You're right, I'm a professional artist who consults with intellectual property attorneys on this topic on a regular basis. My entire career is based on copyright. My rent is paid with copyrights and my food is bought with copyrights. 99% of the contracts I've negotiated in the past 15 years of my life have been about copyright.
There is no such thing as implicit permission to redistribute copyrighted material. There is Fair Use, and there is explicit permission, but nothing in-between. You could argue in court that damages should be lower because you believed you had implicit permission, but you would still be guilty of violating the copyright holder's exclusive authority to distribute. There is no way under current US law to transfer any right of reproduction or distribution without an explicit statement.
The people who own the copyright on those files, are explicitly making them available for free download on P2P networks. That precludes them suing others for doing the same, since you have at least implicit permission from the copyright holder.
There's no such thing as "implicit permission" to redistribute a copyrighted work. Either you have explicit permission or you don't have the legal authority to distribute.
True, but the point is that the military does give them weapons "free". It has always been common for people to bring or add their own equipment (I recently shipped out a load of M4 barrel plugs to Iraq for some friends and went in on some body armor last year) but it's not like you're expected to just show up with whatever blunt object you can lay your hands on and that's it. CS isn't isn't simulating a 19th century militia.
You seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about people "who think like me" or "who I must support" or who "I must agree with". If you want to talk to them, send them an email.
No, I'm aware that they agitate for schemes like national health insurance, but on the path to that, the oppose any attempt to make people dependent on one employer. That's stupid.
I'll assume you meant the opposite of what you said, since what you said makes no sense. You keep speaking as if there is one collective group of people with a single idea, but that isn't the case. Many do work to disentangle health care from employers, while others see it as the lesser of two evils until some sort of more widespread care is available. One common idea is that as health care becomes more and more of a burden on employers, eventually it will be Ford and GE and IBM who go to Congress and demand to be more competitive internationally by nationalizing health care.
So yes, the fundamental statement that you made, that for some reason people complaining about Wal Mart don't seem to be doing anything else in the health care debate, is meritless.
So is food. So is shelter. Where's your argument supporting employer provision of those?
Those are provided by the government (and many private charities) if you can't afford them. If historically they had been provided by employers, it would doubtless have been a difficult public battle to have them provided by government. But neither situation has anything to do with what I was saying, that they are necessary for life and therefore many believe should be available outside of the market to those who cannot afford them. It is also worth noting that food and shelter for a family can be had for a few hundred dollars a month, while health insurance for a family generally costs at least $1,500 a month when bought as an individual on the open market.
But you already get emergency care, regardless of whether your employer provides it. Not because of any generosity -- emergency care providers will always provide you with care at a critical moment because they can't afford the time to check.
That is correct, we already pay for very expensive health care (through taxes) at our emergency rooms. But that excludes essentially all preventative care and dealing with any chronic conditons -- chronic and preexisting conditions being one of the greatest reasons for people being excluded from private health care in the first place.
And even if I accepted that it was "different" along this dimension, it wouldn't explain why e.g., employers couldn't just *give the employee that cash* at let him buy from any approved plan.
If some businesses and health insurers want to move to such a plan, I'm sure they would have a great deal of support from many corners. In my experience, the CEOs and other high ranking officers of a company usually have exactly this kind of private insurance provided for them. Certainly, nobody is stopping a company or insurance company from doing it for all employees, I suspect it would simply be more expensive due to the reduction in size of the risk pool.
No, you're (suprise!) making an apples-to-oranges comparison. You're comparing receiving emergency health care to a planned purchase. But since the question is about employer-provided insurance, not the actual care itself, you should be comparing the planned insurance purchase to the planned electronics purchase.
