote." explanation.
We could do that. Or we could just attribute it to whatever will help us promote our pet cause without any real evidence. This way people will need to agree with us, otherwise they would be undermining democracy.
Did you know that some countries with nationalized health care have much higher rates of voter turnout than the US? Obviously, the solution is that we must nationalize health care immediately.
Ok, but that doesn't validate the 5 second rule. If most floors are very clean, then you could leave food a lot longer than 5 seconds and it would be fine. And on the contaminated floor, 5 seconds wasn't fast enough to avoid disease. So it looks like there is no scenario where the rule holds and it is important that you pick up your food within 5 seconds.
The evidence is fairly clear, across Europe 80 - 90% turnouts are common. The UK? 60%. The US? 50%.
There are hundreds of cultural and political differences between Europe and the US. You've given absolutely no reason to believe that the one you cite, proportional representation, is the cause of differences in voter turnout. The stastic you cite has done nothing to convince me that if the US switched to a proportional election there would be a large increase in voter turnout.
The reason you're confused is because you think MS called open source a "cancer" and that's just not the case. They have said bad things about the GPL, but they haven't released their open source products under that license, so there's no contradiction.
Huh, I didn't know he had a radio show. But I checked that link and apparently no one is Seattle carries it so doesn't do me any good (I don't have satellite radio because I would almost always rather listen to a cd). Oh well.
When I got halfway through your post I was going to respond to say how ridiculuous it is, but by the time I got to the end I realized that you just have no idea what racism is.
If they were lily-white blonde Indians taking the jobs from us, you can bet there would be just as much racism.
No it wouldn't. In that case, race would be a complete non-factor. It would have absolutely nothing to do with racism.
Just look at all the fun people are having with France. That might not strictly qualify as "racism",
It doesn't strictly qualify because it's not racism at all. That doesn't make it okay. But calling everything bad in the world "racism" is not productive. If the Republicans wanted to pass a Constitutional amendment to repeal woman's suffrage that would be ridiculous and we would condemn it. But if you called the amendment "racist," as you apparently would, that would still be idiotic.
As to charity, BG has NOT given money... But do not give him credit for where it does not belong.
Why was this modded insightful? It's just a lie. You can find hundreds of articles that will show you how untrue this is. Here's one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/701860.stm: starting "Microsoft chief Bill Gates has pledged $57m over five years to help protect young people in Africa against the threat of HIV and Aids" and with a caption under Gates' picture that reads: "Bill Gates: History of donations to fight disease".
Slashdot Mirror
What are you talking about? What does anything have to do with contracts? Downloading ROMs or copying games is generally illegal. They point this out in their manual and are warning you that they may choose to go after you for it. This has nothing to do with contracts. Can I pirate all the movies I want because they merely include an FBI warning about it and I haven't signed a contract with the FBI? Your argument makes little sense.
That doesn't make it "mostly inaccurate". This makes it completely accurate. If it is "occassionally true" that people who would have bought the material now don't, then they have suffered an economic loss by losing those sales.
If you want to claim that they haven't suffered an economic loss, then you would need to say that none of the people who copied it would have bought it, and I don't think you believe that.
Don't you think this is a bit arrogant? Just because something is less useful to you doesn't make it less useful to everyone, but that's what you seem to be saying. For me, an mp3 is much less useful than a CD. The first think I would do with it is burn it onto a CD so that I can listen to in my car. Or I could just buy it on a CD in the first place from a music store right by my house and be saved the trouble.
I don't see your point. I use my TV primarily for watching movies. Therefore, I want it to accomodate movies as best possible. If I sometimes choose to watch broadcasts on it (which I currently don't, but might someday), I would like it if they fit my television. Saying that people should give up on 16:9 tv's because they don't accomodate most current programming is silly since current programming isn't why many of us own those tv's. Since the question is about whether movies should conform to tv standards or vice versa, I don't see the relevance of my computer screen which I don't use for movies or tv. I could just as well point out that your cell phone or digital watch doesn't have a 4:3 screen. But you win the bet. So I owe you a tenth of a $100 bill now? Are you aware that that has no monetary value? Betting $100 at 10:1 would have made more sense.
Don't you find it a bit arrogant that you are definite "The World" as being content that is of interest to you? I could just as easily say "The World is 16:9. If you want to watch 90% of films in today's market, they are going to have to streatched or chopped to fit on a 4:3 TV."
Perhaps you care more about "broadcasts" (ugh) than movies and are willing to contort your movie watching to accomodate your broadcast watching, but you can't assume that's true of everyone.
Gosh, that is hard. Let me think for a while...
