"If someone robs a bank overnight (no people harmed) and takes 10 million dollars the shit would hit the fan.
But a corporation?.... and to pay $20.7 million in fines and restitution."
Its a close and decent point but not a perfect one. They didn't take a school's budget and steal the money by transferring it over to their bank account. They scammed them. Just as car mechanics and other people who overcharge do everyday. Its not quite stealing just highly unethical.
I like my culture and laugh because 300 million people rule over 6+ billion people. We do it by working hard. So keep your 35 hour work week, elitist views, and socialist economy and complain about whoever is in charge.
Money and power come from having a strong economy and military. If you want the money and power in this world then work for it. If your culture isn't suited to the greed lifestyle then get used to being dominated. Thats just a fact of life.
And people in America understand supply and demand just as well as anyone else. When gas hits $3-$4 due to either excess demand or lack of supply we will switch to the next cheapest thing. Thats the beauty of capitalism and the free market. If gas hits $10 a gallon you can watch every american suddenly become "smart" and drive an electric car. I'm sure it will happen in the next 50 years anyways so save your breath. Your soapbox will not change this course of history one bit so stop wasting your time.
I have had some annoying girls ask me to fix their computers. These are usually the friends of friends, who care only about themselves, basically the cast members of "mean girls." So instead of trying to get something out of it I usually ask them for something they won't ever end up giving me. An example, this one girl begged me multiple times to fix her computer. I told her I don't know how to cook and if I fixed her computer I simply want a dinner out of it. But I knew she was too selfish to ever do that in return. My real plan was to help her so she can't ask my help again. I cleaned the computer up, got it working great, 5 months later it is filled with spyware again and even though she has mentioned it to my brother he simply responds "he is still disappointed about you not holding up your end of the bargain."
I spent the hour not for the free dinner but because I knew I wouldn't get it and I could use that for leverage.
"Still, i'd like to get an account when it goes live (and any storage above say, 1G isn't useful to me.)"
So basically they are giving you unlimited space since space is cheap. Obviously the more space means less and less to most people as I barely use 10mb, let alone 1,000mb. So call it marketing but they are telling you that google will take care of your technological needs. Whether its searching, storage, online shopping, or email now. I think its great. And I'm sure its safe to say we don't have to worry about google trying to screw us over later like other companies may do when we get hooked to their service.
saw David was modded -1 but quickly back up to 0. But he wrote a nice post and I agree with it. Pirates are lazy and aren't usually tech savvy. They would most like throw down the $100. I am sure they have a lot more pirated software that needs windows and not linux.
Learning linux is not worth saving $100 to most people.
Republicans control the house and the president positions. If I was going to sell the government something I would go to the republicans, the people in power. Seems like a good business move and since they were selling these faulty machines for tens of millions it looks like it paid off.
Until we see votes being changed I don't think I can subscribe to your magazine.
Even if this could detect all copyrighted movies and songs (which I don't think is possible because how can an intel chip know the difference between a dvd movie I ripped and turned into divx and my home movies) I still am not scared. Just think of all the encryption out there that gets broken. The more companies try to restrict something the greater the challenge of breaking it.
Am I missing something, can someone tell me what to fear (I RTFA)
" What I really hate about having all this information public is I get a lot of spam (both email and snail mail)."
Just this morning I did the classic, rip up all the junk mail and use their prepaid envolopes to ship it back to them. It cost them stamps, time to open it, and to throw it away. And it was fast and fun for me!
'Few bittorrent sites, supranova.org, torrentz.com, and an irc.irchighway.net network later and I've dropped completely off their "This group watches TV" radar, when the fact is I have over half a terabyte of TV.'
"So basically you're pirating TV? "
yeah, seems so. Sometimes you miss those great chapelle shows or an episode of southpark and its a great way to catch them. Commerical free. I think we all know this is the way TV is headed, less 30 second ads and more in-program ads.
"We use economics threats as a diplomatic tool and if we can dish it out we should be able to take it right back!
Am I off base here?"
I have to say you are off base. If you get right down to it, gambling is a tax on the poor (for the most part, obviously there are exceptions to everything). If gambling was allowed everywhere it wouldnt ruin the rich or middle class, it would suck out what little money the poor gets from their small paychecks.
I do not agree the US has to allow anything in another countries' web site just because the server is based outside the US. If that were true all we would need is one lawless country to gamble, view child porn, violate copyright, and do whatever else we want to do. I mean just like submitter said 'It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the U.S. and make it a trade issue.' Pot/Kettle black?"