I was comparing both care and insurance (hence the use of "health care/insurance" in my sentence!). Note that I said "or forego the product completely", which is not an option for someone with preexisting or chronic conditions, at least if they'd like to live to see old age. You can shop all you'd like, but if you have an exclusionary condition, you won't find private insurance at any price a normal mortal can afford, which is generally why large risk pools are created in the first place (by employers or governments or some other third party). If you stick out of the risk pool in home or auto insurance, you can make changes to fit back in. There is no comparable way to reenter the market for health insurance if you are deemed "u
That's what I was thinking as I read this. Which military requires soldiers to buy their own weapons on an open market? This doesn't seem realistic at all, it seems silly.
Well, I'm glad the people who are so indignant about employers that don't provide health insurance, are agitating to have this changed so that health insurance is more portable and less dependent on one's employer.
I'm pretty sure you spend so much time being sarcastic because you never actually research and think about the topics you get bent out of shape over. I think you'll find that those most critical of Wal-Mart and other employers who fail to provide health care are also those most supportive of national health care or other alternative methods of getting insurance that are less dependent on employers.
Unfortunately, you keep making the same mistake over and over again in your replies, which is equating health care/insurance with any other commodity (even other forms of insurance). Health care is not something "nice to have", it is quite literally life and death. If you don't get care at a critical moment, you'll die or wind up unable to work for the rest of your life. The same can not be said of buying milk or auto insurance or an mp3 player, where you have the ability to walk out the door and go to another salesman or forego the product completely.
Indeed, this works both ways. There was a local SBC promotion with Yahoo! for DSL at $19.99/month, and if you had cable you could call up and go through the motions to cancel, tell them you were leaving for that deal, and they'd match it. Pretty big discount considering they charged $45/month for Cable internet for those of us who don't have Cable TV as well.
Of course, I live in an old building with horrible wiring and could never get DSL, so it was all a bluff.
The idea that we can end terrorism by treating everyone with "respect" is naïve.
The idea that you can end terrorism by any means is naïve. Terrorism isn't an enemy or a place or a person.
Maybe you enjoy getting into unwinnable conflicts that accomplish nothing other than to drain resources and distract you, but us rational people would prefer to spend our time and energy elsewhere.
Some fights are unavoidable, unless you would rather surrender or run away.
Yeah, and some fights are avoidable. Learning the difference is part of what separates grown ups from teenage boys.
I know for a fact that fresh installs of WinXP SP2 i recently did on several systems had DRM turned on by default for ripped tracks using WMP. I don't remeber if that was WMP9 or an earlier version, but it was the default that your music was locked to the machine. Quite a subtle way to lock people in by crippling their own data in a way most would never notice until months (or years) later.
doesn't it strike you that the message sent by the courts to tech companies with their Apple decision is "You're on your own when it comes to protecting your trade secrets"?
Well, yes, that is the message. That's what the law says -- it is the company's job to protect trade secrets. If they want to keep it secret, they get limited legal protection should a leak occur. The courts are not the place to go and complain that it is hard to develop a major new product in secret, and the courts are not in the business of protecting a company's marketing strategy and timeline.
Yeah, because what people really wanted was for companies to start using illegal and unethical means to find leaks. That's exactly what people were requesting. The are no possible legal means to conduct an investigation, after all.
If you install from a counterfeited disc (or downloaded copy), the copy of Windows on your computer is also counterfeit. Why is this so hard for you to understand???
Because it isn't true. The copy would be illegal, unlicensed and illegitimate, but it is actually Microsoft Windows. Why is it so hard for you to understand that if I have a copy (legal or not) of Microsoft software, that it is still software produced by Microsoft? The legality of posession has nothing to do with whether it is actual Microsoft software. Genuine doesn't mean legal, it means it is really Microsoft Windows.
Where the product originated does not change the fact that an illegitimate copy has been made... There are plenty of outfits that try to pass off pirated copies of Windows as legit. By your definition, do those also not qualify as counterfeit?
The linguists are not talking about whether a copy is legitimate or not, just whether it is in fact what it is claimed to be, and it is in fact Microsoft Windows. It is an illegal, illegitmate and unlicensed copy of genuine Microsoft Windows. It might be fraudulently protrayed as a legal, licensed copy, but that fraud has no bearing on whether the software is actually Microsoft Windows or not.
