For every drug that comes to market there are about 10 that do not. The drug companies have to make back their money somehow.
Funny you should phrase it that way... the current music and pharm industries aren't that different after all. For every album that turns a profit, there are dozens that lose big. The record companies make their money on a very small percentatge of their catalog, which get big enough (due to marketing dollars, in large part) to offset the losses they're dealt by the vast majority of their contracts.
The scale is different, but the model is very, very similar.
Incidentally, the reason they're similar is that 50+ years ago, those two bit idiots couldn't get a hold of good equipment and the cost of production was many orders of magnitude out of normal people's reach, similar to pharma now. The music industry has held tight to their model, past it's sensible end point, because computers and cheap electronics have made production costs negligible... well within the reach of average people.
I'm not guaranteeing that in 50 years, we'll all have gene sequencers and personally matched pharma, but, technology has a way of obsolescing business models. At some point, laws need to change to reflect new environments.
People do need to be incentivized to produce... that's a good reason for IP law. But there need to be limits to how much control they have, and for how long, in order for greater society to benefit. The commons always need to be addressed. If the laws benefit the few, to the detriment of the many, then they are unjust, and should be modified.
And for that matter, this sort of price regulation inevitably makes it illegal to offer certain discounts... they couldn't do a "buy ESPN & CNN, and get another channel for free" for example, without reducing the base price of the individual channels.
Why would it do that? All the law has to do is mandate that the cable companies *offer* a la carte service... not mandate them to *only offer* a la carte. Let the people who watch 6 channels choose them and be done. Let the TV junkies buy their channels in the same packages they're accustomed to. Why should it be black and white? For people who watch a LOT of TV, the packages may be a better deal... that's a choice too.
Plus, there's no reason the law should be written to outlaw price breaks to incentivize greater purchasing: "$5 / channel $35 for any 10 channels" etc.
That's just silly. Packages won't go away, you just won't be required to use them.
If the software running weapons systems hasn't been thoroughly audited, regardless of it's source, I think the open/prop debate becomes secondary in a big hurry.
hm. well, i guess we'll find out, but the 30 gig drive in my main desktop has spun almost continuously for over 3 years now, and is still ok. we have a few 2-4 gig drives from 96-7 that still work fine too. maybe we're lucky?
i just have too much data that requires frequent random access... no way i could keep track of a dvd library of it all, much less a cd library.
i do have dvd and cd backups in case the drives do fail, so i'm not super concerned with it.
i admire what must be a supreme organizational ability you have... i can't deal with paper at all beyond the bills and such that are important enough to demand attention... working out hierarchies and classifications so i can find a particular article or photograph at some later date takes far more skill than i possess. and if i can't find it, why bother keeping it?\
no, i'll stick with big drives and frequent backups.
Weight is an issue for a few, but plenty of LAN gamers carry their whole PC and 17 inch CRT to and fro, so the Xbox doesn't exactly break the camels back, so to speak. Reliability hasn't been a concern for me... i've had a couple of PS cards die on me, all the while the commodity 30 gig HDD which spins about 24/7 in my PC hasn't hiccupped. Replacing a HDD is perhaps not trivial for normal humans, but i don't see it as a massive concern. And as for cost, hard drives are pretty much cheaper than flash for anything over about 32 megs, which, lets face it, is necessary.
i love the idea of having that storage available for the speed of saving, loading maps and downloadable content, etc. Really, flash isn't ideally suited for that i don't think.
i think the HDD removal, if true, would be another anti-piracy move. No more ripping games onto the HDD and playing them from there... which i've heard is popular among the kiddies.
