Yes, because we all know that Traffic Vigilantes cause safety to happen, and that the people you are now forcing to drive the speed limit aren't going to mistake you for a self-sanctimonious assclown, pass you on the shoulder, and aggressively cut you off the first chance they get. Who knows, now that you've taught them how to drive they might not be so careless when cutting in front of you that they won't accidentally clip your front bumper some day, spinning you beneath the tractor trailer in the right lane you were pacing.
"He enjoyed his righteous glee until the very end" makes for a pretty pathetic epitaph.
Tell you what. You get trained, a badge, a gun, and a car with flashing red lights on the top, and then you can control how other people drive. Until that time, if you are serious about being safe and preventing accidents, avoid aggressive drivers. There are two proven ways you can do this: stay in the right lane unless passing, or stay off the roads altogether. If you find you're still being tailgated in the right lane, gently slow down until the traffic in the left lane is passing you, giving the tailgater ample opportunity to use the left lane to speed by you. But getting or staying in the way of an aggressive driver is likely the highest risk driving maneuver you can perform while sober (perhaps even higher than shoving a cell phone in your ear.)
Well, if they're going to tag people for tailgating, I want them to issue tickets to the clowns going less than the speed limit in the left lane, too; and those who speed up as you attempt to pass them.
I think the best way to reduce road rage is to eliminate the butt-heads who get in my way:-)
If they are being shut out, how are you going to see them?
Usually the problem isn't seeing them. It's weeding out the serious researchers from the nutjobs that's tricky. (And even the nutjobs can occasionally uncover some facts, but they're usually shrouded in such bad science that they're almost useless.)
The point is not whether counterclaims are being stifled or not. The point is that in reporting the facts, you don't "pick a side". Especially when you're trying to ferret out other quiet cases of science that may be supporting the "other side."
Saying that there's only one serious opposition researcher is almost implying "so everybody else thinks he's wrong." That's hardly the way to give isolated researchers the courage to stand up and say "and I agree with him."
Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.
But you don't get re-elected by ignoring the threat. You get re-elected by trumpeting the threats loudly and then touting the lack of successful attacks. Fortunately, this last set of elections proved that fear-mongering by itself isn't enough; or that it can last only so long.
I'm wondering what the best course of action from the pov of consumers is, though.
My action has been to continue to purchase music on CD, from a store. Since there is no good way to "buy" music on-line and still get a high-quality product, I don't. And any music that an "ordinary" CD player can play can be ripped at whatever quality I'm looking for.
I realize it's mostly pissing in the wind, and that I'm still enriching the record companies far more than the artists. But the principles I live by are:
I refuse to rip people off. That includes record labels. If I disagree with the price, I do not purchase the music, nor do I download it. I live without it.
Once I've bought the disc, I'm going to fully exercise my rights. I'll copy it for use at home, work and car, use it as a ring tone, whatever.
I do not share those copies with other people.
If that doesn't qualify as fair use, I don't know how much more fair I can be.
Wouldn't it be best for SCO to simply drop the suit and try to get back into the technology business? Or would that just firmly seat the hook for the expected counter-suit from IBM to reclaim damages from the frivolous lawsuit?
I'm not understanding why SCO would continue to pump any of their few remaining pennies into a lawsuit, when the judge's actions are clearly saying "DROP THIS NOW, YOU DAMN IDIOTS."
It seems to me that this entire suit is nothing now but a personal battle for Darl and his cohorts. Have they completely forgotten that they are supposed to be wisely using their shareholders' money to turn a profit? Why don't the shareholders vote him out in order to salvage whatever money they have left? Even ignoring the financial impact of the suit, he's managed to turn a once-profitable company into a penny stock as well as a laughing stock. If I were an investor, I'd be mad enough to want a change.
I still think buying into any form of DRM is a bad idea. Perhaps Apple has implemented it better than most (not a surprise, given that it's apple) but still, I'm not going to ever voluntarily purchase DRM'd audio.