I guess I should buy a small island and serve the world's child porn needs. I could make billions and claim that the US (and any other big country that dislikes my island) is forcing their morals on me.
I am glad to see this as my CS department was filled with people who were dreaming of big money. Instead it will be filled with the dorks and geeks we all love. Those people who dream of talking about the latest CPUs and video cards, who love to program at 2:00am, and who will load up a quake deathmatch instead of going to a trendy nightspot. These things move in cycles and I am happy it is on the downtrend.
Malpractice happens a lot, its called being human. Doctors make mistakes like everyone else does at work. Its just their mistakes can cost millions of dollars. Unless its totally careless (not following the right procedure) or idiotic (amputating the wrong foot) it shouldn't be a million dollar lawsuit.
It is modded down now. I get a score of 2 because my posts are usually informative and my karma is near perfect. And sure it may be off topic of this crappy news story but I believe the news story I posted will be much more important. Who knows of the/. editors are on the ball because they are late on the news.
7:25AM SCO Group files suit against AutoZone (SCOX) 13.42: Co files suit against AutoZone (AZO) for its alleged violations of SCO's UNIX copyrights through its use of Linux. The lawsuit alleges that AutoZone violated SCO's UNIX copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system that contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization from SCO's proprietary UNIX System V code in violation of SCO's copyrights.
Saw that in my morning routine of news but no links yet:(
How much email is generated by the US as a whole, how much legitimate email is created by the US, and how much spam. It would be interested to have the rest of the story. Its easy to make a statistics claim like the US creates the most spam but if we send the most email then it isn't that suprising. I'm sure the US creates the most junk in a lot of areas.
I would never pay them a cent. I am an out of college grad student with no money and if they want to throw me in jail for not paying up that is fine. But I am a complete stubborn asshole who hates authority.
I can't imagine the RIAA lawyers after I tell them that I want to go through the court case, get fined $150,000, and never pay up. I think if one person stood up to them it could seriously have a huge effect on them. Politicians only stand up for big companies when the media isn't looking.
If I only cost them their lawyer fees for going to court it would be worth it for me. Fuck their deep pockets and unethical business.
Isn't it funny how we have people complaining how windows auto-update can download patches automatically into users machines and how this is dangerous but at the same time we blame these windows users for not updating their pcs. So when you have tens of millions of windows pcs would you rather MS update them automatically or not? This is problem a dumb question because I bet the/. crowd is divided on it as a matter of privacy and annoyance.
That would be one hell of a shake up. I support my bands by going to their concert (no way would I buy a cd and give money to the riaa). But I don't subscribe to their newsletters or visit their sites. And I imagine most people don't either. That means even though I may like 20+ bands I will only keep up with so many of them with less promotions. However, it would certainly be nice to have less manufactured bands out there.
Yes until that company goes out of business and than there is one less company promoting music. So you get less artists and less choices. I never even hear when my favorite artists have a new cd coming out. Sevendust, Incubus, Counting Crows. There are no promotion dollars for them and so I don't buy their cds when they come out.
So if you like consilidation of music and the least creative artist out there (think more backstreet boys, britney spears, dance/pop combos for easy money) then wish for every music company to go out of business.
I am not saying I agree with this price raise but I am just trying to let people here see the other side of the story so they don't just yell "EVIL!" and go on to the next news story. This issue isn't black and white.
That is so retarded. With the DMCA and other laws to say everything written in the law is perfect is the dumbest thought ever.
In MI there was a law about spitting after 2:00am. Should it cost me $100+ to spit on the sidewalk? Or how about a law about sodomy in Texas. Should people go to jail because they had anal sex? Or how about countries that suppress religion. If I lived in another country should I declare myself a muslim or risk going to jail on trumped up charges?
$150,000 per song is too much. Maybe if it was $20, $100, or even $500 per song with a max number of songs to teach a consumer a lesson. But imagine if you saved up $100,000 for retirement and lost it all on one song? What a horrible law.
She was 12, she did something wrong, but she didn't deserve to be treated as a criminal.
Oh yeah, I don't care about the GPL code at all. If I wrote something for free and others used it and didn't share I wouldn't care about it at all. More power to them.
I took an economics class which explained this situation. You see the UK has their music industry which pays for ads, marketing, and other markups to put it in stores. They spend money in the UK so you will buy it in a UK store. If everyone buys it from China after getting the promos in the UK the industry loses a lot of money.