By your logic: a counterfeit $100 bill is genuine because every aspect of it is genuine, except for the serial number and the fact that it is not an agent of the Federal Reserve which manufactured it. So, by right, everyone should accept that counterfeit $100 bill for all debts, including Uncle Sam.
Right? Same logic. ..
I don't see how that has any relationship to the logic of recognizing that Microsoft is in fact the source of the software being sold by pirates. You're positing a situation in which the source of the item is not the source claimed, which is the entire distinction between something genuine and something counterfeit.
The linguists are simply pointing out that the pirates are selling exactly what they claim to be selling: software written by Microsoft programmers, marketed as "Windows". It isn't some Korean workalike, or some Chinese software that is remarkably similar, it is the actual software produced by Microsoft programmers and sold under the Microsoft brand name in Microsoft boxes on Microsoft CDs.
You're missing the point. We're not arguing whether it's Windows on the CD, we're arguing whether it's a GENUINE copy of Windows.
No, you're missing the point. The linguists are talking about Windows, not the disc it comes on. The Windows software you get on a counterfeit disc is the actual software created by programmers at Microsoft. It is genuine Microsoft Windows, just not legal or authorized.
Pointless analogy, since the copies of Windows that we're talking about ARE copies, not original Microsoft-produced Windows CDs that are not supposed to exist. Again, you have to consider the SOURCE of the CD to determine whether it's a counterfeit.
Hey, it's the closest analogy that exists for your comparison to currency. You continue to talk about physical items while the article is talking about software. The SOURCE of the Microsoft Windows software distributed by pirates is, in fact, Microsoft. The software is not counterfeit, it is 100% genuine Microsoft Windows. It is just distributed illegally on counterfeit media.
No it isn't. The physical medium wasn't prepared by Microsoft or one of its legitimate manufacturing partners.
But the physical medium is not what makes Microsoft Windows, the medium is essentially just packaging for the software. Microsoft Windows is the same product whether it comes on a CD, a DVD, a download, a disk image pushed over a network, etc.
Having a fake hundred dollar bill that's identical right down to the fiber doesn't make it any less counterfeit.
No, but having a real $100 bill that is legally not supposed to exist (ie, it was heavily worn and exchanged by a bank for a new bill, after which it was supposed to be destroyed) does not make it less genuine. It is illegal, but not counterfeit.
If someone made a Windows clone from scratch that coincidentally was the exact same code as the Microsoft version, it would be counterfeit. But nobody is claiming someone recoded Windows in a counterfeit version, they are claiming that pirates distribute the actual software created by Microsoft. It is genuine Microsoft Windows in counterfeit packaging.
I'm actually sorry I poted another reply to this thread, since it meant I couldn't moderate you up. But I did want to thank you for explaining so clearly what is happening, why, and why it is unexpected.
What's the difference between root and Admin? Or, better yet, what is the *purpose* of Admin?
On a practical level, the purpose of Admin (aside from being a sudoer) is that they can manage the applications and settings on the system without being nagged. An Admin user can change things in the global/Applications and/Library directory. But anything owned by the system, including the/System and some of the more dangerous things in/Library, will require the Admin use to reauthenticate or sudo to change.
Admin users have to jump through even more hoops than just reauthentication in order to view or change other users' stuff. You can't accidentally view, much less change, another users' home or files. The Admin user is pretty limited out of the box.
Let me tell you up front that I'm an Agnostic/Atheist, and I avoided the CSM for many years because I assumed it was something akin to the Watchtower. Fortunately, I read a few issues in 2000 and have been reading it daily ever since.
It is, hands down, the single highest quality general interest newspaper published in the United States today. Compare any article on any topic from the CSM and what is reported in the other newspapers and media and it it becomes immediately clear that the only thing their "bias" does is remove all the sensationalism and hype from stories and replace it with depth, background and context. "If it bleeds it leads" is not the motto at the CSM, and they don't waste column inches on bullshit celebrity gossip or sports. They go out, get the facts first hand, and write responsible, in-depth, adult stories that do not shy away from the horrors of the world but also do not dwell on them.