Ripping music introduces distortions. Re-ripping music adds really big distortions. Highs are chopped, and nothing is crisp. Bright cymbals sound like clanging old beer cans. Snare drums sound like toms. Pianos sound like Casio keyboards. And Bob Dylan's vocals are more like sand than gravel.:-)
The reason is simple: AAC is a lossy compression format. It's pretty good for what it is, but it introduces distortions of its own, and it does lose clarity. When you burn it to an audio CD, you're creating a WAV file that is a reproduction of the compressed music, not of the original. It's no worse than AAC, but it can be no better. Now let's re-rip it. MP3 is also a lossy compression format, and most encoders I've heard (even lame, which is the best I've played with) are a lot worse at fidelity than AAC. What was simply muddy before is now compressed mud.
Visually, it's the equivalent of looking at a VGA-resolution printout of the Mona Lisa. You can recognize it, you can use it for a background picture on a web site or a TV show, but you could never hang it on your wall and enjoy it.
If all you use music for is "pleasant background noise", have at it. Re-rip until your iPod is stuffed. But if you enjoy your music, you're going to be extremely disappointed in the quality that results.
FairPlay only allows you to put your music on five computers. If you want to listen to it on your Mac, or burn a CD from it using your Mac, that uses one of your five licenses. Your very first iPod used another. Your second iPod tooks a third. Your shiny new Powerbook used your fourth license. And now your video iPod used your fifth, and last, license. Next year, when you upgrade to an iPod Pico (or whatever) that music you "bought" for your first iPod won't play, because you've used up all its licenses.
Yes, I know the iPod doesn't "require" FairPlay. Purchasing from the iTMS does, of course. And lots of people are loading up on hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of music from iTMS with barely a clue that they're only another iPod away from completely losing the right to listen to the music they're paying for.
This is insidious DRM at its worst. It's virtually invisible -- right up until you hit that glass wall. My only hope is that there are congressmen who get burned by this. We need some of them to become outraged enough to kill future DRM legislation, and maybe even roll back some of the draconian stupidity that is the DMCA.
Regarding the specific word "stupid", I consider people who voluntarily play the DRM game to be suffering from the same type of "the future will always be perfect" delusion that allows people to go deep into debt or vote to increase spending without raising taxes. You may not be "stupid" simply for owning an iPod, but loading it up with Digitally Restricted Music can be described as "shortsighted" at best.
Well, it's bad, but not the worst. Check out Xiph's comparison page and you'll probably find that the Real player is about as bad, and Yamaha's VQF is even worse.
I've been using Mailinator for throw-away web page signups for years, but I use Sneakemail for the purchasing sites where I'd like to be notified about shipments, etc.
I have to say I like the idea of a 10 minute window. Several hours means I can't really use it to have them send me passwords, as I frequently have name collisions at Mailinator.
In the same vein, I dislike the lack of a "roll-your-own" email address that Mailinator offers. With Mailinator, I can simply type john@mailinator.com and not worry about visiting Mailinator's site first. With TMM, I have to hit their site to get the randomly generated mail40367@10minutemail.com address (and yes, they're slashdotted at the moment.)
we tried it 'your way'. It didn't work, and we lost millions. The next version is going to give the features the consumer is clamoring for." They can say that, and _not_ be accused of piracy.
They could, but they won't. Microsoft is in bed with the (RI|MP)AA for the long haul. They will never do anything to play open forms of media because they are afraid they'll be legally reamed if they don't.
They're just positioning the Zune up to work with Vista and Treacherous Computing. Once consumers come to understand that the only music they can play comes from web stores, and the only movies they can watch are from store-bought discs, they'll buy into the Zune hook, line and sinker. At least that's Plan A.
The trick is to recognize they have no Plan B. That's it, people, it's Zune and Microsoft's brand of DRM, or nothing at all. Remember, they're Microsoft. They sincerely believe they can dictate whatever the hell consumers want. And apparently we want Zunes, and we don't care about DRM.
For the most part they're right about DRM. People are obviously stupid enough to buy iPods that are crippled by FairPlay, and invest thousands of dollars at the iTunes store, so they can't be too far off the mark.
Absolutely. Anything that portrays the MPAA in a negative light can only serve to embarrass them. Of course that same line of thinking doesn't seem to have weakened the RIAA in any way. But yeah, anything to get them in the news as being another example of "corporate evil" will shift public opinion.