I saw the same scenerios brought up with cars, vacuum cleaners, etc. Imagine if a company needs a salesperson to sell a vacuum cleaner (to show off all the cool parts). So a store has someone trained to show off the vacuum cleaner but raises the price. People may go to that store to learn about the vacuum cleaner but then go to a discount store where its marked down because no salesperson exists. What does the vacuum cleaner company do to stop their good retailers from being driven out by bad retailers? They have to stop allowing the discount retailer to sell at a marked down price or they risk losing the salesperson and future sales in the long run.
I see the same scenerio in the UK. If advertising, marketing, and all the other costs aren't recouped in the UK because they are buying cheap imports then the artists from that company won't be promoted anymore. Thus, in the long run it will cause less sales. In this scenerio however people can argue that the radio and Internet is enough free promotion for an artist. I think the music industry knows best how to promote an artist (ie britney and other crap) since its their business.
Hope that helps people understand the situation a little more. I am in the crowd 99% of the time that screams MUSIC INDUSTRY IS EVIL! but this time I see the economics of it all.
Your right, a 12 year girl in the projects should have to pay $150,000 for downloading a song off of kazaa. Wait, she won't make that for the next 30 years of her life. Well thats justice for you.
Good luck! Fight the good fight and get paid for it! My printer which is my fax needed more ink because of the 100+ faxes I got. So it has already cost me $30 to get advertised to in the past 6 months.
My brother who works for a hedge fund tells me how they have bought articles, not ads, articles in forbes. So perhaps fax.com gave forbes some money to show both sides of the argument. Not that it should help them. Fax.com broke the law, the case was so obvious the higher courts refuse to hear it, fax.com keeps getting sued for breaking the law.
Its terrible that fax.com is all but broke. "At its peak, the company boasted of a database containing 16 million fax numbers and 30 million "untouched" fax numbers, and that it could blast out as many as 3 million faxes a day on behalf of Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ), Mail Boxes Etc. (now a unit of United Parcel Service (nyse: UPS - news - people )) and other customers. To find fax numbers, the company used a sophisticated automated "war dialing" system that randomly called and recorded millions of fax numbers."
Slashdot Mirror
"If someone robs a bank overnight (no people harmed) and takes 10 million dollars the shit would hit the fan.
....
But a corporation?
and to pay $20.7 million in fines and restitution."
Its a close and decent point but not a perfect one. They didn't take a school's budget and steal the money by transferring it over to their bank account. They scammed them. Just as car mechanics and other people who overcharge do everyday. Its not quite stealing just highly unethical.
I like my culture and laugh because 300 million people rule over 6+ billion people. We do it by working hard. So keep your 35 hour work week, elitist views, and socialist economy and complain about whoever is in charge.
Money and power come from having a strong economy and military. If you want the money and power in this world then work for it. If your culture isn't suited to the greed lifestyle then get used to being dominated. Thats just a fact of life.
And people in America understand supply and demand just as well as anyone else. When gas hits $3-$4 due to either excess demand or lack of supply we will switch to the next cheapest thing. Thats the beauty of capitalism and the free market. If gas hits $10 a gallon you can watch every american suddenly become "smart" and drive an electric car. I'm sure it will happen in the next 50 years anyways so save your breath. Your soapbox will not change this course of history one bit so stop wasting your time.
I have had some annoying girls ask me to fix their computers. These are usually the friends of friends, who care only about themselves, basically the cast members of "mean girls." So instead of trying to get something out of it I usually ask them for something they won't ever end up giving me. An example, this one girl begged me multiple times to fix her computer. I told her I don't know how to cook and if I fixed her computer I simply want a dinner out of it. But I knew she was too selfish to ever do that in return. My real plan was to help her so she can't ask my help again. I cleaned the computer up, got it working great, 5 months later it is filled with spyware again and even though she has mentioned it to my brother he simply responds "he is still disappointed about you not holding up your end of the bargain."
I spent the hour not for the free dinner but because I knew I wouldn't get it and I could use that for leverage.
Just don't fuck with the seapigs. End of discussion. I know I wouldn't want to test them out.
"Still, i'd like to get an account when it goes live (and any storage above say, 1G isn't useful to me.)"