Your comment on racing reminds me of one of my classes in college - a sort of "How Stuff Works" physics class. We had an assignement which was to build a mousetrap powered lego car, using a specific technics set. I'm not sure if the other people (mostly humanities majors) got into it like i did, but i loved that project. That car kicked ass...
no, i can't justify driving dangerously, but i can justify driving within my skill level, which is not the same as everyone else's. Personally, i believe it should be harder to get a licence in the first place, and there should mandatory retesting (a stringent road test i mean) every 5 years, perhaps even more frequently beyond a certain age.
that being said, it's almost irrelevant because society will only accept the laws it accepts. That sounds stupid, but there's a feedback loop that's in place, and certain laws, which get broken all the time, *shouldn't* be enforced to the letter. If i cross a road when the "DON'T WALK" is lit, at 10pm and there are no cars within 3 blocks of the intersection, should i get a ticket? The law says so, but most people would agree that's unreasonable. What if there's a blind corner nearby? Or a hill? A rigid automatic system can't acocunt for these things easily, so we use something inherent : the judgement of a police officer, a human, who can assess the specific situation, and make a determination as to wether i was acting dangerously. Is it a perfect system? No, but it's preferable to a mechanically authoritarian system with no judgement at all.
I'm not making an argument against this system in particular, because society will decide if the tradeoffs are worthwhile, not me alone. I will say that we've gotta be really careful about how much enforcement ability we cede to automatic systems, be they electronic or beaurecratic, because rigid enforcement of the letter of the law removes the critical factor of human judgement. In some cases, this is fine, and beneficial (an argument could be made for photo enforcment of red-light violations), but we need to look at each case carefully, and be aware of just what we're giving away, and what we get in return.
perhaps the parent means licenced early on, like, in the 80's. It may have mattered, it may not have.
In my opinion, apple has always excelled when their hardware and software are joined together. i had a clone (PowerCenter 180 or something like that), and it just wasn't the same as having a real mac. part of why things work so smoothly is because the hardware is as refined as the OS and other apple software... there's a lot to be said for that.
anyway, it's an old debate, but i'll choose computers based on quality over market share most of the time.
well, there's another possible reason to tax foreign goods, which is to make domestic products sell better. even if people are spending more for the same object, less money is travelling to china so more money stays in the hands of americans, overall.
this is one major argument for letting halliburton and other us companies take contracts for rebuilding iraq, even if they do it for more money than iraqis, because if the US is gonna spend a few billion dollars, we should try and keep most of those billions inside the US economy.
i don't necessarily agree with these arguments (they both oversimplify), but i've heard them used time and again.
Wow. When i first read your post, i thought you said Sergio Aragone, creator of the comic Groo, the tale of a mendicant fool with a samurai sword and a pet dog, Rufferto, who is smarter than he is.
At least the restaurant scene is not far off from a fray involving Groo - many body parts are always severed...
that's fair. i guess someday we'll see if you're correct and it shakes out that way in court. nonetheless at this stage, i'm not at all sure that a company couldn't revoke your licence and request that you cease using their software. i may have spoken too vigorously, but every bit of software i have is governed by some licence agreement or another, and would appear to valid as of today. perhaps that'll get challenged and will be settled, as you say.
in the case of linux, the software is still licenced whatever any particular company calls the transaction. when you run linux, you are accepting the terms of the GPL, which is a licence between you and the rightsholders of the code, in this case many independent authors. a company can tell you whatever it wants to, nonetheless their act of distributing it indicates their acceptance of the GPL, as does you're running it.
that being said, i was perhaps inprecise in my statement. a company *could* sell you software unencumbered by licence, but few, if any, do so in reality. my guess is that virtually no one reading this site has more than 1 program on their pc that is completely licence free.
as for the statement regarding leasing cars, you are correct you sign contracts, but the contracts that deal with leasing a car are still different from software licences. primarily this is because you cannot easily gain from IP in the car, can't redistribute the car while maintaining your copy. if that was all possible, you'd probably get a licence with your car like the EULA on windows, saying you won't disassemble, copy, redistribute or otherwise modify the car. again, the argument about if they should or should not is completely up for depate.
It's legally valid because you didn't licence your car from Ford -- you purchased an object. Things like cars and toasters aren't (yet) subject to licencing (just wait til your toaster has software on it though... betcha the box has a EULA).
You did, however, licence your linux software from the developers who wrote it and if they stole code, you, as a licencee, may be responsible, not for damages, but for payment of licencing fees on the code that was misappropriated.