They've used lies and exaggerations against 'movie pirates' for years, so if the karmic wheel has to turn in their direction I'm not going to feel bad about it, either.
Too well played, I believe. Their site is not only being Slashdotted, but I think millions of gullible people are frantically sending each other emails right now saying "OMG, Dave, they want to charge you $50 for your big screen TV!!!" Their site is going to take a looong time to recover from this one!
Past experience suggests that I'll get this exact link from a well-meaning relative sometime in the next two or three months.
If nuclear war ever looks eminent I'll probably be taking a trip to the Greenbrier to "play golf" and "take in the sights."
Forget that. If I find out the nukes are in the air, I'm going after that hot business analyst a couple cubes over. "Hey, baby, it's our last few minutes on earth... "
Who in their right minds would pay-per-view for 92x64 bitmaps?
Your question shows a lack of understanding of their customer base. With their insulting crippling of phones and fear-based advertising Verizon continually aims for the bottom 50% of the population, and that's going to include an awful lot of people not in their "right minds".
You can't even fault them for it -- even idiots end up with money that they want to spend, and Verizon is simply there to collect it. It's capitalism in action.
Well, it makes me wonder why Microsoft can't simply buy the FSF for 10 billion dollars just to own the FSF name, and then write GPL v4 granting all software ownership options exclusively to Steve Ballmer. It's nice to think the foundation wouldn't be misused in that way, but I don't see a guarantee.
Think about how you'd "upgrade" a license. Does it even make sense to release software saying "this is released under a license that is not yet written?" Let's just say that you do, but the new license contains features you disagree with. OK, so you feel bad and your software is licensed inappropriately. But what about the 'consumer' of your license, who thought he was getting it under these specific conditions, and those conditions have now been taken away?
While I agree completely with RMS regarding "tivoization" (lovely word, BTW) think about the GPL v2 license. If the software had been released saying "covered under future GPL licenses", then Tivo would be in violation the moment GPL v3 is released. Let's say that completely ended their business model, putting them out of business and leaving millions of Tivo users without a working directory service. The offenders are gone, but the "innocent" public is harmed by their absence. Overall, is this a good thing?
Or what if RMS gets hit by a bus, and the next license claiming to be the GPL is written by a consortium of corporations? For the sake of argument, suppose this new GPL v5 is written such that it permits companies to claim ownership over previously free software? Would you want your software to suddenly be misappropriated by Microsoft or IBM?
As a free software consumer, I don't think I want to be exposed to that risk. I'm willing to accept the terms of GPL versions 1, 2 and even 3. But I don't know what's in v4, and I'm not willing to trust that v4 will be something I ever agree with.
Heh. Every time I come back from vacation, I consider it a mini-game of roulette to see if my door access card will let me into the building. You never know if this will be the time they choose budget cuts, or if they find out about Slashdot during working hours...:-)
[ Yes, I am joking. I'm quite sure Mr. Lo is brilliant -- just maybe a touch too honest.:-) ]
You're assuming that he cares about earning lots of money.
Wrong! I'm assuming nothing. I'm telling a fracking joke, and everyone here took it waaaay too seriously! I said, "I am joking." You even quoted me above saying, "I am joking."
OK, so I want everyone who posted a reply to my comment thinking I was serious (and that includes the moderators who modded this up as insightful) to stand up and take this pledge:
I JUST READ A JOKE. THE JOKE EVEN SAID IT WAS A JOKE. I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IT WAS A JOKE IMPLYING THAT SOME GUY PASSING UP MONEY IS STUPID. IN THE FUTURE WHEN I SEE A SLASHDOTTER SAY 'I AM JOKING' I PROMISE NOT TO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. IHBT, AMEN.
Slashdot Mirror
"He enjoyed his righteous glee until the very end" makes for a pretty pathetic epitaph.
Tell you what. You get trained, a badge, a gun, and a car with flashing red lights on the top, and then you can control how other people drive. Until that time, if you are serious about being safe and preventing accidents, avoid aggressive drivers. There are two proven ways you can do this: stay in the right lane unless passing, or stay off the roads altogether. If you find you're still being tailgated in the right lane, gently slow down until the traffic in the left lane is passing you, giving the tailgater ample opportunity to use the left lane to speed by you. But getting or staying in the way of an aggressive driver is likely the highest risk driving maneuver you can perform while sober (perhaps even higher than shoving a cell phone in your ear.)
