Not exactly. On a bad day I would say I HATE my car. The fact of the matter is that I love my car dearly, but I hate the way I'm constrained in using it by crappy urban planning and having to share the experience with all the idiot assclowns who share the road with me.
Similarly I say that I hate Flash/whatever. I don't really hate the tools, I just hate the way I'm forced to interact with them, and the way they are not utilized to their full potential by crappy conflicting interest and poor communication. When I think of the hoops I have to jump through to make a Flash file that's got an appropriate file size and is actually useful (just because some bureaucrat insists that everything bounce around like a Jack Russel fucking Terrier), and the way I am daily offended by other people using it badly. It's actually a lot like my commute.
By the way, the day I wrote that post had, in fact been a bad day for me and Flash. I had spent all day cleaning up SEO/ease-of-maintenance issues caused by its misuse. Add in a few run-ins with IE6 and some other issues stemming from poor implementation of standard practices and you've got a recipe for HATING Flash...especially when it's used for the primary navigation, in files that often run around a megabyte.
The main problem there (for the rights holders) is that doing some research and issuing a lawyer's letter requesting settlement to someone costs more already than the couple thousand dollars they could get in statutory damages in such a case, as most people do not infringe on too many works at a time. This is making the whole enforcement process uneconomical at best.
And yet they make their arguments on economic terms...I sometimes feel like they're behaving more like scared, spoiled children than like people who are ostensibly good at making money.
It's probably because big media publishing long ago fell into a rut where they held all the cards and didn't have to innovate. All they had to do was keep up the status quo and keep raking in the cash. Now they're being faced with a changing world and they've gotten too fat and lazy to keep up.
I'll tell you what: that's capitolism, that's economics.
"the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's actions"
Yet another way her courtroom shenanigans and tomfoolery are going to bite her in the ass. I'm opposed to full-scale IP-less law(lessness), but I'm pretty much disgusted with everyone involved in this case, from the prosecution, to the defense, to the judge, jury, defendant and RIAA. They should all be ashamed of themselves for making a mockery of both copyright law and the American judicial system.
I agree completely with you that both assumptions are ridiculous, but how exactly do we determine any of these variables?
The "real" damages might be a lot lower than some people think if we're making them less than the retail value of the songs distributed. It's not like Swedish death metal sells a whole lot of copies.
On another note, let's say I download an old album that was never very popular and never made it to CD, one that I could otherwise only get through a lot of hunting and which would certainly be second-hand. Is that wrong? I could spend money and time obtaining it, but that money would not be going to the record companies so it can't possibly count as a "lost sale."
Let's assume 24 songs is about 2 CDs worth of music. What would happen if I stole 2 CDs from Wal-Mart? I'd get a slap on the wrist misdemeanor, and no more than a $1,000 fine. Probably I would get a whole lot less than that.
How is stealing that same content digitally somehow worse? If anything I can think of a few ways it's less harmful than shoplifting...
According to some wikipedia article the median American individual makes about $32,000/year (never mind the fact that women make $27K). Multiply that by a career lifespan of 45 years and you get $1.4 million.
They have just judged that she should pay 1/3 more than a typical American will make in their life.
What's wrong with this picture? Clearly she would have never spent that much on music...
The internet is a public domain, huh? I can't tell if you're a troll so I'll answer in all seriousness.
The internet is primarily a communication tool, right? So are private gatherings, phones, snail mail, etc. How would you feel if the man were allowed to peer into those without oversight? The police reading your email or tracking what you do online is ultimately no different from tracking what you do on the phone or in your own home. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that must be respected if we want to live in a free society.
P.S. I'm an upstanding citizen and really do have nothing to hide, it's a matter of principle.
This reminds me of something that happened last winter in my city. It actually happens a lot, I'm sure, but this time it made the news for whatever reason. The city decided that a man's house was not safe to live in because he had knocked a hole in the wall to do wiring and plumbing upgrades.
For some reason they figured it was in everyone's best interest that he take up sleeping in the alley behind his house rather than in a house with a hole in the wall and threw him out on the street. It makes no sense to me, but that's probably because I live in reality-land instead of government-land.
On the contrary, it might be better to get a (very small) SSD for this purpose. Assuming grandparent wants to be able to turn this machine off and then on again quickly.
SSD will be the only way to go if you want it to have a startup time on par with other kinds of home theater components.
SSD has a place where it is used best, (speed-dependent applications, such as OS booting), HDD also has a place where it shines (massive storage without breaking the bank). SSD is awesome for booting, but way faster than I need for most things. Why would I pay 10X as much to store DVD rips on a drive that can deliver them oodles faster than I need to watch them?