I confess, if their name was different they'd probably be one of the top papers in the country among literate, moderate adults. It's their biggest liability, but try to ignore it and I you'll be surprised.
whaa? You sound like comic book guy. The Rebels are fantastic cameras any pro photographer would have killed for 20 years ago. That they are available now to regular consumers is fantastic.
Pair an older rebel with a 50/1.8 and an amateur photographer could put together a kit for $500 that is capable of shooting professional glossy magazine covers.
Eh, you found one guy who says that, but in my experience it is in fact quite common for entry level (and midrange) DSLR camera bodies to be considered "prosumer". Go to the boards on dpreview or photo.net or fred miranda and ask if they consider a Canon 300/350/400D a prosumer camera and most will say yes. Ask if a D30 is a prosumer camera and you'll probably get a 50/50 split at worst.
Prosumer just means good enough for situational pro use and fancy enough for high end enthusiast use. I don't think a fixed lens vs interchangable lens would affect that equation much.
In addition to the great new gapless playback feature, one cool thing "power users" of iTunes might be interested in is that there is now a "Skipped Count" (and "Last Skipped") attribute in iTunes. This will be great for finding those overrated songs that you constantly skip without remembering to downgrade them to fewer stars. Smart Playlists everywhere rejoice!
I was also impressed that it stopped checking the gapless settings on my whole library and immediately started updating the gapless settings on just the tracks on my iPod when I plugged it in. Good prioritization.
I'm scared of telling it to update album art, how well does it do? A fully automated system makes me worry I'm going to have all sorts of songs with hilariously incorrect artwork on them.
Don't the recent MP3 tag formats support arbitrary tags? I would imagine Apple is just adding a gapless tag, which may not be compatible with other implementations but should work for all their software and hardware. Otherwise they'll just store the information in the iTunes Library file like they do when a file's tag can't be written to or it doesn't support particular data.
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You're right, I'm a professional artist who consults with intellectual property attorneys on this topic on a regular basis. My entire career is based on copyright. My rent is paid with copyrights and my food is bought with copyrights. 99% of the contracts I've negotiated in the past 15 years of my life have been about copyright.
There is no such thing as implicit permission to redistribute copyrighted material. There is Fair Use, and there is explicit permission, but nothing in-between. You could argue in court that damages should be lower because you believed you had implicit permission, but you would still be guilty of violating the copyright holder's exclusive authority to distribute. There is no way under current US law to transfer any right of reproduction or distribution without an explicit statement.
The people who own the copyright on those files, are explicitly making them available for free download on P2P networks. That precludes them suing others for doing the same, since you have at least implicit permission from the copyright holder.
There's no such thing as "implicit permission" to redistribute a copyrighted work. Either you have explicit permission or you don't have the legal authority to distribute.
True, but the point is that the military does give them weapons "free". It has always been common for people to bring or add their own equipment (I recently shipped out a load of M4 barrel plugs to Iraq for some friends and went in on some body armor last year) but it's not like you're expected to just show up with whatever blunt object you can lay your hands on and that's it. CS isn't isn't simulating a 19th century militia.
You seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about people "who think like me" or "who I must support" or who "I must agree with". If you want to talk to them, send them an email.
No, I'm aware that they agitate for schemes like national health insurance, but on the path to that, the oppose any attempt to make people dependent on one employer. That's stupid.
I'll assume you meant the opposite of what you said, since what you said makes no sense. You keep speaking as if there is one collective group of people with a single idea, but that isn't the case. Many do work to disentangle health care from employers, while others see it as the lesser of two evils until some sort of more widespread care is available. One common idea is that as health care becomes more and more of a burden on employers, eventually it will be Ford and GE and IBM who go to Congress and demand to be more competitive internationally by nationalizing health care.
So yes, the fundamental statement that you made, that for some reason people complaining about Wal Mart don't seem to be doing anything else in the health care debate, is meritless.