We could argue all day about wether software *should* be considered identical to a physical object, but at present it is not. You don't buy software, you buy software licences, always.
So in summary, yes, it *could* stand up in court, not as a liability issue, i.e. damages for past illegality, but as an issue of paying a licence for the use of SCO IP. This presupposes that they can prove that Linux actually carries any such IP and that the version of the kernel you happen to be using contains any of it. The first is highly questionable and the second will be moot about a week after any infringing code segments are actually identified.
(the latter case, incidentally, does nothing to help IBM in their contractual dispute which *is* a liability issue and *is* about past damages. If infringing code is found, even if the code is removed from the linux sources, those responsible for the misappropriation, presumably IBM, will be held liable for damages. However, users should be free and clear, though linux's reputation would be substantially tarnished.)
[i am, of course, not a lawyer, but i'm pretty sure my understanding is correct.]
Just because Dean's campaign promotes GPL'ed software doesn't mean he's going to fight for your interests: at most this is just pandering to the web-connected crowd, but is more likely just someone's pet project that got blown out of proportion.
maybe i'm not cynical enough. i thought that at best this was an attempt to use technology in a way it's not been used before - to organize grassroots political action. at *worst* it's pandering. the thing i like the most about dean is that he seems not to be pandering to anybody, which is rare among politicians. it's refreshing. but, maybe i'm super naive, i guess.
On the security side, I hope that VeriSign avoids Diebold's mistake (with electronic voting machines, which is different from Internet voting) and makes the source code and security procedures public for scrutiny.
hah! wow, yeah, i'll be over here holding my breath for that one. right up until my lungs collapse.
until the government decides to care and force these systems to be open, they will not be. christ, maryland even got an independent review telling them how much of a piece of shit the Diebold system is, and they were like, "Yeah, this sure does suck... too bad we already paid diebold a lot of money. We're using them anyway."
sometimes i feel like my head's going to explode.
voting systems should be a) secure and b) easy to use, in that order. I'm all for increasing participation, because nothing makes society work better than when more people are informed and involved... but not at the cost of security.
And when the fuck did the time taken to tally become such a huge issue. Christ, we don't do this for the media... who cares if we have to wait 3 days to find out what happened? Does that affect *anything*? I understaind there are potential economic savings in efficient tallying procedures, but come on, America is fucking rich... i'm sure we can find the cash to make sure the elections process is secure and accurate.
Voting is the one thing that should never be handed over to interested parties. I'm more than a little nervous that Diebolds CEO is a hard core, vocal Bush supporter, but i wouldn't be any happier if he had said he would deliver Ohio's votes to Dean, or Lieberman or Ralph Nader or Jesus Christ. It's improper.
Which is probably a good reason not to chop down all those nice CO2 absorbing rainforests down there...
human causes aren't limited to burning fossil fuels.
Re:Time to take matters into our own hands?
on
RIAA Bits
·
· Score: 1
I have a better idea...
how bout you "take into your own hands" by not buying CD's from RIAA member companies. and be public about it.
i've been buying cd's for a long time, and have spent quite a bit on recorded music. now, i've decided to stop, only buy CD's a used record stores or from labels i know are not affiliated with RIAA.
does it mean i'm not gonna get the new radiohead record? yep, it does. will i miss having it? yeah, i will. so, oh well.
honestly, fighting this with more illegality is going to have the opposite effect - it's going to underscore the need for legislation to ease prosecution, enable heavy DRM, and stifle technology.
what there should be is a petition that says "I, as a consumer of music, am appaled by the current state of the music industry, where musicians and consumers both lose and the only winners are the executives of large multinational corporations. As such, i'm not buying any more new recordings from RIAA affiliates. I will move my business to independent labels or second hand stores, and live concerts, which do vastly more to support artists and communities and the ART of making music. Until the industry begins fairly compensating artists, works HONESTLY to create a fair and equitable electronic distribution model and stops making false and misleading statements, I pledge to remove my personal financial support."