Having the right tools and using the tools right are very different things. I refuse to pick which type of drive is "better," because each one is great in its own way. I keep my multimedia on regular old 7200rpm drives, because it's cheap and gets the job done. I'd love to boot from SDD, but using it for large-scale storage would be stupid.
Is denial of service on Iranian government sites such a hot idea?
They might hassle the government a little bit, but they also might gum up the tubes being used by regular folks to do things like post body counts and whatnot to Twitter (of all the ridiculous places).
I'm in about the same boat. The ads are really just on my blog as a sort of "just in case." Just in case I ever get Slashdotted or something I might make a little real money. Getting paid only for clicks makes me wish my readers weren't so savvy.
Until getting into space becomes cheap enough to be used for more than big industry satellite ventures and adventures for the stupidly rich, no. Until then there will not be much commercial space flight, at least in the sense the headline implies. Once we have a way to get to space that doesn't involve immense cost and burning insane amounts of fuel, yes, we'll have awesome space tech.
Where's the damn space elevator already? Stupid sci-fi books getting my hopes up.
Way to ignore the sentence following the quote. We're talking about each other's peers here, not each other. Every profession has its fair share of asshats. I'll even go out on a limb and admit that mine has more than its share of asshats.
Amen to that. Good graphics work is good, bad graphics work is bad, regardless of the medium. The same can be said for file size optimization.
At my current job I came in to find people happily oblivious, building promotional headers for the website in Flash, with zero thought towards file sizes. They had the navigation built into these animations, which sometimes topped a megabyte. It was a mess, and will continue to be until I get my new version of the site layout pushed through the executives, but I'm going to be dropping the file size of each page by a couple orders of magnitude. I've also edited the content down from 1000+ pages to less than 30.
I've also showed them a few things about optimizing files and we're making progress. I've also tried to explain what file types compress what types of images best, so that we can get our static image bloat under control. That one isn't going quite so well.
Now the only problem is that it has to ultimately maintained by a different group, who uses.NET, and the WYSIWYG Visual Studio editor (ick! why are they even using it? I dunno) is a little squirrelly about PNGs, and the people who will be maintaining it don't trust the CSS to make things work. They're resisting the fact that they can flow things onto the page now instead of making a zillion absolutely positioned DIVs (ARG!).
Way to ignore the paragraph directly after the one you quoted. I would argue that Java has *everything* to do with this, remember the stupid Java applets that Frontpage used to make rollovers out of? It was atrocious, you used to be unable to browse the web without Java.
Nobody (that I remember) made a fuss about Flash "killing" Java applets when it came out.
Why is it that every time a new technology is created we have to phrase it as "taking aim" or "taking on" or being a "[blank] killer?" Why can't we all just get along?
But seriously, why can't we look at this in terms of the development doors that will be opened, and not mind the fact that RIA content will someday probably fall by the wayside? Progress happens, and those companies/individuals/organizations that fail to adapt fall behind and eventually wither. I think we can all agree that HTML5 has the potential to be awesome, let's approach it in terms of how to make it as awesome as it can be, instead of wringing our hands over the fates of the poor, defenseless multinational corporations.
If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.
As a professional "graphics artist type" I take a offense at that. What if I were to ask about the computer coders types making the kind of buggy crap they do now with [whatever language you like]?
Don't blame me for the ugly crap made by my less talented brethren and I won't blame you for the unstable, insecure crap made by yours. No-talent assclowns are no-talent assclowns, regardless of profession.
This graphics artist type (full disclosure: I may get paid for design, but my hobby is programming so I'm sort of an odd duck), for one, is very excited at the potential of HTML5. I look forward to a world where I can make animations for the web and embed videos and whatnot without having to muck around with stupid Flash/Silverlight/Java/whatever. I HATE Flash, I HATE Silverlight more, I HATE Java the most, and anything I can't name off the top of my head can go STRAIGHT to hell. I do see where the parent is coming from though. I see a lot of designers building sites in Flash just because they lack the analytical skills to wrap their overdeveloped right hemispheres around using CSS and (X)HTML. To design a website that isn't just pretty, but is actually good takes more than a good creative sense.
These days everyone and their brother and their cat might think they're a web designer, but most of them aren't. They're just some guy with a pirated copy of Photoshop. Rest assured that there are web designers out there who know what they're doing.
Slashdot Mirror
Not exactly. On a bad day I would say I HATE my car. The fact of the matter is that I love my car dearly, but I hate the way I'm constrained in using it by crappy urban planning and having to share the experience with all the idiot assclowns who share the road with me.