So is food. So is shelter. Where's your argument supporting employer provision of those?
Those are provided by the government (and many private charities) if you can't afford them. If historically they had been provided by employers, it would doubtless have been a difficult public battle to have them provided by government. But neither situation has anything to do with what I was saying, that they are necessary for life and therefore many believe should be available outside of the market to those who cannot afford them. It is also worth noting that food and shelter for a family can be had for a few hundred dollars a month, while health insurance for a family generally costs at least $1,500 a month when bought as an individual on the open market.
But you already get emergency care, regardless of whether your employer provides it. Not because of any generosity -- emergency care providers will always provide you with care at a critical moment because they can't afford the time to check.
That is correct, we already pay for very expensive health care (through taxes) at our emergency rooms. But that excludes essentially all preventative care and dealing with any chronic conditons -- chronic and preexisting conditions being one of the greatest reasons for people being excluded from private health care in the first place.
And even if I accepted that it was "different" along this dimension, it wouldn't explain why e.g., employers couldn't just *give the employee that cash* at let him buy from any approved plan.
If some businesses and health insurers want to move to such a plan, I'm sure they would have a great deal of support from many corners. In my experience, the CEOs and other high ranking officers of a company usually have exactly this kind of private insurance provided for them. Certainly, nobody is stopping a company or insurance company from doing it for all employees, I suspect it would simply be more expensive due to the reduction in size of the risk pool.
No, you're (suprise!) making an apples-to-oranges comparison. You're comparing receiving emergency health care to a planned purchase. But since the question is about employer-provided insurance, not the actual care itself, you should be comparing the planned insurance purchase to the planned electronics purchase.
I was comparing both care and insurance (hence the use of "health care/insurance" in my sentence!). Note that I said "or forego the product completely", which is not an option for someone with preexisting or chronic conditions, at least if they'd like to live to see old age. You can shop all you'd like, but if you have an exclusionary condition, you won't find private insurance at any price a normal mortal can afford, which is generally why large risk pools are created in the first place (by employers or governments or some other third party). If you stick out of the risk pool in home or auto insurance, you can make changes to fit back in. There is no comparable way to reenter the market for health insurance if you are deemed "u
That's what I was thinking as I read this. Which military requires soldiers to buy their own weapons on an open market? This doesn't seem realistic at all, it seems silly.
Well, I'm glad the people who are so indignant about employers that don't provide health insurance, are agitating to have this changed so that health insurance is more portable and less dependent on one's employer.
I'm pretty sure you spend so much time being sarcastic because you never actually research and think about the topics you get bent out of shape over. I think you'll find that those most critical of Wal-Mart and other employers who fail to provide health care are also those most supportive of national health care or other alternative methods of getting insurance that are less dependent on employers.
Unfortunately, you keep making the same mistake over and over again in your replies, which is equating health care/insurance with any other commodity (even other forms of insurance). Health care is not something "nice to have", it is quite literally life and death. If you don't get care at a critical moment, you'll die or wind up unable to work for the rest of your life. The same can not be said of buying milk or auto insurance or an mp3 player, where you have the ability to walk out the door and go to another salesman or forego the product completely.
Indeed, this works both ways. There was a local SBC promotion with Yahoo! for DSL at $19.99/month, and if you had cable you could call up and go through the motions to cancel, tell them you were leaving for that deal, and they'd match it. Pretty big discount considering they charged $45/month for Cable internet for those of us who don't have Cable TV as well.
Of course, I live in an old building with horrible wiring and could never get DSL, so it was all a bluff.
The idea that we can end terrorism by treating everyone with "respect" is naïve.
The idea that you can end terrorism by any means is naïve. Terrorism isn't an enemy or a place or a person.
Maybe you enjoy getting into unwinnable conflicts that accomplish nothing other than to drain resources and distract you, but us rational people would prefer to spend our time and energy elsewhere.
Some fights are unavoidable, unless you would rather surrender or run away.
Yeah, and some fights are avoidable. Learning the difference is part of what separates grown ups from teenage boys.