I don't even think the RIAA is necessarily wrong in it's lawsuits... foolish, and malicious, but not wrong. And it's likely to work, too, in the short term. Lets face it nerds, file sharing wouldn't be an issue if it was only geeks that did it... it's little janie doe after school and her mom who doesn't know any better. well, now they know better and you can bet little janie's computer doesn't have Kazaa on it anymore. Piracy will probably substantially shift back to physical media by burning and trading cd's wholesale (anyone remember dubbing tapes off your friends in the 6th grade...), which is arguably as big a problem as file trading. Eventually a new system will be put in place... either an egalitarian system of artsit's directly selling to fans, or compulsory licencing, or a tax on CD burners, or some as yet undiscussed method. I hope to see one that breaks the stranglehold of Big labels, because, honestly, they're not needed anymore and the artists will do better with indies or on their own.
(for one proof of why major label money and producers are becoming increasingly unnecessary, check out www.mellowdrone.com - this guy made a record in his NYC apartment with some mikes and a VAIO, which sounds as good as anything that comes out of Universal/Sony/etc., production-wise, and offered it for download on his web site.)
Lets not give the RIAA's statements legitimacy by engaging in the acts they blame for their losses. Lets show them that they're about to suffer losses which stem from something other than file sharing -- namely alienation, dissatisfaction, and outrage. Too much mass market crap, overpriced CDs and shady artist relations have lead some people to do nothing but download their music for free. It's lead me to a place where i am no longer willing to support their product.
The cable is actually pulling up. Catastrophic failure at any point along the cable results in it leaving earth.
not if the point of failure is beyond the midpoint, causing the center of gravity to shift below GEO and draw the cable down.
that being said it wouldn't likely be dangerous due to it being lightweight, wide and thin. A sheet of flexible cardstock does about the same damage dropped from 100 feet or a 100 thousand.
Slashdot Mirror
hear-frickin-hear!
damnfools at FOX... firefly was GOOD dammit.
For every drug that comes to market there are about 10 that do not. The drug companies have to make back their money somehow.
Funny you should phrase it that way... the current music and pharm industries aren't that different after all. For every album that turns a profit, there are dozens that lose big. The record companies make their money on a very small percentatge of their catalog, which get big enough (due to marketing dollars, in large part) to offset the losses they're dealt by the vast majority of their contracts.
The scale is different, but the model is very, very similar.
Incidentally, the reason they're similar is that 50+ years ago, those two bit idiots couldn't get a hold of good equipment and the cost of production was many orders of magnitude out of normal people's reach, similar to pharma now. The music industry has held tight to their model, past it's sensible end point, because computers and cheap electronics have made production costs negligible... well within the reach of average people.
I'm not guaranteeing that in 50 years, we'll all have gene sequencers and personally matched pharma, but, technology has a way of obsolescing business models. At some point, laws need to change to reflect new environments.
People do need to be incentivized to produce... that's a good reason for IP law. But there need to be limits to how much control they have, and for how long, in order for greater society to benefit. The commons always need to be addressed. If the laws benefit the few, to the detriment of the many, then they are unjust, and should be modified.
And for that matter, this sort of price regulation inevitably makes it illegal to offer certain discounts... they couldn't do a "buy ESPN & CNN, and get another channel for free" for example, without reducing the base price of the individual channels.
:
Why would it do that? All the law has to do is mandate that the cable companies *offer* a la carte service... not mandate them to *only offer* a la carte. Let the people who watch 6 channels choose them and be done. Let the TV junkies buy their channels in the same packages they're accustomed to. Why should it be black and white? For people who watch a LOT of TV, the packages may be a better deal... that's a choice too.
Plus, there's no reason the law should be written to outlaw price breaks to incentivize greater purchasing
"$5 / channel
$35 for any 10 channels"
etc.
That's just silly. Packages won't go away, you just won't be required to use them.
probably so... but i'll keep it up until it's official. plus, i haven't thought of a witty quip with which to replace it...