Similarly I say that I hate Flash/whatever. I don't really hate the tools, I just hate the way I'm forced to interact with them, and the way they are not utilized to their full potential by crappy conflicting interest and poor communication. When I think of the hoops I have to jump through to make a Flash file that's got an appropriate file size and is actually useful (just because some bureaucrat insists that everything bounce around like a Jack Russel fucking Terrier), and the way I am daily offended by other people using it badly. It's actually a lot like my commute.
By the way, the day I wrote that post had, in fact been a bad day for me and Flash. I had spent all day cleaning up SEO/ease-of-maintenance issues caused by its misuse. Add in a few run-ins with IE6 and some other issues stemming from poor implementation of standard practices and you've got a recipe for HATING Flash...especially when it's used for the primary navigation, in files that often run around a megabyte.
Sometimes I type too fast for my own good.
The main problem there (for the rights holders) is that doing some research and issuing a lawyer's letter requesting settlement to someone costs more already than the couple thousand dollars they could get in statutory damages in such a case, as most people do not infringe on too many works at a time. This is making the whole enforcement process uneconomical at best.
And yet they make their arguments on economic terms...I sometimes feel like they're behaving more like scared, spoiled children than like people who are ostensibly good at making money.
It's probably because big media publishing long ago fell into a rut where they held all the cards and didn't have to innovate. All they had to do was keep up the status quo and keep raking in the cash. Now they're being faced with a changing world and they've gotten too fat and lazy to keep up.
I'll tell you what: that's capitolism, that's economics.
"the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's actions"
Yet another way her courtroom shenanigans and tomfoolery are going to bite her in the ass. I'm opposed to full-scale IP-less law(lessness), but I'm pretty much disgusted with everyone involved in this case, from the prosecution, to the defense, to the judge, jury, defendant and RIAA. They should all be ashamed of themselves for making a mockery of both copyright law and the American judicial system.
I agree completely with you that both assumptions are ridiculous, but how exactly do we determine any of these variables?
The "real" damages might be a lot lower than some people think if we're making them less than the retail value of the songs distributed. It's not like Swedish death metal sells a whole lot of copies.
On another note, let's say I download an old album that was never very popular and never made it to CD, one that I could otherwise only get through a lot of hunting and which would certainly be second-hand. Is that wrong? I could spend money and time obtaining it, but that money would not be going to the record companies so it can't possibly count as a "lost sale."
As long as we're on the subject...sort of.
Let's assume 24 songs is about 2 CDs worth of music. What would happen if I stole 2 CDs from Wal-Mart? I'd get a slap on the wrist misdemeanor, and no more than a $1,000 fine. Probably I would get a whole lot less than that.
How is stealing that same content digitally somehow worse? If anything I can think of a few ways it's less harmful than shoplifting...
Did she steal 190,000 CDs worth of music? I doubt it.
According to some wikipedia article the median American individual makes about $32,000/year (never mind the fact that women make $27K). Multiply that by a career lifespan of 45 years and you get $1.4 million.
They have just judged that she should pay 1/3 more than a typical American will make in their life.
What's wrong with this picture? Clearly she would have never spent that much on music...
The internet is a public domain, huh? I can't tell if you're a troll so I'll answer in all seriousness.
The internet is primarily a communication tool, right? So are private gatherings, phones, snail mail, etc. How would you feel if the man were allowed to peer into those without oversight? The police reading your email or tracking what you do online is ultimately no different from tracking what you do on the phone or in your own home. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that must be respected if we want to live in a free society.
P.S. I'm an upstanding citizen and really do have nothing to hide, it's a matter of principle.
This reminds me of something that happened last winter in my city. It actually happens a lot, I'm sure, but this time it made the news for whatever reason. The city decided that a man's house was not safe to live in because he had knocked a hole in the wall to do wiring and plumbing upgrades.
For some reason they figured it was in everyone's best interest that he take up sleeping in the alley behind his house rather than in a house with a hole in the wall and threw him out on the street. It makes no sense to me, but that's probably because I live in reality-land instead of government-land.
Don't forget they did this in the dead of winter.
On the contrary, it might be better to get a (very small) SSD for this purpose. Assuming grandparent wants to be able to turn this machine off and then on again quickly.
SSD will be the only way to go if you want it to have a startup time on par with other kinds of home theater components.
SSD has a place where it is used best, (speed-dependent applications, such as OS booting), HDD also has a place where it shines (massive storage without breaking the bank). SSD is awesome for booting, but way faster than I need for most things. Why would I pay 10X as much to store DVD rips on a drive that can deliver them oodles faster than I need to watch them?