I know for a fact that fresh installs of WinXP SP2 i recently did on several systems had DRM turned on by default for ripped tracks using WMP. I don't remeber if that was WMP9 or an earlier version, but it was the default that your music was locked to the machine. Quite a subtle way to lock people in by crippling their own data in a way most would never notice until months (or years) later.
doesn't it strike you that the message sent by the courts to tech companies with their Apple decision is "You're on your own when it comes to protecting your trade secrets"?
Well, yes, that is the message. That's what the law says -- it is the company's job to protect trade secrets. If they want to keep it secret, they get limited legal protection should a leak occur. The courts are not the place to go and complain that it is hard to develop a major new product in secret, and the courts are not in the business of protecting a company's marketing strategy and timeline.
Yeah, because what people really wanted was for companies to start using illegal and unethical means to find leaks. That's exactly what people were requesting. The are no possible legal means to conduct an investigation, after all.
If you install from a counterfeited disc (or downloaded copy), the copy of Windows on your computer is also counterfeit. Why is this so hard for you to understand???
Because it isn't true. The copy would be illegal, unlicensed and illegitimate, but it is actually Microsoft Windows. Why is it so hard for you to understand that if I have a copy (legal or not) of Microsoft software, that it is still software produced by Microsoft? The legality of posession has nothing to do with whether it is actual Microsoft software. Genuine doesn't mean legal, it means it is really Microsoft Windows.
Where the product originated does not change the fact that an illegitimate copy has been made...
There are plenty of outfits that try to pass off pirated copies of Windows as legit. By your definition, do those also not qualify as counterfeit?
The linguists are not talking about whether a copy is legitimate or not, just whether it is in fact what it is claimed to be, and it is in fact Microsoft Windows. It is an illegal, illegitmate and unlicensed copy of genuine Microsoft Windows. It might be fraudulently protrayed as a legal, licensed copy, but that fraud has no bearing on whether the software is actually Microsoft Windows or not.
By your logic: a counterfeit $100 bill is genuine because every aspect of it is genuine, except for the serial number and the fact that it is not an agent of the Federal Reserve which manufactured it. So, by right, everyone should accept that counterfeit $100 bill for all debts, including Uncle Sam.
.
Right? Same logic. .
I don't see how that has any relationship to the logic of recognizing that Microsoft is in fact the source of the software being sold by pirates. You're positing a situation in which the source of the item is not the source claimed, which is the entire distinction between something genuine and something counterfeit.
The linguists are simply pointing out that the pirates are selling exactly what they claim to be selling: software written by Microsoft programmers, marketed as "Windows". It isn't some Korean workalike, or some Chinese software that is remarkably similar, it is the actual software produced by Microsoft programmers and sold under the Microsoft brand name in Microsoft boxes on Microsoft CDs.
You're missing the point. We're not arguing whether it's Windows on the CD, we're arguing whether it's a GENUINE copy of Windows.
No, you're missing the point. The linguists are talking about Windows, not the disc it comes on. The Windows software you get on a counterfeit disc is the actual software created by programmers at Microsoft. It is genuine Microsoft Windows, just not legal or authorized.
Pointless analogy, since the copies of Windows that we're talking about ARE copies, not original Microsoft-produced Windows CDs that are not supposed to exist. Again, you have to consider the SOURCE of the CD to determine whether it's a counterfeit.
Hey, it's the closest analogy that exists for your comparison to currency. You continue to talk about physical items while the article is talking about software. The SOURCE of the Microsoft Windows software distributed by pirates is, in fact, Microsoft. The software is not counterfeit, it is 100% genuine Microsoft Windows. It is just distributed illegally on counterfeit media.
No it isn't. The physical medium wasn't prepared by Microsoft or one of its legitimate manufacturing partners.
But the physical medium is not what makes Microsoft Windows, the medium is essentially just packaging for the software. Microsoft Windows is the same product whether it comes on a CD, a DVD, a download, a disk image pushed over a network, etc.