If the software running weapons systems hasn't been thoroughly audited, regardless of it's source, I think the open/prop debate becomes secondary in a big hurry.
hm. well, i guess we'll find out, but the 30 gig drive in my main desktop has spun almost continuously for over 3 years now, and is still ok. we have a few 2-4 gig drives from 96-7 that still work fine too. maybe we're lucky?
i just have too much data that requires frequent random access... no way i could keep track of a dvd library of it all, much less a cd library.
i do have dvd and cd backups in case the drives do fail, so i'm not super concerned with it.
i admire what must be a supreme organizational ability you have... i can't deal with paper at all beyond the bills and such that are important enough to demand attention... working out hierarchies and classifications so i can find a particular article or photograph at some later date takes far more skill than i possess. and if i can't find it, why bother keeping it?\
no, i'll stick with big drives and frequent backups.
I'm not convinced...
Weight is an issue for a few, but plenty of LAN gamers carry their whole PC and 17 inch CRT to and fro, so the Xbox doesn't exactly break the camels back, so to speak.
Reliability hasn't been a concern for me... i've had a couple of PS cards die on me, all the while the commodity 30 gig HDD which spins about 24/7 in my PC hasn't hiccupped. Replacing a HDD is perhaps not trivial for normal humans, but i don't see it as a massive concern.
And as for cost, hard drives are pretty much cheaper than flash for anything over about 32 megs, which, lets face it, is necessary.
i love the idea of having that storage available for the speed of saving, loading maps and downloadable content, etc. Really, flash isn't ideally suited for that i don't think.
i think the HDD removal, if true, would be another anti-piracy move. No more ripping games onto the HDD and playing them from there... which i've heard is popular among the kiddies.
that's great! i love the NSF. They funded my summer internship too. Best summer of my life...
Your comment on racing reminds me of one of my classes in college - a sort of "How Stuff Works" physics class. We had an assignement which was to build a mousetrap powered lego car, using a specific technics set. I'm not sure if the other people (mostly humanities majors) got into it like i did, but i loved that project. That car kicked ass...
no, i can't justify driving dangerously, but i can justify driving within my skill level, which is not the same as everyone else's. Personally, i believe it should be harder to get a licence in the first place, and there should mandatory retesting (a stringent road test i mean) every 5 years, perhaps even more frequently beyond a certain age.
that being said, it's almost irrelevant because society will only accept the laws it accepts. That sounds stupid, but there's a feedback loop that's in place, and certain laws, which get broken all the time, *shouldn't* be enforced to the letter. If i cross a road when the "DON'T WALK" is lit, at 10pm and there are no cars within 3 blocks of the intersection, should i get a ticket? The law says so, but most people would agree that's unreasonable. What if there's a blind corner nearby? Or a hill? A rigid automatic system can't acocunt for these things easily, so we use something inherent : the judgement of a police officer, a human, who can assess the specific situation, and make a determination as to wether i was acting dangerously. Is it a perfect system? No, but it's preferable to a mechanically authoritarian system with no judgement at all.
I'm not making an argument against this system in particular, because society will decide if the tradeoffs are worthwhile, not me alone. I will say that we've gotta be really careful about how much enforcement ability we cede to automatic systems, be they electronic or beaurecratic, because rigid enforcement of the letter of the law removes the critical factor of human judgement. In some cases, this is fine, and beneficial (an argument could be made for photo enforcment of red-light violations), but we need to look at each case carefully, and be aware of just what we're giving away, and what we get in return.
perhaps the parent means licenced early on, like, in the 80's. It may have mattered, it may not have.
In my opinion, apple has always excelled when their hardware and software are joined together. i had a clone (PowerCenter 180 or something like that), and it just wasn't the same as having a real mac. part of why things work so smoothly is because the hardware is as refined as the OS and other apple software... there's a lot to be said for that.
anyway, it's an old debate, but i'll choose computers based on quality over market share most of the time.
well, there's another possible reason to tax foreign goods, which is to make domestic products sell better. even if people are spending more for the same object, less money is travelling to china so more money stays in the hands of americans, overall.
this is one major argument for letting halliburton and other us companies take contracts for rebuilding iraq, even if they do it for more money than iraqis, because if the US is gonna spend a few billion dollars, we should try and keep most of those billions inside the US economy.
i don't necessarily agree with these arguments (they both oversimplify), but i've heard them used time and again.