I think the best way to reduce road rage is to eliminate the butt-heads who get in my way :-)
True, he was merely reporting the existence of a news story, and not the story itself. Please forgive my meta-mistake.
Usually the problem isn't seeing them. It's weeding out the serious researchers from the nutjobs that's tricky. (And even the nutjobs can occasionally uncover some facts, but they're usually shrouded in such bad science that they're almost useless.)
Saying that there's only one serious opposition researcher is almost implying "so everybody else thinks he's wrong." That's hardly the way to give isolated researchers the courage to stand up and say "and I agree with him."
"Hey, Osama, it's for you. Some guy, says his name is Emmanuel Goldstein, says you're stealing his routine."
But you don't get re-elected by ignoring the threat. You get re-elected by trumpeting the threats loudly and then touting the lack of successful attacks. Fortunately, this last set of elections proved that fear-mongering by itself isn't enough; or that it can last only so long.
My action has been to continue to purchase music on CD, from a store. Since there is no good way to "buy" music on-line and still get a high-quality product, I don't. And any music that an "ordinary" CD player can play can be ripped at whatever quality I'm looking for.
I realize it's mostly pissing in the wind, and that I'm still enriching the record companies far more than the artists. But the principles I live by are:
- I refuse to rip people off. That includes record labels. If I disagree with the price, I do not purchase the music, nor do I download it. I live without it.
- Once I've bought the disc, I'm going to fully exercise my rights. I'll copy it for use at home, work and car, use it as a ring tone, whatever.
- I do not share those copies with other people.
If that doesn't qualify as fair use, I don't know how much more fair I can be.I'm not understanding why SCO would continue to pump any of their few remaining pennies into a lawsuit, when the judge's actions are clearly saying "DROP THIS NOW, YOU DAMN IDIOTS."
It seems to me that this entire suit is nothing now but a personal battle for Darl and his cohorts. Have they completely forgotten that they are supposed to be wisely using their shareholders' money to turn a profit? Why don't the shareholders vote him out in order to salvage whatever money they have left? Even ignoring the financial impact of the suit, he's managed to turn a once-profitable company into a penny stock as well as a laughing stock. If I were an investor, I'd be mad enough to want a change.
I still think buying into any form of DRM is a bad idea. Perhaps Apple has implemented it better than most (not a surprise, given that it's apple) but still, I'm not going to ever voluntarily purchase DRM'd audio.
The reason is simple: AAC is a lossy compression format. It's pretty good for what it is, but it introduces distortions of its own, and it does lose clarity. When you burn it to an audio CD, you're creating a WAV file that is a reproduction of the compressed music, not of the original. It's no worse than AAC, but it can be no better. Now let's re-rip it. MP3 is also a lossy compression format, and most encoders I've heard (even lame, which is the best I've played with) are a lot worse at fidelity than AAC. What was simply muddy before is now compressed mud.
Visually, it's the equivalent of looking at a VGA-resolution printout of the Mona Lisa. You can recognize it, you can use it for a background picture on a web site or a TV show, but you could never hang it on your wall and enjoy it.
If all you use music for is "pleasant background noise", have at it. Re-rip until your iPod is stuffed. But if you enjoy your music, you're going to be extremely disappointed in the quality that results.
Welcome to "well-oiled" DRM.
BTW, your Aunt Salley called, and she sounded right pissed.
This is insidious DRM at its worst. It's virtually invisible -- right up until you hit that glass wall. My only hope is that there are congressmen who get burned by this. We need some of them to become outraged enough to kill future DRM legislation, and maybe even roll back some of the draconian stupidity that is the DMCA.
Regarding the specific word "stupid", I consider people who voluntarily play the DRM game to be suffering from the same type of "the future will always be perfect" delusion that allows people to go deep into debt or vote to increase spending without raising taxes. You may not be "stupid" simply for owning an iPod, but loading it up with Digitally Restricted Music can be described as "shortsighted" at best.