Having a fake hundred dollar bill that's identical right down to the fiber doesn't make it any less counterfeit.
No, but having a real $100 bill that is legally not supposed to exist (ie, it was heavily worn and exchanged by a bank for a new bill, after which it was supposed to be destroyed) does not make it less genuine. It is illegal, but not counterfeit.
If someone made a Windows clone from scratch that coincidentally was the exact same code as the Microsoft version, it would be counterfeit. But nobody is claiming someone recoded Windows in a counterfeit version, they are claiming that pirates distribute the actual software created by Microsoft. It is genuine Microsoft Windows in counterfeit packaging.
I'm actually sorry I poted another reply to this thread, since it meant I couldn't moderate you up. But I did want to thank you for explaining so clearly what is happening, why, and why it is unexpected.
What's the difference between root and Admin? Or, better yet, what is the *purpose* of Admin?
/Applications and /Library directory. But anything owned by the system, including the /System and some of the more dangerous things in /Library, will require the Admin use to reauthenticate or sudo to change.
On a practical level, the purpose of Admin (aside from being a sudoer) is that they can manage the applications and settings on the system without being nagged. An Admin user can change things in the global
Admin users have to jump through even more hoops than just reauthentication in order to view or change other users' stuff. You can't accidentally view, much less change, another users' home or files. The Admin user is pretty limited out of the box.
Let me tell you up front that I'm an Agnostic/Atheist, and I avoided the CSM for many years because I assumed it was something akin to the Watchtower. Fortunately, I read a few issues in 2000 and have been reading it daily ever since.
It is, hands down, the single highest quality general interest newspaper published in the United States today. Compare any article on any topic from the CSM and what is reported in the other newspapers and media and it it becomes immediately clear that the only thing their "bias" does is remove all the sensationalism and hype from stories and replace it with depth, background and context. "If it bleeds it leads" is not the motto at the CSM, and they don't waste column inches on bullshit celebrity gossip or sports. They go out, get the facts first hand, and write responsible, in-depth, adult stories that do not shy away from the horrors of the world but also do not dwell on them.
I confess, if their name was different they'd probably be one of the top papers in the country among literate, moderate adults. It's their biggest liability, but try to ignore it and I you'll be surprised.
Rebel XT (cheap, and a piece of shit)
whaa? You sound like comic book guy. The Rebels are fantastic cameras any pro photographer would have killed for 20 years ago. That they are available now to regular consumers is fantastic.
Pair an older rebel with a 50/1.8 and an amateur photographer could put together a kit for $500 that is capable of shooting professional glossy magazine covers.
Eh, you found one guy who says that, but in my experience it is in fact quite common for entry level (and midrange) DSLR camera bodies to be considered "prosumer". Go to the boards on dpreview or photo.net or fred miranda and ask if they consider a Canon 300/350/400D a prosumer camera and most will say yes. Ask if a D30 is a prosumer camera and you'll probably get a 50/50 split at worst.
Prosumer just means good enough for situational pro use and fancy enough for high end enthusiast use. I don't think a fixed lens vs interchangable lens would affect that equation much.
In addition to the great new gapless playback feature, one cool thing "power users" of iTunes might be interested in is that there is now a "Skipped Count" (and "Last Skipped") attribute in iTunes. This will be great for finding those overrated songs that you constantly skip without remembering to downgrade them to fewer stars. Smart Playlists everywhere rejoice!
I was also impressed that it stopped checking the gapless settings on my whole library and immediately started updating the gapless settings on just the tracks on my iPod when I plugged it in. Good prioritization.
I'm scared of telling it to update album art, how well does it do? A fully automated system makes me worry I'm going to have all sorts of songs with hilariously incorrect artwork on them.
Don't the recent MP3 tag formats support arbitrary tags? I would imagine Apple is just adding a gapless tag, which may not be compatible with other implementations but should work for all their software and hardware. Otherwise they'll just store the information in the iTunes Library file like they do when a file's tag can't be written to or it doesn't support particular data.