Wow. When i first read your post, i thought you said Sergio Aragone, creator of the comic Groo, the tale of a mendicant fool with a samurai sword and a pet dog, Rufferto, who is smarter than he is.
At least the restaurant scene is not far off from a fray involving Groo - many body parts are always severed...
actually, i use my "windows" ipod on my mac all the time, no reformat necessary.
to go the other direction you need XPlay or something to enable windows to handle HFS+, but that's just software... easy.
you're absolutely right, and i recind the statement i made.
that's fair. i guess someday we'll see if you're correct and it shakes out that way in court. nonetheless at this stage, i'm not at all sure that a company couldn't revoke your licence and request that you cease using their software. i may have spoken too vigorously, but every bit of software i have is governed by some licence agreement or another, and would appear to valid as of today. perhaps that'll get challenged and will be settled, as you say.
in the case of linux, the software is still licenced whatever any particular company calls the transaction. when you run linux, you are accepting the terms of the GPL, which is a licence between you and the rightsholders of the code, in this case many independent authors. a company can tell you whatever it wants to, nonetheless their act of distributing it indicates their acceptance of the GPL, as does you're running it.
that being said, i was perhaps inprecise in my statement. a company *could* sell you software unencumbered by licence, but few, if any, do so in reality. my guess is that virtually no one reading this site has more than 1 program on their pc that is completely licence free.
as for the statement regarding leasing cars, you are correct you sign contracts, but the contracts that deal with leasing a car are still different from software licences. primarily this is because you cannot easily gain from IP in the car, can't redistribute the car while maintaining your copy. if that was all possible, you'd probably get a licence with your car like the EULA on windows, saying you won't disassemble, copy, redistribute or otherwise modify the car. again, the argument about if they should or should not is completely up for depate.
It's legally valid because you didn't licence your car from Ford -- you purchased an object. Things like cars and toasters aren't (yet) subject to licencing (just wait til your toaster has software on it though... betcha the box has a EULA).
You did, however, licence your linux software from the developers who wrote it and if they stole code, you, as a licencee, may be responsible, not for damages, but for payment of licencing fees on the code that was misappropriated.
We could argue all day about wether software *should* be considered identical to a physical object, but at present it is not. You don't buy software, you buy software licences, always.
So in summary, yes, it *could* stand up in court, not as a liability issue, i.e. damages for past illegality, but as an issue of paying a licence for the use of SCO IP. This presupposes that they can prove that Linux actually carries any such IP and that the version of the kernel you happen to be using contains any of it. The first is highly questionable and the second will be moot about a week after any infringing code segments are actually identified.
(the latter case, incidentally, does nothing to help IBM in their contractual dispute which *is* a liability issue and *is* about past damages. If infringing code is found, even if the code is removed from the linux sources, those responsible for the misappropriation, presumably IBM, will be held liable for damages. However, users should be free and clear, though linux's reputation would be substantially tarnished.)
[i am, of course, not a lawyer, but i'm pretty sure my understanding is correct.]
Just because Dean's campaign promotes GPL'ed software doesn't mean he's going to fight for your interests: at most this is just pandering to the web-connected crowd, but is more likely just someone's pet project that got blown out of proportion.
maybe i'm not cynical enough. i thought that at best this was an attempt to use technology in a way it's not been used before - to organize grassroots political action. at *worst* it's pandering. the thing i like the most about dean is that he seems not to be pandering to anybody, which is rare among politicians. it's refreshing. but, maybe i'm super naive, i guess.
On the security side, I hope that VeriSign avoids Diebold's mistake (with electronic voting machines, which is different from Internet voting) and makes the source code and security procedures public for scrutiny.
hah! wow, yeah, i'll be over here holding my breath for that one. right up until my lungs collapse.
until the government decides to care and force these systems to be open, they will not be. christ, maryland even got an independent review telling them how much of a piece of shit the Diebold system is, and they were like, "Yeah, this sure does suck... too bad we already paid diebold a lot of money. We're using them anyway."
sometimes i feel like my head's going to explode.
voting systems should be a) secure and b) easy to use, in that order. I'm all for increasing participation, because nothing makes society work better than when more people are informed and involved... but not at the cost of security.