Well, it's bad, but not the worst. Check out Xiph's comparison page and you'll probably find that the Real player is about as bad, and Yamaha's VQF is even worse.
But yeah, Vorbis just completely rocks.
I have to say I like the idea of a 10 minute window. Several hours means I can't really use it to have them send me passwords, as I frequently have name collisions at Mailinator.
In the same vein, I dislike the lack of a "roll-your-own" email address that Mailinator offers. With Mailinator, I can simply type john@mailinator.com and not worry about visiting Mailinator's site first. With TMM, I have to hit their site to get the randomly generated mail40367@10minutemail.com address (and yes, they're slashdotted at the moment.)
They could, but they won't. Microsoft is in bed with the (RI|MP)AA for the long haul. They will never do anything to play open forms of media because they are afraid they'll be legally reamed if they don't.
They're just positioning the Zune up to work with Vista and Treacherous Computing. Once consumers come to understand that the only music they can play comes from web stores, and the only movies they can watch are from store-bought discs, they'll buy into the Zune hook, line and sinker. At least that's Plan A.
The trick is to recognize they have no Plan B. That's it, people, it's Zune and Microsoft's brand of DRM, or nothing at all. Remember, they're Microsoft. They sincerely believe they can dictate whatever the hell consumers want. And apparently we want Zunes, and we don't care about DRM.
For the most part they're right about DRM. People are obviously stupid enough to buy iPods that are crippled by FairPlay, and invest thousands of dollars at the iTunes store, so they can't be too far off the mark.
They've used lies and exaggerations against 'movie pirates' for years, so if the karmic wheel has to turn in their direction I'm not going to feel bad about it, either.
Too well played, I believe. Their site is not only being Slashdotted, but I think millions of gullible people are frantically sending each other emails right now saying "OMG, Dave, they want to charge you $50 for your big screen TV!!!" Their site is going to take a looong time to recover from this one!
Past experience suggests that I'll get this exact link from a well-meaning relative sometime in the next two or three months.
Forget that. If I find out the nukes are in the air, I'm going after that hot business analyst a couple cubes over. "Hey, baby, it's our last few minutes on earth ... "
Your question shows a lack of understanding of their customer base. With their insulting crippling of phones and fear-based advertising Verizon continually aims for the bottom 50% of the population, and that's going to include an awful lot of people not in their "right minds".
You can't even fault them for it -- even idiots end up with money that they want to spend, and Verizon is simply there to collect it. It's capitalism in action.
Well, it makes me wonder why Microsoft can't simply buy the FSF for 10 billion dollars just to own the FSF name, and then write GPL v4 granting all software ownership options exclusively to Steve Ballmer. It's nice to think the foundation wouldn't be misused in that way, but I don't see a guarantee.
While I agree completely with RMS regarding "tivoization" (lovely word, BTW) think about the GPL v2 license. If the software had been released saying "covered under future GPL licenses", then Tivo would be in violation the moment GPL v3 is released. Let's say that completely ended their business model, putting them out of business and leaving millions of Tivo users without a working directory service. The offenders are gone, but the "innocent" public is harmed by their absence. Overall, is this a good thing?
Or what if RMS gets hit by a bus, and the next license claiming to be the GPL is written by a consortium of corporations? For the sake of argument, suppose this new GPL v5 is written such that it permits companies to claim ownership over previously free software? Would you want your software to suddenly be misappropriated by Microsoft or IBM?
As a free software consumer, I don't think I want to be exposed to that risk. I'm willing to accept the terms of GPL versions 1, 2 and even 3. But I don't know what's in v4, and I'm not willing to trust that v4 will be something I ever agree with.
Heh. Every time I come back from vacation, I consider it a mini-game of roulette to see if my door access card will let me into the building. You never know if this will be the time they choose budget cuts, or if they find out about Slashdot during working hours... :-)
Wrong! I'm assuming nothing. I'm telling a fracking joke, and everyone here took it waaaay too seriously! I said, "I am joking." You even quoted me above saying, "I am joking."
OK, so I want everyone who posted a reply to my comment thinking I was serious (and that includes the moderators who modded this up as insightful) to stand up and take this pledge:
Sheesh.