So basically they are giving you unlimited space since space is cheap. Obviously the more space means less and less to most people as I barely use 10mb, let alone 1,000mb. So call it marketing but they are telling you that google will take care of your technological needs. Whether its searching, storage, online shopping, or email now. I think its great. And I'm sure its safe to say we don't have to worry about google trying to screw us over later like other companies may do when we get hooked to their service.
saw David was modded -1 but quickly back up to 0. But he wrote a nice post and I agree with it. Pirates are lazy and aren't usually tech savvy. They would most like throw down the $100. I am sure they have a lot more pirated software that needs windows and not linux.
Learning linux is not worth saving $100 to most people.
Republicans control the house and the president positions. If I was going to sell the government something I would go to the republicans, the people in power. Seems like a good business move and since they were selling these faulty machines for tens of millions it looks like it paid off.
Until we see votes being changed I don't think I can subscribe to your magazine.
Even if this could detect all copyrighted movies and songs (which I don't think is possible because how can an intel chip know the difference between a dvd movie I ripped and turned into divx and my home movies) I still am not scared. Just think of all the encryption out there that gets broken. The more companies try to restrict something the greater the challenge of breaking it.
Am I missing something, can someone tell me what to fear (I RTFA)
" What I really hate about having all this information public is I get a lot of spam (both email and snail mail)."
Just this morning I did the classic, rip up all the junk mail and use their prepaid envolopes to ship it back to them. It cost them stamps, time to open it, and to throw it away. And it was fast and fun for me!
'Few bittorrent sites, supranova.org, torrentz.com, and an irc.irchighway.net network later and I've dropped completely off their "This group watches TV" radar, when the fact is I have over half a terabyte of TV.'
"So basically you're pirating TV? "
yeah, seems so. Sometimes you miss those great chapelle shows or an episode of southpark and its a great way to catch them. Commerical free. I think we all know this is the way TV is headed, less 30 second ads and more in-program ads.
"We use economics threats as a diplomatic tool and if we can dish it out we should be able to take it right back!
Am I off base here?"
I have to say you are off base. If you get right down to it, gambling is a tax on the poor (for the most part, obviously there are exceptions to everything). If gambling was allowed everywhere it wouldnt ruin the rich or middle class, it would suck out what little money the poor gets from their small paychecks.
I do not agree the US has to allow anything in another countries' web site just because the server is based outside the US. If that were true all we would need is one lawless country to gamble, view child porn, violate copyright, and do whatever else we want to do. I mean just like submitter said 'It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the U.S. and make it a trade issue.' Pot/Kettle black?"
I guess I should buy a small island and serve the world's child porn needs. I could make billions and claim that the US (and any other big country that dislikes my island) is forcing their morals on me.
I am glad to see this as my CS department was filled with people who were dreaming of big money. Instead it will be filled with the dorks and geeks we all love. Those people who dream of talking about the latest CPUs and video cards, who love to program at 2:00am, and who will load up a quake deathmatch instead of going to a trendy nightspot. These things move in cycles and I am happy it is on the downtrend.
Malpractice happens a lot, its called being human. Doctors make mistakes like everyone else does at work. Its just their mistakes can cost millions of dollars. Unless its totally careless (not following the right procedure) or idiotic (amputating the wrong foot) it shouldn't be a million dollar lawsuit.
It is modded down now. I get a score of 2 because my posts are usually informative and my karma is near perfect. And sure it may be off topic of this crappy news story but I believe the news story I posted will be much more important. Who knows of the /. editors are on the ball because they are late on the news.
7:25AM SCO Group files suit against AutoZone (SCOX) 13.42: Co files suit against AutoZone (AZO) for its alleged violations of SCO's UNIX copyrights through its use of Linux. The lawsuit alleges that AutoZone violated SCO's UNIX copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system that contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization from SCO's proprietary UNIX System V code in violation of SCO's copyrights.
:(
Saw that in my morning routine of news but no links yet
How much email is generated by the US as a whole, how much legitimate email is created by the US, and how much spam. It would be interested to have the rest of the story. Its easy to make a statistics claim like the US creates the most spam but if we send the most email then it isn't that suprising. I'm sure the US creates the most junk in a lot of areas.
I would never pay them a cent. I am an out of college grad student with no money and if they want to throw me in jail for not paying up that is fine. But I am a complete stubborn asshole who hates authority.
I can't imagine the RIAA lawyers after I tell them that I want to go through the court case, get fined $150,000, and never pay up. I think if one person stood up to them it could seriously have a huge effect on them. Politicians only stand up for big companies when the media isn't looking.
If I only cost them their lawyer fees for going to court it would be worth it for me. Fuck their deep pockets and unethical business.