Having the right tools and using the tools right are very different things. I refuse to pick which type of drive is "better," because each one is great in its own way. I keep my multimedia on regular old 7200rpm drives, because it's cheap and gets the job done. I'd love to boot from SDD, but using it for large-scale storage would be stupid.
You must be thinking of 2004...right? I can't tell if you're serious, or just a troll.
Is denial of service on Iranian government sites such a hot idea?
They might hassle the government a little bit, but they also might gum up the tubes being used by regular folks to do things like post body counts and whatnot to Twitter (of all the ridiculous places).
Something to consider.
I'm in about the same boat. The ads are really just on my blog as a sort of "just in case." Just in case I ever get Slashdotted or something I might make a little real money. Getting paid only for clicks makes me wish my readers weren't so savvy.
I need to find some more gullible readers...
Until getting into space becomes cheap enough to be used for more than big industry satellite ventures and adventures for the stupidly rich, no. Until then there will not be much commercial space flight, at least in the sense the headline implies. Once we have a way to get to space that doesn't involve immense cost and burning insane amounts of fuel, yes, we'll have awesome space tech.
Where's the damn space elevator already? Stupid sci-fi books getting my hopes up.
Way to ignore the sentence following the quote. We're talking about each other's peers here, not each other. Every profession has its fair share of asshats. I'll even go out on a limb and admit that mine has more than its share of asshats.
Amen to that. Good graphics work is good, bad graphics work is bad, regardless of the medium. The same can be said for file size optimization.
.NET, and the WYSIWYG Visual Studio editor (ick! why are they even using it? I dunno) is a little squirrelly about PNGs, and the people who will be maintaining it don't trust the CSS to make things work. They're resisting the fact that they can flow things onto the page now instead of making a zillion absolutely positioned DIVs (ARG!).
At my current job I came in to find people happily oblivious, building promotional headers for the website in Flash, with zero thought towards file sizes. They had the navigation built into these animations, which sometimes topped a megabyte. It was a mess, and will continue to be until I get my new version of the site layout pushed through the executives, but I'm going to be dropping the file size of each page by a couple orders of magnitude. I've also edited the content down from 1000+ pages to less than 30.
I've also showed them a few things about optimizing files and we're making progress. I've also tried to explain what file types compress what types of images best, so that we can get our static image bloat under control. That one isn't going quite so well.
Now the only problem is that it has to ultimately maintained by a different group, who uses
Way to ignore the paragraph directly after the one you quoted. I would argue that Java has *everything* to do with this, remember the stupid Java applets that Frontpage used to make rollovers out of? It was atrocious, you used to be unable to browse the web without Java.
Nobody (that I remember) made a fuss about Flash "killing" Java applets when it came out.
Why is it that every time a new technology is created we have to phrase it as "taking aim" or "taking on" or being a "[blank] killer?" Why can't we all just get along?
But seriously, why can't we look at this in terms of the development doors that will be opened, and not mind the fact that RIA content will someday probably fall by the wayside? Progress happens, and those companies/individuals/organizations that fail to adapt fall behind and eventually wither. I think we can all agree that HTML5 has the potential to be awesome, let's approach it in terms of how to make it as awesome as it can be, instead of wringing our hands over the fates of the poor, defenseless multinational corporations.
If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.
As a professional "graphics artist type" I take a offense at that. What if I were to ask about the computer coders types making the kind of buggy crap they do now with [whatever language you like]?
Don't blame me for the ugly crap made by my less talented brethren and I won't blame you for the unstable, insecure crap made by yours. No-talent assclowns are no-talent assclowns, regardless of profession.
This graphics artist type (full disclosure: I may get paid for design, but my hobby is programming so I'm sort of an odd duck), for one, is very excited at the potential of HTML5. I look forward to a world where I can make animations for the web and embed videos and whatnot without having to muck around with stupid Flash/Silverlight/Java/whatever. I HATE Flash, I HATE Silverlight more, I HATE Java the most, and anything I can't name off the top of my head can go STRAIGHT to hell. I do see where the parent is coming from though. I see a lot of designers building sites in Flash just because they lack the analytical skills to wrap their overdeveloped right hemispheres around using CSS and (X)HTML. To design a website that isn't just pretty, but is actually good takes more than a good creative sense.
These days everyone and their brother and their cat might think they're a web designer, but most of them aren't. They're just some guy with a pirated copy of Photoshop. Rest assured that there are web designers out there who know what they're doing.