And when the fuck did the time taken to tally become such a huge issue. Christ, we don't do this for the media... who cares if we have to wait 3 days to find out what happened? Does that affect *anything*? I understaind there are potential economic savings in efficient tallying procedures, but come on, America is fucking rich... i'm sure we can find the cash to make sure the elections process is secure and accurate.
Voting is the one thing that should never be handed over to interested parties. I'm more than a little nervous that Diebolds CEO is a hard core, vocal Bush supporter, but i wouldn't be any happier if he had said he would deliver Ohio's votes to Dean, or Lieberman or Ralph Nader or Jesus Christ. It's improper.
All this "Save the environment" stuff is bunk. What people are trying to save is themselves/the human race.
yeah, what a terrible thing. fucking self-preservationists!
i don't care what verbage environmentalists couch their arguments in if the end goal is longevity for human culture.
Which is probably a good reason not to chop down all those nice CO2 absorbing rainforests down there...
human causes aren't limited to burning fossil fuels.
I have a better idea...
how bout you "take into your own hands" by not buying CD's from RIAA member companies. and be public about it.
i've been buying cd's for a long time, and have spent quite a bit on recorded music. now, i've decided to stop, only buy CD's a used record stores or from labels i know are not affiliated with RIAA.
does it mean i'm not gonna get the new radiohead record? yep, it does. will i miss having it? yeah, i will. so, oh well.
honestly, fighting this with more illegality is going to have the opposite effect - it's going to underscore the need for legislation to ease prosecution, enable heavy DRM, and stifle technology.
what there should be is a petition that says "I, as a consumer of music, am appaled by the current state of the music industry, where musicians and consumers both lose and the only winners are the executives of large multinational corporations. As such, i'm not buying any more new recordings from RIAA affiliates. I will move my business to independent labels or second hand stores, and live concerts, which do vastly more to support artists and communities and the ART of making music. Until the industry begins fairly compensating artists, works HONESTLY to create a fair and equitable electronic distribution model and stops making false and misleading statements, I pledge to remove my personal financial support."
I don't even think the RIAA is necessarily wrong in it's lawsuits... foolish, and malicious, but not wrong. And it's likely to work, too, in the short term. Lets face it nerds, file sharing wouldn't be an issue if it was only geeks that did it... it's little janie doe after school and her mom who doesn't know any better. well, now they know better and you can bet little janie's computer doesn't have Kazaa on it anymore. Piracy will probably substantially shift back to physical media by burning and trading cd's wholesale (anyone remember dubbing tapes off your friends in the 6th grade...), which is arguably as big a problem as file trading. Eventually a new system will be put in place... either an egalitarian system of artsit's directly selling to fans, or compulsory licencing, or a tax on CD burners, or some as yet undiscussed method. I hope to see one that breaks the stranglehold of Big labels, because, honestly, they're not needed anymore and the artists will do better with indies or on their own.
(for one proof of why major label money and producers are becoming increasingly unnecessary, check out www.mellowdrone.com - this guy made a record in his NYC apartment with some mikes and a VAIO, which sounds as good as anything that comes out of Universal/Sony/etc., production-wise, and offered it for download on his web site.)
Lets not give the RIAA's statements legitimacy by engaging in the acts they blame for their losses. Lets show them that they're about to suffer losses which stem from something other than file sharing -- namely alienation, dissatisfaction, and outrage. Too much mass market crap, overpriced CDs and shady artist relations have lead some people to do nothing but download their music for free. It's lead me to a place where i am no longer willing to support their product.
hear hear.
The cable is actually pulling up. Catastrophic failure at any point along the cable results in it leaving earth.
not if the point of failure is beyond the midpoint, causing the center of gravity to shift below GEO and draw the cable down.
that being said it wouldn't likely be dangerous due to it being lightweight, wide and thin. A sheet of flexible cardstock does about the same damage dropped from 100 feet or a 100 thousand.