Isn't it funny how we have people complaining how windows auto-update can download patches automatically into users machines and how this is dangerous but at the same time we blame these windows users for not updating their pcs. So when you have tens of millions of windows pcs would you rather MS update them automatically or not? This is problem a dumb question because I bet the /. crowd is divided on it as a matter of privacy and annoyance.
That would be one hell of a shake up. I support my bands by going to their concert (no way would I buy a cd and give money to the riaa). But I don't subscribe to their newsletters or visit their sites. And I imagine most people don't either. That means even though I may like 20+ bands I will only keep up with so many of them with less promotions. However, it would certainly be nice to have less manufactured bands out there.
Yes until that company goes out of business and than there is one less company promoting music. So you get less artists and less choices. I never even hear when my favorite artists have a new cd coming out. Sevendust, Incubus, Counting Crows. There are no promotion dollars for them and so I don't buy their cds when they come out.
So if you like consilidation of music and the least creative artist out there (think more backstreet boys, britney spears, dance/pop combos for easy money) then wish for every music company to go out of business.
I am not saying I agree with this price raise but I am just trying to let people here see the other side of the story so they don't just yell "EVIL!" and go on to the next news story. This issue isn't black and white.
"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
That is so retarded. With the DMCA and other laws to say everything written in the law is perfect is the dumbest thought ever.
In MI there was a law about spitting after 2:00am. Should it cost me $100+ to spit on the sidewalk? Or how about a law about sodomy in Texas. Should people go to jail because they had anal sex? Or how about countries that suppress religion. If I lived in another country should I declare myself a muslim or risk going to jail on trumped up charges?
$150,000 per song is too much. Maybe if it was $20, $100, or even $500 per song with a max number of songs to teach a consumer a lesson. But imagine if you saved up $100,000 for retirement and lost it all on one song? What a horrible law.
She was 12, she did something wrong, but she didn't deserve to be treated as a criminal.
Oh yeah, I don't care about the GPL code at all. If I wrote something for free and others used it and didn't share I wouldn't care about it at all. More power to them.
I took an economics class which explained this situation. You see the UK has their music industry which pays for ads, marketing, and other markups to put it in stores. They spend money in the UK so you will buy it in a UK store. If everyone buys it from China after getting the promos in the UK the industry loses a lot of money.
I saw the same scenerios brought up with cars, vacuum cleaners, etc. Imagine if a company needs a salesperson to sell a vacuum cleaner (to show off all the cool parts). So a store has someone trained to show off the vacuum cleaner but raises the price. People may go to that store to learn about the vacuum cleaner but then go to a discount store where its marked down because no salesperson exists. What does the vacuum cleaner company do to stop their good retailers from being driven out by bad retailers? They have to stop allowing the discount retailer to sell at a marked down price or they risk losing the salesperson and future sales in the long run.
I see the same scenerio in the UK. If advertising, marketing, and all the other costs aren't recouped in the UK because they are buying cheap imports then the artists from that company won't be promoted anymore. Thus, in the long run it will cause less sales. In this scenerio however people can argue that the radio and Internet is enough free promotion for an artist. I think the music industry knows best how to promote an artist (ie britney and other crap) since its their business.
Hope that helps people understand the situation a little more. I am in the crowd 99% of the time that screams MUSIC INDUSTRY IS EVIL! but this time I see the economics of it all.
Your right, a 12 year girl in the projects should have to pay $150,000 for downloading a song off of kazaa. Wait, she won't make that for the next 30 years of her life. Well thats justice for you.
Good luck! Fight the good fight and get paid for it! My printer which is my fax needed more ink because of the 100+ faxes I got. So it has already cost me $30 to get advertised to in the past 6 months.
My brother who works for a hedge fund tells me how they have bought articles, not ads, articles in forbes. So perhaps fax.com gave forbes some money to show both sides of the argument. Not that it should help them. Fax.com broke the law, the case was so obvious the higher courts refuse to hear it, fax.com keeps getting sued for breaking the law.
Its terrible that fax.com is all but broke. "At its peak, the company boasted of a database containing 16 million fax numbers and 30 million "untouched" fax numbers, and that it could blast out as many as 3 million faxes a day on behalf of Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ), Mail Boxes Etc. (now a unit of United Parcel Service (nyse: UPS - news - people )) and other customers. To find fax numbers, the company used a sophisticated automated "war dialing" system that randomly called and recorded millions of fax numbers."
What a sleezy business.