Oh, I got it! Because you're lying through your teeth! These pictures are pretty:
http://secunia.com/graph/?type=adv&period=all&pro
http://secunia.com/graph/?type=adv&period=all&pro
Your claim makes as much sense as if I were to say that IE has much worse performance than other browsers because IE 2.0 was slow. Yeah, it's easy to make claims when you ignore any recent history that contradicts you. Ok, I'm done now. You can back to saying that Apache has fewer security problems than IIS 4 and thus no one should use IIS. From this point forward, we'll all just keep our mouths shut and pretend IIS 6 doesn't exist (since trying to claim that it's had more problems than Apache would be too ridiculous even for slashdot... or so I thought).
How about handbaskets? Surely those are safe?
If the alternative requires me to trust Congress and the courts to correctly figure out who should go to jail for writing software that they don't like, then I would seriously consider it.
People will often support something that goes against their principles and true interests if you claim that it will reduce their taxes or stop "terrorism". Slashdotters see through that and think that they're some kind of visionaries for it. But then, as soon as they're told that a law will prevent "spyware" or stop "spammers", they have the exact same reaction.
I, for one, am very wary of letting the government say what kind of software can or can't be written and who goes to jail for writing what code. I'm not saying that their shouldn't be any rescrictions. Just that too many people here are too quick to support laws they haven't even looked at or researched if they are told that they are "anti-spyware" or "anti-spam", and one day this is going to come around and bite them in the ass when the government (and the interests that control it) abuse these laws.
First you say that you do want Bush. And then in the next sense, you say don't. Stop fipflopping.
At $3 for each 300 msgs (I'm assuming this isn't only for the first 300), you could buy 900 for $9. So does the fact that you are instead spending $10 for unlimited messages really mean that you're going to use more than 900 a month?! That's 30 a day. There are people who really use that much?
Only on Slashdot could someone look at at auction like this and conclude that the guy isn't selling enough hardware.
People aren't shocked and suprised at the general attitude of the forum participants. They are offended at the bias and deception in the writeup posted on the frontpage. Yes, it was submitted by an "anonymous reader", but the editor posting it (michael in this case) should take some responsibility for confirming that the story he posts is not completely false or misleading. Biased comments in the discussion are expected. That's why it's a discussion. But the "news" should be made to be at least a bit accurate.
Maybe I'm a bit more concerned about these issues right now than I usually am because last night I watched the excellent documentary outfoxed about the propaganda that the Fox News channel passes off as news.
He presumably knows that given that his advice was to leave it off.
This is an annoyance online as well as in spoken conversations because you'll see people (including in the comments on this story) use the phrase "an FAQ" to refer to a list of frequently asked questions, which looks horribly wrong to people who pronounce it "fack" (or who think FAQ is inherently plural).
We could do that. Or we could just attribute it to whatever will help us promote our pet cause without any real evidence. This way people will need to agree with us, otherwise they would be undermining democracy.
Did you know that some countries with nationalized health care have much higher rates of voter turnout than the US? Obviously, the solution is that we must nationalize health care immediately.
Ok, but that doesn't validate the 5 second rule. If most floors are very clean, then you could leave food a lot longer than 5 seconds and it would be fine. And on the contaminated floor, 5 seconds wasn't fast enough to avoid disease. So it looks like there is no scenario where the rule holds and it is important that you pick up your food within 5 seconds.
There are hundreds of cultural and political differences between Europe and the US. You've given absolutely no reason to believe that the one you cite, proportional representation, is the cause of differences in voter turnout. The stastic you cite has done nothing to convince me that if the US switched to a proportional election there would be a large increase in voter turnout.
I would, but I don't watch tv (nor have cable or satellite or an antenna attached to me tv (you insensitive clod)). Thanks though.
The reason you're confused is because you think MS called open source a "cancer" and that's just not the case. They have said bad things about the GPL, but they haven't released their open source products under that license, so there's no contradiction.
Huh, I didn't know he had a radio show. But I checked that link and apparently no one is Seattle carries it so doesn't do me any good (I don't have satellite radio because I would almost always rather listen to a cd). Oh well.
No it wouldn't. In that case, race would be a complete non-factor. It would have absolutely nothing to do with racism.
It doesn't strictly qualify because it's not racism at all. That doesn't make it okay. But calling everything bad in the world "racism" is not productive. If the Republicans wanted to pass a Constitutional amendment to repeal woman's suffrage that would be ridiculous and we would condemn it. But if you called the amendment "racist," as you apparently would, that would still be idiotic.
Quickly skimming the page, I thought you can just likened Gates to Elton John.
Why was this modded insightful? It's just a lie. You can find hundreds of articles that will show you how untrue this is. Here's one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/701860.st
starting "Microsoft chief Bill Gates has pledged $57m over five years to help protect young people in Africa against the threat of HIV and Aids" and with a caption under Gates' picture that reads: "Bill Gates: History of donations to fight disease".
And why is there no CowboyNeal option? Honestly.
Who are these drug dealers and how do I meet them? Thanks.
It's the geek version of Electronic Talking Battleship! /you sunk my paladin